Dangerous to Love (2 page)

Read Dangerous to Love Online

Authors: Rexanne Becnel

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General, #Regency

BOOK: Dangerous to Love
8.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“I am still the dowager countess,” she was saying. “You will not put me out of my own home!”
Ivan stared impassively at his grandmother. But inside he was raging. If she thought she was going to live in the same household with him, she was sadly mistaken. If she thought any portion of her life would remain as simple as it formerly had been, she was mad as a hatter.
He allowed himself a faint smile. “I believe I am the one invested with the title and, therefore, possession of this hideous heap of bricks. Not you. I am the one all of the family property is entailed upon. And I am the one who will make the decisions regarding the ultimate disposition of those properties.”
He knew that would silence her, and it did, for the disposition of the Westcott title and estates meant everything in the world to the coldhearted bitch who had sired his equally coldhearted parent. As much as she despised him, she despised her brother-in-law’s side of the family even more. So long as Ivan did not father a son, the chance remained that the property could revert to her dimwitted nephews, or that he would entail it upon one of them. She simply could not abide that idea. Most of all, she could not abide the fact that she was powerless to control Ivan or, as a result, the vast family estates. It was the power he’d waited twenty years to wield over her.
He gave a grim chuckle at the sight of her choking back her fury. How ironic that his sexual activities should control her life. Despite his father’s indiscriminate behavior with everyone but his own wife, he’d apparently sired only one child. Now, however, that bastard son held control of both the titles and the obscene amount of wealth that went with them. In contrast to his father’s loose morals, Ivan meant his own behavior to be so discriminating as to be sure no one succeeded him to the same titles and wealth. At least not during
her
lifetime.
It was clear, however, that while discussion of the entailment might restrain the autocratic old woman somewhat, it would not silence her entirely. Were she not such a thoroughgoing bitch he might actually have admired her tenacity. She’d outlived her husband and her son. But she was not likely to outlive him. He would triumph over his grandmother if only by attending her funeral.
“Westcott House is quite large enough for the two of us,” she stated in what, for her, was a conciliatory tone. “I keep mostly to my own apartments, which are in an entirely separate wing—”
“You will be more comfortable at the country house,” he interrupted. “While I am in town I do not care to see you at all.”
“And what will you do? Put me out? I should just like to see you attempt that. Yes, indeed. I would.” Her bony hands gripped the crystal-topped cane she sometimes used, while her sharp blue eyes glared shards of ice at him.
But his eyes were just as blue and just as frigid. “I’ll maintain a bachelor’s household here for the duration of the season. I should think you would approve of that. After all, according to town gossip, I am the newest and most eligible bachelor in town, and sorely in need of a wife.”
She peered at him suspiciously. “You will be actively seeking a wife?”
He took great pleasure in the answer he gave her. “Yes.”
Yes, he was seeking a wife. But he had no intention of finding one. Let the old crone live on hope. Let her die still hoping.
She leaned forward, unable to disguise her rising excitement. “I know all the good families and most of the eligible young ladies. I can arrange introductions, perhaps even hold a reception.”
“That will not be necessary.”
“But John, just think—”
“I am Ivan!” he snapped. “I will always be Ivan no matter how you try to make an English lord of me!”
He’d been standing nonchalantly at the wide marble mantel. Now he began tensely to pace.
“All right. All right,” she snapped back at him. “I will try to remember that you prefer that Gypsy name. It’s just that I’ve thought of you as John for so long.”
He let loose an ugly laugh. “You thought of me as John,” he sneered. “The fact is you never thought of me at all.”
“I thought of you as the future Earl of Westcott,” she informed him in cutting tones. “Now that the title is officially yours you should show me the gratitude and respect I deserve.”
“Gratitude!” He exploded. “Respect? Not bloody likely! The only emotion you shall ever have of me is contempt,” he swore, forgetting his vow to remain unemotional in her presence.
