Valentine Read online

  Theo hadn’t returned when it was time to dress for dinner, and Elinor felt the first stirrings of anxiety. “Did Lady Theo mention where she was going this morning, Foster?” she asked as she crossed the hall on her way upstairs.

  “I don’t believe so, my lady.” Foster lit the branched candelabra on the long table by the front door.

  “Are you concerned, ma’am?” Sylvester had overheard the question as he left the library, a ledger under his arm.

  “No … no, of course not.” Elinor spoke with an assurance that didn’t convince Sylvester, or the butler. “Theo often goes out all day. It’s just that usually …” She shook her head. “She does usually send a message if she’s going to be particularly late.”

  Sylvester waited until she was out of earshot on the first landing; then he said, “Is there cause for concern, Foster? Should we send some people in search?”

  “I don’t believe so, my lord. Everyone knows Lady Theo. If an accident had befallen her, someone would have sent word.”

  “But she could have had a fall in a field somewhere,” he suggested.

  “Possibly, my lord, but unlikely.” Foster turned toward the baize door leading to the kitchen regions. Sylvester sighed. The message had been clear: The butler didn’t share his family concerns with an outsider.

  The butler didn’t, the bailiff didn’t, the housekeeper didn’t. And as for the tenants and villagers, he might as well be a fly-by-night visitor for all the attention they paid him.

  He stalked upstairs to his own room, where Henry was laying out his clothes for the evening.

  Henry cast his lordship a quick glance and decided this was not a good evening for chat. When Major Gilbraith wore that particular look, a wise man kept a low profile. He poured hot water into the basin and busied himself brushing down a dark-blue coat and cream pantaloons while the earl washed the day’s dust from face and hands and put on a clean shirt.

  “Henry, how do you find the people in these parts?” the earl asked abruptly, stepping into his pantaloons.

  “Find ’em … not sure what you mean, sir.” Henry passed his lordship a starched square of snowy linen. “Will you be wanting the diamond stud, sir?”

  “Thank you.” Sylvester fastened the folds of his cravat with the diamond stud and peered critically at his reflection before turning for his coat. “Do you find them friendly?”

  “In the taproom of the inn, sir, folks are friendly enough,” Henry said, wondering where this was leading.

  “And in the house?”

  “A bit wary, like,” Henry admitted, smoothing the coat over his lordship’s shoulders with a pat and a twitch. “Weston has a good cut, m’lord. Better for you than Stultz.”

  Henry had been a gentleman’s gentleman before joining the army and finding himself in a French prison with the sorely wounded, fever-racked Major Gilbraith. He was more than happy now to have resumed his previous profession and, after the long months of nursing the major back to health, was a more than competent nurse when the crippling headaches struck. Indeed, he was the only person Sylvester could bear to have around him, to witness the hideous degradation of that nauseating, intolerable agony.

  “Do they say much about the new earl?” Sylvester asked with a wryly quirked eyebrow.

  “Not too much … leastways not in my hearing, m’lord.”

  “No, I suppose they wouldn’t. What about Lady Theo?” “Oh, she’s everyone’s darlin’, m’lord,” Henry said. “Can’t do a thing wrong. The apple of his late lordship’s eye.”

  “Mmm.” Sylvester picked up his hairbrushes and tidied his close-cropped curls. “Spoiled, to put it another way.”

  “As I understand it, sir, she’s suffering something powerful over her grandfather’s death,” Henry said. “Leastways that’s what folks say. She’s not herself, they say.”

  “I sincerely hope not,” Sylvester murmured, slipping a lacquered snuffbox into his coat pocket before going down to the drawing room, bracing himself for another strained evening with Theo.

  Emily and Clarissa were standing at the open window when he entered the drawing room. They were gazing out intently across the lawn where the evening shadows were lengthening.

  “I don’t imagine she’d come back this way,” Clarissa said, turning back to the room with a sigh. “Not from the stables.”

  “No sign of the truant, then?” Stoneridge asked, trying to sound cheerfully casual. He crossed to the pier table. “Sherry, ma’am? Or would you prefer madeira?”

