Corey McFadden (2 page)

In answer all the girl could do was hang her head. Joe sobbed against her, both of the children oblivious to the dirt from his face smudging her smock. Not that it had been any too clean to begin with.

Edward stared at the grubby, huddled pair. Perhaps it was time to cease their torment. “I suppose I could come to an agreement with you, Miss Romney, your word as a lady?” he asked softly. Joe raised his head and a look of hope crept across his frightened face.

Maude raised her gaze with some apparent difficulty and said in a small voice. “I would keep my word, sir, but Aunt says I shall never be a lady.”

Edward’s lips twitched but he worked at maintaining his stern expression. “Well, miss, I’ve no doubt that you aunt is correct in her assessment as to your prospects. Nevertheless, I will take your word if you will give it. Will you take these pistols and put them away where you found them, now, and I mean immediately, this morning, and never touch them again, ever?” he asked.

“Never? Ever? For the whole rest of my life?” she cried aghast. “But my father said he would teach me to shoot when I grew up!” It seemed she was not above bargaining, even with the rope around her grimy neck. Exasperated, Edward tried again.

“I really do not care how you behave when you grow up,” he stated. “I only know that my horse and I shall maintain a great distance from you at all times in the future. But for now, until you are at least...let us say, eighteen years old...you will touch no pistols. Is that agreed? Otherwise, I warn you, I shall march directly to your aunt with both of you by the scruffs of your amazingly filthy little necks.”

“Eighteen?” she asked with something of a squeak.

“Miss Maude, please!” Joe whispered. “Eighteen isn’t so very long from now.”

The girl drew her small self up with great assumed dignity. “I will give you my word, sir, but only to save Joe from a hanging. We’ll take the pistols back now, and I won’t touch them again until I am...” she hesitated a few seconds as if weighing her bargaining position. “Oh, very well, then, eighteen!” she cried, stomping her foot and abandoning all pretense at dignity. “But I must say, sir, that’s ten years from now! I’ll be too old to do anything at all by then!”

Edward, who had just turned eighteen and felt himself capable of a great many activities yet, maintained his grave façade. “Nevertheless, Miss Romney, those are my terms, and I might add, they are most generous, considering you almost killed me.” Her point, actually, was well-taken. At eighteen, she would be just as all the others of her sex, interested only in fashion and scandal, and who was marrying whom, and how much jewelry each had; jabbering on all day long about nonsense, practicing interminable, bad pieces on the pianoforte, and painting dreadful watercolors of seascapes, having never seen the sea. What a sorry lot ladies were, Edward reflected, not for the first time. He would certainly not marry until he was very old, and only then if his younger brother had not produced an heir to the earldom. In a way it was a shame that this chit, who at least had some gumption about her, would inevitably be corrupted into a mindless ninny. But that was the way of things, and, after all, no one, least of all Edward himself, would tolerate a wife who ran around shooting pistols and arguing every point to death.

The girl gave a great sigh and sagged a bit, as if she had paid a very high price indeed. Edward stepped forward and handed her the pistols, one by one, making sure she handled them with appropriate care. Joe was looking at Edward with nothing short of worship in his teary eyes, as he wiped a dirty hand across a dirty nose. Edward gave the boy a wink on the sly and was rewarded with a ghost of a startled smile.

“I’ll be off, then, to see if my horse is lamed forever,” he said, although he knew perfectly well that the horse would have calmed itself and wandered back to its stall by now. “Mind you keep your word, Miss Romney,” he added, laying it on a bit.

“Of course I will, sir,” she stated regally, back on her little girl’s dignity. Edward gave her a peremptory nod and turned to make his way up the hill.

“Well, I’m glad that’s over,” he heard the girl announce as he topped the hill and started down the other side. He stopped, amused, wondering what the mouthy brat would have to say about him.

“He certainly was a pompous prig, wasn’t he, Joe?” she demanded.

“Oh no, Miss Maude,” the boy said. “I think he was very fair. We’d best go right away and do as he says.”

“Oh bother him anyway!” little Miss Romney cried. “Eighteen might as well be forever!”

Pompous prig, indeed! Edward laughed to himself, listening to the children’s receding footsteps. Outrageous chit! She would lead some poor sod by the nose through a hen-pecked marriage. He blessed again his wise decision not to marry before his dotage. Well, the poor sod certainly would not be he!

