The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (43 page)

Gilly did not appear to be very moved by this eloquent speech. "For a man who took his sweet time showing up to inspect his holdings, your concern now is as overdue as it is unbelievable," she pointed out crushingly.

"I was unavoidably detained on personal business," Kevin returned repressively. "But that being neither here nor there, I am now aware of the problems facing The Hall and the complications my great-uncle's Will add to the situation, and I am dedicated to setting things to rights."

"For whom?"

"For the people on the estate, of course."

"Ha! For the sake of your empty pockets more like."

"No matter what my motive, brat, even your prejudicial brain should be able to assimilate the fact that it's the estate that will suffer if you refuse to marry me. Would you sacrifice the entire estate and every soul who depends on its success, just to thwart me? And I told Mutter you weren't stupid," he ended, slowly shaking his head in disbelief.

"
Stupid?
How dare you!" Gilly exploded in fury, obligingly stepping into the trap he'd laid for her. "I can read. I can read very well, as a matter of fact. I'll have you know I've read
prodigiously
over the years. I am acquainted with literature, arithmetic, geography, politics, history—self-taught though they may be. Why, I'm a bloody fountain of knowledge!"

The first flickerings of emotion flitted across Kevin's face, only to be quickly squelched. He really was learning to hate himself. Even so, he pressed on: "Hoo! As if that's all it takes to be considered an accomplished person. You're devoid of manners, haven't a whit of style, and possess not a single jot of feminine instinct—and I do not count your earlier exhibition of bawdiness a womanly attribute. And now, now you tell me you're a damned bluestocking into the bargain, albeit a profane one. S'faith, the Fleet begins to appeal."

As if to lend credence to Kevin's belittling description of her failings, Gilly shouted back, "Oh shut up, you despicable, top-lofty prig!"

He spread his hands in acknowledgement of her outburst. "I rest my argument. Now, if you've had done with your hoydenish hysterics, I'll state your options to you one more time. You may marry me tonight so that my great-uncle's funds become available within the year, or sooner if we can solve this puzzle Mutter mentioned and find the hidden treasure—which by the by, I'm more than willing to allow you sole ownership for your troubles. Thus we will be saving The Hall, the estate, and the hundreds dependent on us for their livelihood. Or," and here he paused dramatically, "you can take yourself off, carrying only what you own and not a stitch or penny more, to beg food and sleep under the hedgerows like any vagabond. Which are you to be, Miss Gilly Fortune? A Countess or a beggar? Please, take your time in answering. I know both are appealing prospects."

He watched Gilly chew on her lip for some moments before she looked at him levelly. "If I agree to the marriage, you'll not root out the oldsters in the cottages and set them on the road to make way for younger, more productive workers?" she asked, eying him narrowly.

"I would not," he replied evenly, hiding a triumphant smile. He'd got her! It hadn't been fair, it hadn't been easy. But, by God, he'd got her.

"You'll not employ grinding bailiffs or land stewards to make slaves of the tenants and keep them from coming to you with their problems?"

"No grinding bailiffs or, or whatever else it was you said," he agreed cheerfully, prepared to be magnanimous in victory.

"You won't screw down the wages of the laborers or house servants or turn off servants past their prime without an annual allowance?" she persisted.

"Good heavens child, do people really do such awful things?" Kevin asked in a good imitation of horror. "You must promise to guide me in these things, as you're so conversant with the shabbier practices landowners seem to employ."

"Thanks to Sylvester, I am," she snapped. "Do you agree with giving alms for beggars at the door and allowing visitors to stay at the servants' hall?"

"How could any Christian disagree and still sleep nights?" he asked, tongue in cheek. She was all but eating out of his hand now. Obviously she cared more for the people on the estate than he had realized.

"No grabbing at waste candle-ends instead of leaving them for the servants to use in their rooms?"

"An inhuman practice." Kevin shuddered, as if appalled .

Gilly continued to press him. "No musty cheese parings substituted for good wheels of our dairy's own best sort?"

"Preposterous to believe a Rawlings would stoop so low."

"You'll order the straw changed in the mattresses in the servants' wing twice yearly?"

"Without fail—on my honor."

