The Proud Viscount (2 page)

Rossmere’s eyes were a remarkable shade of silver blue. Though the color was distinctive, it was not the most significant thing about his eyes. They were bone-chillingly cold, like the silver-blue sky of a freezing winter’s day. And there was a power in them, an authority, that disturbed Jane even more.

She turned to her aunt now and laid a hand on her arm. “I’ll give some thought to the inheritance and whether I might in some manner share it with Lord Rossmere. I really have no need of it for myself. But you mustn’t pursue this idea of an alliance. His lordship is not someone with whom I’d be interested in forming a connection, even if I were considering marriage.”

Winters entered with the lemonade and queen cakes and set them on a gateleg table near where the ladies were seated. Jane thanked and dismissed him before speaking again. “I know it’s been a year since Richard died, but I’m not ready to think of marrying. I may never be.”

“But you must! You’ll regret it all your life if you don’t.”

"Perhaps.” She offered the plate of queen cakes to her aunt. “I’d rather not discuss it any further, Aunt Mabel. Would you help me plan the menu for Saturday’s dinner party?”

The older woman eyed her with frustration, but lifted her thin shoulders. “I don’t consider the matter settled,” she informed her niece, “but I’m willing to let it rest for the time being.”

* * * *

Jane escaped to the circular conservatory, where no one would think to look for her. A winged statue of a nude woman, the replica of one of her father’s favorite antiquarian finds, stood in a niche opposite huge pots holding profusely blooming plants. The moist, stifling air in the room was almost unbearable. Jane pushed damp tendrils of brown hair from her forehead, thinking it would have been wiser to disappear to the dairy on a day like this.

She seated herself on a bench in the only shaded window. Larkspur and verbena thrust bright flowers out of containers on either side of her, and vines wound from floor to ceiling all around the room. At this time of year the conservatory looked like a gigantic garden basket, filled with the brightest and sweetest-smelling flowers that grew at Willow End. The horse chestnut outside the window filtered a green light into the room and tinted her white jaconet muslin dress.

The letter from Trelenny Ashwicke was still in her pocket. She’d been about to read it when Mabel interrupted her. Now she drew it out and spread it on her lap. As she read, a smile played around her lips and lit her eyes. Dear Trelenny! Nothing was ever going to tame her high spirits, thank heaven. Fortunately Cranford had realized in time that he loved her for them, rather than in spite of them. It seemed forever since she’d been with them in Bath, and yet it was little more than a year ago. Jane had intended to make the journey for their wedding, and would have, if Richard hadn’t died.

Richard. How easy it was for everyone else to forget him. Jane had even heard her aunt and her father using terms like “for the best” when they didn’t know she overheard them. Nothing would ever convince her that his death was for the best.

But Mabel might be right about Richard’s estate. Rossmere certainly would have benefited from inheriting it. What would he have done with it, though? Its only use to him would be in the money a sale would bring. Jane couldn’t bear the thought of strangers owning Graywood. Even now it was hard for her to see the tenants there when she rode past. When their lease was up next month, she would have to decide if she should renew it for another year. Or could she possibly...? No, it would cause far too much gossip for her to try to move there alone. She turned her gaze toward the window.

Rossmere had stopped under the horse chestnut on his way from the stables to the house. He stood unmoving, except for toying with a furry horse chestnut in one hand. He was not looking in her direction, and she had no way of knowing whether he’d seen her. Somehow she doubted it. His face wore a thoughtful look, with the eyes narrowed slightly and the lips pursed. It was a handsome face, as her aunt had said. He was a much larger man than Richard—not just taller, but more muscular and substantial. Even his hands looked stronger, as though they could crush the hard chestnut to pulp.

Perhaps it was the coiled strength in him that disturbed Jane. She expected it in a horse, energy ready to be released at the urging of hands or heels. In a man it seemed much more dangerous, an unknown quantity. Did it indicate a terrible temper, or an abundance of energy, or a touch of madness? Jane shook off such fanciful thoughts. Obviously they were only ramblings of her mind, evoked by her reminiscences of Richard. Rossmere was solid and healthy and undoubtedly as sane as the next man.

