by Anne Gracie
She’d never felt less renewed. She felt drained, empty.
She reached the top of the hill and breathed in the clean, cold, bracing air. Her options were spread out before her. In one direction was the village, in the other Whitethorn Manor, and far away, to the northeast, lay Fyfield Place . . . Fyfield Place and Mr. Hulme.
Oh, Grand-mère, I’ve made such a mess of everything.
She would have to leave the village. Perhaps it was weak of her, but she couldn’t bear to be scorned and whispered about, to have her new-found friends turn their backs on her. She’d never had friends before, not like this. In France they’d kept their distance.
The children, too, would suffer from her ruined reputation. She couldn’t stay.
She had fifteen pounds. Not enough to start again. The only reason they’d survived before was Sir Jasper’s peppercorn rent on the cottage. And while she had no doubt Nash would honor the agreement, she couldn’t stay on. A token rent would only fuel the rumor mill.
Sick at heart, she contemplated the view and shivered. There was only one option . . .
Nash cursed himself. His blasted temper. After all they’d done to avoid compromising her . . . And with Harris of all people. Worse was the look in her eyes when she realized he’d regained his memory and not told her. He hadn’t even considered her feelings. All he’d thought about was how to remain here, in the cottage, how to protect her from the Bloody Abbot. He’d hurt her. Badly, from the look of it. Damn and blast! And by protecting her from Harris, he’d got her into a worse pickle. What the hell was he going to do?
He’d caused the scandal, he would fix it. But how?
The usual solution to compromised virtue was marriage. His body hummed approval. Nash’s gaze drifted to the line of worn, faded dresses on the hooks in the alcove, to the little collection of homemade books, to the pot of soup, simmering gently over the fire . . .
Maddy was an unsophisticated little soul. A keeper of bees and chickens and children. Beauty, but no training and a basic education. Apart from a short period in her gentleman father’s home, she’d spent most of her life in cottages growing vegetables.
Could Maddy live the life he lived, mixing with la crème de la crème of international society? The men would appreciate her beauty, but the women . . . They’d have her for breakfast, he thought. They’d sniff out her background—they always did—and peck her to pieces.
No, it would be selfish and cruel of him to drag Maddy into that world. She might leap at the idea, but she wouldn’t know the implications. And he would have to watch as the people of his world crushed her bright spirit. And that he couldn’t bear.
He hadn’t taken her virginity, only compromised her reputation, and to a man who bore them both a grudge.
All she really needed was new place to live, to escape the gossip, and an income, he reminded himself. And protection.
A cottage on his brother’s estate would do perfectly. Nash would settle an income on her and the children, and Marcus would ensure they didn’t come to any harm.
It was an adequate solution. But the guilt remained.
“I want you to leave.” Maddy hung her cloak on the hook. The children would be back soon. She needed to make supper.
He gave her a startled look. “What? Now?”
“As soon as possible.” She was pleased he’d recovered his memory, she really was, but right now she just felt . . . beaten. Trying to muster the courage to do what she knew she would have to do. Marry Mr. Hulme.
The only way to cope, when your life was turned upside down, was to put one step in front of the other and do whatever came next. Which was making the pancakes she’d promised the children for supper.
The ten-pound note still sat on the table where she’d left it, the five pounds in change piled neatly on top of it. She put it in the tin. At least they could afford to take the stagecoach back to Leicestershire. She knotted a cloth high around her middle to protect her from splatters and fetched a basket of eggs, a basin, and a fork.
He watched her somberly. “I didn’t—” he began, then stopped. He could see how serious she was. “Very well, I’ll leave, but I’ll wait until the children return. I’d want to say good-bye.”
She nodded. The children would be upset. They liked him. So did she, for that matter, and if she liked him too much for her own peace of mind, it was her secret. But they all knew he would leave one day. And today was the day.
She cracked eggs into the basin and whisked them briskly with a fork. Unanswered questions flew round and round in her head. Why had he really kept it a secret? She didn’t believe his excuse about catching Harris. That didn’t require him sleeping on her floor. Did he think she couldn’t be trusted? Or worse, did he fear she’d try to—to encroach . . .
It was the last thing she’d do.
She’d always known there could be nothing between them. Once it might have been possible, if only Nash was not the heir to an earldom . . . if only Papa had not lost all his money . . . if only she’d had a normal upbringing and an education to equip her for her station in life and she’d made her come-out like other girls of her station. If she didn’t have five little brothers and sisters to bring up, if she wasn’t his tenant, living on his uncle’s charity.
If only . . .
But if onlys buttered no parsnips, as Lizzie often said, and there was no use in trying to cling to past glories. Maddy had learned that from Grand-mère.
As she’d aged and become forgetful, Grand-mère had clung more and more to her airs and graces, refusing to admit what she’d lost. Most of the locals laughed at her, albeit behind her back. She had too much innate dignity for them to do it to her face, but Maddy knew.
Maddy had too much pride to leave herself open to that kind of mockery. One needed money to keep up appearances and she had none. No money and no illusions.
She stopped beating the eggs and put the fork down. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d recovered your memory? Why keep it a secret?”
