Improper Advances (3 page)

Even if the Isle of Man lived up to the enticing descriptions in the tourist guide, its beauties could not replace the pleasures of friendship.

She removed her bonnet and draped her velvet cloak across a chair, wondering what colors the London ladies, bereft of her example, would wear this season. At least she had the consolation of successfully introducing the St. Albans flounce to the female population of Chester.

The public, appreciative of London performers, had welcomed her arrival, and her charity concert on behalf of the impoverished mothers had been well attended. With soaring hopes she’d set out for nearby Liverpool, only to discover that Francis Aickin, the theater manager, had postponed her engagement.

Preoccupied with hiring players for his summer season, he could not aggressively promote the appearance of the celebrated Ana St. Albans. Her concert, he said apologetically, could not take place until June. After agreeing to his preferred dates, she faced the dilemma of what to do with herself in the meantime. Her timely discovery of the guidebook had persuaded her to escape the bustle and coal smoke of Liverpool for Ramsey, this quiet backwater on the Isle of Man.

The chambermaid appeared with a pitcher of washing water. A poor substitute for Suke, she gawped at Oriana’s nightgown, liberally trimmed with Belgian lace.

Oriana brushed out her hair and plaited it herself. Softly she hummed a haunting aria from the season’s most popular opera. Next winter, she promised herself, she’d sing it in public, at the King’s Theatre, to the delight of London’s most fashionable citizenry and the chagrin of the Italian cabal, who regularly hissed English-born singers.

“Is Sir Darius Corlett a native of this island?” she asked the Manx girl.

”
Ta
, that he is, ma’am, but for a long time he lived away. Two years ago he come back from Derbyshire to build his house. My brother, who works at the lead mine in the glen, says Mainshtyr Dare pays a good wage. His smelting works is right here in the town, and his ship is anchored in the bay. His man, Mr. Wingate, is very English. He comes into our taproom on his evenings off.” The girl slid a warming pan between the bedsheets, and withdrew.

Crawling between her heated covers, Oriana reviewed her brief but telling encounter with the Manx baronet. Bold. Unchivalrous. Intelligent. Tactless.

Although he wasn’t handsome by conventional standards, he was decidedly attractive—more so when he smiled. And he’d towered over her. She preferred dark men, the taller the better.

Sir Darius Corlett, whose demanding mouth and roaming hands had so greatly discomfitted her, was someone to avoid. She couldn’t even put him in his place by boasting of her descent from the Stuart kings of England. That fact, like her profession, must remain a secret.

She didn’t discount the dangerous possibility that some islander might have attended one of her London performances, or the more recent one in Chester. Dread of being recognized as Ana St. Albans had firmed her resolve to hide herself away in the secluded glen.

By adopting her married name she cloaked her identity. She’d rarely used it because it was connected to a bittersweet chapter in her life, a reminder of her shattering loss. Within months of their daring elopement, Henry Julian’s regiment had been shipped off to India. There he remained, buried in foreign soil.

In imitation of the heroine in that ridiculous Covent Garden play, she would live in the country under an obscure name—albeit a genuine, legal one. After twenty-three busy years, she looked forward to leading a quiet, ordinary life. No admirers would demand her time and attention, her energies would not be depleted by vocal lessons and rehearsals and concerts. Best of all, she had escaped false rumors and the constant threat of renewed scandal.

Exhausted from her lengthy sea crossing, she slept the night through without waking.

In the morning, a thick mist hung gloomily over the port of Ramsey. Undaunted, she bathed in the steaming water delivered by the maid, who pressed the creases from a modish carriage habit of ivy green. In preparation for her new life, she simplified the arrangement of her hair. But she did reach for the cut-glass bottle of French floral water, as she did every morning, and touched her moistened fingers to her neck, her brow, her wrists.

She broke her fast with plain bread and bitter but sustaining tea, and drove away all thoughts of the immensely gifted Louis, her Belgian chef. On leaving the rickety table, she moved to the window to watch for Sir Darius. When she leaned out the casement for a better view of her surroundings, she saw plain buildings of whitewashed stone and unpaved streets pitted with murky puddles. A large seagull marched across the slate roof; others clawed at the thatched tops of the dwellings.

