The Defiant Lady Pencavel (3 page)

“We’re busy with our sheep; wool is productive to clothe the soldiers fighting for His Majesty on the continent, against the rabble, ruthless French.” Lambrick appeared to wince when he said “French,” surprising her.

“And to bury our dead, since a previous king decreed it to promote our wool industry.” Melwyn set down her glass, her smile challenging. Then she had difficulty meeting the viscount’s dark gaze, and didn’t know why. “You must be extremely wealthy and able to pluck a bride from any of the major families you might choose.”

“Egad, I should have married the Widow Whale. She’d have been a calming influence,” Father muttered to himself. He dropped his snuffbox in his pocket. “Please
try
to remember your deportment, my dear. I...I will consult our housekeeper to see if dinner is ready.” He lumbered from the room like a beleaguered, beaten dog.

“Forgive me, Papa.” Her heart began to sink, but she must remain strong.

“I take it you have no interest in being mistress of Merther Manor?” Lambrick arched a sardonic eyebrow.

“I only wanted you to know what sort of bargain you’d struck, so there will be no misconceptions, if I agree to go through with this.” She walked toward him, trying not to notice his patrician profile. An aura exuded from him she couldn’t define, like the moment before a storm. “I’m not some timid female who will swoon over your every word.”

“Is it myself who offends you, my lady, or men in general?” He smiled slowly, which rendered him more handsome.

“Oh, men are fine when they’re not arrogant, and I know little about you. It’s husbands I don’t trust.” She forced herself to meet his gaze steadily. “Or the idea of a husband, you might say.”

His eyes traveled across her, and up her, halting at her low bodice with a cold calculating expression. “You have a strange manner of dress if you hope to discourage any man.”

“Well, stop eyeing me like a prize ewe. If you want a stupid, compliant wife, you need to look elsewhere.” She fought a prickle at his scrutiny.

“If you stop heaving your bosom at me, I might find it easier to look elsewhere.” He smirked and finished his drink.

Her cheeks heated; but what had she expected? She tugged up her neckline. The viscount’s boorish behavior made this so much easier. “Then I assume you will tell my father that we don’t suit at all?”

“Unfortunately, I’m beginning to think we might suit, as I detest simpering females.” He poured himself another sherry. “Indeed, the idea of you
is
a daunting prospect. And women do require a taut harness.”

She seethed inside. He continued to mock her. “I believe you are too old for me, sir, and will never keep up. Don’t suppose you will ever suppress me.”

“That remains to be seen, my dear. I am all of two and thirty, so still quite robust.” He raised his glass. “I came here with the intention of informing your father that I desire no flibbertigibbet slip of a girl, especially one whose mother cannot restrain herself from flipping up her skirts for a lackey.”

“How
dare
you.” Melwyn felt punched in the stomach, even as she admired his candor. She gripped her hand on the back of the triple-arched sofa upholstered in striped silk. “You are a jackanapes, sir. I will never marry you.”

“Truthfully, you will find few who will dare, my lovely earl’s daughter, after your peccadilloes about the region.” He chuckled, chucked her under the chin, turned and departed the chamber. 

Melwyn rushed to the hearth and smacked her hand on the marble mantel. Her skin smarted, and the ormolu clock and two gold candlesticks jostled.  She glared again at the faded rectangle on the wallpaper. “Double fie! What will I do now? I cannot allow him to best me, and I’ll
never
marry such a blackguard—or any man!”

Chapter Three

Griffin held tight to his horse’s reins. Why did he always taunt fate? He should have simply written to Earl Pencavel and asked to have the betrothal rescinded. Something integral in his nature drove him to act the devil-may-care. Perhaps he’d been hit too hard by a cricket bat at Harrow.

He twisted at the leather. Then when his brother Alan was commissioned into the army, and the devastating results, Griffin’s reckless attitude increased. Life could be over in such short order.

Now the arousing figure and derisive tone of Miss Pencavel disrupted his composure. He gritted his teeth. He’d left Langoron House as soon as he’d informed the earl he had to think the situation over.

Rain started to splatter on his face. The dots of moisture were cold comfort. He trotted his mount into the yard of Jamaica Inn and an ostler rushed out.

An isolated place high on the Bodmin Moor, the L-shaped, two-storied inn was a notorious hideout for smugglers to conceal their contraband on its way up country. Griffin was familiar with its operations. Tea, silks, tobacco and brandy had been smuggled through Cornwall since customs dues were first introduced in the thirteenth century.

