Reggie smiled for the first time in this unsettling visit. The young countess had written him a formal thank-you for the wedding gift, so her desire to greet him in person must mean she had forgiven his boorish behavior. Perhaps that was one less sin that he would fry for. “I came across the score years ago in a bookshop. I knew that someday I would know who it was for.”
“You could have chosen nothing that would please me more.” She started to turn away. “I'm sorry to have interrupted. I will leave you to your business.”
“I'm about to depart,” Reggie said. “Unless you had something else you wished to discuss, Wargrave?”
The earl shook his head. “No, there was nothing more.” Reggie hesitated, knowing he should thank his cousin. Not all men in the earl's position would have the honesty to compensate for the sins of their predecessors. But Reggie was still far too angry about his uncle's duplicity to be gracious. He gave an abrupt nod of farewell and left, barely aware of the butler, who ushered him from the house.
Outside, Reggie tossed a coin to the footman who had been walking his horses, and vaulted into his curricle. But after settling in the seat, he simply held the reins in his strong hands as the horses tossed their heads, impatient to be off.
Strickland. Bloody, bloody hell. He now owned the place that had been the site of his greatest happiness and most profound grief, and he had no idea whether he felt pleasure or dismay.
His lips tightened, and he snapped the reins over the horses, turning the carriage neatly in the street. He needed a drink.
Better yet, he needed a dozen.
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Caroline Davenport drew aside the curtain and watched her husband's cousin depart, noting the tension in the whipcord lean figure as he drove away. Dropping the curtain, she asked, “How did he react to the news?”
“Fortunately I didn't expect gratitude, because I received none. Cousin Reggie is not a man who likes surprises. If I had simply cut off his allowance, it would have been easier for him to accept.” Richard limped to the window and put an arm around his wife's waist. “He was also understandably furious to learn that my late, unlamented grandfather had illegally deprived him of his own estate.”
Settling herself against her husband, Caroline said, “Do you think that becoming a man of property will make a difference to him?”
Richard shrugged. “I doubt it. My grandfather must bear much of the blame for ruining him. Reggie once told me that he had wanted to go into the army, but the earl would not allow it. Instead my cousin was kept on a short leash, his debts paid but his allowance insufficient to give him any real freedom.”
“What a horrid old man your grandfather was.”
“True. But Reggie must take some of the blame himself. He's highly intelligent and almost uncannily perceptive about people. Becoming a rake and a drunkard were not his only choices.”
Caroline heard the regret in her husband's voice. He took his responsibilities very seriously, and the part of him that had made an exceptional army officer grieved at the waste of Reginald Davenport's potential. More than that, Reggie was the nearest relation on the Davenport side of the family, and Richard would have liked to be on friendly terms with him. But that was an ambition unlikely to be fulfilled. “Do you think he is too old to change his way of life?”
“Reggie is thirty-seven years old and very well practiced in vice and outrageousness,” Richard said dryly. “Rakes sometimes reform, but drunkards almost never do. Lord knows, I commanded enough of them in the army. Most drank until they died of either bullets or whiskey. I expect my cousin will do the same.”
Caroline rested her head against her husband's shoulder. Reginald Davenport had once terrified her, but today she had seen him sober and polite, and for just a moment he had revealed a quite devastating amount of charm. There was good human material there, and she understood Richard's desire to help his difficult cousin. It was an effort likely to fail. Still ... “Miracles do happen. Perhaps one will this time.”
“If Reggie really wants to change, I'm sure he is capable of it. But I doubt that he will try,” Richard said pessimistically. He drew his wife's slim form more closely to his side and forced himself to put aside all thoughts of his wastrel cousin.
He had done what he could. Hard experience had taught him that there was only so much one man could do for another.
Chapter 2
It was a bad day even before she awoke; whenever Alys had the nightmare, she was out of sorts for hours. Thank God, it came only two or three times a year.
In the nightmare she was always just outside the French doors, hearing the drawling voice ask with bored malice, “Why on earth are you going to marry a bossy Long Meg like her? Ten feet tall and all bones. Not exactly the sort to warm a man at night, and with her managing ways she'll keep you under the cat's paw for sure.”
After a brief pause her beloved would reply, not defending her, not mentioning the love he had eagerly proclaimed to her face. “Why, for money, what else? She'll do well enough. Once I'm in control of her fortune, you'll see who rules the roost.”
The words triggered the familiar nausea and the shattering pain that had driven Alys to fly from the only life she had ever known. But this morning she was in luck. Before the dream could continue to her nadir of degradation, something tickled her nose. She sneezed, a sure way of waking up when one is near the surface of sleep.
She opened her heavy lids to see a radiant nymph of dawn. The shining vision perched on the bed had guinea-gold curls, a flawless heart-shaped face, and eyes of a guileless cerulean blue. The sight of Miss Meredith Spenser, Merry to her intimates, had been known to gladden the hardest of hearts. While Alys's heart was by no means hard, it took a great deal to gladden her at this hour of the morning. The sight of a young lady looking so ruthlessly cheerful, so early, was not enough.
