Captain Langthorne's Proposal

‘Oh, that feminine curiosity you all share—however strikingly you differ in other ways,’ he said, with a secretive smile that probably meant he missed nothing. ‘I found some things I expected and others I certainly did not.’

‘Well, now I know. Pray don’t be more infuriating than you can help, Sir Adam—even if you are a man and therefore can’t avoid it.’

‘Well, that’s put me in my place,’ he lied blithely. ‘But if you must know the vault had been opened lately, as I’m sure you suspected after hearing Wharton’s fanciful tale. The grass around it was torn, as if something heavy was dragged over it. Why anyone should disturb the dead when there must be so many less macabre hiding places in the neighbourhood is currently beyond me, but I did find this,’ he told her, taking the reins in one hand while he dug in his pocket. He handed a small object to her with yet another frisson of shock when their fingers touched.

Serena wondered if he felt it too, but if he did nothing showed on his face as he concentrated on his pair once more and she forced herself to look coolly composed as she examined the object he had passed her. It was a button of distinctive design, still attached to a piece of dark grey cloth. An elusive memory stirred at the back of Serena’s mind, but however hard she tried she couldn’t make it tangible.

‘It looks vaguely familiar,’ she finally admitted, ‘but anyone we know could have lost it in the village churchyard.’

‘It has been torn off in some sort of accident—or an argument, perhaps. No man would have a button wrenched off like that and not notice unless he were preoccupied with something very urgent indeed.’

‘Yet until we discover something illegal has taken place we’re as guilty of flying at phantoms as any gothic heroine.’

‘Speak for yourself, my lady. Nobody ever accused me of being a heroine before.’

And nobody ever would, she decided, with considerable exasperation at his wilful misunderstanding. ‘It amazes me that Rachel never pushed you into the lake when you were children, Sir Adam.’

‘Not for want of trying. But, being five years younger than I am, she was always too small to manage it on her own.’

‘What a shame I didn’t know you both better then; somehow we could have soaked you between us.’

‘In your presence I would have been on my best behaviour even in my unregenerate days,’ he said, with such a mix of teasing and admiration that she felt the breath catch in her throat.

‘You regarded me as a scrawny and irritating chit, not worth knowing because I couldn’t play cricket. Believe me, I’m liberally supplied with male cousins who left me in no doubt as to the general inferiority of the female half of the population when they were home for the holidays, so there’s no need to pretend you were any different,’ she managed, coolly enough.

‘Scrubby brats!’ he said, with apparent amusement and far too much understanding of her contrary emotions in that teasing smile. ‘Point them out to me when we’re in town and I’ll dunk them in the Serpentine.’

Serena couldn’t suppress a delighted chuckle over her mental picture of the scapegrace Marquis of Helvelin, immaculate Mr Julius Brafford and the very dashing Lieutenant the Honourable Nicholas Prestbury picking mud and pondweed off their normally resplendent persons. ‘Well, you could try,’ she said with a smile, as she reckoned up the combined strength of her three tall and muscular relatives.

‘You should laugh more often, your ladyship. It makes you young and carefree instead of overburdened and old before your time.’

So he thought she looked haggish, did he? Her smile wiped effectively off her face, Serena frowned, then gazed haughtily at the distant Welsh Hills to prove he meant nothing to her whatsoever.

‘I am a widow,’ she informed him majestically. ‘And I live a very comfortable life, thank you very much.’

‘That you do not,’ he replied, as if he would like to shake her for taking such an optimistic view of her situation. ‘You’re exploited by your mother-in-law, and when not relieving her of her duties or fussing over her you’re at the mercy of a sister-in-law who delights in setting your consequence at nought and her own A1 at Lloyd’s. What I quite fail to fathom in the face of such wilful self-abasement is why on earth you endure it and what Helvelin is about to let you, considering he’s head of your family. If you’re truly content with such a lot you’re far more poor-spirited than I ever thought you.’

‘I’m nothing of the sort,’ she snapped furiously, trying hard not to let him see how that brutal assessment of her character had hurt. ‘And I’ll thank you to leave my cousin out of this and mind your own business.’

‘No. You’re Rachel’s best friend, and it concerns her deeply that you let yourself be trampled on by a family who don’t really appreciate you. Even if you won’t allow me to be concerned on my own account, you can’t forbid me to worry about my sister’s friend.’

His voice was gruff with emotions she dared not examine too closely. Her breathing threatened to stall in the face of any chances she might be about to throw away—the main one being the possibility Adam Langthorne might care about her. That could not, must not be. There was no future in such thoughts on either side. Even if she loved him—and so far she’d managed to avoid that trap—she couldn’t marry him. Come to think about it, she couldn’t consider it especially if she loved him.

