Five

Nita Haddonfield possessed keen medical insight, long blond hair, and curves. Tremaine had guessed at the first two, but the third…

The third revelation was a problem. His cock had awoken with that problem in mind, a puzzle and an inconvenience. A few minutes of self-gratification did nothing to solve the puzzle.

Why her?

She’d made a fetching picture in a faded velvet dressing gown the same shade of blue as her eyes, and she’d brought a cozy elegance to the business of nibbling biscuits. Tremaine’s imagination—ever as unruly as a healthy tup—had latched on to the idea that Lady Nita would be cozy and fun in bed. How he’d leaped to that conclusion about a woman who lacked romantic sentiments, had no use for marriage, and little use for men—

A knock sounded on Tremaine’s door, too decisive to be a footman with more coal or a maid with a tea tray.

“Come in.”

George Haddonfield sauntered through the door, showing a country gentleman’s attire to excellent advantage. “Ready to go down to breakfast, St. Michael?”

“I am, in fact,” Tremaine replied, whipping his cravat into a mathematical. “The earl says I’m to quiz you about coaching inns, packet captains, and French highwaymen.”

George lifted the dish that held Tremaine’s shaving soap and took a whiff. “Beastly time of year to travel. This is quite pleasant. Is it French?”

“Scottish, and no time of year is good for travel. Mud, flies, storms, rain, coaching accidents, pestilence, blistering sun, every season has some blight to offer the weary traveler.”

Tremaine could, that very minute, have been racketing about the snowy lanes of London in a headlong dash for Oxford. What had he been thinking?

“So don’t travel,” George said. “Linger here for another week or so. The ladies would love to show you off at the assembly.”

“A temptation, to be sure.” To be shown off like a prize ram? “I might be leaving today, despite the lure of the assembly. One of my most valuable flocks has taken ill, and I’m awaiting word of their prognosis.”

Tremaine’s wardrobe stood open, and George surveyed its contents.

“You’d be a perishing idiot to ride any distance with the sky promising snow,” George graciously opined. “You’ve traveled on the Continent before. Your waistcoat whispers of Italian silk, and that’s Flemish lace on your shirt cuffs.”

A touch of lace only. French blood would tell. “I’ve traveled at length, though less so in recent years. Why aren’t you married, Haddonfield? You’re comely, well placed, and overly endowed with charm.”

George touched the sleeve of one of Tremaine’s fancier shirts, fingers lingering on the frothy cuff.

“I ought to marry. Travel in quantity doesn’t agree with me.”

Whatever that had to do with anything. Some married men traveled a great deal.

Tremaine dragged a brush through his hair, which was overdue for a shearing. “Lady Nita has also apparently eschewed holy matrimony,” he observed, “while the earl wants nothing more than to see his sisters well settled.”

Now George examined the embroidery on a paisley waistcoat. “I suspect Nicholas made some promise last year to our dying father about finding husbands for the ladies. Nicholas promised Papa he’d marry, and he kept that promise.”

The ladies were doomed then, all but Lady Nita. Tremaine’s money was on her to thwart her brother, and yet she needed marrying. Needed somebody to share biscuits with her late at night, appreciate her curves, and give her children of her own, lest she waste her days wiping the noses of other people’s offspring and brewing tisanes for other people’s uncles.

Tremaine tucked a sleeve button through the buttonhole on his cuff. “If Bellefonte won’t sell me his merinos, then I’m for Germany. The earl has some notion that he can lead Mr. Nash to the altar by parading the sheep before him.”

The sleeve button wasn’t cooperating, or perhaps Tremaine was in a hurry to get down to breakfast.

“Let me do that.” George captured Tremaine’s wrist and tended to each sleeve button, left then right, with the practiced efficiency of a valet. “I’d not like to see those sheep go to Nash.”

“Neither would I,” Tremaine said, “but my interest is mercantile, while yours is—what?”

George Haddonfield was a pattern card of male beauty, and yet what made his appearance interesting was a quality of self-containment, a guardedness his older brother Nicholas lacked. George had spent time on the Continent too, a sad and weary place in the wake of the Corsican’s protracted spree of republican violence.

