Country Flirt (13 page)

This was an acceptable reason and gave Lady Monteith no fears of losing the fortune. Land was as safe as money in the bank. Her complaint was of a different nature when she sat with Monteith after Howard left.

“You should have offered to go with him, Monty.”

“He would have asked me to accompany him if that was what he wanted.”

“I wish he had told me last night he meant to be away this morning. I made sure he’d go into Lambrook this afternoon. I have asked Clifford to meet me at Mrs. Bright’s at two.”

“There’s no reason you must be home every minute Howard is here. As to this foolishness of meeting Clifford at the Brights’ house—”

“I don’t want to do anything to upset Howard. Especially when he will be leaving so soon. I wish you could convince him to stay on here at the Hall.”

“I wish I could convince him to leave today!”

“Think of your brothers, Monteith!” she said, with an accusing flash from her fine hazel eyes. “It is fine for you, with Lambrook Hall and the family fortune. What is to become of the boys?”

Monteith felt as guilty as his mother hoped. Primogeniture had favored him, but the boys were less comfortably endowed. “They’re not penniless,” he reminded her. “Teddie has Uncle Horace’s estate—”

“A little farm in the wilds of Norfolk,” she scoffed.

“Five hundred acres is only relatively small. Bert will be speaking to Lord North about a position at Whitehall when he finishes this holiday. He can live in the London house. It won’t kill him to work for a living.”

“It wouldn’t kill you to show a little consideration to Howard, either! I swear you’re going out of your way to disoblige me.”

Monteith knew his mother would steal the cat’s milk without blinking, but he
did
feel he should be a little more than polite to his uncle. In this indecisive mood, he shoved his cup away and left the room. He had matters to attend to around his own estate and spent the morning with his bailiff. When Lord Howard returned for luncheon, Lady Monteith was at pains to cement the bond between uncle and nephew.

“Did you arrange about buying the land, Howard?” she asked.

“Gerard spoke to the fellow this morning. I went to look at another place—the Grimsby farm.”

“I hadn’t heard it was for sale!” Monteith exclaimed in surprise.

“It isn’t. I thought I might tempt him with a good offer, as the place isn’t entailed, but he is quite adamant. It seems his family has been on that corner of land forever. Why that should stop him from turning a neat profit is beyond me. Sentiment has no place in business. If the man neighboring Langford will sell off a few
begahs,
I shall take the Langford place. Gerard will let me know this afternoon. I’m taking another run down there to scout out a few features.”

“Why don’t you go with Howard, Monty?” Lady Monteith suggested. “You know all about land and crops and things.”

Between guilt and curiosity, Monteith expressed agreement.

“I don’t want to interrupt your usual schedule,” Lord Howard said.

“I tended to my business this morning. I’ll be happy to go with you, Uncle,” Monteith repeated.

The flash that glinted in the nabob’s eye didn’t look like gratitude, but he said, “That’s kind of you, Monteith. I plan to leave at two. And by the by, Irene, I am expecting some crates to arrive from London today. Will you be home? They are rather fragile—some antique statuary. I don’t want the servants hauling them about and breaking them.”

“I’ll be very happy to take charge of them, Howard.” She smiled wanly. There went the meeting with Clifford! And she couldn’t send him a note, as he was taking lunch out with some business associates. Nora would be unhappy with the inconvenience, but she would at least send Nora a note.

“Are you riding or driving?” Monteith asked Lord Howard
.

“Driving. Perhaps we should take your carriage.”

“That’s wise of you.” Lady Monteith nodded. “The air is chilly by the seaside.”

When the gentlemen left in Monteith’s carriage, it came out that chilly breezes were not the reason for avoiding the open curricle.

“I am taking Miss Bright along to see the place,” the nabob said.

Monteith felt a powerful jolt at the news, but to oblige his mother he said calmly, “As we have the carriage, perhaps Mrs. Bright would like to go along.”

“She might as well. There will be no lovemaking with a third party present.”

The third party realized this was a hint that he might find some other occupation. Instead, he began to speak enthusiastically about the excellent location his uncle had chosen and his eagerness to see it.

Lord Howard gave his nephew a suspicious look when Lady Monteith’s footman was seen leaving the Brights’ house. “What is this?
11
he demanded.

