Royal Regard (54 page)

I do not fool myself that you will come to love me
again, now I have broken your heart so many times, with seeming
disregard for your acts of tremendous honor, sacrifice, and
principle. Not when you believe I cause you pain out of obstinacy
or disrespect or even outright malice. I can only hope, pray on my
knees in the most abject entreaty, that you may forgive my desire
to honor a husband who had first claim to my affections, with the
knowledge that my deepest passion, my greatest love, my entire
heart belongs to you. Please know, my beloved, as I have said in
every missive, your pain is shared.

Your devoted servant,

Isabella, Lady Huntleigh

***

To The Right Honorable Countess of Huntleigh

Madam:

Please refrain from contact. Your false sentiments
are wasted ink, and I tire of finding your seal in my
correspondence. My solicitor will be in contact regarding your
contractual obligations.

Sincerely,

His Grace, The Most Noble Nicholas Northope, Duke of
Wellbridge, Marquess of Abersham, Marquis de Taillebois, Earl of
Baxton, Conte di Pietranego, Viscount Yoakefield, Baron Harbury,
and Baron Ostelbrooke

1821: Saltash, Cornwall,
England

The megrim that had kept Bella home from Sunday
services had blown away on the sweet late summer breeze, drifting
on the salt wind over the Tamar River with the musty smell of
plumping grapes. Feeling cooped up, she had walked across her few
acres of food crops—wheat, oats, vegetables for the table, and a
small orchard of fruit trees. She had hiked past the barn, through
the fields where they kept a small flock of sheep and herd of
beeves. The sounds of sea birds mingled with church bells in the
distance and the lowing of contented cows.

As she made her solitary trek to the
vineyards, she turned over the day’s concerns. The cook at Antony
House wanted to buy more cheeses than usual for a house party, and
Bella wasn’t sure she could accommodate. The farm manager needed
more workers for the midsummer planting, and she wasn’t sure where
she could find the money or the men, the mines a more regular
source of income than her fifty acres. Her stableboy was talking
about moving to Plymouth, and the housemaid thought Bella didn’t
know she had snuck out last night, to meet God-only-knew-who under
the moonlight. One of the horses had colic, she had lost three
lambs to a well-concealed den of foxes since last week, and her
plan to start raising pigs had been scuttled by the need to
re-thatch the cottage.

She had built a life for herself here, as
Mrs. Isabella Clewes, though not the one of ease her husband had
intended. Her identity was not unknown—nowhere the length or
breadth of England could she reside completely anonymously—but by
living quietly, modestly, and frugally, as well as refusing
absolutely to acknowledge she was a countess, she had finally
worked her way into the good graces of most of her neighbors. It
had helped that the vicar was of an age with Myron and had heard
her husband’s opinion before the stories from London had travelled
this far south. Here in Saltash, at least, she wasn’t the pariah
she might have been anywhere else.

No longer, by any measure, the wealthiest
widow in England, Wellbridge’s Statement of Claim had cost nearly
every shilling she’d had, and with no funds to keep them operating,
left most of her properties dormant. Only the shipping line
remained viable and that only because the king, in his own
interest, had made it so. But he had also ensured Myron’s other
investors decamped in droves, keeping her in much reduced
circumstances.

Worse still, when she refused to marry
Wellbridge, her claim to
feme sole
was nullified, leaving
all of her assets in the hands of a trustee who had no interest in
her opinions—or for that matter, her wellbeing—as long she was in
opposition to the king. Saddest of all, the situation had tarnished
her fond reminiscences of Myron, since he was the one who had
agreed to the unjust contract, determined to over-protect her even
into the afterlife.

Alexander and Charlotte would have taken food
from their own mouths to ensure her care, but Bella had no wish to
rely on anyone for her support if it could be helped. Rather, she
increased her hidden cache by five times in the lies she told
Charlotte. Since the Firthleys rarely had reason to travel so far
south, and Bella would never again find reason to be in London,
they couldn’t know the precarious nature of her life as minor
gentry.

A circumstance which, without the approval of
His Majesty, seemed unlikely to ever be resolved. The peace
offering she had sent, a barrel of her vineyard’s first blend, had
resulted in a kind note of thanks, in Prinny’s own hand, requesting
a few barrels more. At her expense, of course, leaving her with a
decided lack of available coin and less than half the small vintage
to sell.

The vines were at the heart of today’s
worries. The malbec grapes were showing signs of gall, a grave
concern, as they were needed in every blend, particularly the red
the king enjoyed so much. If she lost them, she might not produce a
decent vintage for two or three more years, which meant another
winter lived lean by everyone who worked her small acreage. Her
farm manager was importing new cuttings from one of Bella’s recent
acquaintances in France, but until the new vines were producing,
several seasons from now, she had to find a solution to the
parasite slowly killing her grapes.

With any luck, this would also prove a
distraction from the parasite of her mind: Wellbridge.

Almost a year since she had seen him, and she
hadn’t yet decided how to feel. She loved him still, wanted to be
joined with him, mind, body, and spirit. She could imagine no
context in which that would change. Thoughts of him were imbued
with a tenderness, a sweetness, a poignancy that did nothing so
much as…
enrage her
.

Only a weak-willed woman would allow a man to
destroy her life, and still wish to feel his lips on hers. Only a
pathetic woman would pine for a man who ran for the Continent like
a coward without even reading her letters. Only a senseless woman
would cuckold a good man with a libertine, then believe the rake
would make her happy. Only a stupid woman would allow remembrances
of one hour with a man to invade her dreams and her bedchamber
night after night, months later. Scowling, she ran through the
familiar refrains, searching the horizon for her vineyard manager,
who would surely have some opinion on the malbecs that might, for a
few minutes, take her mind off the miserable cur.

