Under the Kissing Bough (10 page)

He paused, seeming to sink in on himself, as if memories or pain consumed him. Concern for him overrode Eleanor's dislike of him, and she came forward. He really ought not tax himself in this fashion. Oh, how could she coax him to the comfort of his own rooms?

Before she reached his side, he roused. His glance—sharp and assessing—stopped her and put that nervous flutter back in her stomach. The man was worse than his son at that.

"You hunt?" he demanded.

"Hunt?" she echoed, feeling remarkably stupid.
"Hunt. Ride to hounds? Follow the chase? Dash after Charles Renauld? My wife knew how to lead the field. In fact, she started the tradition of the hunt meeting here at Christmas time."

Eleanor stiffened. She understood him at last. He intended to hold her to the standards of his late wife. She glanced at the beauty in the portrait. Well, she could not compete with that—not in beauty, or skills, or anything. So she had best be honest. She glanced at the earl again, struggling to phrase her words diplomatically.

"Well, do you, or don't you? It is not a difficult question, miss!"

Anger warmed her veins and she flashed back an answer. "I do not. It is a barbaric sport. And if I had my way it would be banned."

His eyes narrowed. "Squeamish, are you? Ha! You modern girls. Brought up with too much feeling and sentiment."

Heat washed Eleanor's face. "I see no fault in disapproving such an unequal contest. And I am not squeamish. If I were, I would faint to see you have so little regard for your own health."

He glared at her. "Pack of nonsense. Foxes must be hunted, and my well-being is my own concern."

"No, it is also your son's concern, and he is mine. And why must foxes be hunted? Because they eat a few chickens? For that we must cause them so much fear and pain, and turn their homes into nightmares and orphan their kits?"

"Rubbish. They're foxes. You cannot pretend they feel as we do. They're animals. Vermin."

She thought of how it did feel to be trapped in a room, too many bodies pressed close, too many avid eyes on her, too many sharp tongues looking to wound with even sharper words.

"Fear is something all creatures understand, my lord."

The earl's eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to tell her again what utter rot such naive sentiments were, but a softening in her eyes stopped him. Good God, the girl meant it. He shifted in his chair, and his movement caused the rug to slip from his lap. She came to him at once, picking up the blanket, smoothing into place, her touch firm and with none of the usual reluctance in the young to touch an aged, sick man.

The difference between her and that other one his son had brought to him struck him at once. What was her name? Clorinda, Christina? No, Cynthia. That was it. A pale girl with moonlight hair, and about as much substance in her.

This one still could not hold a candle to Amanda. But she had not run from him. And she had good hands. Elegant hands. Strong hands. He wanted his son married. He wanted the boy married soon. But, as of late, he had begun to wonder if he was doing wrong to push the lad into it. He'd had a dream last night of Amanda, of her unhappy, and superstition ran deep enough in him to make him wonder if it had been a message from her for him to stop pushing.

But that was rubbish as well. Was it not?

"Sit down," he ordered.

That mulish look came back to her mouth, but she glanced around and sat on the edge of the chair nearest him, her back straight, obedient as any simpering miss ought to be. She irritated him by acting so meek, and he fought the urge to be savage enough to drive her from the room in tears.

He honestly did want his son married, after all. But was she right for the lad?

Straightening, he turned his chair. His shaking hands made it difficult, but when she started to rise to help him, he waved her away.

When he could see Amanda's portrait, he relaxed back in that damn chair.

"D'you know how she died?" he asked, determined to find out if this Glover girl would do for his son, or if he ought to fix Geoffrey with another of Edward's girls.

She said nothing, only shook her head, her eyes enormous and dark in that small, oval face of hers. She looked a touch like a fox herself, with a hint of red in that sleek brown hair, and those wide brown eyes that stared at him as if she were a hunted creature.

He paused a moment, making her wait before he said, "She went out hunting with me in an utter downpour. Came home soaked and laughing about it. The fever came on that night. She wouldn't hear of the doctor being called. I summoned Ibbottson anyway. She died within the week. Influenza. Nothing Ibbottson could do for her. Nor I. Geoffrey was ten at the time, Andrew eight, and Patrick wasn't old enough to understand why his mother had to go to heaven without him."

He scowled. The place in his heart that Amanda had filled still ached, still lay empty and barren. He no longer wanted to cut short his own days, as he had once, trying every reckless thing he could. But he blamed those hard years for the foundation of this shaking palsy and every other ailment that now plagued him. Well, at least he'd had the boys to bring him back from his despair. And now he still had one task in life—to see Amanda's sons settled and happy, as she had asked. And, by God, he would do just that. Whether the lads liked it or not, he would.

