Emily Greenwood (11 page)

“That’s not in the least gentlemanly of you, Mr. Collington.”

“It’s James,” he said, fixing her with a look that forced her to acknowledge all that had so far passed between them.

She crossed her arms in front of her. “Didn’t we just agree to stay away from each other?”

“We agreed not to touch one another. But I won’t have people thinking there’s ill will between us. And anyway, how do you know your father wouldn’t want to come?”

“He doesn’t like parties.”

“Maybe he’ll surprise you. Is it right to make other people’s decisions for them?”

“I know him very well. He’s not interested in the kind of people likely to come to a party hosted by a fashionable gamester.”

“Well, I doubt he would be happy to hear what his daughter is getting up to in the evenings.”

He waited. She pressed her lips together unhappily.

Finally, she said grudgingly, “Very well, Mr. Collington, we’ll come to your party.”

“James,” he said firmly.

“
James
,” she said, as if the word itself were reprehensible.

“Thank you, Felicity,” he said, enjoying using her name. Felicity—happiness. Felicity, who could make him feel so giddy, even though she also made him want to tear his hair out. “It will be my pleasure having you both as my guests. My visitors will arrive tomorrow, so you’ll join us for dinner.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “And I believe I can count on Lovely Annabelle staying away during my house party? This is a game I can’t allow you to continue.”

Her reply was only a grunt, but he took it for assent.

“Good, because I won’t have my guests being made uncomfortable by rumors or visitations.”

Despite her protests that she knew very well how to get home, he walked her all the way to Blossom Cottage.

“Go away,” she said, when he would have stood as she washed the soot off herself with a bucket she’d left outside the cottage.

It wasn’t until the next morning that James discovered that Lovely Annabelle had left him a calling card in the form of a pile of soot outside his door that he had unknowingly tracked all over his carpet and into his sheets. He groaned and rang for a maid to clean up the mess.

Felicity awoke the next morning to the unhappy knowledge that her haunting had been a miserable failure. Worse, she and James had
kissed
. She threw the covers over her head. She’d failed in her plan to haunt him, and only succeeded in pulling back the door to her heart that she’d kept shut for three years. Now, when she could least afford to open it even a crack, and to this man of all men.

Wonderful. She was uncontrollably drawn to the man who had taken her family’s estate, a man as handsome and charming as any devil sent to tempt a poor mortal.

All these years, attraction had been something she’d had no trouble doing without. Had passion lain in wait, to ambush her? Because being attracted to James was the worst possible thing that could happen. It would undermine her efforts to get Tethering back, first off. And anyway, because of what she and Crispin had done, she could never marry. She’d vowed that she would never either explain herself to a man, or trick him into thinking she was pure. Marriage was closed to her.

James
is
a
different
sort
of
man,
a voice whispered.
He’s unconventional. He might understand.
But she knew this was nonsense. He might be attracted to her—very well, he was—but to look beyond her transgression of three years ago would take love, abiding love. And that was not what was between them.

A foolish, dreamy part of her wanted to spin a fantasy that a very grand love might grow between them, but she crushed it.

She hid under the covers from the bright sunlight streaming in her window. It was a fresh new day and she felt horrible. On top of everything last night, no one save James had even seen Lovely Annabelle. The stable boy might have thought he did, but James had confirmed his own presence, and no one would think the ghost had been there too.

Maybe, she thought dispiritedly as she got out of bed and cringed as her scratched and battered feet met the floor, she could haunt again, but this time only in the servants’ quarters. Servants were a superstitious group. If she scared them enough so that they left, he would have no staff. No one would want to work at Tethering if it was said to be haunted.

She sighed and dipped a cloth in the pitcher that stood on her dresser and peered into the mirror, then began scrubbing at the traces of soot she had missed last night. She was having trouble summoning the verve, the hopeful, playful energy that the thought of haunting James had previously brought. It had all gotten so complicated.

She made a face at her still-sooty likeness in the mirror. What about haunting his houseguests? That would be quite a victory, if she could pull it off. And maybe worth the danger. He thought she’d agreed not to haunt, but she hadn’t actually said she wouldn’t. And Tethering had more than one secret passageway.

She pulled on a gown of dingy dotted swiss that she had dyed black all those weeks ago. It was riskier than she had originally thought it would be, tangling with James. If he did catch her again, what was to prevent him from exposing her as the strange, unchaste woman who was invading the home of a gentleman by night? She would become the local madwoman, and who would want to associate with her or her family then? What a feast that would be for the gossips. While she could stand being considered a bit odd in her old gowns, she couldn’t allow her family to become pariahs. Even worse would be her father’s shock and disappointment.