Her escort arrived in a gig drawn by a bay pony—fourteen hands high, in her judgment—and halted in front of the inn.

Waving to catch his attention, she called, “Good morning, Sir Darius.”

The baronet looked up, and touched his wide brim in perfunctory acknowledgment of her cheery greeting. A night’s repose hadn’t seemed to improve his mood, for he failed to return her smile.

She smelled like a garden of rare and exotic flowers. Dare, trapped in the fragrant cloud of her perfume, tried to identify it. Lilies, lilacs, roses? He couldn’t guess what it was; he only knew it was damnably intoxicating.

“I had little faith that you would come, Sir Darius.”

“I’m a man of my word,” he declared.

Her head tipped back, exposing a slender column of a neck and the elegant curve of her jaw. As she eyed the low, heavy clouds scudding across the sky, she said, “It’s not a promising day for a drive.”

He let out a humorless chuckle. “If you’re so easily deterred by damp, you won’t like living on this island. Be thankful for a civilized mist—you might’ve had the more typical torrent of spring rain.” He guided the pony around the largest puddles, to avoid splashing mud on his passenger’s deep green skirt.

“Have you ever lived in the country, Mrs. Julian?”

“Till now, I never wished to.”

Dare imagined her being driven around Hyde Park in a fashionable phaeton, smiling and nodding to her acquaintances, or sweeping through London’s lamplit streets in a closed carriage. “What made you change your mind?”

“A gentleman.”

This disclosure deepened Dare’s suspicions and, contradictorily, sharpened his interest. “He commanded you to leave London?”

“No, I went voluntarily. Extremely inconvenient, but very necessary.”

He had to wonder if she made hasty departure in order to conceal the evidence of an indiscretion. But if that were so, she’d want to hide on the island for nine full months instead of just one.

“How far is Glen Auldyn from Ramsey?” she asked.

“Two miles. The whole island is thirty miles top to bottom, so there are no great distances.” Fedjag, who regularly trod this stretch of the Sulby Road, slowed even before Dare tugged the left-hand rein.

After negotiating the sharp bend, he said, “Here we enter the glen, which extends four miles southward.

That field is called Magher y Trodden—the site of an ancient cemetery haunted by restless spirits.”

“Trying to frighten me away, Sir Darius?”

He wished he could, but last night she’d demonstrated her tenacity. She turned her face away from him and gazed at the mountain on their right. Fog veiled the view but couldn’t obliterate its beauty.

“You must favor hills and tors,” she commented. “I’m told you have property in Derbyshire.”

She
had
been asking questions about him, the little schemer. Affronted by this proof of her prying, he was determined to deflect further inquiries. “The locals identify Skyhill as the site of a fairy city. It’s also a famous battleground—on that summit an army of Norsemen conquered the native Manx.”

Her fascination killed his impulse to drive her away with a lecture on history—perhaps he should try geology. A soliloquy on the predominant characteristics of Manx slate would cause those pretty hazel eyes to glaze from boredom. By comparing and contrasting the Plutonian theory of the earth’s origin—which he strongly supported—with the less worthy Neptunian example, he could force Mrs. Julian to leap out of the gig and run back to Ramsey.

The pervasive, garlicky odor of the ramsoms, pale flowers shooting up in shadowy places, would surely dissuade her from settling here. To his dismay, she complimented the precocious bluebells bobbing beneath the green canopy of tree branches, and admired the river, swollen by spring rains, as it splashed and foamed over the rocks.

To make certain she noticed that the glen was sparsely populated, he said, “There are very few crofters here.”

“How do they support themselves?” she asked.

“You would regard their agricultural methods as primitive, but they manage to feed themselves and supply their livestock with adequate fodder. Lezayre parish is blessed with good farmland, and a quantity of grain leaves Ramsey port for England. Glen Auldyn used to be famous for snuff making, and some folk still grind tobacco with their hand mills.”

His lead mine provided employment to two dozen men, but he didn’t tell her that, or point out the pair of stone gateposts marking the entrance to his future home. He didn’t want a fortune hunter to see his mining operations, or the unfinished splendor of his villa.

But he couldn’t ignore the laborers erecting a stone bridge over the stream. Beyond them, another group shoveled gravel out of a wagon and spread it across his new drive.

