Someone perfect, p.13
Someone Perfect, page 13
Estelle was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. “That can never be guaranteed,” she said. “Some women bear only daughters. Some are barren.” Sometimes the man is incapable. But she did not say that aloud.
“Nothing is certain,” he said. “Even an apparently settled life can change totally and without warning within an hour. Within a moment. But when one has great responsibility, Lady Estelle, one really ought to make a serious attempt at organizing oneself, doing one’s duty, planning a future as well as one is able for the security of one’s dependents.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is all very well, is it not, to consider the lilies of the field, which neither toil nor spin, as the Bible urges us to do, and conclude that we ought to model our lives upon their example and do nothing but enjoy life and allow fate to carry us along as it will? People are not lilies. People do need to plan.”
“I wish you would marry me,” he said.
For a moment she did not trust her ears. He had spoken rather softly. Also quite distinctly.
“What?” She stared, wide-eyed, at his broad back until he turned to look across the room at her. Or, rather, to frown across the room.
“I wish you would marry me,” he said again. “We are equal in birth. We are not very far apart in age. We are both unattached. At least, I assume you are, though it surprises me. You are past the first blush of youth and must have received any number of eligible offers. Your beauty alone would make that inevitable, but you have far more than just beauty to recommend you. Perhaps you have waited for love. If so, it would seem to have eluded you until you are past the age at which you can continue to expect it. I wish you would consider me, then.”
She had listened to a few proposals of marriage when she had not been able to avert them. She had never heard anything remotely like this one. And never before had a marriage proposal been so totally unexpected. She had always been able to prepare herself, plan something to say that would soften the blow of her refusal. This time, however . . .
“Lord Brandon,” she said, “I cannot think of anything whatsoever that would induce me even to consider marrying you.”
They gazed at each other for what seemed a long while before the pencil Estelle did not realize she was holding snapped in two and he nodded briskly.
“Then it is time I returned you to the house,” he said, striding toward her and taking the two pieces of pencil from her nerveless hands and tossing them onto the desk.
He looked into her eyes, his own dark and hard, the frown line still between his brows. He hesitated while Captain pranced and panted at the head of the stairs.
“Accept my apologies for insulting you,” he said curtly, and kissed her hard right on the mouth.
It was not just a brief peck of a kiss. It must have lasted for several seconds while Estelle stood in shock, burned by the heat of him, smelling some combination of shaving soap and leather, and somehow feeling the kiss from her mouth to her toes, but inside her body rather than outside, with a hideous awareness that threatened to rob her of both breath and control of her knees. She was aware of her hands dangling uselessly by her sides and of a ghastly temptation to set them on either side of his waist or on his shoulders or on either side of his face.
Then his mouth was gone from hers and he took half a step back and indicated the staircase with one hand, his eyes still holding her own. “After you,” he said, his voice still curt, just as though he had not recently stopped the world and set it spinning again in the opposite direction. And otherwise discomposing her. And outraging her. And . . .
And why had it not occurred to her to use her hands to push him away—and maybe slap his face for good measure?
She preceded him down the staircase, Captain panting at her side, and outside into a light drizzling rain.
Nine
It was not far from the summerhouse to the main house. Right now, however, it seemed an endless distance to Justin, though they hurried along, heads down against the light rain. Too late he remembered that there was an umbrella at the summerhouse. He doubted he would have brought it anyway, though. He would have had to offer her his arm and hold her close to his side so they could share it. As it was, there was a space of three or four feet between them. Captain was loping along in front of them.
Could he have orchestrated a worse disaster if he had tried? He very much doubted it. The idea had come to him last evening. Ideas, rather. Plural. First that Maria was going to need a respectable and socially connected female to present her to society next spring, but he did not have a candidate in mind. His aunts on both his mother’s side and his father’s rarely went to London, and had their own families to occupy them anyway. Maria’s aunts were not members of the ton. Her great-aunt was too elderly. His second idea had been that he could solve the problem—and a few others for good measure—by marrying and letting his wife sponsor Maria. The third idea was that he was looking at the perfect candidate. Except that she was an impossibility.
And he had realized that last evening.
Lady Estelle Lamarr, that was.
She was perfect. She was poised and charming, not to mention gorgeous. In company she knew how to take the lead when it was necessary, retreat into the background when it was not. She could talk with ease to anyone, listen with interest, smile with what looked like genuine pleasure. She never drew attention to herself yet somehow commanded it. She was elegant and graceful. She would be the perfect candidate for his countess in every imaginable way. Except one. She disliked him.
She had never made any bones about it, though she had, of course, always been polite. Courtesy under all circumstances had been bred into her very soul, it would seem. But even if they could have got past their first unfortunate couple of encounters, she would still never recover from her hostility toward him. For she had been poisoned against him by local gossip long before she even met him, despite her assurance that she believed it only when it could be proved with facts. Maria had probably supplied some of those facts, or what she had believed to be facts, courtesy of her mother. And he had done nothing to help Lady Estelle change her perception of him. Even after six years back in society as the Earl of Brandon he was still stiff and gauche and uncomfortable and inclined to hide behind the morose armor he had built around himself after he was banished.
