When to Engage an Earl by Sally MacKenzie (4)

Chapter Four

 

Jane was straightening the papers on her desk, getting ready to leave for the day, when her brother came back to the office. He was looking down at a sheet of paper, a slight smile on his lips.

“Did you get things sorted out between Mr. Linden and Mr. Barker, then?” she asked. One of Mr. Linden’s pigs had paid a visit to Mr. Barker’s mother’s flower bed. Mrs. Barker, not the easiest of women, had demanded bacon for breakfast.

Randolph looked up and blinked as if it was taking him a moment to understand her question.

“Oh, yes. Once I brought Linden and Barker together without Mrs. Barker present, they readily agreed it was likely one of the Hutting boys who had let the pig out. Linden’s going to have a word with the vicar, and I suspect Henry or Walter or both of them will be planting some new flowers for Mrs. Barker.”

“I doubt that will satisfy the woman.” Jane gave her desk one last inspection and stood. She was eager to get back to the Spinster House.

Though it is a bit lonely . . .

Nonsense. It was merely that the initial excitement of living on her own had worn off.

“You are likely right.” Randolph sighed and shook his head. “It’s a pity Barker is cursed with such an unpleasant mother. He wants to wed, you know. I’ve told him he’ll have to change his living arrangements to accomplish that goal. I can’t see any woman being willing to move in with that harridan.”

Jane snorted. “His mother is not the only impediment to his marriage.” Mr. Barker had been courting Cat for months before the duke entered the scene, so Jane and Cat and Anne had discussed his strengths and weaknesses in detail.

Well, his weaknesses. They hadn’t identified any strengths. “He smells of manure and has no conversation, unless you’re interested in sheep and farming.”

Randolph scowled at her. “He’s not a bad sort, Jane. He’s a hard-working, steady, reliable fellow.”

“I wouldn’t want him.”

He raised a brow. “That doesn’t have much to say to the matter, does it? You don’t want any man.”

No! Where in the world had that thought come from?

“Very true,” she said, a bit more sharply than she’d intended. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off—”

“Just a moment.” Randolph flourished the paper he’d been reading. “I wish to discuss this with you.” He sounded oddly excited.

“What is it?”

“An invitation to a house party celebrating the birth of Lord Chanton’s heir.”

Lord Evans’s nephew.

Her heart lurched and then began to hammer alarmingly in her chest. Fortunately, the desk was near at hand. She leaned against it. “Why are you invited?” She would know if Randolph had done business with the viscount, wouldn’t she? She wrote all his correspondence, since his handwriting was illegible.

“Not me, us. We are both invited.”

Lud! Her heart went from hammering to wild pounding. She leaned more heavily against the desk.

This was foolishness.

She swallowed and tried to sound dispassionate. “Very well, but my question remains. Why?”

Randolph regarded her expectantly. “Is there something between you and Lord Evans, Jane? He’s sure to be at the party, you know.”

She shook her head—she didn’t trust her voice.

But it’s true. There is nothing between us.

She’d heard him herself at the fair—he was going wife-shopping in London. Which was perfectly fine. He was an earl. He needed an heir.

Perhaps he’d already found a suitable female to marry.

Lud! She felt as if someone had thrust a knife into her belly.

“He came to Loves Bridge in August,” Randolph said.

“For the fair.”

Randolph laughed. “You don’t really think the Earl of Evans would make a special trip to Loves Bridge to attend a common village fair, do you, Jane? The man spends a good bit of his time in London. I assure you there are many more interesting entertainments available there.”

True. She didn’t know why the earl had come—she’d been so intent on finding a replacement for Worm Wertigger’s zoo, she hadn’t asked him—but it clearly had not been to see her, if that was what Randolph was getting at. If it had been, the earl would have said something, wouldn’t he?

Or he would have done something. They had been alone in the Spinster House. He’d even had his arms around her when she’d tripped and fallen into him. And then there’d been that odd moment when she’d brushed the fluff out of his hair.

Though, to be fair, she hadn’t encouraged him.

Oh, bother. She’d admit she knew very little about such matters. She’d always thought the flirting women did to attract male interest was silly. More to the point, there’d never been a male in Loves Bridge whose interest she’d wanted to attract.

And yet . . .

It was true he made her feel more alive. She enjoyed bantering with him. She’d even admit she found him very handsome. What woman wouldn’t?

But was any of that worth giving up her independence?

No.

What a silly question! Lord Evans wasn’t interested in her that way. He’d left Loves Bridge over a month ago. If he’d felt any sort of a tendre for her, he would have come back to see her. It would have been so simple. He could have paid the duke a visit and then stopped by the Spinster House when he was in the village.

The duke—that was it!

“You forget the Duke of Hart is Lord Evans’s good friend, Randolph. He came to visit him.”

Randolph gave her a long look.

