A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (20 page)

The poor lad’s face, which was a darker-haired, slightly narrower version of Jellicoe’s, flamed. “I am
not
. Everyone says I’m the very image of Papa at my age.”

“Which is a very old fourteen,” Jellicoe informed Antigone, before he resumed teasing his brother. “Are you sure? I’ve never heard that said. You’re swarthy as a Turk, not like the rest of us Jellicoes. No. It must be Broad Ham. Why else would he let you up on the box and trust the ribbons of his precious grays to you? A mark of great favor and condescension, I might add, that he has never granted to another living soul, with the exception of the earl himself. No, stands to reason. I’m convinced you’re Ham’s natural-born son.”

Young Thomas’s pride in having his accomplishments touted overrode his outrage. “You’re just jealous. Because I’m Broad Ham’s favorite. And Papa’s.”

“Indisputably,” Jellicoe agreed with amiable frankness. “But not as jealous as James. He’s put it about that you’re the chambermaid’s.”

“The tweeny,” corrected Viscount Jeffrey, just to be outrageous.

“He’s just teasing you, Thomas,” Lady Claire said, coloring slightly. “Will, what will the Misses Preston think of us?”

“I hope they will think us silly beyond belief, and perhaps a little witty and amusing.”

“A very little.” James’s style of humor was bone-dry.

“And rude. To the chambermaid and the tweeny—she’s only twelve, you know, so she can’t be my mother anyway—as well as to me and Papa,” Thomas agreed.

Antigone had to laugh at such outrageously wicked, lively banter amongst siblings. Cassandra had always seemed too tender a sprig for such rough love.

But the boy had shifted his attention to Antigone now. “What sort of mare do you have?”

Antigone knew just how to impress him. “Thoroughbred. Out of the Earl of Grosvenor’s Meteora, by his Rhadamanthus.” She named the great racehorses as if she were invoking an incantation. And with much the same effect.

Thomas’s only response was an appreciative, long, drawn-out whistle.

“I take it you’re impressed?” Jellicoe asked him.

“That’s stakes winners—the Derby and the Oaks—on both sire’s and dam’s sides.”

“I told you she was a ripping great mare,” Jellicoe warned. “Enormous big black thing. With great big teeth. Scares the hell out of me, the great beastie.”

Thomas made a sound of deep derision at his brother before he came at Antigone with a flurry of questions. “How did you get her? Do you race her? Who trains her? Where do you keep her?”

“At home. She does not race anything except the wind, because no one has ever ridden her but me.”

“A mare like that? She should be racing. You do know what you have in her, don’t you?”

“I am fully aware.” She could imagine the outrage the poor boy was feeling, and she sympathized. She had felt that way herself, not too long ago. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but she does not race.”

“Why ever not?” Thomas demanded with the assurance that came from youth and a wealthy, influential family.

“I haven’t the money to do so. But I assure you, I take better care of that horse than I take of myself.”

“That I can attest to,” Jellicoe said quietly.

But Thomas wasn’t satisfied. “If you don’t have the money, how did you get her in the first place?”

“She was given to me as a gift on the occasion of my twelfth birthday.”

“The devil you say,” Jellicoe broke in. “Who would give a twelve-year-old girl an enormous beast of a horse like that?”

“The Earl of Grosvenor. But she wasn’t enormous when I got her as a filly, was she?”

“He doesn’t understand.” Thomas was making a pay-no-attention-to-him motion with his hands. “The Earl of Grosvenor’s stables are legendary. Out of Meteora by Rhadamanthus, you said?”

“Yes. His lordship the earl was a friend of my late father’s. They were at school together, and later the earl became my father’s patron, and Papa dedicated several books and papers published in the
Transactions of the Royal Society
to him. And so the earl gave Papa the horse for me.”

“Lucky. I wish someone would give me a horse.” Thomas was still shaking his head, as if it were a crime that she should have such an animal and not race her. “I’d love to see her run.”

“And so you shall.”

“Tomorrow?” he asked with all the need for immediate gratification of youth.

Antigone was happy to assure him. “If you like.”

“Are we going to let Thomas talk about horses all day?” Lady Claire interjected. “Have you ever been to the ruins at Cowdray, Miss Antigone? I am dying to know what we can expect in the ruin. Will says there are sure to be ghosts.”

