The Spinster and the Earl (11 page)

“If my luck holds,” he said aloud to the empty room as he flipped his lucky gold coin in the air, “I may win myself a bride, as well.”

Lord Patrick moved uneasily from foot to foot as he stood among the bulbs his daughter dug around. His dog, a high-strung black and white border collie, sat at his feet anxiously wondering why his master had stopped in their usual walk about the manor.

“Have a spark of sense, Bea’. The earl’s not one gentleman we wish t’insult,” he pleaded. “We can’t afford to offend him. Your reputation has come down as it is.”

She gave her father a scathing green-eyed stare. “Pray tell, what exactly do you mean by that?”

“Bedad lass, the whole village has heard of your kissing him. They’ll be wondering why we’re not visiting there. Whether once again you’ve been jilted, or something or other.” He mopped his head in frustration. His daughter’s peccadilloes were working on seeing him buried.

“Faith, I can’t even pop m’head in The Boor’s Teeth for a tranquil pint without some jackanapes making some sort of witty jibe about m’daughter’s game-of-the-hen ways . . . demme, if they all don’t think you’ll burn in hell for not marrying.”

“You can attend, Father,” she said, lifting her chin in challenge. “But as for myself, I refuse to do His Grace’s bidding.”

“But, darlin’, the gentleman asked me if you’d be willing to be the hostess of his fine fête. And I told him that you’d make a grand one.”

“Then you shouldn’t have spoken for me. ’Twas unfair. I loathe him.”

“Aye, anyone can see that.” He sighed. “But he—’’

“
Tell his lordship that I’m not coming,” she said with a final toss of her head.

Lord Patrick frowned down at her, his bushy, white eyebrows meeting in the middle of his forehead. “He’s out yonder, awaiting your answer.” He nodded in the direction of the garden, his voice rough with impatience. “You can hie yourself over there and tell him yourself that you’re not coming. I’ll not play messenger for ye, lass.”

“He’s outside waiting?” she whispered, almost dropping her trowel.

It had been almost three sets of Sundays since she last saw him. He’d packed his belongings the day after the card game and departed without so much as a by your leave. Now, as if he’d just paid a call but yesterday, he’d returned as coolly as water from a mountain spring to visit her.

“Well, are you going to see him?” asked her father, softening at the thought that his high-strung daughter had finally met her match.

“Aye,” she said, deciding to settle the matter with the English lord once and for all. She’d tell that arrogant son of Cromwell how to go about hanging himself! She snatched off her gardening gloves and tossed them in her basket.

Her father watched with parental affection as she marched off with a quick swish of her skirts to find the earl. Softly chuckling to himself, he remembered how for the past fortnight his usually indifferent lass had fair jumped out of her chair whenever a visitor came to call.

“Just like a cat, all spit and fire, she was. Hissing at everything and nothing, an’ a saying she didn’t care for the man.”

“Ha!” He laughed. “And I’m a blind old fool. Musha, ’tis a pleasure to see her come alive again.”

He nodded his graying head and pulled out his long dhudeen pipe. A rewarding cloud of fragrant smoke soon circled his head. Mayhap for the first time in five years he could finish carving that cradle he’d begun. He smiled dreamily, thinking of the grand babies he hoped to bounce on his knee one day. With a soft whistle to his dog, he went in search of his carving tools.

The earl stood by a white rose bush admiring its perfectly unfolded leaves. He turned at the sound of her approach and leaned casually on his walking stick. He was wearing a morning coat of superfine gray that stretched at his broad shoulders, his immaculately starched neck-cloth done in the complicated occidental, contrasted with the dark tan of his sun-kissed skin.

He raised his tall, beaver hat as she approached, looking directly into her wide green eyes. His blue ones sparkled down at her as if they’d just heard a splendid joke. “Ah, Lady O’Brien.” He bowed.

“Your Grace,” she replied stiffly, lowering her lashes as she made a proper curtsy of welcome. “My father tells me that you wished to speak with me, sir.”

