Elisabeth Fairchild (28 page)

Kill the cat or no, in the last leg of her journey, Fanella threw open the basket, filled her lap with letters, and set out to discover what it was, that the Duke of Heste had to say for himself. She was shaken and speechless by the time she had finished. Lord Beauford wrote with beautiful and touching eloquence. More than once she was forced to ply her handkerchief, for she could not hold herself aloof from the emotion he poured so freely onto each page. The letters, read one after the other, could not fail to pierce the swollen boil of her anger. The love in them reached out to her in a wealth of deep feeling and profound thought. Yet another facet of this truly perplexing man was revealed to her.

“I wanted you to see me for myself, and foolishly stripped off a part of that self in an effort to achieve that end,” he explained. She could almost hear his voice.

“I wanted to believe that someone might care for who and what I am without title, money and connections. I did not realize that my dishonesty might alienate the very person I sought. I am most contrite for the deceits you have suffered on my account,” he claimed in another.

“A young woman should not be lied to by the very man she means to entrust herself to, for the rest of her life.” The lines welled up off the page, like a healing balm. They were the words she had been wishing to hear above all others, and had avoided for fear they would not be said.

“Can you not accept my apology?” he askhen four letters were sent and still no reply.

“Will you not let me hear forgiveness from your own sweet lips? You do but deceive yourself if you are convinced you can no longer care for me,” he scribbled after fourteen had been sent and still no response.

“Can you not care for a duke as much as for a coachman?” His tone was reasonable, even in the last of the letters. “You have always seen what lay within my heart, and head, within my very soul, duke or dustman, coachman or king. I have read the knowledge in your eyes, and in your acts of kindness. Do you think I am changed so much, by the power of a name? Do you mistrust your feelings so much as to end all chances of our happiness? Can you no longer find any place for me in your heart? I love you, my dear. I always will. I should like above all else for you to be my wife. I have begun to make changes in my household with just such a future in mind. Please give me some indication as to your feelings in this matter.”

“The last thing in the world that I intended was to hurt you, to injure your sensibilities in any form or fashion. My undying love I pledge, along with a profound desire for reconciliation.”

She could not fail to be swayed. Nell sat quite still when she had finished reading. The last letter expressed regret that she had not seen fit to respond to his correspondence. Lord Beauford politely informed her that it was no longer his intention to plague her with communication he had been informed she refused to read. He would, in addition, refrain from pestering her with his presence, should she be so inclined as to accept his sister Beatrix’s invitation for a Season in London. He wished her all the best, and signed himself off, as he had in each of the letters, as 
Duke or Dustman, Coachman or King--Beau.

Nell carefully folded the letters away again, and bound them up with their blue ribbon, as tears misted her eyes. She began to think herself very foolish in having so cut herself off from Lord Beauford, as to make it very difficult ever to face him again, much less admit to him that she found it much more difficult to fall out of love with him, than she had found falling in.

Chapter Twenty-One

On arriving at her destination, Nell found it a great relief to have her thoughts redirected from their obsession with a certain bundle of letters by the kindly reception from her hostess, Lady Elliot. Anne Elliot met her with an embrace such as one might expect of a relative, and announced that her bags had arrived before her, and had been unpacked in the guest room she was to occupy.

“You must relax a moment, my dear, and take a cup of tea with me, before setting off to witness Boots’s transformation.”

Nell was in no way inclined to refuse such an offer given that she was exhausted, by the trip, and by the gamut of emotions she suffered in plowing through the correspondence of a gentleman whose connection to her she had so long let lie fallow. She would cherish those letters for the rest of her life, no matter that she could not bring herself to respond to them.

“You will not recognize him, my dear, when next you set eyes on him,” Lady Elliot said, as they settled into two comfortable chairs with a steaming pot on a table between them. For a wildly disordered moment, Nell, whose mind kept wandering back to the man she had once thought to be a coachman, thought this lady referred to the Duke. Her mind was soon disabused of this notion. “Your Bootsanother animal entirely from the poor beast my brother Brampton first packed off to me,” Anne clarified.

Nell focused her attention on the purpose of her visit. “I am so pleased you have seen fit to care for the old dear.”

Lady Elliot filled her cup. “My brother, Brampton, was quite struck by what happened on the beach in Brighton when you wanted to rescue the poor horse from the bathing boxman.”

Nell blushed. “I’m afraid I made quite a spectacle of myself.”

Anne Elliot’s slow, engaging smile reminded Nell for the briefest of moments, of Beau Ferd, or Lord Beauford, as she must remember now to think of him.

“A moving spectacle to hear Bram tell it. Moving enough to prompt his buying of a horse he had neither need nor space for. I was never more surprised than when the poor, emaciated beast was delivered to my door, and yet, I do not know why I should be amazed. My brother was always the sort of boy who brought home wounded creatures. I can remember a time when there was a hare, at least two birds, and a stoat kept in his room. I should not be too surprised that he was touched by your distress.”

Nell thought she would much rather meet such a man, than continue to dwell on the failings of Lord Beauford. “I should like to thank your brother personally.”

Anne ’s eyes sparkled. “My brother is most anxious to see you again, Nell. May I call you Nell?” She called her four-year-old daughter out from under the tea table, where she had been quietly playing with a set of lettered blocks. The solemn, fair-haired child, regarded Nell with wary approbation when her mother asked her of she would be so good as to lead Nell down to the stables, that she might meet Uncle Bram, who had promised to show her where Boots was kept.

“He would have joined us for tea. . .” Anne assured Nell, “but Brampton will not not renig on a promise, no matter how trifling, and he had promised to teach my son, Andrew, how to handle a whip before he returns to London.”

