The Bride's Secret (16 page)

“I was with the old earl for a year, and I've now been nearly another year with the new earl.”

“And my husband is an agreeable employer?” She was puzzled over the way James had snapped at him the night before.

“Most agreeable.”

“Would you describe him as a difficult taskmaster?”

He pursed his lips. “He demands much of me, but he tempers his demands with consideration. It would not be difficult for me to understand what an outstanding soldier he was while in India.”

Since James had come to Yarmouth straight from India, Mr. Fordyce must not be acquainted with the fact that James had also served in Spain, Portugal and at Waterloo. She was unaccountably proud of him, and had to fight the urge to enlighten the secretary on her husband's military accomplishments.

“Tell me, how does one go about becoming a secretary?” she asked.

He gave a shy laugh. “One doesn't set about to become a secretary. In my case, when I left Cambridge—after an undistinguished two years there—a friend recommended me to the previous Earl Rutledge, who at the time was seeking a new secretary.”

“And the position suits you?”

He thought for a moment before replying. “My own capabilities, it would seem, are perfectly suited to this position. It's rather simpatico, actually.”

Simpatico
. 'Twas the very word she had used to describe how well suited James was to her.

Smiling, she stood up. “I've taken enough of your time. I wished to get to know you, as his lordship tells me I will have the liberty of using your services when needed.”

He hastened to his feet. “Services it will be my pleasure to give.”

“Oh, there you are,” James's voice thundered from behind her.

Carlotta spun around to face her husband, who directed an angry gaze at her.

Chapter 16

James's angry gaze upset Carlotta. This brooding man bore little resemblance to the man whose kindnesses had won her favor and secured her hand in marriage. Meeting his flashing eyes with only bare civility, she brushed past him and spoke icily. “You wanted me, my lord?” Knowing how greatly he disliked her addressing him as
my lord,
she had thrown in the title to spite him.

A sudden, painful grip on her arm stopped her in mid-stride. She spun around to see his hand coiled around her arm and the fury in his eyes. He closed the hidden doorway behind him, then spoke to her in a guttural voice. “You are never to address me as
your lord
, Carlotta.”

The corners of her mouth lifted with false mirth. “But you're acting so very lordly, dearest.”

He released her arm and began to move further into the library. “I'm out of charity with you, if you must know.”

She stopped abruptly and shot him a scorching gaze. “Pray, what could I possibly have done to draw your wrath?” she asked, her voice quivering. “I honestly have no clue.”

He indicated a seat on the sopha nearest the fire. She narrowed her gaze and flung herself down into the silk cushions. James was treating her as if she were a servant.

“I've been looking all over for you,” he said. “You could have shown the courtesy of allowing me to know your direction.”

Her eyes blazed with anger. “You had only to ask Mrs. MacGinnis. She knew very well where I was.” She glared at him and spoke coolly. “Furthermore, it was not my understanding that I was to inform you of my every move. Am I to be treated only as your chattel?”

He winced and ran a hand through his sandy hair. “Forgive me,” he said in a gentle voice, coming to sit beside her and take her hand.

Unaccountably, her stomach fluttered when he did so, undoubtedly due to the combination of so gentle a voice and the warmth of his big hand. “You must confess, James, since we have arrived at Yarmouth, you've been a veritable bear.”

He nodded remorsefully. “While you, on the other hand, my love, have behaved in such a manner as to make me swell with pride.”

She looked up at him with hopeful eyes. “I have?”

“You will make a fine countess, Carlotta.”

She agonized over her own unworthiness, yet beamed over his compliment. “I meant it when I told your staff last night I would learn each and every one of them. I started with Mr. Fordyce, but I perceive you do not care for him.”

James shook his head. “But I do! He's extremely competent.”

“If awfully shy.”

“The shyness is merely a barrier he erects with women. Fordyce has had little intercourse with the fairer sex.”

“Then he is more congenial with you?”

“Not at first, but we get on well together now.”

“It's my ardent wish that your ill humor with him doesn't send him running to a new employer.”

