Chapter 2

The house was a hunting box? That was what her companion had said. But Rosamund, gazing out through the carriage window onto a predominantly white world, found herself looking at a quite imposing gray stone house. Obviously whoever had built it had intended to have large hunting parties. There must be at least eight bedchambers abovestairs and as many rooms below.

The snow was still whirling thickly down and had settled at an alarming speed. The coachman had to kick it aside before lowering the carriage steps outside the door of the house, and when her companion went down them in order to hand her out, his booted feet completely disappeared into the whiteness.

Dennis was going to be furious. And frantic. And what about him? Would he be hopelessly lost and stranded looking for her?

“Your brother will not take foolish risks,” the earl said, guessing her thoughts as she put her hand in his and set her foot on the top step. “And he will guess that you have found shelter somewhere. There is really no alternative, ma’am, but to relax here until the storm has passed and the roads have cleared.”

“Yes,” she said, joining him in the snow, “you are quite right, sir.”

A manservant opened the door of the house and ushered them into a tiled hallway from which a stairway rose straight to the floor above. He opened the door into a sitting room after assuring them that there was a fire in there.

“I shall tell Mrs. Reeves that you have arrived, sir,” he said, “and have her bring you some refreshments.”

“Ah, warmth,” Rosamund said, crossing the room and holding her hands out to the fire. “Blessed warmth.”

Lord Wetherby made his way to a sideboard on which were glasses and several decanters. “Brandy is what we both need,” he said, “I hope you do not get a chill out of your ordeal.”

“Oh, I never take chills,” she said, but she took the glass from his outstretched hand. She frowned at the amber liquid. “I have never tasted it. Is it very strong?”

“Drink it in one gulp,” he said. “It will warm you from the inside.”

“A prospect not to be resisted,” she said. She swirled the brandy around in the glass a few times the way she had seen Leonard do it, lifted it to her lips, and tossed back its contents. She swallowed . . . and clutched first her throat and then her stomach. She coughed and thrust the empty glass at her companion.

He laughed. “It will feel good once you have recovered from the shock,” he said.

Rosamund continued to cough. “Poison,” she said with a gasp. “I’m going to die.”

“No,” he said, “I assure you you are not.”

She felt warmth spread inside her and managed to get the coughing under control. And she glanced at the man who was standing three feet in front of her, his own glass still in his hand. He was laughing at her, his eyes dancing with merriment. And she noticed suddenly and for the first time that he was a very handsome man.

His teeth were white and even and his eyes were very blue: a quite lethal combination, she decided. His hair was fair and wavy and rather too long—too long by fashionable standards, though not by any standards of attractiveness. He was half a head taller than she, slim, and yet not puny, either. Oh, no, definitely not puny. The slimness related to his waist and hips. He had muscles in all the right places.

Carriages were noisy things, Rosamund realized suddenly. Lack of conversation was not noticed in a carriage. Not that there had been any lack of conversation there. But the sitting room in which they stood seemed very quiet.

He was still smiling. “Have you decided to survive?” he asked.

“It was very unkind of you not to warn me,” she said.

“Had I allowed you to sip at it,” he said, “you would have grimaced after the first sip, as I have seen so many ladies do, and refused to take another drop. Don’t you feel warmer now?”

Considerably warmer. “Yes, thank you,” she said. “I do.”

Fortunately for her poise and dignity the door opened at that moment to admit the woman who served as cook, housekeeper, and maid all in one. And Rosamund blessed her silently. She was clearly a garrulous soul.

“What a blessing it is that you arrived safe and sound,” she said, bustling over to a table and setting down a large tray. “They won’t come today, I told Reeves. Not in this weather they won’t. But, then, it would have been such a shame to have had to spend goodness knows how many days at an inn. The linen is never aired or the food decent in inns, is it, madam? I have brought you some tea and cakes and bread and butter. The liquor is over there, sir. Oh, you have found it, I see. And a good thing, too. I’m sure you need warming. I’m Mrs. Reeves at your service. Mr. Price did not name the gentleman we were to expect.”

“Halliday,” the earl said quickly. “Justin Halliday. And Mrs. Hunter.”

