Kitabı oku: «Housemaid Heiress», sayfa 2

‘Now then, children, I’m not up to playing referee,’ a weak voice chided from the floor where the sufferer lay.

‘The devil—how long have you been awake?’

‘Long enough, Marco, long enough.’

‘You always had peculiar ideas of entertainment.’

‘I hail from a peculiar family.’

‘And are commonly considered the pinnacle of our eccentricity.’

‘I don’t usually waste time interrogating pretty girls in the middle of the night, so I could argue with that, were I feeling up to it.’

‘No doubt you soon will be, so if you will excuse us, Miss Smith?’

‘You’ll come if I scream?’

‘Trust me,’ he said with a rueful smile that did something to her heartbeat.

Dazed, Thea went out into the night without her usual feeling of dread dogging her every step. She doubted Granby’s thugs would be a match for her tall rifleman and his fearsome artillery, so at least tonight she was unlikely to be captured and forced up the aisle.

Murmuring soft endearments to reassure the nervous black charger, she carefully untied his reins. The stream ran only yards from the back of the hut and she knew Marcus would never have sent her out here if he thought there was the faintest degree of danger, but he was not to know what devils stalked her footsteps.

She caught herself thinking that, if only some of the lords Grandfather lured to Hardy House had been more like him, she might have wed before Granby’s mother realised what an opportunity was going a-begging. Anyway, the Major wasn’t a lord, so there was no earthly reason why he should want to marry her. If she did not wed a titled man, her fortune would be tied up so tightly only her grandchildren would receive more than a pittance.

Now her reputation was so comprehensively ruined, no self-respecting gentleman would marry Miss Alethea Hardy, and she instinctively knew Major Ashfield was one of those. All she could hope for was to stay out of the Winfordes’ reach until her twenty-first birthday, then live in obscurity on her hundred a year. It was so much less than her once-grand expectations that she almost sat down and cried.

By the time she had repeated the process of gently leading a horse to water and letting him drink with Hercules, she was resolved to be on her way as soon as dawn lightened the way.

‘I was beginning to think you a figment of my fevered imagination,’ Nick joked weakly when she crept through the ill-fitting door at last.

‘Funny, I hoped I was having a nightmare,’ she replied, wondering crossly why his darkly romantic looks had no effect on her silly heartbeat.

‘I like your waif, Marcus.’

‘You liked every pretty female you ever set eyes on.’

‘Well, they like me,’ he replied smugly.

Thea chuckled and got a penetrating stare from his cousin that she met with proud contempt, in case he thought her susceptible.

‘Will the Captain be fit to ride tomorrow?’ she asked at last.

‘He wasn’t fit today, but that didn’t stop him.’

‘You’ll be on your way at first light, then?’

Marcus frowned. ‘I shall be, but I hope you’ll stay while I fetch our cousin’s carriage to take him to Rosecombe.’

‘To the Park?’

‘Yes, do you know it?’

‘I saw it on my way,’ she said casually, trying not to sound wistful.

From the road she had caught a glimpse of the beautiful neo-classical mansion through still-bare trees and thought it everything she could never have. Elegance and harmony, she thought now, and the protection of a loving family. These two men were inside that family, and she could not keep a twist of bitterness from her lips.

‘You dislike the aristocracy?’

‘No, I just wish they’d give me a job in one of their grand houses, but no respectable family employs a vagrant maid.’

‘Oddest vagrant I ever set eyes on,’ Nick observed faintly from his makeshift mattress.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, go to sleep,’ his loving relative ordered sharply.

‘Don’t see how I can with you gossiping.’

‘I’m going out, so I suggest you recruit your strength. Lydia won’t be best pleased with you as it is, without working yourself into a high fever.’

‘No, the little darling will no doubt give me the scold of my life.’

‘Then get some sleep, instead of fantasising over Cousin Ned’s wife.’

‘Got to be fresh tomorrow to greet the flower of the regiment,’ Nick said irrepressibly and closed his eyes at last.

After a few minutes they heard his breathing deepen and knew he was genuinely asleep at last. Marcus put a finger to his lips and quit the room with a significant nod at his patient.