Nell’s hand was taken up in little Betsy’s small, sweaty clasp, as the child led her through a garden and out into the stableyard, where the cracking of a whip was to be heard, along with the rumble of male voices. Nell regarded the child with the interest of a woman who might have bourne sons and daughters to the Duke of Heste. She wondered if children were meant to be a part of her future. She had resigned herself to the fact that the Duke certainly was not.

The whip sounds ceased. The rumble of male voices quieted. There was no more sound than that of a single set of footsteps approaching them, and the whistled trill of a tune, that Nell could not fail to recognize as one that Lord Beauford had used to teach a postboy the rhythm of Beethoven. She stopped in her tracks, despite persistent tugging from Betsy.

There was no mistaking that whistle, no mistaking the black and white ball of fur bounding out of the paddock to the left of the stables. It was Bandit, whom she had never thought to set eyes on again. She bent to stroke the eager animal, mouth gone completely dry, and could not bring herself to look up, or rise, until a highly polished pair of riding boots came to a stop beside Bandit’s hastily thumping tail.

Lord Beauford had ceased his whistling, and leaned upon the crooked, silver-laced head of a parasol, whose point bit into the dirt, near Bandit’s hind leg.

Her eyes rose to meet the pale blue gaze she had once trusted so implicitly, passing over the trim, natty garb of a gentleman who had at his disposal the finest tailors money could buy. She paused for a moment in her regard, to focus on the fresh posy of pinks that bloomed ihis buttonhole. She wondered if this duplicitous fellow still kept the ones she had given him pressed between the pages of Voltaire.

Beneath the brim of a fine, gray beaver his pale gaze swallowed her up with a hungry, almost fearful pleasure, from the top of her not so fashionably bonneted head to the second-hand hem of her skirt.

“I a-a-am e-e-ever so pleased to see you, Miss Quinby!” His delight spilled into the pronunciation of her name.

Nell gave no such display of joy. She was too stunned. The last person she had expected to see here was the Duke of Heste, the sentiment of whose letters still burned fresh in her memory. She had only begun to release her anger toward this man for past deceits. Surely he did not expect civility from her when he insulted her with fresh pretense.

“My lord Beauford,” she dipped a stiff curtsy. “We play at charades, again, it would seem. Shall I call you Uncle Brampton this time?”

A winsome smile touched his lips. “You may call me anything you like, Miss Quinby.”

Her mouth set itself in a hard line as she tried to stop the trembling of her chin. “Even liar?” she challenged.

He flinched, and glancing at the solemn little girl who stood watching their exchange, he said softly to her, “Run ahead with A-Andy, Bet. He has just gone down to the pasture with his whip. We shall follow in a m-moment.”

The fair head bobbed, and after a long dubious look at Nell, the girl trotted away. Nell felt shamed to have shown her temper before the child. She met Beau’s pale blue regard, feeling pained, and foolish.

“You may call me liar if it pleases you,” he said evenly.

“It does not please me.” She bit down on her lip, reminded of all the beautiful sentiments this man had expressed to her in his letters. How did one cross a bridge of lies and deceit to reach a place where such words might be believed? How did one assuage the pain? “I am wounded that you have resorted to false pretenses yet again, to lure me here.”

He rubbed at his forehead, and flicked a lock of hair from out of his eyes. “Sorry about that. I had, a-a-as you must r-r-realize, exhausted all conventional a-a-avenues of communication, to no a-a-avail.”

Nell frowned. His stammer was far more pronounced than usual. She felt somewhat responsible for his agitation. “I should be leaving,” she said, backing away from him. Anger and sorrow tore at her voice.

Sadness pulled at the corners of his mouth. “You came to see Boots. Do not go without having put your mind at r-rest a-a-as to his condition.”

“That too, was not a lie?”

He sighed. “See for yourself.” He waved the silver-topped parasol in the direction his niece had gone.

Nell could not help but be reminded of a time in their past that involved yet another parasol. Taking a deep breath, she set off energetically in the direction he indicated.

“The position mentioned in your sister’s letter, that of a companion, was that too a lie?” she asked, expecting the worst.

He hesitated.

“Is it?” she insisted.

“There is a p-p-position. . .” he said haltingly, voice following her. “I had hoped that you might be willing to fill it.”

She whirled on him angrily. “I did not come seeking your charity.”

He sighed. “Well, if you think it a charitable deed to serve as my life’s companion, I could wish for yours.”

She blinkn dismay.

He reached out to lend support to her elbow. “I did not lightly ask for your hand in marriage, Miss Quinby,” he said earnestly.

“Oh!” she snapped wretchedly, wrenching her elbow from his grasp so that she might precede him down the pathway at a headlong clip.

Troubled and confused, she rushed through the woods, to a blindingly sunny green meadow where she shielded her eyes against the glare to observe three children as they ran and played with a golden horse. Boots! A fatter, glossier Boots. His head came up when she called his name, so that he might nicker his recognition. The children were as happy to see their Uncle as the horse was to see Nell.

“Uncle Brampton, Uncle Brampton,” they cried gleefully, each of them seeking his attention in a different manner. Two young lads were playing leapfrog. “Look here,” called one, bounding to the top of the stone wall that enclosed the pasture.

The eldest caught up his whip, taking care to flick it in a direction away from the horse, and his siblings. “I think I’m getting the hang of it,” he crowed.

The little girl tucked flowers into the horse’s mane whenever Boots lowered his head to crop grass. “Doesn’t Boots look pretty, Uncle Beauford?”  Her big blue eyes regarded Nell with some concern. “She has not come to take him away, has she?”

Beau looked at Nell.

Nell shook her head, so troubled by what had just transpired in the woods that she empathized most acutely with the child’s unwarranted fear. “No,” she assured the girl. “I have only come to see how my old friend is doing. I am very pleased he is your horse now. By the looks of him, he is very happy here. It was kind of your uncle to send him to you.”