Return of the Viscount (13 page)

From the moment she'd entered the balcony up above, he'd known she was there, feeling her presence and her gaze so vividly, he'd momentarily lost track of what he was doing. He'd punched Appertan harder than he'd meant to, bloodying his nose. And while he forced Appertan to stand still while he made sure it wasn't broken, blood had soaked both of them.

Michael rang for a bath. He'd started out living in this castle trying to be his own man, without needing a valet. But he'd definitely succumbed to the luxury of having a bath brought to him instead of submerging himself in a cold river.

He had a new purpose for every servant he encountered—finding out something about his wife, and if there might be someone within the household who wished her harm. So when the footmen carried in the bathing tub, he began what might be a long attempt to win their favor.

When the two of them returned with the first pails of water, he commented that they must be brothers, and they sheepishly nodded agreement, admitting that they were named Tom and Will. Practically the only way he could tell them apart was a faint scar on Tom's cheek.

“Weren't the both of you outside the green drawing room?” he asked, when they'd brought in the last buckets to fill his tub.

They glanced at each other. “Yes, milord,” they said in unison.

“I hope you do not think I deliberately tried to harm your master.”

“No, milord,” said Tom.

And Will added, “ 'Tis none of our business, milord.”

“You live in this household; it would seem all its residents are your business. But then again, I imagine it is Lady Blackthorne who is more the mistress of the house than her brother is the master.”

They said nothing, just exchanged uneasy glances.

“It must have been quite frightening for the staff when she was nearly injured by that falling bust.”

“Susan didn't mean to—” Tom began.

Michael held up both hands. “I know she didn't. And it was all my fault for distracting her; I told Lady Cecilia that.”

“And we're grateful, milord,” Will said, giving his brother a warning look. “We're her only family, our sister she is, and if she was to be dismissed . . .”

He let his words die off, and Michael well understood the plight of servants. “Does Lady Blackthorne let servants go?”

“Oh, no, milord, never,” Tom said, ignoring his brother's frown. “She's fair to everyone, and has even added to the staff.”

“How long have you both been here?”

“Five years, since we were pages,” Will quickly said, perhaps attempting to control his brother's side of the conversation. “We've lived in Enfield our whole lives.”

Then they knew Cecilia's family well, perhaps even down through generations. Hopefully, that made them trustworthy. “So who are the new servants? I will make certain to appreciate their work.”

Will's smile was faintly suspicious but grateful. “Our sister, Susan, o' course, and the new page, Francis, and another watchman for the grounds.”

“Name's Parsons,” Tom supplied.

“I hope the new servants enjoy working here.”

“Oh, they do, sir,” Tom gushed.

Will had begun to roll his eyes at his brother's behavior. Was that because of Tom's kowtowing to Michael, or because his assurances about the servants weren't true?

“I'm glad to hear it,” Michael said, knowing he couldn't push for any more answers without causing too much suspicion.

“Shall I come take your garments to the laundry, milord?” Tom asked, then ducked his head. “Since ye've not got a valet.”

“Thank you. I would appreciate it.”

They left him alone to his now-tepid bath, where he sank in and gave thought to how he could use Tom and Will. He couldn't keep an eye on Cecilia every moment, but if he knew she had trustworthy servants about her, that would help.

After his bath, he deliberately lingered near Cecilia's study as she worked, so she'd get used to seeing him now and again throughout the house. He wanted her to know she had someone to call upon for help should she need it.

Seeing her before dinner was more arousing than he'd imagined it could be after one virginal kiss. Her face reddened when she first saw him across the drawing room, and for once he was glad Appertan was more interested in the bottom of his brandy glass than anything else. That allowed Michael to stare at her as he wanted, to remember the kiss and let her realize what he was thinking, all without saying a word.

When she walked into the dining room without waiting for his escort, Michael watched the way her swaying hips made her skirt do a lively dance. She was all grace and elegance, her blond hair immaculate, not a lock cascading down her perfect neck. He assisted her into the chair.

