Barbara Metzger Read online

  “Could you be breeding?” she asked.

  Eleanor stared into her glass. “No. I bled on the way home.”

  “Excellent. Then you are not ruined. You are a heroine, and so we shall tell everyone.”

  Lady Eleanor laughed in disbelief. “I should have known you were a ninny. Who else would take on my brother?”

  “A practical woman with a family to protect. Here is what we shall say: You realized Arkenstall was up to no good and went after him in the family coach, with your maid for companion. You are not a young miss, so that is unexceptional. Foolish, perhaps, but not shocking. The maid came down with the influenza, so you left her behind, still bravely giving pursuit. When you located the dastard you sent for Squire, who arrived too late to arrest him but, with your help, retrieved the family heirlooms.”

  Lady Eleanor considered the fabrication. “But where have I been? Too much time has passed.”

  “Why, you have been recovering from the influenza yourself. At…surely you have an old school friend in the north or someone who would vouch for your presence?”

  “I do have an old aunt who lives in Wales. She never comes to town anyway. It might just work.”

  “It will work. It has to.”

  “You are very good, Countess. I knew I did the right thing by sending William to you.”

  “Thank you. He will be anxious to see you, as will Hugo.”

  “Rothmore is here too? The Chudleighs always said he would never survive the journey.”

  “I believe they felt he could get better care here, now. He is not as strong as I would wish, but he is thriving. He has something of your look, you know. The nose, I think.”

  “Poor boy.”

  They both laughed. Then Eleanor said, “You have indeed wrought miracles. Maybe you can manage this one too, making me respectable again.”

  With Claymore’s help, they planted the tale on the local grapevine. Few believed the story, but if that was what the countess wanted them to think, then that was what they would, rather than lose her good graces.

  None of the local hostesses had to worry about entertaining a stumbling, if not fallen, woman in their homes. Lady Eleanor refused all invitations. She would not accompany Alissa to the village or to the outlying farms. She would not join the boys on their excursions. She would not even take meals with the others. She just kept to her room or took long rides to who knew where.

  Alissa was worried enough that she thought of writing to Rockford, but Eleanor had begged her not to tell him she was back, swearing that she would do it herself, in time. No correspondence waited to be sent, however. Claymore suggested the letter might have been mailed from the village on Lady Eleanor’s walks, but Alissa doubted her sister-in-law went there, with all the whispers.

  The secretary would read the letter either way, so Alissa kept her own counsel. Lady Eleanor was still recovering from the influenza, she told anyone who was impolite enough to ask.

  Alissa knew it was far more likely that the woman was recovering from a broken heart and shattered pride.

  She could sympathize with both.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alissa was starting to paint again. Sketches, actually, for she had few hours to sit in the attic room she had claimed for a studio. At night, when she and Aminta were not invited to dinner or an informal dance or a musical program at one of the neighbors’ houses, she had the time, but the light was not good enough. So she drew, and planned in her head the paintings she would create, perhaps in the winter, when there was not as much to be done out-of-doors.

  She also thought about hiring an instructor to teach her the art of oil painting. She had never had the funds for lessons or materials before. Now she did, and some of the subjects she wished to capture would do better in the heavier medium. Watercolors, with their light and airy feel, could not lend the heroic quality she wished in the portraits she wanted to paint. She had pads full of quick studies of the four boys, each so different, but she wanted to paint them together in one large portrait, a family. And her sister was so dear to her, so perfect in her youthful beauty, that Alissa wanted a large portrait of Amy as she was now, to keep for when she moved away to start a family of her own. Watercolors seemed too ephemeral to her, for such a lasting tribute.

  After a few attempts, she did not feel she could convey the solidity, the sheer weight of Rock Hill itself in her usual softly flowing landscape style. Her efforts were good renderings and pretty, with the leaves turning colors, but Rock Hill was not pretty. It was massive and permanent, looming down over its holdings like a dragon guarding its hoard of treasures. Whenever she was out, visiting tenants or on collecting expeditions with the boys, she stopped to study her new home, viewing it from every angle, in all kinds of light, to plan the perfect painting.

