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The smiling face tipped towards him. ‘Does Bart go in for…for calling men out?’
‘Duelling? Not by choice, I don’t suppose. But if you’re asking if he’s well enough equipped to protect himself, then, yes, he certainly is. He could do some damage with pistol, rapier and gloves, too. And the young lady writer, whoever she is, has chosen an excellent business partner, with Bart’s head for accounts.’
‘It’s pity he won’t be offering for her. Even if she is a commoner.’
Rayne smiled, which Lady Waverley took for sympathy, but which was, in fact, nothing of the sort. Lydia Barlowe. L.B. How careless of her, he thought. How endearingly, wonderfully careless.
Letitia’s proposal to visit Strawberry Hill House at Twickenham, just across the river from Richmond, had an ulterior motive that no one but Mr Waverley could be expected to guess, for it was where Mr Horace Walpole had written, in 1764, his famous Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. Others, including Letitia, were to follow this trend, literally, while readers made pilgrimages to the amazing house-cum-castle he had built to satisfy his every Gothic whim. No serious romantic novelist could afford to miss such a place with its towers and turrets, chapel, cloisters and chambers littered with historic curios.
The great man himself, son of a Prime Minister, had died seventeen years ago and now it was possible for visitors to look round by arrangement with the housekeeper, a favour that Letitia had gone to some trouble to secure for her party of pupils, tutors and chaperons. She was not inclined to hurry through the rooms, having made it so far with notebook and pencil, sketching and scribbling as they were shown into the long gallery, the library, past carved screens, mock-tombs and suits of medieval armour, gloomy portraits and up winding spooky staircases.
Miss Sapphire Melborough, however, having other things on her mind, had soon seen enough of Strawberry Hill and was incautious enough to enquire of Mrs Quayle, in an undertone bordering on despair, how much longer they might be stuck here. She had asked the wrong person, for Mrs Quayle was thoroughly enjoying herself despite the appropriate melancholic expression. She passed on the plaintive query to Letitia, which Sapphire had neither wanted nor expected her to do.
‘Why? Who wants to know?’ said Letitia.
‘Miss Sapphire. She’s had enough.’
‘If it’s her ankle, she can rest on the bench over there and wait.’
‘I don’t think it’s her ankle, Letitia.’
Beckoning to her pupil, Letitia noted the pouting rosebud mouth. ‘What is it, Sapphire? We’re only halfway round. There’s much more to see.’
‘But I…well, you see…’ Pulling in her bottom lip, she nibbled at it.
‘See what?Are you unwell? Do you wish Mrs Quayle to…?’
‘No, Miss Boyce, only that I expected to be home by now because Lord Rayne is to bring my new horse and give me my first lesson on it. I’m afraid I shall miss it if I stay here much longer.’
‘Sapphire, I made it clear three days ago that on Friday we’d be having an extended visit. If you forgot to tell your parents, that is your responsibility. My claim on your time takes priority, I’m afraid, and when we’ve concluded our visit here, we shall be taking tea at the tea gardens in Twickenham. I told you that, too, if you recall. You’ll have to have your riding lesson tomorrow instead, won’t you?’
Sapphire could not stifle the sigh. ‘Yes, Miss Boyce. But Lord Rayne will not be pleased to be kept waiting.’
‘Lord Rayne’s displeasure is not my concern, Sapphire. You’ll be writing an account in your journal of this visit next week, so I suggest you pay attention to what you’re seeing.’ Or not seeing. As if I care a fig about Lord Rayne’s arrangements.
The cream tea at Church Street’s sunny tea garden could not be hurried any more than the tour of the house, so it was past time for dinner when the carriages arrived back at Paradise Road after taking the day girls home. Letitia did not go up to Richmond Hill House with Sapphire, having no wish to hear about the missed riding lesson.
There was much to be written about by candlelight that evening.
The following day, Saturday, was bright but blustery, a stiff breeze rattling the window frames and rolling the last of the blossom across the walled kitchen garden like drifts of snow. Wandering alone, Letitia peered into the glass frames while the covers were up, at the strawberry beds white with flowers, at the budding cucumbers, the tiny spears of chicory and lamb’s lettuce. In the furthest corner, the gardener’s son was shovelling gravel on to the path and raking it over. Like coarse oatmeal, Letitia thought, adjusting her spectacles more firmly on to her nose. Fine wisps of hair whirled around her face as gusts of wind moulded her cotton day dress into the contours of her body and, to find a place of shelter, she opened the door of the stone-built potting shed built against the high wall, and entered.
