The Wagered Miss Winslow (12 page)

“Yes.” Beau smiled at the memory of Niall Winslow’s expression when he, Beau, had turned over the final winning card. “And then I met your brother. Ah, Rosie, I cannot tell you how it took the cockles off my heart to learn that he was a nasty man. My only pain is that my victory over him has served to do you a bad turn.”

“Thank you,” Rosalind said, her smooth brow furrowed as she heard herself speak. What was the matter with her? She was actually feeling guilty, as if she was in some way responsible for the terrible life Beau had led thanks to his father’s despairing act of suicide. But this was silly! She was blameless. She hadn’t even been born when the tragedy had taken place.

Beau saw the conflicting emotions come and go on Rosalind’s face and turned away, remembering why he hadn’t wished to tell his story. He might not be Irish by birth but he had an Irishman’s dislike of baring his troubles to the world. He was much happier suffering in silence while showing only a laughing, teasing face to the world.

He had played the cards as they had been dealt to him, and would continue to do so, even if that meant he would have to marry George Winslow’s daughter to regain the home of his birth. But he didn’t want her sympathy. He didn’t want anyone’s sympathy.

“Here now!” he said loudly, perhaps too loudly, too cheerfully, attempting to banish the air of gloom that seemed to have settled over the room. “There’s nothing like a sad story to set up an appetite, is there, Rosie? If I offer you my arm just as Woodrow has taught me, would you do me the honor of joining me at table? I find I have a grand longing to show off my winning way with forks.”

Her green eyes made shiny by unshed tears, but with her quick mind immediately attuned to his discomfiture at her clumsily displayed sympathy, Rosalind lifted her prettily cleft chin and announced as she took his arm and they walked toward the dining room: “I forbid you to address me as Rosie, Mr. Remington!”

“Of course, m’ darlin’,” Beau answered, smiling down at her, deciding that her father had at least sired one admirable child.

“Or ‘my darling,’” Rosalind warned, although she could not muster any heat in her voice.

“Ah,” he said, winking at her as Riggs raced to help seat her at the head of the table, “and don’t you know I can’t be promising
everything
?”

R
osalind knew that she looked her best, dressed as she was in her red riding habit that sported a fetching black velvet collar and matching buttons, the full, divided skirt swinging against her black leather boots as she walked toward the stables, rhythmically hitting her riding crop against her thigh.

She had barely slept a wink last night, and when a driving rain had begun pounding on the windowpanes and she had at last fallen into a fitful slumber her dreams had been filled with the woebegone, slightly dirty face of a bewildered, disillusioned twelve-year-old boy with large, sad blue eyes.

How very deeply Beau’s story had touched her heart, even though he had steadfastly refused to speak of it again as they sat through their delayed meal, instead shooting her secret smiles as Riggs had fallen over himself apologizing for the sad state of the pigeons (that had, in truth, looked rather dark around the edges).

Not knowing what to say, what area of conversation would be safe, and longing to be by herself so that she could think over all that Beau had said, Rosalind had excused herself after refusing dessert and hastened to her room, leaving Beau behind to smoke his cigar in the garden outside the dining room.

She knew he had smoked a cigar because her bedchamber was just above the dining room and her windows were cracked open, so that the manly aroma of his cigar wafted in to tickle at her nose and tease her with mental images of how he must look, standing alone in the moonlight, a swirling mist of blue smoke rising in a cloud around his head.

How unused she was to having a male presence in her household—for surely Riggs and Kyle, the groom, did not count. Neither would she number Niall or any of his cronies among any list she might try to form in her head, for she had nothing but disdain for her brother and any man who believed himself his friend.

Indeed, during those rare times Niall was in residence, Rosalind made herself scarce, spending her time digging at St. Leonard’s or busying herself in her workroom, pretending the guest bedchambers were all empty.

Not that she had needed to take such drastic measures, for Niall and his cronies had always behaved as if she were invisible to their eyes, neither conversing with her at table nor curbing their brutally frank speech as would any
real
gentleman who knew a lady to be present.

Only once had any of Niall’s friends noticed her, and then she had wished that the man had contented himself with tumbling one of the local barmaids in nearby Winchelsea, as it seemed the rest of the party was doing. Lord Henry Something-or- other, a vacant-faced twit with a terribly protruding (and runny) nose and no discernible chin, had cornered her in her workroom, and had not been dissuaded of his ardor until she’d had recourse to tapping him on his dripping beak with a bit of broken Roman statuary she had uncovered at one of her digging sites.

But now, today, this morning, she was wishing that she could be unaware of a certain male presence in her household. She had risen early, almost at dawn, and had bathed, dressed in her best morning gown, and all but raced downstairs to the morning room, sure she would surprise Beau at table.

But he wasn’t there, and hadn’t been there. And, although she waited for nearly an hour, pushing cold eggs from one side of her plate to the other while Riggs wrung his hands, sure she was sickening for something, Beau never did show his handsome head inside the doorway.

Only when she had returned to her room, somehow unable to muster sufficient interest to go to her workroom, did Mollie mention that she had seen Mr. Remington ride off on a great black horse he must have had brought down with his traveling coach.

“High as a house, that horse was, Miss Winslow,” Mollie had gushed, her expression purposely blank as she watched her mistress’ cheeks flush a becoming pink. “Such a big horse, such a big man. Fair makes a miss quiver all over with a fearsome delight, don’t it, miss?”