  She wrote letters in her mind too, picking just the right words to express her thoughts, the right tone to transmit her feelings. She would tell Rockford about his sister and how she was grieving for her lost love. Alissa could not be certain from the few conversations she’d had with Eleanor whether the lady was madder at being betrayed, or sadder at being alone. Even if Rockford had no insight to his sister’s heart, his forgiveness might help Eleanor forgive her own blunderings.

  Alissa wanted to tell him what fine boys he had. Hugo was teaching Kendall German, from Rockford’s own schoolboy texts, and he had made her take the potions and elixirs away from his bedside. He was far healthier now, but she thought he also wanted more room for books. Oh, and she had to make note for Rockford that Hugo was a dab hand at croquet, although he did not fare well at cricket.

  As for Billy—she supposed she could call him William in her letters to his father—he had not broken anything in the last week, if one discounted the window of the apothecary, which was not his fault. They all needed more cricket practice, it seemed.

  Rockford ought to know how happy her own boys were here, how Kendall was getting to play like a real boy instead of worrying over adult concerns. And her Willy was getting more confident away from her presence. With Billy’s fearless example, how could he not spread his wings?

  Aminta had more poise now, too, she told Rockford in the letter she composed, and did not blush half as easily. She still preferred the company of the vicar’s niece and Alissa, but she was making new friends, learning how to go on in local society. The matrons all complimented the countess on her sister’s pretty manners. Alissa thought he would want to know.

  He ought to be informed about the plans for Rock Hill, too. Did he have color preferences for the servants’ new livery, and did he think a small weaving shed would cause unrest, as the new machinery was doing in the north?

  She described everything in her mental letters: the tutor she had dismissed because he was a worse cricketeer than Hugo or Billy and did not bathe, to boot, the nervous young suitors bringing posies to Aminta, the new hat she had bought after Billy used her old one for a fishing creel, Claymore’s new spectacles.

  She told him, too, about her dreams, how the boys needed a father, and she needed a husband. They could have a good marriage, she believed and wanted to convince him, if he were willing to try, willing to meet her halfway. They could be partners, she was sure, not distant associates bound only by a scrap of paper and a set of rules he had created out of cobwebs. She told him she was lonely. She asked him to come home.

  She never wrote the letters, of course, never sent him a word.

  *

  Some of the neighbors were not sure of the etiquette surrounding bride gifts. There had not been much of a wedding, and did not seem to be much of a marriage. They could not throw dinners and balls in Alissa’s honor, not without the earl, so most simply accepted the countess and ignored her circumstances.

  One neighbor had other ideas of what was proper.

  “Can’t deny me the right to apologize, can you?” Sir George Ganyon asked, after he had been refused twice. This time Alissa had been passing in the hall, in plain sight, so she had to nod t
o Claymore to admit the baronet.

  “We will take tea in the gold parlor,” she told the butler. “Please ask my sister and Lady Eleanor to join us.” Claymore understood the unspoken plea, but could not help his mistress.

  “Lady Eleanor has been out since before breakfast, my lady,” the butler informed her, “and the young miss is at the vicarage helping to arrange the flowers we sent for Sunday’s services.”

  “Of course,” she said, now wishing she had made some excuse to Sir George, rather than suffer his company alone. If she did not hear his apology now, however, she would only have to do it another time, or wonder if he would accost her on the high street of the village, or at some social gathering. He did not attend the tame neighborhood entertainments she did, preferring the pub or card parties or men-only hunt gatherings, so she had escaped his company since the wedding. She had not missed it.

  “I know just the thing,” she told Claymore. “The boys can join us for tea. They need to polish their company manners.” Seeing the baronet’s would teach them how not to behave, she hoped. He was already drooling, a trickle of saliva sliding from the corner of his mouth.