Chapter One

October, 1790

Bedfordshire, England

The evening was positively intolerable. It was bad enough being got up for hours on end in tight stays and in one of her stepcousin Amelia’s tatty old gowns. The awful thing was much too young for Maude and made her look even more like a child than usual. Not to mention being forced to sit and listen to Amelia play the pianoforte—badly—and warble insipid songs. But to watch that insufferable prig, Edward Almsworth, the Earl of Radford, cast searing glances at Amelia and linger by her side all evening, was truly nauseating!

It had not helped, of course, that the young earl had treated Maude so insultingly. Imagine, yanking her ear and asking had she blown any of the locals off their horses recently! She was certainly no longer a child and he need not have so smugly reminded her of that ridiculous incident.

Maude now caught sight of the earl laughing uproariously at some
bon mot
uttered by Amelia. He had his hands all over her—at least he had one hand on her shoulder. What on earth could Aunt Claire be thinking to allow such a display? Maude turned away in disgust, and came face to face with her own reflection in the tall pier glass set between two windows in the drawing room. She gave a deflated sigh. The slight figure staring back at her was uninspiring, to say the least. Her nose tilted up too much and there was a smattering of freckles across her face that no beautiful young woman would have been so foolish as to acquire. And her red hair...well, as Amelia had taken pains to inform her, absolutely no one in the
ton
thought red hair was attractive. A garish, unfashionable color, was how her stepcousin had put it. Then there was the matter of her figure, or what there was of it, which wasn’t much. Amelia’s old hand-me-down dress had been cut down to fit her, since Amelia, two years ago at sixteen, had been taller and more curvaceous than Maude was now at eighteen. Well, nearly eighteen. The gown itself, a faded green satin, hung limp and flat on Maude in all the places where Amelia had filled it out so fetchingly. No wonder she could inspire nothing more than the yank of an ear from a handsome man!

She turned away from the sorry sight with another sigh. Her mother had been so beautiful. But then everything had been beautiful when her parents had been alive.

“A delightful concert, eh, little miss?” said a voice at her side. “I’m sure you’re thrilled at being allowed to stay up with the adults tonight?”

Maude bit back a sigh of exasperation. This gown would go in the trash bin tonight, aunt or no aunt. She turned and saw Mr. Demerest, an elderly neighbor, who leaned on a cane and looked as though he might topple over.

“Why. no, sir,” Maude said, unwilling to yield the point, even to make polite conversation. “I am nearly eighteen now, and I always stay up late. And, really, you know, I’ve had to listen to Amelia practice every night.”

Mr. Demerest drew back, slightly affronted that the child had not simply agreed affably with his obviously innocuous remark. Well, perhaps Claire, atrocious woman that she was, had a point about this girl. Only seventeen and already the makings of a shrew. He nodded distantly and made for the punch bowl which he knew would be a more hospitable companion.

Maude watched him go with relief. How she wished this interminable evening would end. She glanced about the room, noting with some surprise that Aunt Claire had managed a fair turnout. Many were family friends of long standing whom Maude had not seen since her parents’ death, and who had greeted Maude with warmth. Claire had not endeared herself in the neighborhood since coming to Romney Manor with her husband, Maude’s Uncle James Romney. And his daily overindulgence in his brandy had limited their sphere of acquaintances to those who indulged in drinking as much as he did and who could tolerate the acid tongue of his waspish, if beautiful, wife.

“Maude, my dear child, is that really you?” a pleasant voice behind her asked.

Turning, Maude was relieved to see an old friend of her mother’s beaming at her fondly.

“Oh, my love, what a beautiful girl you are growing into, just as beautiful as your dear mother was. She would be so proud of you, Maude,” Mary Farrington said warmly, drawing the girl into her arms for a fierce hug.

