An Improper Arrangement

“Good morning to you, sir,” the valet chirped cheerfully, his voice setting up an anvil chorus between his employer’s ears. “I have been waiting without, the tray at the ready, until I heard you moan—er, sounds of you stirring, sir. I brought coffee, against my better judgment, as I believe your stomach would do better with Adam’s ale in your present condition.”

“Water? You want me to drink water? Pour the coffee, Horton, or hand over the pot. As for whatever is beneath those covers, thank you, but no.”

Only after he’d singed his tongue on some of the hot, dark liquid did he ask, “What time is it, Horton?”

“Nearly noon, sir,” the valet said, his voice containing just a hint of censure. Horton was by and large a good valet, but he did on occasion assume a proprietary role, especially when Gabriel’s inconsideration of altering the man’s schedule came into play.

“All of noon, Horton? Shame on me.”

“Indeed, sir. Your friend the baronet sends his apologies, but as you didn’t seem to wish to seek him out last night, and the fun you promised him seems to be over, he departed just after breakfast this morning. He did also leave behind a note.”

So saying, Horton handed it over.

“The seal is cracked,” Gabriel said, looking up at the valet, who quickly busied himself removing the offending tray, leaving only the small silver pot behind.

“It may have been urgent, sir.”

Gabriel squinted at the note, attempting to make out Rigby’s chicken scrawl.

Horton lent his assistance by throwing open the draperies blocking out the noonday sun.

Servants could torture a man more than any regiment of foreign gaolers.

“Thank you, Horton.” Gabriel, although blinking rapidly, refused to acknowledge the man’s punishment. “There’s nothing else in the note save what you’ve already told me.”

“Which is why I waited until you awoke on your own, sir, yes,” Horton answered, as if explaining something to a child. “The duchess asks that you amuse Miss Neville this afternoon, as Her Grace will be occupied with the duke. She thought a drive about the estate would be pleasant, and that you and Miss Neville could become better acquainted.”

“Yes, that’s precisely what I need after a night of injudicious imbibing. Stilted conversation of no merit combined with a bumpy drive to soothe this damned headache.”

Even Horton apparently had no answer to that one. “Your bath is prepared in the dressing room, along with a suit of clothes I deemed appropriate for a day in the country.”

“Since Her Grace has undoubtedly already informed her guest of the excursion, please see that Miss Neville’s maid is told to have her ready and downstairs by one. And thank you. What would I do without you, Horton?”

“It’s not to be thought of, sir,” he replied, blushing to the very crown of his nearly bald head.

Horton had been with Gabriel for several years before his master had gone off to war, only to come home looking overly thin and haggard, and sporting bruises too fresh to have been left over from the day of the doomed battle. The valet had fussed over him, Gabriel had allowed it and now the man seemed to believe he’d gained some sort of privilege above that of a mere employee.

Which he had, and deservedly so.

An hour later, when the chime of the hall clock struck one, the sound buried somewhere under the squawking and wing fluttering going on in the grand-entrance-cum-aviary, Gabriel trotted down the staircase and opened, then quickly closed the door behind him, expecting to see Miss Neville dutifully waiting for him at the main entrance.

“Georgie, have you seen the young lady?” he asked a shirt-sleeved youth industriously cleaning one of the cages. “And please tell me that’s not today’s newspapers from London you’re laying in there.”

“Yes, sir, the last one. Mr. Hemmings always hands ‘em to me onct the family’s lunched. All they’s good for, Mr. Hemmings says, onct they’s read.”

“Wonderful.” The newspapers might be two days old before they reached Cranbrook Chase, but everything remained new until it was learned. “And the young lady?”

“Miss Neville? Yes, sir. She said as how to tell you she’d be outside, away from the moltin’, and you was to find her out there because you sure as check wasn’t goin’ to find her in here.”

Clearly the woman wasn’t shy about voicing her opinions. Gabriel smiled as he headed outside to see Miss Neville pacing back and forth in front of his town curricle. Both the groom holding his bays’ heads and his tiger watched her progress rather as if they were viewing a tennis match at Wimbledon.

She certainly was a sight to behold.