With surprising speed, he swung back his arm and threw the chestnut at a gate some distance away. His aim was accurate. The horse chestnut smacked into the upper rail and dropped to the ground. Rossmere continued to frown after it for some time before strolling off toward the hall.

Jane forced her gaze back to Trelenny’s letter. Perhaps she would go to visit the Ashwickes as her friend suggested...after Lord Rossmere left Willow End, taking Ascot with him.

Chapter 2

Lord Rossmere returned to the house with some reluctance. His godmother, Lady Mabel Reedness, had specifically requested his presence in the north drawing room at four o’clock, and Rossmere barely had time to make himself presentable. Without Lady Mabel he would have been ruined years ago. She had lent him money when every banker he approached had refused him a loan. Rossmere suffered considerably under his burden of gratitude to Lady Mabel.

For some time he had managed to find excuses for turning down her invitations to visit Willow End, but he was in a financial bind again. There was another mortgage payment coming due, and improvements that simply had to be carried out on the estate if he was ever to lift himself out of debt. It would have been grossly uncivil of him to expect his godmother to provide the money he needed while at the same time refusing to accept her hospitality for a month.

For some reason it hadn’t even occurred to him that bringing Ascot would upset everyone, from Lord Barlow down to the stable hands. “Not to be trusted,” was the way they were given to phrasing it. What they meant was that Richard had met his death riding that horse, and no one was sure whether the horse or Richard’s illness was to blame. They preferred to think it was the horse. Rossmere had ridden Ascot for the last year, and he knew better.

The horse was half-wild, of course. Always had been. Rossmere remembered riding him several years ago when he’d visited Richard. There was no sign during his “good” times that Richard was sick at all. Actually, Rossmere had considered Ascot the sole indication. An odd concept, perhaps, but one he felt quite certain about. Ascot was infected with the untamed wildness that seized Richard during the black times. In the man this primitive turbulence was horrifying; in the horse it was awesome.

Ascot’s wildness was not a challenge to him. Rossmere had no interest in “conquering” the beast, or mastering its unruly temper. Quite the opposite, in fact. His blood raced with the excitement of allowing Ascot his head, of storming across fields and soaring over fences at a speed and height he’d not known before, even in his younger years, when the best of horses were available to him.

Rossmere liked to remember Richard in the “good” times, riding Ascot as he himself did now, filled with the glory of unrestricted movement. But he never forgot that Richard didn’t always have that freedom. From the first sign of an impending episode, he was locked safely in the farthest wing of Willow End, cared for by a stout manservant and no other. If Rossmere had wondered why Richard was imprisoned at Willow End and not his own estate of Graywood, he had never given voice to his question.

For this visit Rossmere had been given a suite in the east wing. Both the sitting room and the bedroom were hung with tapestries depicting various Greek and Roman myths, their predominant colors of brown and blue heavy against the tan walls. Various details lightened the rooms, though: the vases of summer flowers, the light draperies at the windows, the height and intricacy of the ceilings.

While he allowed Lord Barlow’s valet to adjust the fit of his coat, he gazed out over the park where the ground rose toward the downs. They had raced there once, he and Richard. Ascot had triumphed over his own hack without the slightest difficulty, and Rossmere had found himself longing to ride the huge black stallion. As though aware of his thoughts, a tendency Richard exhibited from time to time, he’d dismounted and beckoned the viscount to take over Ascot. “You’ll do well with him,” he’d said, though the general wisdom at the Graywood and Willow End stables even in those days was that no one but Richard could manage the wild horse. No doubt it was that incident that had prompted Richard to add the codicil to his will giving Rossmere the horse.

Because everything else had gone to Lady Jane.

For one brief moment, when the letter came from his godmother informing him of Richard’s death, he had allowed himself to hope that he would be his cousin’s beneficiary, that all his financial embarrassments were over. That tiny, suspended moment between reading one sentence and the next had betrayed him. To have considered his own situation when his poor cousin lay dead might have been human, but it disgusted him, showing him how poverty had eroded his humanity. Rossmere had vowed then that it wouldn’t happen again.