Ten years he’d stayed away from her and this godforsaken family seat she so valued. Ten years of wandering the world, never happy, never finding the peace he so desperately sought. His mother and her Gypsy band had long ago faded into the landscape. His identity had faded away with them as well, leaving him only his hated ties to the Thornton family tree.
He’d lived like a pauper these ten years since leaving Bastard Hall, letting his more than generous allowance accrue into a tidy sum. Meanwhile he’d worked himself to the bone, taking chances other men would never take, risks that saner minds would run screaming from.
He’d amassed a small fortune of his own along the way, enough to keep him forever independent of his father’s family’s wealth. So why had he come back? Why had he let himself be invested with those damnable titles?
To spite her.
It hadn’t been enough simply to let the cousins he’d never met inherit the Westcott estates. No, that had not been sufficient punishment for what she’d done to him. So he’d come back once he’d heard of his father’s death just to spite her. He would become the earl, just as she’d planned all those years ago. She thought she was getting what she wanted, but he would see that she lived to regret it. For despite all her plotting, he would provide her with no heir and she would know that her family line would end with him. She would lose everything she valued to the brother-in-law she so despised—just as she’d caused him to lose everything he valued.
He took a deep breath, fighting for control. “I’m staying with Blackburn until you have vacated these premises.”
She perked up at that name. “Oh, yes. Blackburn, the bastard prince.”
Ivan gave her a cold smile. “We bastards must stick together, given that our families so readily abandon us.”
Her face cooled into a mask of resentment. “If I’d abandoned you, you would be some pathetic Gypsy horse thief, dead or in prison by now.”
Ivan clenched his jaw in frustration. The truth of her words was a bitter pill to swallow, but no less the truth. As miserable as his childhood had been, from what he could tell, the other children in his mother’s band had fared even worse. If any of them had survived the past twenty years, he’d not been able to locate them.
Still, that did not pardon the old woman for her actions. He poured himself a glass of whisky, tossed it back without savoring the warm comfort of its stinging heat, then set the tumbler down with a sharp crack. “I’m leaving. Send word to Blackburn’s house on Compton Square when you have departed.”
“I have no intention of leaving my own home,” she replied in a frosty tone.
Ivan paused at the door and stared at her. Twenty years ago she’d ripped him from his home, but even then, he would have welcomed her presence in his life. He would have welcomed
anyone’
s presence in his life. But twenty years ago she’d abandoned him, a terrified child, to the cruelty of Burford Hall. To the cruelty of that drunken headmaster and his sadistic wife. To the cruelty of a community of boys, where the bullies reigned and the weak were crushed.
He’d learned one important lesson at Burford Hall, however. One lesson that he lived by still. Might made right.
Now that he had the might—his father’s titles and the fortune attached to them—he had the right to do anything he wanted.
He studied the aging crone before him with a cold, aloof gaze. It was too late for her to worm her way into his life now. Far too late. Besides, what she valued most in life—her esteemed position in society and the continuation of her family line—meant nothing to him. Less than nothing.
“You cannot win against me, Grandmother,” he said in a derisive drawl. “Stay here if you must, but I warn you, it will not make you happy. You’d be better off in the country, welcomed into the bosom of your family. Ah, but you have no family, do you? At least none that you can abide—or who can abide you. Perhaps your servants can comfort you in your decline.”
So saying, he turned on his heel and left, striding purposefully from the elegant drawing room, into the cold marble foyer, and then through the towering doors and down the granite steps. Though Westcott House was as fine a house as could be found in London, he thought of it as an unforgiving heap of stones. It was a magnificent credit to a title handed down for nearly four hundred years. But its only value to Ivan was as a tool of revenge. The ton, the season, the money—it was all a waste of time except insofar as he could use it to strike back at those who had hurt him.
If it brought him no particular comfort to take that revenge, he refused to admit it. For if his goal was not revenge, if his one focus was not to bring low all those who once had looked down on him, then what in hell was he to do with the rest of his life?
 
