Almost a Bride Read online

  She dipped her quill in the inkstand and began. She scratched out the first line and tried again. Boris and Oscar padded between the table and the parlor door. Usually Arabella went for a ride at this time in the afternoon and the dogs raced off their surplus energy alongside her horse—

  Her horse . . . did Renegade still belong to her or did he now belong to Jack Fortescu? She stopped in mid pen-stroke. Renegade had been bred on the estate, so technically belonged to the estate. Strictly speaking, he was on loan to her . . . had been for five years.

  The quill dropped to the parchment, spattering ink. What else didn’t belong to her? Her clothes . . . well, surely they did. They had been bought with estate funds, of course, but . . . no, that was absurd. Boris and Oscar whined and she hushed them with uncharacteristic impatience. They were hers, at least. They had been a birthday gift from Sir Mark Barratt, the pride of a litter delivered by his adored Red Lady.

  What little jewelry she had surely belonged to her. There were a few pieces of her mother’s and the pearl set her father had given her when she made her debut at Court. A waste of money he’d called it when she’d returned home without a suitor on the horizon. But he hadn’t taken them back. Although she supposed that technically, again they could be said to be part of the estate. Of course, she had a tiny stipend from her mother’s jointure. It might go some way towards paying for her keep, but it wouldn’t enable her to live independently.

  Oh, it was impossible. Her head was spinning and the heat in the room was suddenly unbearable. She jumped up. “All right, we’ll go for a ride.” Two feathery tails wagged in vigorous enthusiasm. She went through to her bedchamber, slipping her arms out of the morning gown. It was the matter of a moment to climb into britches and a riding skirt of serviceable green broadcloth. She picked up the matching waistcoat, then let it fall to the bed. Briskly she tucked her plain white linen shirt into the waistband of her skirt. It was too hot for coats and waistcoats and she was not going out in public, she wouldn’t even leave the estate boundary. She sat down to pull on her boots, the dogs now panting eagerly by the door. She grabbed her gloves and whip, picked up her hat, then tossed that to the bed. She needed to feel the wind in her hair.

  “Come on, boys.” She opened the door and they bounded ahead of her down the stairs. It was close to three o’clock and the duke would be closeted in the library with Franklin and Mrs. Elliot, so she was unlikely to run into him—nevertheless, she took the back stairs and left the house through the scullery.

  “Renegade’s a bit dozy this afternoon, my lady,” the groom informed her as she came into the stable yard. “’Tis the heat, I reckon. Sendin’ us all to sleep.”

  Arabella agreed with a quick smile and perched on an upturned rainwater butt to wait for her horse to be saddled. “Right powerful brute came in this morning,” the groom observed casually as he led her horse from the stable. “An’ a nice set of carriage horses. Four prime ’uns.” He cast her a slyly questioning glance as he flung the saddle over Renegade’s back.

  “I imagine his grace of St. Jules has only the best,” Arabella observed with a cool nod. “I would expect him to be a fine judge of horseflesh.”

  “Well, someone certainly is,” the groom declared. “You should take a look at ’em, m’lady. The gelding’s in the fourth stall . . . t’others at the end of the second row.”

  Arabella slid off the water butt and wandered towards the stables, trying to appear as if she had only a cursory interest in the new arrivals. Which was far from the case. The raking chestnut was a magnificent beast, but he would take strong hands and an even stronger will to manage. She thought of the duke’s lean, elegant hands and realized with a shock that she hadn’t known she’d noticed them. But she could remember every detail, from the manicured filbert nails to the smooth pale skin over the knuckles, to the slender wrists visible beneath the foaming lace of his cuffs. But slender didn’t mean weak. She could imagine a tensile strength there, the strength of a man who could use that rapier as it was intended to be used.

  Telling herself not to be ridiculous, she turned from the stall and marched out of the stable block into the sunshine. Renegade tossed his head when he saw her and Boris and Oscar ran in ever-decreasing circles around the cobbled yard. The groom led the horse to the mounting block and Arabella swung herself into the saddle. She leaned forward to pat the animal’s neck. “Wake up now, Renegade.” He snorted and tossed his head again, then walked sedately out of the yard.