Appertan gave a snort. “I'm sure Cecilia never seated herself before you arrived.”

Michael eyed his afternoon opponent, who sported a faint bluish purple bruise beneath one eye. “A lady always welcomes assistance.”

“Perhaps a lady doesn't wish to feel like a fragile flower,” Cecilia said dryly.

“No?” Michael was still behind her, hands on her chair, trying not to openly enjoy the view down the front of her cleavage.

With an exaggerated sigh, Appertan looked away.

“You do not feel appreciated when a man assists you?” Michael asked her.

Appertan grumbled almost inaudibly, “Cecilia, just put all of us out of our misery and tell him to go away.”

“Pardon me? I didn't quite hear you,” Michael said.

The earl didn't repeat his comment, and Michael walked to his own chair.

As the first entrée of curried fowl and boiled rice was served, Cecilia looked pointedly at her brother. “When your guardian arrives, do you have any recent concerns we should discuss?”

Appertan shrugged. “No. You'll show him your journals and account books, he'll spend a day closeted with them, then he'll pretend he wants to have a meaningful conversation with me. At last he'll be on his way, feeling like he's done his duty.”

“What an interesting arrangement,” Michael said. “He makes certain all is well but doesn't care how that's accomplished, which suits you both. Luck has gone in your favor.”

Appertan frowned. “How's that?”

“Because your sister assists you in overseeing the household.” “Assists” was too minor a term to encompass Appertan's utter disregard of his duties, but Michael couldn't risk alienating him just then. And as for Cecilia, she'd put aside her own future for the brother she loved. How would she feel when he no longer needed her? “And Lady Blackthorne was lucky as well because she is permitted to do as she pleases, especially since marriage to me removed the impediment of her own guardian. I imagine there are many guardians who would have insisted on doing much of the work themselves.”

“His lordship is a busy man,” Cecilia said, after swallowing a taste of rice. “He has recently proposed several bills in the House of Lords, and he's in the midst of restoring his own estates.”

Restoring? Michael focused on her. “It sounds as if his estates had deteriorated.”

“I believe he spoke of the work as basic maintenance that occasionally needs to be done when one owns property,” she explained.

Appertan leaned toward Michael. “But then you wouldn't know much about that.”

Michael arched a brow. “And why wouldn't I, as I own a landed country house?”

“Just like I have my guardian and Cecilia to ‘assist' me,” Appertan said, smirking, “you have your brother. Seems neither of us cares for the work of owning land. At least I didn't run away.”

“So you believe a man who feels a calling to serve his country is simply running away?”

“I'm certain he didn't mean that,” Cecilia said, her lovely brow furrowed as she sent a pointed glance at her brother. “Can we not have one peaceful evening? After dinner, we can relax together as our family used to, instead of you rushing off, Oliver. I'll play the pianoforte, and you can sing.”

Michael tried to imagine that domestic scene and failed. Appertan met his gaze, and in that moment, they both sobered, as if they shared a realization that Cecilia perhaps should not be left alone. Or was Appertan simply acting?

“I'll stay for a while,” Appertan said at last. “But remember, you haven't named him as family yet.”

A faint blush swept her cheeks, and she was so lovely that Michael didn't take any offense. Not that he would have anyway; he'd known from the beginning that she would not be easily won over. She was a challenge, and the triumph of winning such a strong woman would be sweet.

He thought of the evening ahead—and the night, which he could no longer risk letting her spend alone.

Chapter 12

C
ecilia followed the men to the main drawing room, where the pianoforte took up one corner, and several chairs and sofas were grouped nearby as if awaiting a performance. She wished Penelope had come to dinner that night, for she suddenly felt self-conscious and ridiculous. Oliver didn't want to be there—perhaps he now only had one use for Cecilia, and that was as his business steward. And Lord Blackthorne? He said he would remain her husband, and he was doing everything possible to make her agree. She should feel . . . crowded, smothered, irritated, but, instead, she could barely keep her gaze off him, wished desperately that she could kiss him again.

