The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) (3 page)

“Is that so?”

“What practical skills do you offer, my lady? Needlepoint-pillow making? Watercolor painting? Flower arranging? Menu planning? Singing?” (Thunk!) He snorted as he struck another log apart with a solid blow.
 

“I can’t carry a note,” she admitted. “But I have managed an earl’s household for years. I can cook, bake and milk a cow, along with numerous other, more typical feminine accomplishments.”
 

“Is that so?”
 

“Is that so hard to believe? Oh, never mind, there’s enough to warm our meal.” She got up, strode over to him and touched his back low at his waist. He stilled. She could warm her hands on the heat he gave off. And the scent of the man! Fresh air, leather and muscular male effort, with a top note of horse, she sighed. Just as a practical gentleman ought to smell. She plucked up half a dozen good-sized pieces of wood and carried her armload away without trouble. She was capable, too, she wanted to prove for some inexplicable reason.
 

A little while later, she returned and sat down again behind her hero to watch his body twist, heave and move as he worked. Now, she noticed dreamily, his damp shirt lay pasted to his body, across broad shoulders and wide back, narrowing to his waist and trim hips. His hard buttocks were sculpted like a Roman athlete’s. Oh, she thought, here was a man.
 

She was enchanted. Until, that is, he opened his mouth and ruined everything.

“Yes indeed, I pity the baron.” (Thunk!) He picked up a log and pointed it at her for emphasis. “Even a doddering, old man deserves some peace and consideration in his dotage.” He stood it on end and swung the axe. (Thunk!) “No doubt you will drive him to an early grave.”

“I will not.”

“Oh no? If the baron’s as old as you say, he won’t survive the trouble. And you, my lady, are nothing but.” (Thunk!) He glanced at her over his shoulder and said, “I suppose, you can pray that he’ll expire on your wedding night, and leave you untouched, widowed and wealthy. Best of all worlds.”

“You, sir, have an inappropriate sense of humor.”

“Do I?” He mocked. She opened her mouth, but he cut her off, “Yes, you just
told me
I do.”

“I will not be the death of him,” she said with starchy dignity, “because I shall spare him the fatal vexation of me entirely. I shan’t marry him.”

The man stopped chopping and leaned an elbow on the axe handle on the stump. “Though you’re well intentioned, somehow I can’t imagine he’ll escape his fate. And I’d wager your father is anxious to be rid of you, too.”
 

“You’re probably right,” she snapped. “But you’re cruel to point it out. I vow I won’t go back to the earl unless he ends this farcical betrothal and promises not to attempt such a travesty again on my behalf. He thinks that I need a strong hand to guide me. He’s often said he regrets having been lax. Lax. His parenting never involved indulgence, just benign neglect. And having let me do as I wish for two decades, it seems a mean trick to impose discipline by marrying me off to some relic from another age.”

“Perhaps.”

“Who knows if the old baron is even up to the task of managing me! You say I’ll give him fatal spasms.”

“Only if the drink doesn’t kill him first,” Clun quipped.

“He’s a…a tippler?” She asked.

“More than tipples, if memory serves. A bottomless cask. Mouth like a funnel on one end and a wee spigot at the other,” he concluded with a wink.

Ignoring his wink, she quickly resumed her train of thought. “How could an elderly souse be a proper husband for me? What was the earl thinking? No. If I marry at all, I will marry a strong, practical man who does not drink to excess.”
 

“A woodsman perhaps,” he teased. “Wouldn’t you miss your comforts, my lady? Hot water magically appearing in your room for your bath and disappearing again just as magically when it’s cooled.”

“I am content to bathe in the stream and do so often.” She was only too happy to leave him flabbergasted, or scandalized, or whatever it was that left his eyes bulging and his firm, kissable lips loose as a carp’s.
 

Served him right, she sniffed.

