Judith Ivory (16 page)

She stared at him. He was offering her a clean slate. And the fifty-six pounds she’d stolen. Provided she helped him. “All right.” What else could she say? “Thank you.”

Yes. Of course, she wanted this. She sat there staring into his dark eyes under the brim of his hat, trying to fathom what Mount Villiars was about, what made him tick.

While Stuart met her eyes, thinking, Yes. At last. His first inroad on what he called to himself their Hotel Accident.
I seem to have accidentally shagged her
, was how he phrased it silently. It just happened. He couldn’t explain it. Other than to say that a once-in-a-lifetime, unbelievably erotic moment had arrived before him, and its odd tenderness had simply not been something he’d wanted to throw away. So he’d given in to it—though now he was fairly certain that doing so had somehow been a mistake.

She bit her lip, then said, “You may be proving some of my darker suspicions about you wrong.”

“Excellent,” he said and laughed. “Not all, though, I trust.” His laughter became rueful—and, for the life of him, he could not contain a dirty edge to it. It was too delicious to tease her. A wicked part of him loved her doubt of him; it loved her off-balance.

He sat there smiling at her.
Your lordship
indeed. She had not a whit of respect for his title. Which was why, perhaps, she amused him so. It gave them a secret, unspoken point of agreement. He thought it ludicrous, too, that an accident of birth, having nothing to do with his own actions, should mean anything at all to people around him. But mean something it did. And he wasn’t willing to give up the privileges
his birth bestowed simply because Mrs. Hotchkiss saw through it. She would toe the line like everyone else—it would be his pleasure to see to it.

After a moment, he caught himself, remembering what they were about—he might have sat there staring at her all day—and raised his hand. He struck the ceiling with his gloved knuckles, and the coach took off. Like that: He tapped and the wheels dug into the gravel in almost the same instant, as if the horses had been pulling, raring to go, just waiting for him to let them out the gate.

As they took off up the street, he called to her over the gathering noise, “Are these not the fastest, most responsive horses you have ever known?”

She only eyed him, perhaps too afraid to open her mouth. Or too contrary.

It didn’t matter; he loved his coach and eight. They were the one extravagance of his uncle’s he agreed with. The coach leaned and darted through the village lanes, as fast as it dared. It was when they pulled out onto country roads, however, that the horses truly seemed to take to the air.

Stuart closed his eyes, strangely at peace. For a moment, he was gliding on the blades of his sleigh, outside Petersburg, cutting across the open snow, moving fast, no impediment in sight. Just white, white snow as far as the eye could see. His English carriage had in common with his Russian troika the small miracle of grace and speed and movement, the power of strong, beautiful animals that pulled wonderfully, galloping in unison. He jostled gently, lulled by the rhythmic ring of a single bell that made time to the jingling tack. His bell. He had in fact taken it off his troika, the sleigh left behind. He’d cut it from the high center harness an hour before he’d departed, thinking to bring with him the sound of something familiar.

He didn’t think anything could ruin his pleasure in the horses. Until he opened his eyes and happened to glimpse Emma’s face, contorted with worry. She held on to the hand
strap for dear life. He frowned at her caution, wishing he could convince her otherwise. He watched her heed, then sat up straighter himself. It became an effort to relax while witnessing her tension.

Indeed, it was only when the horses’ clatter
whoa’d
to a halt, to silence, that Emma could let out breath—she would never have dreamed eight horses could gallop so fast for a mile, let alone the six miles to the Stunnels’ farm.

She sat there a moment in Stuart’s coach, staring at their destination: a little brick house at the top of a snowy rise of land, more snow on its roof, icicles dangling from it, melting in the sunny afternoon. She felt all but stunned by the normalness of the sounds outside. A sheep calling. A bird somewhere. They were here—the fact that they had arrived seemed a miracle. They’d covered the distance between town and the farm in a quarter hour.

As he helped her down, Stuart frowned, and said, “It was an accident.”

The lamb. He was uneasy, too, now. Uneasy and annoyed, apparently, that she’d introduced doubt in him regarding his beloved horses.

But she wouldn’t feel sorry for it. It seemed all right to have a degree of doubt, when a misstep could land you in a ditch or worse. Good. A little doubt seemed good in this instance. Have a little care, Stuart.