She was instantly enclosed by the earthy aroma of potted plants and trays of seedlings covered by layers of damp newsprint. Racks of tools hung along one side, with buckets and pots, hoses and string, raffia and bell jars. A long low bench was covered with sacking as if the old gardener had used it to indulge in an occasional nap, and a pile of sacks at one end suggested a pillow. Intrigued, she bent to look more closely, to confirm her theory.
A long curling hair lay upon the pillow, clearly not the gardener’s. Lifting it carefully away, she held it up to the high dusty window where a beam of light caught its shining gold. A sound behind her made her turn sharply and to frown in annoyance at the hefty figure of the gardener’s son filling the doorway. One hand was hooked over the top edge of the door. ‘Can I ’elp you, ma’am?’ he asked.
His question, and the quiet way he asked it, made her feel as if she’d naughtily strayed out of bounds. Nor did she like being trapped in so small a place. ‘No, thank you…er…Tom, is it?’
‘Ted,’ he replied, not moving or looking politely away, as if he knew of her discomfort and was enjoying it. No more than twenty years old, he had already filled out with brawn, his shirt sleeves rolled up to show well-muscled sunburnt forearms, his front buttons opened too far down for any lady’s eyes to dwell there for more than a second. ‘Can I do anything for ye?’ he asked.
Damsels being pursued and seduced by young males glowing with rude health was the stuff of her novels, and this the kind of situation not too far removed from some of the scenes in them, though so far no major part had been taken by the gardener or his son. Then, she had imagined a kind of helpless excitement rather than the raw anger she now felt at the threat of trespass by an uncouth lad. The girls and Mrs Quayle were in Richmond, shopping. Gaddy was still in her room. The gardener, Ted’s old father, was nowhere to be seen. This present danger was very far removed from the harmless entertainment of fiction where one could turn a page and return to safety.
Still frowning, she asked, ‘Have you finished the path?’
‘Yes, ma’am. All done.’ His glance at the sack-covered bench lingered and returned to her, but not to her face, and she knew how he must have seen the clinging cotton of her dress revealing her figure as she bent to the glass frames.
‘Then I’ll find you another task to do,’ she said, suspecting that he would twist whatever she said to mean something different. ‘Where’s your father?’
‘Oh, we don’t need to bother about him, ma’am. He’ll not be in for a while yet. Got a task for me, ’ave you? Is that what you want, eh?’ He spoke slowly, insolently, his words taking on an intimacy far beyond their worth, his pleasant features as relaxed as his body, his blue eyes alight with anticipation.
‘Ted, will you move away from the door, please? I want to go out.’
But he took his hand from the top edge, stepped further inside and began to close it, darkening the confined space. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘I know what you want. It’s what all you young lasses want.’
Letitia’s hand groped behind her, closing over the rim of a terracotta pot. In the very moment she brought it up to hurl at Ted’s approaching head, the door re-opened with a crashing force, slamming it into the lad’s rear end as he ducked to avoid the missile.
Like an angry bullock, he roared and turned to rush upon the intruder, but his progress was interrupted by a shining Hessian boot across his shins that sent him flying headlong into a stack of logs outside the door. The pot that Letitia had thrown shattered upon the door frame, and as she picked her way through the shards to find out who her rescuer was—supposing it to be Mr Waverley—she was in time to see the stocky Ted about to launch himself upon Lord Rayne.
Assuming that his lordship would certainly go down like a skittle, she let out an involuntary yelp of fright for, though she had once written of a brawl between two rivals, she had never seen a blow landed. She did now, but only just, delivered with such lightning speed that Ted did not see it coming at all. She heard a sickening crack as Rayne’s fist connected with the cheek, and the grunt that followed, the thud as Ted fell back hard into the log pile where he slithered and stayed, swaying to one side.
‘Get up!’ Rayne snapped, standing over him.