She wore a short, tight dark blue jacket that reached just to her ridiculously small waist. It was unbuttoned, to show the ruffled white lawn blouse beneath, with matching lace protruding from the hem of each sleeve. That in itself was intriguing, to say the least. But when he dropped his gaze below her waist, all the way down to her booted toes and back up again, it was to realize she must possess the longest legs in creation. Legs that went all the way up to her hips. Legs that, as she strode with purpose, her steps longer than might be considered ladylike, could put ungentlemanly thoughts into any man’s brain, probably never to be dislodged.

Gabriel glared at the groom, who quickly dropped his own gaze to the ground, and then at his tiger, who was younger and only grinned his appreciation.

“Miss Neville, I’ve kept you waiting. How bad of me,” he said, and then watched as she turned her head to him and gave him a quick glance of impatience before managing a smile and curtsy.

“Nonsense, sir,” she replied sweetly, “I haven’t been here above a moment. I’m only glad it wasn’t me who kept you waiting. I hear you spent a restless night. It wasn’t the turbot served at dinner, was it?”

It might be too soon in Gabriel’s mind for mention of the buttered fish and spiced mussels, but he wasn’t going to let her know that, especially since he felt certain she’d somehow learned he’d poured himself into a bottle the previous evening.

“Lovely bonnet, Miss Neville,” he answered, motioning for the tiger to hop up on the back rail of the curricle as he personally helped Thea up onto the seat. “Are you quite sure it will protect your nose from the sun? Her Grace is most concerned about your freckles.”

She didn’t answer until he’d walked around the curricle and taken the reins handed up to him by the groom. “Her Grace would also like me half a foot shorter, but there are some things that are impossible. And I rather like freckles. I’m told they’re unusual with hair dark as mine.”

This statement of course compelled him to look into her face as the footman released the horses and they headed around the circular drive. “Debutantes take great care, even extreme measures, to avoid freckling. I doubt many of them so much as see the sun for weeks on end.”

“This may be my first exposure to English Society, sir, but I am far from a debutante. I was presented at a Christmas ball when I was only just past my sixteenth birthday.”

“Young but not unheard of.” Gabriel turned his attention back to his horseflesh. “Two and twenty now, sixteen then. That’s a half-dozen years, Miss Neville. You didn’t take? No wonder your mother was so ready to unload you on Her Grace. You’d about run out of possible suitors in Virginia, hadn’t you?”

He really should be hanged. Or at least gagged. But right now he was not in charity with the young lady, fetching freckles and long legs notwithstanding. She had sealed his fate, and she didn’t even know it.

But she only laughed and asked him what species of trees lined the drive ahead of them. She was too bright not to know he’d insulted her, which put him less in charity with her because she’d ignored his jab and left him feeling lower than a worm and now beholden to treat her better.

“Those, Miss Neville, are black mulberry trees. As opposed to white mulberry trees. A difference we English learned to our disappointment during the sixteenth century. They grow quickly, are easily replaced if one dies and one of the earlier dukes liked them, even though their berries are useless, either as juice or jam. Unpleasant would be putting it mildly. Worse, silkworms don’t like them.”

She looked again at the row of dark-leaved, fairly squat trees. “Silkworms? I didn’t know the English were part of the silk trade.”

“That’s because we aren’t, although certainly not for lack of determination. Our first King James ordered a field, farm, nursery of trees—whatever you’d call it—installed at Buckingham Palace. He followed that planting by ordering landowners all over England to purchase and plant ten thousand more of the trees. We were going to rival China in the production of silk, even sell our silks to France, rather than the way it was—and is—with France smuggling silks across the Channel to us.”

They’d left the black mulberry trees behind them as Gabriel turned his horses to the right, following the carefully constructed circuit that meandered about the estate, for the use and pleasure of ladies visiting Cranbrook Chase.

“The trees look healthy enough,” Thea remarked. “What happened?”

“Nothing, Miss Neville. Absolutely nothing happened. It seems the king was badly advised. Silkworms are attracted by white mulberry trees. Not black.”

“Oh, that is unfortunate. Could they not be persuaded to like black mulberry trees? If they were the only ones to hand, I mean.”