Did he think she would make a bolt for the open road in the middle of the night then? Thea tried hard not to feel insulted. It seemed that the rifleman’s trust was hard won, and she wanted it for some reason. Which was ridiculous, she decided, stoking the fire from a dwindling reserve of logs before she sat against the wall next to the primitive fireplace.

The rifleman’s bedroll was under his cousin along with his own. Their cloaks lay over him, with Thea’s cherished blanket, but she didn’t expect to sleep. It wouldn’t hurt her or the Major to pass the night in a draughty shed, but their patient was a very different matter. She focused her tired eyes on the pallid oval of his sleeping face. She was supposed to be watching him, not thinking about his arrogant cousin.

Hours later, Thea felt someone shake her gently and came awake, panic stark in her startled face. Gracious! She was leaning confidingly against Marcus Ashfield’s mighty torso. No, she had snuggled into his warmth like a shameless hussy in her lover’s arms. Thea tried to put as much space as possible between them and her hair promptly fell out of the knot held in place by her diminishing supply of hairpins.

‘If you have a particle of sense you’ll hold still, if you don’t want to make me into the rogue you seem determined to cast me as,’ Marcus gritted as if an armful of bedraggled woman fighting sleep represented limitless temptation.

Finally realising her dishevelled state, she flushed and shook her head to try and clear it of the nonsense his coming upon her last night seemed to have stuffed it with, and felt her heavy locks fan out in an untidy cloak that threatened to enmesh them both.

‘Why?’ she managed to whisper at last, nodding at his scandalously positioned arms.

‘For warmth,’ he said abruptly and her heart sank ridiculously.

‘Of course,’ she mumbled and rubbed sleepy eyes before stretching against his muscular chest, feeling a terrible temptation to rub up against him like a luxuriating cat.

‘I could not have you catch your death, Miss Smith.’

‘No, I would be for ever on your conscience, I suppose.’

‘I think you could be anyway,’ he replied with a sombre look and Thea’s heart plummeted; she didn’t want to be numbered among an officer’s obligations, especially not his.

‘I’m an independent woman,’ she informed him crossly and felt him chuckle through the warm connection of their still-entwined bodies.

‘You’re a penniless runaway,’ he corrected and the growing daylight revealed that his grey eyes were shot through with hot silver sparks she should definitely be wary of, since excitement and curiosity were coursing through her in the most immodest fashion.

‘I still have my pride,’ she assured him crossly.

‘Does it keep you warm at night?’ he asked huskily and the feel of his superbly fit body lying so close said the rest for him.

He had kept her warm all through the night, and for the first time in her life she felt the traitorous stir of passions she did not understand, and could not hope to resist if she spent much longer in his arms.

‘No, but it ain’t so likely to land me back at the foundling’s in nine months’ time.’

‘I told you I honour my obligations, I believe,’ he informed her rather coldly and in turn shook his head as if to clear it of incendiary thoughts. ‘I must apologise if I have behaved in an ungentlemanly fashion toward you, Miss Smith. I promise I am not a vile seducer.’

No, a wayward voice informed her, he would probably prove all too pleasant a one. She tried to rein in scandalous images of being locked in his strong arms, and learning things a proper young lady would never picture. Her baser self told her that if she was to lose her virtue, how much better to do so to a virile and attractive man like Marcus Ashfield rather than Granby. She shuddered at the memory of the night she spent in the dissolute baronet’s bedchamber, and tried not to protest when Marcus misinterpreted her revulsion and let her go, as if he had just unwarily touched a burning brand.

‘Will you stay?’ he asked abruptly.

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘I should reach Rosecombe by breakfast time, if I set off now. Unless yon lunatic wakes up and insists on coming too.’

The subject of lunatics reminded her what she was running from, and panic threatened, heedless of the injured man only feet away. Fighting it cost her a bruised lip as she bit down on her full lower one, but she managed it and looked up into his questioning eyes.

‘Please hurry,’ she pleaded in an urgent whisper she hoped would not wake the sleeping Hussar.

‘Don’t worry, I will, and you can keep my armoury.’

‘Take it, I will stand less chance of shooting myself.’

‘Nick could shoot the pip out of an ace left-handed even in his current state. If anyone sinister appears, wake him up and he will shoot for you. I would not leave you if I thought you were in danger. Oh, and if he decides to importune you with unwanted attentions as well, just squeeze his bad arm.’