“I told you before. I wanted to catch Harris in the act, and you would have booted me out. As today has proved.” He linked his hands behind his head, as if pleased with his answer and rocked back on two legs of the chair.
“When Mr. Harris was doing that I was hoping the chair would break,” she observed, and sloshed some buttermilk into the mix.
He grinned. “Me, too.”
She eyed the chair. “He certainly weakened it.”
All four chair legs instantly resumed their place on the floor.
That wiped the smile off his face, she thought. “So it was all about catching Harris?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t believe a word of it. She sifted flour into the basin. “You could have slept comfortably at Whitethorn, then come back here in the morning.”
She put a knob of butter in a pan and put it by the fire to melt. “There was no reason for anyone to connect the Honorable Nash Renfrew to me.” She added the melted butter to the pancake mix and beat it vigorously.
“Hang it all,” he said irritably. “If you must know, it was vanity, pure and simple. I couldn’t arrive at Whitethorn in only one boot, not on my first night as the new master. I’d look ridiculous. One needs to make an entrance for that kind of thing, you know—make an impression, begin as you mean to go on.”
“Fustian!” She covered the bowl of pancake batter with a clean cloth, and as she placed the bowl on a shelf to sit, the answer came to her. She knew why he’d stayed on in her cottage. The mystery was why he didn’t want to admit it. The last of her anger drained away.
“Fustian?” he repeated when she returned to the table.
“You’re a fraud, Nash Renfrew,” she said softly. “You stayed here, you slept on that cold, hard floor for one reason only: to protect me and the children from the Bloody Abbot.”
“Well, of course I did,” he said, looking embarrassed. “What sort of fellow would I be to leave you in a fix like that, to go on my merry way after all you’
d done for me?”
So, she thought. It was gratitude, pure and simple. And gallantry. Repayment in kind. So much for morning dreams and foolish hopes.
And if he’d left her in a worse mess when he left than she’d been in when he arrived, it was nobody’s fault. Not his, not hers. One of life’s accidents.
Thirteen
“So who are you, Mr. Nash Renfrew?” Maddy asked. She’d made them both a cup of rose hip and mint tea and sat down at the table to drink it. “I know you’re the brother of the Earl of Alverleigh, and Sir Jasper’s nephew—and please accept my condolences on the death of your uncle.”
He nodded in acknowledgment, and she continued. “But apart from the fact that you’ve been living abroad, I know nothing else about you.”
“I’m a diplomat,” he told her. “I’ve been posted to Russia for the last few years, living in St. Petersburg and Moscow.”
“St. Petersburg,” she exclaimed. “I’ve heard it’s very beautiful.”
“It’s the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to, with the possible exception of Venice. They call St. Petersburg the Venice of the north.” It felt so peculiar, sitting here, exchanging polite chitchat like strangers over a table, when he’d slept with her in his arms. Nash sipped his tea. He was even used to the taste of her strange brews.
“And do you like being a diplomat?”
“I love it,” he said simply. “I can’t imagine doing anything else. Travel, intrigue, glittering palaces, and political fencing in the dark, and all the while, I’m serving my country.”
“So you’re not planning to become a squire on the land.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Far from it. I’ve been granted leave of absence to untangle the affairs of Uncle Jasper, among other things. I gather he grew rather muddled toward the end.”
She shook her head. “Not muddled so much as very frail. He couldn’t leave his bed, but I used to visit him often, and his mind was quite clear until the last few weeks, when the laudanum the doctor prescribed made him very groggy.”
“I see.” So the financial discrepancies he’d discovered were not the result of an old man’s forgetfulness. Marcus had written to him in Russia, saying he sensed something was amiss. Marcus had a nose for that sort of thing.
“I don’t have long to sort it out. I’m expected back in St. Petersburg in June.”
She refilled his cup and her own. “You have much to do then, in such a short time. The estate will need a lot of work, I fear.”
He pulled a face. “As bad as that, is it? Oh well, I’ll get it started and my brother will help—he loves that kind of thing. I’m not completely off the hook as far as work is concerned. The czar’s aunt, the Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna Romanova, is making her first visit to London, and since she knows me well, I must go to London and dance attendance on her. She’s an old lady and very difficult to please.”
She gave him a dry look. “I gather you please her.”
He was startled.
Her eyes danced. “My grandmother was the same—very crotchety and picky in general, but in the company of a handsome young man, she blossomed. You’d think her nothing but milk and honey.” She began to clear away the cups and saucers. “So, no other close relatives who might be worrying? Parents? A wife? Should you write to your brother and tell him you are all right?”
“No, I’ve al—” He broke off, recalling how he’d broken into her letter to Marcus. “No one will be worried. My parents are dead and I have no wife.” He took a breath and added, “Though my aunt is even now making arrangements for my wedding.”
“You’re betrothed?” Was there a constraint in her voice? Her back was turned so he couldn’t read her expression. Surely she didn’t think . . . didn’t expect . . .
His chest felt suddenly tight.
She turned with a brilliant smile. “How exciting. Tell me about your fiancée. Is she pretty? Is the wedding to be soon? You must tell the girls, they love to hear about weddings.”
No, she didn’t expect . . .