Marriage to him would be the end of her perfect life, where she controlled her own destiny and answered to no one.

Except Lord Doddridge, she thought, feeling bemused. But he'd never bothered her, and certainly Oliver didn't, at least as far as her management of the vast Appertan estates. But now there was Lord Blackthorne, and to honor her father, he was trying to remake Oliver into a dependable man. A very good goal, and she definitely—someday—wished that Oliver would be able to do the work she did.

Unless she was more selfish than she'd imagined, wanting the reins of the earldom without the title, and
that
was why she resisted Lord Blackthorne's efforts with Oliver.

She watched Oliver pour himself a brandy, then begrudgingly offer one to Lord Blackthorne, who declined.

“I need all my faculties to decipher this book,” he said, picking up Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice.

She turned away, struggling to hide a smile. Who would have guessed such a sober man hid a sense of humor? She didn't want to know these things about him. She went to the pianoforte. “I know I volunteered to play, my lord, but do not assume I am supremely talented. Every young lady learns to play. Whereas my brother—”

“Isn't going to sing,” Oliver interrupted. “But I'll turn the pages for you.”

She hid her disappointment, hoping he'd change his mind. At the keyboard, she tried to clear her head, to recapture what it had once been like to be a family, to spend an evening together. In her mind, she returned to their bungalow in Bombay, imagining her brother Gabriel still alive, teasing Oliver, making their mother smile and distracting her from the anxious looks she usually bestowed on their father.

“What are you thinking?” Lord Blackthorne asked, from his place on a nearby sofa.

She gave him a wry smile. “I am remembering evenings from my childhood, when our father used to have us perform.”

“He was very proud of you both,” Lord Blackthorne said. “There were nights when we were not permitted to sleep, waiting to move into position for a dawn engagement. We all took turns talking about our families, and your father participated just as freely.”

“What did he say?” she asked, feeling wistful, even as her fingers began to play a melody she knew by heart.

Oliver pretended to ignore them, leafing through sheet music with great concentration.

“He spoke often of stories of Lord Appertan at Eton,” her husband said. “I heard about a particular archery incident.”

Oliver remained hunched over the table full of music, but he was no longer searching through them, his fingers still, his head tilted. Cecilia felt sad even as the amusement of that famous family incident returned.

Lord Blackthorne looked at her brother. “Did you really try to prove you could shoot your arrow through the skirt of your tutor's academic gown without hitting the man himself?”

For the first time in a long while, Oliver wore a smile that wasn't tinged with arrogance or sarcasm. Cecilia started to laugh. All her concerns slipped away, and she pretended she had back her brother of old.

Oliver sipped his brandy and eyed Lord Blackthorne. “I pinned him to a tree. I was quite the hero, even when I was flogged afterward.”

Lord Blackthorne just shook his head. “You were lucky you didn't pierce his leg—or anything else.” He glanced at Cecilia. “He spoke of you, too. For a woman who claims she doesn't like the adventure of the Indian countryside, it seems you could be quite daring.”

“Tell me something he said about me,” Cecilia said with an eagerness she didn't try to hide.

Lord Blackthorne gave her his faint smile. “I heard you used to go on long walks even as a child—and without permission. There's an ancient castle ruin nearby, isn't there?”

She threw back her head and laughed in a most unladylike way. Her husband's eyes sparkled as he watched her, and to hide the warmth of her response, she glanced at her fingers moving on the keys.

“I was convinced there was a hidden dungeon there, no matter how many people told me otherwise,” she said. “I had to go explore.”

“I like that spirit of adventure,” Lord Blackthorne said softly.

She couldn't meet his eyes. “Yes, well, I could have been seriously hurt.”

“But you weren't,” he countered. “I hear you found the undercroft and were convinced that instead of storage, it housed evil knights.”