Ted struggled and clawed his way up, holding an arm out against the possibility of a second punisher. ‘Don’t,’he mumbled.
‘Get off home!’
‘Yessir…I wasn’t…I didn’t….honest.’
‘Out!’
Slouching, clutching at his face, Ted staggered away with a sullen glance at Letitia. ‘She wanted it,’ he muttered, ‘as much as t’other one.’
This insult was not allowed to pass any more than his first had been and, before he had taken another step, he was yanked backwards by a strong hand beneath his arm, only to be knocked sideways by a fearsome blow beneath his jaw, laying him out into a patch of feathery fennel. This time, he did not move.
‘Oh, you’ve killed him,’ Letitia whispered behind her hand.
‘If he opens his mouth once more, I will,’Rayne said, looking round for a water-butt. Taking up the full bucket of water from beneath the tap, he swung it back and discharged the contents over the prone body. Then, placing the empty bucket upon Ted’s chest, he stepped back, removed Letitia’s hand from her mouth and drew her like a parent with a child along the path to the door in the wall that led to the house garden.
Closing the door upon the last ugly scene, he released her. ‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ he said, ‘but unfortunately there was no choice. Are you all right?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you for being there. I’m very much obliged to you. If I’d known he…oh, dear…it must begin to look as if I’m forever getting myself into…well, the truth is that…’
‘The truth is, Miss Boyce, that you do seem to attract a rather immediate kind of response; while I can understand why it happens, I find it more difficult to understand why you allow it to happen. One could, I suppose, attribute it to not being able to see clearly, but surely that cannot always be the case.’
‘Lord Rayne,’ she snapped, coming to an abrupt standstill on the path, ‘I do not allow any of these…these incidents to happen to me. Do you really believe that…oh…this is too much! Why should I care a fiddler’s thumb what you believe? I have thanked you for dealing with this latest incident but, if you recall, you yourself behaved just as badly, if not worse, because Mr Waverley did not arrive in time to stop you.’
‘Miss Boyce, Bart would not have arrived to find what I might have found just now if I’d been five minutes later. It’s fortunate that I saw him following you as I entered the garden, but my point is that you need some protection before something truly serious happens to you. Bart is all very well, but he’s not here when he’s needed, is he? Nor does he have any obligation to be.’
‘Why should a woman need protecting in her own garden, my lord?’
‘Why? Because you appear to employ untrustworthy servants. That’s why.’
‘I don’t employ him. He’s the gardener’s son, helping out.’
‘Helping himself, more like. How many others has he helped out?’
Immediately, she remembered the long curling blonde hair that could have belonged to at least three of her seven pupils, or one of the maids. Surely that young lout had not forced himself upon one of them there, in the potting shed? There was a path that connected her garden with Mrs Quayle’s next door along which the three boarders came to lessons each day. But could they also have used it at night to meet that dreadful man? It was unthinkable. They were all highly respectable young women. Like herself. Like the young heroines in her novels. Highly respectable, but eager for adventure, and very vulnerable. Were these young creatures simply more audacious than her, or more foolhardy?
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I intend to find out. If this incident has served no other purpose, my lord, it’s certainly alerted me to the danger of—’
‘Of not being protected sufficiently and of not being able to see what you’re doing half the time. There’s an easy remedy for both those problems, Miss Boyce.’
‘That’s not what I was about to say. You are determined to put me in the wrong. Very well, allow me to turn the tables, for once. In future, kindly refrain from organising my pupils’ riding lessons while they’re still in my care. I have first call on their time and I shall not be releasing any of them before the hour of five, unless there’s a very exceptional reason.’
‘So you think I’m free before the hour of five, do you?’
‘You were yesterday, according to Miss Melborough.’
‘Then she was mistaken. I told her father I would bring the new horse over after dinner, which is exactly what I did. I spent an hour or so with them in the paddock while it was still light. Are you jealous, Miss Boyce?’
‘Of what, exactly?’
‘Of me spending time with the Melborough wench?’
‘Oh do rid yourself of that addle-pated notion, Lord Rayne. Spend whatever time you wish with whomever you wish, my sisters included, but don’t expect me to tailor my time to fit yours.’