“I suppose it’s possible the invitation is for me and you were included out of politeness.” Again, there was that odd excitement in his voice.

That didn’t make much sense either. Randolph hadn’t been away from Loves Bridge in a long time. “Have you been corresponding with the viscount, then?” She supposed it was possible that someone other than she could decipher Randolph’s handwriting.

“No.” He looked back down at the sheet of vellum. “I, er, knew Chanton’s cousin years ago.” He was definitely biting back a smile now.

He’d never mentioned knowing a cousin of Lord Chanton—and why would he suddenly seem eager to meet the man?

“Are you going to accept?” It certainly sounded as if that was what he was planning to do. “I can’t imagine you wish to be in a household with a new baby, Randolph.” Her brother was very set in his ways.

Randolph hesitated, but only for a moment. “The viscount must have an army of nursemaids to attend to the baby.”

“He certainly has an army of daughters. You did know he has eight, didn’t you?”

Her brother paled a little at that. Eight girls plus a new baby equaled a lot of commotion.

“Chanton’s estate must be large enough to keep his guests from tripping over his children. And the girls will likely be busy with their governess most of the time.” Her brother’s jaw hardened, a sure sign he’d made a decision. “We’ll go.”

“We’ll go?” Perhaps she was a little set in her ways too. The thought of staying in a strange house with people she didn’t know—and likely Lord Evans as well—made her very uncomfortable. “You go. I’ll stay here.”

He frowned at her. “How am I to explain your absence?”

“Tell them I’m busy.”

“With what? Redecorating the Spinster House?” He snorted. “At the rate you’re going with that, you can use that excuse forever.”

It was true she’d been dithering over every decision. It was very unlike her. “I’ve got the lending library to see to as well.”

“No one ever goes there. Even when the current Duchess of Benton was the Spinster House spinster and ran the library daily, it was deserted.”

Sadly, that was very true.

“You’ve never been to a house party, Jane. You should go.”

“I’ve never wanted to go to a house party.” She didn’t see the point of parties of any sort. She had a few good friends—

Well, she had two good friends, Cat and Anne, who now seemed far more interested in their husbands and growing families than they were in her. But that still didn’t mean she wanted to spend several days trapped in a strange house with people she didn’t know.

Randolph had never been eager to rub elbows with strangers either.

“Why do you want to go, Randolph?”

Randolph looked away—and then looked back, meeting her gaze directly. “Now that you have your own place, I’m thinking of marrying.”

Jane felt her jaw drop.

The cynic in her wanted to say something caustic about looking for a free cook or to ask if his Wednesday evening visits to the Widow Conklin no longer satisfied, but the loneliness she saw in his eyes stopped her.

Randolph had upended his life for her when she was fourteen and their parents were killed in a carriage accident. He’d come home from London to be father and mother to her. Yes, it had been understood that he would join the family business eventually, becoming yet another Wilkinson in Wilkinson, Wilkinson, and Wilkinson, but he’d planned to spend several years in Town first. She remembered him and Papa shouting over it on occasion.

And then their parents’ carriage had collided with a big oak tree. No one had ever known exactly what had happened, but the horse Papa was driving was new and a bit skittish. A rabbit or a fox or some other animal had likely darted across the road, causing the horse to bolt. It was just bad luck it had happened at a curve with a tree.

She’d been young and self-centered and devastated by loss, so she’d taken Randolph’s sacrifice for granted. He was five years older than she. She’d thought him grown, and he’d seemed very mature, but looking back now, she realized he’d been only nineteen. A man, yes, but hardly ready to be chained by so much responsibility.

And then there was the rumor that he’d been in love but the woman had refused to marry him, not wanting to be stuck in a small village with a fourteen-year-old sister-in-law to raise.

Randolph had never mentioned a lost love, and Jane had never asked. Perhaps she should have, but feelings were not something they discussed.

And after fourteen years of silence, how was she to find the words?

“You never said anything about wanting to marry.”

He shrugged. “All men want to marry, Jane.” He frowned at her. “As do most women.”

For once she didn’t rise to the bait.

“And you think you’ll find a suitable candidate at this party?”

He shrugged and his eyes slipped away from hers. “I don’t know. Perhaps. At least it’s an opportunity to meet people other than the Loves Bridge villagers.”

That was true. And perhaps it would be good for her, too. Seeing Lord Evans again might cure her of her odd blue-devils.

“Very well. If you want to go to this party, I’ll go with you.”

He grinned and handed her the invitation. “Splendid. Could you pen our acceptance?”

 

 

 

Alex smelled a rat.

When he’d arrived at his brother-in-law’s estate a few minutes ago, Charles, one of Roger’s grooms, had given him a pitying look before taking his curricle off to the stables. And now Jennings, the butler, informed him Lord Chanton had suddenly remembered urgent estate business and gone out. The way Jennings refused to meet his eye as he said “out” made it painfully clear Roger had fled the moment he’d seen Alex approach. Why?