“It was my special hiding place,” she mused, far-off memories moving slowly through her mind. “I did my studies there by candlelight when I was older. It's been a long time since I went back. It really is too dangerous.”

“I'd like to see it,” he answered.

They looked at each other for long moments, and she imagined taking him there, showing him the places she'd hidden unafraid, knowing he'd take that as proof that she could be the kind of wife he wanted, one who'd follow the drum into any adventure. She looked away.

“I take it you weren't very daring at school, Blackthorne,” Oliver interrupted.

“I didn't go to school.”

Oliver boldly asked the question she wanted answered. “Why not?”

“Because my father refused to send me. He preferred to have us tutored at home.”

She looked back down at her fingers moving over the keys. Tutored at home? How very strange for a viscount's heir.

Oliver grunted. “There were days I wished I'd been allowed to stay home.” Then he glanced speculatively at Lord Blackthorne. “Did you wish you could have gone?”

“Yes. From what I understand, you often meet your lifelong friends there. Luckily, I met mine in my regiment.”

“Do you miss them?” Cecilia asked, feeling a pang of sorrow for Hannah.

A darkness seemed to briefly cross his face and was gone so quickly she thought she imagined it.

“Actually, my two closest friends and I returned to England together.”

“Do I know them?” Oliver asked.

“Rothford and Knightsbridge,” Lord Blackthorne answered.

The Duke of Rothford and the Earl of Knightsbridge,
she thought in surprise. No lowly soldiers, those men. They'd purchased commissions in their youth, and would have been Lord Blackthorne's superiors. It seemed he got on well with authority, unlike her brother.

“They have both sold their commissions and officially retired from the army,” Lord Blackthorne continued. “So when I return to India, it will be without them.”

Return to India.
That phrase sent a surprising shiver of sadness through her. She wanted him gone—why did the thought so disquiet her?

The silence grew tense, and Cecilia felt a need to change the subject. To Lord Blackthorne, she said, “So what childhood memory did you discuss with your fellow soldiers on those long lonely nights?”

“I had little to say,” he answered, smoothing his hand over the cover of the book almost absently.

“You were so very perfect as a child?” Oliver taunted.

“ ‘Boring' is the better word,” Lord Blackthorne said wryly. “Every chance I got, I played with my toy soldiers and staged elaborate battles in the library. My mother permitted me to keep them set up for days, so that I could conduct entire wars. And when I outgrew that, I buried myself in war history and battlefield memoirs.”

“You really were boring,” Oliver said, setting a song sheet on the piano, then leaning against a sideboard to contemplate his ever-receding brandy.

Lord Blackthorne's childhood sounded lonely to Cecilia. “What did your brother do while you prepared yourself to be a soldier?”

He shook his head with bemusement. “He released frogs onto my battlefields, dragged me fishing, and occasionally agreed to a sword battle with sticks.”

“We could still fence,” Oliver interjected.

“No sharp weapons,” Cecilia reminded them, but inside, she felt glad that Lord Blackthorne's brother had played with him. He had those memories—she had memories, too. And they never discussed them, as if Gabriel hadn't existed. Obviously, even her father kept quiet about his son, for Lord Blackthorne had never heard of him.

“Our brother Gabriel was a daring prankster,” she said, glancing at Oliver. “Do you remember when Gabriel confronted that pack of wild dogs in Bombay?”

Oliver tensed, and she worried she'd made a mistake.

“Your brother had to be quite young,” Lord Blackthorne said.

“He was eight.” Oliver took a sip of brandy. “Cecilia told him to stay in the carriage, but he wouldn't. I egged him on.”

“Our family used to take carriage rides in the evening along the Esplanade,” Cecilia explained. “It was near the seashore, and there were rotting carcasses and . . . other things thrown there by the fishermen. The smell—” She gave a shudder, and said to Oliver, “Do you remember?”

“How could I forget?” he murmured.

