A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (22 page)

She glanced up at him and their eyes met and held. The warmth began to spread, heating and pouring into her lungs, searing her breath before moving downward, deeper into her core. Antigone felt the irresistible push of this molten tide and knew that this feeling was as far beyond anything as she had ever imagined. Her hands had begun to tingle from the mere memory of the warm press of his hand over hers. Her cheeks had become heated and sensitive just from the remembrance of the way his whispered words had fanned along her cheeks.

“Oh, here they are at last.” Claire startled her back to reality. Back to the carriage, where she sat with her cheeks afire in front of his family.

Viscount Jeffrey handed Cassie into the carriage just as the first drops of rain began to patter onto the lawn. “Spring ’em, Broad Ham,” he called as he swung himself through the door.

“Well, now,” Viscount Jeffrey asked the lot of them. “How did we all enjoy ourselves?”

At least four of them were studiously quiet—Cassandra, from her usual reticence, although her cheeks were glowing, Claire and Antigone because of mutual embarrassment, and Will, for no reason at all. He just leaned back in the space between his brothers and smiled.

“I found a peacock that scared Claire silly,” Thomas was relating, “and I climbed up one of the walls, although Claire told me not to. But I got to the top of the part where some of the parapet was left. I could look through the crenellations and everything.”

“Most successful, then on all accounts?”

“Most successful,” Will offered at last, and the lopsided smile on his face warmed her to her marrow.

“You will remember your promise?” Thomas addressed her directly. “To ride with me tomorrow, and show me your mare? Do you like to hunt, Miss Antigone? Foxhunt, that is?”

“I’ve followed the Thornhill Hunt any number of times. But the Thornhill isn’t known to be receptive to ladies.”

“You could come and hunt in Ditcham country, couldn’t she, James?” Thomas leaned around Will to appeal to his eldest brother. “You’re hunting tomorrow, aren’t you, James? Ladies ride with the Ditcham, even if they don’t take all of the fences. It’s like to be one of the last—if not
the
last—hunts of the season. Mama will let me go if you’re going.”

“Probably not,” James hedged in answer to Thomas’s question, before he turned to Antigone. “Doesn’t like getting showed up, Aldridge. Though if he’s seen your mare, I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to buy her out from under you.”

Antigone felt some of her warm pleasure in the day go cold. “Why do you say that?”

“Oh.” James made an offhand gesture. “He’s just an acquisitive sort, isn’t he? Always wanting whatever someone else has, no matter the cost, like a sulky schoolboy, though he’s a bit old for that role. But whatever I’m driving, or riding, he always makes me an offer. It may be some competition he feels with me, or more likely with Father, but I’ll lay you a groat the man will offer for such a high-bred mare. You mark my word.”

“Oh, I have.” Antigone nodded, finally seeing things exactly the way they were. “And you are quite correct. I believe he
has
actually made his offer for the mare. But she is not now, nor ever will be, for sale.”

Chapter Thirteen

Will had meant to be up early. He had meant to spend the quiet hours of the early morning working, writing the letters necessary to bolster his chances of securing the preferments for being reassigned to a ship. And to casually be available if Preston had decided to accept his brother’s invitation to hunt. Yet, despite his best intentions, he made another unfortunately late start of it. The night had seen him staring at the ceiling wide awake at two o’clock in the morning, and dead asleep through the breakfast hour.

But at least this night, he had had the vision of the deliciously kissable Preston to ponder instead of the ghosts of lost shipmates who habitually haunted his waking dreams.

When Will finally awoke to find the morning half gone, he splashed the sleep from his face, and wandered through the seemingly empty house until he found James hard at work in the estate office.

“There you are.” James frowned at him over the top of his ledgers. “Nice of you to join us.”

“Apologies.” Will ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t seem to adapt to country hours. I can’t keep myself awake or asleep for longer than four hours at a stretch. I woke and couldn’t fall back asleep until just before dawn, and I’m sure to be yawning by supper. Speaking of food, I reckon I’ve missed breakfast, but do you suppose there is such a thing as coffee about?”

James reached back to pull the bell cord. “Four hours? Is that all you ever got in the navy—four hours of sleep?”

“The watch system is slightly more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it. Four hours on duty, followed by four hours off. Watch after watch. That’s the basic routine.” He subsided into a chair while James spoke to the footman who appeared at his summons.

