скачать книгу бесплатно
Soon, Dianna would be put on the marriage market, and she would hunt for the perfect husband. Ariella knew her beautiful sister, an heiress in her own right, would have no problem becoming wed. But Ariella wished for a far different life. She preferred independence, books and travel to marriage. Only a very unusual man would allow her the freedom she was accustomed to and she couldn’t quite imagine answering to anyone, not when she had such independence now. Marriage had never seemed important to her, although she had grown up surrounded by great love, devotion and equality, exemplified in the marriages of her aunts, uncles and parents. If she ever did marry, she knew it would only be because she had found that great and unusual love, the kind for which the de Warenne men and women were renowned. Yet at twenty-four, it seemed to have escaped her—and she didn’t feel lacking. How could she? She had thousands of books to read and places to see. She doubted she could accomplish all she wished to in a lifetime.
She slowly faced her sister.
Dianna smiled, but with anxiety. “I am so glad you are home! I have missed you, Ariella.” Her tone was now coaxing.
“I have missed you, too,” Ariella said, not quite truthfully. A foreign land, where she was surrounded by exotic smells, sights and sounds, facing people she couldn’t wait to understand, was far too exciting for nostalgia or any homesick emotion. Even in London, she could spend days and days in a museum and not notice the passage of time.
“I am so glad you have met us at Rose Hill,” Dianna said. “Tonight will be so amusing. I met the younger Montgomery, and if his older brother is as charming, you might very well forget about Genghis Khan.” She added, “I don’t think you should mention the Mongols at supper, Ariella. No one will understand.”
Ariella hesitated. “In truth, I wish it were just a family affair. I cannot bear an evening spent discussing the weather, Amanda’s roses, the last hunt or the upcoming horse races.”
“Why not?” Dianna asked. “Those are suitable topics for discussion. Will you promise not to speak of the Mongols and the steppes, or supper parties with academics and reformers?” She smiled, but uncertainly. “Everyone will think you’re a radical—and far too independent.”
Ariella balked. “Then I must be allowed absolute, ungracious silence.”
“That is childish.”
“A woman should be able to speak her mind. I speak my mind in town. And I am somewhat radical. There are terrible social conditions in the land. The penal code has hardly been changed, never mind the hoopla, and as for parliamentary reform—”
Dianna cut her off. “Of course you speak your mind in town—you aren’t in polite company. You said so yourself!” Dianna stood, agitated. “I love you dearly. I am asking you as a beloved sister to attempt a proper discourse.”
Ariella groused, “You have become so conservative. Fine. I won’t discuss any subject without your approval. I will look at you and wait for a wink. No, wait. Tug your left earlobe and I will know I am allowed to speak.”
“Are you making a mockery of my sincere attempts to see you successfully wed?”
Ariella sat down, hard. Her little sister wished to see her wed so badly? It was simply stunning.
Dianna smiled coaxingly. “I also think you should not mention that Papa allows you to live alone in London.”
“I’m rarely alone. There is a house full of servants, the earl and Aunt Lizzie are often in town, and Uncle Rex and Blanche are just a half hour away at Harrington Hall.”
“No matter who comes and goes at Harmon House, you live like an independent woman. Our guests would be shocked—Lord Montgomery would be shocked!” She was firm. “Father really needs to come to his senses where you are concerned.”
“I am not entirely independent. I receive moneys from my estates, but Father is the trustee.” Ariella bit her lip. When had Dianna become so proper? When had she become exactly like everyone else her age and gender? Why couldn’t she see that free thinking and independence were states to be coveted, not condemned?
Dianna smoothed the gown on the bed. “Father is so smitten with you, he can’t see straight. There is some gossip, you know, about your residing in London without family.” She looked up. “I love you. You are twenty-four. Father isn’t inclined to rush a match, but you are of age. It is time, Ariella. I am looking out for your best interests.”
Ariella was dismayed. It was time to set her sister straight about Lord Montgomery. “Dianna, please don’t think to match me with Montgomery. I don’t mind being unwed.”