Cecilia turned back to Lord Blackthorne. “There was a pack of wild dogs that fed there, and if you were foolish enough to leave your carriage to walk the sand, they would attack. Gabriel was determined to see how far from the carriage he could go before spotting them.”

“I assume your parents didn't approve,” Lord Blackthorne said.

“Of course not.” Cecilia smiled. “But Gabriel had it all planned, and darted out of the carriage before Mother could stop him. He chose a night Papa wasn't with us. While she shrieked, and the coachman hesitated to risk his own life, Oliver and I crowded the single window to watch. Gabriel went twenty paces before the dogs appeared over the nearest mound. We screamed his name, and he ran back, vaulting into the carriage, falling onto the floor laughing, while Mother slammed the door shut and pounded on the roof for the coachman to drive off. We were all flung back by the speed of those panicked horses.” Her smile faded. “He was very daring.”

“And it killed him,” Oliver said, turning to look out the window as if he could see anything in the night.

“How did he die?” Lord Blackthorne asked.

She winced, but Oliver didn't respond. It had been ten years, after all. She found she didn't want to tell the story either.

“Go ahead, say it,” Oliver prodded, looking down at her where she sat hunched on the piano bench. “You brought it up.”

Something in her eased when he didn't openly blame her for Gabriel's death. But she had enough guilt of her own.

Lord Blackthorne was studying them closely. “It is obviously a painful memory. You don't need to speak of it.”

But she was watching Oliver, and thought of the pain of never speaking of his beloved twin. “He was killed by a crocodile,” she whispered.

Lord Blackthorne frowned.

“You probably expected a fever to have taken him,” she said, her voice hoarse now. “He pushed me out of the way—saved my life.” She was supposed to be watching over him—his death was all her fault. It should have been her whose body was never found, not her sweet little brother.

She waited for Oliver to condemn her as she condemned herself. Sometimes, she felt like she was always waiting for that.

“He would have been the earl,” Oliver said. “A better one than I.” He drained his brandy and poured another.

“That's not true,” she insisted.

When Oliver didn't answer, she began to play the piece he'd picked out, but he didn't join in, as if he didn't want to be that sort of brother anymore.

“I have to leave,” Oliver said, when she'd finished.

Michael watched Cecilia's face, saw the disappointment and sadness that she so quickly hid. Now that he'd heard the tragic story of her brother, it was obvious she had much practice at concealing her emotions—and her guilt. She must never have gotten over being the one who lived instead of dying. Her worried gaze followed her brother to the door, even as her fingers touched her locket.

“You are very talented,” Michael said into the silence that followed.

She glanced at him, then looked back down at the keyboard. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“Appertan will be all right.” He wanted to lift the concern from her eyes, make her happy, but she didn't want him to do that.

She gave a faint smile. “I hope so.”

“That locket you wear—does it have something to do with Gabriel?”

She looked down at it, then glanced at him, wearing a sad smile. “Each side is a miniature of my brothers just before Gabriel's death. Although they were identical, I could always tell them apart.”

She opened the locket and held it up to him, displaying the small faces of two laughing boys, both with tousled, lighter blond hair than Appertan had now.

“The artist tried to persuade them to be serious,” she continued, “as the subject of such paintings usually are, but they just . . . couldn't.”

When she closed the locket, he said, “Does Lord Appertan look at the miniatures?”

“No.”

“I imagine becoming the earl made him relive the death of the brother he's now replaced. That is only natural.”

“Do you think so?” She sounded hopeful.

“I do. We'll continue what we've been doing. It will help. Will you play another song for me?”

She nodded, and to his surprise, she began to hum and eventually sing, her voice simple and pure, her beauty angelic in the candlelight. Michael let peace wash over him, as if the world's cares could remain beyond the closed doors. He knew desire could forge a bond between two people, but he'd never imagined that contentment and happiness could be just as seductive. She made him happy, just being with her. But they would be separated soon.