Last night he had struck Lady Estelle Lamarr from his mental list of prospective countesses. Not that there was anyone else on the list.
And what had he done this morning? He had mistimed his departure from the house and found that a few stragglers from the lake party were still up under the portico—including Lady Estelle. It had been perfectly clear that his cousin Sid was about to take her in pursuit of the others, but he had not yet done so. Justin had offered his escort instead—to the summerhouse. And she had accepted.
He might have known there and then that disaster was looming. The summerhouse was his domain, especially the upper level. It was the only place on Everleigh land where he felt fully at home and relaxed. And private. He had wanted the privacy this morning in particular because he had a very personal letter to write.
But, he had thought as they made their way there, he would not need to take her to the upper level. He had had a door and a lock installed at the top of the stairs. He could sit downstairs with her, let her see the view, relax for half an hour. So of course he had taken her up. He had even been glad about it for a while. She had liked it. She had been interested in his writing. She had asked him about his reason for leaving here twelve years ago and about his relationship with his father, and he had felt that she was genuinely interested in knowing the truth, even though he had not told her a great deal of it. And then . . .
Well, then he had made an ass of himself.
I wish you would marry me.
And as though that idiocy were not enough to embarrass him for the rest of his natural life even if he lived to be ninety, he had proceeded to explain his reason for asking . . . You are past the first blush of youth . . . Perhaps you have waited for love. If so, it would seem to have eluded you until you are past the age at which you can continue to expect it. I wish you would consider me . . .
The memory was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat. The drizzling rain did not help.
The lake party was hurrying back to the house from the other direction, he could see. Fortunately, he had an excuse not to encounter them or have to mingle with them for a while.
“Captain,” he called. “The stables.”
And his dog, after turning to look at him as though to say, “What? Again?” nevertheless obediently changed direction. Justin followed him without a word to his companion, who held her course for the house.
Lord Brandon, I cannot think of anything whatsoever that would induce me even to consider marrying you.
Her rejection had been cutting in its brevity. And clear in its meaning beyond the shadow of any doubt.
So he had kissed her. Hard. On the mouth. With no finesse whatsoever.
He owed her an apology. At the very least. He had made one, in fact, but that was just before he kissed her. He owed her another. The trouble was that he did not want to get close enough to her for the next eternity or two to say anything at all. And he did not doubt she felt exactly the same way.
He settled Captain back at the stables, rubbing him down with a towel and cleaning his paws and underbelly. He fed him, though it was the wrong time to do so, and changed the water in his bowl, though what was already there had looked fresh.
His letter remained unanswered.
He was as far as ever from finding a countess. That list of his was quite blank. He did not know anyone.
He wanted desperately to go home. Which was laughable when he considered that the home for which he yearned was half of a poky, drafty loft in a small, dilapidated old cottage with a dreary view over a stone quarry through its windows.
Through one of its windows—the tiny square one under the eaves in the loft—Ricky was perhaps gazing at this very moment, watching for Justin even though July had come and gone and Justin had not come with it. Ricky understood simple facts. What he could not understand was changed facts or the reasons for them. He could not understand the difference between cancellation and postponement. One always had to be very specific with what one told him, for as far as Ricky was concerned, the things one told him were then facts written in stone. If they changed, he was not only disappointed; he was also distraught and quite inconsolable.
“It’s something you need to keep in mind next time you say you are coming here, Juss,” Wes Mort had dictated to Hilda, his woman, who had written the letter for him. Wes could both read and write—Justin had taught him by candlelight through one cold winter and beyond—but he was embarrassed by the slowness with which he read and the large, childish appearance of his handwriting.
Don’t tell Ricky you are coming back in July after you have finished all your stuff in London and then write to say you can’t come then after all but will come in the autumn instead, after harvest. Ricky don’t understand things like that, Juss. You said July but you didn’t come in July and now he is mortal down in the dumps. He don’t want to eat or sleep or even wash. He drags about, driving us mental, and he don’t smile no more. Hildy is threatening to leave me. (This is Hilda here, Justin. I am NOT threatening to go, how would my men do without me and where would I go anyhow, but poor Ricky is in a bad way.) In future when you are leaving here tell him goodbye and you will see him sometime when you can. I’m ready to pop you a good one and put another bend in your nose. Perhaps it will improve your looks. Come when you can, but make it soon or you may find Ricky looking after two lunatics here.
For four years Justin had lived in half that loft above Wes’s cottage. Ricky, Wes’s brother, lived in the other half. He was thirty years old now, a few years younger than Wes, and a big man, but he still had the mind of a four- or five-year-old. He was sweetness itself except when something frustrated him. Then he tended to mope and sulk and sigh and sometimes throw a tantrum. He had taken a liking to Justin from the start and considered himself Justin’s protector from all ills, real and imagined. Leaving him after a visit was never an easy thing to do.