“If you don’t marry, what will you do? What about children? If Father gives you your inheritance, will you travel the world? For how long? Will you travel at forty? At eighty?”
“I hope so,” Ariella cried, excited by the notion.
Dianna shook her head. “That’s madness!”
They were as different as night and day. “I don’t want to get married,” Ariella said firmly. “I will only marry if it is a true meeting of the minds. But I will be polite to Lord Montgomery. I promised you I won’t speak of the matters I care about, and I won’t—but dear God, cease and desist. I can think of nothing worse than a life of submission to some closed-minded, proper gentleman. I like my life just as it is.”
Dianna was incredulous. “You’re a woman, Ariella, and God intended for you to take a husband and bear his children—and yes, be submissive to him. What do you mean by a meeting of the minds? Who marries for such a union?”
Ariella was shocked that her sister would espouse such traditional views—even if almost all of society held them. “I do not know what God decreed for women—or for me,” she managed. “Men have decreed that women must marry and bear children! Dianna, please try to understand. Most men would not let me roam Oxford, in the guise of a man, eavesdropping on the lectures of my favorite professors.” Dianna gasped. “Most men would not allow me to spend entire days in the archives of the British Museum,” Ariella continued firmly. “I refuse to succumb to a traditional marriage—if I ever succumb at all.”
Dianna moaned. “I can see the future now—you will marry some radical socialist lawyer!”
“Perhaps I will. Can you truly see me as some proper gent’s wife, staying at home, changing gowns throughout the day, a pretty, useless ornament? Except, of course, for the five, six or seven children I will have to bear, like a broodmare!”
“That is a terrible way to look at marriage and family,” Dianna said, appearing stunned. “Is that what you think of me? Am I a pretty, useless ornament? Is my mother, is Aunt Lizzie, is our cousin Margery? And bearing children is a wonderful thing. You like children!”
How had this happened? Ariella wondered. “No, Dianna, I beg your pardon. I do not think of you in such terms. I adore you—you are my sister, and I am so proud of you. None of the women in our family are pretty, useless ornaments.”
“I am not stupid,” Dianna finally said. “I know you are brilliant. Everyone in this family says so. I know you are better read than just about every gentleman of our acquaintance. I know you think me foolish. But it isn’t foolish to want a good marriage and children. To the contrary, it is admirable to want a home, a husband and children.”
Ariella backed off. “Of course it is—because you genuinely want those things.”
“And you don’t. You want to be left alone to read book after book about strange people like the Mongols. It is very foolish to think of spending an entire lifetime consumed with the lives of foreigners and the dead! Unless, of course, you marry a gentleman for his mind! Has it ever occurred to you that one day you might regret such a choice?”
Ariella was surprised. “No, it hasn’t.” She realized her little sister had grown up. She sighed. “I am not ruling out marriage, Dianna. But I am not in a rush, and I cannot ever marry if it will compromise my happiness.” She added, mostly to please her sister, “Perhaps one day I will find that once-in-a-lifetime love our family is so notorious for.”
Dianna grumbled, “Well, if so, I hope you are the single de Warenne who will escape the scandal so often associated with our family.”
Ariella smiled. “Please try to understand. I am very satisfied with my unfashionable status as an aging spinster.”
Dianna stared grimly. “No one is calling you an old spinster yet. Thank God you have a fortune, and the prospects that come with it. I am afraid you will have a great many regrets if you continue on this way.”
Ariella hugged her. “I won’t. I swear it.” She laughed a little. “You feel like the older sister now!”
“I am sending Roselyn to help you dress. We are having an early supper—I cannot recall why. I will lend you my aquamarines. And I know you will be more than pleasant with Montgomery.” Her parting smile was firm, indicating that she had not changed her matrimonial schemes.
Ariella smiled back, her face plastered into a pleasant expression. She intended it to be the look she would wear for the entire evening, just to make Dianna happy.
