Rogue's Reward (3 page)

The coachman called to the horses, and the carriage stopped. Moments later a footman was dropping the steps and helping the ladies from the chaise. Hawksley Park stood before them in all its Palladian glory and Lady Diana was at the door.

“Lady Acton! I’m so glad you could come.” Diana dropped a respectful curtsy.

The countess nodded, then swept away in a rustle of skirts.

“Eleanor, my dear friend! I just couldn’t wait in the drawing room with Mama as I ought.” Diana grasped Eleanor by both hands. “As soon as you’ve had tea, you must come with me and I’ll show you around. You’re to have the very next bedroom to mine, so we can have the most comfortable coze imaginable.”

Linking arms, the two girls followed the countess into the hallway, where maids and more footmen stood ready to aid the travelers.

“I’m in the most dreadful tangle, Eleanor,” Diana whispered as soon as her friend was divested of her coat and bonnet, and they were following behind the guiding butler. “There’s no hope for me at all.”

“Which sounds excessively melodramatic, Di. Is it something I can help you with?”

“You kind creature! You’re always the soul of good sense. I’m just a ninny in comparison. But I’m lost this time, truly. Have you ever met someone and known right away you were meant for each other, but it could never be?”

Eleanor shook her head. She dismissed the irrelevant image of a pair of violet eyes that came annoyingly to mind.

“No, I haven’t. Don’t tell me you’re in love? And it’s someone your mama thinks totally ineligible?”

Diana stopped and looked at her friend with wide blue eyes. “However did you know?”

“Because nothing else would make you look quite so like Hapless Clara who pined away for love.”

“Don’t make fun, please! His name’s Walter Feveril Downe. It’s a splendid name, isn’t it? We met last year when I first came out and I knew right away. He was at so many dances and dinners, but nothing was ever declared between us, of course. Yet he’s written to me.”

“Diana! I’m shocked.” Eleanor laughed. “I’m to assume that Lady Augusta knows nothing of this and would have the vapors if she were to find out? Is he the son of a coal merchant?”

“Eleanor, do be sensible. Of course not!” Lady Diana looked shocked to the core. “His father is Viscount Clare, but he’s a younger son and you know how Mama is.”

“Well, no, actually I don’t, except by reputation, since I’m about to meet her for the first time. But pray, don’t sink into a final decline between here and the drawing room. If there’s anything I can do for such very deserving star-crossed lovers, you have my word to help. I’m a splendid conspirator. Being one of six children teaches you all kinds of useful skills.”

“No, there’s nothing anyone can do. It’s hopeless, really.”

“Surely not!” She gave Diana’s hand a little squeeze. “I know you would never really give your heart to someone ineligible. Only a creature as lost to all decency as me would do that.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Eleanor looked at her friend’s woebegone face and laughed again. She had no idea why she had said that. “Nothing at all. I’m just trying to cheer you up. Now smile, or else I shall lose all courage to face the dragon.”

Lady Augusta, Dowager Countess of Hawksley, did look something like a dragon, Eleanor thought as that lady sailed toward them. She had prematurely graying hair caught up beneath a cap of stiff lace shingles, and her eyes were small and sharp. Diana had certainly not inherited her lovely blue eyes from her mother. Yet Lady Hawksley wasn’t actually breathing fire. Instead, having absolutely no affection for her guests, she was preparing an effusion of greeting.

“
Ma chère
Felicity!” she said, holding out both hands to Lady Acton, who had entered the room ahead of the girls. “Hawksley is honored.” Then she looked past the countess’s shoulder at her daughter. “So this is Lady Eleanor? Diana has told me so much about her. What a pity that she is not more
ravissante
—so unfortunate for a girl about to come out.” She continued archly in French which Eleanor had no problem translating: “Such a shame when all the beauty belongs to the mother and none to the daughter.”

Lady Acton leaned forward and kissed the dowager countess on both cheeks, her lovely features in marked contrast to the lines of perpetual discontent on the other face.

“Then how very gratifying for you,” she said, also in perfect French, “that in your case it’s the other way around.”

Lady Augusta didn’t hesitate for a moment, though she returned to her native tongue. “Diana was the belle of last season, indeed. She was drowned in offers, but I believe Lord Ranking will be brought up to snuff this spring and he is to be Duke of Maybury. It would be a most appropriate match for the heiress of Hawksley Park.”

