The Bluestocking and the Rake (The Regency Gentlemen Series) (14 page)

“
There
!” said her ladyship triumphantly. “I knew it!”

“Miss Blakelow is not that kind of woman. She is good, kind and decent. She is also proposing to pay me back for any monies lent to her.” He walked towards the door. “You may not approve, Mama, but for the first time in my life, I have found someone who makes me smile, someone who’s absence from a room makes me sad, someone whose eyes seek mine when there is a good joke to be shared. For the first time in my life I wonder what it would be like to hold that person when I am old and grey. And
that
, in my experience, is a most promising start. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go.”

And with that and stopping only to peck her upon the cheek, he went away.

“Well,” fumed Lady Marcham, flinging down her parasol. “
Well
! That is how he speaks to his own mother! That is the son whom I bore into this world and nurtured and raised. Ungrateful boy!”

Sir Julius looked longingly at the door, wondering how he could get out of the room without appearing rude. “I…erm
―”

“This is how he repays me! This is how much he thinks of his father’s name…of his father’s inheritance! Are that woman’s children to run free at Holme? Is her blood to taint the Hockingham name for future generations?”

“I…what a fetching bonnet that is, my lady.”

“And I am just expected to sit back and let him throw himself away on a…a harpy? No and no!”

“No, my lady.”

“I will not let that woman wreck my son’s future. I will not stand idly by and let that odious creature take him from us. Oh, no!” said her ladyship, shifting her ample bosom, “she will find out exactly what I am made of!”

Miss Blakelow was busy polishing the copper late one morning the following week when John appeared to inform her that his lordship had called and was waiting in the parlour to take her out in his curricle for a drive.

The lady’s first inclination was to ask John to inform the earl that it was not convenient and that he should come back again another day. She had started to relay this message to her butler, but on his giving her his look, the one that contained that perfect mix of scepticism and “tell him yourself,” she was persuaded to give it up. She untied her apron, hastily put on the cap and spectacles and went in to the parlour.

He was standing by the fireplace, talking to Aunt Blakelow when she came in, and Miss Blakelow did not miss the swift but thorough assessment the man gave her figure as she appeared. She lifted her chin, and wrapped her arms protectively across her bosom, but on seeing the gleam of amusement that stole into his eyes, unfolded them again.

“Good morning, my lord,” she said clasping her hands before her. “Did you have a good trip to
London?”

“Certainly I did, thank you,” he replied. “How do you do? Your aunt has just persuaded me to take you out for a drive and I have to say that I think it a capital idea. It is a glorious day and I have a fancy to see the far side of the lake where there is a grotto, or so I have been told. My curricle awaits, ma’am, if you would send a maid for your shawl and bonnet?”

“I told you before that I am too busy to drive out with you.”

“What nonsense. Do you never stop for luncheon? Even paragons of womanly virtue such as you have to eat and
I
have brought a picnic. Now, what say you to that?”

“Of course she
will be pleased to go with you, Lord Marcham,” said Aunt Blakelow, ignoring the glare she received from her niece.

Miss Blakelow gritted her teeth. “I don’t wish to appear rude, my lord―”

“Good, that settles it then,” he replied promptly. “Go and fetch your bonnet.”

“Do you
ever
take ‘no’ for an answer?” she complained.

He grinned. “Not when I want something. I’ll wait for you here.”

For some inexplicable reason, it took her an age to decide what to wear. It was a warm October day and yet she tugged on a thick winter pelisse because it was smarter than the old cape she habitually wore. She changed her gown three times and ended up back in the one that she had been wearing earlier. She put on her glasses and a hideous bonnet that she had only bought because it completely hid her hair and cast her face into shadow, which greatly added to her strait-laced image. By the time she was dressed to her own satisfaction, it was fully forty five minutes before she finally returned to the parlour.

“Well,” he said, as she entered the room. He was standing by the window, impatiently slapping his gloves against his thighs. “If this is how you treat your beau, it is not surprising that you have never married.”

“I don’t have any beau,” she said.

“No, and I don’t wonder at it. You probably frightened them all away with that bonnet.”

