A Kiss to Remember (3 page)

“I’ll bet he’s a dwarf,” Lottie ventured.

“Or a humpbacked troll with broken teeth and an insatiable appetite for ten-year-old brats.” George curled his hands into claws and went lurching at Lottie, eliciting a squeal shrill enough to send the kittens napping beneath her petticoats scattering across the threadbare rug. Lottie never went anywhere without a herd of kittens trailing behind her. There were times when.

Laura would have sworn her little sister was spawning them herself.

Laura was forced to make an awkward hop to keep from tripping over one of them. Rather than darting for safety, the yellow tabby plopped down on its hindquarters and began to lick one paw with disdain, as if their near collision was solely Laura’s fault.

“You needn’t look so smug,” she informed the little cat. “If we get evicted, you’ll soon be gobbling down barn mice instead of those nice, juicy kippers you fancy.”

Sobering, George sank down beside Lottie on the settee. “Can he really evict us? And if he does, what’s to become of us?”

Laura’s laugh held little amusement. “Oh, we’ve nothing to worry about. Listen to this—‘Lord Devon-brooke begs your forgiveness,’” she read with contempt. “ ‘He sincerely regrets having been lax in his duties for so long. As the new master of Arden Manor, he will gladly shoulder the responsibility of finding new situations for you.’” She crumpled the letter again. “Situations indeed! He probably plans to cast us into the workhouse.”

“I’ve never cared much for work. I do believe I’d prefer to be cast into the streets,” Lottie said thoughtfully. “I’d make a rather fetching beggar, don’t you think? Can’t you just see me standing on a snowy street corner clutching a tin cup in my frostbitten fingers?” She heaved a sigh. “I’d grow paler and thinner with each passing day until I finally expired of consumption in the arms of some handsome, but aloof, stranger.” She illustrated her words by swooning onto the settee and pressing the back of one plump little hand to her brow.

“The only thing you’re likely to expire of,” George muttered, “is eating too many of Cookie’s teacakes.”

Reviving herself, Lottie stuck her tongue out at him.

George sprang to his feet, raking his sandy hair out of his hazel eyes. “I know! I’ll challenge the blackguard to a duel! He won’t dare refuse me. Why, I’ll be thirteen in December—nearly a man.”

“Having no roof over my head
and
a dead brother isn’t going to make me feel one whit better,” Laura said grimly, shoving him back down.

“We could murder him,” Lottie suggested cheerfully. A precocious reader of Gothic novels, she’d been dying to murder someone ever since she’d finished Mrs. Radcliffe’s
The Mysteries of Udolpho.

Laura snorted. “Given the unfeeling way he ignored his mother’s letters for all these years, it would probably take a silver bullet or a stake through the heart.”

“I don’t understand,” George said. “How can he toss us out on our arses”—catching Laura’s warning glare, he cleared his throat—“on our
ears
when Lady Eleanor promised us that Arden Manor would always be our home?”

Laura moved to the window and drew back one of the lace curtains, avoiding her brother’s shrewd gaze. “I never told you this before because I didn’t want either of you to worry, but Lady Eleanor’s promise possessed certain …
stipulations.”

George and Lottie exchanged an apprehensive glance before saying in unison, “Such as?”

Laura faced them, the truth tumbling out in a rush. “To inherit Arden Manor, I must marry before I reach my twenty-first birthday.”

Lottie gasped while George groaned and buried his face in his hands.

“You needn’t look so appalled,” Laura said with a sniff. “It’s rather insulting.”

“But you’ve already turned down a dozen proposals from every unmarried man in the village,” George pointed out. “You knew Lady Eleanor didn’t approve of you being so persnickety. That’s probably why she tried to force your hand.”

“Tooley Grantham’s given to gluttony,” Lottie said, ticking off Laura’s reservations about her potential suitors on her pudgy little fingers. “Wesley Trumble’s too hairy. Huey Kleef slurps when he eats. And Tom Dillmore always has little creases of dirt in the folds of his neck and behind his ears.”

Laura shuddered. “I suppose you want me to spend the rest of my life with some hulking bear of a man with no table manners and an abhorrence of bathing.”

“It might be better than spending the rest of your life waiting for a man who doesn’t exist,” George said darkly.

“But you know I’ve always dreamed of marrying a man who could carry on Papa’s work in the parish. Most of the men in the village can’t even read. Nor do they care to learn.”

Lottie twined one long golden curl around her finger. “It’s a pity I’m not the older sister. ’Twould be a great sacrifice, of course, but I’d be perfectly willing to marry for money instead of love. Then I could take care of you and George forever. And I wouldn’t have any trouble catching a rich husband. I’m going to be quite the Incomparable Beauty, you know. Everyone says so.”

“You’re already an Incomparable Bore,” George muttered. He turned his accusing gaze on Laura. “You might have mentioned needing a husband sooner, you know. While there was still time to find you one who meets your exacting standards.”

Laura plopped down on a creaky ottoman and rested her chin in her hand. “How was I to know that anyone but us would even want this run-down old place? I suppose I thought we could simply go on living here as long as we liked with no one ever the wiser.”

Unshed tears stung her eyes. The sunlight pouring through the east windows only served to underscore the genteel shabbiness of the drawing room. The petit-point roses embroidered on the settee cushions had long ago faded to a watery pink. An unsightly mildew stain marred the plaster frieze over the door, while a moldy stack of leather-bound books was being used to prop up one of the broken legs of the rosewood pianoforte. Arden Manor might be a humble country house that reflected only a shadow of its former glory, but to them it was home.

The only home any of them had known since they’d lost their parents over seven years ago.

Slowly becoming aware that her brother and sister’s dejected faces mirrored her own, Laura rose, forcing a smile. “There’s no need for such long faces. We’ve an entire month before this Lord Devil arrives.”