Throwing off the memories, he looked up again to glare at this slip of a girl, this timid creature Geoffrey had brought home. Lord, why could the boy not take a headstrong beauty to wife?

She watched him from those huge eyes, and he waited, ready to snap at her for showing him any pity. He hated those mawkish misses who cried over every damn thing. But she only sat still, listening, attentive, understanding in her eyes.

Her silence, and the innocent vulnerability in her eyes, stirred an urge deep inside him not to dig at her any more. And that gave an opening for his conscience to whisper to him.

Tell her the truth, damn you. Let her make her own choices while she can.

Only where would that leave Geoffrey?

He had seen his son cut up terrible about that other, silly girl, and abandon himself to more vice than was good for anyone. The lad needed a wife. Needed someone who could love him. And he needed it before he damaged himself in ways that could not be repaired. The earl knew too much about that from his own past mistakes.

Damn, but he was getting maudlin himself. However, he also knew that Amanda would not have approved his plan, and this room had brought that full to an uneasy awareness.

He glanced at Amanda's portrait, and turned to the girl, determined to ask her straight out what she thought of this match, and what did she feel.

Before he could wet his dry lips, a knock on the door interrupted, and Geoffrey strode into the room.

For an instant an awkward silence held the room. Eleanor froze still. The earl scowled. And Geoff stood in the doorway, stare locked with his father, trying to keep his exasperation in check. Devil take it, but did the man wish to be buried with a Christmas service? He had heard from a servant of the earl's demand to come downstairs in a Bath Chair with wheels upon it. And then he had heard that the earl was ensconced in the countess' rooms with Eleanor.

For a brief moment, the thought teased Geoff that the earl had been play acting the whole bloody time, pretending to be deathly ill to gain his own way in this matter of his heir's marriage. After all, Simon Arthur Westerley, Earl of Herndon, Viscount Staines and Baron Wey had lived for sixty-two years upon this year, burying one wife, raising three sons, ruling his domain, and manipulating others for most of those years. Poor Cynthia had utterly dreaded the earl, and with reason for he had made her cry upon more than one occasion.

But Geoff dismissed such a notion. Ibbottson, not his father, had written him about the earl's limited time upon this earth. Besides, it would be like the earl, even while dying, to still wish to manage the world around him.

Still, the suspicion that something was afoot returned to tease Geoff as he studied his father's ruddy face, and his suspicions leaked into his voice, coming out in a clipped tone. "Good morning, Father. Eleanor. Do I intrude?"

Eleanor rose at once and went to the earl's side and placed a protective hand on his shoulder. "Good morning. Your father and I were just getting better acquainted."

Irritation nibbled at Geoff's already sore temper. Devil take it, did she think his father needed protection? He could almost laugh, if it did not chaff so much that she had leapt so readily to take his father's side.

The earl reached up and covered Eleanor's hand with his own, smiling, almost as if he had won a small victory. And then he said, his voice quavering slightly, "She's no ring yet. Thought you were to see to that."

Guilty enough to grow warm under his collar and cravat, Geoff glanced at Eleanor to see her reaction. She looked away, embarrassment staining her cheeks. Oh, Lord, she did care about a ring. Of course she would. But he had not been thinking of it, or of her, but only of his own misery. Well, that would end. He strode to the bedside to tug on the bell-pull, summoning a servant.

Bellows, the butler, answered quickly enough that Geoff suspected he had been standing at the ready. The staff must be buzzing with the news that the earl had come downstairs, and Bellows must have decided that a possible confrontation between father and son dictated the need for him to respond in person to this delicate situation.

"Bellows, please see that my father is made comfortable in his rooms again."

"So I'm to be ordered about in my own house?" the earl demanded, sounding more a petulant child than a nobleman.

Geoff turned to him. Eleanor still stood beside the earl, her hand on his shoulder, her eyes worried. For her sake, Geoff cut off the curt answer he had ready. Instead, he asked, his tone silky, "You feel well enough then to go about easily, do you?"

Hesitation flickered in the earl's eyes. He glanced up to Eleanor, then slumped in his chair, suddenly looking aged and tired again. "Old men don't feel well—ever. Nothing but aches, in bed or out of it. Oh, take me back to my rooms, Bellows. The young have no use for me."

Eleanor's lips parted as if she would protest, but Geoff stepped forward to catch her hand. "Bellows, please also bring the family jewels from the vault to the library. Miss Eleanor is going to choose a ring."