‘I suppose I could always join my aunt in Bath for a while,’ she said without enthusiasm.

‘Where you’ll run her household and look after Helvelin’s tribe of sisters instead of being at the beck and call of your family by marriage, I suppose? You have a way of humbling a man with your choices to avoid him that is without parallel, Lady Summerton,’ he replied austerely.

Inflicting pain on Sir Adam Langthorne was difficult, but less unthinkable than seeing him grow restless and bored with her. ‘I feel very real affection for my cousins, as I believe they do for me. But they have a doting mama and little need of me, and I do like to be busy.’

‘Yet you just made it sound as if your boxes are packed and your farewells all but complete. Could it be that you are less convinced than you sound, my lady?’

‘I have no wish to be a burden.’

‘Anyone less likely to be a charge on any household she became part of I find it hard to imagine. You overflow with misplaced loyalty to those who don’t deserve it, and begrudge yourself to those who’d value it way above rubies.’

‘That I don’t. I value true affection and consideration far above duty,’ she said stiffly.

‘Then prove it and come to London with Rachel, who surely deserves your friendship and loyalty even if I don’t. Prove you mean it, Lady Summerton, instead of revelling in the heady delights of sacrificing yourself on the altar of family duty in Bath instead of Herefordshire.’

‘I can’t,’ she replied in a hard little voice, trying not to slavishly watch for his reaction to her denial.

She knew without looking that his eyes would be flinty now, and his sensuous mouth set in a disapproving line. It was an effect she had been striving for these many weeks, after all, but she couldn’t resist a sideways glance at him, despite destroying any admiration he had for her once and for all. To her amazement he was smiling at her as warmly as if she had agreed to his ridiculous scheme as eagerly as a schoolgirl.

‘You mean you won’t let yourself, however strong the temptation?’ he asked with considerable satisfaction, and seemed to require no answer. ‘You have no idea how flattering it is to be regarded as so dangerously irresistible that a lady of character dares not risk my company lest she succumb to my fatal charm.’

‘Pray don’t congratulate yourself on reaching that ridiculous conclusion, Sir Adam,’ she replied stoically, although of course it was true. Trust him to deduce exactly why she was refusing such a tempting offer. ‘You must have every single one of your attics to let to truly believe no lady dares spend time in your company lest she falls at your feet in a frenzy of gratitude and infatuation.’

‘Well that’s properly put me in my place. If I might suggest you take a few lessons in rebuffing a gentleman’s hopes and dreams with finesse before you brave London society once more, Lady Summerton? Or perhaps it should be the other way about and your potential suitors are the ones who need their courage honed by an expert? At least giving lessons to them will help me pass any tedious moments during our stay, and I feel uniquely placed to offer such forlorn hopes my wise counsel.’

‘You can’t possibly live with us!’ she heard herself say, as if everything was settled and nothing left to do but decide where they would reside.

‘I really don’t see why not. Even the most exacting chaperon would trust your reputation to Cousin Estelle and my sister.’

‘Your cousin wouldn’t notice if you held an orgy under her very nose!’

‘An interesting notion, but I think I can restrain myself. And my sister would be justly furious if we abandoned her to Cousin Estelle’s tender mercies. She would never see the outside of the nearest library or Hatchards.’

‘You would be there,’ Serena protested, but her resolution was faltering.

She recalled the circus that was the London season for debutantes such as she and Rachel had once been with a shudder. To leave Rachel to face all that in the care of bookish, otherworldly Miss Langthorne would be distinctly unfriendly, and she knew she couldn’t do it.

‘My presence will make matters worse,’ she defended herself weakly, feeling she was leading a forlorn hope against a superior tactician.

‘Rubbish. Nothing could be worse than poor Rachel spending months being carted from one blue-stocking salon to another on my cousin’s coattails, and you know it—unless you’ve become as blue as my esteemed relative.’

‘You know perfectly well I haven’t,’ she told him, ‘and nobody could call Miss Langthorne formidable,’ she added lamely, quite ruining her effect.

‘I prefer to call her a force of nature,’ her undutiful cousin said with a surprisingly affectionate smile for a relative who benignly ignored him and everyone else most of the time.

‘That’s one alternative, I suppose.’

‘It is the only description I ever found that fitted her.’

‘As she has a reputation for speaking her mind, I can’t think why you consider her a suitable chaperon for myself or your sister, given that she will doubtless refuse to attend any event that’s unlikely to amuse or interest her.’

‘Which is precisely why I need your presence. Cousin Estelle, eccentric though she might be, would never permit immorality to flourish under any roof where she was residing,’ he replied, with every appearance of shocked virtue himself. ‘Any more than I would dream of suggesting it.’

