Regina Scott (10 page)

She eyed him as if weighing the worth of his character, and he stood a little straighter.

“Why?” she challenged. “Why are you so insistent on helping?”

Will spread his hands. “It is my duty as a gentleman, Jamie’s father and your neighbor.”

“It won’t wash,” she countered. “I’ve met any number of so-called gentlemen who thought only of themselves. I refused your son yesterday, so you owe me no family obligation, and I doubt we’ll be neighbors for long. You will have to do better than that for excuses to meddle in my affairs.”

He didn’t know whether to press the fact that she intended to leave the area or to take umbrage over her assumption he meant to meddle. At the moment umbrage seemed to have the upper hand.

“Very well,” he said. “The truth is that I wish to help you, madam, because you are the most beautiful, infuriating, intriguing woman it has been my pleasure to meet across three continents, and I begin to wonder what I would have to do to prove it to you.”

* * *

Samantha stared at him, heart hammering. He thought she was beautiful! She intrigued him! Of course, she apparently infuriated him as well, but she chose not the dwell on that. He was quite enough to dwell on.

She’d caught her breath when she’d seen him jump that hedge yesterday. He’d embodied everything she’d ever read about his brave adventures, every story his father had delighted to tell about him. She’d known then that she had growing feelings for Will, and now it seemed he reciprocated. She wanted to dance around the withdrawing room, shout it out the door, carry it up the fells.

Run as far and as fast as she could.

So she did the one thing she knew was guaranteed to cool any feelings he might have for her. She smiled sweetly and said, “Your brother had similar thoughts about me, my lord. A shame he didn’t live to fulfill them.”

He recoiled as if she’d struck him. She supposed she had. But if he couldn’t remember the reason he should avoid her family, it was her duty to remind him.

“You will excuse me now, I’m sure,” she said. It took every ounce of strength to move around him and walk toward the door, but she knew it was for the best. Getting caught up in these emotions was no good for either of them. Better to cut the strings now, before they grew any stronger.

“Lady Everard.” The detached voice felt like a blow, but she turned to glance at him. His face was calm; all warmth and interest had fled. It was as if a stranger stood there. Once more she wished she could run away, hide, anything to avoid the pain building inside her.

Help me, Lord. You know what I’m doing is right.

Then why did it feel so wrong?

“I had assumed you were unaware of the circumstances surrounding his death,” he said. “If you know more, tell me.”

Samantha swallowed. All those who had been involved in the case had been sworn to secrecy, on penalty of being tried for treason if they confessed their parts to anyone but an appointed agent of the Crown. By his statement, Will must not have been made privy to the secret. It was grossly unfair! His brother’s death was involved! But she could not break her oath, even for his sake. The scandal would hurt more than he could know.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the matter.”

“No, only to throw it in my face, it seems.”

She would not cringe. She had made this mess; she must live with it. Oh, why had she brought up his brother? Couldn’t she have found a kinder way to fend off his attentions? Why couldn’t she have been gifted with her cousin Jerome’s gilded tongue or her cousin Richard’s patience? No, she was too much like her cousin Vaughn and her father, acting first and thinking it over later.

Perhaps that was why she returned to Will’s side. He stood stiffly, warily, his beautiful boots planted deep in the carpet, as if he expected her to attack.

Instead she kept her voice calm. “I never set out to hurt your family—your brother, Jamie or you. I wish you would believe that at least.”

“I’d like nothing better,” he said, and she thought she could hear the truth of it in his voice. “But there are too many secrets between your family and mine, secrets you refuse to share.”

“Because they are not mine to share! Because sharing them would only hurt others who do not deserve more pain!”

“Because you do not trust me,” he said.

Heat pulsed in the air, and she trembled with it. “You don’t understand.”

“Don’t I? I’m not a vengeful man, Samantha. I have no wish to harm you or your family either. I have stated my desire to be your friend, begun to prove it, I hope, by my actions. But a friendship without trust is false.”

“Trust is like a fencing foil,” she countered. “It isn’t effective unless you extend it.”

He inclined his head. “Excellent point. Perhaps we both have something to learn in that area. But I have no secrets—my life, alas, is an open book.”

