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‘I wonder what he is riding?’ Jeffrey said. ‘A man like him probably has no idea of good horseflesh.’
Like him? Now that was pure snobbery. She wondered what they said about a woman like her, a penniless schoolteacher, behind her back. No doubt they had thought she had come to ingratiate herself. How mortifying that they were very nearly right. She felt her shoulders rise in that old defensive posture and forced them to relax, keeping her expression neutral. These young noblemen were nowhere near as vicious as schoolgirls, nothing to fear at all.
‘Aye,’ Gerald said. ‘A man like him will be all show and no go.’
Jeffrey raised a brow. ‘As if you would know, cuz. Isn’t it time your mother let you have a decent mount of your own?’
Gerald hunched a shoulder. ‘I’m to get one on my birthday. And a phaeton.’
‘God help us all,’ Jeff said sotto voce.
The door swung back and the earl strode in. His silver gaze swept the room, taking in the occupants in one swift glance before he made for the empty place at the head of the table.
The new earl was just as impressive in the grey of morning as he had been in the glow of lamplight. Perhaps more so. His black coat hugged his broad shoulders and his cravat was neatly tied. He was not wearing an armband. Perhaps he considered the black coat quite enough, though the rich fabric of his cream waistcoat, embroidered with blue sprigs, suggested he hadn’t given mourning a thought when he dressed.
The shadowed jaw of the previous night was gone, his face smooth and recently shaved. He was, as her girls would say when they thought she could not hear, devilishly handsome. Devilish being the most apt word she could think of in respect to the earl, since his face was set in the granite-hard lines of a fallen angel who found his fate grim.
Oh, jumping Jehosophat, did it matter how he looked? After today, she would never see him again.
‘Good morning,’ he said to the room at large.
The two young men mumbled grudging greetings.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ Mary said with a polite calm. It wasn’t right to treat him like some sort of pariah in his own house. She wouldn’t do it. She would be civil. Even if it was hard to breathe now he took up so much of the air in the room.
His eyes widened a fraction. ‘Miss Wilding. Up and about so early?’
‘As is my usual wont,’ she replied, sipping her chocolate, not tasting it at all any more, because all she was aware of was him.
Heat rushed to her cheeks and she hoped he did not notice.
After responding to Manners’s enquiries about his preferences for breakfast, he picked up the newspaper beside his plate and disappeared behind it.
A strained silence filled the room. It demanded that someone break it. It was just too obvious that they had stopped talking the moment he entered. He would think they were talking about him. They weren’t. At least, not all of the time. It made her feel very uncomfortable, as if her skin was stretched too tight.
She waited until he had eaten most of his breakfast. Sally, widowed by two husbands and therefore an expert, always said men were not worth talking to until they had filled their stomachs. ‘My lord?’
He looked up, frowning.
Perhaps he hadn’t eaten enough. Well, it was too late to draw back. ‘May I request that your coachman drive me to St Ives this morning? It is time I returned home.’
He frowned. ‘Not today. Your presence is required in two hours’ time for the reading of the will.’
The will? What did that have to do with her? ‘That is not necessary, surely?’
He gave her a look that froze her to the spot. ‘Would I ask it, if it were not?’
She dragged her gaze from his and put down her cup. A tiny hope unfurled in her chest. Perhaps the earl had left something for the school after all. Had she been too hasty in thinking her quest unsuccessful?
The earl was watching her face with a cynical twist to his lips, as if she was some sort of carrion crow picking over a carcase. Guilt twisted in her stomach. She had no reason to feel guilty. The school was a worthy cause, even if it did also benefit her. And if she had previously hoped the earl’s summons had signified something more, something of a familial nature, those expectations had been summarily disabused and were no one’s concern but her own. ‘If it is required, then I will attend.’
The earl pushed his plate aside and pushed to his feet. ‘Eleven o’clock in the library, Miss Wilding. Try not to be late.’
She bristled, but managed to hang on to her aplomb. ‘I am never late, my lord.’
He gazed at her for a long moment and she was sure she saw a gleam of amusement in his eyes, but it was gone too fast for her to be certain. ‘Unless you become lost, I assume.’
Once more heat flooded her face at the memory of his rescue the previous evening and her shocking responses to his closeness. Her incomprehensible longings, which must not recur. It was ungentlemanly of him to remind her.
He departed without waiting for a reply, no doubt assuming his orders would be carried out. And if they weren’t then no doubt the autocratic man would find a way to rectify the matter.
