Grace Gibson (9 page)

Morning came, and Mary had little trouble pretending that she was worse for wear. Her escapade, unknown to anyone, had begun right after Will left for Newcastle. She had strode out to the fields and tramped a number of woods before she had even reached the road to Hampton. The walk had been one of extreme length and undisguised anguish. She had wept her eyes out, imagined all her pin money lost on a single wager and pictured Will leaping to his death off some bridge rather than coming home to face his father. There would be no good outcome, she knew. Will Fanley had proven himself to be the greenest card player imaginable, and she sensed intuitively that bad luck, once entrained, did not leave without the satisfaction of total ruination.

These dire reflections were bad enough, but it was her guilty conscience that plagued her heart out. She never told Will she had her mother’s settlement. He was too expensive and prone to impulse, and by default had been led to believe that the family’s means were modest at best. Certainly he would resist this desperate measure. But if she could bring herself to be willing to waste her expectations, she knew she had the power to could convince him to take it to settle the business with Mr. Neville. And while this solution seemed rational, she dared not offer it for fear Will would do just what he was doing. He would throw it away in some scheme!

She had wandered in despair, with her head down and her arms clasped around her, marching to some unknown but horrible future. Many hours without food or drink or rest had elapsed, and many miles had gone by.

This was the state in which the Marquis of Denley had found her! She let out a little gasp of horror as the memory replaced the drowsiness of waking. What followed was a morbid dread of meeting him in the full light of day, and a growing resignation that he would have to be faced sooner than later.

Cora helped her into her new sprigged muslin gown gathered just beneath the bosom with a wide olive coloured ribbon. She asked that her hair be dressed high as well, rather than pulled into a knot at the back of her neck, as was her usual style. Once done, and with soft slippers on her wounded feet, Mary looked at herself and saw that an ivory dress and a head full of curls did little to hide the hollow worry in her eyes.

“You look very fine, miss,” Cora declared.

This was precisely the sentiment uttered by her father when she tentatively opened the door to the breakfast parlour.

“You look very fine this morning, Mary!”

She peered reluctantly into the room to see if perhaps the Marquis of Denley was still abed, only to see him rise immediately and come to help her to a seat. Her pale cheeks warmed a little, and she greeted him with an embarrassed murmur. “Good morning, my lord.”

He bowed, and retreated to the buffet where he filled a plate and nonchalantly brought it to where she sat. “You were saying, sir?” he said to her father while removing her napkin from the table and placing it on her lap.

Mr. Fanley did not notice these attentions at all. “I was asking after Bromley, and you were telling me of Somersetshire. Mary, Robert is telling me that our pigs at Greenly are much finer than they are in the south.”

“Indeed, sir?” she asked, weakly.

“They are infinitely
cleaner,
” Denley clarified with a telltale lift of his right brow.

This caused Mary to choke on a crumb. Lord Robert, turning an amused eye on her, calmly poured coffee into her cup, and watched as she sipped in mortified silence.

“Cleaner?” her Papa asked, much astonished. “I had never thought about it, but now that you mention it, I daresay our pigs are not quite so foul as I’ve seen elsewhere. And the estate sir? How did you find it?”

“Shockingly disregarded, sir, and I am heartily sorry to tell you about it. I know you can never be pleased when you hear any tale of shameful neglect.”

“Shameful you say?” Mr. Fanley looked perversely pleased. “I knew it! I knew Bromley would never apply himself. Did you find him much overindulged? I had always thought him a very selfish person. And the woman he married, well, I will not say much about her, except that
she
was likely to be a great chain around his neck.”

Robert placed his eyes briefly on Mary Fanley, as she aimlessly plied a tiny piece of bread with a little butter. She would not look up at him, and he rather wished that she would, so he could get a better measure of her thoughts.

Mr. Fanley took no notice of his miserable child, but he did think to say, “I say, Robert, did I happen to mention that my son is home from school?”

Mary’s eyes instantly flew open, and she looked momentarily stricken. Her knife hit her plate suddenly, and she held the morsel of bread she was labouring to eat in a paralyzed grip.