The government kept enacting laws to stop it, but many the revenuer would accept the odd bribe. Griffin had the misfortune of attracting the few honest excise men left—but that only added to the intrigue.

Inside the expansive taproom with low, thick beams, he ordered a brandy and sat near the granite hearth. Smoke and the smell of alcohol drifted around him. He could break the betrothal, or allow Miss Pencavel to do so, if he revealed his bad character. She was not yet in her majority, so would be perfectly in her right to rebuff him. They’d spent no private time together, so he couldn’t be accused of impropriety with her, as tempting a piece as she was.

She didn’t seem concerned that her reputation might be tarnished by putting an end to the agreement. In fact, she acted too anxious to dissolve their arrangement.

He fought a smile as he’d always savored a challenge.

Griffin took a long drink from his glass, the smooth taste warming him. Miss Pencavel was beautiful, and captivating, if you enjoyed being berated. But he had no need for such a creature. He was reluctant to take on a wife at all. Then why prolong this farce?

He only worried that the earl might threaten a breach-of-promise suit at a final refusal, though the man appeared to be of mild character. His father had often said his friend Pencavel should have more back-bone, especially when it came to his feckless wife. Hopefully—for
her
sake of course—the daughter didn’t harbor the same base inclinations.

A grizzled man approached. He wore worn linen breaches, along with the leather gaiters sported by the working class. “Lord Lambrick, is it?”

Griffin glanced up into the stranger’s dirty face. He’d made arrangements to meet someone here, but had to be careful. “I could be. Who wants to know?”

“Name’s Clem, sir. Might I sit?” The man sat before being invited. He leaned a grubby sleeve over the table. “I been told ‘ee be the man to speak to, by a mutual friend.”

“I have few friends. And you are too brash, and unwashed, for your own good.” Griffin sipped more of his brandy to hide his suspicion. The embers in the blackened hearth sizzled and snapped. “You wish to speak to me about what, specifically?”

“I might have somethin’ downstairs ‘ee should be interested in.” Clem’s foul breath blew across the table.

Laughter from a group of miners in soiled drill coats soared from another table. A buxom girl sashayed by with pewter tankards of ale. Her ample cleavage almost made up for her pock-marked face.

“Are you here to trap me into something nefarious, my uncouth fellow?” Griffin asked in mock severity even as his curiosity rose. “My revenge would be painful.”

“Don’t worry none, sir. I’m as honest as a man can be, an’ still be a criminal.” Clem chuckled coolly. “I heard you be wooin’ the earl’s pretty daughter. A ripe handful she be, ess?”

“That is none of your business. I’d watch my tongue if I were you.” Griffin’s defense of Lady Pencavel was stronger than he intended. He gripped his brandy glass, already anxious to be done with this fetid fellow.

“No disrespect, beg pardon.” The man tugged on his forelock, yet his gaze remained sly. “Come wi’ me, sir, an’ I’ll show ‘ee what I have. That’s what you’re here for, true?”

“You’re assuming much...and yes. But what you have may hold no interest for me at all as I am a cultured and discerning man.” Griffin didn’t trust this scavenger, but he’d dealt with many the low character before. He’d have to give their “mutual friend” a good dressing down if this was a mistake. “I insist you provide me with more details.”

“These items...they be like the guineas an’ shillings we has here, but from backalong times in Italy.” Clem snickered and beamed as if he’d offered the crown jewels.

“Very well, it might be worth a look. But I warn you, no tomfoolery. I am not a man to cross. Or run afoul of, or broadside, and so on.” Griffin nodded and rose slowly to his feet. He felt the cool brass handle of the pistol in his coat pocket, leery of footpads, swindlers and cut-purses.

****

The billowing smoke of London almost choked her, and Melwyn closed the coach window in irritation. “I haven’t visited here in a couple of years, and had forgotten what a beastly stink this city is. The kennels are teaming with offal.”

The coach rumbled over the raised pedestrian walkways, past brick, and wattle and daub buildings that leaned like drunks over a table—the few such structures left after the Great Fire of 1666. The numerous shop signs, which no longer dangled over people’s heads as a few had fallen and killed the passersby, fascinated Melwyn, and softened her pique at having to flee Cornwall.

