Before The Scandal (9 page)

“You have all the makings of a milliner, Alyse,” Richard observed from behind his newspaper. “Or a dressmaker, perhaps.”

Alyse would have stuck her tongue out at him, but her aunt would have seen the gesture. The woman could detect both sin and ungratefulness from five hundred yards. “Thank you, Cousin,” she said instead, pulling out more stitches.

The butler walked into the morning room. “My lord, you have a note from Quence Park,” he intoned, holding out the silver salver.

Richard set aside the newspaper to pluck the missive off the tray. “Damnation,” he muttered as he read through it. “Saunders, have Raleigh saddled.”

“Right away, my lord.”

“Is William well?” Alyse asked as the butler exited the room again.

“Yes. Their coach overturned last night. His damned brother no doubt ran it into a ditch.”

Alyse just managed to stifle her gasp. “Is that what the note said? Is Phin unhurt?”

He glanced at her as he exited the room. “Mind your own business, Alyse.”

Alyse sat back. What in the world was Phin doing? He’d become reckless and angry and self-absorbed as he’d gotten older, but he seemed to have changed since his return. If he’d done as Richard had said, though, perhaps he hadn’t changed at all.

“Alyse, make certain Cook knows that Mrs. Potter will not tolerate cucumbers.”

She shook herself. “Mrs. Potter?”

“For luncheon. Have you forgotten that Eloise will be dining with me today?”

Blast it.
“Of course not. I’ll remind Cook immediately.”

Oh, she’d completely forgotten. Phin was very distracting. Setting aside the embroidery, she hurried out of the room and down the succession of hallways to the kitchen. “Mrs. Jones,” she said into the general chaos, “I’m to remind you not to serve cucumbers.”

The cook nodded. “Yes, Miss Donnelly. I won’t be serving anything off a vine for luncheon.”

“Thank you,” Alyse said with a smile, then spied the berry tarts cooling on the table.

“Help yourself, miss,” Cook said, grinning. “I know how you like berries.”

“Oh, bless you, Mrs. Jones.”

Berry tarts. A small piece of heaven on Earth, as far as she was concerned. Taking small bites to make the treat last longer, she strolled back to the front of the house. Her aunt wouldn’t touch the tarts, so she would be expected to abstain, as well. Now at least she could do so without any unsightly drooling.

As she reached the morning room again, she heard her aunt speaking, and then a deep male voice answering. Saunders was in the dining room supervising the luncheon preparations, but as a shiver ran down her spine she knew it wasn’t the butler or a footman speaking. Straightening her shoulders, she strolled into the room.

Phin Bromley, smartly attired in a blue jacket and trousers with Hessian boots, was seated in the chair she’d vacated. As his hazel gaze caught her, he stood. “Miss Donnelly,” he said, inclining his head.

Goodness.
No one bowed to her anymore except as a jest. But she saw nothing in his lean face to make her think he was teasing. Belatedly she gave a half curtsy. “Colonel Bromley.”

“The colonel,” her aunt declared, “thinks to convince me that I can do without you for an hour so that you can show him about the valley.”

“I wish to become reacquainted with the area around Lewes,” Phin said.

“What about your sister? Isn’t she available to conduct a tour?”

Aunt Ernesta was going to send him away. Alyse stepped forward. “I imagine Beth wanted to be home to greet Richard.”

Her aunt opened and closed her mouth again. “You will return Alyse here within one hour, Colonel. I am expecting a guest, and I require her presence.”

Phineas offered Alyse his arm. “I will have Miss Donnelly home by noon, then. I give you my word.”

“Have one of the maids go with you, Alyse.”

Stunned at being allowed to leave her aunt’s side for the second day in a row, much less at her aunt suddenly demanding propriety from her, Alyse nodded and pulled Phin toward the door. Aunt Ernesta could change her mind as long as they were in earshot, so she grabbed a passing maid with her free hand. “Mary, come with me,” she said, and the three of them practically ran through the front door and down the front steps.

“I assume we’re to leave quickly,” Phin murmured, putting his hands on her hips and lifting her onto the seat of the curricle. The sensation left her pleasantly breathless. Every time he touched her, she seemed to lose all bearings.

He helped Mary onto the carriage’s small rear bench, then came around and climbed up beside Alyse. With a whistle he sent the team down the drive at a brisk trot. Once they’d rounded the hedgerow, Alyse finally let out the breath she’d been holding.

“Thank goodness,” she sighed, belatedly setting aside the bonnet she’d snatched on the way out the door.

“That was quick thinking, saying that Beth was occupied. Where
is
your cousin?”

“Your brother sent for him,” she returned, surprised that he didn’t know. “Something about you overturning the coach.”

A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I did no such thing,” he muttered. “The coach broke an axle and overturned on the way to the opera last night.”

Phin stated it so matter-of-factly that the import of what he’d said took a moment to sink in. She reached over to touch a scratch on his chin. “While you all were in it?” she gasped.

“Yes. More ill luck for Quence Park.”

“Everyone’s well, though? Beth? William?”

“A bit knocked about, but no additional damage done.”

No
additional
damage. Alyse badly wanted to ask him what precisely had happened that day ten years ago, but it had been enough to cause him to flee once, and she liked having him back in East Sussex. Best keep to safer topics, then. “Did you have a destination in mind for us this morning?”

“I thought perhaps the Quence tenant cottages.”

She smiled. “I haven’t been there in ages. Do you think Mrs. Hutchens still makes that wonderful sharp cheese?”

He glanced sideways at her again. “You haven’t heard? My valet informed me that half the cottages were burned to the ground last year.”

Alyse stared at him. “What?”