“Apparently not.” Gabriel turned to look at Miss Neville and suddenly realized this was no shallow puss. He could nearly hear the wheels whirling in her head, and she was spinning threads around him, tying him up with his own words. “I suppose one is attracted or one is not. Proximity doesn’t seem to be a factor. With silkworms, that is.”

“Oh, yes, with silkworms. With gentlemen, I suppose it’s different, and ladies should learn to be attracted to the only ones to hand.”

“I should have apologized immediately. You were going to get your own back on me, no matter how long it took. I just happened to give you ammunition with the mulberry trees.”

“Only after I guided you there when I recognized the trees. I know the history of King James’s mulberry trees. There are still some thriving in Saint James’s Park, and I was told to look out for them if one of my suitors were to take me there for a drive. Now I can scratch that off my list of suggested excursions.”

It was his own fault. He wasn’t at his best today, and she had clearly taken umbrage at being told to meet him at one rather than asked if she would care to drive out at one. She had him at a disadvantage, she knew it, and the mulberry trees might not be her only method of torture, meant to remind him that he’d behaved like a perfect ass ever since her arrival.

“We could keep this up, Miss Neville, I suppose, verbally jousting back and forth, save for two things. No, three. One, I’m still paying the price for a poor choice of comfort last night.”

All he did was pause to take a breath, and she was on him. “Yes, I heard, although it was made clear to me that drinking yourself stupid isn’t something you do on a regular basis. My maid, Clarice, is quite accomplished at ferreting out information, and your valet may be loyal, but his tongue is hinged at both ends. Forewarned is forearmed, sir. You may wish to remember that.”

“Jesus,” Gabriel said under his breath. But she’d heard him. They were sitting right beside each other, even as they were miles and miles apart, which is where he wanted her. Of course he did. “Number two, Miss Neville, which should be obvious to us both, you’re more clever than I.”

“And not beneath taking advantage of a man in pain,” she pointed out, smiling. “There’s also that. How is your head, by the way? My stepfather describes it as having one’s head stuck in a vise while the devil jumps up and down on one’s stomach. I’m only amazed anyone, having experienced this torture, chooses to repeat it. Her Grace drove you to it, though. I understand that.”

“That takes care of numbers two and three. Now the question remains—what are we going to do about it?”

There was that smile again, gorgeous in itself, but now he knew better. Perhaps he should be ducking, or jumping from the curricle, putting himself out of the line of fire.

“I don’t know what you’re going to do about it, sir, but if you’d remained in the drawing room, as opposed to making that ridiculous statement and bolting like a rabbit toward its den at the first sniff of the fox, you would have heard me inform Her Grace that I thank her for her thought, but I must decline…for obvious reasons.”

“I admire your sticking abilities, Miss Neville, while condemning my rash reaction, but do you really believe the duchess was at all swayed by your refusal?”

Her smile was sweet enough to sugar ten cups of tea.

“Oh, no, it was rather that she was quite agreeable to the offered solution.”

Now he should be cowered beneath the curricle, his hands wrapped protectively around his head. Had his aunt come to the same conclusion he had, and now this grinning nemesis was going to accept a secondhand proposal of marriage? No, it couldn’t be that. Not after the mulberries. “And what, pray tell—half-certain I’m laying my head on the block—is that solution?”

“Sir Jeremiah offered himself as chaperone, and the duchess immediately took him up on the idea. I agreed, and it’s all settled. You’re no longer necessary to the project, sir—that of popping me off, as Her Grace insists on putting the thing.”

“Sir Jere—Rigby? Has my aunt lost her mind? Is she that desperate? Rigby?” Gabriel had been expecting anything. But that? Never that.

At last her smile faded. “There’s something wrong with the man?”

“You’re damned right there’s something wrong with—No, of course not. Rigby’s a fine man. Solid to the core.”

“Her Grace says she thinks he’s a bit of a loose screw, but that we’ll manage.”

“One would recognize the other, yes. That’s to be expected,” Gabriel mumbled half to himself. “Well, it can’t happen. You’ve got enough on your plate, Miss Neville, without adding Rigby. And you do understand the duchess only agreed because she knew I would have to step in rather than allow Rigby and his good intentions to ruin your chances of ever finding a white mulberry.”

