More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (61 page)

He turned his eyes—his
laughing
eyes—on her. “Quite so,” he agreed.

“I believe,” she said pointedly, “the library is free.”

“It is,” he said. “I have just been in there finding a book of which I have heard many good opinions.”

He was holding a book in one hand, Viola noticed for the first time.

“It is called
Pride and Prejudice,
” he said. “Has anyone heard of it?”

“I have,” Mrs. Codaire admitted. “But I have not read it.”

Viola had—more than once. She thought it easily the best book she had ever read. Lord Ferdinand strolled farther into the room and smiled about him with easy charm.

“Shall I read some of it aloud,” he asked, “while you ladies sew? We men are not nearly as diligent or as skilled with our hands, you see, but perhaps we are good for something after all.”

Viola glared indignantly at him. How dare he bring his charm into this female preserve instead of slinking about outside working himself into a temper as any decent man would?

“That would be very kind of you, I am sure, Lord Ferdinand,” Miss Prudence Merrywether said. “Our papa used to read to us, particularly on dark evenings when time might otherwise have hung heavily on our hands. Do you remember, Faith, dear?”

He did not need further encouragement. He seated himself on the only remaining seat, an ottoman almost at Viola's feet, smiled about him once more as the ladies settled back to their work, opened the book, and began to read:

“ ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' ”

Three or four of the women laughed, and he read on—surely knowing that more than three or four of them were thinking of how that opening statement of the novel applied to him. Not that he had a good fortune in all probability. But he had Pinewood. And she, Viola,
had made it prosperous. She gazed bitterly down at him for a few minutes before resuming her work.

He read well. Not only did he do so clearly and with good pacing and expression, but he also looked up at frequent intervals to reveal his reactions to the narrative with his facial expressions. He was enjoying both the book and his audience, his manner said—and his audience was enjoying
him
. A glance about the room assured Viola of that.

How she hated him!

He stayed after he had read for half an hour to discuss the book with the ladies and to take tea with them and examine and admire their work. By the time the sewing group dispersed for another week, he had all but the strong-minded few veritably eating out of his hand. He even accompanied Viola out onto the terrace to see them all on their way. The rain had stopped, but the clouds still loomed gray and cheerless overhead.

Viola could have cried, and perhaps would have done so except that she was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had bested her—again.

“What a charming group of ladies,” he said, turning to her when they were alone on the terrace. “I must see to it that they are invited to meet here each week.”

“So must I.” Viola turned sharply away and hurried back into the house, leaving him standing on the terrace.

ERDINAND WOULD HAVE ENJOYED THE FOLLOWING
week if it had not been for Viola Thornhill. He had not anticipated the intense sense of belonging he felt at Pinewood. He had considered several careers after university—the army, the church, the diplomatic service—but nothing had appealed to him. But the result of doing nothing had been inevitable boredom and involvement in all sorts of madcap escapades and a general sense of purposelessness. He had not even realized it until he came to Pinewood and discovered that the life of a country landowner fit him like a glove.

But there was Viola Thornhill. He assiduously avoided any further encounter like the one the night he broke the urn. He even more firmly avoided all thoughts of matrimony. That would be a solution bought at too dear a price. And so they continued to inhabit Pinewood together.

He began to return his neighbors' calls. He continued to make friends of them and tried not to admit to himself that he was disappointed to discover how easy it was in most cases. They ought to have been more loyal to Miss Thornhill. He heartily disliked the tedious, pompous Claypoles and believed he would have disliked them under any circumstances. But their stiff, cold civility won his respect. Claypole fancied himself to be Miss Thornhill's suitor, Miss Claypole was her friend, and
Mrs. Claypole doted on her children. To them Lord Ferdinand Dudley was simply the enemy.

He set about familiarizing himself with the workings of his estate. He had little knowledge and no experience, having never expected to be a landowner. But he was determined to learn rather than leave everything to a steward. Besides, he might soon be without a steward. Paxton was Miss Thornhill's loyal employee. He made that clear when Ferdinand called on him at his office over the stable block one morning, the estate book tucked under one arm.

“The books are very well kept,” Ferdinand said after exchanging greetings with the steward.

“She keeps them herself,” William Paxton said curtly.

Ferdinand was surprised, though he might have guessed that the small, neat handwriting was a woman's. It was not a pleasant surprise, though, to know that she had had a direct part in the running of the estate. Worse was to come.

“You have done remarkably well,” he said. “I have noticed how everything has changed for the better during the last two years.”

“
She
has done well,” the steward replied, passion vibrating in his voice. “She has performed the miracle. She tells me what to do and I do it. She often asks my advice, and she usually takes it when I offer it, but she does not need it. She could have done it all without me. She has as good a head on her shoulders as any man I have ever known. If she goes from here, I go too, I am here to tell you right now. I'll not stay to see the place go to wrack and ruin again.”

“But why should it?” Ferdinand asked.

“We all saw you betting recklessly on almost certain
failure in the village,” Paxton said, not even trying to disguise the bitterness in his voice. “And we all know how you acquired Pinewood through another wild wager.”

“But I did not fail,” Ferdinand pointed out, “at either venture. I do not deal in failure. I find it too depressing.”

But Paxton was launched on mutiny. “You promised all sorts of things the other morning when we went to the home farm,” he said. “The estate cannot afford them yet.
She
understands that. She does things gradually.”

