The Convenient Arrangement (8 page)

When he dipped his head toward her and walked toward the door, she called to his back, “David had the right idea.”

“Excuse me?” he asked, turning.

“Dumping that coffee on you. It was, without question, the wrong thing to do, but it was the right idea. It's most unfortunate that it failed, however.”

“What failed?”

“That the sugar in your coffee could not sweeten your disposition. Mayhap next time, I shall suggest to him that he simply tip the sugar bowl over your head instead.” She pushed past him, leaving him gaping after her in amazement.

Oh, how she had hoped it would be different this morning. She had hoped
he
would be different this morning, but Lorenzo Wolfe was as irritating as he had been last night. Somehow, she must find a way to provide for her and David without Lorenzo's help, but how? She needed to ascertain an answer to that question … and soon before she dumped something over Lorenzo herself!

Five

Lorenzo wiped the back of his neck and wondered how much farther this corridor ran along the hillside. The air was close, and the walls bedecked with cobwebs. He doubted if anyone, other than Miss Urquhart who seemed quite at home even here, had been along this passage for years.

When Miss Urquhart did not pause as they passed yet another door, Lorenzo lingered and opened it. He sneezed.

“Dusty?” Valeria asked as she walked past.

He did not reply to the obvious. Looking in and trying not to breathe in too much of the dust clumped in every corner, he saw the room was empty except for a wooden bed frame and what looked like a small table. Now this was interesting! He had not guessed until now that Moorsea Manor might have once been a monastery. Although the title was as ancient as modern England, he had no idea when this house had come into the family.

His hand fisted on the dirty door frame. So many questions, and the only person who could answer them was an old woman who was half-crazy. He smiled. Mayhap Earl could shed some light on this. The old man seemed in full control of his brain, and he had owned that he had lived here for as long as Lorenzo's uncle.

Closing the door, he nearly bumped into David who was trying to peer past him. He gave the lad a chance to look in.

“Just like all the rest,” David grumbled. “I thought there would be something interesting out here.”

“I find this interesting.”

“That's no surprise.”

Trying to disregard the youngster's petulant tone, Lorenzo said, “You may not be surprised, but I am.”

“At what?”

“That you don't find this interesting.”

“Dirt and dust and broken furniture?”

“But it's more.”

“How is it more?”

He continued with the boy along the corridor. He had piqued David's curiosity, so now might be the time to win over the lad enough so that Lorenzo need not worry about coffee in his lap or a missing boot that somehow—and with David's help, he suspected—had found its way out onto a window ledge where it had collected an inch of rain last night. The leather was already hard and threatening to crack.

“This is the oldest part of the house, David. Who knows who might have stopped here? Mayhap Vikings who terrorized the coasts so many centuries ago, or Henry Tudor on his way to battle the forces of Richard III at Bosworth Field. It appears that this building caught the attention of Henry's son, for I believe these doors we are passing once led to the cells of monks.”

“Cells? Like dungeon cells?”

He shook his head and watched as David's enthusiasm drained away. “Cells were what the monks called their private chambers. This might have been a monastery before it was taken over by Henry VIII and sold to my ancestors.”

“Do you think there's a dungeon in here?” Obviously the boy had a single thought in his mind, and he would not be budged from it.

“I believe you found it last night.”

David scowled. “I did not!”

“From what Gil told me while he was searching for you the
first
time, the wine cellar might once have held prison cells.”

“I didn't see them.” He grinned. “But I can show you the way there now, and—”

“Whoa! We need to take the ladies into consideration. Miss Urquhart may not be able to manage those twisting stairs.”

“She's doing pretty well over there on those stones.”

Lorenzo looked past David and groaned. Miss Urquhart was trying, despite Valeria's pleas not to, to climb a pile of rocks to peer into a hole near the ceiling. Why was she interested in this when she had not stopped at a single door along this corridor? Mayhap she had dragged them all through here just for this. He could not allow her to break a limb or her neck, so he rushed up to her and took her arm.