“How did ‘ee snatch the coach and horses, again, without your father’s knowin’?” Clowenna pressed a handkerchief to her nose.

“I have my wiles. Anything to slip away from that vile Lord Lambrick.” She shivered in revulsion, yet his mesmerizing eyes haunted her dreams. “He’ll never have me to wed and bed. Whatever that might mean, since I’m a virgin and wouldn’t know.”

“But why London, m’lady? After five days o’ travel at indifferent inns?” Clowenna brushed soot from the shoulders of her spencer jacket, then rubbed her tailbone. “Me bum is numb.”

“To hide with my windowed aunt, of course. Doesn’t everyone have a widowed aunt tucked away in London for convenience?” Melwyn tugged her pelisse close. “For people of my class, it is
de rigueur
.”

At Grosvenor Square, in the exclusive Mayfair district, the two women alighted. The pale-stoned townhomes with Corinthian columns and several stories lorded over the park before them. Elegant carriages clattered over the cobblestones.

“Your father will know where we is.” Clowenna stepped around steaming horse dung.  “Your aunt bein’ his sister.”

“I’ll be of age in six months, and then he can’t force me to do anything.” Melwyn regretted she sounded like a child with that statement as she smoothed her wrinkled skirt.

“Six months be a long time, m’lady. What choices does ‘ee have, if not to marry?”

“I’ll marry a footman, if needs must, then run off before the fateful bedding, disguise myself as a man and join the navy and travel to the ruins in Italy and Greece.” Melwyn shoved aside her ire that her maid was correct in her assumption about choices, and approached the intricately carved door.

“Will be flogged in the navy, given your temper,” Clowenna said thoughtfully.

Melwyn laughed, for the first time in a week. She stared again at the door. She hadn’t seen her aunt for two years, and hoped she’d be welcomed. Hesitating, she turned to her abigail. “I still wonder how that brigand Lambrick knew about Mama.”

“We should o’ stayed in Cornwall an’ asked him.” Clowenna flicked a smut from her eyelashes. “An’ I doubt someone with your pride would marry a footman.”

“What do you mean, my pride? If I had any pride, I’d sit home and knit, smile blandly at all men, and sink into despair.” Melwyn jerked the bell pull. “Really, Clowenna, you have the bellicose manner of a virago. I don’t know why I keep you with me.”

“Because no one else puts up with ‘ee, m’lady?” Clowenna rolled her eyes. “An’ if ‘ee wasn’t so fair to look at, you’d never get away wi’ your mischief.”

The front door creaked open and the typical stiff-lipped butler stared down his long nose at them.

“Please inform her ladyship that her niece is here and seeks sequestering.” Melwyn walked past him as if he were invisible, as certain servants should be.

“Very good, m’lady.” The man shut the door, almost closing it on Clowenna.

Melwyn smelled the overstuffed rooms and noticed her aunt’s old-fashioned decor hadn’t changed since her last visit. The rococo still garnished everything like icing on a wedding cake.

“Who is here? I’m not at home to callers today. Who would be so rude as to break that rule?” an imperious voice asked. A woman with a voluptuous figure sauntered down the corridor. Her little lace cap sat atop a mountain of brown hair, like a snow cap on Mt. Everest. Her lilac-colored gown clung to her generous curves. She raised a quizzing glass. “Oh, dear, is that you Melwyn?”

“It is I, dear Auntie Hedra.” Melwyn rushed forward and kissed the air on each side of her aunt’s papery but still lovely face. The woman smelled like rose water, and a hint of Canary wine. “Can you hide me for a few months, six to be precise?”

“What have you done now, gel?” Her aunt arched a mouse-skin covered eyebrow. “Are you still the hoyden that my poor, delusional brother has never managed to curtail?”

“I am guilty as charged, Auntie.” Melwyn removed her pelisse and dropped it in the butler’s hands. “I’ve tried and tried not to vex Papa, but I just can’t squeeze myself into the paper-doll conformity that is expected. And
why
is it expected? Don’t women have brains the same as men?”

“We do, m’lady, but should use them quiet-like...the power behind the throne, an’ all that.” Clowenna stepped forward, still rubbing her butt.

“And did you travel all the way to London with no companion, only this person of questionable birth and actions that I see before me?” Aunt Hedra sneered. “This creature stares at me and not at her feet as she ought to.”