The Dangerous Viscount (29 page)

Before he could think of a suitable riposte she swept out of the room and closed the door behind her with a ladylike hint of unnecessary force. Irrational! Everyone, everyone male that is, knew that men were rational and females by their nature, the opposite. Diana seemed to have no grasp of this basic fact, which only proved the thesis.

The door opened again. Hah! She was back and he could set her straight.

“Let me tell you … Oh. It’s you, Hedley. You could have let me know Lady Iverley had arrived.” Which was unfair. Clearly George had tried to inform him and he’d refused to listen. Damnation, he was beginning to behave like a woman himself.

The old man had known him far too long to heed his show of temper. “Her Ladyship has made certain requests, my lord. Am I to take my orders from her?”

“Of course,” Sebastian said, then caution intervened. “Within reason. What requests?”

“A gross of wax candles. She does not like the smell of tallow.”

Sebastian wasn’t fond of it himself. His uncle,
who appeared to have had no sense of smell, had a penchant for petty economies and the use of cheap candles was one of them.

“Very well,” he said. “What else?”

“She has requested firewood, my lord. But we have none on the estate.”

“Of course we don’t. We live on top of a coalfield.”

“Shall I order some?”

“Certainly not.”

While he could appreciate and share Diana’s liking for comfort, burning firewood was a ridiculous luxury. She’d followed him to Northumberland against his orders and in this matter, at least, he determined to remain firm. She needed to learn that when you lived near Newcastle, you got your heat from coal.

This assertion of will somewhat improved his mood. He’d tried to spare her the rigors of northern life and he’d ignored him. She would have to bear the consequences. And after all they were wed and needed to find a way to coexist. He remembered his earlier vision of their marriage, before her great betrayal: that he would continue to live his life without much alteration. Unfortunately the death of his uncle meant that life would have to take place, much of the time, at Saxton rather than London, but otherwise the principle was the same.

Of course the main advantage of his original plan was sharing her bed. Having Diana in the same house, even with a couple of furlongs of corridor between them, would put a severe strain on his self-control.

* * *

The outrage in Sebastian’s voice when she’d accused him of irrationality had been delightful. Nothing else about the encounter was remotely satisfactory and she wondered if she should have been more conciliatory. But much as she might wish to attain satisfactory relations with her husband, she refused to abase herself to do it. He was going to have to meet her halfway. At least halfway.

The really maddening result of her dramatic exit from the library was she’d left the only room in the house that was, thanks to the ceramic stove, both warm and free of the nauseating smell of coal.

Any hope that the firewood had been delivered was quashed when she found her room freezing. The tallow candles, while disagreeable, didn’t make her sick. Only the special quality of Northumbrian coal affected her so.

“I’m going to get into bed,” she told Chantal. “It’s the only way to keep warm.”

“This is a very strange house,” her maid told her while unfastening her gown and dressing her in a flannel nightdress over several layers of shift and petticoat. “I cannot understand the language here. Is it English?”

“I barely understand it myself. Did you manage to find the housekeeper?”

“That is the most strange thing.
Il n’y a pas de femmes.”

“No women? You mean no housekeeper?”

“No women at all. No female servants.”

This was unusual, and extravagant. Menservants
were not only paid more than maids, their hiring was also subject to a tax.

Saxton Iverley seemed understaffed for such a huge house and she’d assumed it was the result of a dearth of funds, as evidenced by economies like tallow candles.

“Who does the cleaning? The laundry?”

“Men. All of them. I looked. You and I, milady, are the only women in this whole place.”

S
ebastian didn’t lay eyes on Diana again for over twenty-four hours. After another heartbreaking day at the colliery, he drove into town to dine at an inn and interview a physician recommended by the secretary of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Dr. Harrison, who seemed an enlightened man and disavowed the use of leeches on expectant mothers, agreed to call upon Lady Iverley the next day.