Lord Robert perceived her distress and the source of it, and he pursued it. “The younger Mr. Fanley is here?” he asked with interest. “Is he yet to come down to breakfast? I look forward to meeting him, sir.”

“Oh, he was here for much of the time you have been gone. But yesterday, he travelled down to Newcastle to see the horse market. I expect him back tomorrow, is that not right, Mary?”

Mary’s voice wavered slightly, but she managed to say that she did not rightly know when he would return, but that it would certainly be sooner than later.

“Quite right.” Mr. Fanley turned to Denley. “Now sir, I entreat you to come with me to the granary in Stall. We will see what sort of thievery they are set on for our yields this year. Mary, we’ll not be home before dark, but I will never miss a dinner on account of that bunch of hagglers.”

Mary, thinking she would be spared a reckoning with Lord Robert, managed a smile and a short reply. But the Marquis interjected with his regrets. “I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, but I am obliged to dedicate myself to writing a tedious letter for my uncle, and it will not wait.”

Mr. Fanley tried to interest his guest in shirking his responsibility, but Lord Robert could not be moved. Only a promise that they would sit at their leisure in the evening, when Robert would “willingly hear every detail of the grain market” that Mr. Fanley could think to share with him, comforted the gentleman enough that he could leave happily.

Immediately upon her father’s departure from the room, Mary stood to escape herself.

“Stay seated if you will, Miss Fanley,” Lord Robert directed. “I have a good deal I’d like to say to you this morning.”

She sank down into her chair, but managed a faint protest. “But your correspondence, sir. I am sure you will need the writing desk in the salon and a spell of undisturbed quiet.”

He got out of his chair and took a seat much closer to her, but angled such that he could scrutinize her face. “No doubt you would like me elsewhere,” he said coolly.

At this moment, Mrs. Darlington came bustling into the room. After greeting Lord Robert and Miss Fanley, she said, “Please excuse me, sir, but I must ask Miss Fanley about tonight’s dinner. And there is the matter of the young master’s room: I am of a mind to air his sheets, but if he is to come back early it will be very bad for him to arrive with his room all out of order.”

Before Mary could be saved, for she did look a trifle hopeful at the interruption, Lord Robert took the situation to hand. “Mrs. Darlington,” he began with authority. “I understand that before you were the housekeeper you were Miss Fanley’s nurse?”

“Why, yes, sir. I nursed both her and Mr. Will from infancy, my lord,” asserted the lady with pride.

“Good. Then I am sure you perceive that Miss Fanley is still not quite recovered from her adventure of yesterday?”

Mrs. Darlington peered at Mary, and agreed with Lord Robert that she did look very pale, very pale indeed.

“Hm.” Lord Robert joined Mrs. Darlington’s close examination of Mary Fanley. “It is as I thought.” He straightened and addressed the housekeeper in a conspiratorial tone. “I perceive that the servants at Greenly Manor are much used to imposing on Miss Fanley for guidance at every turn. May I count on you to instruct them all to leave her be today, and to
try
to manage things as best they can?”

“It shall precisely as you say, sir,” Mrs. Darlington replied with her fists on her hips. “I am always saying they will run her to the ground one of these days, over the most trifling things.”

“I rely on you, then. Tell the cook to make a nice dinner for Mr. and Miss Fanley and myself, but nothing extravagant, mind. We will make a quiet party; if she can manage a capon with her special potatoes, and perhaps a soup and a pudding, we will be delighted.”

“Yes sir.” Mrs. Darlington nodded in reverence. “And the young master’s sheets, sir?”

“Air them, by all means,” he commanded. “Mr. Fanley will not be here before tomorrow. Send the footman in to clear the trays, and have a good fire made in the library, for I can see we will have no peace in this room. Miss Fanley and I will retire for a quiet morning of reading and conversation. Now, my good woman, be off to shield the young lady from distractions, and I’ll thank you very heartily.”

Mary sat through this exchange with a stunned face. When they were again alone, she protested. “You are very good at ordering my servants, sir.”

“I beg your pardon, but someone must. I have only ever seen them ordering
you
from one problem to another. Have you never thought to make Mrs. Darlington earn her post?”