Before she could find the stocky Spaniard who
had taken on the challenge of taming and expanding Myron’s parents’
small private vineyard, wild for a decade, she was distracted by
the sound of muddy footsteps coming nearer. Against her will, she
shivered and took a step backward, then whipped her head around to
see if anyone was within shouting distance, but she saw no one. She
found herself grasping a pergola as though it were a spear she
could throw.

Stomping her foot to clear her irrational
fright, excess emotion splashing like the mud on her boots, she
slowly placed one trembling hand back at her side. She held a grey
bonnet over her eyes, trying to peer through rays of muted
sunshine. She hadn’t heard horses or a carriage, but the vineyards
were a fair walk from the house. A visitor would have gone to the
front door, an unknown tradesman, the back, and neither would have
followed her into the fields. A neighboring farmer would have
announced himself by now, as would anyone in her employ. If someone
important were waiting, the housekeeper would have sent a groom to
find her, and he would have called out to determine her
direction.

“Who is it? Who is there?” she cried out, as
the footsteps reached the end of the row where she was standing,
the shadow crowding the sun, chilling her. She wished she had
brought her shawl, if not a cloak.

“I know am a bit scruffy, Bella, but it’s not
even been a twelvemonth.”

Her hand and her bonnet flew to her mouth.
Before she could choke on a mouthful of grey flannel and mauve
lace, she set it firmly atop her messy hair, tied the ribbon, shook
the dirt and dust from her pewter-grey day dress.

“Wellbridge.” She spoke deliberately without
inflection and made no move to curtsey. “Why are you here?”

Shading her eyes with a tanned, ungloved
hand, she still couldn’t see but the faintest outline of him. He
finally entirely blocked out the sun, making her shiver. Through
the bright spots in front of her eyes, he looked the same but for a
three-day traveling beard, his hair just a bit longer, falling in
waves without being tied in the usual queue, and his face darker
than she remembered. She leaned into the aroma of oranges, lemons,
leather, and witch hazel, dizzy with this ethereal proof he wasn’t
somehow a dream. She reached up to touch his cheek, but pulled
back.

“Why are you here?” she asked again, stepping
away with a studied scowl. “I’ve fulfilled my
contractual
obligations
. I’ve no more money to give you unless you would
have me starve.” She waved her hand around to indicate the small
size of her farm.

He ran his hand over her hair, down her
cheek. “Oh, Bella, how I’ve missed your tempers.” He leaned in and
kissed her. Trying to draw away, she found herself held tightly
against him. The evidence of how much he’d missed her was
incontrovertible, so she twisted and pushed and pulled herself away
with all her strength. Very little, as it happened, since he still
made her knees weak. If he hadn’t acted the gentleman and let her
go, she might have kissed him back instead of maintaining the
appropriate frozen glare.

This was the man who had reduced her to
worrying every day about grapes. He was the reason she had to
choose between pigs and a roof. No matter the memories of his hand
on her thigh, kisses on the back of her knee, the whispers under
the moonlight, she had to keep in mind he had meant not a bit of
it.

She was willing to take much of the blame for
her circumstance, from breaking Wellbridge’s heart down to her
impudent discussion with the king. To some degree, she could not
help but feel every hardship was nothing but her due. But while she
may have ill-treated the duke by insisting so severely on her
mourning, his transgression had been far greater, demanding the
entire contracted payment, leaving her all but destitute.

No matter how much she had wanted to honor
Myron, whose memory had faded to fondness within weeks, then
resentment in the months that followed; no matter how many letters
she had written to Wellbridge, some posted, some not, before and
after the breach of contract was adjudicated; she knew from the day
she left London she should have returned immediately to beg Nick’s
forgiveness and implore him to marry her without delay. Not for the
money, or the safety of his title, and certainly not to appease his
male vanities, but to circumvent the overwhelming loneliness she
now experienced every minute of every day living without him. She
wanted, more than anything—even more than she wanted to be irate—to
tell him about the problem with the malbecs.

“How rude of me to stand gawping, Your Grace.
If you have come to buy wine, I’m afraid I must disappoint. Our
yield was short this year—we’ve only begun to tame the vines, you
see—but perhaps you will enjoy a glass with His Majesty back in
Town, since he has stolen more than half of my harvest. The two of
you can toast to the theft of the last of my funds.”

His face fell into the lines of an ocean
cliff. He bowed, just the wrong side of polite.

“My apologies, Lady Huntleigh, for the
disruption. I had convinced myself, from the plentiful letters I
found on my return from the Continent, that you might welcome my
presence. I see now my solicitor’s fervor has extinguished any
chance of that.” He turned to walk back to the house where his
carriage or horse must be waiting. “At the king’s express command,
by the by, not mine!”

“No! Wait, Your Gr—” Her voice cracked,
“Wellbridge—Nick. Is it true?”

He turned back, hope flaring in his eyes like
candles in a mineshaft. “I am not a liar, Lady Huntleigh, and I am
not in the market for wine,” he said, in his best ducal tenor. “Did
you have some other reason to detain me than your counterfeit
undying love?”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean… it is not
counterfeit. You’ve only taken me by surprise. I was taken aback by
your…” She blushed, glancing at his tight nankeen riding breeches,
“… your
ardor
, and hindered by what is left of my pride.
Please stay, please. At least long enough to rest your horses. It
is nearly time for tea and Cook has made raspberry tarts.” She held
out her hand. “Unless I misremember, your favorite indulgence.”