  Arabella directed him to the paddock and then gave him his head along the riverbank that ran at the bottom of the field. She relaxed into his smooth gait, exhilarated by the wind whipping her hair across her face, clearing her head, somehow smoothing the besetting tangle of problems.

  Perhaps there was an empty cottage on her relatives’ land in Cornwall. It wouldn’t have to be grand, just a simple two-room dwelling would suit her. Her stipend would pay for the bare necessities and she could grow her own vegetables. She would have a garden, maybe a couple of fruit trees. She could barter produce for meat, flour . . . she didn’t have to live on charity. There had to be ways she could earn enough to keep body and soul together once she could find her own roof. And so long as she could transport her orchids, she could continue to breed and sell them as she did now. At the moment it was merely a hobby, but it could become a truly paying concern.

  She was feeling almost at peace, almost as if the future had now been decided to her satisfaction, when she finally turned Renegade towards home. Boris and Oscar lolloped beside the horse, their wild energy for the moment exhausted. They trotted into the stable yard and Arabella cursed under her breath. The duke and Peter Bailey were standing in the middle of the yard, seemingly engaged in an earnest conversation.

  They both turned as she entered the yard. Peter Bailey swept off his hat. His kindly, intelligent countenance showed deep distress as he walked towards her. “Lady Arabella, I’m so sorry to hear of his lordship’s death.” He laid a hand on her bridle as he looked up at her.

  She nodded with a rather wan smile. “It was very sudden, Peter. Did the duke explain the circumstances to you?”

  “Yes, at some length, madam.” Peter’s expression became even more doleful and his voice was barely above a whisper. “It’s a very strange disposition of the Dunston lands and fortune, if I may say so.”

  Arabella nodded again. “I don’t understand how it happened, but my brother was, as you know, a law unto himself and he had every right to dispose of what belonged to him free and clear.”

  Peter contented himself with a half bow of acknowledgment. They would not speak ill of the dead, but like everyone else on the estate he had had no illusions about Frederick Lacey’s general character, and the circumstances of the earl’s death as recounted by the duke had done nothing to change that.

  Jack waited discreetly for a minute or two, not wanting to disturb the whispered exchange. He didn’t think he’d ever before met a respectable woman so careless of her appearance. Coatless, hatless, hair whipped into a tangle by the wind, her nose smudged with dust, perspiration beading her forehead, Lady Arabella looked perfectly at home in a stable yard and could have been any farmer’s daughter coming in from a day raking hay in the fields. He thought of Lilly, his cool, elegant mistress, who never had a hair out of place even in the throes of passion. For some reason the contrast brought an involuntary smile to his lips.

  With an alerting cough he strode across the yard towards them. “I thought you were too busy to ride this afternoon, ma’am,” he said with a dry smile. His gaze drifted over her, settling for an instant on the pronounced swell of her breasts beneath the thin shirt. An interesting counterpoint to the marked indentation of her waist and the flare of her hips in the green skirt.

  “Exercising the dogs is one of my afternoon tasks,” Arabella responded, uncomfortably aware of that swift flickering appraisal. She wished she had worn a coat, or at least a hat. She must look like a gypsy, as disheveled and sweaty as she had
been that morning in the conservatory, and the duke was as infuriatingly immaculate as ever. In fact, she was sure he’d changed his shirt since she’d last seen him.

  He laid a hand on the smooth, warm neck of her horse, then palmed the soft, velvety nose. “And it can’t be done in company,” he mused with the faintest hint of a question mark.

  “The speed I ride with the dogs is not conducive to conversation, your grace,” she stated, and nudged Renegade’s flanks with her knees, urging him over to the mounting block. The sooner she brought an end to this awkward conversation, the better—she was at enough of a disadvantage as it was.

  Jack stepped away from the horse but walked beside him. “Beautiful gelding,” he observed.