Jennings ushered him into the red drawing room, where he found his sister nursing her son.

“What’s going on, Diana?”

“Don’t growl at me like that, Alex. You’ll upset poor Christopher’s digestion.”

The only parts of the Honorable Christopher Alexander David Philip Livingston-Smythe that were visible were his feet. When Diana had been a first-time mother, she’d nursed in private, but now she just covered herself and her baby with a large shawl and carried on.

By the ninth child, privacy must be only a faint memory.

“And do sit down. You are making me queasy as well.”

Alex sat on the edge of the nearest chair. “Diana—”

“Tell me how things go on in Town,” she said quickly. “I’m dying to hear the latest gossip.”

He took a deep breath. His sister was an old hand at turning the conversation when she wished to avoid a particular topic. He was not going to let her get away with that this time.

“I’ll be happy to talk about London after you tell me what the hel—” He cleared his throat. This was his sister he was speaking to after all. “What is going on.”

She frowned and deftly switched the baby to her other breast. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He snorted. “Oh, you know exactly what I mean.” He ticked off the evidence of Diana’s meddling on his fingers. “One, Roger has fled the house. Two, both Charles and Jennings looked at me as though I was a lamb going off to slaughter. And three, your eye is twitching like it always does when you are up to something.”

Diana put her free hand to her face. “My eye isn’t twitching.”

What plot could Diana be hatching at her son’s christening? It wasn’t a celebration that lent itself to machinations....

Perhaps it had something to do with the guest list. “This is just a family gathering, isn’t it?”

“Mmm.” She looked down at Christopher—or the lump in the shawl that was Christopher—instead of meeting his gaze.

Blast it, that was the answer. “Whom else have you invited?”

“Er, just one or two extra people.” She stroked her son’s foot.

He would not shout. For one thing, it would likely make the baby cry. “Diana, I mean it. Tell me whom you’ve invited.”

Fortunately for her an interruption appeared in the form of their mother.

“Oh, Alex! Jennings told me you’d arrived,” Mama said, hurrying into the room.

Likely Jennings, sensing trouble, had run to find Mama. Alex stood to greet her—and noticed the speaking look she exchanged with his sister.

He forced himself to smile. “Diana was just about to tell me whom she’s invited to this party.”

“Oh.” Mama looked at him and then back at Diana. “I do think we should let him know, dear. It would be rather dreadful to have him caught unaware.”

Zeus! His fingers flexed. I cannot strangle my female relatives.

A pity.

Diana sighed. “I suppose you are right.” She looked up at him as Mama took the chair next to her. “You see—oh, do stop looming over us.”

He frowned, but lowered himself back onto the edge of his seat.

Diana had finished nursing. She held the baby against her shoulder, patting him on the back. “I didn’t precisely invite Lady Charlotte—”

“What?!” Alex shot to his feet again.

The Honorable Christopher Alexander David Philip Livingston-Smythe emitted an impressively loud belch.

“Well done, Stinky!” Diana grinned at the baby as if he’d just taken a first in oratory.

“Stinky?” Alex was momentarily distracted.

“Martha can’t say ‘Christopher,’ and even Judith gets lost in all those syllables,” Diana said, referring to her two youngest daughters, “so Judith gave him the nickname.” Diana held her son’s face close to hers and spoke in the high voice people so often used with babies. “And you are stinky sometimes, aren’t you, my brilliant widdle boy?”

Christopher’s tiny face lit with a wide, toothless grin and a bit of milk drooled out.

Alex felt a pang of . . . longing. He’d not paid much attention when Diana had had her first babies—he’d been only a young lad when Bea was born—but now that he was thinking of marriage, infants seemed to affect him rather strongly.

He forced his thoughts back to the matter at hand—the guest list. Surely he had misunderstood Diana. His sister would never invite the woman who’d jilted him to her home. She’d been beyond furious on his behalf when the wedding had been called off. “Whom did you say was coming?”

Diana grimaced as she settled Christopher in the crook of one arm. “You heard me. Lady Charlotte.”

He looked to his mother for confirmation.

Mama nodded.

He sank back down to his seat.

He was too shocked to feel dread or delight—or simple distaste.

“I didn’t set out to invite her, Alex,” Diana said. “I invited Roger’s cousin Imogen, Lady Eldon. Eldon’s been gone almost a year now, so Imogen’s coming to the end of her mourning. We thought this would be a pleasant way for her to start to reenter Society.”

“I see.” He vaguely remembered Lady Eldon. He’d met her over a decade ago when she’d married the much older Lord Eldon. “But how does that get us to Lady Charlotte?”

“Lady Charlotte is Imogen’s companion.”