She managed a weak smile, and watched him perform an abbreviated toilette by running his fingers through rebelliously curling dark hair and rubbing a rueful hand over his unshaven chin. Then, with a last look and a quick gesture of farewell, he left the hut with his boots in one hand and his rifle in the other.

The place seemed cold and empty as she listened to the faint noise he made resuming his boots and the jingle of Hercules’s tack and the indistinct murmur of a deep masculine voice reassuring both horses as he mounted, then rode away. Never had a room felt so silent and bereft as this ramshackle shed, despite the man sleeping in the dying light of the fire and the strengthening daylight round the ill-fitting door. Thea reminded herself of the realities of her new life and sat down to wait in the cold dawn for the injured man to need her, or his rescuers to come.

Chapter Three

Marcus rode away from the tumbledown hut with contrary feelings. Of course it was normal for a man waking up to a delicious armful of slenderly curved woman to be aroused by her. Just because the wench had stirred his baser instincts, he did not have to act on them. After all, he was a gentleman—no, he was a nobleman now, and one did not always preclude the other.

His grandfather’s death, only ten days after that of his direct heir, had brought the new Viscount Strensham home to try to sort out the havoc his father’s wild spending had wrought. Julius Ashfield must be turning in his grave now that the son he had despised had inherited the title he had coveted so long for himself. Although, according to the family lawyer, his father had made damn sure only crushing debt accompanied the family honours—maybe he was having the last laugh after all.

There was one clear solution, and he would take it if there was truly nothing left, but a man who was contemplating matrimony to the richest woman he could cozen into becoming his viscountess had no business seducing the first attractive female to fall into his arms. He considered Miss Hetty Smith with a reminiscent smile. No doubt the fiery little creature would read him his fortune if he offered to set her up as his wife in watercolour, and he couldn’t afford her even if she surprised him and said yes.

A picture of her, flushed with sleep and delightfully ruffled, rose in his mind’s eye. With his attention wandering from his quest, it was just as well that Hercules had realised comfortable stables lay close as they neared Sir Edward Darraine’s country home. She had looked enchanting with that heavy mass of tumbling nut-brown curls falling about her slender shoulders and down her back, Marcus remembered with a wolfish glint in his eyes. Yet the sleepy mix of puzzlement and heat in her blue-green eyes indicated she was an innocent, in that if nothing else.

He reflected on the presence of his untouched purse in his pocket and decided he did her dishonour. She was certainly no thief, nor willing to earn her bread on her back. The grim truth was that she would starve without recourse to one of those undesirable occupations, and he found the idea of her being forced into either repulsive.

It went against his baser instincts, but he must provide her with an escape from poverty if he was not to exploit her vulnerability to get her into his bed. Shocked by the potent drag of desire at the thought of having her under him, he knew he must reject such a venal notion out of hand. If either of them was to come out of this with any self-respect, the less he saw of her, the better for both of them.

A very resolute Major Ashfield rode into Ned Darraine’s stable-yard ten minutes later and issued a set of precise orders to the staff, who found themselves running to obey before they questioned his right to hand them out as if he was with his old brigade.

‘Marcus, good to see you, old man!’ The master of the house greeted him as if they had parted yesterday, instead of over a year ago when Ned had inherited his own title under very different circumstances.

‘Same goes for you, Ned, but where’s Lyddie when I need her?’

‘Getting dressed of course. Where else would she be at this unearthly hour of the morning?’

‘In the old days she would have been up and about for hours. You have become a fine pair of slug-a-beds since you came home.’

Ned just smiled an extremely smug smile. ‘One day you’ll understand,’ he assured his cousin, and the memory of where he had awoken himself drove all desire to tease from Marcus’s mind.

‘I need you too,’ he insisted instead and Ned knew he wouldn’t ask if he didn’t need it.

A plan was taking shape in Marcus’s mind for rescuing both his charges, so he had better get on with it before his baser self gave in to temptation.

Luckily it took less than half an hour for the Darraines’ travelling carriage to be fitted out with quantities of cushions, an ominous-looking box from Lady Lydia Darraine’s stillroom and the noble lady herself.

‘Marcus will come with me,’ she told her husband, who meekly ordered a groom to lead the second-best hunter in his stable for the Major to ride back.