“Very likely a note from Mama,” Monteith said. “She didn’t know we were stopping, or I might have delivered it for her.”

Mrs. Bright read that Irene would not be able to keep her assignation with Clifford, but as she had already asked the Russels to drop in, she had to refuse Lord Howard’s invitation to join his party.

Samantha was happy to see Monteith had come along. Half her reason for accepting the invitation was to annoy him. His annoyance was taking on a coloring that spoke of more than mere peevishness. At times she almost suspected a tint of green. Why should he be jealous if he didn’t care for her a little himself?

She wore her most flattering straw bonnet and put her hand on Howard’s elbow as they left the house. From the corner of her eye, she noticed that Monty was frowning. No one noticed that Mrs. Armstrong was watching from behind her curtain. Her major occupation was scanning the street, especially since Lord Howard’s return. She had seen his quick dart across the road last night. She had come to believe Miss Bright had attached Monteith, since he was at the house nearly every day. Howard’s visit last night and that possessive hand on his arm aroused her anxiety. She immediately called her own carriage and threw on her bonnet to follow them.

Their route along the seacoast led her to believe it was only a pleasure jaunt. Unless they stopped somewhere for refreshment, there was no way she could join them. Her curiosity rose when the carriage turned in at the Langford estate. No one had lived there since she had come to Lambrook. In a twinkling, she figured that Lord Howard was thinking of buying the place. She didn’t direct her driver to follow the carriage into the private road, but drove along half a mile and stopped. From this vantage point, she could see them when they came out.

Mr. Gerard was waiting for them at the house with the door open, “Everything is shipshape inside,” he said. It was a happy day when Lord Howard had walked into his office and bellowed “Holloa! Is there anyone in?” Gerard’s usually saturnine face hadn’t been without a smile ever since.

“There is no hurry with that,” Lord Howard told him. “Of more importance, did the neighbor agree to sell me that strip of land?”

“We were fortunate, sir.” Mr. Gerard smiled. Good fortune dogged his every step recently. “It happens old Gilmore wants to retire—quit farming—but he doesn’t want to leave the neighborhood. He will sell off his entire holdings, keeping only the house and a few acres for himself. He is willing to part with the whole thousand acres—for a price.”

“I didn’t expect him to give them away. Tell him I’m ready to close today,” the nabob bellowed, without even asking the price.

“What is he asking?” Monteith inquired.

Mr. Gerard wrung his hands and said, “Ten thousand,” in a quavering voice. Such sums were a new thing for him.

“That’s pretty steep, Uncle,” Monteith cautioned.

“Offer him seven-five,” Howard said. “But I don’t mean to lose out on the sale for a piddling twenty-five hundred pounds. See if he goes for the lower figure, and if he don’t, raise it by five hundred till he says yes.”

“I fancy eight thousand will take it,” Gerard said.

“Since you don’t plan to farm, why don’t you only buy half the acres?” Samantha suggested. “It seems a shame to put so much land out of production.”

“I don’t like to be cramped,” Howard told her. “There will be the gardens, you see. That will eat up a couple of hundred. And that entire strip,” he said, pointing down the hill to the bay, “will be taken up with my docks and boats. You are forgetting the tide, my dear. I shall have to put in a little canal and a lock to control the water level. It don’t do a ship any good to be beached. Hard on the hull. I would prefer to keep it wet at all times. And there will be the buildings for overhauling the vessels.”

“But there is all the land that goes with the Langford estate itself,” she pointed out.

“My horses must pasture somewhere. I mean to set up a stable and training track for them. We Monteiths have always been interested in racing. You don’t want the stench too close to the house proper. Then there will be my hunters and hounds to put somewhere. The stable hands will need somewhere to rest their heads as well. Perhaps in the little house already standing,” he said, glancing to the Langford mansion.

“Oh, Howard!” she gasped, shocked at such an extravagant way of going on.

He grabbed her fingers and squeezed them. “I forgot. That is to be your little playhouse. The stable hands must be closer to the horses in any case. Then I’ll build this squat little hill up a few hundred yards and put our house here, facing the sea. My statuary will go behind it. I am having a little Indian temple shipped home as well, in pieces, to be reassembled. Some dandy carving on it. A little naughty you will think when you see it, but we’ll keep it out of bounds of the kiddies.”