EMILIAN ST XAVIER sat at his father’s large, gilded desk in the library, unable to focus on the ledgers at hand. It was a rare moment, as his life was the estate. But an odd gnawing had begun earlier that day, a familiar restlessness. He hated such feelings, and was always determined to ignore them. But on days like this one, the house felt larger than ever, and even empty, although he kept a full staff.
He leaned back in his chair, objectively looking around the luxurious, high-ceilinged library. The room bore almost no resemblance to the room in which he had so often been chastised as a sullen boy, when he had been determined to cling to his differences with his father, pretending absolute indifference to Edmund’s wishes and Woodland’s affairs. But even when he had first arrived at the estate, his curiosity had been as strong as his wariness. He had never been inside an Englishman’s home before, and Woodland had seemed palatial. Raiza had insisted he learn to read English, and he had stared at the books in the bookcase behind his father’s head, wondering if he dared steal one so he could read it. Soon he had stolen book after book. In retrospect, he knew Edmund had known he was secretly reading philosophy, poetry and love stories in his bedroom.
Even though his mother had wanted him to leave the kumpa’nia and go to live with his father, he would never forget her tears and her grief. Edmund had broken her heart by taking him away from her, and he had hated Edmund for hurting Raiza. He had known that he would not be at Woodland if Edmund’s firstborn, pure-blooded son had lived. His Rom pride, which was considerable, had demanded that he remain detached and indifferent to the life his father offered him.
His Rom blood had dictated suspicion and hostility. He had lived with gadjo hatred and prejudices his entire life. He knew his father had to be like all the other gadjos. But in truth, Edmund had been firm, but fair and compassionate, too. The adjustment to the English way of life had been so difficult that he couldn’t see it. He’d run away several times, but Edmund had always found him. The last time he’d stolen a neighbor’s horse, and he had been physically branded so that the world would see him as a horse thief before Edmund had appeared to take him home. He was hardly the first Rom to have a scarred right ear, and it was one of the reasons he wore his hair so long. Edmund had finally asked him to stay, telling him he would willingly let him leave when he turned sixteen, if that was what he still wished to do.
He had agreed—and in the end, decided on his own terms to stay. In the following years he had gone to Eton and then Oxford, excelling at both institutions. Yet their relationship had remained somewhat adversarial, as if Edmund never quite trusted his transformation into an Englishman. Emilian never quite trusted his father, either. Being Edmund’s son and heir did not change the fact that his mother was Romany, and all of society knew it—including Edmund.
The condescension and scorn from his youth remained, but it was disguised now. To the gadjos, even those warming his bed, no amount of manners, education or wealth would ever change the “fact” that his inclination was to steal horses and cheat his neighbors. Every supper party and ball, every business affair, every paramour, had proven that—and proved it, still.
Edmund’s death had been a tragic accident. Emilian had just graduated Oxford with the highest honors, and he had been traveling with the Roma. It had been his first visit to his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since his father had taken him from her ten years before. Edmund’s estate manager had written him. Upon learning of Edmund’s sudden death in a hunting accident, Emilian had instantly rushed home.
Shocked that his father had died without his having had the chance to say goodbye, he had gone from his grave directly to his desk. All he could think of was the opportunities of the past—and that he hadn’t ever thanked Edmund for a single one. He recalled his father teaching him how to ride, explaining every aspect of the estate to him, insisting that he receive the best possible education, and how Edmund had proudly taken him to every country affair, whether a tea, a supper party or a country ball, as if he was as English as anyone. He had sat down at his father’s desk and begun poring over every account and ledger until his tears had made it impossible to read the pages. And in the end, a very English sense of duty had triumphed. He had been aware of his father’s failures as the viscount; he had always known he could do far better. Now, he intended to set Woodland straight. Now, he intended to make Edmund proud of him.