“At the moment it’s a rumor, since I haven’t seen them yet myself, but I’d like to amend that. You wouldn’t happen to know whether any other estates have been…troubled by misfortune, would you?”

“What are you implying?”

“That Quence’s misfortune is deliberate.”

She felt as though she’d been punched in the gut. And to think, a few moments ago she’d been anticipating another kiss. “You’re mad,” she stated. “Either that or you’re trying to make trouble for me by deliberately entangling me in some…conspiracy. Stop the carriage, Phin.”

“No.”

Blast it all. She should have known better. The first man to pay serious attention to her in better than four years, and he wanted something from her. “You promised that you wouldn’t make things worse for me.”

“I’m not—” He stopped, taking a deep breath. “There are four people in East Sussex whom I trust, Alyse. Two of them won’t talk to me because they’re afraid of what could happen. The third arrived here when I did. And then there’s you. This isn’t the sort of conversation I want to have with you, but honestly, there isn’t anyone else.”

“Is that why you kissed me?” she asked quietly, trying to keep her voice steady. “Because you need my help, and you’re, what, attempting to charm me?”

“I kissed you because I’ve been wanting to kiss you for the past ten years,” he growled. “I never claimed to have any sort of timing.”

That stopped her for a moment. If he was attempting to confuse her, he was doing a brilliant job of it. She gazed at his profile, at the line of the scar dissecting his right eyebrow. “How long will you stay at Quence?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet. Apparently there’s a fine line between stopping trouble and causing it.”

“You shouldn’t have left like that. Of course no one knows what to make of you now.”

He turned to look full at her, his hazel eyes glinting with a steel that he hadn’t possessed as a youth. “If you think you can say anything that I haven’t dwelled on endlessly, you are very much mistaken.”

“Why did you go?”

“Because I couldn’t stay.”

“My father said you made him promise that he would look after William and Beth. He said you gave him every penny you had.”

Phin shrugged. “It wasn’t much. I was seventeen. I’d probably stolen half of it from William to fund my escape from here.”

Alyse looked down at her hands for a moment. He’d made his escape ten years ago, and she was trying to make hers now. The only difference was that she had no intention of ever returning to her so-called family. “Why did you stop the work on the dam?” she asked again, refusing to be thrown sideways by the realization that they had more in common now than they’d had as children.

“Because they set it downstream, where it would have flooded half of Roesglen. I didn’t see a need for that.”

She didn’t, either. “Why would William do that in the first place?”

“I doubt William knew the particulars.”

Frowning, Alyse elbowed Phin in the ribs. “Are you going to stop being deliberately obtuse?”

“I am not—”

“You said you wanted help. Then stop dancing about and say that this person you suspect of…of malicious destruction, I suppose, is my cousin.”

“Because I don’t know that for certain, and because we have company.” He indicated Mary seated behind them. “Company employed by Lord Donnelly.”

Alyse looked over her shoulder at Mary, who sat swinging her legs out over the edge of the narrow seat. Mary hadn’t been at Donnelly House long; she’d been one of the new servants Richard had hired once he’d decided to take up residence in East Sussex. In the past, Alyse might have trusted the maid to keep any overheard conversation to herself. Over the past few years she’d seen precisely how easily gossip could spread and how damaging rumor could be.

“You ask sharp questions,” Phin said after a moment.

“I’m trying to figure out where I stand in your little plot. I haven’t seen you in ten years, Phin. Things aren’t the way they used to be.”

His gaze took her in from toes to the top of her head. “So I’ve noticed.”

Her cheeks heated. “Stop that.”

“Stop what? Looking at you?”

“You know very well what I mean. I may have been spoiled, Phin Bromley, but I was never stupid. And for your information, Richard only took up residence fulltime at Donnelly a year ago, so perhaps he wasn’t aware of the particulars of water flow.”

Phin drew the curricle to a stop and jumped to the ground. Bypassing Mary, he walked around to Alyse. Before he could put his hands around her waist again, she made her own way down. He hesitated, then offered his arm. “We’ll be back in a moment,” he said over his shoulder, otherwise ignoring the maid.

“What is it?” Alyse asked, putting her hands behind her back so she wouldn’t be tempted to touch him and fall prey to his charm.

“I thought you were less than happy with Lord Donnelly and your current situation.”

“That is to be kept between us,” she said, abruptly worried that he would mention it elsewhere. “And my ‘current situation,’ as you call it, is much better than my previous one. Or the one before that. Take me back to Donnelly, Phin. Whatever it is you’re after, I can’t provide it. And I won’t trade information for your affection.”

Hazel eyes met hers. “You have my affection, anyway.” He stepped closer.

“Phin, don’t—”

Phin drew a hand around her waist. Silently he placed a feather-light kiss on the right corner of her mouth, then another on the left. Then, as her heart hitched, he tilted her head up with his fingers and kissed her.

This was precisely what her mother had been worried about back before Phin had left, but she’d been only fifteen, and he couldn’t possibly have kissed as well as he did now. Shivering heat coiled down her spine. Oh, it would be so easy to simply float away on her fondest daydreams—except for that one nagging bit of logic that said he hadn’t come back to see her. He’d come back to see to his family, and she’d been…some sort of coincidence.

She pushed his chest. She might as well have pushed a stone wall, but he lifted his head. “What is it?” he murmured, running his fingers softly along her cheekbones.

Good heavens.
“You take too much advantage of our old friendship, sir,” she said with as much indignation as she could muster. “I was once engaged to be married. I know very well what men do to get what they want.”

For a long moment he gazed down at her. Then, a muscle in his jaw clenching, he nodded. “Of course.” He gestured her back toward the curricle. “My apologies.”