Before she could do more than glare balefully at her ward, a soft furry object fluttered across her face. Alys sneezed again. “What the devil ...” She heaved herself up in the bed. “Oh, it's you, Attila. I warn you, cat, the next time you wake me up with a tail in my face, I'm going to find a dog to feed you to.”
Dividing her scowls impersonally between Merry and the cat, Alys pushed her heavy hair from her face. The braid she used at night had come untied as she tossed in the nightmare, and now her hair was down around her shoulders. It would require at least an extra five minutes to brush out.
“Heaven help any dog that encounters Attila.” Smiling, Merry handed over a thick mug of steaming coffee. “Here, Lady Alys, just the way you like it. Lots of cream and sugar.”
Wrapping her long fingers around the mug, Alys shoved the pillows up behind her and subsided against them as she took a grateful swig of coffee. “Ah-h-h ...” she sighed as the hot liquid began to restore life to her component body parts. Her brain clearing, she asked, “Why did I want to get up this hour?”
Merry grinned, looking much less like a porcelain doll. “The planting begins today, and you charged me to be sure that you rose early.”
“So I did.” Alys gulped more coffee. “Thank you for waking me. Maybe I'll keep you after all.”
Unabashed, Merry retorted, “You have to keep me, remember? You voluntarily agreed to take on me and the boys, and now you're stuck with us. At least until you find some demented male who will take me off your hands.”
Alys laughed, a sure sign that the coffee was restoring her natural good temper. “All the males who cluster around you are surely demented, but it's always from unrequited love. My only problem is keeping them at a safe distance.”
She gazed fondly at Merry. Her ward had the kind of petite blond beauty that Alys would have killed for when she was a girl. It would be easy to hate Merry if she weren't such a thoroughly nice person. The girl was also intelligent and had a worldly wisdom that was downright frightening in a young lady of a mere nineteen summers. She occupied a niche in Alys's life that partook equally of daughter and best friend, though sometimes it was hard to tell who was raising whom.
Since her guardian was showing signs of life, Merry said, “One of the farm lads left a note for you. It was addressed to Lady Alice, A-l-i-c-e, of course.”
“It's too early in the day to apologize for how my name is spelled.” Alys yawned again. “Besides, if they did know how to spell it correctly, they would probably pronounce it wrong, What did the note say?”
“Something about chickens.”
“That would be Barlow. I'll stop by his place today.” Alys finished the coffee, then swung her long legs over the side of the bed and fumbled for her slippers. “It's safe to leave now, I won't fall asleep again. Take that imbecile cat with you and feed him.”
Merry chuckled and leaned over to scoop the giant long-haired tomcat into her arms. Attila was a substantial armful, a crazy quilt of stripes and white splotches. His regal expression made it hard to remember the straggly, starving kitten Alys had pulled drowning from a stream. These days he assumed that rulership was his natural due, and peasants who didn't provide his breakfast were beneath contempt. He yowled accusingly as Merry carried him from the bedroom.
Alys's head sank onto her hands as she sat on the edge of the bed, her good humor fading under the lingering depression of the nightmare. After a moment she sighed and got to her feet, pulled on her worn red robe, and went to sit at the dressing table. As she combed her fingers through her hair to loosen snarls, she stared at her reflection and dispassionately catalogued her appearance in the way that she had learned was the best antidote to the dream.
Though she wasn't the sort of woman a man would desire, at least she wasn't really ugly. Her complexion was too tan for fashion, but her features were regular and might have been called handsome if she were a man. It was just that her face, like the rest of her, was too large. She stood five feet nine and a half inches in her stockings, and was as tall or taller than most of the men at Strickland.
Having undone the snarls, she began brushing out her hair. Back in the days when a fortune had endowed her with spurious desirability, her heavy tresses had been called chestnut. Now that she worked for a living, it was merely brown, a color of no particular distinction. Still, Alys privately thought her hair was her best feature. It had grown back even longer and thicker after the time she had furiously chopped it off, and it gleamed with auburn and gold highlights. But it was basically just brown hair.
Parting it straight down the center of her head, she started on the first of two braids. After finishing them, she wrapped both about her head in a prim coronet. In the early morning sun, her most bizarre feature was clearly visible; her right eye being gray-green while her left was a warm brown. Alys had never met anyone else with this particular trait. It seemed unfair to be both odd-eyed and freakishly tall.
The thought produced a slight smile, thereby displaying her other regrettable feature. Usually she forgot the idiotic dimples that appeared when she smiled or laughed, but seeing herself in the mirror reminded her how utterly incongruous they looked on a great horse like her. Doll-like, golden Merry was the one who should have had dimples, but perversely, she didn't. Life was definitely not fair. If Alys could have given her dimples to her ward, she would have done so with great delight.
Scowling eliminated the dimples, so Alys scowled. Her dark, slashing eyebrows were fearsome even when she was smiling, and made her scowl truly intimidating.