‘I should stop right there, Sir Adam. You were doing so well until you got carried away,’ she said, with a frown that was only partly in jest.

‘Then ignore my pleas and come for Rachel’s sake. It could be a bigger disaster than her first season if you don’t support her.’

‘I really don’t see what I can do that any other widowed lady might not do better,’ she protested.

‘You have the sophistication of taste to see my sister is dressed to suit her own looks, rather than those of whichever blonde beauty the dressmakers are promoting this season—or you have when you choose to employ it,’ he said, with a disapproving glance at her very plain gown and shabby cloak.

‘You have a way of flattering a lady that is almost unparallelled, Sir Adam,’ she forced herself to parry lightly, but he had given her pause for thought and she suspected he knew it.

‘What do you think the Bond Street Beaux would say about my sister if she turned up in the salons of the ton in her current guise?’ he challenged her.

‘Poor Rachel,’ she said unwarily, as she considered her friend as she had last seen her clad in a tobacco-brown stuff gown that had never been fashionable, even in the dim and distant past when the village dressmaker had made it up for her.

‘Then you’ll do it?’

‘I’ll talk to Rachel, and if she truly wishes to go I’ll support her in any way I can.’

‘Hmm, an admirably evasive reply. You’ll support her, but is that to be from a distance or at her side, where she needs you?’

‘Where she needs me, of course. It’s time I returned the favour.’

Chapter Four

Sir Adam gave her a sharp look, but Serena focused her attention on the east lodge of Windham looming on the horizon as if she had never seen it before. She had never discussed the darkest days of her marriage and widowhood with anyone but Janet and Rachel, from whom it had been impossible to hide her unhappiness, and she refused to start now.

‘Thank you,’ he finally said quietly, and she turned to look at him at last.

She could see nothing on his face but relief that she had agreed to his scheme. He was a good and thoughtful brother, yet she couldn’t dismiss the idea that she had just conceded the first round of a match that was more important than she knew—and to a master of strategy as well.

‘Unless you wish to be invited for dinner at Windham tonight, I suggest you set me down by the picket gate into the park, Sir Adam, so I can walk to the Dower House unremarked,’ she said, rather helpfully for someone who had been so neatly outmanoeuvred.

‘Will you be there?’ he asked, and she tried not to care that he asked as if his enjoyment depended on her company.

‘Luckily my sister-in-law takes my no for an answer, but you wouldn’t be so fortunate, I dare say,’ she said lightly.

‘Then I shall do as you say, my lady, and trust such humility will lead you to greet me with a little more than bare civility when next we meet.’

‘I hope you don’t think me so rude as to ignore my neighbours, sir?’

‘Well, that is good. I must put myself forward more often,’ he replied, with a decided twinkle back in those rather fascinating eyes.

She really must concentrate harder on winning their battle of words and wills if she was to see him every day when they went to London, she decided. Refusing to dwell on his victory, she graciously allowed him to tie the reins to the kickboard once more and hand her down with due ceremony.

‘Thank you, Sir Adam. You have saved me from arriving home all aglow from walking home on a warm day.’

‘I have, haven’t I? What a splendid gentleman I am,’ he said, in a self-satisfied tone that had her hiding a smile despite her resolution to be all dignity and propriety with him from now on.

‘That you’re not. I’m too much the lady to say what you really are.’

‘Very commendable, my dear,’ he replied, then gave her such a warm smile before he touched his hat brim with his whip and drove away that he left her feeling as flustered as if she had run all the way home after all.

When she reached the Dower House her flushed cheeks and windblown hair led the Dowager to inform her that she looked like a milkmaid, which gave Serena a good excuse to seek out the privacy of her chamber while she restored her appearance to suitably subdued order. A quiet evening at the Dower House with a cosy fire and a good book was, she decided, just what a female under siege from a determined gentleman and her own wayward inclinations needed to restore her peace of mind.

Sir Adam made sure the whole household knew he would be busy with his account books and correspondence that evening. He even managed to give them some attention—until his sister came in to inform him he was very poor company and she was going to bed. He murmured something suitably infuriating, before going back to his figuring as if lost in concentration, then sat back in his comfortable chair, feeling vaguely guilty as she wished him an impatient goodnight and left with a sharp click of the door that told him she would have slammed it if she wasn’t too much of a lady nowadays.