“Oh, but—”

“It’s settled, Miss Neville, as well my aunt already knows, or I wouldn’t have taken my injudicious dive into the bottle last night after she and I spoke.”

He was silent for a few moments, wondering when he’d become so brutally frank with a lady, and then said, “I can’t believe I was taken in like a raw youth. So soft and powdery and…and flouncy. So kind and sweet and none too bright, bless her heart. But a woman is a woman is a woman. Gabe, she was never deliberately fooling you—you were only fooling yourself.”

“Do you always talk to yourself? I do, as well, although I try not to, as my mother worries it’s the sign of an infirm brain.”

“She’s probably right. And, considering the way I feel at this moment, you might well be concerned for your safety until I can be locked up somewhere. In any case, Miss Neville, we will thank Sir Jeremiah for sacrificing himself to the cause when we see him in London, but I will be serving as your chaperone. I might not be the best you can find, but at least I won’t steer you wrong when it comes to suitors. Rigby is less discerning and likes everybody.”

“But you don’t.”

He immediately thought of Henry Neville. “No, I don’t. Some less than others, I’m afraid. Perhaps I’m too judgmental.”

“Or too quick to judge,” she said, shrugging those slim, elegant shoulders. “I may lay claim to a similar failing, and probably should apologize, although I won’t.”

Gabriel shot her a quick look, wondering if they were destined to never have a conversation that wasn’t burdened by layers of meaning.

She’d meant him, had to have meant him, he was certain of at least that much. But why? He was generally considered to be a likable fellow. Then again, she could have dozens of friends in Virginia who thought the world of her.

They just didn’t seem to like each other. Wasn’t that odd. He, as well as she, should have no opinion of each other at this early stage of their acquaintance, yet they’d both seemed to have this need to qualify their instant reactions to each other.

Or deny them?

Considering the force of his reaction, his extreme awareness of her, expressions of mutual dislike were probably the best solution for both of them. Clearly the safest.

“Her Grace told me there’s a lovely stone bridge somewhere along this route, overlooking a picturesque meandering stream. I believe I may have just caught a glimpse of sun reflecting off water. Are there fish in the stream?”

“It’s stocked every spring, yes. Now you’re going to tell me you’re an expert fisherman.”

The head turned, the smile was back, her dark eyes were dancing, and he wondered how long his supposed dislike of the woman was going to save him…or her. “No, not at all. My mother considers the practice unsuitable for ladies. But ladies fish in England? Your question seems to hint as much. You’ll teach me before we leave for London? We’ve got a whole week or more before we go. Please? I’ve watched my stepfather do it any number of times, and I believe I might have an aptitude.”

“I wouldn’t believe I’d be the least surprised if you did. All right, Miss Neville. I’ll teach you. As your chaperone, I’ll teach you most everything I can.”

God help her. God help me. God help us both…

CHAPTER FIVE

THEA HAD BEEN drawn to the walkway overlooking the aviary after the duchess retired to the duke’s apartments following evening prayers, thinking it a good place to be alone with her thoughts.

It was a pity she couldn’t seem to muster any of other than dubious merit.

What an odd interlude it had been, driving out with Gabriel Sinclair. She didn’t believe she could recall any time in her life she’d been so irritatingly aware of someone.

When his hand had accidently brushed against hers, she’d actually been hard-pressed not to shiver, and definitely not in revulsion. She could think him a hardened seducer, if it weren’t for the fact that he hadn’t seemed to notice her reaction. No, she certainly couldn’t relax when around the man, not for a moment. Succumbing even slightly to the odd charms of the duchess’s grandnephew definitely held no part in her plans.

She’d wanted to. His occasional smile and pleasantly handsome face encouraged her to let down her guard, be herself and simply enjoy his company.

Much as he apparently did not enjoy hers.

He’d been polite, when he remembered, but for the most part seemed to be a man with a great deal on his mind, none of it pleasant to contemplate.