“Nash is guardian to his nephew,” George said, straightening a fold of Tremaine’s cravat. “I don’t think the boy is happy. I know he’s not, in fact. Neither is his mother. How a man treats his dependents says a lot about him. No one is more dependent than a wife, and Susannah has no wickedness, no instinct for self-preservation. Managing Nash will take sharp wits and a nimble self-interest.”

Business instincts, in other words.

“Have you shared your sentiments with your brother?” Tremaine asked. He wanted those sheep, wanted them badly, but his question had more to do with keeping them from the wrong hands than putting them in his own. As for Lady Susannah…

Lady Nita didn’t think much of this Nash fellow.

George held the bedroom door open. “Bellefonte wouldn’t be interested in my opinion regarding a possible match for Susannah. He and I manage the civilities, but we’re not close.”

As Beckman hadn’t been close with his brothers, and a fourth brother, Ethan Grey, had apparently been estranged from them all until recently. No wonder Bellefonte fretted over his siblings.

A scattered flock was at the greatest risk for predation.

“I had only the one brother,” Tremaine said as he and George traveled the carpeted corridor. In memory of that late brother, a lazy scoundrel with too much charm, no honor, and little sense, Tremaine would meddle, just a bit.

“I didn’t always like my brother,” he went on, “and I often didn’t respect him, but he’s dead, and even the civilities are lost to us. Talk to the earl, Mr. Haddonfield. Bellefonte is a reasonable man. If Lady Susannah must marry, the union should have at least a chance of happiness.”

Though if Susannah Haddonfield was determined to wed her poetical squire, Tremaine suspected little anybody could say, do, or threaten would stop her.

She had Lady Nita’s firm and misguided example to follow, after all.

* * *

Nita managed breakfast without falling asleep at the table, though she hadn’t rested well through the night.

“What have you planned for today, Nita?” Nicholas’s expression was mere brotherly interest, but if Nita said she wanted to check on wee Annie, he’d set down his teacup and cast a glance at his countess that would bode ill for the King’s peace.

And Nita didn’t dare mention persistent coughs, sore throats, or head colds, though they were on her mind.

“I’m inclined to practice the pianoforte today,” she replied. “Some pieces that might allow the musicians a break at the assembly.” Then she’d check on Annie.

“Thoughtful of you,” Leah said, and to Nita’s surprise, a look went the opposite direction, up the table, from countess to earl.

“Mr. St. Michael,” Nita said, “have you plans for today?”

He would say nothing of their shared biscuits and cider, of that Nita was certain. Did he know she’d nearly kissed him, nearly turned a sweet, friendly embrace into something sweet, friendly, and improper?

Why hadn’t she?

Mr. St. Michael had a dimmer view of marriage than Nita did. He wouldn’t have followed a stolen kiss with awkward declarations or lewd presumptions.

“As it turns out, I’m off for London later today,” he said. “Word came last night that one of my flocks has taken sick. Bellefonte, your man Alfrydd was good enough to send a pigeon for me to Oxfordshire, but in the absence of encouraging news this morning, I must go.”

Another look went winging around the table, this time from Kirsten to Susannah to Della—and what was Della doing at the breakfast table twice in one week?

“A pity that anybody should have to attempt the King’s Highway at this time of year,” the countess said. “Nicholas, please pass the teapot to our guest.”

Nita ate something—eggs, possibly bacon, buttered toast—then excused herself. As Mr. St. Michael had recited his plans for the day, he’d done Nita the courtesy of keeping his gaze elsewhere, yet would a hint of regret have been so inappropriate?

Rather than seek him out and ask such a brazen question, Nita applied herself for the next hour to country-dances at the pianoforte.

“If you hit those keys any harder, the poor instrument will lose its tuning.”

Tremaine St. Michael had ventured into the music room, a pair of worn saddlebags over his shoulder. Nita brought the music to a cadence and folded the lid over the keys.

“Mr. St. Michael. I gather you’re leaving us.”

Leaving her.

He took a seat on the piano bench, which left little room for Nita. “I honestly don’t want to, my lady. I looked forward to turning down the room with you, learning how you cheat at cards, or singing a few verses of ‘Green Grow the Rashes, O.’”

“Mr. Burns again?”

“At his philosophical best. Will you walk with me to the stables, my dear?”

The door to the music room was open, which preserved Nita from an impulse to kiss Mr. St. Michael. She’d refrained the previous night—good manners, common sense, some inconvenient virtue had denied her a single instant of shared pleasure.

