A Gamble on Love

by Blair Bancroft

Published by Kone Enterprises

at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 by Grace Ann Kone

For other books by Blair Bancroft,

please see
http://www.blairbancroft.com

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only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
If you would like to share this book with another person, please
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own copy.

~ * ~

Miss Aurelia Trevor unhooked her knee,
disengaged her stirrup, and slid down from her side-saddle unaided,
tossing the reins of her lathered horse to a startled groom.
Grabbing the long tail of her sable velvet riding habit and tossing
it over her arm, she stalked down the drive with a purposeful
stride seldom seen in well brought up young ladies. She plunged
down a set of outside steps to the basement of Pevensey Park, her
riding boots beating an echoing tattoo on the flagstone hallway.
She threw open the door to the spacious estate room and came to an
abrupt halt, glaring at its sole occupant. Mr. William Tubbs—a
sharp-faced man with nearly sixty years in his dish—was seated at
the broad estate desk, silhouetted against a jumbled background of
shelves holding an astonishing variety of leather-bound books, from
estate records to serious treatises on agriculture. Mr. Tubbs took
his time in rising to his feet. His eyes flicked over her.
Assessing.

Ah, but he had never done
that when her father was alive!
“Mr. Tubbs,” Miss
Trevor demanded, “why is no work being done on the
weir?”

William Tubbs smirked at her. Yes, confound
it, that was the only word Miss Trevor could think of to describe
the look on her estate manager’s face.

“
Lord Hubert says the work isn’t
necessary.” Tubbs told her.

Miss Trevor’s fine bosom heaved as she took a
deep breath. Unfortunately, she caught Mr. Tubbs’s sudden interest
in her fitted jacket. Nearly sputtering with rage, she declared,
“You know quite well Lord Ralph told you to see to that work as
soon as the harvest was in. It was one of his very last orders. You
cannot ignore it simply because Lord Hubert hasn’t the slightest
idea what it takes to run a property of this size.”

Mr. Tubbs shrugged, making not the slightest
effort to disguise his disinterest in her opinion. “No choice,
miss. Lord Hubert holds the purse strings, as you very well
know.”

“
That may be,” Miss Trevor raged, “but
Pevensey Park is mine, and we will have floods in the spring if
that weir is not fixed. And the work must be done before winter
sets in.”

“
Can’t be helped, miss. You’ve no say
in the matter. Lord Hubert is master here now.”

“
Lord Hubert is an—” Miss Trevor choked
off an unseemly criticism of her uncle and guardian. “By the time I
gain control of my own property, it will be in ruins,” she declared
from between gritted teeth.

“
There’s no help for it,” William Tubbs
repeated stubbornly. “I take my orders from Lord
Hubert.”

For a moment Miss Trevor was silent, a sly
look gradually taking the place of fury. “I have some pin money put
by, Mr. Tubbs. Order the work done, and I shall pay for it
myself.”

Mr. Tubbs, whose own mother considered him
ferret-faced, shook his head. “Can’t do it, miss. I’d get the sack
for sure.”

“
I wonder, Mr. Tubbs,” said Miss
Aurelia Trevor of Pevensey Park, Kent, “whether it has occurred to
you that in the fullness of time I shall have total control of my
lands. It is possible—and I am certain you will agree—that you are
merely postponing the day when you are sacked.”

With this parthian shot, Miss Trevor
turned in a flurry of swishing dark velvet and stalked off down the
hall, startling Cook and her helpers as she dashed through the
kitchen, sporting a ferocious scowl, before ascending into rarified
atmosphere of the state rooms on the ground floor. She ran up the
great front staircase, waved off her maid Tilly, and flung herself
onto one of the window seats in her corner room.
Think
. She had to think. Five more
years of her uncle’s domination was inconceivable. It wasn’t
supposed to have been like this. Pevensey was hers. She would not
let it be destroyed!

~ * ~

And now, a scant six weeks after her
confrontation with Mr. Tubbs, Miss Trevor’s dreams and hopes were
down to a last slim thread, dangling in the wind. Clasping a fine
cashmere shawl around her shoulders to stave off the nip in the
October air, she stood, all alone, on the flagstones of the south
terrace and surveyed her acres.

For the fourth time in five generations the
ownership of Pevensey Park had descended through the female line.
Originally built by the Duke of Alburton as a wedding gift for a
favorite younger son, the estate had escaped entail by passing, as
a marriage portion, through a nearly unbroken succession of
daughters. Whether this was a curse or a blessing depended entirely
on one’s point of view. Or gender. Until the last two months Miss
Trevor had considered it a blessing. At the moment, however, she
was truly frightened. She was on the verge of losing, and rapidly
discovering desperation.

Aurelia leaned against the stone wall at the
outer edge of the upper terrace, yearning for the days of loving
security, when her mama and her papa were alive, and all was right
with the world. When Pevensey Park was a wonder to be savored and
enjoyed, and not a dreadful burden over which she had no
control.

Pevensey. Beautiful
Pevensey
. A young landscape gardener, greatly under
the influence of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, had convinced her
grandfather to remodel his park in the wilderness style so much in
vogue in the mid eighteenth century. Therefore, below the terraces
was a vast sweep of well-scythed grass, gradually descending to a
deliberately invisible ha-ha, with fat white sheep dotting the far
upslope of the Kentish hills. Irregularly shaped and carefully
placed clumps of trees framed the grassy slope, with a blue-gray
pond lying in the shade of the spinney on the left.