“Leave off, my boy,” she ordered. “I want to see what is beyond.”

“It is too dangerous.”

“Don't treat me like a child.”

“I'm not.” He turned. “David, come here!”

“Lorenzo,” Valeria said, drawing more closely around her shoulders that garish shawl Miss Urquhart had persuaded her to wear, “you can't be thinking of having David crawl up there.”

“Why not? He's already crawled about the house elsewhere and escaped unscathed.”

“But he could get hurt here.”

He handed Miss Urquhart back to the floor, then stepped in front of the scree to keep her from climbing it again. Only then did he look at Valeria. Dismay furrowed her forehead beneath her hair that, even here in the dusty shadows, was a lustrous shade.

He folded her hand in his before the warning went off in his head. Too late, because the soft caress of her fingers trembling ever so lightly in his hand, sent that powerful pulse through him again. Why was he reacting so to her, a woman who vexed him beyond belief and considered him just as aggravating? He had offered other women his arm or a consoling hand, but never had experienced this delicious surge of sensation that strengthened and weakened him at the same time.

“Lorenzo?”

His name sounded like music as she spoke in a breathy whisper that warned he was not the only one aware of this confusing connection that seemed to have no rationale. Clasping her hand with his other one, he stepped nearer to her so he could gaze into her exquisite eyes. Her lips parted as if she were about to speak. He waited for her words, longing for the sweet melody of her voice to weave them into a cocoon where this sense he could not name might metamorphose into something even more incredible.

Suddenly she tensed and cried, “Lorenzo!”

He recoiled as if she had struck him. When she pointed past him, alarm erasing the softness from her eyes, he spun.

With a curse he knew he should not speak in the women's hearing, he plucked a too plucky Miss Urquhart from the rubble and set her firmly on her feet on the floor. He did not lower his eyes from her frightful glower.

“Scowl as you wish,” he said as he folded his arms in front of him, “but you shall not sway me from my opinion on this.
You
shall remain where you are. David will be our climber.”

“Now see here, my boy, I was climbing rocks before you were born. I may be climbing them after you have dropped off your perch.”

“That may be so, but you are not doing so today.”

Miss Urquhart muttered something which Lorenzo thought best that he did not hear. Turning to David, he offered the boy help by locking his fingers together and letting David put his foot on them. He lifted David easily most of the way to the ceiling. Even when the youngster had a good grip on the stones, Lorenzo stood close, his hands outstretched to catch him if the stack gave way.

“What do you see?” Valeria called as David pulled himself up to the hole by the ceiling.

“Just more piles of stone beyond here.” With disappointment on his face, David scrambled back down to the floor.

Miss Urquhart tapped him with the tip of her cane. “You are too young to take things for granted. Just because it looks like nothing more than jumbled rock, you should not assume—”

“That it's safe,” Lorenzo finished, earning a frown from both Miss Urquhart and David.

Valeria smiled and gripped his arm, squeezing gently. Lorenzo Wolfe might want to be a recluse, but he was no air-dreamer. He could see the inherent danger if David took it into his head to explore the ruined sections of the manor. As they turned to go back the way they had come, she whispered, “Thank you.”

“I shall have that hole sealed up without delay,” he replied as lowly. “I may not know your nephew well, but I recognize that eager expression of his. My cousin Corey usually wore it before he attempted to scale the highest tree or swing out of the hay mow and risk both life and limb. Fortunately, he only damaged the latter on his adventures.”

“He sounds like David. Even if you cut down every tree in Exmoor, he would find something to climb. He tried to go down the trellis at the back of my town house in London. He was lucky that he was close to the ground when it gave way. A sprained wrist was all he suffered.”

“If you wish, I can have Gil oversee him.”

“Gil? I believe Mrs. Ditwiller mentioned giving him a room near David's.”

He smiled. “I should have guessed she would have seen the commonsensical solution to this problem already. Gil has only a few more years behind him than young David, but he possesses good sense.”