“I’ll need my cloak.”

Mr. St. Michael stayed right where he was, which meant Nita was more or less penned onto the piano bench.

“I told the earl the Chalmers boys would be useful in any effort to harvest timber from the home wood,” Mr. St. Michael said. “They’ll know where the deadfall is, where the saplings haven’t enough light. The girl, Mary, is plenty old enough to start in the scullery.”

Nita hadn’t dared make that suggestion, though many apprentices began work at age six.

“Mary is needed at home, especially now that the new baby is here.”

“The baby has a mother.” Mr. St. Michael rose, his tone quite severe. “An infant that young ought to be in her mother’s care.”

Nita came to her feet before he could assist her. “Addy tries, but she can’t find honest work, and that leaves only what vice the men in the shire will indulge in, and she drinks.”

Such was the fate of women who did not preserve their virtue for marriage. Mr. St. Michael spared Nita that sermon, though Nicholas had alluded to it enough to disappoint Nita more than a little.

As if any of her brothers had preserved their virtue for holy matrimony? As if they knew for a fact that Addy had cast her good name heedlessly aside, not had it wheedled from her by a predatory scoundrel—or worse?

Mr. St. Michael held Nita’s cloak for her when they reached the kitchen door, and when Nita would have closed the frogs herself, his hands were already at her throat, competent and brisk. He did up the fastenings exactly right—snug enough to be warm, loose enough to allow movement and breathing.

“Have you a bonnet, Lady Nita?”

So formal. If Nita had had a bonnet, she might have smacked him with it, surely the most childish impulse she’d felt in years.

“We’re only walking to the stables, Mr. St. Michael, and the sun has hardly graced the shire in days.” What would freckles on Nita’s nose matter, anyway? “I take it you couldn’t sleep?” she asked by way of small talk.

His eyes looked weary to her, like the gaze of a mother who’d been up through the night with a colicky infant.

“I did not sleep well; you’re right, my lady. I’m accustomed to waking up in strange beds, but I do worry for those sheep.”

Nita let him hold the door for her, though his observation was odd.

Mr. St. Michael bent near. “I meant I travel a great deal, and spend many nights in inns, lodging houses, and the homes of acquaintances. You have a naughty imagination, Lady Nita.”

She took his arm, though she was entirely capable of walking the gardens without a man’s escort. Nita did have a naughty imagination, about which she’d nearly forgotten.

“Will you send word when you reach Oxfordshire, Mr. St. Michael?”

“I’ll have your Mr. Belmont send a pigeon, but you mustn’t worry. I’m a seasoned traveler, William is an excellent fellow under saddle, and the distance isn’t that great.”

The distance was endless, for Mr. St. Michael, having failed to wrangle Nicholas’s sheep free, would never cross paths with Nita again.

“I wish you had taught me a few verses of that song, the one about Mr. Burns’s philosophy.” Nita wished this more dearly than she wished to study German medical treatises on surgical procedures.

“The song is a bit naughty too,” Mr. St. Michael replied. “The lyrics are at once profound and frivolous.” He paused among the shorn hedges and dead roses and offered Nita a mellow baritone serenade:

The sweetest hours that e’er I spend,

Are spent among the lasses, O!

But gie me a cannie hour at e’en,

My arms about my dearie, O,

An’ warl’y cares an’ war’ly men

May a’ gae tapsalteerie, O!

“Burns goes on in that vein,” Mr. St. Michael said. “About how lovely and dear the ladies are, nature’s best work. Men are simply the practice model, while women have the greatest wisdom and so forth.”

“Those are frivolous sentiments?” Nita asked. To be sung to was precious, not frivolous at all. Maybe this was why Susannah was so susceptible to Mr. Nash’s recitations, because when a man offered exquisite verse, his gaze full of sincerity and sentiment, a lady was helpless not to listen.

Mr. St. Michael took Nita’s hand and resumed walking. They hadn’t bothered with gloves, and his grip was warm.

“Mr. Burns had rather a lot of dearies,” he said, his burr once again more in evidence.

While Nita had no one dear, other than her family. A gust of bitter wind blew down from the north, snowflakes slanting along it.

“Must you go, Mr. St. Michael?”

“I don’t like the look of those clouds either,” he said as they approached the stables, “but I’ll probably make London before the weather does anything serious. Will you grant me a favor, my lady?”