Houghton Manor, near Wellington, Somerset May 1829
 
L
ucy Drysdale heard her nephews’ angry screams, but she chose to ignore them. Turning her back to the morning-room door, she reread the last paragraph of the letter she’d just received:
… will be lecturing at Fatuielle Hall during the season. If you are in London I encourage you to attend the entire series of lectures. You will have a particular interest in my theories on the intellectual and moral development of children. Until then I remain sincerely yours,
Sir James Mawbey, B. A.
 
Lucy clutched the letter to her bosom and sighed. Sincerely yours. Though she knew it was quite beyond foolish for her to read anything special into that simple closing, she could not help herself. If there was ever a man whose sincere feelings she wished to be the recipient of, it was Sir James Mawbey. Since reading the first of his articles she’d felt nothing but admiration for him.
At long last a man who cared about more than shooting and gambling, and horses and land.
At long last, a man who wondered about the same things she wondered about, and who had taken the next step by putting his ideas all down in articles. Brilliant articles.
She’d read everything she could of his writings in the new field of psychology, and was more than impressed by the depth and breadth of his knowledge. More importantly, however, he’d validated so many of her own half-formed theories about why people behaved the way they did.
When he’d responded to the letter she’d sent him, however, she’d become his most ardent admirer. Since then they’d corresponded several more times, but she had never dared hope to meet him. Until now.
Unfortunately, her brother would never let her go. She knew how penurious Graham was when it came to money. Not to mention his disdain of her intellectual pursuits. He’d absolutely refused to let her attend university, even though a few women were beginning to do so. No matter how she’d pleaded, he’d remained obdurate, stating that she’d already had more education than a woman needed to have.
It was foolish of her to even hope he’d finance a trip to London for her now, simply for the purpose of attending a lecture series—especially when the lectures pertained to subject matters he considered silly and trite. He’d often expressed the opinion that her intellectual interests should be sufficiently satisfied by their father’s library and by her role now as the governess to his children.
If anything, Lucy felt more stifled than before. She’d long ago read every book in the library, and as for the children, well, they were children. They could never take the place of well-educated adults with wide-ranging interests.
They did not begin to compare to the brilliant Sir James Mawbey.
She stared down at his letter and fingered its creases, daring to dream the impossible. What if she managed somehow to reach London? What if she met Sir James and he were unattached? Was it so unlikely that an attachment might be formed between them? Nothing so frivolous as passion, of course. Not with the serious Sir James. No doubt he did not believe in romantic love, any more than did she. But the love that could grow from respect and admiration … That sort of affection would not be unlikely between them.
Lucy stared around her, feeling a sudden guilt for having such thoughts. And yet the fact remained: she was desperate to find a reason to go to London. If she remained trapped in the Somerset countryside much longer, her mind would surely wither and die.
Another scream broke into her thoughts, but once again she pushed it into the background. Her eldest nephew, Stanley, was an arrogant little monster whenever he wasn’t blessedly asleep. As his father’s heir, he was treated as the lord and master already. Accordingly, his younger brother, Derek, made it his life’s purpose to punish Stanley for being born first. As for her nieces, Prudence, Charity, and Grace, they seemed determined
not
to live up to their names.
Though Lucy had made some inroads relative to their manners since taking on the role of governess to Graham’s five children, screaming was something she’d not yet been able to banish from their behavior.
She could hear the voices of the two angry little boys now, and with a resigned sigh she tucked Sir James’s letter into her pocket. She would have to go and make peace among them. Never mind that she’d already given the oldest ones lessons this morning, then taken the younger ones out for a nature walk. Surely she was entitled to a quiet moment every now and again. But not today, it seemed.
Then something shattered against a marble floor and she flew from the room.
“Stanley! Derek!” The boys leapt apart, then backed away at Lucy’s sharp cry. Though ten and nine respectively, they were similar in size and appearance, and identical in temperament, though no one but she saw the truth in that observation.
“He called me a fart!”
“He called me a horse’s arse!”
Appropriate in both cases, she thought, though she wisely kept that opinion to herself.
Like mice out of the woodwork, the three girls appeared. Prudence, at twelve, was old enough to feel much more mature than her brothers, but still young enough to need to torture them about it. “Oh, dear. Are the
children
fussing again?”
“Shut your trap, Pru!”
“
You
shut
your
trap!”
At that moment their mother, Hortense, hurried into the hall. “What in the world—” She stopped in mid-sentence when she spied the pseudo-Chinese vase shattered across the patterned marble floor of the lengthy hall. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” she murmured, wringing her hands together. “Your father is going to be very displeased. Very displeased.” Then she spied Lucy. “Oh, Lucy. How
could
you allow this to happen?”
Lucy chose not to respond to that particular remark. Though she usually tried to be more sympathetic to her whiny sister-in-law—after all, the poor creature was married to Graham, and that was cross enough for anyone to bear—at the moment she had more important matters to deal with.
“Prudence, take Charity and Grace into the rose garden. Now,” she added when the girl seemed inclined to argue. “Hortense, if you will leave this to me?” She gave the woman a taut, pointed smile.
“Oh, yes. But … but what of the vase?”
“Send Lydia to clean up the mess.”