“A pot of very hot coffee for Commander Jellicoe, Robert.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the footman departed for Downpark’s kitchens, Will turned his attention to his brother. “Thank you. I’m happy to see Thomas couldn’t convince you to shirk your duty this morning.” Will had felt very nearly fratricidal in the carriage yesterday afternoon with his brothers making plans to ride with Preston—plans in which Will could take no part. Simply riding on the back of Preston’s horse had left him sore enough. And after so many years out of the saddle he doubted he had the skills requisite to keep from doing himself a mortal injury should he attempt something so reckless as a bloody hunt. “I take it he’s sulking through his lessons?”

“Hah. Don’t know. I didn’t see him at breakfast, but then again, I was up early so I could get through the work I had to leave undone yesterday so I might go to Cowdray with you.” He shuffled a paper from one pile to another with studied casualness. “I thought I might make a call this afternoon at Redhill, if you’ve a mind to accompany me. In a high-flyer this time, and not in anything so geriatric as the Stanhope.”

“Geriatric? Devil take you.” Will glared at his brother from the comfort of his slouch. “You’re lucky I haven’t had any coffee, or I’d thrash the superiority out of you to show you exactly how geriatric I am.”

“Save your spleen. Here’s your coffee now.”

“Thank you, Robert. Good man.” Will took a fortifying gulp of the scalding brew. “Aah. God, yes. That’s better. So, a trip to Redhill, is it? I take it you found the very beautiful Miss Preston to your taste?”

“Lovely girl. I enjoyed her company very much.” James appeared to apply himself back to his accounts.

Will couldn’t pass up the opportunity to nettle. “How much?”

His brother fixed him with an eye. “You don’t see me asking you what you were doing with Miss Antigone at Cowdray, or prying into your motives in arranging the outing, do you?”

“I am not the one who has admitted he is wife hunting.”

“And if I am, pray let me get on with it in peace.”

“Not a chance of it.” Will propped his booted feet on the edge of James’s desk. “You must enlighten me. I admit to being surprised. I don’t think I heard Miss Preston say two words the entire day.”

“She said a great deal more than two words.” James’s voice held the beginnings of admiration. “And even if she is shy and doesn’t speak, that’s not to say she doesn’t communicate. She has plenty to say without words, if one just cares to look.”

“Do tell.”

“I could see her thoughts in her eyes, in her open expression, just as well as if she had spoken them were she not so shy and demure. She’s lovely. She’s a lovely girl.”

“Lovely enough to be a countess someday?”

“Lovely enough to seriously consider.” James abandoned all pretense to work. “You’re right—she doesn’t say much. But I have to admit, it was refreshing to be with a young lady and feel that I wasn’t being pandered to, or worse, lied to constantly. If I look at a girl more than twice—and I have to look at them all more than twice—it’s as if she suddenly starts saying what she thinks I want to hear, instead of what she truly thinks. If she thinks at all.” He tossed down his pen in a rare show of frustration and pushed back from his desk. “Does that make any sense?”

“It makes perfect, if horrible, sense.” Will couldn’t imagine Preston telling him what he wanted to hear. In fact, she seemed to do the opposite with breathtaking regularity. “That’s the burden, then, of being such a catch.”

“And the responsibility. It’s part of my duty, my job, Will, to look these girls over, the same as yours is to kill Frenchmen. And I have been looking, for a long time. I always have. But yesterday was the first time in a long time—a very long time—that it felt more like a pleasure.”

“Then let me be the first one to wish you happy.”

James let out a rueful laugh. “It’s still a bit early days for that. I’ve only spent one dance, and one day with her. Hence the visit to Redhill. But if the visit goes as I hope, I should think another week could see the business through.”

“One week?” Will brought his feet to the ground, and sat up. “Just like that, you would go ahead and get married?”

“What ought I to wait for? I’m nearly six and twenty, Will. I’ve been looking seriously for my viscountess, and future countess, for almost five years. I know exactly what I’m doing. If I find I’m ready to make my mind up, there is absolutely no reason in the world why I should want to delay.”