T
HE
Stunnels were an older couple. Maud, John Tucker’s elder sister, was tall, spare, and in both posture and topography absolutely as straight as a plank. Longevity apparently ran in the family, because she looked ancient, though solid and in no way ready to leave this earth: a long, thin slab of a woman, a gray rock, with a lot of cracks and grooves. Her husband, Pete, if slightly taller, looked agelessly similar, as if they had grown to resemble each other over the course of the longest marriage Emma had ever heard of. Tomorrow, their children would arrive to celebrate their sixty-seventh wedding anniversary.

Which was why, on January 7, Maud told Emma, “After ye look at the tup, we was hoping ye’d help us cut doon a tree.” A Christmas tree. Maud, Pete, and Emma discussed the tree on their walk toward the ram’s pasture. “To spruce oop the place”—she passed a look to her husband, as if they shared a joke—“for the wee lads and lasses. All the grandchildren and two great-grand-’uns,” she announced proudly, “be coming here, ye see.” She had exactly John’s northerly accent.

It turned out they wanted a spruce tree cut down in order to stand it up in their front parlor. They claimed there were several such trees in their far west meadow, which was just “a hop away” from their northwest pasture where they kept the ram they wanted to sell. They’d been waiting all day in hope
that, after they settled the sale of the ram, Emma would be able to help with the tree.

They most surely needed help, she thought. Between the two of them, there was not a finger that didn’t zigzag from arthritis. Neither Maud nor Pete could have gripped a saw well enough to pull it back and forth through a tree trunk. Emma could, she supposed. Her hands were strong. She was sturdy. She was willing. Willing, that is, if Stuart would wait.

He remained down the lane by the coach, blowing visible breath in the air as he murmured to his horses.

“Fine,” Emma said, as they arrived at the fence over which she could see a ram. Let Stuart come up and get her, if he wanted her.

As she put her forearms across the top of the fence, Maud, then her husband, one on each side, looked slightly askance down at Emma: about six inches down. She was considerably shorter than either of them; her arms, where she rested them on the fence, came to her chest.

All right, it had to be a small, squatty tree. What other choice did they have? They had been hoping for a bigger human being to arrive, she supposed.

From the fence, they talked over their business transaction: what the ram’s habits were, what the scar on his back leg was from. At some point, the Stunnels began to throw glances at the tall man in the distance. Oh, yes, by all means. Emma laughed inwardly. Fat lot of good it would do them to want the viscount to cut down their tree. Though, come to think of it, perhaps his wiry coachman could do a better job than she could.

Meanwhile, the ram was a full-grown and rather rowdy fellow. Emma hadn’t realized: She wanted a quieter animal or, better still, a younger one that she could work with a little. When she told the Stunnels their tup wasn’t what she was looking for—a little embarrassed not to have known her own mind better—they barely paid attention. They had both stopped to stare fully at the man at the end of the lane by the prancing team of horses. He’d left his coat in the carriage,
taken it off ten minutes ago for being too warm. Coatless, in clear view, he stood, contemplating his animals: a man tall enough to lean an elbow on the coach’s high wheel as he casually bit at the side of his fingernail.

His driver was hunched overhead in the seat, a man who, come to think of it, when he stood, was only an inch taller than Emma. Stuart’s two footmen were at the rear, both of them thin, under twenty, neither within six inches of Stuart’s tall height, none of them with his robust build.

It was true. For sawing down trees, Stuart would seem to be the pick of the lot. Emma was rather amused to see that the Stunnels intended to have him. How to tell them that the only large, truly strong person here had fifteen snotty titles and seventy-seven servants, so he didn’t have to drive his own coach or even open its door or so much as sign his own name?

Maud Stunnel waved at him.

Stuart saw her and froze. He glanced up at his driver. Emma was certain he would send the man. Then he didn’t. He realized they wanted something of him specifically. And, blast, if he didn’t start toward them, cooperative the one time Emma would have liked his usual standoffishness. She didn’t want to introduce him. She couldn’t think how to explain their association. And whatever was said would travel back to John and thus the entire village. Oh, fine.