And hers was a book locked tightly shut. She could not afford to give him the key.

“I will consider your offer of friendship, Will,” she said. “But more I cannot promise.”

He bowed, and she curtsied. For once, she had the opportunity to watch him retreat. Yet somehow, she still felt as if she was the one running away.

Chapter Ten

W
hat was she hiding? What did she know about his brother’s death? Was that knowledge why she kept crying, why she refused to further an acquaintance with Jamie or him?

Will wanted answers, but he knew withdrawal was the surest way to earning her trust.

Lord, guide me in this!

He took two steps down the corridor from the withdrawing room and found Jamie standing here, face set.

“You were hard on her.”

Will raised his chin. “You heard the conversation?”

“Some of it,” Jamie admitted, closing the distance between them. “It didn’t take me long to determine the schoolroom is lacking a few things a young gentleman might need, such as toy soldiers and a decent ball. I intend to send over some things from home.”

“Then perhaps we should go,” Will said, starting past him.

Jamie caught his arm. “A moment. You and Samantha seemed at cross purposes. Why?”

Will knew he had to go carefully. He didn’t want Jamie to think he had feelings for Samantha, especially when her refusal to marry must be fresh in the lad’s mind.

“It’s a long story,” Will said. “If you’re finished here for the moment, say your goodbyes to the lady and we can talk on the ride home.”

Jamie nodded, and a short time later he and Will were riding back across the fields for Kendrick Hall.

“She seemed unaccountably delighted to be rid of us,” Jamie said. “I thought I knew what was troubling her, but you seem to have hit on something more. What is it?”

“She mentioned your uncle,” Will replied. Just remembering hurt. He’d all but blurted out that he had feelings for her, and she’d said the one thing calculated to douse the warmth. He did not think it was a coincidence. Something about him frightened her. But again, he could not discuss that with Jamie without hurting his son.

“About Uncle?” Jamie asked. “He’d left for London before she was more than a child. Did she even know him?”

Will felt as if he was picking his way through the darkest night, he had to chose his words so carefully. “Yes. They met in London. Tell me, what do you know about your uncle’s death?”

“Only that he was killed.” Jamie guided his horse over the little stream in the center of the field. “I wondered why. Was it a theft gone wrong or had he made an enemy? I just don’t understand why you think Samantha would know the answer.”

So, his father, Jamie’s grandfather, hadn’t told the boy everything. Will should have expected that. Jamie had been all of eight when his uncle, the former Lord Wentworth, had been killed. Was he any more ready to hear the truth at seventeen?

As if Jamie knew his thoughts, he drew his horse closer to Arrow. “You don’t have to shield me, Father. I’m not a child.”

No one would have believed the statement by the way he thrust out his chin, as if he’d been denied a treat. But if Jamie was to spend the rest of his life next door to the Everards, perhaps he should know the whole story.

“Very well,” Will said. “Here’s what I was able to piece together from your grandfather and discreet inquiries in London. My brother, Gregory, was in town for the Season. He and your grandfather had talked about him taking a wife, so no one was surprised that he began courting—no one, that is, except the Everards.”

“Samantha’s family?” Jamie pulled his horse farther away. “Why would they care if Uncle began courting?”

“Because he began courting Samantha.”

Jamie reined in with a jerk that set his mare to champing at the bit. Will slowed Arrow and allowed his son to catch up.

“Uncle was courting Samantha?” he demanded. “She was sixteen! He had to be ages older.”

“Thirteen years older to be precise,” Will said. “Not unheard of. You know your mother and I were the same age at seventeen, but that was a rarity.”

“On too many counts,” Jamie muttered.

Will frowned. “I hope you’ll have the good sense not to disparage your mother.”

Jamie colored and hung his head. “Of course I wouldn’t disparage her, Father. I only meant that, growing up, there were a lot of stories told about you both. Some I didn’t like.”

Will kept Arrow at a steady trot. “We’ll have to discuss those as well, then. Just know that your mother and I did nothing shameful. We were in love, we eloped to Scotland to marry against our parents’ wishes, they agreed to accept the marriage when we returned and you were born a year later.”

“A full year?” Jamie pressed.