"You'll replace the millstone?"

"First thing," he sighed wearily, wondering just how long this was to go on.

"You'll keep Hattie Kemp on as cook?"

Kevin took a deep, steadying breath, seeing himself toppling to his knees just at the finish line. "I'll replace the millstone first thing."

"But Hattie Kemp—"

"Hattie Kemp has worked long and hard and deserves a rest. I'll continue to pay her while reducing her duties and responsibilities. I'll even give her a title of sorts so she can hold up her head in the servants' hall. Bloody hell—I'll finance her tour of China if she so desires. But I will
not
eat her cooking one more day than absolutely necessary."

If Kevin worried that he had just destroyed all his progress with Gilly, he was to be happily disabused of that notion.

"Good enough," Gilly concluded with a single sharp nod of her head. "I hesitated to trust your sincerity until you balked at Hattie Kemp's cooking. If you'd agreed to that I would have known you'd lied about the rest." She stood and smoothed down her skirt with an odd, queen-like grace that did little to improve her appearance but went a long way in telling Kevin that this woman-child was no stranger to that frequently painful emotion called pride.

This time when Kevin extended his hand, Gilly took it, her grip firm and her palm dry. "We've a bargain," he stated more than asked.

"The London dandy and the kitchen wench wed tonight—for the sake of the estate," Gilly agreed solemnly, her eyes holding a glint of mischief.

Raising the calloused, chapped, and none-too-clean hand of his intended to his lips, he quipped, "If, my dear Gilly, today's conversation can be considered a foretaste of what we can expect from our association in the years to come, I can dare to say now that our union will never be dull. Indeed, that hope has become your prime attraction. Our children should be quite unique, don't you think?"

Gilly's returned her hand to her side so quickly she could have been thought to have unexpectedly encountered something hot. "Ch–children?" she stammered weakly.

"I propose to become a husband, not a monk," Kevin said matter-of-factly. "I am, after all, a man, and with a man's needs and desires. I
desire
children to ensure the title. That pursuit conveniently serves to simultaneously satisfy my
needs
. Don't be so alarmed, child," he concluded more gently. "I'm not an ogre. I can assure you I will endeavor to make the experience as enjoyable for you as it will be for me."
Which is not really saying much
, he added silently.

Gilly was appalled, and more than a little confused. What was he talking about? Mating, a necessary part of procreation, at least as she had seen it so often between the farm animals, seemed for the most part an exhausting series of physical contortions that looked as impossible to achieve as they were uncomfortable to maintain—quickly begun, just as abruptly terminated, and embarrassingly personal in nature. As for humans? Well, surely that was just as Hattie Kemp said. Only men, and maybe women the likes of the serving maid at the Cock and Crown actually derived any pleasure from the act—and the cook even doubted Millie would do the deed if it weren't for the money that changed hands every time she went off with one of the men who asked her.

Children themselves were another matter. Gilly would like to have children. It seemed the natural thing to do. Eventually. But was she ready now for such a big step? She didn't think so.

Nodding absently in Kevin's direction, she walked slowly out the door and down the corridor, lost in thought, unaware of his gaze watching her thoughtfully as she went. She hadn't answered him as to her acceptance of their marriage being one that was normal on every level. She couldn't. Not yet. She'd have to give the matter more thought.

Gilly walked through the kitchens in a daze, never seeing Hattie Kemp, as that woman's brow wrinkled fretfully at the sight of her young Gilly so lost in thought. Once outside Gilly picked her way through the overgrown gardens, to sit on a stone bench placed beneath the nude statue of some winged faerie and stare up at the exposed female curves. Unconsciously, she crossed her arms over her own small breasts.

Gilly's mind traveled back a few years, to the time when her budding body could no longer be concealed, even by binding, and her beloved breeches only tended to accentuate the differences between herself and her young male chums from the estate. It had marked the end of her carefree youth, as even the villagers became careful to keep their sons away from the Earl's bastard daughter now that she was no longer an affable little tomboy but a blossoming adolescent.