“I've been that bad?”

“You have been a positive ogre. I pray Stevie never sees that side of you. The child is far too young and too sensitive to understand the shifting moods of a stepfather.”

His eyes went cold. “I beg that you not refer to me as Stevie's stepfather. It's my greatest wish that the Yarmouth staff come to think of him as my own son—though I vow I shall never let the boy forget the fine man who was his real father.”

She squeezed his hand. “Being treated as your own child, I believe, is what will make Stevie happiest, too.”

“Speaking of Stevie, I thought you and I could walk with him to the stables he's so keen to see.”

“It's a fine day to explore your lands.”

“Our lands,” he said.

“Oh dear, I don't know if I shall ever become accustomed to all of this.”

“A year ago I felt the same.” He glanced at the window.”You've been out today?” he asked.

“No, but I gazed out at the wonderful parterre garden and saw how brightly the sun is shining. I shall be pleased to accompany you and Stevie. He's already outdoors because it's his mother's belief that sunshine is good for children, provided the air is free from chilling winds, that is.”

“I agree with you. I was an exceedingly healthy lad and was rarely indoors.”

Her glance swept over him, over his lightly bronzed face and well muscled body. He looked to enjoy extraordinarily good health. “You still spend a great deal of time outdoors?”

He laughed. “Nothing when compared to the hours I was outdoors as a child, but if the sun's out, I'm out. I don't like it when Ebony does not get exercised.”

“I take it Ebony is your mount.”

He nodded. “You'll see him today. Do you ride?”

“I do, but not well. My grandmother could never afford to keep a stable. Stephen presented me with a horse when we lived in Portugal and insisted I become proficient at handling her. Keeping a mount in Portugal, as you know, was less expensive than in England.”

“Everything was less expensive in Portugal! And in India.”

“You had a batman?”

“He's with me still. Mannington, my valet, is my former batman.”

“It seems I learn something new about you every day.”

He grinned. “Enough of me. The sun is wasting. Shall we go find Stevie?”

* * *

If James had swelled with pride over his bride the night before, then today his pride was increasing tenfold as he and the wife and son walked over the land that had come to mean so much to him. Though he had not been born to Yarmouth, it had become as vital to him as breathing. He had walked every inch of the estates, had inspected every dark crevice in the mines, had learned every servant and employee by name.

It was difficult to believe he had not spent his entire life here. During the past year he had rectified that shortcoming by becoming an astute student of the Rutledge family. He had learned the first earl's title had been bestowed upon him by Queen Elizabeth, and the second earl had been the first to reap riches from the mines located between the Hall and the Bristol Channel. He had discovered his great-grandfather was the earl who had fathered fourteen children.

As he and his new family covered the velvet-like expanse of green park land, he found himself wondering if his children would ever succeed to the earldom, or—he wondered morosely—would his title pass to one of the Moore cousins he had never met?

“Is Bwownie here yet, Papa?” Stevie asked.

Papa
. It was the first time the lad had addressed him thus. Nothing purchased with mere money could have meant so much to James. “Not yet, but today I shall allow you to ride on my mount with me.”

Stevie's little steps covered only half the distance of James's. “What's your mount's name?” the boy asked.

“Ebony.”

“Do you know what Ebony means, Stevie?” Carlotta asked.

He shook his head, his fair hair flying from side to side.

“It's another name for black.”

“Then Papa and I are
simpatico
, too,” the boy said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I named my pony for the color bwown, and he named his for black.”

“I declare, we are
simpatico
,” James said, “but how did such a small boy learn such a big word?”

“I learned it back in Bath. Mama said you and she were
simpatico
, and I asked her what that meant.”

His heart soaring, James tossed a glance at his wife, who looked up nervously at him. To his complete surprise, color hiked up her smooth cheeks, something he had never before witnessed in his confident wife.

“I daresay that's what I said when I learned you have more than a passing interest in poetry,” she explained nervously.

He smiled smugly. He had a new favorite word.