“Yes.” Nobody asked Nita for favors. They asked her to set bones, deliver babies, listen to their coughs, poultice their wounds, or—in the case of Nicholas—they ordered her to sit at home and stitch samplers.

“You don’t know what I’m about to ask,” Mr. St. Michael said.

“I know you. You wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.” Nita also knew she’d miss Mr. St. Michael. He was not friendly, but he had somehow become her friend.

“Please see that this gets to the Chalmers household.” He passed Nita coins, a good ten pounds, a fortune to Addy and her children. “I’m not sure whether the best approach is to give it to the mother, so she knows she need not immediately return to her trade, or to give it to the child, Mary, so it won’t be wasted on gin. I’m delegating that decision to you.”

Nita slipped the coins into the pocket of her cape. “Some would say you’re condoning sin.” While Nita wanted to hug him.

“If feeding children and preventing them from freezing to death is sin, then I condemned myself to eternal hellfire ages ago, simply through the number of youths I employ to tend my flocks. My parents were quite wealthy, but they chose to guard their wealth rather than remain with their sons. Addy has not abandoned her offspring, though her children are one storm away from either death or the poorhouse, and I know not which is worse.”

“Thank you, regardless of the theology or your motivations.” Mr. St. Michael was kind, though he would not want that put into words.

He dropped Nita’s hand and signaled the groom to bring William out. “May I make a farewell to your Atlas, my lady?”

“Of course.” Despite her heavy cloak, Nita was chilled, and the barn would be relatively warm.

They walked into the stables, out of the wind but into near darkness. In warmer months, the hay port doors, windows, and cupola would be opened to let in light and air, but in winter, warmth was more important than light.

Atlas lifted his head over the half door, a mouthful of hay munched to oblivion as Nita and Mr. St. Michael approached.

“You need a more elegant mount, my lady,” Mr. St. Michael said. “Just as you need a silly evening of cards, a waltz or two, and more poetry. I had hoped to give you that.”

Nita needed to kiss him. Tremaine St. Michael had offered her a rare glimpse of how male understanding could comfort and please, he’d offered her poetry, and he was leaving.

“Good-bye, Mr. St. Michael.”

Nita didn’t have to go up on her toes to kiss him, but she did have to stand tall. Despite the bitter wind outside, despite his lack of hat, scarf, or gloves, Mr. St. Michael’s lips were warm.

He tasted of peppermint with a hint of ginger biscuit. Nita hadn’t planned more than to press her lips to his, but Mr. St. Michael was apparently willing to indulge her beyond those essentials.

His hands landed on her shoulders, gently but firmly, as he tucked her between himself and the wall of Atlas’s stall. He slid a hand into her hair, cradling the back of her head against his palm.

Soon, he’d gallop off to Oxford, but the way he held Nita said, for the moment, she wasn’t going anywhere.

Well, neither would he. Nita wrapped an arm around Mr. St. Michael’s waist—blast all winter clothing to perdition—and sank a hand into his dark locks.

“I’ll miss—” she managed before his mouth settled over hers, and Nita’s worldly cares, her disgruntlement with her family, her concern for the Chalmers children, all went quite…tapsalteerie-o.

Kissing Mr. St. Michael bore a resemblance to the onset of a fever. Weakness assailed Nita, from her middle outward, through her limbs, and then heat welled in its wake. He held her snugly—she would not fall—but she felt as if she were falling.

Tremaine St. Michael’s kiss was a marvel of contradictions: solid male strength all around Nita and feather-soft caresses to her lips; dark frustration to be limited to a kiss and soaring satisfaction to have a kiss that transcended mere friendliness; utter glee to find that her advances were enthusiastically returned and plummeting sorrow because Mr. St. Michael’s horse awaited him in the stable yard.

He cupped Nita’s jaw as he traced kisses over her eyebrows, nose, and cheeks.

“You deserve more than a stolen kiss in the stable,” he whispered. “But if a stolen kiss is what you’ll take, then I hope this one was memorable.”

This one kiss, this one series of kisses had, in less than a minute, banished winter from Nita’s little corner of Kent.

She rested against him, as she had for a moment in the kitchen late at night. “You’ll let us know when you’ve arrived safely to Oxford.” She was repeating herself.

