Chapter Three
Everett left the Fishers’ house with a feeling of triumph that wasn’t diminished by the brisk summer breeze and wet pavement. It was a pity there was no hackney available, but with the bright clouds flying across a blue sky, it was a great day for a walk.
A great day to celebrate success after a chase. He had saved the estate and the family name from ruin. And Grace. Grace, with her interesting hard edges and yellow-brown eyes that went from soft to sharp in the space of a blink. She was just the lady to be his countess.
His foot slipped and a smell of horse excrement assaulted his nostrils. The earthy scent was a muddy battlefield, and in front of him were his soldiers in a melee of blood, smoke, and mud. Head spinning, he looked down at his boots, smeared with brown, which gradually became clear. Glistening, wet straw. For a second, he could see the soiled floor of a cowshed, the lowered head of a cow showing ulcers and sores around its mouth.
He blinked hard and the cobbles came back into focus. He’d committed himself to an heiress who wanted to keep half of her dowry, when he needed all of it. In the focus of his negotiations, he’d supposed twenty-five would solve the immediate problem and the rest would sort itself out. Grace, she of the gold eyes, would want to stay if he persuaded her. Seduced her.
With his feet in shit, he could suddenly see the extent of the…trouble he was in. Given her determination to leave, he ought to call it off. He straightened to turn back, but didn’t make a step.
It would take weeks to be accepted by another heiress. The deterioration of the herds was quick, and without this marriage, there would be no money to compensate Bridge Farm for culling their animals. Men, women, and children under his protection would end up destitute. They would end up paupers in the workhouse, breaking rocks and hardly eating. How could he back down?
It was true his parents had married for love and so had George, but he’d never aspired to be anything like his father. This was a financial transaction—twenty-five thousand, with the prospect of twenty-five more. The precipitating crisis left him with no choice.
Yet, as well as this bleak necessity, he had been drawn into the idea of convincing Grace to stay at Larksview, and with him.
The worst thing was, despite the horse excrement on his boots and the knot in his chest that said he had made a mistake, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
…
George was there when he returned to his room. Everett usually took the stairs two at a time at a running pace, but instead he walked, taking the time to compose himself.
“Have you been waiting long?” He threw off his jacket, then seated himself on the bed as he pulled at his cravat.
George, who was sitting reading today’s paper, looked up. Everett would have liked to ignore his visit, but your own brother was not really a person one could cut, especially when he was sitting in the only chair.
“I suppose not, compared to the importance of my errand.” George folded the newspaper, leaving a lumpy section in the middle, and discarded it onto the floor. “The gossip I received last night was of poor quality.”
“Yes, I have discovered.” He began to untie the laces on his boots.
“You know Miss Alnott is only offering half of her dowry, just twenty-five thousand.” George looked at him hard.
“It’s too late.” He rose and put his boots outside the door to be cleaned.
George exhaled audibly. “Tell me you haven’t done something irrevocable.”
Everett didn’t reply and sat back down, pulling at his cuffs. It was too hot in this room.
“Have you thought about this at all?” George asked.
“I have thought a lot about Larksview.” He was on edge and it was laced through his voice. “It’s a business deal. In effect, she is hiring me to obtain her dowry for her.” Which was a better basis for a marriage than naive idealism. Romanticism had wrecked his parents’ marriage, and that wouldn’t happen to him.
“Good God, Everett, have you lost your mind?”
No, but maybe George had lost his memory. “I came for money. This is an expeditious way of obtaining it. If you want to know what losing your mind is, I suggest you consider my position. It is being left debt from your feckless elder brother’s gambling and your father’s irrational investments. It’s having every damn cow within a two-hundred-mile radius die and not being able to stop the disease, because you can’t pay the farmers to cull.
“Grace is offering me a way out of this. Twenty-five thousand.” His chest heaved with the effort of containing yet more angry words. George didn’t deserve his wrath, any more than he himself deserved this mess he’d inherited.
“You said Peter’s debt alone was twenty thousand.”
“It is.” Business partners ought not to start off lying and trying to cheat each other. A tinge of guilt went through him, and he ignored it. “I’ll get the rest of the dowry. She only wants money to go abroad, and Larksview is at least as good as the continent. She’ll see my need is greater.”
George’s eyes widened as Everett explained the terms of their bargain.