“Moghrey mie,
Mainshtyr!” the stoneworkers called.

“Good morning,” he replied. He slowed the vehicle, telling his passenger, “If I don’t stop, they’ll be offended.”

Her gloved hands reached for his reins. “What’s your pony’s name?”

“Fedjag. Feather, in Manx.”

“I can walk her up and down the lane till you return,” she offered.

“No need, I’ll only be a moment.” As Dare moved away from the gig, he looked over his shoulder.

Mrs. Julian, regal as a princess and twice as lovely, gripped the lines with unexpected expertise, forcing him to revise his vision of her progress through Hyde Park. He left her in the provocative feathered hat and the clinging habit of bold green, which complemented her milky skin and ruddy hair. But he permitted her to drive herself along the carriageway.

“Going to the mine?” asked Donny Corkhill. “When I saw Ned Crowe last night, his mouth was moving as fast as Auldyn stream. Said they’d hit a new vein of ore.”

“I hadn’t heard.” If not for Mrs. Julian, he could investigate this promising development.

His mine’s productivity couldn’t match that of the Derbyshire operations he’d inherited from his grandfather, and it might be years before excavations yielded enough income to offset the expenses. But he could offer a job to those who needed one, either here in the glen or at his smelting house in Ramsey.

The chief benefit to him was augmenting his collection of rocks and minerals with the specimens his men pried from the underground caverns.

Returning to the gig, Dare climbed up beside Mrs. Julian, and was assailed by that enticing aroma.

Awareness of her swiftly seeped into him, until he felt thoroughly drenched by it. His shoulder brushed hers, and all those mad, carnal thoughts from last night resurfaced. He shoved them back down. His reluctance to have her for a tenant was at odds with his lingering desire to plunder her magnificent body.

Directly across from his new bridge stood twin stone pillars. Driving Fedjag between them, he announced, “Croit ny Glionney—Glencroft.” He turned his head to catch her initial, unguarded reaction.

She wouldn’t care for the cottage. He was certain of it.

Her face revealed nothing during her silent study of the slate-roofed gray stone dwelling with twin chimneys at either end, and its adjacent barn. The boundary hedges were unruly and the surrounding meadow was overgrown.

“So many wildflowers,” she commented with evident pleasure, before descending from the gig.

Dare observed her lissome grace as she approached the cottage, her dark green skirt brushing the upright heads of the bellflowers and yarrow. She moved like no woman he’d ever seen, and carried herself with supreme self-assurance. Kneeling, she plucked a handful of blossoms.

Wrenching his gaze from the queenly figure waiting for him on the doorstep, he looped the reins through the iron ring set into the stable wall.

When he joined Mrs. Julian, she declared, “I mean to fill this place with bouquets.”

He fitted his key into the lock and turned it. Nothing happened.

“I hope you’ve brought the right one,” she said, casting up wide, worried eyes. Little pearly teeth clamped down upon the plump lower lip.

Her pensive glance and wistful words dissolved his prejudice momentarily. “I did,” he said, with a reassuring smile.

Their glances held. She drew a sharp breath, possibly of anticipation.

Dare returned his attention to the lock, and found, to his dismay, that his fingers were shaky and his palms moist. It had been a long, long time since he’d stood so near a fetching—and fragrant—female.

He shoved against the door. When it failed to give way, he kicked hard enough to force it open. The grinding of the unused hinges was music to his ears. One glance inside, he told himself, and her enthusiasm for living in a quaint country cottage would vanish. Within seconds she would plead with him to recommend the best hotel down in Douglas.

Clutching her flowers, she preceded him into the narrow, dark hall, and found her way to the small parlor. The light streaming in from two small windows revealed white walls and a fireplace with an iron grate.

“Extremely rustic,” said Dare, unnecessarily.

She ran her hand across a wooden chair back. “The furniture was made on the island?”

He nodded. The view of Skyhill had lured her to the window. After gazing out for a moment, she went into the adjacent room, which had barely enough space for its dining table and a few spindly chairs.

He let her find her way to the rear of the house. A great stone-faced hearth dominated the kitchen. The dairy, dry and cool, contained rows of wooden shelving.