She didn’t want to take chances, to pin her hopes on anything besides what was solid, she thought as she pulled a brush through her hair, which was rebelling against the soot and soap treatment with prodigious frizz. But she still had heard nothing from the lawyer. So she had no choice. Tethering was her life. She had to get it back.

At breakfast her father squinted at her as she bent to kiss him.

“My dear,” he said, putting down the roll he was buttering as she took a seat, “you have a dark smudge by your ear.” He leaned across the table, peering at her over his glasses. “It almost looks like… soot?”

“Oh.” She gave a light laugh and pushed down a splash of hysteria. “I… er… dropped my hairbrush in the cold hearth this morning. Some ashes must have gotten in it.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. She hated fibbing to him, but it was in the service of something good.

“I see.” He took up his roll again. “My dear, I don’t think you need to tell Mr. Collington any more stories like the one about Lovely Annabelle. We wouldn’t want him to think we were trying to poison his pleasure in his new home.”

“Oh, of course,” she said as she put her napkin in her lap. She clutched it there, forcing her hands to stop shaking. She took a quiet, steadying breath.

“Felicity,” he said, clearing his throat, “I received a note this morning from Lady Pincheon-Smythe.”

“You did? How surprising.”

“Yes, I was surprised. She was not my favorite of your mother’s friends, but she does have a point.”

“And what is that?” she said, picking up her knife and buttering her bread.

Her father cleared his throat. “She reminded me of my fatherly duty to see my daughter well married.”

She put down the knife. “Really! How appallingly interfering of her.”

“No, don’t be upset, dear. She is right. I have been selfish these last years, enjoying having you here with me. I would be failing in my duty to you, though, if I didn’t guide you toward a good marriage. Your mother and I were so happy during our years together, and I could wish nothing less for my daughter. I saw how your mother bloomed when you children came along.”

He couldn’t know how his words pricked her, raw as she felt. She wasn’t strong enough just then to withstand dreams of a happy family life and children.

“Father, you loved one another,” she said, carefully keeping the emotion from her voice. “There is no one I care for.”

“Is there not? Be that as it may, she is right that you will never meet eligible men if you don’t go about in society more. She has invited you to join her at tea with her nephew, and I would like you to go.”

“Oh, Father, no. Mr. Godfrey is an awful bore.”

“You have met him?”

“Well, no, but I observed him at the garden party.”

“Come, my dear, that is no way to get to know a person. You must give these things a chance to develop.”

“But I’m so happy here with you.” He had left her to herself all these years, never interfering in her social life, or rather lack of one, and that had suited her perfectly since she was not going to marry. Now was a terrible time for him to start feeling remiss.

He shook his head. “You are a vibrant young woman, and I am a contented recluse. Poetry is my life now. You must have the chance to pursue your own happiness.”

“But Tethering—”

“Is no longer ours,” he reminded her firmly. “That doesn’t mean you cannot still be very happy and fulfilled. Lady Pincheon-Smythe will expect you next week,” he said in a tone of finality. “And I want you to consider Mr. Godfrey seriously as a suitor.”

“Yes, Father,” she replied morosely.

They continued the meal in silence. As they were finishing, he asked, “Have you any pressing plans for today, dear?”

She put down her teacup. “I must set the workers to their tasks in the orchard, but I should be done by late morning,” she said, pouring herself more tea, needing the extra jolt it would provide. “Was there something you wanted?”

“I could use your help in the library, taking notes while I review what I’ve written as you usually do.”

Oh, help! The last thing she wanted was to spend more time at Tethering—in possible contact with James—than she had to. But she could hardly deny her father this simple request. “Of course,” she said, “I would be glad to.”

“Thank you, my dear,” he said warmly. “You are a good daughter.”

If he only knew. “Nonsense, Father,” she said, “you are the best of parents. You know I always enjoy helping you with your work.”

He blushed at her praise. “Why don’t you come and find me in the library when you are done, then?” he said.

She nodded, then remembered her promise to James. “Mr. Collington is to have a house party and has invited us to dine with them. The guests are arriving today.”

“How very kind of him!” Her father was pleased. “And maybe there will be some young gentlemen there. I have even thought that perhaps young Markham—”

“Oh, Father!” she broke in. “Truly, the role of matchmaker doesn’t suit you at all.”

“Needs must,” he said firmly. “And we will want to be gracious to his guests, to show that we are happy to have Collington as a neighbor.”

“Yes, Father,” she agreed, even as she knew she’d likely have to do her best to make James Collington and his guests uncomfortable.

