The Lady Mercy Danforthe Flirts With Scandal (33 page)

Marry him? It simply was not possible. Their worlds were too different. But the hankering for his company, his smile, his kisses, still remained. She did not know if she would ever be cured of it. Or if she could ever get Rafe Hartley back into the box where he belonged.

“Well, goodness gracious, Lady Mercy, we were not expecting a visitor so early.” Rafe’s aunt Sophie came to the door, still in her nightgown and surrounded by children, her hair in a long, honey-blonde braid over one shoulder.

Mercy tried to ignore the fact that she was in a ball gown, hoping that this would discourage any questions about it. “I decided to come and see what I might do to be of assistance here, Mrs. Kane. I’ve asked Mrs. Hartley to send some of my things by cart today. I do not mean to intrude. Please tell me if you think I will be in the way, but there is surely something I can do?”

She must have sounded quite pitiful—and looked it, shivering in a thin gown and white evening gloves.

Of course, Rafe’s aunt did not turn her away. Mercy knew the kind lady would take her in, when she appeared like a stray waif on the Kanes’ doorstep.

Fortunately, she could blame her trembles that morning on the cold air and her lack of long sleeves or a coat. No one, she was quite sure, would guess her in danger of anything more than a chill. But inside her, some wayward little imps—the ones she’d hoped to quell by her actions last night—were very much alive and dancing.

***

Later that day, when Rafe visited his aunt and uncle, he learned of their new houseguest.

“Is it not very kind of Lady Mercy to offer her assistance?” his aunt exclaimed.

“Assistance?” It was difficult to imagine exactly what assistance the ice princess could give in that farmhouse, so far removed from her usual environment. He wanted to be angry with her still for refusing to marry him, but when he saw her in his aunt’s house, it was difficult to keep his temper raging. She had not told him her plans, of course, and he’d expected her to be back in Morecroft by now, making arrangements for her return to London. Instead, she stayed. Moved nearer, in fact. With one hand she pushed him away; with the other she tugged him close.

“Lady Mercy has offered to stay here and help look after the children while your aunt rests,” his uncle explained.

A more vibrantly colored fish had never been seen so out of water. “Stay here? Where? There aren’t enough bedchambers, surely.”

“I share with the children,” Mercy replied. “If a person is well organized, they need little space.”

This, from a woman who grew up in a thirty-five-bedroom country manor and lived most of her year in a London town house that required, so he’d heard, a staff of twenty-eight to maintain it.

“I am very grateful for the extra help,” said his aunt, shooting him a warning glance to hold his tongue.

Rafe did not know how he felt about this development. As long as she stayed at his aunt’s house, he would see her every day. There was good and bad in that; pleasure and temptation. After all, he’d warned her there would be no more kisses until she accepted his marriage proposal. How was he supposed to keep to that vow if she walked by his farm every day?

He couldn’t read her countenance. She wasn’t the sort to stand there gazing at him with dewy eyes.

His uncle considered Mercy Danforthe to be all lace and petticoats. Like Rafe, he had a tendency to suspect the worst of those from the upper classes. He was probably thinking now that she would be more trouble than help, but his wife, of course, was too polite to refuse the offer when it came from Mercy directly.

Well, it would be interesting to see how she managed in that crowded farmhouse with very little in the way of luxury.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be staying long,” he said to her.

“Just as long as I am needed.” She flashed him a smile, and the appearance of those two dangerous dimples, while it might attempt to show innocence, warned Rafe of the very opposite. “I discussed it with Mrs. Hartley recently, and she thought it would be a very good idea for me to come here and lend a hand. I like to go where I am most needed, of course.” Chin proudly raised, she added, “As Mrs. Hartley said, no one else is so capable of putting things in order.”

Rafe groaned softly. His stepmama, the mischief-maker. He should have seen her hand in this. “You didn’t think to inform me of this last night.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, dimples evident again, “I shan’t cause you any trouble.”

She already had, of course.

How calmly she’d stood in his house in the early hours of that day and refused to marry him. Even after the night they’d shared. He stared at her until he felt his uncle watching him, and then he looked away.

Mercy soon settled in at his aunt’s house, and before too long had his cousins marching around the village in formation behind her like signets with a mother swan. That wouldn’t last, he thought grumpily. Those wild imps would soon grow bored with the game and start playing up.