Samantha noticed the bent of his talk—as though it had been decided she was to live here with him, and he hadn’t even asked yet. Monteith noticed it, too. He gave her a look, half questioning, half quizzing. But when he spoke, it was of other things. “What size of house do you plan to build?” he asked.

“Nothing elaborate. I’m a simple man. Say—forty or fifty bedchambers, but perhaps a little larger area on the ground floor. There will be the picture gallery and the library and half a dozen or so saloons. A ballroom, of course—nothing fancy. What I won’t skimp on is my conservatory. I want to be able to walk through groves of palmyra and coconut trees as I did in India. Unfortunately, they’d perish in the cold here, so I must enclose them. Well, what do you think of my plans, missie?”

“I think it is the entire island of England you will need, Howard,” Samantha said in a weak voice.

He slapped his knee and laughed merrily. “I don’t aim so high, but if the Isle of Wight were for sale, I’d pick it up. I hear it has an excellent climate.”

“Shall we have a look at the inside of the house?” she suggested.

“That is of little interest to me,” he said with a kindly smile. “You go ahead. I want to pace out the location for the temple. I had planned to root out that little orchard,” he said, waving toward a thriving fruit orchard of two hundred trees, “but I begin to think my temple would look well with it for a backdrop. I like the effect of old stone against new greenery. It reminds me of home—Lambrook Hall, I mean. A pity there isn’t a lake on the property. In the future, I might snap up the property on the other side and have one dredged out—stock it with fish.”

Mr. Gerard mentally rubbed his hands in glee. “I’ll keep an eye on that property for you, Lord Howard.” He smiled, and went trotting off after his patron.

Samantha, with her head spinning, went into the Langford house. It was roughly five times the size of her own home, and five times as elegant. A crystal chandelier graced the front hall. Marble floors stretched like a black-and-white-checkered sea before her. In the distance, an elegant horseshoe stairway curved upwards. She looked back toward the open doorway, where Monteith stood watching her. She sensed his indecision, and to encourage him to join her, she spoke.

“Can he possibly be serious about all these plans?” she asked. Her voice echoed in the empty hall. “It begins to sound almost like madness.”

With this slim encouragement, Monteith stepped in. “He’s serious. When the madman is a millionaire, we call it eccentricity. Do you dislike his ideas?”

She shook her head in bewilderment, and they began strolling around the downstairs. “It’s like asking me if I’d like to be the queen. It sounds too farfetched to be taken seriously.”

“You must have noticed the courting is stepping up in pace. Last night he told me you were number one. It seems he’s decided—one of these days he’ll remember to pop the question. You must do battle with your conscience and decide what you’ll say.”

“It will take years to do all the work he speaks of,” she parried. “There’s no hurry.”

“I sense a note of reluctance to come to grips with the issue.”

“It’s not reluctance. It’s incredulity. To think, just a few days ago I was bored!”

“That’s not surprising. Just last night I was bored to flinders at your house.”

She gave him a pert look. “Thank you, Monteith. Naturally we simple country folk can’t expect to amuse a London rattle when he decides to make a sojourn.”

“I was bored with his infernal ranting about
tulwars
and banditti, not with you.”

“It is unlike you to be so gauche,” she said, hoping to lure him into more personal conversation.

He ignored this taunt. “The long evenings of Indian tales go with the territory, remember!”

“Is this why you invited yourself along on the excursion, to warn me?”

“Uncle didn’t say you were coming with him till after we had left the house.”

Samantha was disappointed to hear it. “What a lovely saloon,” she said, looking around at the embossed ceiling and matching fireplaces of white marble.

“It seems a shame to desecrate it with weapons and other Indian paraphernalia.”

“You forget, if I am the chosen one, this is to be my own personal playhouse. I can do as I please with it. I shall spend a good deal of time here, and I shan’t allow a
tulwar
or scimitar anywhere near it.”

“What pleases you is to avoid any reminder of your husband, I see.”

“I didn’t say that!”

Monteith raised a finger and shook it playfully. “You did, you know. There was also an intimation that you’d get away from him as much as possible. A strange way for an infatuated fiancée to speak.”