Miss Blakelow took a firm grip on her temper. “Are we going for a drive, my lord, or not?”

“Yes, if my horses have not expired through boredom in the last hour. I was beginning to wonder if you had become stuck in your own chamber pot.”

Aunt Blakelow had a suspicious coughing fit, which sounded very much like laughter.

“I have not kept you waiting above forty minutes,” Miss Blakelow said, with a defiant toss of her head.

“Only because you did not have the nerve to keep me waiting a full hour. But I’ll wager you were tempted to try it to teach me a lesson, weren’t you?”

Miss Blakelow lowered her eyes as a guilty flush stole into her cheeks. “I was undecided as to whether I needed a shawl or a spencer or a pelisse.”

“So instead you chose that great thick redingote, which I’m sure is just the thing for a freezing winter day…but in the warm sunshine outside, you will be wishing it at Jericho within the space of five minutes.”

“Have you finished?” she demanded.

“And when we are married, such a hideous bonnet as that will be forbidden. As will be those spectacles,” he remarked, moving to the door and holding it open for her. “In fact, I may cheerfully burn half your wardrobe and not repine. Good day, Aunt Blakelow. I shall return your niece forthwith.”

It was on the tip of Miss Blakelow’s tongue to retort in kind, to lash out that he was dressed like a court card, but he looked so immaculate, so elegant and so handsome that the words died upon her lips. He led her out to his waiting curricle and before she had time to set one booted foot upon the step, he had placed his hands on her waist and lifted her high up onto the seat as if she were nothing but a featherweight. Her stomach performed a perfect back-flip as her feet left the ground, or maybe it was because his hands held her so firmly that she felt funny inside. She opened her mouth in surprise and to protest, but before she could form the words he had removed his hands. He looked up at her, a devil lurking in his eyes, daring her to protest.

“Yes, Miss Blakelow?” he asked softly.

“Nothing, my lord.”

A soft smile curved the corners of his mouth as he walked away to the rear of the equipage, said something to his groom and then swung up onto the seat beside her. He took the reins in his gloved hands, the groom jumped onto the seat behind them and in a moment, they were bowling down the drive.

“And so Miss Blakelow, show me it all.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I do not wish to see the beauty spots that your aunt was pleased to show me the other day. I wish to see the warts.”

She stared at him as if she could hardly believe her ears. “Do you have a hankering to see an estate in decline, my lord? Do you have a desire to see a property so ravaged of all its wealth by a man trying to pay off a gambling debt?”

“Certainly I do.”

“I can show you tumbledown barns in bad state of repair, farmers’ cottages with leaking roofs and rotting crops in the fields because there is no-one left to harvest them.”

“Then by all means do so.”

There was a silence.

“I wish that I could believe you to be in earnest,” she said seriously.

“I am very much in earnest. How am I to know what is to be done at Thorncote if no-one will show me where the problems are?”

She flashed him a smile. “Then turn left at the end of the drive.”

* * *

“Well, what do you think?” Miss Blakelow asked him a good while later as they sat on the grass in the warm sunshine by the lake, eating from the picnic basket that his lordship had brought. She reached into the basket and pulled out a pastry, pulling it apart with her nimble fingers.

They had driven the length and breadth of the estate, inspecting rickety bridges, tumbledown walls and broken fences, talking to the tenants and discussing plans for improvement. Miss Blakelow was cautiously optimistic that she had persuaded him to help at last and stole a furtive glance across at his profile.

Lord Marcham shrugged and gazed over at his horses, which were grazing nearby, the groom in attendance. “I think that Thorncote is in a very bad way,” he answered.

“Yes,” she agreed thoughtfully, nibbling a piece of her pastry.

“I also think that it would take an extremely large sum of money and an army of men to bring it back into good order. And I am asking myself why I should put myself to the trouble.”

Miss Blakelow stared at him, her temper bubbling under the surface.
Put yourself to the trouble
, she thought angrily.
Yes, it’s much easier to turn your back, isn’t it, my lord?
She gave herself a mental shake, took herself firmly in hand; getting angry with him was not likely to get her what she wanted. “Because you will make a tidy profit when the estate comes to the good again,” she pointed out calmly.