She had refused to change overnight into a simpering, giggling ninny just because her body had chosen to go all soft and curvy on her—not that soft or that curvy—but her childish adventures abruptly became solitary expeditions. Even when the other girls blossomed, making Gilly once again look undersized with their own more voluptuous curves, she did not seek out her old friends.

Growing up brought loneliness; growing up brought home the shame surrounding her birth. Was it any wonder she rejected the outward trappings of femininity? Was it any wonder she could see no beauty in the female form that could excite men to madness?

"I'll tell him I need more time to get used to the idea," she decided aloud, thereby settling the matter in her own mind. "Surely he could not be that anxious to, to—oh, to do whatever it is he's bent on doing."

Elsewhere on the weed-choked grounds, Kevin was reflecting wryly on Gilly's reaction to his declaration that he meant to share her bed. She was of good, if not legitimate stock, that much he could rely on anyway. But he had no burning desire to bed the brat, especially not before she had been totally and repeatedly submerged in hot, soapy water and rubbed all over with a stiff brush. But it was best to begin as one meant to go on. Once heirs were produced, they could each for the most part go their own way.

Gilly did not really appeal to Kevin physically; considerably less in fact than any of the high-steppers he'd had in keeping in London these months past, and whole worlds less than the debutantes he'd flirted with in London in the misguided notion that he should be allowed to choose his own Countess.

Yet the longer he put off bedding his unwanted bride, the harder it would be to establish any relationship at all along those lines. If he wanted heirs, and he did, he would have to bed his wife occasionally, even if he was able to find his real pleasure elsewhere. Mutter's suggestion of eventual divorce left a bad taste in Kevin's mouth. He could not abuse the girl any more than necessary. She'd already been hurt enough at the hands of the Rawlings men.

And Kevin knew himself not to be a romantic sort. Marriage was a duty for men of his class. Nothing more. After all, unlike his closest friend, Jared, who had the Devil's own good luck, he hadn't been fortunate enough to find a woman like Amanda who could forever blind him to other women while binding him eternally to herself.

So what did it matter if he married Gilly or any other woman? None of them were Amanda.

Besides, all cats were gray in the dark, or so Kevin had heard it said. He was marrying out of duty. He gave a rueful chuckle, then quipped aloud, "I imagine I'll just have to close my eyes and think of England.

The Hall kept country hours, which meant dinner would be served at the ungodly early hour of half past six. This also meant that if Kevin were to have the luxury of a before-dinner drink, a bit of a prop he hoped would sustain him through yet another infamous Hattie Kemp culinary disaster, he must present himself in the large saloon as the hour struck six.

He was in the room scarcely a minute when the hour did precisely that—to the tune of eighteen striking clocks (he later counted them for his own edification). He was, he thought, virtually surrounded by the demmed things. Ticking clocks, chiming clocks, cuckooing clocks set with paste diamonds, and marble-footed clocks. There were clocks supported by gilt cherubs, clocks draped with reclining ivory nymphs, and one particularly repulsive specimen stuck in the middle of the stomach of some overweight, grinning pagan god or other.

"Of all my late great-uncle's eccentricities, this far and away carries off the palm," he told the otherwise empty room. "It is also," he added decisively, "the first evidence of his reign at The Hall to be routed out by his successor." So saying, the new Earl walked over to the clock closest to him—the obese, grinning god—and lifted its bulk in both hands preparatory to disposing of the thing through the nearest window if no other idea swiftly presented itself.

"Isn't that a bit heavy to carry about that way?" came an openly mocking voice from the doorway. "Mutter favors a pocket watch, I've noticed, but perhaps things are done differently in London."

Kevin turned toward his tormentor and lifted one fine brow in disdain. "Careful, brat," he warned, "or I'll order all these demmed timepieces stacked floor to ceiling in your chamber. It's as good a place as any other I've yet to find."

Gilly tried her best to look crestfallen, and failed miserably. "Do you mean to say you don't appreciate Sylvester's clocks? How sad. Perhaps you're more taken with some of his other interests—his collection of maps, charts, and such? Or, failing that, his voluminous research into ancient mazes and the like. No? Ah," she sighed as a tic began to work in Kevin's cheek, "that's a pity. A real bleedin' pity. Then what shall we do with the end product of old Sylvester's life's work?"