“The laborers need new cottages, not just repairs upon repairs,” Ferdinand said. “The estate will not pay for them. I will.”

Paxton looked at him suspiciously. Doubtless with the label of gambling wastrel put upon his person went that of impoverished aristocrat, Ferdinand thought.

“However,” he added, “I will need the advice and assistance of a good steward. Was it Bamber who hired you?”

“The old earl,” Paxton said, nodding. “He sent me here, but he made it clear to me that I would be
her
employee, that Pinewood was hers, not his.”

Viola Thornhill was not the only one who had been given that impression, then? The late earl really had intended that the property be hers.

Paxton, like the Claypoles, was someone he came to respect during that week.

He involved himself with other neighborhood concerns. The church choir was one. The school was another. The roof of the schoolhouse leaked during wet weather, he learned during a visit to the schoolmaster. There was still not enough money in the village fund to have it replaced, even though Miss Thornhill had made a generous donation. Ferdinand put in what remained to be raised, and immediate arrangements were made for
the job to be done. So that classes would not have to be interrupted, he offered Pinewood as a temporary schoolhouse for the appointed day. He told Viola Thornhill about it at dinner.

“But how can it be done?” she asked. “There is not enough money. I was hoping that within the next three or four months—” But she clamped her lips together and did not complete her sentence.

“You could afford it?” he suggested. “I have contributed what remains.”

She stared mutely at him.

“I
can
afford it,” he told her.

“And so of course you
will.
” There was annoyance in her voice. “You will do anything to make a good impression here, will you not?”

“I suppose,” he suggested, “I could not be doing it because I believe in education?”

She laughed derisively. “And school is to be held here while the work is being done?”

“Will that inconvenience you?” he asked.

“I am surprised you ask,” she told him. “Pinewood is yours—according to you.”

“And to law,” he added.

He hoped Bamber would not simply ignore his plea to send a copy of the will. He even sent another letter, urging him not to delay. The present situation was ridiculous and impossible—and definitely dangerous. He was compromising the woman by living in this house with her. But it was not just that. He only had to set eyes on her to feel his temperature take an upward swing. Indeed, he did not even have to set eyes on her.

The nights in particular were a trial to him.

Once the will had arrived and she could see for herself
that Bamber had left her nothing, she would have no choice but to leave.

It could not be soon enough for Ferdinand.

I
T WAS A WEEK
of near-despair for Viola. One by one she had to let go of her comfortably negative illusions about Lord Ferdinand Dudley. He was a wastrel who would care nothing about the well-being of the estate or neighborhood, she had thought. His actions proved her wrong on both counts. He was an extravagant, impoverished younger son, she had thought, a man who gambled recklessly and probably had huge debts. But he was going to build new cottages for the farm laborers, Mr. Paxton reported—out of his own money. He was going to pay half the cost of a new schoolhouse roof.

He was not to be driven away either by foolish pranks or by boredom. She suspected that he genuinely liked most of her neighbors. And it was obvious that he was winning their friendship. Under other circumstances, she thought grudgingly, she might even like him herself. He seemed good-natured. He had a sense of humor.

He was idle and empty-headed, of course. She clung to that illusion after all the others. But even that she was forced to abandon before the week was out.

The schoolmaster had marched the children in an orderly crocodile from the village to Pinewood on the appointed morning, and classes had been set up in the drawing room. As she often did, Viola helped out by supervising some of the younger children as they practiced their penmanship. But when a history lesson began,
involving all the children, she went downstairs to the library to see if there were any letters.

The library was occupied. Lord Ferdinand sat on one side of the desk, one of the older boys on the other.

“Excuse me,” she said, startled.

“Not at all.” Lord Ferdinand got to his feet and grinned at her—with the sunny smile that was beginning to play havoc with both her digestion and her sleep. “Jamie is late for the history lesson. Off you go, then, lad.”

The boy hurried past Viola, bobbing his head respectfully as he passed.

“Why was he here?” she asked.

“To learn a little Latin,” Lord Ferdinand explained. “Not necessary for the son of a tenant farmer destined to take his father's place one day, one might think. But there is no accounting for the desires of the intellect.”

“Latin?”
She knew all about Jamie's brightness and scholastic ambitions, for which his father had neither sympathy nor money. “But who can teach him?”

Lord Ferdinand shrugged. “Yours truly, I am afraid,” he said. “An embarrassing admission, is it not? It was my specialty at Oxford, you see. Latin and Greek. My father would have been ashamed of me if he had still been alive.”

Gentlemen went to Oxford or Cambridge almost as a matter of course, unless they went into the army instead. But they went mainly to socialize and carouse with their peers—or so she had heard.

“I suppose,” she said more tartly than she intended, “you did well.”

“A double first.” He grinned sheepishly.

A double first
. In Latin and Greek.

“My brain,” he said, “is so full of dry matter that if you
knock on my skull you can watch the dust wafting from my ears and nostrils.”

“And
why,
” she asked him, “have you been wasting your time climbing over wet roofs at night and gambling?”

“Sowing my wild oats?” His eyes smiled into hers.

She did not want him to be intelligent, studious, wealthy, generous, good-humored, conscientious. She wanted him to be a wild, indigent, unprincipled hellion. She wanted to be able to despise him. It was bad enough that he was handsome and charming.