“That I do,” he answered, his eyes taking in the green morning poplin she wore. The simple puffed sleeves encased her narrow shoulders and the tight square bodice tapered sharply into a v-line around her waist, billowing over the heavy folds of her stiff, white petticoats and clean apron. Stiff, just like her pale, tight face. Except her cold airs could not hide the contrary lushness of her youth, her rose-colored lips, and the bright color of her emerald eyes. Neither could she control the wanton long black tendrils that had escaped once again from her tight coiffeur, which now pleasingly framed her face.

He itched to put his hands around her tiny waist. But her cool, green eyes forewarned him that such a gesture would not be welcome.

“I’ve been considering our wager,” he said nonchalantly tugging at one of the pearl buttons of his leather riding gloves.

She looked up at him, his words at last having caught her attention.

“I thought perhaps it best for me to invite you to my home to act as my hostess,” he continued, clarifying the matter. “During the upcoming festivities to celebrate my new peerage, I shall have need of one. I’d hoped you’d accept to play the part.”

“Aye, to be sure. That’s what you thought would be best,” she murmured parroting him, a tinge of anger framing her words.

What she really yearned to know was where had he been all this time? Why had he not paid a call? She would rather have her favorite ewe roasted than confess that she’d thought of him.

He stood so close to her, much too close—she could feel the barely contained energy beneath the perfectly-attired gentleman.

She strolled over to her tulips to distract herself from him. His closeness clouded her thoughts. She needed to give herself time to think. He may have won the card game, but he hadn’t won her. And to top it off he’d gone away and completely ignored her!

Having some guile of her own at her disposal, she said, “But I wonder, Your Grace, what would happen to your fine plans, if for example, I were to tell Father of our little agreement? Don’t you think his honor would be a wee bit offended? Perhaps he’d even consider dismissing you as a suitor for my hand?”

A spark of admiration lit his eyes. Smiling down at her, as though they were talking pleasantly of the unseasonably fine weather Ireland was enjoying that spring, he said, “Faith, I thought Lord O’Brien had told you. But then, perhaps not. What a pity, I thought by now he’d confided in you.”

“Told me what?” she asked suspiciously. Her eyebrows raised questioningly, a niggling of doubt making her insist. She sensed he was about to tell her something that he would then hold over her head.

“Why, my dear lady, did he not tell you about the little tête-à-tête he had with me?” he said once more, as if he could not believe she did not already know.

“Let me see . . . oh, yes, I do believe, ma’am, he promised to forfeit to me ten of your best sheep if you decided to bow out of your obligation of fulfilling the role I chose for you,” he finished, with a low warning tone of a moral lesson.

“Apparently, my lady, your father is a laudably honest gentleman and believes that one should pay off one’s gambling debts. I, of course, heartily agreed with him,” he said explaining. “It would set a bad precedent if one did not fulfill one’s debt. Don’t you think, my lady?”

Beatrice shook her head in stark disbelief. Her own dear father had betrayed her. It was almost too much to bear.

Ten sheep!
Mavrone
, she’d been planning to use all of the flock’s wool for the new looms she’d ordered. She couldn’t afford the loss of any of the quality fleece. She gulped down her rising panic and squelched her pride, turning pleading, green eyes the color of new spring grass on him.

“Would you be willing to wait till autumn to collect on them?”

She bit down on her lower lip, mentally counting the lambs to be born in the following weeks. The season had only just begun. Oh, so many would be lost! And all because of her arrogant foolishness.

He shook his head, his eyes resting upon her tightly bound hair. “Nay, m’dear, one debt will not settle another. You do understand that, don’t you? That your sheep, though they’d be welcome additions to my own flocks, aren’t nearly as important as—”

“M’self,” she murmured, a lump in her throat, making it impossible for her to utter more. She nodded miserably. Musha, musha, why had she let herself make the expensive gamble? The payment was far too dear. Her well thought-out plans couldn’t afford such a setback.

He saw the look of dismay on her face and knew that once again he had won. The matter was settled. She had to capitulate to his demands or lose some of her precious angora sheep.

Nonchalantly, he re-buttoned his riding gloves and prepared to finish the matter with one last parting word of instruction.

“I’ll send a carriage for you on the morrow. I want you at the castle before my guests arrive. There’s a great many preparations to be made and I’ll be depending on your valuable help in this. I suggest, therefore, you bring a small retinue of some of your own servants to lend a hand.”