Stuart actually had to leap a fence to get to them, or else walk around the house the back way, which he didn’t know to do. He took his hat off as he approached the fence, then, one hand on the wood rail, he took it—a sideways lift of his whole body in a single motion that brought him over. He didn’t even break stride, coming over a fence as high as his chest with the jauntiness of a dressage curvet: as if he were a great big shiny Thoroughbred, who could kick his heels over fences twice that high. Something in Emma sighed—he was so blessed graceful she could have watched him do that particular maneuver a dozen times. Go back, Stuart. Go back and vault the fence again.

As he came up, she saw him as the Stunnels must. The sort of tall, slender, broad-shouldered man made to wear layers of fine clothes and look nothing but elegant, healthy. His broad-shouldered frock coat looked well filled out. His vest, in lustrous stripes of dark blue satin, buttoned snugly across a wide chest. His light gray trousers tucked into his outrageously festive—foreign—riding boots strode on long, strong strides. Ah, yes, a lumberjack, if ever she saw one. A lumberjack with a silk hat in hand. Indeed, he was a picture, the effect perfectly set off by his dark good looks and slightly too-long hair. A lock in fact fell forward, long enough to flop at the bridge of his nose as he walked. He looked like a foreign prince, the Russian tzar come to join them.

Emma asked of the Stunnels, “Where’s the saw?” Since she knew where all this was going, best to get them there without explanations.

They looked at one another, flummoxed. They were hoping for great big, fancy explanations, no doubt about it.

Too bad. “The saw,” Emma reminded them. She was finished with the tup. Now she wanted to be finished with the whole business.

They had a saw actually hanging out a tree they’d started down the meadow, having wrestled the tool as far as they could.

With a grunt, Pete Stunnel tugged a wood-handled, three-foot, jag-toothed saw from the inch cut that held it in an eight-foot-tall Norway spruce. When he handed the saw to Stuart, Emma giggled; she couldn’t help it.

Stuart stared at it, holding it by the handle backward. She took it from him, turned it, and put it correctly into his long, uncallused fingers. “Drag the teeth back and forth till the tree falls over,” she said.

“Fancy that.” He lifted his haughty eyebrow at her, then pulled his mouth. “It’s not a difficult concept.”

She laughed. Right, he cut down trees every day. No problem.

Surprise of surprises, he attempted it. It was a struggle for a full minute, with the Stunnels looking back and forth at each, part-perplexed, part-amused. He had the strength, just not the experience. Emma herself was greatly entertained: the local viscount trying to hack down an evergreen two weeks after Christmas for some dotty old couple she barely knew.

Then all at once Stuart got the rhythm. He drew a few efficient strokes, back then forth, realized he had it, then for some reason stopped. He took off his frock coat, folded it neatly, unbuttoned his collar in forty-degree weather, then his vest. After which the man blitzed through an eight-inch-diameter pine tree in under two minutes. Not only did he saw it down, afterward, much to Emma’s amazement, he picked it up by the trunk and dragged the heavy thing behind them all the way to the fence, where he pitched it over, did that lovely leap on his one arm again, then helped each of the other three of them over: She herself, he grabbed by her bum as she came to the top of the fence, then smiled as he set her down beside him. The Stunnels were already on their way to the house by then, oblivious, too busy exclaiming over how much quicker it was this way than dragging the tree around the back of the house.

Maud Stunnel was thrilled that their “new neighbor”—how she and her husband began to refer to Stuart—stood their Christmas tree in the stand for them in the middle of their small parlor. She said chattily, “The place looked so dreary,” waving a gnarly hand that resembled a crab. “The children’ll never guess we dint havvit oop all along.” Other than, of course, it was a bright, soft, dewy fresh green.

To Emma, their front parlor looked cluttered, if not exactly deary. Its furniture seemed as old as its owners, with now a big, sappy tree crowding in on an assortment of chairs, unmatched, seemingly borrowed from everywhere; they were expecting a houseful. Nonetheless, the tree smelled lovely. Maud’s smile was beaming: all but toothless, but
bright and good-humored with merry, milky blue eyes. Pete, quietly puffing a pipe he got going, nodded and nodded at the sight of the tree, looking well pleased himself. Emma liked the couple’s enthusiasm. And their cheerful agreement on such a belated piece of home decoration, not to mention the fun of fooling their own progeny.