* * *

Clun could only stare agape at her in the autumn twilight. His mouth went dry. She flippantly mentioned bathing in the nearby stream and he blanked for an instant. First, came to mind his recollection as a young man of taking a brief dip late in the year. His frozen balls had retracted somewhere far inside his lower body and refused to descend for a full day. Next flashed a series of heated, pleasantly stirring imaginings: the glowing colors of her creamy skin touched with blushes all over, her long chestnut hair fanning out around her siren’s face, her rosy nipples gathered tight as buds in the chill water. He forcibly recalled himself to his senses. Much as he feared, her proximity, the wood chopping and the bathing-siren fantasy registered below. He took up a large log and held it before him.
 

To distract her, he teased: “You would have me believe you’ll bathe in a frigid stream and kill your own meat through the winter?”

“I’ll have you know that I’m a dead shot. The venison in the stew, that’s mine.”

“You mean Lord Clun’s.”
 

“Well, if you want to be a stickler. But I shot it.”

“I’m impressed.” And he was. Lady Elizabeth was nothing if not surprising. And stimulating.
 

“I just realized we’ve not been introduced. I am Lady Elizabeth Damogan.” She pronounced her last name with care, slightly exaggerating the second syllable, ‘da-MUG-en.’ “Those who have only read the name mistakenly say ‘DAM-o-gan,’ which I cannot abide.”
 

“And you’re too polite to correct their pronunciation? I’m astonished.”
 

Of course, he knew her name. He was about to marry the chit. Should he instruct her to pronounce de Sayre
⁴
in some ridiculous way, perhaps ‘dee SAY’ or funnier still ‘de-SIRE’?
 

“I’m William Tyler…That is, well, Tyler.” He bowed elegantly to cover his hesitation. Clun wasn’t sure what his intentions were at the moment, only that he wished to have a bit of fun with Lady Elizabeth ‘da-MUG-en.’
 

Chapter 2
 

In which our hero makes a somewhat triumphal return.

A
fter supping with his feral bride-to-be, Clun rode on to his country house. Though he wasn’t expected for weeks, it gratified him to see the grounds and buildings of The Graces well tended.
 

In the previous century, his great grandfather had commissioned James Albright to design the place. It took twelve years to complete its construction. He might’ve been finished sooner if it hadn’t become a labor of love for Albright as much as his patron. No graceful flourish, exotic wood or subtle carved intricacy was spared or begrudged.
 

Client and architect became so enamored with The Graces, as it came to be known, their wives conceived a jealous disgust of the place. Mrs. Albright ran off with a barrister (and proved de Sayre marital dissatisfaction was communicable). Thereafter, this tradition of alienated affection carried down through subsequent generations of de Sayres, finding the Ladies Clun stewing in the cold, stone castle ten miles away in Wales whilst the Lords Clun luxuriated as often as possible in solitary, sunlit splendor at The Graces.
 

Albright’s design culminated in a soaring four-storey gatehouse. Clun paused before this ‘Triumphal Entry,’ as popular guidebooks called it. The entry featured a 35-foot tall archway crowned by a peaked pediment that echoed the main building beyond. The main hall was a vast, imposing Palladian structure boasting numerous, divided light windows
⁵
. It stood along the western side of an enclosed, rectangular courtyard with short, symmetrical wings north and south. The entry enclosed the courtyard’s eastern side.

With dusk dimming to night, the beige stone building glowed welcome to the weary baron. Its flanking wings embraced him like arms. The scent of loamy, fresh-turned earth tickled his nose and told him the courtyard garden was ready for winter. The chill, humid air made him glad of his many-caped greatcoat.
 

He took one last look at the surrounding countryside before he urged Algernon forward.
 

While The Graces had been under construction, Lancelot “Capability” Brown transformed the surrounding rain-soaked, Shropshire hills and dales into a captivating landscape. All that Mother Nature seemed to bestow on this parcel of heaven-on-earth was in fact placed at Mr. Brown’s direction by an army of local laborers. Even the large serpentine lake that fed from, and contributed to, the estate’s little stream was mostly manmade.
 

Although situated in remote southwestern Shropshire, The Graces drew gentry on holiday tours seeking breathtaking views. Unlike the Lake District, which was overrun with visitors enjoying its famously picturesque landscape, this less-traveled treasure tucked away in Clun Forest beguiled those who sought it out because they had the luxury of imagining they alone beheld its glory, they alone disturbed its tranquility.
 