She shouldn’t be surprised he wasn’t doing handsprings of joy at the idea of being her chaperone, the one her suitors—if there were any—would come to asking permission to court her. Which was also odd, since if ever there was a man who wanted to be shed of a woman, that man and woman were he and the seeming albatross now hanging around his neck.

The duchess had been so encouraging, going on endlessly this afternoon about her marvelous grandnephew and his eagerness to be in on their rather slapdash scheme. Indeed, the woman obviously spied no flies in the ointment she’d mixed up in the laboratory of her mind. She’d get some of her own back (and her husband back), Thea’s mother would get some of her own back, and all without anyone really knowing. Except for their combined target, who would know there was a loaded pistol of sorts aimed at his reputation.

Thea considered her position—that of being the loaded pistol. The duchess believed Thea was involved for two reasons: to make her mother happy and to catch herself a rich English husband. Her mother believed she had agreed in order to help the duchess, who was providing her daughter with the opportunity to live out her mother’s dreams for her.

Nobody had actually asked her why she’d uncomplainingly gone along with their plans. Although they probably should have, especially her mother, who certainly couldn’t raise her chin proudly and state, “My daughter is a most biddable and cooperative young lady.”

Because I have plans of my own.

Then she wondered what and who Gabriel Sinclair thought she was. Clearly he didn’t consider her an unexpected ray of sunshine dropped into his humdrum life.

She heard the door open and close, heard the footsteps but didn’t move from her position, her forearms on the thick railing of the intricately carved banister as she leaned forward, pretending to get a better look at the strange wonderfulness below her.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen such vibrant colors,” she said, at last turning her head as Gabriel Sinclair stopped beside her. “Some of them simply don’t look real, do they? I’ve seen green parrots, of course, but nothing like this. I hope there are books in the library, and I can learn more about them.”

He likewise rested his forearms against the railing, not five feet away from her. As if they were old acquaintances, which they most certainly were not. Yet she did feel comfortable with him much of the time, perhaps because he was good to his aunt. “They’re loud. They smell. What else is there to learn?”

“You don’t like them,” she said.

“I have nothing against them, other than their current location. Do you know what we’re standing on, Miss Neville?”

“I assume a part of the staircase, although I can’t quite work the logistics out in my head.”

“Not a staircase, Miss Neville. We’re standing on a part of the staircase. Not quite one of the seven wonders of the ancient world but equally as lost, at least for now. Imagine if you will those walls on either side of us gone, the doors removed.”

“I wouldn’t want to say it, but those walls do appear, um, hastily constructed.”

“Yes, and that’s being kind. In the duke’s defense—not that he has any—there was some urgency with the construction, for matters of containment, you understand. In any event, imagine if you can those walls gone, the stairs hidden behind those walls once again revealed in all their glory.”

Thea closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again, to see him watching her closely, almost as if taking inventory of her features. She’d already taken an inventory of his: soft dark brown hair with a slight widow’s peak and golden highlights in the sunlight, eyes the color of a summer sky, remarkably straight nose, firm chin. He wasn’t classically handsome. He was…approachably handsome.

Stop this! You’re supposed to be thinking about staircases!

“All right, yes,” she said quickly, “I’m imagining. In truth, I don’t have to imagine it. I’ve seen several similar constructions in Virginia. Americans don’t all reside in log cabins at the edge of some wilderness, you know.”

He cocked one eyebrow at her, his expression amused. “Point taken, and I suppose I’ll attempt to let the baronet down easily when I explain there probably isn’t a large feather headdress still packed up in my aunt’s traveling trunks. What, no smile? You’re not amused? Very well, we’ll go back to imagining.”

“Please do,” Thea said, stepping back from the railing. She was beginning to feel too comfortable sparring with the man, and much too aware of his close proximity.

Gabriel stepped back, as well, and spread his arms, as if to encompass the hidden staircases to his right and left. “Oh, yes, I forgot something, didn’t I? Not just those walls on either side in front of us, but also the ones behind you that, yes, conceal matching staircases. Rather like an enormous hourglass, with its top and bottom gone and a bar making up its middle. Now imagine the staircases, along with this section we’re currently occupying—the bar—floating in place, without any obvious support.”