Mrs. Reeves looked assessingly at Rosamund and then at the earl. “Reeves has carried your trunks up to the main bedchamber, sir,” she said. “There is a fire burning there and all the sheets have been properly aired, I do assure you, ma’am.”

Rosamund was speechless at the implications.

“You will need to prepare another room, if you please, Mrs. Reeves,” Lord Wetherby said. “Please move my things into it. Mrs. Hunter will occupy the main bedchamber.”

“I shall see to it at once,” Mrs. Reeves said. “Don’t worry, sir, about the chills or damp sheets. I aired out the green room too until we heard yesterday that Mr. Price would not be coming.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Reeves,” the earl said dismissively.

“Oh, dear.” Rosamund looked down at her plain woolen dress after the housekeeper had hurried from the room. “All my things are in Dennis’ carriage.”

“Well,” Lord Wetherby said with a grin, “I shall not expect you to dress formally for dinner, Mrs. Hunter.”

She gazed ruefully at her half-boots, which she still wore, and thought of comfortable slippers and warm nightgowns and hairbrushes and shawls in her trunk.

“I do have a trunk of ladies’ clothes with me,” the earl said. He smiled when Rosamund looked up at him in astonishment. “They belong to my, ah, sister. She was supposed to be accompanying me here but had to remain behind with a severe cold at the last moment. She is, I believe, almost your exact size.”

Rosamund frowned. Why would Mr. Halliday’s sister send her trunk with him if she was not coming herself?

“I took up her trunk the day before our departure,” the earl said, “as she was not to be at home the night before. She, ah, stayed with her aunt. With our aunt, that is.”

“I could not use her things,” Rosamund said.

“I do assure you she will not mind at all,” he said. “I will have Reeves take the trunks back into your bedchamber.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I will not use much, you know. Mainly just a nightgown.” She felt herself flushing and wished she could recall the words.

She was too busy with her own discomfort to notice the earl grimace and close his eyes briefly.

“Will you pour?” he asked, indicating the tray.

Rosamund jumped to her feet and crossed to the table, where she made a great to-do about pouring two cups of tea.

The Earl of Wetherby sat in the sitting room after Mrs. Reeves had removed the tray and then returned to show Rosamund to her room. He wished he could have the last half-hour back again.

Mrs. Reeves would doubtless have been able to lend her a few things—slippers, a nightgown, whatever else were necessities for women. Had he had to open his mouth and offer her the trunk of clothes he had bought for Jude? He had wished to bite his tongue out just a few moments after the words had escaped him—as soon as she had mentioned a nightgown, in fact.

Oh, Lord, a nightgown. There were two in the trunk. If they could be called nightgowns, that was. And the other clothes, though not nearly as indecent as those nightgowns, were far more the type of garment one would buy for one’s mistress than for one’s sister.

Well, the damage was done now, he thought as he crossed the room to pour himself another glass of brandy. And he was not going to lose any sleep over it. She might think what she would. It really did not matter to him, except that he would not wish deliberately to embarrass her.

She was deuced pretty. About the same size as Jude, it was true, though not as curvaceous, perhaps. No less attractive, though. Slenderness could be just as alluring as more generous curves. There was no other similarity between the two women except height. Jude was auburn-haired and green-eyed. Mrs. Hunter had dark hair and dark eyes. Glossy hair and long. She wore it in coils at the back of her head.

She was not only pretty, but also animated, her face eager and mobile when she talked. Damnation! Why could she not look like a horse and bray when she laughed? He did not particularly want to be snowbound with a pretty, animated woman. Oh, correction: he did, he did. But not with a lady. He wanted Jude. The situation would have been perfect. No Price. No Price’s ladybird. Snow outside to prevent them from either going out or receiving unexpected callers. Nothing to do all day and all night except make love.

The thing was that he had planned it all out to be a last fling of freedom—one last grand orgy of uninhibited sex and pleasure. And the weather had cooperated beautifully with those plans. Except that the plans had gone awry. He was stuck with the wrong lady—lady being the operative word.

Damn! If she weren’t so deuced attractive.

Rosamund abovestairs in the main bedchamber, warmed by a roaring fire, unpacked the trunk carefully, examining each garment with curiosity. Mr. Halliday’s sister liked bright colors, it seemed. And she favored silks and gauzes and muslins even though it was only the end of January. Fortunately there were a few warm shawls. The sister also favored low necklines. She must have a good bosom, Rosamund concluded.