Then she turned from the mirror, having completed the ritual of assuring herself that she didn't look as dreadful as the nightmare always made her feel. A pity that today she must supervise the planting and would wear pantaloons, linen shirt, and a man's coat. Her usual dark dresses were better at restraining the excesses of her figure, but the male clothing required by some of her work made it all too obvious that she had a normal assortment of feminine curves. Given her ridiculous size, the effect was somewhat overpowering. Not that all men were repelled. She had seen enough sidelong glances to guess that some were curious about what it would be like to bed a Long Meg. They would never find out from her.
Jamming her shapeless black hat onto her head, Alys Weston, called Lady Alys to her face and other things behind her back, thirty-year-old spinster of the parish and highly successful steward of the estate known as Strickland in the county of Dorset, stamped down the steps to begin supervising a long day of work in the fields.
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The day turned out to be even more tiring than anticipated. The new seed drill Alys had bought was temperamental, to the unconcealed delight of the laborers who were only too willing to say that the fool contraption would never work. Having considerable aptitude for mechanical things, Alys got the device to perform after an hour of crawling around underneath it on the damp earth.
She spent the rest of the day covered with dirt, too busy even to stop for lunch. Merry, bless her, had sent Dorset blue vinny cheese, ale, and the local hard rolls called knobs, which Alys ate while riding to the sheep pasture to check on the health of some lambs that had been sickly.
By the end of the day, the scoffers were reluctantly conceding that the seed drill was effective. They liked it even less now that it worked. Alys was hard-pressed to keep her tongue between her teeth. It had been a continuing battle to get these taciturn males to accept her orders, and even after four years of proof that her modern methods worked, every new idea was a battle. Damn them all anyhow! she swore as she rode home, the spring sun setting and a sharp chill in the air. There wasn't another estate in Dorset as productive, nor another landowner or steward that provided for displaced workers the way she did.
Sometimes she wondered why she bothered.
When she returned to the steward's house, Rose Hall, Merry was embroidering demurely in the parlor and the boys had not yet returned from school. Alys took a quick bath and changed to a dark blue wool dress. Then she joined her ward for a glass of sherry and a quick glance through the post. As Merry laughed at the misadventures with the seed drill, Alys came across a letter franked by her employer, the Earl of Wargrave.
Frowning, she slit the wafer and opened the letter. Most of her communications were with the estate lawyer, Chelmsford, rather than the earl. She had never met either of them, of course. If one of those respectable gentlemen learned that the steward was female, she would surely lose her situation.
The old earl had never left his principal seat in Gloucestershire, but the new one was young, active, and conscientious. She worried that someday he might turn up unexpectedly. Luckily, on his one visit to Strickland, he had given enough warning for her to decamp with the children, leaving a message that illness in the family had called her away. She left a stern warning to everyone at Strickland not to reveal her sex.
After a week by the sea in Lyme Regis, Alys had returned to find that no one had betrayed her secret, the books had been carefully inspected and approved, and Wargrave had left a complimentary letter that included several intelligent suggestions for her consideration. The man may have spent most of his life as a soldier, but he was clearly no fool. Apart from that one visit, Wargrave had left her alone to run the estate as she saw fit. It had been an ideal arrangement, and she'd hoped that matters would continue unchanged indefinitely.
Her thought must have been unlucky. Alys inhaled sharply as she read the letter. Merry looked up from her embroidery questioningly. “Is something wrong?”
Alys gave a brittle smile. “I knew I should have stayed in bed this morning.”
Merry set the hanks of silk thread in her workbox and crossed to Alys's side. “What has happened?”
Silently Alys handed the letter over. Lord Wargrave wished to inform Mr. Weston that Strickland had been transferred to his cousin, Reginald Davenport. He had no idea what his cousin's plans for the property were. However, the earl had been most impressed by Mr. Weston's abilities. Should matters not work out with the new owner, Wargrave would be delighted to find him another steward's position, perhaps running Wargrave Park itself. Apologies for the inconvenience, etc., etc.
“Oh, dear,” Merry said softly. “This could complicate matters somewhat.”
“That is one of the greatest examples of ladylike understatement I have ever heard.” Alys stood and began pacing around the room in long, angry strides.
“Perhaps it will make no difference,” Merry said hopefully. “I believe I've read of Mr. Davenport. Isn't he some kind of sportsman? Perhaps he'll live in London and collect the rents and never come down here.”
“It's one thing for Lord Wargrave never to visit when Strickland is just one of a dozen estates. But if this is the only property Reginald Davenport has, he's bound to come down here occasionally. For the holidays. House parties for friends. Hunting. He may decide to live here part of the year.” She came to a halt in front of the fireplace and stared at the flickering yellow flames. “There is a limit to how many ailing relatives I can invent to escape from him.”
Merry frowned. “You do have a contract.”
Alys shrugged as she lifted the poker from its brass stand. “A contract isn't much better than the will to uphold it. Davenport could make my life so miserable that I won't want to stay.”
“Isn't it possible that he might want to keep you on? You've done wonders with the property. Everyone says so.”