“But we’ve only a little over three weeks before your birthday,” George reminded her.

Laura nodded. “I realize the situation seems hopeless, but we must always remember what Papa taught us—through prayer and persistence, the good Lord will provide.”

“What should we tell Him to send us?” Lottie asked eagerly, bouncing to her feet.

Laura pondered her answer for a long moment, her pious demeanor at odds with the determined gleam in her eye. “A man.”

Sterling Harlow
was going home. When he had summoned Thane’s groom and ordered his mount to be readied that morning, he would have sworn he was simply going for a ride in Hyde Park. He truly believed he had no more pressing expectations for his day than to flash a lazy smile and tip his hat as he engaged in a series of mild flirtations with any lady who happened to catch his eye. That was to have been followed, as it invariably was, by a hearty lunch, an afternoon nap, and a night of gaming with Thane at the tables of White’s or Watier’s.

Which didn’t explain why he had driven his horse into a feverish canter and was already leaving the congested alleys of London behind for the open country lanes.

The hedgerows and stone fences flew past, framed by the ripe green of the rolling meadows beyond. The summer sky was a dazzling blue with clouds grazing like fluffy lambs across a field of azure. Fresh air flooded his
lungs, driving out the city soot, and making him feel drunk and more than a little dangerous.

He rode hard for nearly an hour before he recognized the emotion seething through him.

He was angry. Angry as hell.

Shocked by the discovery, he slowed the mare to a trot. He’d had twenty-one years to perfect the chill detachment suitable for a man of his station. And it had taken one sanctimonious country miss two minutes to destroy it.

He had tucked her letter away in the drawer of Diana’s desk three days ago, never to be seen or read again. But her voice still echoed through his head— prim and waspish in its attempt to prick a conscience deliberately dulled by years of indifference.

Although you chose to ignore her repeated pleas for reconciliation over the past few years, she died with your name on her lips. I trust the news will not cause you any undue distress.

Sterling snorted. How difficult was it for Miss Laura Fairleigh to appoint herself his mother’s champion? After all, his mother had given her a home.

She had cast him out of one.

It was only too easy to imagine the self-righteous little prig ensconced in the cozy drawing room of Arden Manor. She had probably sat at the rosewood secretaire to write the missive, tucking the pen between her pursed lips while she searched for a scathing turn of phrase with which to damn him. He could even see her smug siblings hovering at her elbow, begging her to read the letter aloud so they could make sport of him.

Perhaps after she’d sealed the letter with a tidy wafer of wax, they had all gathered around his mother’s
beloved pianoforte in the gentle glow of the lamplight to sing hymns and thank God for making them so morally superior to an unforgiving wretch like him.

The image brought him yet another astonishing realization.

He was jealous. Ridiculously, pathetically, ragingly jealous.

The emotion was utterly foreign to him. While he might covet a beautiful woman or a fine piece of horseflesh that belonged to another man, he had never suffered any particular hardship on those rare occasions when he was denied what he admired.

But he was jealous of the children who lived in the house that had once been his home. He hadn’t even allowed himself to think of Arden Manor for years, but suddenly he could almost feel the prick of the thorns on the tangle of roses climbing up the whitewashed bricks. He could smell the piquant tang of his mother’s herb garden and see a fat yellow cat drowsing on the back stoop in the noonday sun.

He felt a pang in his chest, uncomfortably close to his heart.

Sterling dug his heels into his mount’s flanks, urging her into a gallop. They traveled several leagues at that grueling pace before he slowed the horse to a sedate canter. It wouldn’t do to kill a loyal horse over a woman. His mouth tightened.

Especially a woman like Laura Fairleigh.

Sterling paused at a ramshackle inn to rest and water the horse before continuing on his way. The sun had peaked in the sky and began its lazy slide toward the horizon before the landmarks began to look vaguely familiar to him. He drew the horse to a halt at a lonely
crossroads. If his memory served him correctly, the village of Arden lay just over the next hill, the manor less than a league beyond.

He would rather not endure the curious stares of the villagers if he rode through their isolated village on a sleepy Thursday afternoon. He also didn’t want one of them rushing ahead to warn Miss Fairleigh of his approach. She wasn’t expecting him for another month and if his years of sparring with Napoleon and his minions had taught him one thing, it was to take full advantage of the element of surprise.

Sterling guided the mare off the road and down a sun-dappled path. To reach the manor without being spotted, he would simply have to cut through the oak wood that bordered the western corner of the property.

As he neared the ancient copse, a smile quirked his mouth. As a boy, he’d fancied that the wood was haunted, home to any number of hobgoblins and sprites seeking to do him mischief. His mother had done little to dispel the notion, obviously hoping his fear of the forest would keep him from falling into a fast-running stream or tumbling down some stony gorge. His smile faded. She’d ended up giving him to a monster worse than any he could have imagined.

The wood was even darker than he remembered.

A thick canopy of branches tangled overhead, forbidding the sunlight, but welcoming the shadows. Sterling’s eyes struggled to adjust to the primeval gloom. No matter how hard he tried to focus on the path ahead, he kept catching odd flickers of movement from the corner of his eye. But when he would turn his head, everything would go eerily still, like the air before a storm.

Without warning, a bird took wing from a twisted hawthorn. Sterling’s horse shied nervously, nearly unseating him.

“Steady, girl,” he murmured, leaning forward to stroke the animal’s neck.

He’d spent the last ten years staring down the mouths of a madman’s cannons. It was ridiculous that a deserted forest should so unsettle him. He should never have returned to this accursed place, he thought bitterly. He should have instructed Diana to give the manor to the sanctimonious Miss Fairleigh with his blessing.