“Yes, I have been there.” Antigone had ranged over most of the open land in the district while riding Velocity. “And I think your brother Commander Jellicoe is a great one for teasing. But, although I have never seen one, I cannot vouchsafe that there will be no ghosts.”

For Antigone supposed that she had brought at least one ghost with her. Lord Aldridge could not be seen—and certainly would not be spoken of by Antigone or her sister—but his presence in her life, his interest in her affairs, could be felt just as assuredly as if his cold fingers were sliding against the back of her neck, making her skin prickle with gooseflesh.

“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” said Thomas. “Everything that is typically attributed to ghosts has a logical explanation.”

Antigone smiled. “You sound very much like our father. Papa used to say he did not believe in anything that could not be measured in some way or another.”

“How sad,” said Lady Claire. “Oh, I do beg your pardon, Miss Antigone, and Miss Preston, too. But if he really believed that, then he could not believe in hope, or … or love. There is no way to measure that.”

Antigone turned to look at her sister, knowing that Cassie’s gentle smile was mirrored on her own face. “Ah, but that is where you are wrong, Lady Claire. He did believe in love. He would turn our backs to the wall, and put a book over our head and measure how tall we had grown. And that, he would say, is how you measure love.”

Oh, yes, there were going to be ghosts aplenty with them today.

Chapter Twelve

When at last the party alighted from the cramped carriage at the ruins of Cowdray House, Will was more than ready to have Preston to himself. But she appeared to be in no hurry. Indeed, as they began to walk along the close-cut grass toward the empty stone shell of Cowdray, Preston seemed more interested in keeping her sister company than in speaking with him.

“A house has been on the site since the thirteenth century,” she was saying as they strolled toward the crenellated gray stone walls, “but the present house was completed sometime during the reign of Henry VIII. The story is that a monk who was dispossessed from Battle Abbey during the dissolution of the monasteries cursed the family
by fire and by water
.”

“Well, the fire certainly holds true,” offered James. “The whole place burned to the ground some twelve years ago—went up in a pillar of fire. They said you could see the flames for miles and miles around the countryside.”

“Look.” Thomas pointed up at the embayed shell. “There are still scorch marks on the walls.” The empty shell of the Tudor house was destroyed beyond all hope of recovery.

“Only fitting,” Will added his contribution, “since Guy Fawkes—he of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament—lived and worked here at this house for many years as a footman.”

Preston turned her head to regard him. “I didn’t know that.”

“At last we discover a lamentable gap in the history section at your bookseller.”

The others turned to regard him with curiosity at that particularly infantile and dangerously revealing piece of teasing. “And then,” he added dramatically to cover for his blunder, “only two weeks after the fire, the heir, the Eighth viscount—and let this be a lesson to all viscounts—plunged to his watery death whilst attempting to make a passage over the Fall of the Rhine.”

“Oh, no,” Claire breathed. “How awful.”

“And so ends the ancient house.” Preston’s deep sigh seemed to bring her opinion into agreement with Claire. “How quickly it all passes. How fragile life really is.”

Will drew up for a moment. He had forgotten how recently they were bereaved, how fresh their pain might seem to them. He couldn’t expect Preston, or even Claire or his brothers, to be as inured to the cold fact of death as he had become. At two and twenty, he had already lost more close friends than he could hope to make for the rest of his life.

But Thomas was too adolescent to allow any lapsing into sentimentality. “Why did they call it ‘Cow-dray’? I don’t see any cows, and I don’t see any drays.”

“Don’t let your tutor hear you talking like that, my lad. It’s not English,” Will instructed him. “If I remember my history lessons—and the young Reverend Mr. Townsend was a demon with a switch if we forgot, wasn’t he, James—the word came from the Norman French
coudreye,
which—”

“Means hazel tree,” finished their young linguist. “There must have been a hazel copse.”

“Exactly. It is a common characteristic of place names in this rural, remote part of the world. I believe the Misses Preston’s house, Redhill, comes from the name of the copse nearby their manor house.”

As he had hoped, Preston’s level blue eyes swung to his. “How did you know that?”