As he strode through the corridors of the house, he caught glimpses of the small army of servants who kept the place immaculate. He’d been raised to that kind of luxury, where his every whim was accommodated and his pockets were perpetually full. He was reduced now to two loyal family retainers who served him at Longborough Park, but he’d found that there were certain compensations for his present position.

One of them was that he wasn’t expected to fulfill any social obligations.

There were no balls, and few parties, that he regretted not attending, and he certainly didn’t mind not having to give them himself. He regretted not being able to maintain a stable of riding and carriage horses, and he wished there were the resources to hunt, but he preferred the freedom of his run-down seat to the straitlaced strictures of London...or even of Willow End.

He presented himself now to Lady Mabel with his usual polite attention. She was seated on a spoon-back chair that looked only marginally comfortable, though there were plenty of more commodious seats in the room. Her graying hair was pulled back tightly into a bun and her posture was rigid with resolution. She waved him imperatively to a chair and regarded him with a penetrating stare. Calculated to remind him of his indebtedness? Perhaps. He had only known her to be forthright, not manipulative. It was possible that she merely assessed him.

“I saw you on Ascot,” she said. “There’s a devil in the beast that’s not always controllable.”

“So I’ve noticed. I assure you I don’t underestimate him.”

“Good.” She dismissed the subject with a slight flip of her hand. “I wanted you to come here so we could have a talk about your future, Rossmere.”

Though he disliked the sound of this topic, he continued to look agreeable, without offering a remark or asking a question. He was not a man to be easily intimidated. His godmother was forced to continue her discussion without his help.

“There’s the matter of my family obligations. I have five nieces and nephews in addition to you, my godchild. When I die, my brother’s children have some right to expect an inheritance from me. Not that they need it, any of them, but they’re blood ties. I’d feel more comfortable knowing that each of them was already provided for, and there’s one who isn’t, in some ways. Jane may have more than sufficient property, but she lacks that essential for any woman—a husband and family.”

“It’s most unfortunate Lady Jane was unable to marry Richard.” Rossmere knew precisely where his aunt was headed now and he refused to follow her there. He had been away from society too long. It hadn’t occurred to him, when the invitation came from Lady Mabel, that she would have this particular scheme in mind, though it should have. She had been determined for years to marry him off to an heiress. He was surprised she would consider her own niece, except for Lady Jane’s advanced age. Rossmere regarded his godmother with a slight frown of disapproval. “I don’t think she has recovered from my cousin’s death.”

“She may never,” Mabel informed him in her bluntest manner. “That’s hardly the point. Each month that passes reduces her chance of marrying. We’re not talking about a love match. We’re speaking strictly of a marriage of convenience. For both of you, Rossmere. You need a wife who has property. Jane needs a husband who can establish a place for her in society and give her children.”

“I can’t believe your niece would countenance such a match.”

“Perhaps not—just yet.” Mabel leaned toward him, gripping the arms of her chair with determined fingers. “You would have to convince her of the desirability of the match. She thinks she will be content as an aunt to her brothers’ and sisters’ children. It’s not enough. She needs to marry soon, before she can become entrenched in a spinster’s way of life.”

“What else has she been leading all these years?”

Mabel bestowed a scornful look on him. “Basically she’s led the life of a fiancée these past seven years. A fiancée who never intended to marry, it’s true, but a fiancée nonetheless. With all that entails.”

Rossmere couldn’t be sure exactly what his godmother meant to convey by this insistence on a pseudo-engagement. Surely not that the young woman wasn’t a virgin. After all, the reason the pair hadn’t wed was because of the possibility of her becoming pregnant with yet another mentally disturbed Bower. Richard Bower’s father had suffered from the illness; his son would likely have inherited the same weakness.

No, Lady Jane was undoubtedly as pure as any other young lady of refinement. Her aunt was merely indicating that there had been no possibility of her considering another man as a husband because of her intense attachment to Richard. Well, Rossmere could credit that, but it carried no weight with him in this argument.