The Impetuous Heiress, page 4
She sighed. “In truth, her new husband is not penniless. Though I imagine part of the reason they went to Bordeaux was to stretch their shillings.”
Or dodge creditors. That was often the case. “It’s a wonder they didn’t take you with them.”
A shiver went through her. “I’d spent much time with Lady Hermione and her late husband through the years when Papa was away. They were childless, you know, and always welcoming. As soon as Papa was buried and the will settled, I happily let Hermione gather me up and take me home to her cottage in Hampshire.”
A maid entered carrying a tray.
“Oh, good.” Miss Parker stood. “Come along, Brother, and I’ll pour.”
She busied herself, silently serving until the door closed. “Your parents aren’t gossips, Mr. Lovelace, but I’ll ask you again, are you?”
She leveled another long look, one that hinted of a vulnerability that touched his heart.
“You saved me today, Miss Parker.” Let her believe that. In truth, he’d been plotting for days, seeking a way to spend more time with her. “I owe you my silence, and yes, I’ll tell you again, I’m capable of keeping private matters private. You have my word as a gentleman.”
She studied him a long moment, color rising in her cheeks, before reaching her hand across the table and grinning. “We must shake on it.”
Her face lit with an intelligence, and playfulness, and open-hearted good nature that stirred him. A man might be comfortable with a woman like Miss Parker.
He took the hand offered, flipped it over, and pressed his lips to her palm in a kiss that set her whole face aflame and his own heart beating wildly.
Resolved to End Things
28, December 1822
Loughton Manor, Leicestershire
Mel opened her eyes to a garden of blue and pink flowers, curling and bursting on the underside of the bed canopy.
Her neck ached, and when she turned her pounding head to the side, it felt like a rattling dried gourd. Across the room, a stream of bright light sliced through a gap in the window curtains.
She sat up and looked around. The bed was large, the chamber well furnished with a sofa and chairs, and this elegant tester bed with its crisp white sheets. A carved wooden mantel framed a hearth and the bright fire casting warmth into the room. An armchair had been drawn up to the bedside.
She fell back, remembering. Hermione had tricked her. They were at Loughton Manor, and though she’d informed Fitz that he was a free man, he’d held her, undressed her, put her to bed, and then hovered in that very chair.
For how long? She pressed her hands to her face. What time was it? Had it been only an hour or two since she’d fallen asleep, or was that morning light? They’d arrived here in a gloomy midafternoon that threatened more snow, but perhaps the skies had cleared and the sun was setting, and…
Dinner. We’ll have dinner together.
He’d murmured the words in her ear, and then she’d felt the touch of his lips.
Warmth uncurled in her, and this time it wasn’t her stomach rebelling. She pushed down the sudden desire, just as she’d fought the nausea for the last few days. The last several days.
Oh, very well, the last many weeks.
It wasn’t what Hermione suspected, dropping broad hints about Fitzhenry Lovelace, their scandalous afternoon at the inn, and her courses. Surely it couldn’t be that. Mother had managed only once to… No. She and Hermione had returned to Hampshire and some spoiled cheese. Or perhaps it had been the oysters they’d eaten at the inn on the way home that started everything. In any case, Hermione had recovered, but Mel’s own more sensitive stomach had not.
A distant thump reminded her that there’d been other noises the night before: voices at her bedside, Hermione’s, and another lady’s gentle tones. The pixie, Fitz’s mother, most likely. There’d been knocks on the door, footsteps across the room, whispers, and now that she thought about it, even some shouting and giggling and running feet in the corridor.
She rubbed her eyes and sat up, pressing a hand to her stomach. Hunger gnawed at her insides, blessedly unaccompanied by nausea. She must find something to eat.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she spotted a glass of water on the bedside table and took a deep swallow. The pain between her eyebrows eased.
A teapot sat on the table near the fire. She tossed aside the covers and reached for her robe—which someone had unpacked from her trunk and placed at the foot of the bed.