“Yes, but … but what will Graham say? About the vase, I mean? He’s bound to notice. I mean, it’s been sitting in this very spot, on this very table for, well, for as long as I’ve been coming up to Houghton Manor, and that’s a long time—since I was a child—and that would be, well, never mind how long that would be—”
“Please, Hortense.” Lucy broke into her sister-in-law’s aimless chatter.
“Oh, yes. Of course.” Hortense melted away. She was extremely ineffectual, both as a wife and mother. But she was a good breeder, and after all, that was what Graham had wanted. That was all most men wanted, Lucy thought in irritation. No doubt that was precisely what the two hooligans who now stood nervously before her would someday want in a wife. A good breeder with no ideas or opinions of her own.
She fixed the pair of them with a stern stare. “I want the complete truth and in the precise sequence in which it happened.”
“It was his fault!”
“He started it!”
“The precise sequence,” she repeated. “You shall both memorize heraldic orders all afternoon if the truth is not immediately forthcoming.”
The brothers shared a look, one that told her she had bested them, at least for the moment. She usually tried to link the children’s punishments to the particular infraction committed. But occasionally she resorted to the time-honored tradition of writing lines. Instead of using biblical quotes, however, she preferred the heraldic orders. It was her own perverse slap at a society so ordered and restrictive as to stifle any creative thought. Though she knew it was unlikely, she hoped that particular punishment would instill in the boys a lifelong dislike for the rigid social orders they’d been born to. Especially Stanley.
“Derek was feeding Sunny,” Stanley accused.
“Just an apple!”
“He’s my horse, not yours!”
“So then what happened?” Lucy interjected.
“He pushed me down,” Derek retorted.
“Well, you threw dirt on me.”
“
After
you pushed me down!”
“You deserved it!”
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
“Boys! Boys! How did you end up in here, knocking the vase over?”
“Stanley chased me.”
“All the way from the stables? Can I assume that neither of you paused to wipe your feet?”
Derek frowned. “I couldn’t stop. He was chasing me.”
“Well, he was getting away,” Stanley countered. They both peered up at her guiltily.
Lucy stared at them. They were not bad boys. Not really. And to be honest, she was glad that if they’d broken anything, it was that hideous old vase. But that was not the point. They were brothers who were growing up to hate one another, just like so many other brothers of the quality. Younger brothers who would inherit nothing always hated their elder siblings, just as the eldest sons always grew to hate their fathers and waited impatiently for them to die. And all on account of the antiquated system of primogeniture.
“I’ll deal with you first, Stanley. I should like to remind you that some day the responsibility for the Houghton stables will fall to you. If you are to rise to your responsibility then you must have a care for every horse there—”
“I do! Nobody can say I don’t love all the horses!”
“Do not interrupt. It’s rude. No one disputes your affection for the horses. What I want to point out, however, is that you will also have responsibility for all those who tend to those horses. You should encourage
everyone’s
affection for the horses, including Derek’s. If he would give Sunny an apple, then you should be pleased, not jealous and resentful. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Stanley gave a reluctant nod, as she expected he would. She’d determined long ago that he took his inheritance very seriously. Though his father saw the rank only in the light of the privileges it provided, Lucy hoped to instill in Stanley some sense of the responsibilities too.
“As for you, Derek. Did you choose to be kind only to Sunny, or to the other horses as well?”
His eyes would not meet hers. “I didn’t have enough apples for every bloomin’ horse in the stables.”
“No, of course you didn’t. So you selected Sunny specifically because you knew it would rile Stanley. Am I right?”
He shot her a resentful look but didn’t answer. Lucy took a deep breath. Were it not for the broken vase this would not be so serious a matter. But she knew her brother would demand someone be punished for the vase. If she did not give them both a fair punishment, Graham would let all the blame fall to Derek.
When the maid Lydia scurried into the room, Lucy took the broom and dust pan from her. She gave the broom to Stanley and the pan to Derek.
She gave them a stern look. “First you shall clean up this mess. Together.” She raised one hand, forestalling their objections. “Then you shall go down to the stables and give every horse, from hunter to draft animal to pony, some sort of treat, whether an apple, a handful of oats, or just a little affectionate light grooming. You shall do that together also, both of you with each horse. When you have completed those tasks, come find me and together we will then go and tell your father what has occurred and how we have resolved it.”
All in all, a fair resolution, she decided. Derek knew he had been saved a caning from his father. The swift smile of relief he threw her showed that. As for Stanley, he’d had a new facet of his future responsibilities revealed to him, then been sent to the stables, his favorite place in the whole wide world.
She sighed. As much momentary satisfaction as she received from situations such as this, she nonetheless found it frustrating. She reached in her pocket for the precious letter. There was so much more in life to learn. But she feared she would never have the chance. Rather than experience life, at twenty-eight years old she was already considered a spinster and relegated to raising her brother’s children, preparing
them
to experience life.
But not forever, she vowed. Somehow she would find a way to leave Houghton Manor. She had a very modest income of her own, left to her by her mother’s father. But one hundred pounds a year was not enough for her to be entirely independent. If she could only find a way to supplement it, she could afford to leave the stifling circle of her family and move to town.

Other books

When Gods Die by C. S. Harris
I Spy Dead People by Jennifer Fischetto
Emilie's Voice by Susanne Dunlap
The Giving Season by Rebecca Brock
Cartel by Lili St Germain
The Blissfully Dead by Louise Voss, Mark Edwards
A Change of Heir by Michael Innes