Wes was a great bruiser of a man, all brawn and muscle and big heart—and sometimes big mouth. It was Wes who had broken Justin’s nose in a tavern brawl that had been more of a massacre than a fight between equals. Wes had jeered at him when he lay on the floor, blood pouring from his nose, eyes unfocused. He had spit to one side of him and commented that if Mr. La-di-da wanted to toughen up a bit so he could give a better account of himself in the future, he could come and work for him. In a stone quarry. His mouth had fallen open in astonishment when Justin had turned up on his doorstep two days later to inform him that here he was, reporting for work. Wes had grinned at him then.
“I did a good piece of work on that face, Mr. La-di-da,” he had said. “There is not a single part of it that is not still swollen. Except maybe your eyeballs. Even your ma wouldn’t know you.”
Justin had still been marveling that he had all his teeth. “If I can last out for a whole week of working for you,” he had told Wes grimly, “you can drop the La-di-da label. It is the way I talk. It is not going to change. My name is Justin. Justin Wiley.”
“Juss.” Ricky had been smiling sweetly from behind his brother’s shoulder. “Did you fall down and hurt yourself? Come in the house. Hildy has made some soup. Hildy’s soup is always the best. It will make you all better again.”
Wes was a foreman at the quarry. He had given Justin a job, and Justin had kept it for four years. For at least the first of those years he had been given all the hardest jobs, though that was merely a matter of degree. There was no easy job at the quarry.
And that was the home and the life for which he still sometimes found himself yearning. He had proved himself worthy of that life. He had gritted his teeth and refused to accept defeat and made himself fit in—until he no longer had to make the effort.
And now he had to find a way of sending a message that would comfort Ricky. And reassure him that he had not been forgotten. That he was still loved. And that Justin was safe even though Ricky was not here to protect him.
* * *
* * *
All the way back to the house, Estelle had been desperately hoping she would not meet anyone before she reached her room. She needed time to get her teeming thoughts and her battered emotions in order before she could even think of putting on her social face. She had just been proposed to and kissed by a man who gave her the shivers. And it was entirely her own fault. A cool No, thank you outside the house earlier when he had asked if she would like to see the summerhouse would have averted all of this. So why had she not said it?
But she had not done so and that was that. And she was not going to escape, it seemed. Even before the Earl of Brandon turned away toward the stables with his dog she both heard and saw the approach of the lake party. They were hurrying back to the house, apparently in great high spirits despite the lowering sky and the discomfort of the drizzle. So she had to don her social manner after all and greet them with answering smiles and laughter as they all dashed up the marble steps to the shelter of the portico and on into the great hall.
“You are not half as wet as we are, Lady Estelle,” Gillian Chandler observed, shaking droplets of water from her skirts. “We had that horrid rain in our faces all the way back. It did not have the courtesy to go around us.” She found her own words funny. So did everyone else.
“Those of us who wagered that there was rain in those clouds,” Mr. Frederick Ormsbury, one of the Cornish cousins, said, “ought not to have allowed ourselves to be overruled by those who insisted there was not. How much did we wager?”
“I believe that was nothing. The rain deniers were afraid to take us on,” Bertrand said to the loud amusement of all.
“Thank heaven for bonnets, I say,” Rosie Sharpe said. “Though I do wish I had not worn one of my favorites.”
“What we ought to have done,” her brother Mr. Ernest Sharpe said, “was jumped in the lake and gone for a swim. We were going to get wet anyway.”
“Ugh!” Maria said to more laughter.
Estelle, smiling brightly as she shook out her skirt, met her brother’s eyes. He held her look for a moment and raised his eyebrows. Was she in for a scold? For going off alone with the earl instead of staying with the main group? But he was their host. They were all at his home. She was twenty-five years old.
“You were wise, Lady Estelle, to go only as far as the summerhouse,” Angela Ormsbury said. “And you were even wiser to remain at the house, Mrs. Sharpe. Though we were all enjoying the walk exceedingly before the drizzle came on. That waterfall is breathtaking, just as Mama has always said it is.”
Mrs. Sharpe, the earl’s maternal aunt, had been waiting for them in the hall with her husband and was clucking and fussing over them and urging them to run up to their rooms to change their clothes before they caught their deaths. She had taken the liberty, she told Maria, of asking for hot chocolate and hot cider to be sent to the drawing room in half an hour’s time.
“I am so glad you did, Mrs. Sharpe,” Maria said.
“Fresh Chelsea buns straight out of the oven too,” Mr. Sharpe added. “Or so your housekeeper promised us, Maria.”
“And, Maria, dear,” Mrs. Sharpe said, “you must please call us Aunt Betty and Uncle Rowan. We are, after all, your stepaunt and -uncle, if there is such a relationship. Now, off you go. All of you.”