Maude felt the familiar sorrow wash over her and fought back the tears which always threatened at the thought of her wonderful parents. She had been six years old when her joyful world had exploded into tragedy. A simple trip to the continent, Maude’s first and much anticipated, had ended in terror and stark bereavement. While crossing, in mid-channel, a fierce storm had ripped the sails from their lines and had driven the ship onto the rocks near the coast of France, breaking it into pieces. Maude remembered the screams and the frantic pitching, and that her life had been saved by her father. They had watched as her mother, trapped as her voluminous skirts filled mercilessly with water, had been dragged down into the vicious sea. Her father had held Maude above the furious waves, and grabbing a piece of the ship’s timber as it tore past, had pushed her onto it. Screaming at the child to hold fast, he had lunged away from her toward a flash of silk of her mother’s dress. Maude had clutched the splintered board with her little hands as shriek after shriek tore from her throat. Unknowingly, she had ridden the board as it floated toward the beach, stranding her finally, insensible, with the flotsam of the wreckage. She had not seen the waves close over all the love she had ever known.

“Let me get a good look at you, child,” Mrs. Farrington said, pulling back and holding Maude at arm’s length. The woman’s pretty eyes narrowed as she viewed Maude’s dress with distaste. “I see your stepcousin is turned out in great finery this evening, Maude, but this dress is clearly an old make-over. Where is your new dress?”

“Well, Amelia is being presented this Season, Mrs. Farrington,” Maude said, her face reddening under her friend’s scrutiny. “And I don’t care much about clothes. Really, I don’t. Aunt Claire says we can always get two wearings for the price of one since I am smaller than Amelia...” Her words dwindled away under Mrs. Farrington’s barely concealed look of disgust.

“And what about your Season, child? I see a great deal of money and attention being lavished on this Amelia, but you are the heir to Romney Manor and you must be eighteen now, aren’t you?”

“Well, not quite,” Maude said, a little chagrined. “You see, Amelia is already eighteen, and I am not quite old enough. Aunt Claire wanted to push Amelia along. And, of course, it’s too expensive for both of us to have a Season in the same year.” Maude’s eyes strayed inadvertently toward Amelia who was still deep in a
tête-à-tête
with the earl. Would the man never leave her side? “Aunt Claire says she wants Amelia married as soon as possible. She’s so beautiful, you know, and she’ll have such prospects...” Maude broke off as she saw Mrs. Farrington eye her stepcousin. The woman’s lips thinned in obvious disapproval.

“A husband would be a good idea, I believe, and the sooner the better for that one.” Mrs. Farrington gave a sniff and turned her attention back to Maude. “Are you well, my dear, and happy?” she asked, smiling.

“Of course I’m well, Mrs. Farrington,” Maude said lightly, glad to get off the subject of her stepcousin. “And as for happy, I suppose so, I mean, considering...” Maude paused, aware again of that nameless longing that filled her. Uncle James was such a dear and he loved her, brandy and all, but still, there was that ache and the persistent feeling that her own home, Romney Manor, had been filled these last eleven years with a malevolence and dissension that would have shocked her loving parents.

Mrs. Farrington drew her close again, her eyes warm. “You must come and see me, my dear. I had not realized you were so grown up. I still think of you as a child, I suppose, and you’re not at all, are you? Although,” she added mischievously, “you do still have a baby face, don’t you?” She noted Maude’s wince and quickly amended her remark. “Mind you, Maude, I much prefer your natural beauty to the artful splendor displayed by your stepcousin.” Her eyes wandered to Amelia again as the girl’s shrill laughter was heard above the din in the room. “I wonder why Claire doesn’t see...” she broke off, clearly aware that she had said a bit too much.

“...Well, I must leave, my dear. There’s Giles gesturing furiously at me from across the room. He has no patience with these affairs, wants to be back home with his dogs and his horses,” she said fondly.

Maude could well remember that Giles Farrington and her father had spent many an hour pounding through the countryside, dogs baying beside them, while the ladies had enjoyed their cards at home.

With a quick kiss and a smile, Mrs. Farrington was gone, leaving Maude feeling alone again. She looked about for her Uncle James but could not find him in the crowd. There was always the chance Joe had had to shepherd him upstairs already. That happened more and more frequently now.

Glancing about the room, filled now with merry, fashionable guests, Maude noted with dismay the faded draperies that hung dispiritedly in the long windows. The manor had been in the Romney family for generations. It was a beautiful old home; one could see it still in the classic lines and the beautifully laid out, once carefully tended gardens, but now the glory was gone, the loving touches and attention to detail that had made it a showplace under her mother’s care.