He smiled at her, and she stared up at him, her eyes utterly innocent and wide, and he knew that he would have to do more to protect her from his father's meddling. She was not up to dealing with such as the likes of the earl. It would not be an arduous task, for if Ibbottson was to be believed, there was not that much longer that he would have to deal with his father.

That thought chilled him.

After seeing his father escorted out, Geoff offered his arm to his bride-to-be and led her from his late mother's room and down the stairs. He did not wish to talk, and, thankfully, she did not either. He ushered her into the library, and then went to poke at the already blazing fire.

Eleanor went at once to stand beside the window and stare outside. A light snow had fallen, crisping the world as if God had sprinkled powdered sugar across the bare trees and the frozen ground. Not enough to form even a good snowball, but enough to make the ground dangerous. She hoped it stayed icy. With the ground slick and hard, there would be no fox hunting.

The door opened softly behind her, and Bellows came in, a black, leather-covered box in his hands. He put the box down upon a round rosewood table that stood near the fire, beside the tall-backed tapestry chairs and then gave a small bow.

Geoff thanked the butler, waited for the man to leave, and then told Eleanor to come and choose a ring.

She came to his side, slowly, wishing he would pick something for her. Would he never give her anything?

Geoff opened the lid and pulled out two drawers from the front. "Which would you like—diamond, emerald, ruby, sapphire?"

Staring at the dazzling array of stones, Eleanor's breath caught in her chest. These shimmering colors drew a greed from her that she had never known to exist, and she felt as if she were a child again being offered a tray of sugared fruits at Christmas. She wanted to take more than one.

The jewels lay against black velvet: square green emeralds in a necklace, diamonds glinted from a broach, rubies that glinted like red eyes winked from a long necklace, and sapphires, that faded when compared with Geoffrey's eyes, still dazzled her. Rings, bracelets, pendants. Jewels enough to make even her appear breath-taking.

"The tradition in our family is for the bride to have a diamond ring. There's some ancient Italian story in the family about diamonds being formed from the fires of love. I have no idea where the tale came from, and it does not seem to have much to do with us. However, anything less than a precious stone and some might whisper that I do not value you."

An odd tightness gathered around Eleanor's chest.

A precious stone or others would think he did not consider her precious? They would think the truth. But she could not say that to him.

Instead, she frowned and said, quite honestly, "It is a pity my eyes are not blue or green, for then I could simply choose something to match."

She heard the rustle of his coat and then his scent—all warmth and male—wafted closer. He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning her head, lifting her face to him. And she let him, amazed that he would touch her so and not daring even to breathe for fear she might lose that strong, vibrant contact.

"It isn't a pity," he said, his voice drifting to a rumble that vibrated in her chest. "Your eyes flash gold at times, and to match that would take the finest topaz. Only people would take it wrong if you wore something so trumpery."

The fraction of a smile lifted the corner of his mouth, and then his thumb caressed the skin just under her lower lip in the merest graze. Her skin quivered from his touch, and her pulse leapt to a wild, erratic tempo.

She fought to remember that worldly, practiced gentleman such as him thought nothing of such a gesture.

Using the excuse of the gems to consider, she turned away, pulling back from him. And from the corner of her eye she glimpsed him frown and fold his hands behind his back.

"Choose something, Eleanor. And you do not even have to use your card to get what you want now," Geoff said, quite deliberately using her Christian name, half hoping to provoke her into an argument. But she would never argue with him. No. She was a lady. Well bred. Refined. Better than he deserved.

Tensing his jaw until his teeth hurt, he watched her. She stood with her head bent over the jewels. Her tea-dark hair had been put up, but stray wisps had come loose to caress the back of her elegant, white neck. The perverse desire rose to touch his lips to where those sable strands lay, to stroke his fingers across that skin which looked so soft.

He looked away, angry with himself. It was only a reaction to seeing Cynthia. He was just trying to obliterate her with sensations. With Eleanor. As he had done in London with any woman he could buy. It was so unfair to Eleanor to think of using her in that way. And he despised himself all the more for, even though he knew it to be wrong, he still wanted her that way. He longed for her softness. He ached for her to touch him with understanding and patience, and for her to champion him as she had his father.

But their bargain allowed no such dealings between them. They had an arrangement. Or they would if she ever thought to name what she wanted from him.

Her voice, soft as a kitten's, pulled his attention back. "This one, please."

He glanced at the ring she indicated. A small sapphire stone, pear cut, glinting with violet depths and hints of rare green fire. She had good taste in stone, he thought, approving, and half-wishing that she was the sort of woman he could buy with such gems.