Rosalind hadn’t bothered to remind Mollie that she, Miss Rosalind Winslow, had no use for men, and was glad she had kept her silence when Mollie lowered her voice to a whisper and added, “And to think, miss—he has asked to be your lawful husband! With him so very big, and you so very little, aren’t you just wonderin’ and wonderin’ what it will be like?”

Knowing full well what “it” the maid was referring to, and not about to begin a conversation that could only prove embarrassing (to her, if not to the clearly delighted Mollie), Rosalind busied herself in unbuttoning her cuffs and asking, most politely, of course, to nave her riding habit laid out immediately.

She was not pursuing the man, she reasoned as her mare, Daisy, was saddled for her. After all, she often rode out of a morning—although she might not have done so for more than a week, as the digging at St. Leonard’s was going so well. But no matter. This was still, at least technically, her stables, and Daisy was her horse. If she chose to ride about the estate, and if she happened to see Beaumont Remington, and if he happened to ask her to join him, well, what of it? He was, as Mollie had so crudely reminded her, about to become her “lawful husband.”

“Here ye go, miss,” Kyle said, bringing Daisy over to the mounting block. “Ye sure now ye don’t want me ta ride along behind? Careful as you go now, seein’ as how that rain we had this mornin’ has made the fields all muddy. Told the master about it, but he just laughed and rode off on that big beastie o’ his. Nearly nipped m’ ear off, the beastie did, when I tried ta throw a saddle over him.”

“Thank you, Kyle,” Rosalind said, lifting herself onto the sidesaddle and turning Daisy toward the lane that led to the open fields, knowing the groom couldn’t understand why she had chosen to dispense with his company when she had never before ridden out by herself. “I just wish for a solitary ride this morning, but I will be careful.”

Daisy was a gentle animal and did not need to be given her head before settling into a decent canter. After riding along the lane for about a half mile, Rosalind turned the mare into a field that had not yet been planted and urged her into a genteel gallop, feeling the wind pull at her tightly bound hair and the pins that held her black cossack hat to her head. It was exhilarating to hear the rush of the breeze in her ears, to listen to Daisy’s hooves throwing up huge clumps of moist earth, to smell the mingled scents of soil, flowers, and newly leafed trees as she watched the horizon, hoping for a sight of a large black horse and his master.

But it was not to be. After an hour spent riding aimlessly through the fields and stopping to chat with a half dozen of the tenant farmers, Rosalind at last gave up the pretense of being on a meandering morning ride and turned Daisy, heading for St. Leonard’s.

And that was where she found him.

She saw him from a distance as Daisy, having reduced herself to a leisurely walk, turned the corner of the lane. He was standing in the middle of the ruins, in the area she had been working in this past month or more, dressed in simple fawn riding pants and an open-necked white shirt, his hands jammed on his hips as he seemed to be frowning over the grids she had marked off with string.

The black stallion, his reins tied to the trunk of a nearby sapling, whinnied invitingly and Daisy immediately turned, heading in the other horse’s direction. “It doesn’t pay to appear too anxious, my pet,” Rosalind whispered in the mare’s ear as Beau, his attention caught by his stallion’s whinny, came to assist her in dismounting.

His hands nearly spanned her slim waist as he eased her to the ground and Rosalind, feeling she had told her mare one thing and then done exactly the opposite herself, took two prudent steps backwards before redirecting her steps in the direction of the ruined church. “Thank you, sir,” she called over her shoulder as she went, the riding crop once again beating against her skirts.

“You’re welcome, colleen,” Beau answered, falling into step beside her, his long strides fairly eating up the ground. She was being prickly this morning, but he had almost expected it. He would give her time to become accustomed to the idea of marrying him. He was a patient man. “You’re not wearing your usual digging clothes today, I see, although I must say that is a very fetching hat. I trust you slept well?”

Rosalind turned her head to hide a frown. He was being so very formal this morning, although he had complimented her headgear. “Fairly well,’ she said, stopping at the edge or the grid and frowning yet again, all thoughts of his seeming coolness toward her forgotten. What on earth? “Beau, have you been digging here?”

“And of course I have, my sweet colleen. I’ve been scrabbling in the dirt all the morning long. Have you ever met an Irishman that didn’t itch to plant potatoes in every plot he can find?”

Rosalind lightly slapped a hand against her cheek. “I’m sorry, Beau,” she said, not realizing until too late that she had addressed him informally, the way she did when she thought of him in the privacy of her mind. “Of course you weren’t digging in the dirt. Not that anyone has, not really. There are no new holes, or anything like that. The area just seems different—altered in some way—and not just because it rained last night.”

Beau came to stand beside her, looking down at the squares dug out to different levels, and saw nothing unusual—if there was, in truth, anything very
usual
about roping off squares and then lifting layer after layer of dirt from each of them, looking for only the blessed saints knew what.

“Altered?” he questioned, wondering if this digging business would continue once he and Rosalind were married, or if she would turn to more normal pursuits once she was a happy matron with babies to dandle on her lap.

Rosalind walked around the perimeter of the squares, mentally reviewing the course of her explorations over the past few weeks. “I have it!” she exclaimed at last, turning back to Beau. “Someone is filling up the area in which I have been digging this past week. I don’t believe it! The entire square must be a good six inches higher than it was yesterday.
All
of the squares have been altered, now that I really look at them. See how soft the ground looks? I never would have noticed it if it hadn’t rained last night. We’ve had an unusually dry spring, you understand.”