Sheri Cobb South (5 page)

Margaret nodded. “Ever since the old duke died. It apparently took some time to trace the new one, but the household staff was informed that he had been found, and would be coming soon to claim his inheritance. There has been no sign of him yet, but we live in daily expectation of his arrival.”

“Let us hope that his welcome is rather warmer than mine,” remarked James, gingerly touching his bandaged forehead.

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Margaret. “I hope you are referring to your encounter on the road, and not to your present company.”

“Touché,
Miss Darrington,” he replied, acknowledging this riposte with a slight bow. “I assure you, I have no cause for complaint. No man ever had more capable or charming nurses than you, your aunt, and—and M-Miss Amanda.”

And that, thought Miss Darrington, settled the matter. If the tutor was already so smitten with her sister that he could not speak her name without stammering and blushing, her choices were limited to dismissing him out of hand, or being embarrassingly frank with him. She found herself reluctant to do the former, for she rather liked the new tutor. Being not at all of a tranquil disposition herself, she found his quiet manner calming and his self-deprecating humor appealing. She opted, therefore, for the latter.

“By which, of course, you mean that Aunt Hattie and I are capable, and Amanda is charming,” she remarked. “Mr. Fanshawe, I must be frank. You will have noticed that my sister is possessed of an uncommon beauty.”

“Since we are being frank with one another, Miss Darrington, I will point out that a man would have to be blind
not
to notice such a thing.”

“Quite. Unfortunately, the village and its environs appear to be sadly lacking in blind men.”

“Also in men with four fingers, as your aunt has discovered. In fact,” he added, his dimples becoming quite pronounced, “I should say Montford is cursed with blooming health.”

An answering smile tugged at her lips, but she would not allow herself to be distracted. “I assure you, Mr. Fanshawe, I am quite serious. You are not the first to entertain hopes in that direction, but it will not do. You must not think of her.”

His eyebrows rose above the edges of his spectacles. “This is plain speaking, indeed,” he remarked, somewhat taken aback.

“Amanda, you see,” she continued, “is to make a brilliant marriage.”

“Is she, indeed? And who is the fortunate fellow who is to be her husband?”

Margaret’s chin rose. “We don’t know yet,” she said with a trace of defiance in her voice.

“I see,” James said slowly.

Margaret received the uncomfortable impression that he saw a great deal too much. “You have seen my sister; can you doubt her ability to attach a wealthy gentleman?”

“No,” confessed James. “But—if I may be so bold—given the dearth of eligible suitors in the area, where is she to meet this worthy?”

To his surprise, her direct gaze slid away almost guiltily. “I had thought perhaps—” She picked up a book from the scarred table and began to thumb idly through its pages. “I had thought perhaps she might marry the duke.”

“The duke of Montford?” echoed James incredulously, jerking his thumb in the direction of the Palladian mansion on the hill. “The duke that—correct me if I’m wrong—you’ve never laid eyes on?”

“Even a duke must marry sometime, if he wishes to ensure the succession,” she pointed out, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the word to betroth an angel sight unseen to a man merely for the sake of his worldly goods.

“But—but what if he is already married?”

“In that case, she might marry his son. I should think his heir must be a marquess or an earl at least, wouldn’t you?”

“And if he should prove—unsuitable—in some other way?”

“I assure you, Mr. Fanshawe, I am not a monster! I should not wish to see my sister wed to a brute, or a half-wit.”

“I am relieved to hear it,” confessed James, his eyes twinkling behind his spectacles. “Tell me, am I more eligible than a ducal half-wit, or less?”

Margaret might have taken offense at this question, had she not seen that twinkle, and responded in kind. “Oh, decidedly less! There is still the title to consider, you know, to say nothing of the Priory.”

“I am chastened, indeed,” said James in a decidedly unrepentant voice.

Margaret returned the book to the table with a thump. “But nor would I wish to see her wed to a man who is unable to provide for her. Remember,
Mr. Fanshawe, I know to a farthing how much you earn, and even if two people were capable of living frugally on thirty-six pounds per annum, it has been my observation that scholarly gentlemen are not always—practical.”