And he had. In three years, he had managed to erase all debt from Woodland’s accounts. The estate was currently making a handsome profit. There were new tenants, and their produce was being exported abroad, as well as sold at local markets. He was a partner in a freight company. There were profitable investments in a Birmingham mill and a national railway, but the coup de grâce was the St Xavier coal mine. The export of British coal grew in tonnage annually and he was cashing in on it. He was the wealthiest nobleman in Derbyshire, with one exception—the shipping magnate, Cliff de Warenne.
Emilian pushed the ledgers aside.
He did not know de Warenne personally—how could he? He had scorned society ever since coming into the title and the estate. From his first advent into society as a boy at Edmund’s side, they had whispered about him behind his back, and nothing had changed except that he now expected it. He preferred avoiding all social intercourse, as it was nothing but a dull pretense for everyone involved. When he did sit down to a meal with Englishmen and their wives, it was with men who were important to him—the managers of his mine, his partners in the freight company, those who wished for him to invest in other ventures.
“My lord, sir?” His butler, Hoode, paused on the library’s threshold. “You have callers.” Hoode handed him a small tray containing several cards.
Emilian was surprised. Callers were rare. His last visitor had been a widow with four sons whose family had blatantly informed him she was a good “breeder.” Now, as he took the cards, he fought to avoid cringing. As wealthy as he was, it was inevitable that marriage prospects were pressed upon him from time to time. The candidates were all excessively unmarriageable daughters. The crème de la crème were sent elsewhere to look for blue-blooded English husbands. He didn’t give a damn. He didn’t want children. Childhood was synonymous with misery and fear—and therefore he had no need of a wife, English or not.
He glanced at the cards and became still. These cards were not from families seeking marriage. One card belonged to his cousin, Robert, the others from Robert’s friends.
“This is rich,” he murmured. There was only one reason why his cousin would call, as they could not stand each other. “Send Robert in, Hoode.” He stood, stretching his tall, muscular frame. He intended to enjoy the ensuing encounter, very much the way a basset would enjoy being locked in a small room with a mouse.
Robert St Xavier appeared instantly, smiling obsequiously, hand outstretched. Blond and plump, he boomed, “Emil, my God, it is good to see you, eh?”
Emilian folded his arms across his chest, refusing any handshake. “Shall we cut to the chase, Rob?”
Robert’s smile faltered and he dropped his hand. “We are passing through,” Robert said in a jovial tone, “and I had hoped we could share a good bottle of wine. It has certainly been some time. And we are cousins!” He laughed, perhaps nervously or perhaps at the absurdity that any familial affection lay behind the claim. “We’ve taken rooms at the Buxton Inn. Will you join us?”
“How much do you want?” Emilian said coolly.
Robert’s smile vanished. “This time I vow I will pay you back.”
“Really?” He lifted a brow. Robert had inherited a fortune from his father. He had spent every penny within two years. His life was dissolute and irresponsible, to say the least. “Then it would be a first. How much, Rob, do you need this time?”
Robert hesitated. “Five hundred, perhaps?”
“And that will last for how long? Most gentlemen can live off that sum for a year.”
“It will last a year, Emil, I swear it!”
“Don’t bother swearing to me.” Emilian bent and reached for his checking book. He should let him starve. Too well, he recalled how Robert and his father had scorned him as “that Gypsy boy.” They had called him a dirty savage. But it was only gadjo money—and it was his gadjo money. He ripped the note from its pad and handed it to Robert.
“I can’t thank you enough, Emil.”
He looked at him with disdain. “Have no fear—I will never collect anything from you.”
Robert’s smile, plastered in place, never wavered. “Thank you,” he said again. “And would you mind if we spent the night here? It will save us a few pounds—”
Emilian waved at him dismissively. He didn’t care if the trio stayed, for there was plenty of room at Woodland, enough that their paths would hardly cross. He moved toward the French doors and stared past his gardens at the rolling wooded hills that etched into the gray, fading horizon. He had a terrible sense that something was about to happen…. But it must be his imagination, he thought. Still, he looked at the sky again. Not even a thunderstorm was rolling in.