“I’ll let you know, and, Nita?”

Not Lady Nita, but plain Nita. How that warmed her too. “Tremaine?”

She felt the pleasure of her familiar address reverberate through him, because he kissed her ear as he held her in the gloom of the stables.

“Please be careful. Your brother isn’t wrong to worry about you. Tending to the sick is noble but perilous. I would not want harm to befall you.”

Nita added two more feelings to the bittersweet confusion in her heart. Tremaine St. Michael cared for her, and yet he sounded as if he nearly agreed with Nicholas: the Earl of Bellefonte’s oldest sister ought to spend her afternoons stitching samplers, indifferent to the suffering of others.

“I’ll be careful,” Nita said. “You avoid the ditches.”

“I generally do, though I wish—” Mr. St. Michael stayed where he was a moment longer, peering down at Nita as a heathery fragrance sneaked beneath the stable scents to tease at Nita’s nose.

Nita was penned in by the wall, the horse, and Mr. St. Michael, so she turned her face away, from him, from his wishes.

“Safe journey, Mr. St. Michael.”

He stepped back, and as he tugged his gloves on, Nita could see his focus withdraw from her and affix itself to his sheep, to the journey he undertook to ensure their safety.

Nobody had ever tormented him with orders to stitch samplers while a child suffered influenza or a maiden aunt endured a female complaint in mortified silence.

Nita was the first to move toward the stable yard, lest Mr. St. Michael ruin a delightful kiss with parting sermons and scolds.

William waited outside, a groom leading him in a plodding circle. Snowflakes graced a brisk breeze beneath a leaden sky, and Nita’s resentment receded to its taproot: worry, for Mr. St. Michael, for the infirm whom she tended.

And a little worry for herself too.

“I have enjoyed my stay at Belle Maison,” Mr. St. Michael said, taking the reins from the groom. “Every bit of it.”

He led William to the mounting block, the first few steps of a distance that must widen and widen between him and Nita. She wanted to throw herself into his embrace just once more, but instead spared the sullen sky a glance.

Mr. St. Michael swung up as a flutter of white caught Nita’s eye, followed by a thin, tinkling peal from the bell in the dovecote.

* * *

Elsinore Mayhew Nash was a furious woman, also a mother devoted to her son. When her brother-by-marriage summoned her to his library, she took off her apron, slapped a vapid smile on her face, and hastened to Edward’s side.

“You wanted to see me, Edward?” Elsie’s tone imparted eager, if timid, good cheer. The only eagerness she’d felt in the past year had been to wallop Edward with a poker in locations chosen to ensure he never became a father.

“Elsie, a moment.”

So, of course, she must remain standing while Edward pretended to pore over a column of figures. Elsie could relax, though, because his complexion assured her he’d not yet begun to drink.

The Stonebridge “library” had once been the housekeeper’s sitting room. Now that Edward had appropriated it, the library was the warmest room in the house.

Also home to fewer than a hundred books, the rest having been sold.

Little did Edward know, but Elsie’s ball gowns had been sold too. She’d taken care of that before leaving London to join Edward’s household, a brilliant precaution quietly suggested by another lady who’d buried not one but three husbands.

“Please have a seat, my dear,” Edward said, returning his pen to its stand. “You’re looking well.”

Elsie’s guard went up. Not only was Edward sober, but he was also on his good behavior—for now.

“Thank you, Edward,” she said, perching on the edge of a straight-backed chair. “We’re making pies, which I enjoy. Apple is your favorite, isn’t it?”

More eager good cheer. Elsie had considered poisoning Edward, but how would Digby manage if his mother swung for murder? What little money she had hidden wouldn’t last long at all. Edward’s aging great-uncle, the baronet, was the sole relation left to provide for the boy, and the baronet might be worse than Edward.

“I do favor an apple pie,” Edward said. “I do not, however, favor George Haddonfield in any proximity to my nephew.”

Eager good cheer gave way to feminine confusion. Elsie had mastered the transition by her second week under Edward’s roof.

“George Haddonfield? Surely we’d remain on friendly terms with Lady Susannah’s brother? He brought Digby home from his tutoring session merely as a kindness on a frigid day.”

Edward retrieved his quill pen and brushed it over his fingertips. “The situation is delicate. Friendly terms with Susannah’s siblings for now is a prudent course, but George Haddonfield in particular is to be avoided.”