He helped her to stand and walked with her down the hall to the library, where he placed her peremptorily into a cushioned chair and brought her a footstool.

She owned she was getting quite used to being steered around by him and not wanting to give him the satisfaction of perceiving her surrendered state, resorted to argument. “I see what you are saying, but my mother died when I was only eleven. I was never taught how to order anyone about. They had always had the rule of me when I was a child, and I could not quite be firm, especially with my nurse.”

He looked at her reprovingly. “I did not bring you here to talk about Mrs. Darlington.”

She gathered her dignity. “No, I expect you intend to scold me for yesterday. Well, I’m resigned to hear it, if you must lecture me…” She stopped abruptly and glared at him. “…but you know nothing about it, sir.”

“Resigned?” he asked heatedly. “I’ve no intention of sermonizing, but I will tell you that you are very lucky not to have been robbed or molested…or worse!”

“Indeed, sir, I am very grateful to you. I am well aware of how foolish it was. I can only claim to have been wholly preoccupied, otherwise I would never have gotten into such a…predicament! That you assisted me makes me indebted to you; were you to also refrain from the indelicacy of prying into my state of mind I would consider it an undeserved but most gentlemanlike kindness.” She glanced at him hopefully from beneath lowered lashes.

By his stony expression she could see he did not yield to this attack. “You forget, I am no gentleman. We of the nobility are rude enough, as I believe you put it, to circumvent common manners at every turn.”

“That was not precisely what I said.”

“No, it was perhaps couched a little more diplomatically,” he conceded. “But it was precisely what you meant. I overlook it because it is true, and also because it now serves me. I have no intention of sparing you an explanation.”

She bit her lip and stared into the fire, desperately trying to come up with the required account of why she was found tromping nearly ten miles away from home in a ditch at the side of the Westway road. At last she crumpled into her chair and confessed. “It is that my heart is broken,” she said wearily.

This caused his lordship to stand abruptly. “Your heart?” he demanded. He shook his head in bewilderment. “I had never suspected…You are not romantic in the least!”

She smiled sadly. “I’m not, am I? I am afraid I even botched your rescue to a degree.”

“You made it quite impossible for me to be chivalrous,” he complained. “But tell me, who is your swain and what has he done to you? Is it that dastard, Jack Himmel? Your father has a very dim view of him!”

She stared up at him as he prowled to and fro in front of the fireplace. “Oh, no sir! You misunderstand me. It is only that my brother Will is in the deepest kind of trouble and I am crushed with worry. I am not in love with Jack Himmel, or with anybody for that matter.”

A look flashed over his face, and she thought perhaps he was momentarily disgusted with her.

“I beg your pardon, sir.” She gathered her dignity. “I had no intention of burdening you with my trouble, and I am heartily sorry if I have been unseemly honest.”

“That is nonsense of the sort I’m used to in Town, Mary,” he said, harshly. “You will now do me the honour of telling me the entire tale.”

She began, haltingly; within five minutes she had enlightened him of the few facts in her possession. He listened gravely up to the point of the introduction of Oscar Neville; then, after a brief start, he stood and glowered down at her with a horrific scowl.

“Oscar Neville was a guest in this house?”

“Yes.” She had to tilt her head back very far in order to look up at him. “I beg your pardon, but do you mind sitting? I feel as if I am about to be overpowered…”

He merely stepped back and resumed pacing.

“Did he know I had been here?”

“Indeed, he became aware of it very soon. My father is uncommonly fond of you, and mentioned you a myriad of times over dinner.”

“And…” he stopped in mid-step and narrowed his eyes to look at her. “And…did he say anything? Did he say anything about
me,
that is? Did he — did he speak privately with Mr. Fanley?”

“Oh, he never did speak to my father. Papa did not warm to him really,” she hedged.

“But he did speak to you,” he said shrewdly.

“Yes, he told me you were a great scoundrel and an infamous rake and that you had squandered your family’s fortune, and — ” She hesitated. “ — he said you were hiding here in the country because you had all but killed a man…”

“And…?”

“And he told me you were a seducer,” she blurted out impulsively. “Which I could not believe, because — you will forgive me — but a seducer must be charming, I think!”