He turned at the sound of new voices. Two of Robert’s equally disreputable friends had joined him, and Robert was showing them the draft. His friends were laughing and slapping him on the back, as if he had just managed some terrific feat.
“It pays to have a rich cousin, eh? Even if he is half Gypsy.” The man laughed.
“God only knows how he does it.” Robert grinned. “It’s his English blood, of course, that makes him so wealthy.”
The third man leaned close. “Have you ever had a Gypsy wench?” He leered. “They’re at Rose Hill—I heard it from a houseman.”
Emilian stiffened in surprise. There were Roma nearby. Had he sensed them all this time?
And suddenly a young Rom, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, stepped onto his flagstone terrace, staring at him through the French doors.
Emilian moved forward. “Wait!”
The young Rom whirled and started to run.
Emilian ran after him. “Don’t go!” he cried. Then, in Roma, “Na za!”
The boy froze at the sharp command. Emilian hurried forward. Continuing to speak in the Romany language, he said, “I am Rom. I am Emilian St Xavier, son of Raiza Kadraiche.”
The boy appeared relieved. “Emilian, Stevan sent me. He must speak with you. We are not far—an hour by horse or wagon.”
Emilian was stunned. Stevan Kadraiche was his uncle, whom he had not seen in eight years. Raiza traveled with him, as did his half sister, Jaelle. But they never traveled farther south than the Borders. He could not imagine what this meant.
And then he knew. There was news—and it could not be good.
“Will you come?” the boy asked.
“I’ll come,” he said, lapsing into English. He steeled himself, but for what he did not know.
CHAPTER TWO
ARIELLA STOOD BY the fireplace, wishing she could leave the supper party and return to her room. She would much prefer curling up with her book for the evening. Pleasant greetings had been exchanged and the weather had been discussed, as had Amanda’s famous rose gardens. Dianna, who was very pretty in her evening gown, was now mentioning her mother’s upcoming ball, the first at Rose Hill in years. “I do hope you will attend, my lords,” she said sweetly.
Ariella fixed a smile on her face and glanced at her father. Tall and handsome, in his midforties, he was still a man who caught the ladies’ eyes. But he did not notice; he remained smitten with his wife, who was as passionate as her husband about the sea, and eccentric enough to stand on the quarterdeck with him even now. Yet Amanda also loved balls and dancing, which made no sense as far as Ariella was concerned. After supper, she decided she would approach her father and see if he might allow a very bold adventure into the heart of central Asia.
Lord Montgomery turned to her. “You do not seem to anticipate the Rose Hill ball.” He spoke quietly, seriously.
She could not help herself. “I do not care for balls. I avoid them whenever I can.”
Dianna rushed to her side. “Oh, that is so untrue,” she scolded.
“I prefer travel,” she added. She saw her father smile.
“I enjoy travel, too. Where have you been recently?”
“My last voyage was to Athens and Constantinople. I now wish to visit the steppes of central Asia.”
Dianna paled.
Ariella sighed. She had promised her sister to avoid any discussion of the Mongols. She debated several topics and gave in to one that interested her. “What do you think about Owen’s great experiments to help labor improve its position and place in the economy?”
Montgomery blinked. Then his gaze narrowed, as if with interest.
But the younger Montgomery stared at her in shock. Then he turned to her father and said, “An absolute disaster, of course, to consolidate labor like that. But what do you expect from a man like Robert Owens? He’s a merchant’s son.”
Ariella bristled and said to his back. “He is brilliant!”
Cliff de Warenne came to stand beside her, putting his hand on her shoulder. He said pleasantly, “I have been impressed with Owen’s experiments. I support the theory of consolidated labor interests.”
The younger Montgomery had to face Ariella with Cliff now. “Good God, and what will be next? The Ten Hours Bill? Labor will certainly argue for that!” He gave Ariella a dark look that she had received many times. It said, Ladies’opinions are not welcome.
