Amanda Scott (37 page)

“No,” he agreed thoughtfully, “I would not have stayed. Fortunately, however, the thought of leaving me at Winchester never occurred to my uncle. He had other use for me.”

“Your uncle? Not your father?”

“My father died when I was small. I scarcely knew him. My Uncle Henry raised me, along with his son, my cousin Jared, who was a year ahead of me at school.”

“But your uncle did not become the earl, so you must be from the senior branch.” She bit her lip, then looked up at him again with an apologetic smile. “Forgive my curiosity, sir, but you must know that I have lived nearly half my life hearing my aunt bemoan her fate. When my Uncle Cadogan died, the fact that he had predeceased his papa made her so furious that she never told us he had even one brother, let alone two of them. Somehow I grew up believing that only the old earl was left.”

“Your uncle actually had four brothers and two sisters,” Lyford said, smiling back at her. “My father was Grandfather’s fourth son, so I never expected to inherit the title; but Cadogan had no children, Edward and his two sons died of the typhus two years ago, and my Uncle Stephen, who was a soldier, waited until he was nearly fifty to wed. Then, before producing an heir, he fell ill of a fever and died six months before Grandfather did. My father, James, was next, so when it was certain that Uncle Stephen’s wife was not in a family way, everything came to me, which was a shock, since I scarcely knew this place. My cousin Jared spent more time at Molesford than I ever did. I didn’t get on as well as he did with the old man, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I didn’t tell you all that in order to gain your sympathy.” His expression hardened. “Where is Pamela? Despite her daring escape from Miss Fletcher, I doubt she will have had the temerity to defy me here in my own house.”

“No, of course she did not. She is in the room opposite to this one, probably quaking in her shoes.”

“As well she should be. She had no business to leave school without permission. If she was unhappy there, she had only to tell me so. She never did.”

“No doubt you frightened her so that she was unable to confide in you,” Gwenyth told him, looking him in the eye again and then wishing she hadn’t done so foolish a thing. How, she wondered, could a man’s eyes express sternness and, at the same time, such audacious desire? Her skin glowed from the warmth of that look. This would never do. But she could not look away.

He said gently, “Do you honestly think I frightened her?”

“Yes, I do.” She licked suddenly dry lips.

“Do I frighten you?” His voice was caressing now, and he took one last step toward her, his left hand moving to touch her shoulder. His touch was light, but the warmth of his fingers through the thin puffed sleeve of her dress stirred unfamiliar sensations throughout her body.

Gathering her wits, though not without effort, she forced herself to speak calmly and with dignity. “Of course you do not frighten me, Lyford, but I am Welsh, not English.”

Stepping beyond his reach, she turned abruptly toward the fireplace and so did not immediately see the twinkle that leapt to his eyes.

“Are Welshwomen so much more dauntless, then?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest as he turned to watch her.

Glancing over her shoulder, she again had the feeling that his posture was one of self-restraint. Coupled with the twinkle, however, instead of frightening her, that awareness gave her a sense of her own power. Lifting her chin, she said, “We Welsh are not trained to be so submissive as our English cousins.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Indeed?”

“Certainly,” Gwenyth said, shutting her eyes to an instant mental vision of her domineering elder brother. “North Wales is neither so civilized nor so tame as England, sir, and our women are not tamed easily either. My sister Meriel,” she went on quickly as he unfolded his arms and took another step toward her, “traveled into France alone when she was little more than my age. We learned to look after ourselves in a most unforgiving environment, Lyford, so I have no reason to fear any mere man.”

He was very close to her again, and her last words came out less confidently, sounding more as though she were trying to convince herself than him. Lyford smiled and looked down the length of himself, forcing her gaze to follow his. “I am not generally thought of as ‘mere,’ you know.”

“N-no, sir,” she agreed, refusing to look up at his face and hating herself for the stammer. He was not mere. “
Mere
” was a very poor word to describe him. The top of her head was not quite level with his shoulder, but it was not his height so much as his breadth that made her feel small next to him. If he were to put his arms around her, she told herself, she would feel swallowed up by his body. That thought, plus the awareness deep within that she would very much like to experience that feeling, brought a brilliant flush to her cheeks.

Lyford chuckled, low and deep in his throat. “Perhaps if you were to look up, ma’am, you would be spared your blushes, though I promise you they are most becoming.”