‘Ned hates being cooped up in a coach, but now you can tell me just what you have been up to,’ her ladyship informed him. ‘And don’t leave anything out.’

Marcus left a considerable amount out; after all, he needed Lydia’s sympathy for his waif, not her abiding mistrust.

‘You ordered the poor little thing out into the dark to water your horses, after forcing your way into her refuge and terrifying her half to death? Marcus, how could you?’

‘Nick was faint and there was nothing but a disreputable hedge-tavern for miles.’

‘If you had had a woman with you, things would have been so much easier on the girl.’

‘No, they wouldn’t, Lyddie. You know very well women can play up like the very devil if they scent a rival.’

‘I didn’t mean one of those blowsy creatures who used to shamelessly chase you and Nick in Spain. A lady of quality would have put the girl at ease, and made sure you were the one fumbling about in the darkness, attending to two great horses.’

‘Such a lady would have been compromised the moment we set out from Southampton,’ he pointed out helpfully, or so he thought.

‘I was speaking hypothetically.’

‘Then please don’t, it confuses me.’

‘Doubtless your waif is a runaway, and I will have some unprincipled employer turning up on my doorstep and demanding her return if I take her in. Anyway, how would I convince Ned she will not try to run off with the silver, or, even worse, one of his precious horses?’

‘I can’t argue with the first. The wench admitted she ran from her last place because of some man who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She also let out that she was raised in a foundling hospital.’

‘Poor thing. They raise those unfortunate children to be deeply ashamed of their beginnings. It made me cross whenever I visited one of the places with Mama to take clothes and books. I knew they would strip any ornament off the clothes and sell the books to buy improving tracts.’

‘Surely not all of them are so austere?’

‘You should try visiting one, but that’s beside the point. We must do something about the poor girl if she truly is respectable. You can put your mind to finding some practical way to reward her for looking after Nick, presuming he and his kit are there when you get back.’

‘They will be,’ he said confidently and in that at least he was right.

By the time they got to the clearing, Lady Lydia had come to a decision. After insisting two strong ex-army officers were quite sufficient to heft Captain Prestbury out of his hut, she ordered the grooms to stay and protect the coach from marauding villains.

Sweeping into the dilapidated hut, she took a comprehensive look around and sniffed loudly. Thea almost flew to the defence of her makeshift home for the last two days, but she was eager to escape it and kept quiet. One look at this stunningly beautiful golden-haired creature, dressed in the very latest kick of fashion, had made her feel more like a beggar-maid than usual. Watching the Captain being carried out by Major Ashfield, and his cousin, at least she could be sure he was safe. It was high time she put as much distance as possible between herself and the acute major’s family.

She hesitated too long, cravenly fearing what lay ahead and not wanting to leave behind the first sense of security she had experienced in months. Trying to melt into the shadows and slide out of the door while her ladyship was preoccupied with gathering Nick’s possessions, she cannoned into a familiar broad chest.

‘And just where do you think you’re going?’ Major Ashfield demanded sternly, putting out a hand to stop her bouncing backwards into Lady Lydia.

She swung round to stare at him with pleading eyes, hoping he would let her slip off into the woods.

‘Yes, you cannot just leave, my dear!’ the beauty added in the mellow contralto voice that had almost made Thea dislike her—she was so perfectly everything her various governesses always insisted she was not. ‘You have cared for poor Nick, after all.’

‘I did nothing more than keep the fire burning, watch his sleep and give him water whenever he wanted it,’ Thea protested.

‘Something he will thank you for himself when he is feeling better, but won’t you speak to me in private, my dear?’

Thea hesitated, unsure that a lady could have much to say to a homeless nobody. At last the mixture of her ladyship’s pleading smile and imperious manner disarmed Thea into staying when Major Ashfield went to stop Nick’s black stallion kicking down his makeshift stable.

‘Don’t worry,’ her ladyship told her airily, when Thea protested about the waiting carriage and her ladyship’s entourage, ‘they can look after themselves for five minutes.’

‘I’m sure they can, my lady,’ she agreed, trying to hide a smile at the idea of three stalwart gentlemen who had held his Majesty’s commission in crack regiments being unable to organise a simple expedition without this vital female’s assistance.

‘Although I probably shouldn’t leave them for ten, so let’s get to more important matters. I am fond of both my husband’s cousins, and you rendered them a service I want to thank you for.’