“He has such a drooping air about him.” Lady Acton smiled. “So very elegant. I’m sure he and Lady Diana will be very happy.”

Eleanor squeezed Diana’s arm and gave her a supportive smile, but the countesses had changed the subject.

“Major Sir Robert St. John Crabtree sends his compliments,” Lady Augusta was saying. “And will no doubt call tomorrow. He’s the very model of courtesy. A most amiable neighbor.”

“Then we’ll look forward to an enchanting morning, unless it should rain. We can hardly expect casual visits in bad weather.” Lady Acton sank gracefully into a chair by the fire. “On the other hand,” she continued lazily, “I believe him to be very indifferent to weather. Don’t you remember, Augusta, how the major escorted Miss Harrison from Vauxhall in that appalling storm last summer? She was almost hysterical, had forgotten her umbrella, and Sir Robert gave her his cloak. So very gallant! He was soaked to the skin.”

“A most inelegant scene!” Lady Augusta sniffed as the maid came in with the tea tray. “Blanche Harrison should have shown more restraint. I have very little patience with any young lady so incommoding a gentleman—no doubt only about some girlish trifle.”

A dish of tea was offered and taken, and nothing more was said about the amiable major. Eleanor was left to wonder if she had imagined the fleeting look of genuine pleasure and anticipation on her mother’s matchless face.

At last the girls were released from the drawing room and Eleanor could go up to her room to wash and change for dinner.

“Who’s this Major Crabtree?” she asked Diana as they went up the great marble staircase.

“Oh, just a neighbor. He sports the most enormous military mustaches and has some huge fortune. Deerfield is his. See, that’s it over there, near the river.”

Eleanor stopped by the window and looked where her friend was pointing. The slightly rolling landscape stretched away into a blue haze of fields, outlined by new plantings of trees. Near the river, she could just make out the tall chimneys of an imposing edifice of red brick. It was not a great seat like Hawksley, but it was certainly more than one might expect for the residence of a retired major.

“Is his family well connected?” she asked.

“I really have no idea. Who cares about Crabtree? He’s old enough to be my father. He probably made a mint in India or something. Eleanor, I know there’s no time now, but I have to talk to you about Walter and we won’t be able to escape our maids for hours. I can’t marry Lord Ranking, truly, even if Mama were to get him to offer. His nose drips.”

“Then marry your Mr. Downe. You’ll be twenty-one in the summer. Can’t you wait until then?”

“You don’t understand. I can’t marry without the permission of the head of the family until I’m five-and-twenty, and that’s Mama. If only I’d been born a boy! Then I’d be the earl and could marry as I liked. I wouldn’t care for myself if I were as poor as a church mouse, but it would ruin Walter if we ran away, don’t you see? He would never get a decent living. Oh, Eleanor, what am I to do?”

“Yes, it’s a problem, I see. But don’t despair, dear Di. I’ll help you if I can, I promise. Just let me know what I can do. In the meantime, I confess I’m dying to get out of these clothes and take a bath.”

“Can you meet me in the long gallery as soon as you’re changed? It is urgent. You see, Walter’s coming to Norfolk very soon.”

“Very well, the long gallery as soon as I’m presentable.”

An hour later, Eleanor emerged from her chamber and took a critical look at herself in the long mirror in the hall. She had bathed and was dressed in a fine white silk dinner gown, which was caught up beneath her breasts with a sash of pale apricot. The ends trailed down the front of her skirts to finish in two gold tassels. Small pleated sleeves gathered into apricot trimming showed off her long smooth arms.

At least she had nice arms and hands, she thought ruefully. As for the rest, Lady Augusta was right, it certainly wasn’t ravishing—perfectly ordinary, in fact. Brown hair, brown eyes, a nose and a mouth occupying all the right places. What more could a girl want?

She laughed at herself and walked rapidly in the direction that Diana had described.

The long gallery was hung with portraits from one end to the other on one paneled wall. The opposite wall was lined with bookcases punctuated with tall windows. An embroidered cushion covered a window seat beneath each one.

Eleanor perched herself on one of these and composed herself to think about Diana’s problem. It was already twilight. The room began to fill with shadows as dusk swallowed the view outside.