‘I’m for the stables,’ Jeffrey said. ‘I want to take a look at his horseflesh.’
He wanted to mock.
‘Can I come?’ Gerald asked, his expression pleading.
‘If you wish,’ his cousin said, kindly, which made Mary think a great deal more of him. He bowed to Mary and the two of them strolled away.
Now what should she do? Go back to her room and risk getting lost? Sally hadn’t expected her to spend more than one night here at the Abbey, no matter what hopes Mary had secretly held. What she should do was despatch a letter to Sally telling her what was happening and why her return might be delayed by another day. She could while away the two hours before the appointed time in writing and reading more enjoyably than spending the time wandering the chilly corridors of this rambling mansion looking for her room.
‘Will you direct me to the library, Manners? I assume there is paper and pen there?’
The butler bowed. ‘Yes, miss. It is located further along this hallway. You cannot miss it.’
If anyone could miss anything when it came to directions, she could and would. But that was her own personal cross to bear. ‘Thank you.’
He gave her a kind smile. ‘There is a footman going to the village this afternoon, if you would like a letter posted, miss. Ring the bell when you are finished and he’ll come and collect it. You will find sealing wax and paper in the desk drawer, and ink on the inkstand.’
She smiled her thanks and made her escape.
The library proved to be exactly where the butler had said and she found it without difficulty.
Nirvana could not have looked any more inviting. Shelves, packed with leather-bound books in shades of blue, red and green, rose from floor to ceiling on three dark-panelled walls. Wooden chairs strategically placed beside tables of just the right height encouraged a person to spread books out at will. Deep overstuffed sofas and chairs upholstered in fabrics faded to soft brown tempted the reader who liked to curl up with a novel. Cushioned window seats offered comfort and light on dark winter days. All was overseen by a large oak desk at one end.
The delights on offer tested her determination to write to Sally first and read afterwards. But she managed it, sitting at the heavy desk, putting out of her mind what she could not say about the new earl as she wrote of the demise of their donor.
She flicked the feather end of her quill across her chin. Should she mention a possibility of some small sum in the will? It seemed a bit presumptuous. She decided to write only of her delayed return. A mere day or two, she said.
Having rung the bell and sent off her missive, she turned her attention to the feast of books. She selected a book of poems by Wordsworth and settled into one of the window seats.
She didn’t have long to indulge because, within the half-hour, Mr Savary, the solicitor who had been at the earl’s bedside, arrived with a box full of papers and began fussing with them on the desk.
Mary decided she would remain where she was, at the furthest point in the room from where the family would conduct its business.
At a few minutes past eleven, the family members straggled in. First Gerald with his mother. Mrs Hampton looked very becoming in black. It suited her air of delicacy. She would have been an extraordinarily beautiful woman in her youth. She and her son, who took after her in the beauty department, sat beside the blazing hearth not far from the desk.
Jeffrey, his saunter as pronounced as any Bond Street beau, came next. Not that Mary had ever seen a Bond Street beau, but she’d seen cartoons in the paper, read descriptions of their antics and could use her imagination. He struck a languid pose at the fireplace, one arm resting on the mantel while he gazed pensively into the flames. Regretting being cut out of the title? He didn’t seem to care much about anything. Perhaps it was the idea of the earl holding the purse-strings that had him looking so thoughtful.
The upper servants gathered just inside the doorway: the butler, the housekeeper and a gentleman in a sombre suit who could have been anything from a parson to a land steward. They must all have expectations. The old earl had proved generous to her over the past many years, so why not to his servants? Though, in truth, on meeting him, she had not liked him one little bit. There had been an air of maliciousness about him.
She was relieved they were not related. She really was.
But if he left the school a small sum of money, an annuity, or a lump sum, it would be a blessing for which she would be suitably grateful, no matter her personal feelings. She put her book on the table at her elbow and folded her hands in her lap, trying not to look hopeful.
But where was the earl?
Ah, here he came, last but definitely not least. He prowled into the room, looking far more sartorially splendid than the dandified Jeffrey. Perhaps it was his size. Or the sheer starkness of a black coat against the white of his cravat. The room certainly seemed much smaller upon his entrance. And even a little airless.
His hard gaze scanned the room, missing nothing. Indeed, she had the feeling his eyes kept on moving until he discovered her whereabouts. He looked almost relieved, as if he feared she might have loped off, as Sally’s cockney coachman would have said.