James, absorbing with some difficulty this unflattering estimation of his character, wondered fleetingly if Miss Darrington’s father had been a scholarly gentleman. Then he recalled that lady’s ready understanding of his Latin exclamation upon seeing the fair Amanda, and was sure of it. Good God, what sort of household had he come to?

“I realize you must think me shockingly mercenary,” she continued, “but what other option is open to a well-bred young lady?”

“If money is a problem,” James said slowly, “perhaps one of you might seek suitable employment. I assure you, working for one’s bread is not so dire a fate,” he added, with a hint of a smile.

Margaret shook her head. “I daresay we might, but it would never do. My sister is an accomplished artist and musician, but no lady in her right mind would hire her as a governess, lest her husband or son succumb to Amanda’s beauty. I, on the other hand, might be imminently suited for such a position, but aside from the fact that I dare not leave the running of the household to Aunt Hattie, I suspect that few ladies desire their daughters to be instructed in Latin or Greek.”

“Your own parents obviously thought differently,” James observed, testing a theory.

“My father,” said Margaret, her voice growing wistful. “It appeared for a while that I was to be an only child, so Papa raised me as the son he supposed he would never have.”

“I daresay Philip’s appearance put your nose quite out of joint,” James remarked.

“Oh, indeed!” She smiled at the memory. “I was nine years old at the time, and thought myself very ill-used.”

“Aha!” said James, cocking an ear toward the schoolroom door. “The usurper approaches!”

Loud footsteps clattered up the stairs, and a moment later Philip burst through the door.

“Meg, are you almost finished? Amanda is back with the doctor.”

Chapter 4

The interview with Miss Darrington gave James much to think about as he lay upon a narrow cot while the doctor poked and prodded at his sorely abused person. It seemed he was in the employ of a family whose handsome Tudor home concealed from the world a dire financial situation, the solution to which seemed to lie in the marriage of the younger daughter to a man—
any
man—of fortune. James reminded himself that this in itself was not necessarily a tragedy; he knew there were women (although he could not have stated the source of this knowledge) who would welcome the opportunity to make such a match. Where he himself fit into the picture was less certain. Apparently he had responded to Miss Darrington’s advertisement, and had been engaged at a salary of thirty-six pounds per annum. But where he had come from, and what he had been doing there, remained a mystery.

“If you would turn your head, please,” adjured the doctor, deftly unwrapping the Darrington ladies’ handiwork so that he might inspect the wound beneath the bandages.

James obeyed, and found himself facing the open wardrobe in which he had stored his meager belongings. These had offered few clues, as there had been no papers nor anything else which might identify him—nothing, in fact, beyond a ragtag collection of secondhand books; a modest assortment of rather cheerless clothing, including a well-worn evening ensemble shiny at the elbows and knees; and a shaving kit somewhat the worse for its adventures—nothing that might shed any light on the life he had led before he met Miss Darrington in the road.

“Well now, I believe you’ll live,” pronounced the doctor at last, his nimble fingers replacing the bandage with the ease of long practice. “You won’t be very pretty to look at for the next week or so, but you have excellent nurses in the Darrington ladies. If your aches and pains should keep you awake at night, ask Hattie Blaylock for a drop or two of laudanum in a glass of her blackberry cordial.”

“Before you go, doctor,” said James, sitting upright and steeling himself to ask the question for which he was not at all sure he wanted to know the answer, “I think you should know that I—I can’t remember the attack.”

“Can’t remember?” echoed the doctor, his bushy eyebrows drawing together in consternation. “What, precisely, can you not remember?”

“Any of it. I can’t remember the person—or persons—who set upon me, or what I was doing before, or—” There was more, of course, much more, but something held James back from a full confession.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it overmuch,” the doctor assured him, packing his instruments back into a worn black leather bag. “It’s not unusual in cases like this for the mind to shut out events too unpleasant to remember, particularly when a blow to the head is involved. Depend upon it, you’ll remember it all in another day or so—and when you do, you may wish you hadn’t,” he added with a wink.