Which David doesn't
. Valeria could not be angry at Lorenzo when her own mind had supplied the words he purposely had chosen not to say. Or had he? As he strode away to offer his arm to Miss Urquhart, Valeria sighed. Lorenzo was being princely with them, offering them a home and treating them with respect. Even if his main concern was with having someone keep an eye on David simply so his reading went undisturbed, Lorenzo's offer was generous and kind. She was an ungrateful wretch to see it as anything else.

But she did not want to be here. Everything that was familiar, everything that was comfortable had been lost when she was forced to sell her home in London. Here the quiet was too quiet. Her ears strained to hear wagon wheels like those that had rung along London's streets and voices other than the ones belonging to this household.

As she hurried to catch up with the others, she heard Miss Urquhart saying, “I don't know of a man named Earl who brings in wood for the hearths.”

“Mrs. Ditwiller is making a few changes,” Valeria said. “Mayhap that is a change she made.”

“Not a good idea.” Miss Urquhart aimed another of her scowls at Lorenzo. “You shouldn't let her change things that have been fine for years.”

“She is the housekeeper,” he replied, glancing at Valeria with a tired expression.

She wondered how else Miss Urquhart had been lambasting him before she rejoined the conversation. A surge of sympathy flooded her. She should not be lamenting her own situation when she should consider how Lorenzo's hopes for his inheritance had been dashed by all the obligations that came with it.

“And she shall be a fine housekeeper,” Valeria said with a smile. “You must give her a chance to do what she deems right, Miss Urquhart.”

“You are a lamb,” the older woman answered, “but you know nothing of Moorsea Manor. We have traditions that should not be disturbed.” She stopped in front of a set of double oak doors. “Traditions that are as old as this.” With a muttered groan, she threw the doors open.

Valeria heard Lorenzo gasp, but she could not manage even that as she stared at the room beyond the doors. Nothing in the simplicity of the corridor had suggested such grandeur would be waiting here. Stained glass glittered in the windows that were set about ten feet apart along the wall. There must be a dozen on each side, marking the enormity of what might have been the original manor house.

The gasp clogging her throat escaped when she realized what she had thought were just reflections of the colored glass on the opposite wall were elegant murals that encircled the room. A battle, as grand and glorious as the one embroidered in the Bayeux Tapestry, was being fought around the room. She guessed the painting must be over five centuries old, because its style had been disdained for many years.

An octagonal hearth was set in the center of the otherwise empty room. As she looked up, she saw smoke stains on the rafters over it. This room once had been much in use.

“What a perfect place for an assembly,” she whispered, not sure if she should speak more loudly here. Even so, her voice echoed oddly through the chamber. “You could fit half the Polite World in here. It must be larger than the Assembly Rooms in Bath.”

“Having an assembly here would be a mistake.” Lorenzo walked past her and gazed up at the roof.

“Oh, no!” She whirled around, wishing she could hear the lyrical notes of the first dance even now. “It's spacious and exotic and—”

“There are spiders in every corner and mice have taken up housekeeping in the walls.” He pointed to a small hole, then toward a broken window half-hidden by the rafters. “And if you look up, Valeria, you may notice they are not the only vermin who have made this their home.”

“Bats!” she gasped. “Where?”

“Right there.”

“I don't see them.”

He pointed. “Third rafter from the back wall.”

“I still don't see them.”

Wondering if she could not or would not, Lorenzo said, “Come with me. I'll show you.”

“But if there are bats—”

“They are asleep at this hour.”

“Are you certain?”

He gestured again at the windows high under the rafters. “As long as the sunshine comes through there, they will be dormant. They prefer the night.”

Lorenzo noted that Valeria kept a wary eye at the rafters overhead as they crossed the room. He had, he must own, the temptation to put his hand over his nape and draw up his collar to keep any of the creatures at bay. Glancing up at the broken windowpanes, he knew that the bats would not be banished from here until every possible entrance they might use was closed up. Another task to add to the long list he was making today.