He was pampering her, or his mother was. Or perhaps they were this kind to all their guests, especially those who were ill. Though she doubted Fitz served anyone else as lady’s maid, at least not in his mother’s home.
Remembering the housekeeper’s shock made her chuckle.
Nevertheless, she must be firm with Fitz—and with herself. Fitz’s abandonment and her mother’s expected arrival had forced her to make a new plan, and she would see it through. His solicitousness wouldn’t change her mind, and she would tell him that when next they spoke.
She must end things with him and be on her way. Mother had left the reading of Papa’s will in a huff and a flurry, torn between badgering Mel for money and rushing the slippery Lord Starling to the altar. It was entirely possible that Mother didn’t know about the cottage in Durham. With luck, when she found Mel missing from Hampshire, she would retreat to her husband’s manor in Kent until spring.
The tea had gone cold, but Mel poured a cup anyway, and helped herself to a cake from the tray. When everything stayed down, and her stomach didn’t rebel, she set herself to searching for her things. No clothes press graced this room, but there’d been a washstand behind a screen and a dressing table.
The scene at the washstand had been a humiliating moment, but never mind. Surely no man wanted to see a lady engaged in tossing up all of her insides. If it put him off her, so much the better.
Someone had carefully placed her comb and brush. She gazed into the small mirror, remembering his face looking back at her with kindness and concern. He had been altogether unbearably handsome. And, considering his neglect, false. Certainly that.
An ornamental dish held her pins. He’d taken her hair down, scattering pins, as was his wont. Someone had kindly gathered them from the carpet.
Despite the wisps of remembered voices and noises, she’d slept through all of the unpacking and tidying-up. Papa always said she slumbered far too soundly to make a good soldier. An enemy could take her unawares.
She shrugged off the ghost of Fitz’s face in the mirror and put a hand to her hair. Straight as a stick it might be, but it was the devil to untangle when it was like this. With a sigh, she picked up the comb and crossed the room to the chair by the fire and began combing out knots.
The Proposal
25 September 1822
Lady Clitheroe’s Estate, Bedfordshire
The quiet tapping started soon after Hermione departed Mel’s bedchamber.
What now?
Her cousin had not quite wrung a peel over Mel’s head, but she had been displeased. Not so much about Mel’s and Mr. Lovelace’s late return to Lady Clitheroe’s, both of them bedraggled and wet after being alone together most of the day. Their dramatic arrival had stirred concern from their hostess, winks from the male guests, and glares from the young ladies stalking Mr. Lovelace.
Mel was, in a word, ruined. What nonsense. She pulled out a pin from her tangled coiffure.
Though Mr. Lovelace was appealing, a forced marriage to him—Hermione’s first impulse—reminded her of the one her mother had been planning for her. The thought of coercing an unwilling party to marry was abhorrent.
When she dismissed the suggestion, Hermione’s true concern became clear. Ruination required an early departure from Lady Clitheroe’s excellent cook and a swift return to the genteel poverty of Hermione’s Hampshire cottage.
The secret visit to Grandfather had also displeased her. For that, Mel felt a trifle guilty. But only a trifle, because Hermione would have wheedled the man for money, and Mel’s pride couldn’t have borne that. She’d sent Hermione off and prepared to deal with her own hair.
The tapping grew louder, probably the maid Hermione had sent away. She would do the same. Combing out her own tangles would give her much needed time to think.
She rose from the seat by the fire clutching her comb.
The latch rattled, the door eased open, and a figure entered.
She gasped. “Mr. Lovelace.”
He quietly closed the door and took her hands. “You are well?” he asked.
He’d changed to dry clothing and was fully dressed, while she was in her nightgown and robe.
“Yes,” she said, distracted by the warmth radiating from him, remembering his kiss on her palm, for heaven’s sake. “What are you doing here?”
“Your cousin did not berate you too badly?”
She scoffed and smiled. “She’ll greatly miss the fine meals when we return home. We’ll leave the day after tomorrow.”