  “Sherry, thank you. No, Theo’s not back yet.” Elinor’s smile was tight as she accepted the glass he brought her.

  “Foster seemed convinced that if there’d been some mishap, one of the tenants would have brought news.”

  “Yes, that’s true … but …” She bent to her embroidery. “The estate is very large and there are many areas that are off the beaten track.”

  “Perhaps we should send …” Emily’s soft voice faded as Theo’s energetic tones came from the hall.

  “They’re not already at dinner, are they, Foster? I can’t believe how late it is…. Oh, Mama, I’m so sorry….” The drawing room door flew open and Theo ran across the room, holding out her hands. “I had no idea how far I’d ridden. Were you dreadfully worried?” She bent to kiss her mother, seizing her hands in a fierce grip.

  “I was about to become so,” Elinor said calmly, but the relief in her eyes was clear as the tension left her shoulders.

  “Well, I’m back, and absolutely starved.” Theo threw her hat, gloves, and whip onto a side table. “And I’m truly, truly sorry for frightening you all.” She offered her mother and sisters a conciliatory smile. “Am I forgiven?”

  “I’d prefer it didn’t happen again,” Elinor said, sipping her sherry.

  “It won’t.” Theo poured herself a glass of sherry, ignoring the earl, who was standing by the fireplace, resting one arm on the mantel shelf, his own glass in his other hand. “It must be dinnertime,” she said hungrily. “The most wonderful smells are coming from the kitchen.”

  Her boots were mud splattered, the skirts of her riding habit white with dust, the collar of her shirt creased and limp, her hair escaping from its pins in a blue-black cloud around her face. She looked tired, but healthily so, and thoroughly disheveled.

  Abruptly, Sylvester realized that he’d reached the end of his patience. He glanced at Lady Elinor, expecting her to say something about her daughter’s unceremonious entrance and appearance. Elinor merely sipped her sherry. What had she said earlier that morning about having indulged Theo’s unspoken grief long enough … that it was time to shock her out of her present frame of mind? Elinor had told him to follow his instincts, and right now his instincts told him it was time to make a stand.

  “Forgive me, Cousin Theo,” he said crisply, “but I don’t consider riding dress to be appropriate at the dinner table.”

  Theo whirled on him, her eyes dark. “And what business is it of yours, pray?”

  “It happens to be my dinner table, cousin; therefore, I consider it to be very much my business.”

  Theo went white beneath the gold of the sun’s bronzing. “Yours?”

  “Mine,” he affirmed quietly. “And I don’t accept riding dress at my dinner table.” Stretching his arm, he pulled the bell rope hanging beside the fireplace.

  Foster appeared immediately in the stunned silence. “Would you ask Cook to put dinner back for fifteen minutes?” the earl requested politely.

  He turned back to Theo as Foster left. “You have fifteen minutes, cousin … unless, of course, you’d prefer to have a tray in your room.”

  “Mama?” Theo swung round on her mother, her eyes both enraged and appealing.

  Elinor didn’t look up from her embroidery. “Lord Stoneridge is entitled to set his own rules in his own house, Theo.”

  How could her mother betray her in this fashion? Stunned, Theo stared at Elinor’s bent head.

  Lord Stoneridge glanced pointedly at the clo
ck.

  Clarissa came swiftly across the room. “Come, Theo, I’ll help you change. It won’t take a minute.”

  Theo shook herself free of her numbed daze. Her eyes focused, flitting across the earl’s impassive countenance before she turned to her sister. Her voice was distant but even. “No, it’s all right, Clarry. I find I’m not in the least hungry.” Turning on her heel, she left the drawing room, her skirts swishing with her long, impatient stride.

  Hotheaded gypsy! He hadn’t intended to deprive her of her dinner, but it damn well was his house. Sylvester refilled his glass as Elinor calmly instructed Clarissa to pull the bell for Foster again.

  “Foster, you may serve dinner immediately,” she said when the butler appeared. “Lady Theo won’t be joining us.”

  “I hope she’s not indisposed, my lady.” Foster looked concerned.