Anyone applying to the housekeeper Mrs. Wirt was given a tour and a voluble discourse on the absent warrior baron, who was one of the famed Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
 

“Poor little Boney,” she’d say in a tone freighted with false pity for the petite imperialist. “He cannot last with my Lord Clun at his throat and that’s all I’ll say about
that
.”
 

Clun had no idea he’d won the war almost single-handedly. He was merely a man long away now come home with domestic matters on his mind.
 

He loved The Graces as the barons before him had and couldn’t help wondering if, by chance, Lady Elizabeth would deviate from the norm and like it. Or perhaps not hate it. Though it shouldn’t have mattered to him, it did. For even if she didn’t find him amiable, his property might charm her sufficiently to stay. Either way, he’d see the answer in her expression when first she beheld it.
 

From the courtyard, Clun saw that all the windows were dark. Holland covers probably draped the furniture above stairs. In their master’s absence, the army of servants staffing The Graces maintained the whole, but they’d be found in work areas and the kitchen on the ground floor at the rear of the main hall.
 

Once he made his presence known, the staff would spring into action. The efficient Mrs. Wirt would see that chambermaids aired, dusted and cleaned all the bedrooms starting with his own tonight. By tomorrow morning, the house’s furniture would all be unveiled. Under her exacting eye, parlormaids would freshen the drawing rooms on the first floor while Penfold the head butler would cast a critical eye over the under butler and all the footmen’s livery. The head gardener would see that his men made the property’s grounds spruce and supplied the house with cut flowers from the conservatory. And the head groom would have the stable in perfect order by nightfall.

Although Clun wasn’t expected for a month, he’d grown restless in Bath witnessing the first of the Horsemen, his friend Jeremy Maubrey, the tenth Duke of Ainsworth, descend into the madness also known as ‘falling in love.’ Not that Clun could blame him. The baron approved of the little apothecary who captured the duke’s heart and made a hash of his brains.
 

If one had to fall in love, Prudence Haversham would do; however, one did not have to fall in love to marry. Indeed, Clun had no intention of doing so. Not on a bet.
 

For umpteen generations, de Sayres married out of practical dynastic considerations and managed to muddle through yet another generation. Row upon row of portraits captured centuries of barons and their sullen-looking spouses. These husbands and wives kept the barony flourishing with a minimum of fuss and few scandals, however disgruntled they felt while doing so. Only one lord before him had married for love and Clun knew all too well how that ended.
 

Romantic love, as bruited about
ad nauseam
, was a myth perpetrated by unidentified female novelists and nincompoops. Unrealistic romantical expectations inevitably led to disappointment, bitterness and irreconcilable marital strife. One need only consider his parents’ marriage to know the truth of this.
 

Accordingly, Clun concluded that a sound, peaceable marriage required mutual honor, respect and wifely obedience. He wanted a sound marriage free of nincompoopery so he selected a spouse as his forebears had, based on rational considerations alone.

The baron had remained in Bath only long enough to attend the duke’s nuptials and wedding breakfast. Thus the first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was duly married in coincidental, but appropriate, grandeur at the local parish church, the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Bath.
 

Serving as groomsmen with Lord Clun, had been Mr. George Percy, second son of Viscount Rutgers and Lord Burton Seelye, second son of the Marquis of Exmoor.
⁶
Large as they were, standing ramrod straight near the altar, they were dwarfed by the 75-foot tall stone pillars holding up the spider web-like fan vaulted ceiling high overhead. Sunlight streamed through stained glass windows to illuminate the bride as she marched in business-like fashion down the nave on the arm of her assistant Mr. Murphy. The groom, God help him, grinned as if he had a vacant skull to let. And in that happy stupor, His Grace was properly, perpetually leg shackled to his apothecary before God, man and one beast, his huge dog, Attila.
 

After the Most Reverend Whomever had concluded the ceremony, the three Horsemen and three other members of the Royal Horse Guards Blue in dress uniforms paired off, drew swords and held them aloft to form a razor-sharp bower under which the happy couple fled.