“James?” Carlotta interrupted his thoughts. “I declare, there's a saltiness in the air.”

“That, my dear, is because we're not far from the sea.”

“Can we see the sea?” Stevie asked excitedly.

“May we,” Carlotta corrected with a playful smile.

“Soon enough,” James replied.

At the stable, James and Stevie went from one stall to another, with James telling the boy each horse's name, but when the boy asked for the horses' ages, James had to defer to the undergroom, Jeremy, who was already beginning to saddle Ebony.

While James and Stevie examined each and every horse, Carlotta began a conversation with Jeremy.

Though James continued to stroke a flank or help Stevie feed a carrot to one horse after another, James grew angry as he listened to his wife laughing with the handsome young groom. His thoughts flashed back to Portugal and how well Carlotta had mixed with the bachelor soldiers there. Though he had never known of any impropriety connected with her, he had always thought her an outrageous flirt and wondered how her husband could have tolerated such brazen behavior.

Sweet heavens! What had he himself been thinking to have taken this woman for his bride? When he had found her in Bath, she had seemed nothing more than a demure widow. But just last night she admitted to a previous attachment to a man she had
not
married! Surely he had not allowed a lightskirt to become the new Countess Rutledge!

A blue funk settled over him.

Once Jeremy had Ebony and a gentle filly saddled, James hoisted Stevie on Ebony, then with Jeremy giving him a leg up, James joined the lad on top the mount.

Later, as she and her husband were cantering seaward, she asked, “And what is my horse's name?”

“Merry May,” he said. “She was born the May before I arrived.”

“You're so knowledgeable about Yarmouth, it seems as if you've always been here,” she said.

He smiled. “As it seems to me. I'm content here.”

“I believe I shall be, too,” she said wistfully.

It was difficult to stay angry with her. She had a facility for saying what he wished to hear.

Though he had intended to ride as far as the sea, his wife had other ideas.

“Oh, James, I have so been hungering to stroll through the parterre garden with you.”

He began to reign in his horse in the direction of the hall. “I can't have my wife hungering,” he said teasingly.

She did not deign to look at him after his suggestive comment.

Soon, they were tethering their horses near the garden.

Stevie pouted. “I want to see the sea!”

James reached down and ruffled the boy's hair. “We will soon enough, son. A man has to learn that to promote harmony in his household, he must allow the women to have their way.”

A smile on her face, Carlotta directed a look of mock outrage at her husband. “You make it sound as if I'm a veritable shrew!”

Smiling devilishly, James came to offer her his arm.

They began to stroll among the parterre garden's many criss-cross paths. “I assume this garden was here when you inherited,” she said.

He chuckled. “It was here, but it had become overgrown with weeds. It seems my uncle never replaced the elder gardener when he died, leaving one man in charge of all the gardening on the estate.”

“With all the improvements you've made at Yarmouth and at the mines, it's a wonder you have any money at all left.”

His brows lowered. “How have you come into possession of such information?”

“Most of it comes from Mrs. MacGinnis, who claims you hung the moon.”

“I daresay she's delusional.” He patted his wife's hand. “Never fear, my love, my estates—our estates now—can afford the expenditures I've made.”

She stopped to pick a red tulip. “The older I become, the less my needs are. Jewels and ball gowns have ceased to hold allure for me. Give me a garden, poetry, a child . . . an agreeable husband and the peace obtainable only in the country and I shall be happy.”

“Then the woman I knew in The Peninsula has ceased to exist,” he said somberly.

She gazed at him and spoke in a far-away voice. “So she has.”

“Somehow, my love, I cannot picture you with shovel and hoe in a garden.”

A little laugh broke from her. “'Tis because I have not been in possession of either since my eighteenth year, but I assure you before that if I did not have my head in a poetry book, I had shovel in hand and was puttering in my grandmama's garden—which was not nearly so beautiful as yours.”

“Ours. “

“Ours,” she mimicked, a smile reaching to her violet eyes.

“Then you plan to garden here at Yarmouth?”