So that was his concern. Will remembered the gossip. Some had insisted he had a reason to rush Peg over the border to Gretna Green, that she had tricked him into marriage by becoming pregnant. He knew that he and Peg had exchanged nothing more than fervent glances and heated kisses before the day they’d wed.

“A full year,” he assured his son. “I have your mother’s marriage certificate. I’ll show you when we return.”

Jamie settled into his saddle. “So Uncle Wentworth tried to court Samantha. Of course she refused.”

“She never had the opportunity to accept,” Will corrected him. “I don’t know whether he actually offered for her, but there was an altercation at White’s over a lady, and Vaughn Everard challenged him to a duel.”

Jamie’s horse pranced, and Will knew his son’s hands must have tightened on the reins. “Uncle cannot have been cruel to her. No man could!”

Will had seen a few too many men who were cruel to women, so he wasn’t sure of his brother’s innocence. Gregory had tended to see women as a means to an end, never as a person deserving of his love and loyalty. What was more, Vaughn Everard may have earned the reputation of being a hothead in his youth, but something had goaded him into challenging Gregory to a duel.

“We do not know Samantha was the lady they argued over,” Will cautioned. “All we know is that your uncle and Mr. Everard met on Primrose Hill outside London the next morning, and he wounded my brother.”

“What!” At Jamie’s cry, his horse galloped ahead, and it was a moment before he could get the beast under control and return to Will’s side. When he did, Jamie’s face was bloodless. “Vaughn Everard killed Uncle?”

Will held up one hand. “The authorities say otherwise. The wound was serious, but not fatal. My brother was very much alive when he reached our London house. He tried to hide his injury from the staff, telling only his valet. The valet had gone down to the linen closet for sheets to use as bandages. When he returned to the room, he found my brother dead, bleeding from multiple wounds. He and the attending physician swear those wounds were not the result of the duel.”

“Everard must have followed him,” Jamie declared, voice tinged with the fire of vengeance. “Followed him and murdered him.”

“Perhaps,” Will said, using all his skill to keep his own voice level. “The witnesses to the duel say he disappeared immediately afterward but returned a short time later. That would not have given him time to do the deed.”

“He could have gone after Uncle,” Jamie protested. “Found a way into the house.”

“He could have. But the magistrates sent for him for questioning and found him on Bond Street.”

Jamie made a face. “Well, that makes no sense. I can’t see Everard killing someone in a fit of passion and going shopping afterward.”

Will had reached the same conclusion. “And the magistrates deemed him innocent.”

“Then who killed Uncle?” Jamie demanded. “And why?”

“That,” Will said, “is just one of the things I hope to convince our friend Samantha to tell us.”

* * *

Samantha knew she should be glad the two Wentworth men had left her alone. Jamie had promised to return when her family arrived to lend a hand with entertaining them. And she should be relieved to be spared further quizzing from his father.

Then, too, there were still a number of items Mrs. Dallsten Walcott needed ferried down to the dower cottage. Samantha could have ordered a servant to carry that painting, this vase, but she thought the fewer people who knew where the pieces had gone the less likely her family would be to protest. It was the lady’s right under the agreement with Samantha’s father, but she knew Mrs. Dallsten Walcott had taken advantage of that agreement before, and so did her family. It would be easier to move the pieces now, before the rest of her family arrived and questioned the changes, as Will had done.

But whatever she did, Will seemed to follow her. As she carried a miniature of Adele’s grandmother down the drive for the dower house, she caught herself wondering whether anyone had ever captured those forest green eyes on canvas. When she approved Mrs. Linton’s menu for the welcoming dinner, she wondered whether Will was as fond of roast duck as she was. He even intruded on her prayers that night, for when she asked the Lord’s blessing on those she loved, his face was the first to come to mind.

This would never do! She couldn’t fall in love with the Earl of Kendrick in less than a week! She didn’t want him to fall in love with her and end up hurting him as she’d hurt Jamie. But in their world love meant marriage, and marriage was the one thing she could not afford. That fact had been brought home to her by a number of memories, stored up from when she’d been a child.

