Rebel Baron (11 page)

      
She was too innocent and sweet to be victimized by a fortune hunter.
But what are you?
an inner voice accused him. Was he any better than Winters? Miranda Auburn had made the mercenary nature of his courtship abundantly clear when she proposed it to him. But he would be kind and faithful to the girl, and break his back making a success of his stud farm. His uneasy reverie was interrupted by Sin's low whistle of incredulity.

      
“Never in my worst nightmare did I imagine to see that baggage again,” St. John muttered.

      
Eyes fixed firmly on her quarry, Mrs. Earl Wilcox picked her way across the muddy grass at the edge of the track. Although it had rained during the night and the ground was a veritable quagmire, the mud did not deter Reba, who held her skirts up, revealing a shocking amount of trim ankle and dainty foot encased in elegant kid slippers with impossibly high heels. Revealed, no doubt, for the baron's appreciation. She was resplendent in a day gown of deep violet silk trimmed with bits of black lace. Her golden ringlets glistened from beneath an elaborate straw hat of matching violet, trimmed with all manner of fantastical flora and fauna.

      
Brand watched, dumbstruck at seeing her here.
She doesn't fit
, a small part of his mind judged as he stood waiting. She waved at him, smiling like a cat whose outstretched claws have just sunk into the wing of a sparrow poised for flight. But he'd escaped her in Kentucky and flown all the way across an ocean. There was no chance he'd fall prey to her now.

      
“You're a long way from Lexington, Mrs. Wilcox,” he said in a level voice when she stopped in front of him.

      
Completely ignoring St. John as if he were part of the fence railing, she smiled up at Brand and said, “That is scarcely the greeting I was expecting after making such a long and arduous journey.” Her lower lip, always plump and kissable, jutted out in a mock pout.

      
Without his saying a word, St. John's expression spoke volumes to Caruthers. Then he turned and walked to the track, where Mathias was sliding from Kentucky Sunrise's back. Brand watched them lead the animal into the stables for a rubdown, ignoring Reba as she had ignored his friend. He could see her foot tapping petulantly on the ground for a couple of beats before she quelled her impatience.

      
“You always did care more for your silly ole horses than for me.” The voice was forlorn and little-girl sad.

      
And it no longer affected him. He wondered how it ever had. “Sunrise almost broke the record Reiver set last week.” He placed the watch back in his pocket and looked at her. “Where's your Earl, Mrs. Wilcox? He know you're out here traipsing around after a mere baron?”

      
Reba let out a long, slow sigh. Her voice was flat when she replied, “Earl's dead.”

      
“Impossible, darlin'. Only the good die young. Earl should live to be a good ninety.” He eyed the violet gown and matching hat ensemble, “I can see how deeply you grieve for him.”

      
“Purple is the second stage in mourning.” She brushed a black lace ruffle at her wrist. “I'm observing the conventions, Brand, darlin'.”

      
“The ‘conventions,’ as I recall my mama instructing me, require black for the first year,” he said with a hint of bitter mockery. “Last time I saw old Earl he was hale and hearty, and that was only six months ago.”

      
“Poor Earl was, as you pointed out, always fat. He developed an infection from his gout and died of blood poisoning while on a business trip to Philadelphia.”

      
“How convenient for you. You're a rich widow now, I imagine...or did his daddy see that you were cut out of the will?” He really didn't give a damn.

      
Reba stiffened and stifled a sob. “I never did love him, Brand. He knew that when he married me, but he wanted me anyway.”

      
“Just to get back at me for beating him at childhood games?” His tone was scoffing. Once her tears would have moved him, but that was a lifetime ago.

      
“Something like that, but I made certain old Cal Wilcox couldn't get his greedy hands on my share of Earl's estate. I am a rich widow, Brand...” She let her voice trail away suggestively. “All alone here in London.”

      
“And now you want a genuine earl, not just a rich country boy. I hate to tell you this, Widow Wilcox, but I'm just a lowly baron who's barely got a shilling to his name.”

      
“I have the money. And I'd be willing to settle for a lowly baron...providin' he's the right one.”

      
“Well now, I reckon I'm just not the one,” he said with a slow grin.

      
Angrily she whirled in a flurry of violet silk and perfume and walked swiftly toward the elegant new spider phaeton sitting at the side of the road.
She must have known I was going to refuse her overtures.

      
What good would it do to try to resurrect a long-dead love? One that she herself had killed. Brand cared nothing for her but worried about the trouble she might cause between him and the Auburn family. He'd put little past her. Once Miss Reba Cunningham set her sights on anything or anyone she wanted, the devil could take whoever got in her way.

      
One of the servants working at the track waited by her vehicle to assist her up. Without taking time to arrange her skirts in the small open phaeton, she cracked the whip over the matched grays and drove off, wheels churning mud.

      
“You must've said something inappropriate, old chap,” Sin remarked dryly as he strolled back from the stables.

      
“Woman always did drive like hell on wheels.”

      
“Everyone who's anyone in London drives that way. She'll do smashingly well here,” St. John replied.

      
“No matter her money, the sort of people she wants to impress won't give a damn. She'll always be an ignorant American overreacher.”

      
“You scarcely sound regretful,” Sin said with a chuckle, relieved that Reba's spell over his friend had been well and truly broken. “Just so long as she doesn't impress you.”

      
“No, she doesn't impress me,” Brand said softly, thinking of Earl Wilcox dying alone in some Philadelphia hotel room while Reba counted his money. The idea that he might be anything like her made his skin crawl with self-loathing.