He pried the comb from her hand and drew her closer to the fire, seating her and then kneeling before her.
Alarm bells clanged, a cannon boomed along with them, and every one of her nerves tingled as they had in the inn when he’d pressed his lips to that most sensitive part of her hand. She’d been wooed by men just as handsome; men both strong- and weak-willed, men who were crafty and men who were dolts. The army had men of every variety, and though she’d come close, she’d never lost her head. Or her maidenhead.
Yet.
“We must talk,” he said.
She inwardly shook herself. “If you recall, talking is what caused our delay.” They’d talked on the journey to Grandfather’s, and again after they’d left. And then, his innocent-but-not-innocent kiss had loosened her tongue even further—and his. They’d talked through the late afternoon and into the evening, through a meal and another round of tea. They’d shared stories about their childhoods and he’d spoken with such a deep fondness of his parents, and siblings, and nieces, and daughter that she’d been more than a little touched.
They’d also talked of investments and politics and trade. The rain had lifted long before they’d departed the inn.
“Yes, and I don’t regret one moment of it,” he said. “Will you make me the happiest of men? Will you marry me, Miss Parker?”
“Marry?” The cannon in her chest boomed again. “Don’t be s-silly.”
He seated himself next to her and kissed her, a soft press of his lips to hers, sweetness laced with a heated promise of more.
She drew away. “It’s not necessary. You don’t need to save me.”
“I see that I need to convince you. How shall I go about it?” He traced his fingers over her cheek and onward. A pin flew, and a lock of hair slipped over her shoulder. “You being you, I’ll start with the pragmatic reasons.” His breath tickled her ear as he leaned close, spotting and removing hairpins. “Even as we speak, there are gossips in their bedchambers writing letters to friends reporting on our absence together, alone, for the whole day; our stop at an inn together, alone, and our return.”
Together. Alone.
More pins and hair fell, like the elements of her plan scattering about her.
“Your grandfather’s recommendation that you marry the proper sort of man is a sound one. You are knowledgeable, Miss Parker. Brilliant, actually. Courageous, but not foolish. I could tell that from your conversation with Mr. Sawley. And I have a seat in the Commons.”
It went without saying that he would have a seat in the Lords when his father died, but he’d made it very clear to her that afternoon that he loved his father as much as she’d loved hers, and was in no hurry to claim the title.
The remains of her coiffure collapsed, and his fingers combed through her hair.
“You’re brilliant, and you’re beautiful, Miss Parker. Mary Elizabeth.”
“Mel,” she whispered.
“Mel?”
“It’s what my close family call me.”
“Mine call me Fitz for Fitzhenry.”
The name suited him, noble as well as seductively derived from the French. “Son of Henry?”
“Yes. Henry is my father’s name.”
He said no more, only watched her, steady and unblinking, while her heart thumped and clanged and she tumbled into his midnight blue gaze. His full lips quirked, his hands reached for her and she went willingly.
Master Fitz’s Fatal Failing
28 December 1822
Loughton Manor, Leicestershire
The door latch turned, setting Mel’s nerves on edge, but it was only Hermione.
“You’re awake.” Hermione opened the door wider for the sturdy young maid behind her who carried a pitcher and towels. “This is Maggie, come to dress you and do your hair, and then you and I will go down to breakfast.”
“Breakfast? I slept the afternoon and night through?”
“You did. And Lord Loughton by your side well into the evening. It took Lady Neda herself to pull him away to join the children at dinner, and then later, to send him off to his own bed. He was so worried about you he would have sent for the midwife—”
“The midwife?”
Hermione waved a hand. “She being the only medical practitioner available. Their surgeon has gone off to visit his family for the Yuletide, and the apothecary has come down with a lung fever. Isn’t that right, Maggie?”
“Yes, madam. Mrs. Astrop’s been ever so busy. Run ragged, she says, what with babies picking their arrivals in the worst weather and folks needing medicine for the lung fever.”