Realizing where on his splendid anatomy she had allowed her gaze to linger, Gwenyth gasped and grew beet red, looking up so quickly that she thought it a wonder her neck didn’t snap. It was no comfort to find him grinning broadly at her.

He said, chuckling, “I don’t mind in the least, Lady Gwenyth. Look your fill.”

Anger replaced embarrassment. “You are unsufferable, sir. To speak in such a fashion to a gently nurtured female is both unmannerly and crude. You ought to think shame to yourself.”

“Ah, but you have just explained that you are not gently nurtured, so I thought you would not mind. However,” he added quickly when her lips tightened in fury, “it would perhaps be as well if we were to find Pamela now.”

Recalled to her duty, Gwenyth replied through clenched teeth, “It is to be hoped that she has not expired from terror.”

“More likely she has fallen asleep,” he said dryly.

As she swept past him, Gwenyth found herself hoping fervently that he would not prove to be right. Her tenuous composure would not withstand gloating, and she was certain Lyford was a man who, given the least cause, would gloat.

Fortunately, Pamela was awake when they entered. “Gwen! M-Marcus,” she cried, scrambling up from her chair. Then, running to Gwenyth, she clutched at her arm, keeping Gwenyth’s body between herself and the earl, who had stopped to regard her sternly from just inside the open door. Peeping past her protector at him, she said, “Oh, Gwen, what is he going to do?”

As Gwenyth gently detached herself from Pamela’s clutches, she realized that she had no idea what Lyford meant to do. A swift echo of their conversation sped through her mind, and she saw at once that they had scarcely discussed Pamela at all after the first two moments. Not that she hadn’t tried, but his attention, to that subject at least, had been ephemeral. Indeed, he had seemed quite unable to focus upon Pamela. Glancing back at him, she saw his warm but mocking smile and gritted her teeth.

“I don’t know what he means to do,” she said when he made no effort to answer for her, “but I do not think he will send you back to Miss Fletcher.”

“He cannot!” Still standing close to her, as though to take strength from her presence, Pamela added defiantly, “I wouldn’t go. I won’t!” She glared at the earl. “You cannot make me!”

“Can I not?” he asked in the gentle tone that Gwenyth had already come to recognize as a danger signal.

Pamela evidently recognized it too, for her defiant air collapsed and she looked at him more coaxingly. “Please, Marcus, say you will not make me go. I can stay here, and truly I will be no trouble. I can help Gwen’s aunt and your grandmama, and Gwen herself will stay to bear me company, so I shan’t be bored, and I won’t even plague you to take me to London—”

“Much good that would do you,” he murmured.

“No,” she agreed, “for Gwen told me that even the Italian opera has closed for the summer, so there would be nothing much to do there now. But perhaps, if Lady Cadogan will agree to sponsor me—and I am sure I cannot think why she would not—you will agree to let me take part in the Little Season, and—”

“I have not said I will not send you back,” he reminded her. “You do not deserve to be rewarded for what you have done.”

Gwenyth said sharply, “Do not tease her, sir. You know very well that you have decided to let her stay.”

“Have I?” He quirked an eyebrow. “I have not said so.”

She knew that he had decided. She did not know how she knew, but she knew, and she was not going to allow him to play games with them. “You have said little to the purpose at all,” she said crisply, “but I believe that had you intended to insist upon her return to Miss Fletcher’s, you’d have made your position adamantly clear long before now. That you have not done so can only mean that you intend to let her stay.”

“How well you seem to know me,” he said with a mocking twist of his mouth, “and on such short acquaintance, too.”

“Do you deny what I say, Lyford?”

He shrugged. “I have denied nothing you have said tonight, nor shall I begin now. Despite what you or my grandmother may think of my manners, I was raised a gentleman and rarely contradict a lady’s word. Pamela may stay as long as she behaves herself, enacts me no tragedies, and does not plague me with foolish demands.” With that, he turned on his heel and left the room.

Pamela flung herself joyously into the astonished Gwenyth’s arms. “Oh, you did it! I didn’t think you could, and I don’t know how you did, but you did. Oh, how did you convince him, Gwen? I was certain he meant to send me back.” Straightening, she clasped her hands to her bosom. “I couldn’t think how to stop him! I was persuaded there would be nothing for it but for me to run away again to someone else, somewhere where he could not find me so easily.”