Having assured himself that her health would be overseen by a competent professional, he was resigned to her presence at Saxton Iverley. Then Hedley raised the vexed topic of firewood. The old butler, obviously taken with the new Lady Iverley whom he termed a bonny lass, seemed tolerant of her desire to coddle herself.

“‘Twould be better for the bairn,” he explained.

Sebastian didn’t ask how the old fellow had discovered his wife’s condition. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I shall speak to her about it myself.”

Without pausing to change his mud-splattered boots, he set out for the east wing. On the way he met Diana’s French maid who gave him a dirty look
along with the barest excuse for a curtsey. A muttered comment that contained the French words for
firewood, husband,
and
miserly
hardly improved his temper as he burst into the long-unused chamber of the lady of the house, next door to his uncle’s deserted rooms.

He had, he realized, never set foot in it before. If he expected a room designed for female occupation to possess a measure of softness and elegance in its furnishings, he was quickly disillusioned. The old-fashioned bed appeared mean in the huge, almost empty chamber. Diana, huddled against the pillows under a mound of blankets with her fur-lined cloak on top, looked tiny and miserable.

“God preserve me from stubborn women!” he roared. “It must be close to freezing in this room.”

He stamped over to the cold fireplace and noted that the coals in the grate had been deliberately dowsed.

“Listen, Diana, and listen well,” he said, crossing the room to stand next to the bed and glare down at her. She sank further into the nest of bedclothes. “We are in Tyneside here. The principal product of the countryside is coal and coal is what we use for heating. Men have died bringing coal up from the depths of the earth so that you and I and thousands like us can be warm. I don’t care what you became accustomed to with your nabob husband, or how much he spoiled you. I am going to light the coals in that fireplace and you will like it. You shall not endanger your health or that of our child by your capricious fancies.”

That, he saw with satisfaction, had silenced her.
She stared back at him, her blue eyes huge and a little frightened. Then they glistened.

Hell! He hadn’t intended to make her cry, merely to learn that in this house his word was law.

“Unwell,” she croaked.

“You are unwell?” he said in a softer voice. “Hardly surprising given the temperature in this room. You are very foolish, you know.”

“No, but I will be if you light that fire.” Her voice strengthened as she pulled herself upright. “The coal made me sick. Chantal had to extinguish the fire because I couldn’t stop vomiting. I don’t know why,” she continued miserably, “but it smells like sulfur.”

Damnation! He knew about nausea from her own account, not to mention Dr. Denman’s. And Saxton coal, which was indeed high in sulfur, did emit strong fumes. Once again he’d proven himself an incompetent when it came to his wife’s care. Since Saxton Iverley was located on a windswept treeless bluff, there was almost no timber on the estate. He looked about the room in desperation, as though hoping for the miraculous materialization of a basket of logs.

“Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll be back directly.”

Whatever Diana expected, it wasn’t the reappearance of Sebastian with a large axe slung over his shoulder.

“What do you think of that?” he asked, pointing at the wardrobe, or whatever it was. Chantal called it the
objet incroyable.

“Hideous,” she said from the bed, “though not without its uses. It holds a lot of clothes.”

Opening a drawer, he removed a handful of lacy
undergarments, which he looked at with a glimmer of interest before tossing them onto the floor.

“I’ll find you something else,” he said as he removed his neck cloth, coat, and waistcoat and hung them over the back of a chair. He carried the empty drawer over to the fireplace. Two sweeps of his axe and it was kindling.

Two more drawers received similar treatment and in no time he had the dry wood crackling in the fireplace. But he didn’t stop there. Without any appearance of haste, or even much effort, he proceeded to reduce a large piece of furniture to firewood.

As the room grew warmer, Diana emerged from her layers of blankets and sat cross-legged on the end of the bed, the better to admire the view. Sebastian might appear slender, but the casual way he swung the heavy axe gave ample proof of the muscles she knew dwelt under his shirt, especially when the sweat brought on by his labor caused the shirt to stick to his shoulders and back. Diana’s eyes widened; she sucked air into her dry mouth.