‘Why not? You’re prepared to accept all the advantages and compliments of having your pupils well mounted and taught by the best riding master while refusing to co-operate in any way. In fact, Miss Boyce, you appear to be hellbent on making it difficult for everyone concerned.’
Letitia was silent. He spoke no more than the truth, placing her yet again at a disadvantage. Fortunately, he did not pursue the matter while there were more side-saddle-trained horses to be acquired for the others. Enough time for her to revise her timetable, if she could swallow her pride.
They stopped just in front of the summerhouse as if by mutual consent, in view of what had happened earlier. So far, her anger had overcome other emotions, but now she felt again the sickly fear as the little shed had darkened and the man’s swaggering presumption told her that she would not be able to hold him off. Was it mere coincidence that she had been made a target three times since placing herself beyond the protection of her family and friends? Had she been less than careful? In London, Uncle Aspinall had taken the place of her father, but now he, too, was miles away, and the only man to offer her his protection, as opposed to being recruited like Mr Waverley, was one of those who had treated her discourteously. And yet, just a moment ago, he had knocked a man down for less.
Rayne was waiting for a sign from her but, having no particular direction in mind, she took his left hand in hers and turned it to look at the knuckles that she was sure would hurt. A grey-blue bruise was already forming.
‘I usually wear gloves,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’
Removing her spectacles, she looked more closely. Tears prickled behind her eyelids as she was reminded of her narrow escape and, although she would not submit to pathetic weeping, she was unable to hide the delayed reaction that trembled her hands. Ted had not touched her except with his menace, which had been far worse than the thorough kisses Lord Rayne had given her.
Her shaky breathing was noticed as she struggled to control herself. His hand took possession of hers, with her spectacles, drawing her over the threshold into the shady summerhouse. ‘Shh!’ he said. ‘It’s all right. No harm done. You must tell your gardener that his son is not welcome. There’s no shortage of labour. My brother’s man will find someone for you, if you wish.’
‘I’b dot crying, really I’b dot,’ she sniffed.
‘No, of course not.’
Even so, when he drew her very gently into his arms and held her like a bird against his chest, she stood quietly to absorb the safety and strength of his embrace. ‘Why did you cub?’ she whispered.
‘To take you for a drive in my curricle.’
‘But that would give the impression that we’re good freds, by lord. And we’re dot, are we?’
‘By no stretch of the imagination are we good friends, Miss Boyce.’
‘It would dot look good.’
‘On the contrary, it would send out quite the wrong kind of message. Unless…’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless I were to be seen taking you to my sister’s house at Mortlake. A social call. That might just disguise any enjoyment we might be tempted to feel.’
She drew herself out of his arms. ‘I should not be allowing this,’ she said, wiping her nose in an unladylike gesture on the back of her hand.
‘Because you may find that you’re enjoying it?’
‘Because I must set an example to my pupils. If they were to see…well, anyway…it won’t do, will it? Young ladies of good birth—’
‘Like yourself.’
‘—like me, do not allow Corinthians to—’
‘Thank you.’
‘—to embrace them—’
‘As they do in novels.’
‘Lord Rayne, would you stop interrupting me for one moment while I try to finish what I’m saying? Please?’
‘Certainly, Miss Boyce. What were you saying?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. You’ve put me off.’
‘Then go and get changed, and we’ll drive up to Mortlake.’
Predictably, she balked at his tone. ‘Do all your female acquaintances promptly do your bidding, my lord?’
‘Yes. All except one. Five minutes?’
‘Multiplied by three. Shall you wait in the parlour?’
‘I shall wait beside my curricle, if it’s still there.’
‘Well, then, try not to look like the cat that’s swallowed the canary, if you please. We cannot have anyone getting ideas.’
‘Put these back on,’he said, holding out her spectacles, ‘and you’ll see that I’m wearing my deepest scowl of discontent.’
‘Thank you,’ she snapped, putting them on as they entered the house. ‘I don’t quite understand why I’m agreeing to this. We have nothing pleasant to say to each other.’
Not in the least put out by her cynicism, he held the door open for her. ‘Then we shall have to resort to our usual mode of bickering like terriers. See you outside in ten minutes.’
‘Fifteen. Not a moment sooner.’