Also on the left, a wooden bridge lead to a
small rotunda, placed with exquisite care to the view, on the far
side of a bubbling stream. Though Miss Trevor might have preferred
a medieval ruin as a playhouse, the small rotunda, with its six
columns and domed ceiling, had been her particular hideaway as a
child. A surge of nostalgia, almost pain, swept over her, as she
recalled the excitement of running over the lawn, crossing the
arched wooden bridge, and entering a world of magic and imagination
such as only a child can know.

She loved Pevensey Park. Every tree, shrub,
and blade of grass. Every sheep on the hillside, every wheat field,
hop vine, and dairy cow; every last flower, fruit, and vegetable
grown in the market garden hidden behind the picturesque stands of
trees. For Pevensey Park, having no great family fortune to support
it, had been forced to make its own way in the world. And,
fortunately, the Park had been blessed with a succession of
level-headed, commonsensical owners. It was a thriving concern. And
its present owner, Miss Aurelia Trevor, was quite determined it
would stay that way.

Slowly—almost fearing the impact on her
current heightened emotions—she turned and looked at the house.
Although not the product of the great Inigo Jones himself, Pevensey
Park was classic Palladian, its cream-colored façade and perfect
symmetry shimmering in the early afternoon sun. The terraces on
which she stood were also a remnant of the Palladian era, her
grandmother having refused, in no uncertain terms, the landscape
architect’s attempt to sweep away all vestiges of the old formal
gardens. For which Aurelia was most grateful. Even now, in early
October, she could lean on the balustrade and look down on
geometrically laid out beds of dahlias, mums, snapdragons, asters
and roses, backed by a few lingering hollyhocks and rose of Sharon.
Green was lovely, but what a bleak world it would be if there were
no flowers.

“
Miss? Miss Aurelia?” Biddeford, the
Park’s butler, was beside her, holding a silver tray on which
rested a visiting card. “Lord Hanley is here.”

Lord Hanley
.
Her last hope. Would he be the savior Pevensey Park needed? If only
she had been able to have a Season, find the proper consort for her
acres . . .

But, first, her beloved mama had succumbed to
a slow wasting disease and then, while they were still in mourning,
her dear papa had passed on as well. From a broken heart, everyone
said, and Aurelia was inclined to agree. Once, they had all been so
happy . . .

And now, here she was, only six months after
her papa’s death, and already several weeks into a search for a
husband, having been forced into giving up all hopes of
independence by a calamitous combination of events she did not care
to dwell on. And yet she must. For without a stern enumeration of
the anguish, disappointments, and frustrations of the last few
months, how would she gather the courage to extend a proposal of
marriage to a perfect stranger?

Miss Trevor sagged back against the
balustrade, eyes closed, fighting for composure.

Papa, how could you?

Yet, truthfully, how could Lord Ralph have
anticipated that his trusted friend and neighbor, Marcus Yelverton,
would pass on—also well before his time—leaving her to the sole
guardianship of Lord Hubert, her papa’s greedy younger brother? The
Trevor brothers, younger sons of the Marquess of Huntsham, had come
into the world well hosed and shod, as the saying went.
Nonetheless, the marriage of Lord Ralph, a second son, to the only
child of the owners of Pevensey Park had been considered a coup of
no little proportion. Lord Hubert Trevor, the third son, had had to
settle for a lady with a much less impressive dowry, and had never
quite forgiven either his eldest brother for being heir to a
marquisate or Lord Ralph for acquiring Pevensey Park.

And yet that old
saying—
Blood is thicker than
water
—proved true. Lord Hubert had been appointed
co-guardian with Mr. Yelverton, and until Miss Aurelia Trevor
reached the advanced age of five and twenty, they must approve even
the slightest expenditure. And now, since Mr. Yelverton’s
unfortunate demise, her fate was solely in the hands of Lord
Hubert, who was proving to be impossible. Obstinate. Heedless, if
not positively stupid. Or perhaps—the ugly thought kept popping
up—simply vindictive.

Worse yet, Lord Hubert had a son—known since
infancy as The Terrible Twyford. And, quite shockingly, Twyford had
begun making assumptions about his inevitable union with his cousin
even before Lord Ralph’s casket was lowered into his grave.
Horrified, Aurelia had nearly boxed his ears. His mama had dragged
him away, but Aurelia caught that part of her scold where Lady
Hubert informed her son he was a silly boy for rushing his fences.
As his papa had told him, “slow and easy over the ground” would do
it.

Slow and easy.
Twyford?
Neck or nothing was more his
style.

Nor was her precarious situation aided by
William Tubbs’s continued obstinance, nor the intransigence of her
papa’s solicitor. Not even Pevensey’s close neighbor, Squire
Stanton, could be brought to believe that a female should have any
say in governing her own property. In fact, less than a week after
her disturbing scene with Mr. Tubbs, Miss Trevor received a
visitor. Harry Stanton, son of the squire and a friend since
childhood, came trotting up to Pevensey Park’s impressive front
portico. He was dressed in his Sunday best, looking fine as a
fivepence. Aurelia scarcely recognized him.

Nor did she recognize his fidgets. Harry had
run tame at Pevensey since he had been old enough to sit a horse.
But on this particular day he looked as if his cravat were
strangling him, his thick neck showing as red as raw beef beneath
the not-so-perfectly arranged folds of white linen. His dark blue
superfine jacket managed to look crumpled in spite of being
stretched tight across his broad shoulders, and his waistcoat
appeared in danger of popping a button or two as it strained over a
figure already showing a tendency for a too-great enjoyment of food
and drink.