‘When I realised they were real gentlemen, I was glad of the company, my lady. It’s very lonely here after dark. I was too scared to sleep the first night.’

‘You couldn’t induce me to stay here half an hour in the dark for a handsome bet, let alone a whole night, but are you hard working and honest, Hetty? Marcus says you were brought up a foundling, so you must be, if their teachings have any effect at all.’

‘I’m as honest as I dare to be, my lady.’

Lady Lydia shot her a penetrating look, but seemed convinced by Thea’s steady gaze.

‘If you truly do not mind hard work, my third housemaid has left to look after her little brothers and sisters now her poor mother has died. You can have a month’s trial in the post, if you care to risk not suiting me?’

‘I wish for nothing so much as a roof over my head and a place in the world, my lady.’

‘Even such a very humble one? You speak well and seem used to better things.’

‘I shall hardly find them lurking in woods or being moved on by the constables in every village where I dare show my face.’

‘True, then you will accept my offer?’

‘Gladly, Lady Lydia, and I promise you will never regret your kindness in making it to one in great need.’

‘Your hard work will be thanks enough for me. Follow this road north for about six miles, then cross Rosecombe Common. The village edges on to it and the first cottage on the green belongs to my husband’s old nurse. She will happily take you in when I explain what you have done for Nick. Then come to the Park tomorrow to see if you might suit. It will sit better if the other servants think you a connection of hers.’

‘You are very considerate, Lady Lydia.’

‘See if you still think so in a few months’ time, when the Park is full of guests and you have to tramp up and down the stairs half a dozen times an hour. Now we must say goodbye, Hetty, and there must be no familiarity between us in future, if you wish to be accepted by my household.’

‘Certainly not, my lady,’ Thea said, managing to look shocked in the style of all the best servants she had ever come across, who considered such encroachments a cardinal sin on both sides.

‘Although I might give in to curiosity when we are alone,’ her ladyship joked, as Thea resolved to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The walk in broad daylight, over ground where her pursuers could have easily caught her, had been an experience Thea never cared to dwell on afterwards, but it had passed without incident. Maybe the Winfordes had given up, or thought she could not have got so far from her home in Devon alone. Once they might have been right, but fear and loathing had spurred her to self-reliance. Grandfather would hardly have believed his indulged granddaughter could change so much, so little wonder if the Winfordes thought her so feeble.

Thea presented herself at the back door of the great house at Rosecombe the next morning, dressed in a print gown she and Nurse Turner had spent the previous evening taking in. Having subjected her to a grilling that would have done justice to Bow Street, the housekeeper conducted her to my lady’s sitting room, so she could interrogate her as well.

‘Any relative of Nanny Turner’s is worthy of a trial,’ Lady Lydia declared at last, ‘but make sure she is trained all over again, Meldon. You know how particular I am about having things done my way.’

‘Of course, my lady.’

‘The usual wage, and find her something decent to wear,’ her ladyship concluded and they curtsied and silently left the room.

‘The head housemaid will send down your new clothes, and you will be expected at six o’clock sharp tomorrow, ready for work.’

‘Yes, Mrs Meldon. Thank you, ma’am.’

‘Thank me by doing your duty and learning our ways quickly.’

‘I always do my best, ma’am.’

The dignified woman just sniffed in the proscribed style, and Thea went out of the side door with a lighter heart. She managed to walk down the path that led to the village without dancing a jig, but it was a close-run thing. Maybe she would evade the Winfordes for the five more months she needed after all. Even if she had to live on very little a year after she came of age, at least it would be her choice.

‘I take it your mission was successful?’ a deep voice she wished she could forget asked as she rounded the corner that would take her into the Park.

‘Major, you startled me.’

‘Miss Smith, I could hardly bid you farewell in front of your future colleagues or the lady of the house, now could I?’

He was going, then? A traitorous voice within told her that would take the shine off her new life quicker than anything, but she silenced it and faced him with composure.

‘You should not be talking to me, sir. I could lose my place.’

‘Since I have no intention of doing you such a backhand turn, will you walk with me?’

‘Aye, sir,’ she could not resist saying, even knowing she was courting a danger that had nothing to do with her enemies for once.