Ten minutes later she tripped down the front steps wearing a cream-muslin day dress under a spencer of apricot kerseymere and a floppy straw hat tied round the crown and under the chin with a long apricot scarf. Peeping from beneath the banded hem of her dress, a pair of apricot kid half-boots completed the captivating picture.
‘Where are your spectacles, woman?’ he said, curtly.
‘In my reticule.’
‘Well, you’re not going to see much without them. Put them on.’
‘I cannot. They ruin the effect.’
‘Miss Boyce, you may take my word for it that the wearing of spectacles out of doors will become all the rage, once you are seen wearing them while being driven in my curricle. Now, put them on, if you please.’
Reluctantly, she fished them out of her cream silk reticule but, because she was wearing kid gloves, they swung upsidedown before she could catch them. Taking them from her, he held them open at eye-level. ‘Hold your head up…there…that’s better. Now I can see you,’ he said with a smile, adjusting a wisp of hair beside her cheek.
‘You’ve obviously had some experience as a lady’s maid,’ she said, blushing at this very public intimacy.
‘It would be useless to deny it. One must be versatile, these days.’
Climbing up into the confined space of the curricle, she bit back yet another rejoinder, realising that she would not always be allowed to have the last word with this man, as she did with her pupils, and that to allow him to have it, once in a while, was by no means as unpleasant as she had thought. Quite the opposite. Absorbed in Rayne’s dexterity with whip and reins, with the classy paintwork and upholstery of the curricle and the prancing matched bays, she said very little, experiencing for the second time that morning the strange sensation that things were happening outside her carefully laid plans.
But the last thing she wanted was for her name to be romantically linked to his when it could cause nothing but problems and eventual heartache. Could she depend on his discretion when, only the other day, he had made his intentions plain? Would his daring sister jump to her own conclusions about their unsettled relationship? Would he encourage her to?
As it turned out, Lady Dorna’s reaction to her brother’s newest interest was to be the least of her concerns, for they were seen during that brief journey by at least five acquaintances of Letitia’s sisters and mother, who would be eager to take the news back to London that same day. Known to be extremely fastidious in his choice of companions, Lord Rayne had never before been seen taking up a bespectacled female in his curricle.
Letitia was more disturbed by this unforeseen complication than Rayne, who brushed it off airily as being no one’s concern but theirs. Forbearing to labour the point that she could ill afford to upset her mother more than she had done already, she said no more about it while imagining the indignation at Chesterfield House later that day.
Both the drive and the visit to River Court went well, Letitia making more effort than usual to respond to Rayne’s charming company if only to show her appreciation of his earlier gallantry. It was unfortunate, she thought, that the problem of her mother’s forthcoming exasperation could not be dealt with as promptly as Ted’s.
As ever, Lady Dorna was delighted to see them together, and their return to Richmond began with some amusement at her assumption of a close friendship. ‘Nonsense!’ said Letitia as the curricle swung at full tilt out of the gates. ‘One single drive doesn’t mean anything at all.’
‘Of course not. Quite meaningless.’
‘I hope she doesn’t think—’
‘No fear of that, believe me, or she’d not have married Elwick, God rest his soul.’
‘Was he a dear man?’
‘Dear?’ he said, easing the horses round onto the road with a turn of his fist. ‘Hardly. As dull as ditchwater. She didn’t need his title. Didn’t need his wealth, either. Can’t think what she needed him for, come to think of it.’
‘She has two beautiful children.’
He glanced at her, hearing a wistful note creep into her voice. ‘So could you, Miss Boyce,’ he said, quietly. ‘Quite easily.’
So quietly did he say it that she could hardly believe her ears, though she blushed to the roots of her hair.
She would have preferred it if he had allowed her to go into the house alone, but he seemed intent on escorting her into the hall as if he’d known she might need some support. With a glance towards the hall table and its array of top hats, gloves and canes, the footman gave her the news she would rather not have heard. ‘Sir Penfold and Lady Aspinall are waiting in the drawing room, ma’am. And Lieutenant Gaddestone and Miss Gaddestone are with them.’
‘Then they’ll be staying for lunch. Tell cook, will you?’
‘I believe cook already knows, ma’am.’
‘Good. Lord Rayne, will you stay, too?’ She did not think he would.