At which point, daunting boxes of candles, garlands, and ornaments came out, along with broad hints that they’d like some help. Stuart wished them well as he put on his coat again. In the end, though, he put up a few ornaments on the tallest branches, the ones they couldn’t reach as easily or safely. It was as if their bodies were made of matchsticks, Emma thought, delicately glued at the joints. One wrong move and they’d crumble into a heap. Yet something in them also flourished. Inwardly. She envied them their good-natured maturity.

And Stuart. He surprised her. She didn’t know what to make of the fact that he could be so pleasant and biddable, when he chose.

“Last thing, last thing,” Maud promised as she handed him a tin star with holes in it for a candle to twinkle out. Emma was happy to hear the woman call it a star, because it looked to her more like a child’s top; she wouldn’t have guessed.

It was when he stretched his long arm out to place the star on the top of the tree that Maud finally gave in to curiosity. She said to Emma, “So your escort here would be?”

Maud Tucker Stunnel, old though she might be, was not going to let anything get past her. She’d figured it out and wanted confirmation: their new neighbor. Or a neighbor if one counted that they lived forty miles from Castle Dunord, but when it came to something as rare and interesting as a viscount, people counted forty miles close, especially when on a clear day as today, from their front window, one could dimly see the castle itself on its hilltop.

Emma sighed and said, “Ah, this is the Viscount—” Blankness. Her brain stranded her in one of those moments
wherein she could pull no name at all from her resistant, preoccupied mind.

“Mount Villiars,” Stuart supplied.

The Stunnels’ eyebrows in unison went up. Delight. There followed a long, pregnant silence as their heads, together, turned in Emma’s direction.

She struggled to make a logical connection between a viscount and herself, why they were here together. “Yes, we’re—”

“In love,” Stuart interrupted. “Off to London, you see, to celebrate.”

She gawked.

With a mild smile, he expanded further. “Two folks born in Yorkshire, you see. We have so much in common.” He shrugged. “Nothing we can do for the fact that we can’t marry. I mean, my being a viscount and having responsibilities that go beyond my sweet Emma. But that’s no reason not to have our two weeks in London.”

“One week. We’re coming back, remember?” Emma added poisonously, “Dear.” In love, indeed. She’d give him
in love.

“Yes, to check on things, then going right back to the city afterward. After which, if we like our sojourn together, she’ll probably move into Castle Dunord. Until we tire of each other, I suppose.” He looked at her, then added, daring her to contradict him, “Sheriff Bligh’s daughter lives around here, doesn’t she?”

Maud Stunnel answered. Stuart could actually keep up a conversation with them. While the Stunnels stared from him to Emma, wide-eyed. Stuart, of course, was the main attraction. With his top hat and Continental manners. When he kissed Maud Stunnel’s fingertips as they left, he sent her into peals of wheezy laughter.

In the coach, Stuart only got the side of Emma’s face for the first five minutes of their ride—their wrapped parcels of pies
and whatever else she’d wanted to eat that had arrived went untouched. She only glared out the window, unwilling to say anything. The usually talkative woman—he loved all her blather—had so much over which to be angry with him, he didn’t try to examine which part might be keeping her from throwing a coherent remark in his direction.

Oddly—undeservingly, he knew—he wished he could have one.

He remembered fondly her nice I-might-have-been-mistaken comment, when she’d realized the true depth of his financial plight. He wanted again the sweetness of her understanding. Her cooperation. As the Stunnels had received. He’d been a little jealous over that, the way she’d immediately dropped what she’d come for, even him, to figure out how to accomplish their amusing, slightly absurd commission. A fresh Christmas tree in January as a hospitality gesture. Ah, well.

Only finally did Emma deign to look at him. Yes, definitely angry, when she said, “I don’t appreciate that you told my neighbor’s sister that I was your—”

“Paramour?”

“I was thinking of an uglier word.”

“Thief?”

The coach jostled, which gave her the excuse to slam her hand flat on the seat beside her to steady herself. He’d given instructions that the driver was to hold the speed down as much as he could, since it made Emma so uncomfortable—not that she thanked him for it. They stared, eye to eye across the coach. “You’re good at fixing sentences, aren’t you? Or filling in words?”