The sister’s feet were one size larger than her own, but that would be no major problem. Rosamund pulled off her boots thankfully and slipped her feet into a pair of soft blue kid slippers.

There were several jars of perfume, all with soft, seductive scents. Rosamund closed her eyes as she sniffed at one of them. Very feminine. Very alluring. Leonard would have liked it. Leonard had liked her to wear perfume. There was a diamond-studded bracelet in a velvet box in the middle of the trunk.

She felt almost as if she were prying—prying into someone else’s life. Mr. Halliday’s sister must be very lovely, she guessed, and very feminine. She must like to attract gentlemen . . . But, then, what woman did not?

Finally she drew out a nightgown and held it up in front of her. It would not do for winter, she thought as soon as she lifted it from the trunk. It was too light and flimsy. A moment later, when it was hanging straight in front of her, held at arms’ length, she looked at it quite disbelievingly. It was sheer white lace, and she could see the bed and the wall opposite through it without any difficulty at all.

My goodness gracious me, she thought and felt herself flush, it must be an overdress. There must be something to go underneath it. Goodness, one would not wish even one’s maid to see one in that. Certainly not one’s husband. But then Mr. Halliday’s sister was doubtless not married.

She put the nightgown aside and refused to look back at it. But at the very bottom of the trunk she found another, one that made the white one look prim enough to belong to a spinster aunt. This one was of black lace and appeared to have no back and not a great deal of front, either. And when Rosamund held it against herself in some disbelief, she found that it reached barely to her knees.

Goodness gracious! Did Mr. Halliday know? she wondered. She folded both nightgowns and replaced them in the trunk. The other clothes she put away in drawers or hung in the wardrobe. The orange silk she would wear to dinner, she decided, with the paisley shawl and the white slippers. All the clothes, she noticed suddenly and frowned, appeared to be perfectly new.

She would be most interested to meet Miss Halliday. She wondered if Mr. Halliday had some trouble with the girl. Perhaps he was her guardian and had planned to bring her into the country to try to talk some sense into her. She hoped for his sake that the cold had not been a ruse and the girl now rushing all over London being indiscreet.

Poor Mr. Halliday!

She just wished he were not quite so handsome. It would be very awkward to be trapped alone like this with any gentleman. But to be stuck with a handsome gentleman was embarrassing, to say the least. And a young gentleman, too. She was not used to young men. She felt uncomfortable with them. Most of Leonard’s friends had been older gentlemen. She had felt at ease with them.

And she had felt comfortable with him. She felt a sudden longing to have him there with her, large and imposing, with his shining bald head and his double chin and his large hands framing her face and his dry smacking kiss and his kindly smile.

Oh, dear, she did miss him quite dreadfully at times.

The orange gown had been his favorite, the Earl of Wetherby mused as he sat at dinner with Rosamund, making polite conversation. He had pictured Jude in it when he bought it, her large bosom bulging over the low décolletage, her green eyes squinting at him as she leaned forward to say something to him. Jude always leaned forward when she was wearing a low-cut dress. She knew it raised his temperature a few degrees. And he had imagined how the color would look with her auburn hair.

And now Mrs. Hunter was wearing it, and with her dark coloring, it looked quite magnificent. She did not lean toward him, of course, as she talked, but he could see the beginnings of a cleavage above the dress. And her breasts looked firm and alluring against the silk. Her hair was coiled higher on her head than it had been earlier in the day.

Jude would have looked like an expensive tart in the dress. Mrs. Hunter looked like a lady. Jude, of course, would not have worn the shawl. The girl had an endearing lack of concern for her own comfort when she was bent on luring him to bed. And she always had a flattering eagerness to get him there, though he paid her a regular monthly allowance regardless of the number of times she provided him with that essential service.

“You look very lovely, Mrs. Hunter,” he said, feeling that her enthusiastic praise of the very ordinary meal before them were becoming somewhat strained. “I trust you found everything you needed?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” she assured him, her cheeks flushing becomingly. “Except a nightgown.” Her blush deepened. “I shall ask Mrs. Reeves if she can lend me one.”