***

Crispin wanted to have a serious, uninterrupted, and private conversation with Felicity. He found her in the Tethering orchard later that sunny morning, amid a party of laborers who were clearing and bundling brush. She was pruning a dead-looking tree with a D-shaped saw, wearing one of those shabby dresses that he hated seeing on her.

She looked up at the sound of his footfalls and stopped sawing. Putting down the tool, she dragged the back of her hand across her forehead.

“What brings you here today?” she asked with a smile.

“I was just visiting with Nanny Rollins, and I thought I would stop by and see how you were faring.” He raised an eyebrow. “When you said that you would be overseeing the orchard, I didn’t think you were going to be one of the laborers as well.”

“I need to be in among the trees so I can see and feel how they’re doing.”

Hmm, he thought, how to say this without offending her? “It’s not your fault, Felicity,” he began, “if you don’t see that it isn’t appropriate for a young lady of your standing to be sawing away at tree branches. Your father does not guide you as he might.”

She gave him an impatient look. “Crispin, my mother and I planted this tree together as a sapling, along with that entire row behind you. I believe she—and my father—would be happy to know that I’m seeing to its care.”

“People know about Jonathan and his gambling,” he said bluntly. “Everyone can see how the Wilcox fortunes have declined. And now you’re working on the estate for pay, and doing the labor too. You’ll have the complexion of a farmer.”

“Do the town gossips think I should just sit in the dower house in meek acceptance of whatever fate delivers to me? I will apologize to no one for what I deem necessary.”

He clenched his teeth in frustration. She picked up the saw again and placed it against a thick branch.

“Here, let me do that,” he said, tugging it. She let it go and gave him a look. He took off his round black vicar’s hat and black vicar’s coat and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt.

“Which branches do you want taken down?”

“The whole tree,” she said, crossing her arms, the corners of her pretty mouth curling. Her hair was gathered at her nape in a loose knot. She was even lovelier now than she’d been three years ago. He guessed that she was unaware that crossing her arms right under her bosom as she was doing framed her breasts and pressed them upward.

He dragged his attention back to their conversation and frowned. “You weren’t going to cut it down yourself, surely?”

“I was just making a start. The workers would do the heavy labor.” She watched him sawing away for several moments. “If you put too much effort into that, when the branch gives you’ll end up with the saw in your leg.”

Pressing his lips together, Crispin shifted his position. Having been away for so long, he had forgotten how maddening Felicity could be. He sawed for several minutes until the branch came away.

He glanced around them, then leaned the saw against the tree trunk. The workers who had been toiling nearby had moved on to another group of trees some distance away, out of earshot. He turned to Felicity, gathering his thoughts.

“I know you’ve said you don’t want to talk about what happened between us, but we must.”

“No.”

“We were intimate,” he persisted, looking into her hazel eyes and reading her shock at his blunt words. “I compromised you thoroughly that night three years ago. We did what we should not have done. But now I want to make things right.”

Silence. Finally, she responded. “Crispin, I am grateful for your gentlemanly impulse, but it is not necessary.”

“Gentlemanly! I’ve felt at times these last three years that I could hardly call myself a gentleman.”

She put a hand on his arm. “We were young, foolish, distressed. But no one suffered any consequences. We will simply never speak of it again, as if it never happened.”

“No one suffered? I took your virtue! Sullied you. How could that not affect you as a marriageable young woman?”

Felicity shook inside as she listened. Lost virtue. Sullied. The words were true, but no one else except Crispin could say them to her. She herself had long ago put the whole memory from her mind. She’d had to, for how could she dwell daily on this thing that had determined her future?

But now he was forcing her to recall that night three years ago when, with everyone overwhelmed by grief over Mrs. Wilcox’s death a week earlier, the two of them had been sent to the orchard to pick apples for the overburdened kitchen. There’d been guests at Tethering then, with many people’s needs to see to, and no one was watching over the conduct of two young people who already knew each other well—and surely knew the rules.

But rules had been far from her mind that early autumn night, when mortality and grief hung heavy in the air. The reality of her mother’s death, of the death that awaits every human, had overwhelmed her, so that life seemed suddenly pointless. All she had wanted was an escape from her pain, and the comfort of human contact. A comfort her distraught, private father couldn’t offer.

When she had turned to Crispin as they stood among the apple trees in the gloaming, an embrace meant to comfort had turned into much more. He was grieving too, needing too, like her, something that was purely of life. She had responded almost frantically to his kisses, and their touches had only grown more urgent. They’d slipped through the hidden door in the garden and lain together on his coat on the dirt floor of the secret tunnel that led to Tethering’s cellar.