On balance, he was relieved, he thought. She was a lovely girl, but life didn’t work like that. Marriages were like treaties between countries, made for practical reasons, not emotional ones. He knew it and Maddy, being of French descent, would know it, too. The French, even after their revolution, remained hardheaded and practical in separating marriage from matters of the heart.
Besides, who knew what Aunt Maude had already arranged? He’d given her more than three weeks. Aunt Maude could settle the affairs of a small country in three weeks. She’d probably picked out the perfect bride for him already. And booked the church.
The tightness in his chest didn’t ease.
“I’m not yet betrothed,” he said. “My aunt has guaranteed to find me a suitable bride.”
“Suitable?” Her eyes widened. “You’re leaving it to your aunt?”
He shrugged. “It’s the most practical solution.”
“You don’t plan to marry for love, then?” She sounded amazed.
There was a short silence, then, “I’ve always believed an arranged marriage is the most prudent approach.”
“Prudent, yes, but a little . . . cold-blooded, don’t you think? Especially when you have a choice,” said the girl who had none.
He hesitated. If she was harboring any female dreams of hearts and flowers, it was best to put her straight now. “My parents made a love match. From the point of view of a child of that marriage, it was a living hell. My opinion hasn’t altered since.” His opinion had, in fact, hardened. The more bored and restless wives invited him for dalliance, the more he realized that marriage and love was the worst possible combination.
He pretended not to notice her troubled expression and added in a light voice, “Besides, I don’t have time to go a’courting. I’m only in England for a short time. The Foreign Office frowns on English diplomats marrying foreigners, and my aunt can be trusted to find the right sort of girl.”
“I’m fascinated by this glimpse into another world,” she said. “What is ‘the right sort of girl’?”
He ran a finger around his collar. Even though he wasn’t wearing a neckcloth, it felt quite tight. “Oh, you know, a girl with the right sort of upbringing, the right sort of connections for a life in diplomatic circl—”
“Maddy, Maddy, we’re home.” The children burst into the cottage. Nash was never so glad to see a bunch of muddy children in his life. The conversation had strayed into sticky areas.
They both knew anything more between them was impossible, but still . . .
“We saw Mr. Harris going into the village,” John told them. “He looked like someone had punched him in the nose.” He scrutinized Nash’s face, glanced at his knuckles, and exchanged a satisfied look with Henry.
“Lizzie’s aunt gave us a quart of fresh milk,” Jane said, shutting the door behind them.
“And some cream to have with our pancakes, as well as the cottage cheese,” Susan added. “Lucy’s got the cheese.”
“Your horse is in splendid fettle, sir,” Henry told Nash, inspecting the signs of battle. “Needs to be ridden, we think,” he added hopefully.
Nash thanked the boys. His horse would be ridden soon enough.
Jane plonked the heavy quart jug on the table. “I carried it all the way.”
Maddy raised one eyebrow at the boys. “I did offer,” John said in an aggrieved tone, “but she said we were too clumsy and would spill it.”
“You did last time,” Jane retorted.
“Enough!” Maddy clapped her hands. “Off, all of you, and wash your hands for supper. We have some news for you.”
The children raced off, squabbling lightheartedly.
“So the murder is out,” he said quietly.
She gave him a quizzical look.
“My fight with Harris.
“Oh, that.” She placed the griddle pan over the fire and began to set the table. “I don’t mind. Mr. Harris is a bully, and what he said about your unc
le and me was horrid. I was only upset because of—” She broke off. “Well, you know.”
“I know.” He still couldn’t quite believe she was booting him out. “I’m glad it wasn’t the fighting that upset you. Most ladies abhor such scenes.”
“Far from it, I have a deplorable bloodthirsty streak,” she admitted as she dropped a small knob of butter onto the pan. It sizzled as she angled the pan to allow the butter to cover the base. A delicious smell filled the room.
She poured batter into the foaming butter. “I’ve never had a white knight come to my rescue before.”
From what he could work out, she’d never had anyone look out for her at all. Bubbles rose to the surface of the batter.
She flipped the pancakes and called toward the scullery, where the sounds of splashing and childish laughter was getting louder, “Hurry along, children. Pancakes in two minutes.”
She slid the first batch onto a tin plate and set them near the fire to keep warm. She dropped in another small knob of butter. He watched it sizzle and foam. His stomach rumbled.
“You’re welcome to stay for supper, Mr. Renfrew,” she said as if he were a stranger, a chance visitor, not someone who’d lived here for the past however many days. Drawing the line in the sand. Putting him at a distance, where he belonged.
“A last supper?” he said with irony.
She met his gaze somberly. “Exactly.”
A heavy weight settled in his chest. He wished it hadn’t ended like this, but though he regretted the final result, and upsetting her, he couldn’t regret his actions.
Leave her to face that night-creeping bastard alone? Never. And no self-respecting man could stand by, hiding behind bed curtains, while Harris threatened and bullied her.
He glanced at the bed. If he had any regrets, they were ones he couldn’t admit to, not to her . . .
Nash had never dined with children before. They arrived at the table in an exuberant tumble, yet once seated, were quite composed and relatively well behaved.