“And what if it does
not
come to the good?”

“It will.”

“What if you disappear to get married and leave the running of the estate to your brother? Who by all I hear is just as hopeless with money as your esteemed father. Who will care about my money then?”

“I won’t get married,” she said, staring at her lap.

“How do you know you won’t? You are still young. There are still…opportunities for you.”

She pulled a face at the thought of being in any way physically intimate with Mr. Peabody. “Thorncote is my home,” she said. “I will live here for as long as I am able.”

“And what if you fall in love, Georgie?” he asked softly, watching her.

She ripped apart another piece of her pastry with a scornful laugh. “I have done with love long ago.”

“And what if love has not done with you?”

“It has, I can assure you. If this is your indirect way of asking me if I mean to marry Mr. Peabody…?”

He shrugged. “It might be.”

“I could not accept Mr. Peabody. As I have told him on numerous occasions.”

His lordship raised a brow. “Is Mr. Peachybody is an overly ardent suitor, Miss Blakelow?” he guessed. “Would you like me to have a word with him?”

“There is no need.”

“Has he touched you?”

She looked uncomfortable and did not entirely answer his question. “I believe William has warned him off.”

“Your brother is good for something then,” Lord Marcham muttered, picking up a plum and biting into one end of it.

“And what do you mean by that remark?”

“Did Peabody insult you ma’am?” he asked again.

“He…he tried to kiss me…that’s all.”

“Where is your brother? Why is he not here to defend you from such men, and I may add, helping you to rescue Thorncote?”

“William lives in
London.”

“And shows no concern that his estate is about to be taken from him,” said his lordship scornfully. “I have been criticised for many things in my time, but never apathy where
Holme Park is concerned. Have you written to him?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And he has fallen in love.”

“I’ll bet,” said his lordship caustically. “No doubt he has been fortunate enough to fall in love with a lady of means. How very timely.”

“If you already knew, my lord, I wonder why you took the trouble of asking me.”

“To see if you’d tell me the truth.”

“Have you met my brother?” she demanded, her bosom heaving with indignation.

“I have had that dubious pleasure. He wanted to call me out.”

“Call you out?” she repeated incredulously.

“Yes. The wretched boy seems to think me responsible for the death of your father. He threw a glass of wine in my face and demanded that I meet him.”

“Did you meet him? Pray tell me! Oh, sir, tell me that you did not.”

She clutched at his arm and found to her disconcertment that she had grasped his hand instead. He looked down at her hand on his as if her touch surprised him and she hastily withdrew it.

“Of course I didn’t,” he replied, somewhat distractedly and then said, “You do have a good opinion of me, don’t you? Well whatever you may think of me, I have not yet resorted to the murder of children.”

She blushed, aware that by touching him so casually and familiarly, she had overstepped the unspoken boundary of her own making. His eyes finally rose to hers and she gulped at the message she read there.

“But he threw wine in your face…” she said, pressing on with the conversation in an attempt to divert his attention away from her embarrassment.

“Yes, and I took great pleasure in kicking him down the stairs for his trouble.”

“Oh, you brute! You hurt him.”

“I sincerely hope so. And allow me to warn you that should your revolting brother come sniffing around my youngest sister; I
will
hurt him and take great pleasure in doing so. A fortune hunter,” said the earl. “What truly repulsive relatives you have, Miss Blakelow. Tell me why I should sink my blunt to rescue such a selfish object as your brother?”

“Because it is his inheritance, my lord, and I would have thought that you of all people would understand that.”

“I do understand it. But what I fail to understand is why you care more for that than your brother does.”

There was a silence as a flock of geese flew overhead. Miss Blakelow looked down at her hands.

“And if I were to consider helping you…” continued the earl. “I would not wish to have Mr. Bateman living here at my expense.”

Her head snapped up and she stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“You know very well what I mean.”

She coloured faintly. “Mr. Bateman has not yet asked me to marry him,” she said, in a small voice. “And I do not believe that he has any such thought in his head.”

“What would you say if he did?”

“That, my lord, is none of your business.”