But the only complaint came from his uncle, who called in at the farm a few days after her arrival and spent half an hour relating a sad tale of how she burnt his supper every night and overboiled his egg every morning.

“Sophie tries to teach her how to cook, but the girl thinks she knows it all.” He shuddered. “She likes to
experiment
with ingredients.”

Rafe laughed. “Sounds like The Danforthe Brat.”

“’Tis a good thing she won’t have to cook when she marries. I’d pity that viscount if she did.”

That curbed Rafe’s laughter.

His uncle added, “I can hardly take a step in my own house without that young lady following behind, tripping me up with a wet mop. I don’t know when she plans to leave, but I hope ’tis soon.”

Since Rafe could not share his uncle’s sentiment, he stayed quiet. His heart wanted to believe she’d moved in with his aunt and uncle to be closer to him, but his head told him it was simply Mercy Danforthe taking control again, meddling.

Mrs. Pyke and her children had moved into Sir William’s fortress on the hill, where they came under both Mrs. Kenton’s eager care and Mercy’s diligent attention. As Rafe commented to his friend’s wife, she was in the lucky position of having two generous guardians now. However, Mrs. Pyke, who had previously complained that she did not get enough of anything, would soon be heard complaining adversely of too much. Rafe was relieved and amused that someone else took the burden upon themselves.

One day he caught Mercy leaving Hodson’s shop with his little cousins in tow—each of them enjoying a mouthful of toffee, keeping them splendidly quiet and busy—and he stopped to congratulate her on this latest mission.

“Mrs. Pyke is fortunate to have your benevolent notice. Thank you for taking her under your wing.”

“She is a sadly ungracious woman,” Mercy replied with a hefty sigh that drew his yearning gaze to her high bosom and then her soft lips. “The moment I put a thought in her head, it falls out again. As much as she claims to find her life so hard, I rather think she enjoys it just the way it is and has no desire to change a thing about it. She cannot read, yet has no desire to learn.”

He laughed. “Charity, given with no true understanding of the situation, is worth little. It can be used up and forgotten in the blink of an eye.” For a moment, he considered putting his hands around her arms, there in the main street of Sydney Dovedale, and demanding that she marry him.

“If only her husband might be found.”

“Pyke has gone into hiding from his creditors and, so I’ve begun to suspect, from Mrs. Pyke.”

But Mercy looked very determined suddenly. “I shall write to Mr. Hobbs. He’s very good at finding people and things.” Her ringlets were less bouncy today, more wayward than usual, the heavy weight of her extraordinary hair pinned up in a more simple arrangement. He supposed it was difficult to manage without a lady’s maid. Even her dress was muted, a simple printed cotton, more in keeping with her current surroundings. It was clearly Mercy’s rare attempt to blend in. She probably did not wish to catch Mrs. Flick’s eye again in her bright orange frock. Abruptly awake to the fact that he was staring at her dangerously curved shape under that gown, thinking of the corset he held for ransom under his bolster, he quickly cleared his throat and fumbled for a harmless, innocent subject in front of the children.

“How is my aunt today?”

“Improving vastly. Doctor Sharpe is very pleased.”

“Good.”

“I suppose you thought I wouldn’t manage. That I’d be in the way.”

He paused, looking at her thoughtfully. “I doubt there’s much, my lady, that you could not do once you put your mind to it.”

“Exactly.” She was smug, pleased with herself.

“Except, of course, one thing.”

Her smile faltered.

“The one thing that stumps your Danforthe courage.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“Find me a bride that stays.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Hartley. I must get home and start the supper.”

After a brief hesitation, he stood aside and let her pass with the children.

Just then the door of the shop opened and Jammy Jim appeared in his apron. “Master Hartley, don’t hover on the step. Come in and browse. We’ve some new gloves just in from Norwich, and you’ll need some for the next dance at the assembly rooms. Lady Mercy laid some aside for you to try.”

“Did she indeed?” he grumbled.

Jammy Jim chuckled. “Her enthusiasm is good for business. As is the reopening of the assembly rooms. Ladies don’t buy the sort of folderols my wife gets in stock unless they have a place to wear them and be admired.”

“Lady Mercy must be your best customer.” He watched her hurrying away down the street.