Plucking the ring from its black velvet nest, he took her hand. Her cold fingers trembled under his touch. His stomach knotted. Lord, he must frighten her terribly.

He watched the pulse flutter rapidly in her throat as he slipped the ring onto her finger. In just a short number of days he would do that as the vicar intoned, "With this ring, I thee wed." Cold flooded his own hands from his fingertips to his wrists.

And then the ring stuck tight before it even passed over her knuckle. He pushed, but there was no moving it further, and so he took it off again.

Slipping the ring into his waistcoat pocket, he gave her a weak smile. Something meant to console her, and himself. "I shall have it resized in Guildford."

"Thank you," she said. She stood there a moment more, glancing about her, before she dropped a meek curtsy and fled from him. No, not fled, merely walked brisk, her back straight, to the door, and let herself out. No scene. No tears. Thank God, not as Cynthia had fled from his kisses and touches in the garden when he had tried to make love to her.

He heard the door shut behind Eleanor. Then he covered his eyes with his hand and pressed his temples to stop the pounding. And he tried to obliterate the feeling that it was a bad omen that the ring she had chosen did not fit. A very bad omen indeed.

* * *

Over the next few days, Geoff found no time to take Eleanor's ring into Guildford. There was a house to decorate, and redecorate, and add yet more pine and seasonal cheer to please his father. Dinners had to be arranged and attended, so that neighbors could meet the future Countess of Herndon, and so that Rushton and his family could be kept well-entertained. Tenants had to be visited and the estate managed. It also seemed as if one or the other of the Glover girls—never Eleanor—always had some task for him which involved their sister, and that one of his brothers had an opposite responsibility for his attention. Their tugging at him irritated, but he knew his duty as a host, and so he did his best to please them all.

Except when it came to spending any time with Eleanor.

Her, he avoided. And he kept himself too busy to even think of her, except in his bed at night, and in the early morn, when he lay upon his sheets, wakeful and restless and hating himself for what he was going to do to her. He was gentleman enough that he would go through with this marriage. They had an agreement, after all. But he very much feared that he was also devil enough to then use her body to find forgetfulness as he had used the women in London.

Those women he had paid—or they had used him in turn. But Eleanor, wide-eyed, innocent Eleanor, knew nothing of how a man could use a woman to slake his desires, or of a man's need for mindless passion in tangled arms and sweated bodies, or how a man's lust could overpower all sense and thought and will.

He did not want to be the man who sullied Eleanor by teaching her any of those things. So, he would have to find it in him to be a decent husband. To respect her and give her no cause for complaint. And, on their wedding night, he would treat her with the delicacy and restraint she deserved. By his honor he would.

And so he fought those dangerous urges that had begun to haunt his dreams of how he longed to pillow his head upon her breast. How her hands might smooth his hair and would feel upon his skin. He kept himself always doing something so that he would not notice her shy, intriguing smile. He tried to ignore her melodic voice. And he forced himself not to watch her slim, petite figure as she moved about the house.

But his mood darkened each day, and he finally decided, as he rode back from meeting the master of the Ashford Hunt to talk about the upcoming meet, that all his unrest was really due to that damnable card she still held.

What did she want from him? From this marriage? He could not even guess what it might be, and so her possible demands began to assume larger and larger dimensions in his mind. She had admired the gems, but had only asked for one ring—nothing else, even though the rest would be hers by her rights as the next countess. So what else might she want? Children? No, that was a given. A house? She seemed to enjoy Westerley, so why would she want more?

And then it struck him. His hand tightened on the reins and Donegal stopped, tossing his head at the sudden check.

Would she want to take a lover?

He gave a rude snort at such an absurd notion. Dropping the reins, he urged Donegal forward. A lover! And, yet, why not wish for someone who could give her the one thing that he could not—a man who could give her his heart? Perhaps it would not even be a man to share her bed, but one of those insufferable fops who wrote damnable poetry, sent flowers and adored paying court to titled ladies?

Donegal shied again under Geoff's tight hand and he had to force himself to relax his stiff, gloved fingers.

Devil take it, but she couldn't want that. Could she?

With a scowl, he rode up the drive to Westerley, the gravel crunching under Donegal's hooves. Donegal's warmth seeped into Geoff's legs, but the rest of him felt as if he were made of ice. The wind whipped the capes on his greatcoat up to slap his face, tugged at his hat, and sent the bite of sleet onto his cheeks. He ignored it all.