  “Yes, he is.” Arabella swung herself down from the saddle onto the block and turned away from the duke. “Peter, if you’d care to come to the house after you’ve completed your business with his grace, I’d be glad to talk some things over with you.”

  “With pleasure, ma’am.” The agent bowed again.

  Arabella gave him a brief smile of thanks, handed her horse’s reins to the groom, whistled up the dogs, and left the yard without so much as a glance towards Jack Fortescu.

  Jack looked after her, stroking his chin, watching the sway of her hips as she walked away with a swift and purposeful step. Then he shook his head, as if giving up the search for a solution to a puzzle.

  Peter broke the strained silence, observing rather tentatively, “Lady Arabella is a great favorite with the tenants. They’ll be heartbroken to hear this news. She knows them all by name, knows all their children. They know they can come to her in any crisis and she’ll help . . . whether it’s food or money or they need more time to pay the rent. I don’t know what they’ll do without her.”

  Jack kept silent.

  After a short pause, the agent continued, “When it became clear that Lady Arabella had no intention of making an early marriage I tried to persuade her father to settle some part of the estate upon her, but . . .”

  “He refused?” Jack glanced sideways at his companion.

  “Not precisely. It was more neglect than refusal. I cannot imagine that he would ever have envisaged a situation like this. He thought, of course, that Lord Frederick, when he inherited, would take care of his sister.”

  “And he didn’t.”

  Peter shook his head. “I tried to persuade him to make provision. But . . .” Again he let the sentence trail off, before picking up more strongly, “But to be quite frank, my lord duke, there was little love lost between the earl and Lady Arabella.”

  “I see.” Jack inclined his head in faint acknowledgment of a fact that didn’t surprise him in the least. Now that he’d met the sister. Anyone more unlike Frederick Lacey would be hard to imagine.

  Peter cleared his throat and continued, “Lord Frederick had little or nothing to do with the management of the estate. If you’ll pardon me for saying so, your grace, it’s a crime that the one member of the family who ever cared about the welfare of the tenants and the good management of estate affairs should be the one with no stake.” He looked with a mixture of defiance and anxiety at the duke. “You’ll forgive my plain speaking, sir.”

  “Certainly,” Jack said. “But I should tell you that if this is a plea for me to settle something on Lady Arabella, it will fall on deaf ears.” Offering the lady a palatable alternative to his proposal would not advance his cause.

  Peter flinched slightly at the coldly matter-of-fact statement. He decided he cared for this new master even less than he had cared for the previous one. At least the earl had had an inalienable right to his land.

  “You will find, however, that I am not careless of my tenants’ well-being and I appreciate a well-managed estate,” the duke continued. “I trust you’ll do me the favor of remaining in your position.” He looked sideways again, reading the other man’s frozen expression with little difficulty. Lady Arabella was obviously dear to his heart.

  “I will remain for as long as you wish it, your grace,” Peter said stiffly.

  “Thank you.” The duke smiled and the agent had the strange sensation of suddenly finding himself in the presence of a completely different man. “And you may rest assured that I mean Lady Arabella no harm. I will not turn her out of house and home until she decides she wishes to leave.”

  Peter unbent a little. “You will be staying at the local inn, then. It’s a decent-enough post house.”

  Jack shook his head. “No, I’ll be remaining at Lacey Court.”

  The agent stared at him. “But . . . but . . . your grace, it’s not seemly.”

  “Lady Arabella considers it seemly,” Jack said gently. “I stand, after all, in place of her brother.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Now, explain if you please the tithing system you use.”

  _______

  It was just after five o’clock when Jack returned to the house. Peter had left him some time earlier, presumably to keep his rendezvous with Arabella, and the duke had continued his tour of the grounds alone. Everywhere he looked he saw the products of careful husbandry. The flower gardens were beautiful, evidence of skilled and loving care, and the home farm was a thriving affair. There were ducks on the duck pond, chickens in the henhouse, doves in the cotes, bees in the hives. The trees in the orchard were heavy with fruit, the hay in the fields ready for baling, the cows in the milking shed lowing anxiously for the evening milking.