“Oh.” He’d wondered what had become of Charlotte, but he hadn’t bothered inquiring. He’d been too relieved not to encounter her at any ton events.

“Of course Imogen couldn’t travel alone,” his mother said. “So if Imogen was to come, Charlotte had to come as well.”

“But what is Charlotte doing as a companion? She’s an earl’s daughter.”

Mama’s brows angled down into a deep scowl. “You must know Buford was very angry when she jilted you, Alex.”

“Yes.” The earl had brought him the unpleasant news himself. He’d given Alex the distinct impression that he would have dragged Charlotte into the church and up the aisle if he thought he could have forced her to say her vows.

He’d tried to calm Buford by assuring him that Charlotte had done exactly the right thing in calling off the wedding. If she found she couldn’t like the match, then there was no more to be said.

Which was, of course, true.

He’d told himself as he’d walked mile after solitary mile in the Lake District this summer that he’d just have to go wife shopping again. Inconvenient, but not a disaster.

But over the last weeks in London, he’d come to realize that Charlotte’s decision to call off their wedding hadn’t just embarrassed and disappointed him. It had completely shaken his confidence with women.

He’d dived back into the social pool only to sink like a rock.

He prided himself on his ability to read people, and yet with Charlotte . . .

How had he been so fooled? He’d thought she loved him.

Clearly she hadn’t.

Now every time he considered paying court to a woman, doubt whispered in his ear: Will you be fooled again?

“There was quite a scandal, of course. Buford needed to send Charlotte away, so it was lucky—” Mama stopped, and then shrugged. “Well, you can’t call a man’s death lucky, precisely, but Eldon wasn’t well and his departure from this realm couldn’t have come at a better time. Imogen needed a companion at the exact moment Charlotte needed to leave London.”

“I see.”

Oh, blast. Diana’s brow was wrinkled with a look of concern.

“You are over her, aren’t you, Alex?”

“Of course,” he said quickly. He’d never spoken about his feelings, and he certainly wasn’t going to start now. “It was nothing. An unfortunate situation, but it’s in the past.”

“It was something,” Diana said rather fiercely. “She hurt you. Mama and I both saw it, much as you tried to hide it.”

“Ah. Well.” He shifted on his chair. He did wish his female relatives wouldn’t so busy themselves in his affairs. “As you can see, I’m fine now.”

Diana and Mama exchanged one of their “poor Alex” glances. He rushed to speak before they could pursue the topic further.

“I do hope Charlotte can return to Society. Would it help if I had a word with Buford?”

Mama shook her head. “No. Don’t worry about Charlotte. I think things will work out for her.”

“That’s good, then.” He started to rise, eager to escape. “If you’ll excuse—”

“It’s you we’re worried about,” Diana said. She looked at Mama again.

He made the mistake of turning his eyes in his mother’s direction as well.

He sank back down onto his chair. Part of him wanted to run, but he knew that would be futile. There was no running from Mama.

“Alex,” Mama said, “we know you want to marry.”

He’d swear the back of his neck suddenly flushed from the hot breath of the horde of eligible young women Mama and Diana must be assembling. “All peers need to marry to get an heir, but I’m only thirty. There’s no hurry.”

Mama ignored him, of course. “My particular friend, the Duchess of Greycliffe—or, as the wags call her, the Duchess of Love—wrote me a few weeks ago to say you’d been attending every party in Town and begging introductions to all the unmarried girls.”

Diana nodded. “My friends told me the same.”

Zeus, how he hated that London was full of spies.

“So I invited someone you might be interested in,” Diana said.

His stomach knotted even as a certain spinster’s face popped into his thoughts.

“Diana, Mama, I know you both mean well, but I would greatly appreciate it if you would stop meddling in my life.”

Diana was as good at ignoring him as Mama. “You don’t have to worry. We didn’t let on that you might be considering her for the position of countess.” She grinned. “We were very clever. I’m quite certain she has no inkling of it.”

Dear God, save him from clever women.

“Please. I can manage this matter by myself.” He wanted to say—and think—no more about it, but he couldn’t keep one question from slithering snakelike through his mind: Who?

He hadn’t met any woman in London who appealed to him.

Yet. Surely he would eventually. Someone who would be open and honest and let him trust his instincts again.

“Well, you haven’t been doing such a wonderful job of that so far, have you?” Mama said, though in a gentle rather than hurtful sort of way.

Diana nodded. “We invited her brother as well, you see. He knew Imogen years ago and has been in touch with her.”

“Oh?” Something in Diana’s tone made his stomach shiver with unease. And Mama was smirking . . .

Diana looked damnably pleased with herself. “I wondered why you ran off to Loves Bridge back in August. It was very odd of you.”

Unease turned to horror. Surely Diana hadn’t invited—

The door opened. Jennings stood there, a man and a woman behind him.

“Milady, Mr. and Miss Wilkinson have arrived.”