“All I need to do is make her fall in love with me, or Larksview, she will stay, and I’ll have the money to pay all the debts.” It was a simple plan and his neck ought not to feel like stone. Tempting a lady wasn’t the same as forcing, or claiming husbandly rights.
“Untruth isn’t a good basis for a marriage.”
“It’s all very well for you to say.” It was easy for George. Married before Peter had inherited, he’d been at liberty to choose. He was financially secure, though not wealthy, and didn’t have an earldom to consider. “I have responsibilities.”
“I say it because I’m married,” George bit out.
“It will be fine.” Bitterness rose in Everett’s throat. With a callousness he didn’t feel, he added, “I will charm and seduce her before a week is out. It will be no hardship, as she is quite attractive.”
“She’s quite attractive, is she?”
Quite attractive was an understatement. She was one of the most striking women he had ever seen. The recollection of her swept-back hair and curved cheekbones and amber-tinted eyes didn’t invite pretty comparisons with roses. She was the chill breeze and warm sun of a summer’s day on your back. She was beautiful in a quirky way, not a diamond, but she had elegance and poise. She was like a rough-cut citrine, with sharp edges and swirling colors.
“She will come to me.” Brotherly rivalry would not allow him to concede any flaw in his plan.
“You poor deluded fool.” George shook his head. “I imagined that by avoiding town and being in the army you’d avoid making a stupid marriage. But apparently, you’re more like Father than I’d realized.”
“It’s not like that,” Everett snapped. “She is marrying for convenience as much as I am. And there won’t be a child in half a year’s time before I swan off to London.” He wasn’t like his father. Or his brothers, either. Peter had been a debauched rake, rumored to be found in compromising situations with any number of ladies, as well as in his main interest of gambling. Everett had found bills and IOUs crammed into desk drawers after his death. George was just as popular, but much more respectable. He had charmed every lady in ballrooms across the capital with his pretty compliments and attention, before marrying the toast of the season. Everett, on the other hand, had never liked debauchery or courting the approval of the ton.
“You think a lady is just like one of your camp followers, but she’s not. She’ll be like Mother. She’s not going to fall in love with you for your fancy title and a big crumbling house.”
“Our parent’s marriage was a love match. At least on Mother’s side. Before she was…bitter, she was hopeful.”
George looked down and his face seemed pale. “Ladies want gifts. Physical things like clothes and jewelry. You’d be well advised to buy something before you leave town.”
“Gifts.” Everett made a skeptical noise in the back of his throat and went to the window to look down at the busy street below. “There’s no money for gifts.”
Better gifts than love, though. The hurt looks from his mother and confused effrontery from his father whenever he left Larksview for London had made love seem rather unhealthy.
“Then, of course, they need the other gift that only a real man can give. They want children,” George said.
There was something deprecating in the way he said, “real man,” but Everett ignored it. He turned away from the window. “Presents and sex. Well, I will be sure to bear your advice in mind, little brother. And now, what about—”
“Lots of clothes and a baby, that’s enough for a lady. But, you need to think carefully about this. You’re a man. Will it be enough for you?”
George’s face was tight, and for the first time, Everett wondered if the seemingly charmed life of his was entirely happy. Before he’d been married, George had been infatuated with someone else. Everett had thought it a passing fancy, if a scandalous one. “Is that the case for you?”
“I’m just fine,” George replied with some of his usual cheer. “My fate is already decided. I just thought you might want to see that you could do a little better than the daughter of a tradesman who you have to persuade to love you just so that she will keep her purse nearby.”
Irritation spiked him anew. “What I want is irrelevant. The Earl of Westbury must have a rich wife. There is no choice.”
George harrumphed dismissively. “Well, I wish you luck. Especially with informing Mother. She will be apoplectic.”
“There will be no reason for Mother to know the Miss A in the gossip columns looking for a marriage of convenience is the same Miss Alnott I’m marrying. You will not tell her.”
“She won’t hear it from me,” George said. “But you can’t hide she’s from trade.”
Everett swallowed. He had six weeks to save Larksview by winning over Grace. He had to be captivating enough to mitigate a crumbling estate, dying cattle, the burdens of being a countess, west-country rain, his brother’s debts, and the haughty dowager.
And he couldn’t touch Grace without her explicit request.
He’d served as a young officer in the Crimean war and brought back most, though never enough, of his soldiers. He’d served in India. He knew about insane wars. Such a small campaign ought to be easy. Just one woman.
This needed sixty years, not six weeks.