It was two miles to the village and she was glad of company. She tried to believe any would have done and failed miserably. This morning he was fresh shaven and his dark mane subdued to strict military order, and he looked even more handsome than he had done dishevelled and weary that first night.

I spent the night with this man, she mused, a wry smile quirking her lips at the very thought. If the starchy housekeeper ever found out, Thea would be out the back door faster than Mrs Meldon could say ‘trollop.’

‘Do you think you will suit, Miss Smith?’

‘I’m sure of it, desperation is a fine teacher.’

‘Oblige me by not abusing Lydia’s trust. I didn’t finagle this place for you so you could run off with the family silver.’

‘I thought it was Lady Lydia’s idea to offer me a job?’

‘So did she. The only way to handle her ladyship is to let her have the ordering of everything. Ned always does, so long as it suits him. I learnt my strategy from a master, which is something else you would do well to remember. My cousin is very far from being the slow-top he often does his best to appear.’

‘Why should I take advantage of either?’ she protested hotly, stung by his assumption that she would abuse the trust of people who had taken in a stormy petrel.

‘Who knows, Miss Smith? I certainly do not. That is a conveniently common name, by the way.’

‘Only when it’s not yours, Major.’

‘You are either a steadfast liar or exactly what you seem, and at the moment I can’t quite make up my mind which.’

‘Then put me out of your mind. You did your duty and provided a sanctuary that lets me keep my honour. Any obligation is satisfied, and I do not intend to lose a place where I have no need to fight off my master.’

‘Ned hasn’t noted another female’s existence since he met Lydia.’

His voice was warm as he spoke of the lovely Lady Lydia and his guarded eyes softened. Thea wondered with a fierce pang of jealousy if he was in love with his cousin’s wife. Not that it mattered of course, he would never feel more than fleeting desire for humble Miss Smith, and heaven forbid that he should discover her real identity. Then she would see his clear grey eyes cloud with distaste and his firm mouth straighten in revulsion. She would rather face Lady Winforde than that particular scenario.

‘And I would be an idiot to endanger such a place for a life crime.’

‘Yet I can’t help but be struck by the fact that you speak very much better than your peers, and express yourself in surprisingly sophisticated language. Who are you really, Miss Smith?’

She was a fool, she silently decided, and tried hard to pretend he had not shaken her composure. She could not seem to draw back behind a mask of humble ignorance when she was with him, which meant she cared what he thought. Nonsense of course, they could not mean anything to one another.

‘I am nobody,’ she replied bleakly.

‘At some stage you must have been somebody, to acquire such a vocabulary.’

‘I might have thought I was, but I was mistaken,’ she admitted, suddenly tempted to pour out the whole unsavoury story after all. ‘My first mistress was a good woman, who wanted her servants to read and write, however humble their origins,’ she improvised hastily instead. ‘She taught me to read fluently when her eyesight began to fail.’

As lies went, it sounded convincing, she thought miserably, and tried to believe it under the acute scrutiny of Major Ashfield’s steady grey eyes.

‘And when she died you went back to domestic service?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why are your hands those of a lady who has recently suffered a reverse?’

He took those offending hands in his and she jumped as a lightning beat of responsive heat shot through her at his touch. Hoping he would take it for a flinch of revulsion, she stared numbly at her hands cupped in his.

‘I take care of myself,’ she offered hopefully.

‘Without noticeable success.’

‘In this case I seem to have done better.’

‘So you do, but I suspect you were a ladies’ maid in this former life, and this role will be a comedown,’ he finally concluded.

Thea had to bite back a sigh of relief. ‘I shall learn to bear it,’ she said truthfully. ‘Destitution is a fine teacher.’

His grip on her slender hands gentled, some of the feelings she longed to inspire in him lighting his gaze, or so it seemed. ‘I’m glad Lyddie saved you from starving or selling yourself even so.’

‘I would starve,’ she breathed.

‘You would be surprised what a person can be driven to, when there is no alternative,’ Marcus replied bitterly and dropped her hand to step away.

‘I probably wouldn’t, you know.’

‘But you aren’t driven by the need of others,’ he murmured, almost as if he was reminding himself of some significant factor she knew nothing of.

‘No, luckily I only have my own to consider.’

Unless she could describe herself as driven by the Winfordes’ greed, and she refused to do so.