  He laughed now. “Oh, they are too busy in the stableyard. I bought you a wedding present, I did, to show no hard feelings. I didn’t know which way the wind blew, that was all, you and the earl. One of my hounds got out of the pen a while ago and came back breeding. I brought the pups over, so your pups can pick one.”

  “My…pups? You brought my sons a dog?”

  “Well, I brought all four of ’em, actually. You’ve got four boys now, don’t you? I meant one for each. Fine wedding present, what?”

  “But I do not like dogs. I told you that.”

  He shrugged. What did a woman know about such things? “A boy has to have a dog if he is to grow up right.”

  A whole herd of hounds had not done much for Sir George. “No. I will not have dogs around the place. You will have to take them away.”

  He shrugged again. “They’ll have to be drowned then, of course. Mongrel pups are useless, you know. You can be the one to tell your brats.”

  Into the awful silence that followed that dire statement, Claymore said, “I will bring the tea, madam.”

  Alissa sank onto her chair, stunned and stymied. Dogs. Four dogs. An entire pack of slavering beasts. Who were right now leaping all over her children, licking them, wriggling their way into little boys’ hearts. Who would be killed if she said no.

  Heavens, she could see the reproach in the boys’ eyes now. Kendall would understand, she supposed. He always had, when she explained her reasoning that they could not afford a new ball, that he had to do chores instead of playing. Willy would likely cry, although he was past baby tears, most often. Hugo might not care as much, although he would adore having a four-footed companion on his collecting trips. But Billy—always so sure of himself and ready for anything—if ever there was a boy made for a dog, it was Billy. He would be inconsolable.

  “You should have asked me first,” was all she said to her gloating guest.

  “Tried. You were never home. Or home to me,” Sir George said with a sly, sideways look.

  Well, the dogs could stay in the stable for now, until she could have a kennel built, somewhere far from the house so she did not have to see or hear the creatures. Jake would have to assign one of his grooms to train the pups, but she would make sure the boys knew the animals were their responsibility. She was having nothing to do with them, and she was not taking men away from important, necessary duties to devote hours to the care of curs. Maybe the boys would get tired of all the effort involved and she could get rid of the dogs soon. Meanwhile, she would make it clear that one growl, one nip, and they were gone. She was not having her sons or Rockford’s savaged by wild animals. As the dogs had come from Sir George’s kennels, their manners were entirely suspect.

  Claymore wheeled in the tea cart and stayed as long as he could, arranging the plates and cups on the table near Alissa. “Is there anything else, madam?” he asked.

  “No, but do stay close in case we need anything.”

  Claymore peered at Sir George through his new spectacles, noting the muddied boots and dirty fingernails. “I shall be right outside, my lady.”

  While Alissa poured the tea, the baronet watched her hungrily, so she offered him a slice of poppy-seed cake. The sooner he ate, she hoped, the sooner he would leave. He did not seem to have food in mind, for he waved the plate aside. “See? No hard feelings. You made the better bargain, eh? I couldn’t see what the earl was so riled about when he came by, but now I do.” He swiped at his damp mouth with the back of his wrist, still devouring her with his eyes. “Out of those dreary gray rags you used to wear, you’re more woman than I thought. Almost a lady of fashion, with that new way of fixing your hair. Almost a lady.”

  Alissa wondered if she should call for Claymore.

  Sir George was going on: “Rockford always did have an eye for women. They say the Austrian princess he’s dancing attendance on is a diamond of the first water. Foreign, of course.”

  “Sir, you forget yourself, and you forget I am a married woman.”

  “Seems to me Rockford is the one who forgets, eh?”

  Alissa rearranged the slices of cake. She did not attempt a bite herself, knowing the crumbs would stick in her throat. Her marriage was a sham, but it was hers to belittle. She put the cake knife down before she was tempted to slice more than the poppy seeds. “I believe the earl asked you to give Rock Hill a wide margin.”

  Sir George pretended to look around, peering up through his overgrown eyebrows. “I don’t see him. Do you?”