The maid had just returned through a side door with a fresh chemise, stockings, and her stays.
“I’ll go and pick out a dress.” Hermione swished over to the same side door. “Your best gown, I think.”
“My carriage gown will do.”
“No, it will not. You’re not running off anywhere today. Not as ill as you were yesterday.”
We’ll see about that. Mel stood and submitted to being dressed. “Who is here? Surely all of the Lovelace family are not present.” Dear God, she hoped not.
“No, not at all, miss,” Maggie said. “Mr. George left yesterday with Lady Glanford, and Mr. Selwyn and Mr. Rupert stayed in London for the Yuletide. Mr. Fitz’s married sisters are away also, spending the season with their families. And his sister, Miss Cassandra has gone off for a week with her friend, Miss Cartwright.”
In September, Fitz had provided a list of his family members, but trying to remember all of them made her dizzy. “So who is left?”
“Well, there’s her ladyship, his mother, and himself, of course, and his sister Miss Nancy, and the boys, Master James and Master Edward, and Lady Glanford’s little Lord Glanford and Master Ben, and his lordship’s Miss Mary.”
“Mostly children.” How astonishing.
“You like children.” Hermione had returned carrying the one good day dress Mel donned for village social events. “It will be very jolly.”
“It’s a wonder Lord Loughton didn’t stay at that hunting party.”
“He planned to,” Maggie said, “and right riled up he was when her ladyship sent Mr. George to fetch him back.”
Mel shared a long look with Hermione. In a great house like this, there was no better source of information than a gossipy servant. Hermione, she knew, would not mind her probing. How else was one to learn anything?
“I suppose Lady Loughton wanted him here when I arrived,” Mel said.
“Oh, that wasn’t why. It had to do with young Lord Glanford and little Master Ben.” Maggie cheerfully cinched and tied the stays then reached for the gown. “Why, this blue will set off the shine in your hair, if I do say so myself.”
“I recall that Lord Glanford was a particular friend of Lord Loughton,” Hermione mused. “No doubt Lady Neda wanted him to spend time with the boys.”
“’Tweren’t that, not entirely. He’s the boys’ guardian and hadn’t been tending to them.”
Mel glanced back at the girl who was fastening her gown. “What do you mean?”
Maggie’s hands paused and her cheeks colored. “Beg pardon, miss. I’ve spoken out of turn. His lordship is ever such a good man, but with all that happened, his wife and the babe dying and the old lord’s sudden passing… sure and he didn’t mean to neglect his wards for so long, and he must be ever so sorry… and with Mr. George taking him to task and then taking Lady Glanford to wife, all will be well.” She took in a breath, her color still high. “If you’ll sit now, I’ll do up your hair, which, if I do say so, is ever so shiny and lovely. And if you’ve time I can tease a few curls—”
“No, do not bother with curls. A simple twist and a tuck will do.”
While Maggie bit her tongue and worked, Mel fumed and counted her blessings.
On the evidence of several days and two eventful nights, she’d pledged herself to an honorable man. Or so she’d thought.
Oh, Hades, she’d been dazzled by his handsome face, and his kisses, and the way he’d made her feel. The way he still made her feel. And Grandfather had given his blessings to their betrothal.
And then—out of sight, out of mind—his letters had tapered off and stopped. He’d swiftly fallen out of the love he’d declared. Having lived among soldiers and seen the male species at close view, she shouldn’t be surprised.
But neglecting those boys…
Maggie tucked in the last pin and stood back.
“Well done,” Hermione said.
Mel studied her reflection. A few curls tickled her cheeks and altogether softened her appearance. “How did you manage it? It usually takes me half the day to produce a curl. Thank you.”
Pleased, Maggie smiled and began tidying the room, but Mel sent her away and turned on her cousin. “Did you know of this business about Fitz and Glanford’s boys?’
Hermione chewed on her lip and sighed. “Neda hinted at trouble.”