“Lass can’t seem to pass by without coming in.”

She always was a spendthrift, but then she had money to waste. Her brother was one of the richest men in the country, and Mercy was rumored to have a fortune of six and a half thousand pounds. Although sometimes he heard it was ten. At other times it was only five thousand. That money, however much she had, was the most unfortunate thing about her, since it set her high above him.

“She knows what she wants when she sees it,” Jammy Jim remarked, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the door frame. “And no price is too high.”

If only that were true, thought Rafe. There was one price she would not pay. He wished she was penniless, a humble crofter’s daughter or a shoeless wretch selling matches. Somehow he sensed she’d still be burdened with that damned pride.

“Handsome woman, that, eh?” observed Jammy Jim with a chuckle.

Rafe scratched his jaw. “I suppose some might find her so.”

“I like a wench with a bit o’ spirit and sauce.”

“In moderate amounts, it might be tolerable.”

“And a nice firm pair o’—”

“Why are you standing idle?” Jammy Jim’s young wife made them both jump as she came to the open door and looked out.

“Idle? I’m talking to Mr. Rafe Hartley, woman.” The shopkeeper straightened up.

“You look the very definition of idle to me. You promised to help me change the window display, lazy lump o’ bacon lard. Make haste. I want Lady Mercy to see the new summer muslins when she next passes, and those parasols that just came in.”

“All in good time, nag-a-minute. She doesn’t need them right now. It could rain for the next dozen days. There’s no need to get yourself in a tizzy, woman.” He rolled his eyes for Rafe’s benefit.
“Lady Mercy this, Lady Mercy that.”

“A young lady of exquisite taste,” his wife exclaimed. “Not that you’d know.”

“I’ve got taste, m’dear.” He winked at Rafe. “Mr. Hartley and I were just discussing that very thing.”

“I’m sure you were. I see it on your guilty face.” She peered over her husband’s shoulder. “How is your dear aunt Sophia, Mr. Hartley?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“Lady Mercy’s presence must be a great help to her.”

“So she tells me.”

There was a lengthy pause while Jammy Jim continued grinning, his wife’s eyes grew wider, and Rafe tapped his foot upon the step.

Finally the woman nudged her husband again. “Well, go and get those items in the window, then. What are you waiting for, a sign from the good Lord?” When Jammy Jim sauntered off with a merry whistle, she quickly tugged on Rafe’s sleeve to bring him inside. “You’ve known Lady Mercy from childhood, so I’m told.”

“Yes.”

“Such a fine young lady. We’re very lucky to have her patronage here. She does a lot of good for this village.”

“Hmmm.”

“Now, what you need,” the woman added, “is a new waistcoat. We have just the very bolt of embroidered damask—”

“Madam, I thank you, but embroidered silk is of no earthly use to me on a farm. It would be an extravagance I can ill afford.”

“Oh.” She looked crestfallen. “That is a great pity. Mr. Hodson just showed some to Lady Mercy, and she admired it so.”

“Perhaps she will buy some for her fiancé,” he muttered.

“We did suggest it, Mr. Hartley, but she said no. He would not suit it, she said. I rather got the impression she was thinking of another man. Someone else of her acquaintance. Someone with blue eyes to be matched by the blue thread woven through the silk.”

Rafe’s heart was beating too hard. She would not make him into another of her projects. Oh, no.

“There’s been no word from Miss Molly Robbins?” she inquired casually.

“None.”

“Such a sorry business, to be sure. What can that young girl be thinking of, to run off and leave you in the lurch? Miss Robbins always seemed so sensible.”

“Yes. But I think I understand now.”

The woman walked around her counter. “You do?”

“Her future was not with me. I could not have made her happy.” It was hard to admit he’d been wrong and a woman had been right. But there, it was done. He was still standing, still breathing.

“Well…I suppose a woman knows when a man’s heart belongs elsewhere.” She opened a large crate on the counter and took out some bundles of packing straw. “We can’t always love where it is easiest or painless. I mean to say, look at Mr. Hodson. Gets my blood up a dozen times a day, that wretched old windbag, but I wouldn’t be without him. Not for all the sand in Egypt. When love hits a person smack in the face like a cricket ball, there’s not much they can do about it, is there? Love doesn’t always come where it’s expected.”