Susannah, not Lady Susannah, because Edward had already appropriated the privileges of a fiancé.

Edward had systematically decided that most of the ladies with whom Elsie corresponded were not quite the thing, a less-than-ideal association, or better suited to friendship with a woman not bereaved.

In other words, he was choking off Elsie’s friendships, one after the other, lest somebody get wind that Edward Nash was rolled up, a sot, and desperate to marry well.

If only those were the worst of Edward’s shortcomings.

“Does George have excessive debts?” Elsie asked. He did not. The Haddonfields as a family were free of the vices Edward assiduously failed to acknowledge in himself.

“He well might,” Edward said, stroking the feather against his chin. “The Haddonfields don’t hesitate to put their unsavory family members on remittance, and George looks to be taking Beckman’s place in that regard.”

“Don’t many gentlemen live in hock to their tailors?” Questions were risky, but Edward was not yet imbibing, so Elsie could venture a few inquiries in the interests of understanding his latest queer start.

More twiddling of the feather while Elsie remained on the edge of her chair and resisted the urge to crack a window, so stuffy did Edward keep this one room.

“George’s situation is not as innocent as a few overdue bills among the merchants, Elsie. He has tastes I would not expect a woman of your refinement to comprehend, but they place him among the least appropriate associations you or my nephew could form.”

In a family of large, loud, dramatic men and headstrong, outspoken sisters, George Haddonfield had a quiet independence that appealed strongly to a widow under the thumb of an in-law she abhorred.

So what if George hadn’t shed the habits many fellows developed in the best public school dormitories? Elsie had followed the drum for two years and had become difficult to shock.

“I’ll tell Digby to avoid Mr. Haddonfield’s company,” Elsie said. “Do I maintain a distance from him at the assembly?”

Edward thrived on instructing Elsie, the maids, Digby, and their man of all work, whom Edward insisted on referring to as a footman. Edward probably instructed his horses and hounds, who were at least free to bite and kick him.

Though they’d regret such displays sorely.

“In public, you will show Mr. Haddonfield every courtesy,” Edward said, twiddling the feather between his palms. “Dance with him, make small talk, inquire after his health. Bellefonte is protective of his siblings, and I cannot have it said we were less than gracious to any of Susannah’s family. Other than the civilities, though, you will avoid him. I offer you this guidance, because I know Pendleton would expect it of me.”

Elsie blinked a few times in rapid succession, as if mention of her late husband still had the power to move her to tears. She had Penny to thank for landing her in this hell, and for handing over Digby’s funds to a mean, intemperate wastrel.

“I owe you so much, Edward,” Elsie said, rising. “I am very grateful for your guidance. Was there more you wanted to say, or shall I get back to those pies?”

Because making pies was doubtless the acme of every gentlewoman’s ambitions, in Edward’s view.

“Don’t let me keep you, but please have the kitchen send up a tray. These endless figures make a man peckish. A toddy or two as well. Something to ward off the chill, and some comestibles to fortify me until my next meal.”

He came around the desk and held the door for Elsie, doing his impersonation of a blond, handsome exponent of good manners and faultless breeding. Edward would have been better served by fewer manners, more common sense, and a dash of self-restraint.

When the door had closed behind her, Elsie paused in the corridor long enough to let the chilly air wash over her.

Of the three Nash offspring, Penny had been the sensible middle brother, not as pretty as Edward, but willing to work to earn his bread, less concerned with appearances, and genuinely devoted to his son. He’d not been the brightest of officers, but he’d worked hard and had had a streak of gruff kindness that had made his sternness bearable.

Norton had been the brash, ginger-haired youngest son, happy to gallop off and buy his colors rather than molder away in rural Kent as an unpaid steward or extra at whist. Elsie suspected Edward had been happy to see Norton go, for younger sons without means could author much mischief.

While Edward was a trial without end. Elsie honestly wanted to warn Lady Susannah to look past the same three tiresome Shakespeare sonnets and a pair of soulful blue eyes. To look at the empty shelves in the so-called library, at how short Digby’s trousers were, at how cold the house was but for the rooms Edward occupied.

Elsie could not afford to warn Lady Susannah, for if Edward did not soon marry wealth, Elsie and Digby might both find themselves on the charity of the parish.