She climbed from her bed and went to the chest at its foot. Inside lay a small wooden box. She ran her fingers over the satiny surface, traced the intricate heart carved around the keyhole. She had never locked the box; Adele had not given her the key when she’d brought Samantha the box. She opened it now and drew out the miniature of her mother. Rosamunde Defaneuil’s hair might have been a darker shade of blond, but it curled around a face very like Samantha’s, and her smile promised excitement, adventure.

“The most beautiful, vivacious, sought-after girl in the Evendale Valley,” Mrs. Dallsten Walcott had assured Samantha more than once. “Before Adele was born, of course.”

But unlike Adele who had been forced to work as a governess in her own home, Samantha’s mother had made a spectacular match. Arthur, Lord Everard, had been in the area hunting and had gone on a whim to the Blackcliff assembly. One look, the story said, and he and her mother had fallen in love.

Samantha set her mother’s picture back in the box and shut the lid. The love her parents had shared had been the heart of a maelstrom. Neither had come out unscathed. Nor had she.

She shuddered as she put away the box and padded back to her bed. Even when she snuggled deep under the goose-down comforter, the memories intruded. Each time her father returned to London and left them both behind, her mother had been devastated. Her despondent sobs had echoed down the corridors.

“I want to see my mother,” Samantha would say to Adele. “I want to give her a hug.”

Adele’s face was always so sad when she’d return from taking the message to Lady Everard. “Your mama says she is not quite up to visitors right now. But I promised her you love her very much. Perhaps we could draw her a picture to cheer her.”

Samantha had drawn pictures. She had learned songs on the pianoforte to play for her mother when she felt better. She had learned how to say “I’m sorry” and “I love you” in French. None of it had mattered. Her mother was lost to her, and would soon be lost to the world.

When she was older, she thought she knew one of the reasons her mother was so sad. She’d been all of nine when she’d first heard the rumors. She’d been in the village shopping with Adele and had tarried in front of the bakery while Adele spoke to a neighbor. Looking into the window at the sweet treats displayed there, Samantha had been surprised to find two girls nearly her age looking back from inside. She’d smiled at them, always hungry to make a friend.

The taller of the two drew the other closer, and Samantha could hear her words come faintly through the glass. “Don’t encourage her. Father says her father is ashamed of her. That’s why he stays so long in London. She must have done something awful.”

She’d wanted to march inside and scold those girls. Her father wasn’t ashamed of her! He was a baron; he had to spend time in London in Parliament and at his other estates. She’d said as much to Adele as they’d ridden home in the carriage.

Adele had hugged her close. “Your father loves you,” she’d said. “There are always stories about people who live their lives for all to see. You know the truth. Hold it in your heart and hold up your head.”

The trouble was, now she did know the truth about how her mother had died, and she found it hard to take anything but sorrow from it. How could her mother’s suicide bring anything other than pain?

Her cousins often told her how much she reminded them of her father—his desire for adventure, his joy for life. She thought she carried some of her mother’s traits as well—the need to be loved, bouts with the dismals. But what she feared most was that she had enough of both her mother and father to make marriage, a good solid marriage, impossible.

With such thoughts on her mind sleep was hard that night. Unfortunately that meant her spirits were at their lowest the next morning. No matter what she did, she felt them weighing her down. Even her maid remarked on her attitude when she brought Samantha her usual chocolate and buttered toast for breakfast.

“I’ll be fine,” Samantha assured her, straightening her spine and raising her chin. She would be fine. She had promised herself she would never get as low as her mother had.

Her mother had focused on loss to the point she had forgotten what she’d gained. Samantha tried to remember things for which she was thankful—her cousins, the friends she’d made in London, even the fortune her father had left her. Though she stood to lose the bulk of it if she wasn’t married in eight days, she would retain several of his many estates. Their income would be enough to keep her clothed and fed in style throughout her life. Jerome’s oldest son would eventually inherit and become Baron Everard. And her family would finally know peace.

Help me remember that, Lord. Help me stay the course You’ve laid out for me.

For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.

She knew the verse. She just wasn’t sure she believed it at the moment.

Determined to shake off the dismals, she took her usual morning ride, being careful to stay on the forest trail and turning Blackie before reaching Wentworth land. Her mare protested, as if she too longed to ride up to Kendrick Hall and spend a few minutes in teasing conversation with its master. But Samantha was not about to give in.