“Well, then, I
do
wish you happy. With all my heart.” Will could not find it in him to tease his brother any more. In fact, it was heartening to find that his brother took his own career as the heir just as seriously as Will did his naval advancement. It was reassuring to see that under all of James’s unruffled, well-valeted ease ran a familiar familial streak of steely determination. “And as a sign of my support of your troth, I had best stay away from Redhill, so I won’t take any wind out of your sails. I have a feeling Mrs. Preston and her presumptive suitor will take a better shine to you than they did to me.”

“And who is that lady’s presumptive suitor?”

“I believe our Lord Aldridge has an interest in the widow.”

James looked up. “Aldridge? I very much doubt that.”

“What do you mean?” Will hadn’t particularly liked the man himself—what with all the warning off—so he was interested to hear James’s opinion of the man.

“Let us just say that my Lord Aldridge has something of a reputation as a collector, and forty-five-year-old, impoverished widows are not on his list of acquisitions.”

“Impoverished?” Will was surprised to hear it. Redhill had looked prosperous enough to his untutored eyes, but then again, he didn’t know how large the farm attached to it was, or whether cropland or pasturage was more profitable at present.

“I shouldn’t think the estate worth more than five hundred pounds a year.”

“That’s not so little.”

“No, but to Aldridge it would be. He’s an acquisitive sort. He doesn’t do anything without profit.”

“And the Prestons’ income, or lack thereof, doesn’t bother you as a potential son-in-law?”

“I’m not Aldridge, to be making profits out of people. In my opinion, the right girl is worth any price.”

The right girl—the one who enhanced James’s life and the career he had inherited. But Will had not inherited his career, though he would be well advised to reapply himself to it with with equal vigor. He had given himself a fortnight’s reprieve, but the longer he waited to find a new command, the more difficult it would be. And if the navy were not going to have him, he had other offers he needed to consider. “May I join you in your work, if not in the visit? It looks to be a letter-writing day for me, as well.”

“Certainly. Pull up a chair. Clean sheets of paper are here.”

The brothers set to their respective work in companionable silence as stewards, and secretaries, and footmen came and went, delivering reports and replenishing the store of hot coffee.

They had been at it for quite some time, when James looked up, beyond Will, out the window. “I say, is that Thomas? Looks like he’s played truant this morning after all.”

Will followed his brother’s gaze out the window to see Thomas leading a gray hunter across the south lawn and up toward the house. “He doesn’t look like he’s come a cropper in a ditch.” There was mud flecking the horse’s chest and legs, but none on Thomas’s coat. “But if he’s walking, his horse must have come up lame.”

“I’m not surprised, at the rate he rides,” James commented as he returned to his papers. “He has good hands, that boy, but he’s yet to learn how to temper his instincts with a greater share of reason.”

“He’s young.”

“He’s only young because Mama lets him be. I was away at school at fourteen, and you—I don’t even like to think of what you were doing. You’d already survived Trafalgar at his age.”

“And I wouldn’t wish that experience on him,” Will said quietly. “Would you?”

James looked at him for a long moment before he took a deep breath, and shook his head. “No. No, I wouldn’t.”

It felt extraordinary to be in such easy accord with his brother. But his eyes were drawn back to the window, and the sight of Thomas trudging across the lawn. “I’m going to see what our truant has got himself up to. You coming?”

“No. Suit yourself. I’ve got work to do, if I’m to stick to my plans for the afternoon.”

Will wasn’t sure what idle bit of instinct had him heading to the back of the house, but he wasn’t about to ignore the subtle flare of warning that had fired up at the back of his brain. The air, as he stepped out of doors and jogged down the steps, was thick with a fine misty drizzle that instantly clung to his shirtsleeves and skin. “Ahoy, Thomas. What’s the trouble?”

“Hello, Will. He’s come up lame.” Thomas gestured with his hunting whip to his mount’s leg. “Threw a shoe coming over a gate dropping down into a lane over near Huckswood Copse.”

“Bad luck.” Will laid a consoling hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“The worst. Until then, I was almost able to keep up with Miss Antigone and her Velocity. You should have seen that mare run, Will. Made old Blue Peter here look like a plow horse, and he’s one of Father’s best hunters. But that mare was fast over fences as well as the flat. And Miss Antigone.” Thomas made that admiring whistle. “Do you know she had her saddle altered to add an extra horn? She can jump with it. She was bloody brilliant.”