Once he’d finished with the easily removable parts, he started hacking at the solid frame. He worked at a steady pace, occasionally grunting when he raised the axe above his head to tackle the upper sections. With exquisite precision he broke it down to a neat pile of boards.

Whatever Sebastian undertook, it occurred to her, he did well. Especially after a little practice.

Which was a useful attribute in a husband.

He finished the job and built up the fire to a merry blaze.

“There,” he said. “That should keep you warm
tonight. Hedley will find some firewood tomorrow.” He looked at her. “How do you feel?”

She felt quite extraordinarily well. She was also dressed less becomingly than she would have thought possible. Her pose on the bed should have been a suggestive, even an enticing one. Clothed as she was in a high-necked, long-sleeved flannel nightgown topped with a heavy shawl, and a pair of woolen stockings, it was hardly surprising that Sebastian regarded her with a notable lack of ardor.

“Quite excellent,” she said, shedding the shawl and wondering if she could loosen the nightgown without being too obvious about it.

Much to her regret, Sebastian pulled on his waistcoat. “You should get back into bed again,” he said. “You need to rest.”

“I’ve been resting all day. Stay and talk to me.”

Before she had a chance to invite him to join her in the four-poster, he sat in a chair a few feet away. His slouched position with booted legs a foot apart revealed the cords of his thigh muscles in tight buckskin breeches. The column of his neck and a hint of chest emerged from his unbuttoned shirt and waistcoat. His exertions had made stray locks of hair, usually swept neatly back, stick to his frowning brow. He looked unapproachable, even a little dangerous.

“What did you mean when you said men had died?” she asked.

His expression changed to one of grief. “An accident at the Saxton colliery last week killed three miners.”

“I’m sorry.” Her condolence seemed inadequate, her own concern with a little queasiness trivial in
comparison. “Does that happen often?”

“More often than it should. Coalmining is a perilous undertaking.”

“What happened?”

“A flood. Water broke through from an abandoned seam at a higher level and poured down though the main shaft. We were fortunate it was the end of the day and nearly everyone out. Just three miners were caught, poor devils. We brought up the bodies today.”

“Did you go down the mine yourself?”

“Not far beneath the surface. But I have been working with mining engineers to detect other potential hazards before they lead to disaster.”

“What can you do?”

“These abandoned shafts are a well-known danger. They can be blocked or drained. My great-uncle was always interested in innovations and he made sure miners had the latest safety lamps. But in the last year or two he was old and didn’t pay enough attention. I should have spent the last few months making up for his neglect.”

He had no need to state what he had been doing instead. The last remnant of Diana’s resentment slipped away. She understood that Sebastian blamed himself for these unintended and tragic consequences of his revenge, a punishment worse than any she could inflict. Instead she yearned to console him.

“You can’t be certain that you would have prevented this particular accident,” she said, “but if you need funds to invest in improvements to the mine, please feel free to draw on my capital.”

He stared at her. “Why would I need your money?”

“There’s no cause for shame. The rumor among the
ton
was that you are rich, but as soon as I saw the state of your London house I suspected. The lack of furnishing and modernization here confirms it. Obviously your estate is not prosperous. Did the building of this vast place ruin your family?”

Genuine amusement restored his disposition. “You couldn’t be more wrong. The Saxton coalfield is hugely productive. Don’t you know? You’ve wed one of the richest men in England.”

“Oh?” she said. “In that case, why is this house so dismal?” She poked the nearest bed curtain, raising a cloud of dust. “Look at this. Shreds! I swear this stuff was manufactured in the reign of Elizabeth. Most of the furniture, such as even exists, is older than the house itself and even more uncomfortable. And the state rooms are barely furnished at all.”

“You are correct in one sense. The first viscount overextended himself when he built Saxton Iverley. I gather he was persuaded by an architect of overweening ambition to attempt to surpass Blenheim and Castle Howard.”

“And succeeded. The size of the place is astonishing. I won’t even need to go outdoors for exercise.”

“The interior was unfinished and the furnishings left to the next generation, once the supply of cash regenerated.”