At last she was looking at him. He patted the side pocket of his coat. “Despite denunciation from several quarters”—he bent an eye at Thomas, and hitched a thumb over his shoulder at Broad Ham—“I bought a well-illustrated, and very well labeled map.”

“I’m rather fond of a good map, myself. They carry them at my bookseller, you know.”

God, he liked her.

But James was looking for his share of the attention, too. “Miss Preston,” he inquired of Cassandra, “are you interested in gardens? I believe despite all the destruction, an admirable portion of the Tudor walled garden still remains.”

“Yes,” the lady said very quietly. “Though Annie is … best in the”—she ducked her head beneath the brim of her bonnet—“garden.”

James was true to his word, and was not put off by her shyness or her apparent stammer. He was assiduous in his attentions, gently cultivating Miss Preston’s conversation, until she felt herself more at ease, and could leave her sister’s protection for the steady assurance of his elder brother’s arm.

“Annie” her sister, Cassandra, had called her. No, he thought, that wouldn’t do any more than Antigone. She was Preston, no more, no less, not some everyday, average Annie. That name suggested some hearty, apple-cheeked milkmaid, not the slippery bundle of contradictions sending him careful, low glances out of the corner of her eyes.

James, Cassandra, and Claire were just walking around the corner of the gray stone walls in search of the aforementioned garden. This was his chance. “Miss Antigone, have you had an opportunity to see the view from the top of this knoll?”

“You know I have not,” she answered under her breath, “but by all means, let us go quickly.”

She went with him almost at a run, letting him take her hand to lead her up over the rise, and down toward the small lake, out of sight of the others. But once they came to the water, she seemed to think better of resuming the playful physical intimacy of the previous night, and stepped away, frowning in absent concentration at the glassy gray-blue water.

“I feared things might not have gone well for you at Northfield, when we parted.” He decided to broach the topic straight on. He faced the water, as well, but stood behind her just enough so that he could watch her.

Her answer to his question was that nonchalant, tossed-up shoulder. “Mama took one look at my face, and asked if Lord A—She saw the bruise and thankfully drew the conclusion that it was the result of my reckless and violent behavior with Mr. Stubbs-Haye, and she bundled me away in a carriage before anyone else at Northfield was even up and could be reminded of my untimely display of pugilistic prowess.”

“Ah,” he said as if he understood. But he didn’t. Lord Aldridge again. “I don’t remember you getting hit in the tavern.” Indeed he had worked his sorry, misbegotten arse off to make sure that didn’t happen, but obviously he was mistaken. And he didn’t like the feeling one bit.

His inability to protect her was all mixed up with the strange, almost primitive urge to take her face between his hands to examine her. So he could really look at her, and divine what it was that she wasn’t telling him.

The shrug again. “My knuckles hurt more.”

“You might try soaking them in brine.” It was not the bruise that was bothering her. Nor her knuckles.

“Does that work?” Her voice was growing more distant, as if her thoughts were wandering farther away, out across the water. As if she could make herself an island.

Will wasn’t about to allow her to drift away. He had worked for nothing else for the past twenty-four hours but to be with her. “Let me see.” Without requiring himself to address the frankly unanswerable question of why she might want to hold herself away from him at this point, he ruthlessly used the excuse to take her hand again, to draw her back. To keep her with him in mind as well as body.

Whatever internal bruising might have occurred was not evident, and she had not broken the skin. But he was no apothecary, to be dispensing bilious cures. He only wanted to turn her palm over in his hand, and tease the long lines of her capable fingers with his own, and watch the shivering awareness run up her arm and into her body. To quietly seduce her.

“You’ll do,” he advised gently. “But you might want to take care that you don’t lay anyone else out like an undertaker in the next few days.”

“Thank you.” She gave him a flash of a smile, before her usually direct gaze slid away to stare at her hand. “I’ll try.” She closed her eyes and swallowed.

Interesting. The lady was inclined, but unsure. There were ways around that. Patience and charm. And with her, humor.

She changed the subject before he could put his nefariously charming plan to work on her. “You and James seem friendly enough.”

“Ah, yes, we always have been—like most brothers growing up, we were the friendliest of enemies—but we’ve only recently been together much as adults. I’ve been at sea since I was twelve, while he’s been in training to be the earl—Eton and Cambridge, and then estate business. The peace has brought us together for the first time in a good many years.”