  He was aware of the buzz of speculation as he made his tour. The dairymaids stopped churning butter for an instant when he entered the refreshingly cool dairy, but a red-cheeked woman skimming buttermilk spoke sharply to them and they returned to their task. A kitchen maid picking runner beans in the vegetable garden straightened from her task and stared openmouthed at this elegant visitor among her cabbages and potatoes. Jack gave her a brief nod, and blushing violently she turned back to her harvesting.

  If Peter Bailey was to be believed, the credit for this smoothly efficient and productive operation was to be laid at Arabella’s door. Jack knew well that while estates could run along well enough without careful supervision, they wouldn’t produce at their peak level without someone taking responsibility. Peter Bailey was a good agent, clearly, but he was still an employee of the estate, and Lacey Court and all its agricultural components showed the involvement of someone with a personal stake, an emotional one even.

  Surely the love Arabella had for her home would make her more likely to accept any proposition that would enable her to keep it? It was another string to his bow anyway, he decided, turning his steps back towards the house and dinner. He was ravenous, having eaten nothing since his dawn breakfast. He vaguely remembered Arabella offering him something at midday when she still assumed he would be returning to London, but since the conversation had taken a rather contentious turn at that point, the question of food had been lost. He hadn’t asked what time the lady of the house normally sat down to dine. In London he usually dined at around six o’clock, but he guessed that his hostess, if she could be called that, probably kept country hours. So he was keeping her waiting.

  He hurried into the shadowy cool of the hall. Franklin seemed to pop out of nowhere at the sound of the duke’s first footfall. He bowed in stately fashion, asking, “What time does your grace wish to dine?”

  Jack offered him a friendly smile, hoping to break through the steward’s stiff exterior. “As soon as I’ve changed out of my dirt, Franklin. I’ll not be above fifteen minutes.”

  Franklin, impervious to the smile, merely bowed again. “Very well, your grace. Dinner will be served in the dining room in fifteen minutes.” He turned and walked back into the shadows.

  Jack shrugged and took the stairs two at a time. He didn’t ordinarily give a second thought to whether his servants liked him or not. It was a matter of complete indifference so long as they did the job they were paid to do, but this situation was rather more delicate. These people hadn’t sought out his service. They would stay perforce, but he
would prefer they did so because they wanted to and not because there was nowhere else for them to go.

  His valet awaited him in the spacious apartments that had belonged to the earl of Dunston. “I thought the turquoise velvet, your grace. With the gold waistcoat.” He gestured with the clothes brush he was using on a coat of turquoise velvet edged in gold lace.

  “Yes, that will do fine,” Jack said, shrugging out of his riding coat. He stripped to his underdrawers and sponged away the day’s sweat and dust with water from the basin on the washstand. He intended to spend a pleasant, companionable evening in Lady Arabella’s company and if he kept his dinner partner waiting too long for her dinner, it might well get off to a bad start.

  Ten minutes later he stood in front of the cheval glass, adjusting the foam of lace at his throat. As usual he wore his hair unpowdered, but that was the only failure to conform to strict sartorial rules for an evening party. He wondered what efforts Arabella had made. She had looked tidy enough in the apple-green morning gown, but before and after that short interlude the only candid adjective for her appearance was careless. But she would have made some effort for dinner.

  He fastened a diamond pin into the ruffles, reflecting with a private smile that he would like to have a hand in her wardrobe. Her unusual coloring and her rather Junoesque form were her assets and would lend themselves to an innovative, even daring style. He could think of at least half a dozen modistes who would slit one another’s throats for the chance to dress the duchess of St. Jules.

  “Something has amused you, your grace?” His valet handed him an embossed silver snuffbox.

  “Nothing of moment, Louis,” the duke said, slipping the snuffbox into his coat pocket. Why on earth was he thinking of this prospective marriage with pleasure, planning it as if it was intended to be a perfectly normal arrangement? Frowning now, all amusement vanished from his eyes, he walked to the door. “By the way, I trust your accommodations are satisfactory?”