“There was no nightgown?” he was unwise enough to ask, twisting the stem of his wineglass between his fingers.

“Yes, there was,” she said. “But not to my taste.”

His eyes strayed to her throat and that part of her chest visible above the gown. They were covered with red blotches.

“I am sorry about that,” he said.

“Is your sister a very young lady?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Both my sisters are older than I.” Oh, foolish words. Foolish, foolish words.

“Oh,” she said.

He smiled at her.

“Everything is new,” she said. “They are not your sister’s, are they?”

He twirled the wineglass, lifted it to his lips, and drank from it. She watched his every movement. It was most disconcerting. He wished there were a minstrel gallery with a full orchestra playing a gypsy dance. Or twenty guests sharing the table with them, all engaged in noisy argument.

“No, actually,” he said, and smiled again.

“Your mistress’s?” she asked.

He continued to smile. “Are you very shocked?” he asked.

She considered a moment. “No,” she said. “Why should I be? I do not even know you, sir, and I was not invited here. It would be foolish indeed to sit in moral judgment on you. Was she the one with the cold?”

"Yes,” he said.

“How sad for you,” she said, “when you had spent so much money on new things for her and had found such a secluded love nest. The bracelet too was a gift?”

“A parting gift,” he said. “I am getting married.”

“Oh, are you?” she said. “And are dismissing your mistress before you do? I am glad.”

What a strange conversation to be having with a lady whom he had met only a few hours before, the earl thought. She appeared to have forgotten her earlier embarrassment, a strange fact considering the turn their talk had taken. Her face had regained the animation he had noticed in his carriage. Her upper lip appeared to be a little fuller than the lower. It was slightly upturned—a most attractive feature. It made one want to reach out a finger to touch it or to lean forward to kiss it.

“And I am glad to meet with your approval,” he said.

“The nightgowns,” she said, leaning forward so that after all he could see the tops of rounded breasts as well as the beginnings of cleavage. She was laughing. “Would she really have worn them?”

He leaned back in his chair, his hand still stretched out to twirl his wineglass. He was beginning to enjoy himself. “Perhaps for a few minutes,” he said.

She looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before flushing again and resuming her upright position in her chair. "Oh,” she said, “I see.”

“Do you?” he said.

Her eyes danced into merriment and she laughed again. “They are shockingly naughty,” she said.

“Yes, aren’t they?” he said. “They were chosen with great care.”

The earl was somewhat relieved when Mrs. Reeves bustled in at that moment with two dishes of steaming pudding on a tray. He really ought not to have encouraged this line of conversation. Mrs. Hunter was a lady.

She seemed to feel the same way. She began on another topic when Mrs. Reeves withdrew.

“Are you marrying for love?” she asked.

He was amused. “Why do you ask?”

“Because if you are,” she said, “it would seem to me that you would have wanted to break off with your mistress without bringing her here. And if you are not, I wonder that you are breaking off with her at all.”

No, perhaps the topic of conversation had not been changed, after all.

“Love is a woman’s invention,” he said. “Or rather being in love is. Women do not like to admit that they are swayed by a man’s looks and sexual appeal. It seems ungenteel to them to be taken with physical attraction. So they dress up their emotions prettily and call them being in love.”

“How dreadfully cynical,” she said, “and how wrong. My husband was in love with me. He adored me for the eight years of our marriage before he died. I was never in love with him.”

Lord Wetherby raised his eyebrows.

“I used to call him silly,” she said, “treating me as if I were a fragile doll and setting me on a pedestal as if I were not human at all but some sort of angel. I used to tease him about it, and he used to tell me that one day I would fall in love and I would understand him better.”

The earl forgot about his pudding. He was intrigued. Who was the poor fool who had made such an ass of himself?

She leaned forward again, a little more than before, so that he swallowed and returned his attention hastily to his plate. “I loved him, of course,” she said. “I loved him more than I ever loved anyone except perhaps Papa. I loved him dreadfully, though he always used to laugh at me when I told him so, and call me a foolish child and tell me I would know one day what it was like really to love.”

Her face, Lord Wetherby saw when she straightened a little and he dared to look at her again, was flushed and eager, her dark eyes large and very direct.

“We knew for three years that he was going to die,” she said. “I think he suspected even before that. He had a cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been unbearably distressing for a young man.”