  She saw a bully and a boor. “I think you ought to leave now, Sir George. Your tea has grown cold anyway, and I am developing a headache.”

  “So you are not quite the lady, eh, despite the fancy feathers? A real lady treats a guest better than that. Rock Hill used to be known for hospitality, in the last earl’s time. You never even offered me a drink. Not that codswallop in a cup, but a real drink.”

  He took a tarnished silver flask out of his pocket and poured a jot into his tea, then slurped it. “That’s better.”

  Better than what? Arsenic? Not in her book. Alissa watched him drink, watched the liquid trail down his chin and onto his already soiled shirtfront. When he set the cup down, she said, “If you are done, I shall ask Claymore to see you out.”

  “That blind old stick? What is he going to do, pick me up and toss me through the door, eh? No, I’ll have my say before I go. It’s an honest offer, anyway.”

  “An offer? Of what? You have given the boys your unwanted mongrels. That is enough.”

  “What, did you forget my last proposal? Asked for your hand, I did, and that brat aimed a pistol at me! No, I thought to offer you a slip on the shoulder, now that you’re married again.”

  She got up. If he would not leave, she would. “I shall return the tea tray to the kitchen. Good day.”

  He ignored her, and rudely stayed seated. “But I saw that wouldn’t serve. I wouldn’t mind taking you to my bed, by Jove, even if you are Rockford’s leavings. He left, heh? But it wouldn’t serve. I need a son. A legitimate son, so I need a wife of my own. So here I am, come to make a proper offer for the girl.”

  Alissa sank back down, setting the tray none too gently back on the table. The cups rattled and the sugar cubes spilled from their dish. “The girl?”

  “Your sister, Amy, unless you have another. The devil knows I don’t mean Rockford’s sister. I ain’t fool enough to take on that shrew. Besides, she’s too old. Eleanor’s what, nearing forty? I want sons, not a dried up prune who’s forever telling a fellow to change his linen and mind his manners. And Miss Prunes and Prisms skipped down that primrose path fast enough, didn’t she?”

  “Lady Eleanor is above reproach.”

  This time Sir George did not bother to pour the liquor into his teacup. He drank straight from the flask. “No, it has to be the chit. She’s got no birth to s
peak of, not even your dead husband’s connections, but her being Rockford’s sister-in-law makes a difference. So does the dowry I hear he’s settling on her.”

  “Am I hearing you correctly? You are asking permission to address my sister? My seventeen-year-old sister?”

  “Exactly. It’s not such a bad deal for her, either. The gal ought to be a widow before too long, not that I intend to cock up my toes anytime soon. She might still be young enough to snabble herself another husband, the way you did.”

  His demise could not come soon enough. “I am sorry,” she said, without the least regret, “but I would never countenance such a match. The disparity in ages and interests would be enough, if I thought you were remotely suited to be her husband. I do not.”

  “Hoity-toity. No matter. I already wrote to Rockford. He’s the chit’s guardian now, isn’t he?”

  He was, according to those papers she had signed. The solicitor had said they were necessary to protect the underage minors. But did that mean Rockford could marry Aminta off without a by-your-leave? Alissa never thought she would be happy that the earl never read his mail.

  “He would not give permission,” she said with conviction.

  “Why not? He’s paying to get rid of the chit, isn’t he? Must mean he wants her off his hands. It’s not as if she’s a prime filly on the marriage mart, not from your stables.”

  “Aminta will never agree. Even with Rockford’s permission, she cannot be forced into marriage, not in this day and age.”

  He snorted. “There’ll always be priests ready to look the other way when the bride argues. A special license, a few bribes, a dram of laudanum in her wine—it’s easily done. Or else I could snatch her up one day and hold her overnight. That cottage still sits empty. She’d be ruined. She’d have to marry me, even you’d agree, because no one else would take her. Half of the folks around here already believe the whole of Rock Hill is full of light-skirts.”