“I hope you have hooked up your dress this time,” a cultured male voice said in her ear. “Have you lost another locket?”

She spun around and leaped to her feet. As she did so, she heard a small tearing sound and looked down to see that she must have been sitting on one of her gold tassels, and in her haste she had ripped it off. She caught at it in her hand and held on to it as if it were a lifeline.

“Of course not,” she said calmly, though her heart was pounding loudly enough to summon at least three footmen. “But instead it seems I have lost my composure and ruined my sash. May I ask what you’re doing here?”

“I might ask the same, mightn’t I?” the owner of the violet eyes said.

He leaned one shoulder against a bookshelf and crossed his arms over his chest. Except for a newly changed shirt and cravat, he was dressed in the same traveling clothes he had worn at the inn, his coat as dark as his head. The faintest sheen of moisture further darkened his hair, as if he had just washed it. Eleanor had to crush the most unholy impulse to reach out and see.

“It’s raining outside,” he said dryly. “You must have noticed, since you were studying the gardens so intensely. And must I answer my own question? Though it’s probably easy enough. Lady Eleanor Acton and Lady Diana Hart were at school together? I wish I’d known.”

“Why? Is Lady Diana another of your attempted schoolgirl conquests?”

Tiny creases marked the corners of his eyes. “Why, do you think I’m her type?”

“Not in the least,” she snapped. “Lady Diana has flawless taste and is guided always by the strictest propriety. She would never fall for a conceited libertine, without honor or scruple, who likes to practice idle flirtations on girls half his age.”

“Half his age? My dear Lady Eleanor, I am only five-and-twenty. Surely you’re at least seventeen?”

“Eighteen. Does Diana love you?”

“I hope so, for I love her very dearly back.”

“You’re an accomplished liar, too, I see. How did you get in?”

“Why, the butler opened the front door in the usual way.”

“You mean you’re a guest of Lady Augusta?” It came out as a distinctly undignified squeak.

“I’m on my way to visit Major St. John Crabtree, as it happens.”

“But how dare you stop at Hawksley and skulk about the private rooms?”

“I’m really not sure that I have to answer all these questions. Don’t you have any of the social graces, Lady Eleanor? It’s more usual, isn’t it, to make small talk about the weather or some book of poetry?”

“When first introduced to another guest, I suppose it is. But not when one’s first meeting was intimate enough to bring up a subject like blackmail.”

“As I remember,” he said perfectly seriously, “our intimacy had very little to do with that.”

Eleanor knew that her cheeks were flaming. “If you were a gentleman, sir, you would never refer to your despicable behavior at the Three Feathers. I assure you that I have forgotten it.”

Laughter danced in his eyes. “Surely not, brown hen? I pride myself that my kisses are extremely memorable. Should I do it again, do you think, in order to refresh your memory?”

He reached out one hand to gently stroke her cheek.

“You have no shame at all, have you? How can you speak so to me when you have been writing to Lady Diana? If her fortune is your goal here, then I give you notice right now that I shall do everything in my power to put a spoke in your wheel.”

“Ah,” he said. “Hawksley. Quite a dowry for such a rattlebrain as Diana.”

“You will never get it. I shall tell her of your behavior to me.”

“Now that I would rather you didn’t do. She is dreadfully fond of me, you know, and would be shocked to think I could behave with so little probity.”

“I imagine you care nothing for her feelings, or anyone else’s. Hawksley Park is your only aim.”

“It would be dishonest if I claimed not to love Hawksley, but I don’t begrudge it. And I have no intention whatsoever of stealing it from Diana. How could I?”

“By marrying her, of course. No wonder she won’t tell Lady Augusta about your attentions! You wouldn’t dare ask proper permission to address her only daughter, would you? What do you intend to do? Elope to Gretna Green with the heiress?”

His smile was full of delight. At my expense, thought Eleanor, almost blind with fury.

“Who exactly do you think I am, Lady Eleanor?” he asked seriously.

“I must suppose you are a certain Mr. Downe,” Eleanor said. “Diana told me about you. You have been acting toward her with a complete lack of honor.”

“Have I?” he said. “How very odd! As a matter of fact, I am not poor Walter, who is actually the Honorable Mr. Downe, I am—”

“Lee!” Lady Diana Hart squealed, hurtling into the room and straight into the man’s chest.