  “I don’t believe so,” Elinor said, laying down her embroidery. “Shall we go in, Lord Stoneridge?”

  Sylvester offered his arm, following her lead.

  THEO’S EMPTY SEAT glared at them throughout a miserably uncomfortable dinner. Elinor did her best to maintain a steady flow of small talk with her daughters and the earl but knew that she fooled none of them, although the earl at least kept up his end of the conversation in the face of his cousins’ reproachful eyes. Elinor found herself wondering why he persevered with Theo in the teeth of such violent opposition. The material benefits of this marriage would be all on Theo’s side. If she couldn’t see that, why didn’t the earl simply wash his hands of his generous impulse?

  The meal finally wound to a desultory close, and Elinor, clear relief in her eyes, rose with Clarissa and Emily. “We’ll leave you to your port, Stoneridge.”

  He stood up politely as they left the room and then with sudden decision picked up the port decanter in one hand, two glasses between the fingers of his other, and followed them out. He crossed the hall and ascended the stairs two at a time, unaware of Foster’s startled observation.

  Outside Theo’s room he paused, raising his arm to knock with his elbow, and then changed his mind. This was an offensive where surprise was probably his strongest weapon. Using the little finger of the hand that held the glasses, he lifted the latch and nudged the door open with his knee.

  The light was dim, but he could see Theo sitting on the window seat, a hunched white figure with her knees drawn up, her chin resting atop them.

  “Why are you sitting in the dark?” he asked, stepping into the bedroom.

  “Since it’s your house, my lord, I imagine you’ve dispensed with such courtesies as knocking before entering,” she commented bitterly.

  “Not at all,” he returned without rancor, hitching a chair with his foot out from the corner of the room. “But I assumed that if I had knocked, you’d have turned the key in my face.”

  He sat astride the chair, facing her, his arms resting along the back, supporting his burdened hands. Deftly, he filled the two glasses from the decanter and extended his arm toward her. “Port, cousin?”

  Theo uncurled from the window seat and reached for one of the glasses.

  “I’m not sure how much good it’s going to do you on an empty belly,” Sylvester observed, setting the decanter on the floor at his feet.

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “Yours, and you know it. You didn’t have to stomp off in a tantrum.”

  Theo sipped her port. It slid comfortingly down her tight throat and settled in her stomach with a warming glow.

  “You insulted me,” she said, adding acidly, “not that that’s unusual.”

  “And you’ve been insulting me at every opportunity since we met. We can’t go on mauling each other in this manner, Theo.”

  There was silence in the dusk-filled room. Sylvester regarded her over his glass. Her discarded riding habit lay in a crumpled heap in the corner of the room, and she was wearing nothing but her chemise and drawers, her hair tumbling loose down her back. It was the first time he’d seen it unbraided, and he realized it was long enough for her to sit on.

  She seemed unaware of her scantily clad appearance, frowning into the gloom, lost in her own thoughts. Then she said abruptly, as if there were no bones of contention between them, “Thank you for the portrait.”

  It was the first time she’d said anything civil to him, and he blinked in genuine surprise. She’d been staring at her father’s picture, now hung on the wall behind him, when he’d entered the room.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t get moved earlier,” he said. “It was an oversight.”

  “Why? Why did it have to happen?” With shocking suddenness she hurled her empty glass to the floor as she sprang to her feet. The glass shattered but she didn’t notice. Tears poured soundlessly down her cheeks, and her face was contorted with anguish. Her voice filled the room in a low torrent of rage at fate’s injustice. “It’s so unfair! He was so young … he meant so much to everyone … he was so important … and now everything’s gone … lost … wasted….”

  She was grieving for her father as well as for her grandfather, and sometimes, through the wild, tumbling storm of words, Sylvester found it hard to distinguish which man at any one moment was the focus of her sorrow. But it didn’t matter. Sylvester understood pain and loss and the raging fires of injustice, and he knew that for the moment she wasn’t aware of him in the room. The whole fetid seething cauldron of grief poured from her in words and tears, and she stood still in the middle of the room, her hands clenched in tight fists.