* * * *

      
Miranda sat staring at the telegram, then rubbed her eyes wearily and reread the message, which was exciting in content. Kent Aimesley, her factor in America, had just arrived in Liverpool after profitable discussions with the transcontinental railway directors. He would be in London within the week with the agreements drawn up for her review and signature. She should be elated but was not.

      
Mr. Aimesley had once been the love of her youth. The penniless son of a vicar, Kent had asked Miranda Stafford, the daughter of a prosperous merchant, to marry him. But that had been a lifetime ago.

      
“I see Mr. Aimesley is in town,” Lori said with a small frown marring her smooth brow.

      
“How did you...?” Miranda smiled at the knowing look on her daughter's face. “All right, don't be so smug.” She knew Lori had interpreted her expression when she opened the telegram. “Actually he's in Liverpool now.”

      
“Are you going to see him, then?”

      
“How can I not? He has just arranged one of the largest ventures in which I've ever been engaged—and,” she quickly emphasized before Lori could suggest she find a new factor, “he is quite irreplaceable. It would be neither prudent nor fair to discharge him because of the past.”

      
“Would Father have offered him work if he had known about the two of you?”

      
A good question. Miranda had often wondered about it herself. “There was little to know. We were very young and naive. We would not have suited.”

      
Lori could tell by the tone of her mother's voice that the topic was closed. “So you wed Father instead.”

      
Miranda did not reply. Instead she removed a sheet of stationery from her desk drawer and began writing instructions for her secretary to wire Mr. Aimesley.

* * * *

      
Another message arrived that afternoon, this time from the baron. He had just uncovered an invitation to a musicale at Lady Tottingham' s the following afternoon, which he'd accepted weeks ago, then most regrettably forgotten—until rummaging through a stack of correspondence. Would Miss Auburn and her mother join him to hear a string quartet play Mozart?

      
Augusta Tottingham was a fabulously wealthy dowager baroness and one of the social arbiters of the day, dividing her time between London and Bath. The old lady still took the waters. Given her great age, she was doubtless a veritable walking—or at least creeping—advertisement for them, Miranda thought wryly as she penned an acceptance. Lori would be delighted to mingle with so many of the “best people.” And she adored Mozart.

      
Brand's carriage arrived promptly for them at one. Giving her reflection in the mirror one last inspection, Lori asked Tilda nervously, “Do I look well in this shade of blue?”

      
The maid sighed at her charge, decked out in the palest aquamarine mull with matching slippers and a parasol for the open carriage which the baron said he was bringing. “You've changed gowns four times already and his lordship is waiting downstairs. Even if you looked faded as a ghost—which you most certainly do not—there would be no time for another change. You're lovely. Go and enjoy,” she admonished, throwing up her hands.

      
Miranda stood smiling at the doorway. “As usual, Tilda is quite right. You're a confection. Come, we mustn't keep the baron waiting.”

      
“Or Lady T,” Lori said in awe. “Abbie was positively green when I told her where we were going.”

      
Brand was standing near the door as the women entered the small sitting room, the one favored by Marmalade. He was keeping an escape route handy in case the great orange brute shoved open the kitchen door again. Mercifully, he'd seen neither hide nor hair of a feline.

      
“Ladies, you are both visions,” he said with a bow. “And my rescuers from Lady Tottingham. I’ve heard she eats barons for breakfast.”

      
Lori giggled as Miranda replied, “If you had not put in an appearance, Lady T just might do precisely that. She is quite formidable, Major.”

      
“Then I shall endeavor to be on my best behavior,” Brand replied as he escorted them to the waiting carriage.

      
They passed the ride discussing the weather, the upcoming races at Ascot and other innocuous topics, both Brand and Miranda attempting to draw Lori into the conversation. However, since she was too nervous about her first meeting with the legendary dowager to say much, the conversation turned to politics and the current battle in Parliament to enlarge the suffrage.

      
“You of all people should support Mr. Gladstone. After all, he urged recognition of the Confederacy during the late war.”

      
“And you, a Liberal admirer of that gentleman, are staunchly abolitionist. How do you reconcile those conflicting points of view?”

      
“I was merely offering a reason for you to appreciate him, even if he was wrong on that one issue. Politics is an art of compromise, after all. Mr. Gladstone's position on voting reform is more moderate than that of the Conservatives. We Liberals do not wish to see unpropertied men voting on a par with those who have made this nation the richest on earth. It would lead to civil disorder.”

      
“And the spread of trade unionism?” he countered with a cynical smile.

      
She stiffened. “Yes, and look what chaos that has wrought wherever it is instituted. I pay my employees fair wages, but I can scarcely have them dictating to me how I run my foundry, shipyard or bank.”

      
“Heaven forbid. I do agree, however, that the Conservatives only want to broaden the franchise so they can recapture control of Commons. They haven't held power since '46. What better way to do it than by stealing Gladstone's thunder?”

      
“My, you are quite astute regarding English politics,” Lori finally interjected. “I have no idea who holds power today, much less that many years ago.”

      
“In time you'll come to understand these matters,” Miranda replied. “You need to read
The Times
. That's why I bring it home each evening from my office.”

      
Lori made a face, but Brand grinned and said, “Your mother would see women with the vote...possibly even unpropertied women. I'd wager on it.” He raised an eyebrow in mock dismay, smiling encouragingly at Lori.