James smiled weakly at this sally, but privately doubted it. He had no time to ponder the doctor’s words, for Philip came up to inform him that Sir Humphrey Palmer, the local Justice of the Peace, had arrived and wanted to question him. Alas, James could contribute little to Sir Humphrey’s investigations beyond a somewhat sheepish confession that he could remember nothing of the man or men who had attacked him. (Of their masculinity, at least, he was certain; it was too humiliating to think he might have been so roughly used by a band of females.) Nor could Sir Humphrey enlighten James, for he had passed the scene of the altercation on his way to Darrington House, and had observed no evidence of foul play at all, much less any suspicious characters lurking in the vicinity.

But if James deemed the interview a disappointment, Sir Humphrey Palmer, for his part, considered it a complete waste of time. How, pray, was he to apprehend a person or persons unknown with no names, no descriptions, not even so much as a list of stolen items said persons might have in their possession? Well, what had happened to that young man was a pity, and he wouldn’t wish such a fate on his worst enemy, but there was nothing he could do beyond expressing his sympathy; he hadn’t a hope in Hades of bringing any miscreants to justice.

Sir Humphrey’s sense of ill usage lent speed to his steps, and by the time he reached his own front stoop, he was convinced that there was something havey-cavey about the whole affair. The more he thought on it, the more certain he became that young Mr. Fanshawe was not telling everything he knew. He only hoped the Darringtons—good family, though poor as church mice, and little Amanda Darrington as pretty a piece as he had seen in many a long year—were not nursing a viper in their bosom.

With these dire thoughts as his only companions, it was hardly surprising that he gave short shrift to the fashionably dressed young man with unaccountably damp hair, who greeted his arrival with a cry of, “Uncle! You’ve been holding out on me! You never told me that angels dwelt among us.”

“Angels?” echoed Sir Humphrey, eyeing with disfavor his nephew and heir presumptive. “Faugh! Nonsense!”

“An
angel, then. One. I met her by the river.”

“By
the river, Peregrine?” echoed Sir Humphrey, scowling at his nephew’s wet curls. “Looks to me like you’ve been
in
the river.”

“That, too,” confessed Peregrine Palmer with a sheepish grin. “I suppose you could say she knocked me off balance.”

“Literally as well as figuratively, it would appear.” Sir Humphrey’s scowl deepened as his suspicions grew. “Tell me, Peregrine, when did this momentous event take place?”

“This very afternoon.” The younger man glanced at the long-case clock in the hall. “Not more than two hours ago.”

“I feared as much,” growled Sir Humphrey. He tossed his hat and gloves onto a piecrust table beside the door, then stalked across the hall toward his study. “It appears that you have made the acquaintance of Miss Amanda Darrington.”

“Amanda,” Peregrine breathed reverently, following in Sir Humphrey’s wake. “It suits her. Tell me, Uncle, how soon may I make my bow to Miss Darrington?”

Sir Humphrey’s bushy eyebrows rose. “I thought you already had.”

“Formally, I mean. I want a proper introduction.”

“Harrumph!” barked Sir Humphrey, reaching for the brandy decanter on his desk. “Since when have you ever cared a fig for propriety?”

“Since now,” declared Peregrine. “I’m serious about this girl, Uncle.”

Sir Humphrey filled two glasses, handed one to his nephew, and drank deeply from the other. “Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Miss Darrington—Miss Margaret Darrington, that is—means for her sister to marry well, and you haven’t a feather to fly with—and won’t, so long as I’m above ground.”

“Which I hope will be a long time, sir,” said Peregrine with amused affection. “Still, I am not utterly penniless, you know. I have my maternal grandmother’s fortune, and although it is not large, it is more than sufficient for me to support a wife in comfort.”

“That’s as may be, but is it sufficient to support her sister, brother, and widowed aunt as well? For nothing less will appease Miss Darrington, I assure you.”

“Oh-ho!” exclaimed Peregrine. “So the angel is guarded by a dragon, is she?”

“You are mixing your metaphors, dear boy.”

Both men looked up at the invasion of their male sanctorum by Lady Palmer, the wife of one and the aunt of the other.

“Angels are not guarded by dragons,” continued her ladyship.

“Amanda Darrington is,” her husband informed her bluntly. He refilled his glass, only to see his wife gently but firmly remove it from his unresisting fingers and set it well out of reach.

“Nonsense! Hattie Blaylock is more pea-goose than dragon.”