  Only when she kicked blindly at a piece of broken glass with her bare foot did he move. Swinging himself off the chair, he caught her against him, lifting her clear of the floor.

  “Be still,” he murmured into her hair. “You’ll cut your feet to ribbons.”

  She struggled in his hold, although he sensed that she was so far gone in her agony that she’d no sense of who or what he was. He held on to her, stepping backward to the window seat, sitting down with her, clamping her against his chest, feeling the heat of her skin beneath the thin chemise, the desperate shifting of her thighs and buttocks in his lap, and despite the circumstances, his body hardened in response to the sinuous wriggles.

  Eventually, her struggles ceased as the violent paroxysm of weeping eased a little. She still sobbed but rested against him, her face buried in his chest. He stroked her hair, murmuring soothing nonsense words.

  He didn’t notice when the door softly opened and then closed just as softly. Elinor stood outside, her hand on the latch, deep in thought. She’d come up to check on Theo, and the sound of her desperate sobbing had reached her through the closed door. She’d not been expecting the sight that greeted her on the other side of that door.

  Well, she’d told the earl to follow his instincts when it came to his dealings with Theo. It seemed he was taking the instruction to heart. Probably she should wrest her daughter from his arms. But Elinor didn’t think she would. She returned downstairs to await developments.

  Slowly, the tempest subsided, reality asserted itself, and when Theo renewed her struggle to free herself from the iron arms holding her, it was no longer a blind reaction to her anguish.

  Sylvester, recognizing her return to the world, loosened his grip immediately. Theo raised her head and stared up into the gray eyes that were for once not cool, ironic, or mocking.

  “What’s happening? What are you doing?” she demanded, sniffing, wiping her running nose with the back of her forearm.

  “I’m not doing anything,” he said. “You’re sitting on my knee looking like the fall of Troy, and all I’ve got to show for it is a ruined coat.” He brushed at his sodden coat with a rueful grimace before pulling a handkerchief out of his breast pocket.

  “Hold still.”

  Theo submitted to having her nose wiped because she was too taken aback to protest. She pushed tear-soaked strands of hair from her wet cheeks and drew a shuddering breath through her mouth deep into her aching lungs. Her nose was blocked, her throat was sore a
nd scratchy, and she felt as weak as a kitten.

  But she also felt drained and peaceful, as if some poison had been drawn from her. Her head fell against his shoulder, and she lay with her eyes closed, waiting for strength to flow back into her weakened limbs.

  With some calculation Sylvester decided he didn’t have much option but to stay as he was until she was ready to move.

  He traced the curve of her cheek with his finger. She shifted on his lap again with predictable results. Deliberately, he slid his hands beneath her, cupping her backside in his palms as if preparing to tip her immediately off his knee, but for longer than was strictly necessary, his hands stayed where they were.

  “Up.” At last, with a brisk movement, he propelled her to her feet. “Pm sorry to unsettle you, gypsy, but having you on my lap with nothing but those flimsy undergarments covering your nether regions is more than flesh and blood can bear.”

  Startled, Theo looked down at herself and realized what he meant, and suddenly she was acutely conscious of the intimate lingering warmth of his hands on her bottom. She flushed but flew to the attack. “I didn’t put myself in your lap,” she said, but her throat was too scratchy for her usual vehemence. “And I didn’t invite you in here, either.”

  She shivered suddenly as her heated skin cooled in the night air, emphasizing the scantiness of her attire. She took a hasty step backward, instinctively trying to put some distance between them, as if it would lessen the indelicacy of the situation.

  She cried out as her foot scrunched heavily on a shard of broken glass.

  “For God’s sake, that was what I was trying to avoid in the first place.” Sylvester leaped up and pushed her sharply so that she fell back onto the bed, her bleeding foot waving in the air. “Stay there until I’ve picked up this mess.”

  Theo lost interest in displays of outraged modesty. They seemed pointless and certainly too late. She hitched herself into a cross-legged position on the bed and peered at her cut sole. “Did I break the glass?”

  “Yes.” He looked up from his knees, shards gathered in his cupped palm. “Don’t you remember?”