Ignoring the group at the hearth, he swung one of the plain wooden chairs near her window seat around and sat astride it. Arms across the back, he fixed the solicitor with a grim stare. ‘Get on with it, then, man.’
The fussy little solicitor tugged at his neckcloth, then broke the seal on a rolled document. He spread it out on the desk. ‘This being the last—’
‘No need to read all the curlicues and periods,’ the earl interrupted. ‘Just give us the details.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Basically, the title goes to you, but all the unentailed income goes to Miss Wilding on condition that she marry within the year.’
The earl’s gaze, steel hard beneath lowered brows, cut to her face. A muscle jumped in his jaw.
What had the solicitor said? No, she knew what he had said. But what did it mean? The unentailed income?
‘There are ten guineas for Manners, five for Mrs Davis and another ten for Ragwell for his excellent stewardship this past many years.’
The servants mumbled and sounded pleased. They shuffled out of the room at the solicitor’s wave of a hand.
Mrs Hampton put a hand to her throat. ‘What about my son? And Jeffrey.’
‘It is my understanding that the late earl passed on any personal trinkets prior to his … his—’
‘His death,’ the earl growled.
‘I got his ring,’ Gerald announced, waving his hand about for everyone to see.
‘The seal of the Beresfords belongs to me,’ the earl said with almost a snarl.
Gerald thumbed his nose. ‘This was my grandmother’s ring.’
The earl scowled. ‘Then where is the seal?’
Gerald shrugged.
‘With the earl’s effects,’ the lawyer said stiffly.
Mrs Hampton’s pallor increased. ‘I thought there was to be some—’ She caught herself.
The earl stood up and looked down at the little solicitor. ‘How much of the income from the estate is unentailed?’ His voice was soft, but no one in the room could possibly doubt his ire.
‘All of it,’ the little man squeaked.
The ensuing pause was charged like air before a storm. The earl’s gaze shifted to her and the heat in their depths flared bright before he turned back to the lawyer. ‘And you permitted this abomination? This dividing of the money from the land? What man in his right mind does such a thing?’
‘The late earl was not always rational when it came to the matter of …’ His breathless voice tailed off.
‘His heir,’ the earl said flatly.
‘I followed instructions,’ the lawyer pleaded.
The earl’s silver gaze found hers again. This time it was colder than ice. ‘Very clever indeed, Miss Wilding.’
She stiffened. Outrage flooding her with heat. ‘I do not understand what this means.’ At least she was hoping that what she understood was not what was really happening.
‘You got the fortune,’ the earl said. ‘And I got the expenses.’
Then she had interpreted the lawyer’s words correctly. How was this possible?
Beresford turned on the solicitor. ‘It can be overturned.’
The man shook his head. ‘If Miss Wilding marries within the year, she gets all income from the estate. If not, the money goes to the Crown.’ He glanced down at his papers. ‘That is, unless she dies before the year is up.’
‘What happens if she dies?’ the earl asked harshly.
Mary froze in her seat. A shudder took hold of her body. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. The man spoke about her death without the slightest emotion. He was positively evil.
‘In that case, it goes to you, or to your heir, currently Mr Jeffrey Beresford, if you predecease him,’ the solicitor said. He smiled apologetically at the young man who was watching the earl with icy blue eyes and a very small smile.
The wretch was enjoying the earl’s shock.
The earl said something under his breath. It sounded suspiciously like a curse. ‘Clearly the man was disordered. What will the courts think of that?’
‘My father was not mad,’ Mrs Hampton said haughtily. ‘Madness does not run in the Beresford family. But you wouldn’t know that, since you have had nothing to do with any of us.’
Mary listened to what they were saying, heard them perfectly well, but it all seemed a great distance off. She didn’t think she’d taken a breath since the earl had explained. She worked a little moisture into her dry mouth. ‘The will requires that I marry in order to inherit?’
The lawyer nodded gravely. ‘Indeed. Within the year.’
‘Marry who?’ she asked.
The earl’s mouth curled in a predatory smile. ‘That is the question, isn’t it?’
Irritated beyond endurance, she rose to her feet. ‘You are hardly helpful, sir.’
Forced to rise also, the earl gave her a mirthless smile. ‘I thought you said you were clever, Miss Wilding.’
She looked at him blankly.
‘He means you must marry him,’ Gerald said, scowling. ‘But you could marry Jeffrey or me. That would put a spoke in his wheels.’