“He was fifty-seven years old when he died,” she said. “But that is not old, is it? I wish he had lived another twenty or thirty years, I wish he had lived forever. I loved him, you see, though I was not in love with him at all.”

He looked at her curiously. He would have put her age at no more than two- or three-and-twenty, but she had been married for eight years and her husband must have been dead for longer than a year—she did not wear mourning. She was clearly older then she looked. But even so at least thirty years younger than her husband,

"Do you love her?” she asked. “Even if you are not in love with her, do you love her? Or will you be able to grow to love her?” She spoke quite earnestly and looked at him very directly, as if the answer mattered to her.

“I do not know her well,” he said, “though we have been acquainted for many years. But I do believe that marriage should be a total commitment, Mrs. Hunter. I will do my very best to come to care for her.”

“Good,” she said, picking up her spoon at last and tackling her pudding. “I am glad.”

He watched her with amusement.

“How did you come to marry Mr. Hunter?” he asked. “Let me guess. He was very wealthy and your family thought he was a good catch.” There was some cynicism in his voice.

“Wrong again,” she said, looking up at him with that bright smile that he was finding increasingly attractive. “He was not very rich, though we were quite comfortably well off. And Dennis just about had a fit when I told him Leonard was going to come to offer for me.”

The earl settled back in his chair, his wineglass in his hand, and regarded her with a half-smile.

“We were in Bath,” she said, “which is reputed to be a town for elderly people these days. But there were some young men there and they acted very silly, the lot of them, and made me dread even going outdoors—always sighing and saying the most outrageous things. Leonard used to come to my rescue and walk me about the Pump Room and sit beside me at concerts. I could relax with him.”

The earl was hard-put to it not to show open amusement. Most girls, he suspected, would have reacted in quite the opposite way.

“When he told me that one day I would welcome all the silliness of one of those young men or another like them, I told him I never would. I would rather marry him any day, I told him. He would not believe me at first. It took me several days to convince him. Dear Leonard. He did not want me to tie myself to an old man, he said. I am afraid I won him by trickery in the end.” She smiled guiltily at her plate and peeped sideways at the earl.

“Oh?” he said. He had one hand over his mouth. He was afraid that at any moment he would offend her by laughing out loud. She was a veritable delight.

“When he told me that he would be leaving Bath within a few days,” she said, “I threw my arms about his neck and burst into tears and told him that Dennis would marry me to some horrid young man if he did not rescue me. He patted my back and told me he would marry me. And then he told me how he loved me. He never stopped telling me so for the next eight years.”

“Very naughty of you,” Lord Wetherby said.

“Yes,” she said, smiling brightly at him again. “But, you see, it was not all trickery. I really was crying, and Dennis probably really would have married me to someone horrid— or tried, anyway. He is trying it again now.”

“Is he?” he said. “Are not matchmaking relatives an abomination?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling at him. “Is that what has happened to you?”

“Yes, partly,” he said.

They smiled at each other with mutual sympathy.

If he did not get out of that room soon, the earl thought, he was going to disgrace himself and terrify Mrs. Hunter out of her wits by leaning forward, taking her chin in his hand, and kissing that very alluring upper lip.

“Are you finished?” he asked, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. “Shall we move to the sitting room?” 

“Would you not rather stay for your port?” she asked. 

“No,” he said, “I will forgo the pleasure.” Though if he were wise, he thought, he would sit over the port for the next two or three hours.

“Leonard never would, either, when we dined alone,” she said with a laugh. “He used to say”—she lowered her voice in imitation of a man’s tones— “‘Why should I sit alone with the port, dearest, when I can be in the drawing room drinking in the sight of you instead.’ He was always being silly, as I said earlier.”

Perhaps not so silly, the earl thought, taking her hand on his arm to lead her from the dining room. Of course, the old codger had been free to take her off to bed with him after drinking of her kisses in the drawing room. As for him, he should have reserved his drinking for the port.

“Cards?” he said as they entered the sitting room. “Do you play?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, turning her head to smile up at him. “But I must warn you that I am an expert. My husband was a very good teacher.”

“I will not play the gentleman and allow you to win, then,” he said. “If you are to win, you must do so by your own skill.”

She laughed.