She bowed to his authority, holding her sharp tongue in check. She knew that if she did protest, it would make matters worse. She’d lose the sheep. And as for her father, he had chosen the man’s side in the matter. She knew there would be no leniency coming from that quarter if she did not do as the earl bid.

“Good day then, Lady O’Brien. ’Tis been a pleasure to see you again.” He tenderly lifted her hand to his. His mouth brushed a butterfly kiss over her wrist. It caused her to shiver and she stared at him wide-eyed, blinking, forgetting for a moment what they had previously been discussing.

Silently, unable to stop the course of events, she watched him mount his gelding and disappear down the road. She could not resist, however, thinking of perhaps faking some highly contagious malady that would send the rogue running for cover. But immediately, she dismissed the idea as worthless. Knowing him, the fox would see through her guile and send for one of his so-called physicians to check on her false condition. The doctor would probably bleed her to death in the process.

No, she couldn’t risk it. Valiantly, she consoled herself with the thought that perhaps being hostess would not be so entrapping. That is, if they both managed to keep their hands to themselves.

*    *    *

Days later, Beatrice looked down at her hands. Small calluses had begun to make their unwanted appearances on her tender white palms. “The devil take all Englishmen,” she grumbled, giving a silver coffee pot a hearty rub.

Her shoulders and arms ached from the exertion and there was still a pile of silver yet to be done. She’d started working at first light dressed in her oldest frock, one that should’ve gone to the scullery maid ages ago. She wore a faded, gray turban wrapped protectively around her hair.

He, that English slave-driver, had set her about making the huge stone pile of Drennan Castle hospitable and somewhat habitable. The roué’s definition for the word “hostess” evidently equated with that of “unpaid drudge.” Since the moment of her arrival at the castle’s front steps three days earlier, she and the half-dozen servants she’d brought with her had been put to the awesome task of trying to remove the thick layers of dirt and cob-webbed grime that covered the ancient keep.

That repairs had been made before she’d arrived were evident, from the solid beams above her head, to the newly laid floors below. The sounds of continuing work echoed throughout as the noise of various hammering and sawing bounced off the stone walls and filtered down to the kitchen where she and three of her maids were hard put to work cleaning, polishing, and endlessly rubbing away the tarnish, layer by layer.

Beatrice muttered between her teeth, “The pleasure of m’company. Ha!”

She’d seen little of his lordly self since her arrival. With the exception of telling her what needed to be done next, the earl barely spoke a civil word to her, as if she were one of his foot-soldiered minions waiting to take obedient commands from their aloof superior officer.

She almost felt like saluting him every time he did show his face. For sure, as the sun rose every new day, he’d find something else that urgently needed to be done. And would she hop to it and see that it was taken care of like a good lass?

She huffed an errant tendril of hair out of her way.

The leading rascal of them all was her own father, Lord Patrick. That sly, old fox had immediately disappeared for parts unknown, after depositing her and the servants he’d been willing to loan on the front portal of the castle. They were unceremoniously left like some parcels he was well eager to be rid of. And to think she’d been concerned for his well-being the day she’d returned the blasted coin to that—that—overbearing, English fiend!

“Aye, I hope they both burn in Hades,” she muttered, remembering the fairies, wishing once more she’d never clapped eyes upon the lord and master of this large stone barn. Mucking it out made-up for a lifetime of unsaid penance for the way she’d mistreated the male sex.

Perhaps, she had to admit, she had been a wee bit of a forked-tailed creature herself to those she successfully dissuaded from courting her. But faith, for all her various machinations, she didn’t merit this lowly treatment! She sighed, and went back to her rubbing, picturing the earl and her father’s smug faces in the reflection of the silver bowl. She simply wiped their existence away.

*    *    *

At luncheon the earl made his appearance. He stood, a tall figure at the kitchen door, his dark-blue linen shirt hanging loosely open at the throat, a few manly hairs peeking through. He surveyed the domestic scene of her and the servants polishing his tarnished silver.

She glanced up at him, her sooty lashes fluttering against her pale skin. It was evident he’d been hard at work from the glistening sheen on his face and the wet dampness on his shirt. His muscled arms, like strong broad beams, were revealed as the long sleeves were rolled up.