Without realizing she meant to do such a thing, Gwenyth grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake, saying furiously, “Put that notion straight out of your head at once, Pamela Beckley. What you did in running away—and on a common coach, at that—was extremely foolish and dangerous! Anything might have happened. ’Tis only your excellent good fortune that nothing did. The truth of the matter is that you deserve to be soundly thrashed, and if your idiotish guardian were attending to his duty, that is precisely what he would do!”

Pamela stared at her in dismay, her eyes like saucers beneath their thick lashes. “You w-want Marcus to b-beat me?”

With an impatient gesture Gwenyth snatched her hands from Pamela’s shoulders and turned away, only to turn back again at once in remorse. “No, I do not want him to beat you. I don’t know what I was saying, Pamela, for there is naught to be gained now by taking you to task. I ought only to be pleased that he has seen the sense of allowing you to remain at Molesford.”

“He did not say about the Little Season, though, did he?”

Taking a deep breath to ease her exasperation, Gwenyth let it out again before saying evenly, “No, he did not.”

“Then we shall have to devise a scheme to convince him of its being a good thing,” Pamela said with a musing frown.

Sternly repressing an urge to slap her, Gwenyth said in a tight voice, “I am persuaded that right now you ought to go to bed. It has been a long day for both of us.”

“Oh, but I am not at all tired now,” Pamela said sunnily. “Would you not prefer that I go back with you to the drawing room? You will recall that the countess expressed a desire for you to make a fourth at her whist table.”

“You,” Gwenyth said, turning her by the shoulders and giving her a push toward the door, “are going to bed because I told the countess you were, and if you go back into the drawing room now, she and Sir Spenser will want to know the reason for your sudden burst of energy. Since I have no desire to be party to that conversation or any like it, you will do precisely as I tell you, or, by heaven, I will return to London first thing tomorrow.”

Looking back as she was propelled across the threshold into the hall, Pamela said in astonishment, “Goodness, Gwen, I had forgotten that you can be so fierce.”

“Then it would behoove you to remember it, my girl, for I am rapidly losing all patience with you.”

“Oh, please don’t be angry,” Pamela begged, turning to face her. “I’ll be good, I promise. Say you aren’t angry with me anymore and that you won’t go to London. Please, Gwen.”

She looked like a puppy who had been scolded, and Gwenyth, no match for the look, shook her head in defeat. “Very well, but no more tricks.”

“Oh,” Pamela said earnestly, “I wouldn’t!” Obedient now, she let Gwenyth take her to her bedchamber and ring for the chambermaid assigned to assist her.

Free at last to return to the drawing room, Gwenyth did so with the aid of a friendly footman; but, once there, she was not at all disappointed to discover that the countess, seated at the central table opposite Sir Spenser, had lost interest in whist.

Smiling at Gwenyth, she said, “You were such a time that we decided to play piquet instead. Perhaps you will like to read or attend to your needlework, as Wynnefreda is forever doing.”

Lady Cadogan, unable to miss the note of censure in the countess’s voice, looked over the tambour frame set before her and said calmly, “I do it to keep my fingers limber, Almeria, as you know perfectly well. My poor hands would soon be useless if I did not keep them occupied.”

“So you are forever telling me.” The countess held her own plump hands up and added complacently, “Fortunately, I do not suffer from rheumatism, so I do not know.” Then, noticing that Gwenyth had not moved, she said, “Don’t stand there, gel. Ring for someone to fetch your workbasket.”

“I fear I have left my needlework in London,” Gwenyth said, seeing no point in confessing her loathing for the ladylike task.

Her aunt patted the armless straight-backed chair beside her own and said with a knowing smile, “Never mind, my dear, you may sit here and entertain me with town gossip instead.” Her tambour was not the small one on which she had been working earlier, but a larger frame that stood on the floor before her chair. Noting her niece’s interest in the woodland-nymph scene coming to colorful life on the canvas, she said, “’Tis a cover for one of the dining-room chairs. I found the pattern with some stuff in a chest in my bedchamber, and we believe it to be one in which the chairs were worked before Cromwell imposed himself on the country and the Hawtrey ancestor allowed the abbey to fall to ruins. Now,” she added in an undertone, peering closely at Gwenyth, “how did it go for your friend Pamela?”