If he let Rachel get so much as a sniff of his planned trip to Thornfield churchyard in the middle of the night she would attach herself to his coattails like a burr. He grinned as he recalled their youthful misdeeds, and decided their neighbours must have windmills in their heads to think the outwardly proper Miss Langthorne bore the slightest resemblance to the real woman under that false image. Frowning now, he thought of another deceptively proper young woman, and wondered what on earth he had been about to encourage Lady Serena to join him on this midnight adventure. At least now he was away from her incendiary presence and thinking rationally again. What would he have done if she had taken him at his word? Although, given the impulsive nature he was certain only lay dormant under all that propriety, it was better to know where she was and what she was up to, it had been pure folly to even hint he would welcome her presence tonight.

He lay back in his chair and contemplated the youthful widow Lady Summerton until his glower gave way to a wolfish smile that would probably have given Serena palpitations had she only seen it. She thought herself so different from the spirited young woman she had once been, before George Cambray had convinced her that all that made her unique was deplorable. What a pompous dolt the man had been! To win such a wife, then fail to realise his extraordinary luck confirmed every doubt Adam ever had about the Cambrays’ collective intelligence—and George’s lack of it in particular.

Yet perhaps he had the late Earl to thank for giving his wife such a disgust of marriage that she was still widowed now, when Adam had come home. The very idea of another man coming between him and his fate made his fists clench and the heady passions he had been holding in check since the day he came home threaten to slip their leash at long last, so that he might march over to Windham Dower House and drag the stubborn female home to his bed, will she nil she.

For the thousandth time he ordered those untamed longings back to their kennel and told them to stop there until they could have their day. If it took years, somehow he would get her to trust the reckless passion that slumbered under her prim exterior. At least Summerton hadn’t quite managed to stifle the warm, sensuous woman he still caught a tantalising glimpse of now and again under all that protective starch, but he must give her ladyship room to realise that what she now considered the shady side of her nature could be set free after all, without disaster inevitably following.

There had been one or two cracks in her determination to hold him at arm’s length lately, and he planned to widen them at every opportunity. Perhaps he should give her a little longer to accustom herself to being wanted as he wanted her, but he wasn’t a plaster saint and his patience was beginning to wear out. There had been a spark of very feminine interest in her lovely azure eyes today, before she’d retreated behind her proper façade and pretended they were little more than strangers.

It was high time he fanned the sparks into flame. If he hesitated she might take herself off to Bath after all, just to make their lives difficult. Fighting the surge of primitive, possessive emotion threatening to put everything else out of his head, he reminded himself he had other business to deal with tonight. Somehow he had to forget the lovely Serena, Countess of Summerton, and give his full attention to the task in hand. He could spare tonight for whoever was using such a grisly hiding place, but woe betide them if they got between him and his true quarry too often.

Shrugging out of his well-cut evening coat and elegant waistcoat, he swiftly replaced his snowy linen with a dark shirt and stock he had hidden in the window seat earlier, then flung his grandfather’s old cloak over it all, listening for any sign of wakefulness. Nothing indicated anyone was stirring, so the household must have left him to his figuring and gone to bed as ordered. Carrying the soft-soled boots he had secreted here for midnight wanderings, he raised the sash on the nearest window and silently closed it after himself before ghosting out into the night.

Even as he rode towards Thornfield, fugitive thoughts of Lady Serena wouldn’t quite lie. Surely she wouldn’t take him at his word and join him after her vehement denial and her current love affair with propriety? Or would she? He shook his head impatiently. Of course she wouldn’t. If she loved him Serena might find it impossible to stay safe and warm in her bed while he took the mild risk of watching for the unwary miscreants using the Canderton vault, but at the moment he didn’t think she knew what love was. He stifled the thought that if she turned up after all it might show that she cared more than she knew, and tried to dismiss the idea that even the best of women were devilish unpredictable at times.

There was only one thing wrong with Serena’s plan to spend an evening in splendid solitude—and he was well over six feet tall and possibly the most infuriating gentleman she had ever met. She knew Sir Adam would go to Thornfield Church at dead of night to find out what was going on, and that he would probably do so alone. The thought of him lying there injured and needy until he was found in the morning, after some mysterious attacker had done his worst against that magnificent body by some foul means, ruined her longed-for respite.

At last she put aside the book that had failed to capture her attention and tried to think about the whole business logically. She considered the macabre idea of body-snatchers coming this far into the country to ply their gruesome trade, and concluded that nothing in that particular vault was fresh enough to interest them even if they did. With a shudder at the very idea, she told herself she had no wish to set foot in a churchyard at any hour of the night, and parted the heavy curtains to stare out into the darkness and carefully consider how she could get there undetected.

Suddenly there was no question of her staying here, and all there was left to do was to get out of the house without anyone knowing she had gone. Telling the butler she would retire early, then waiting impatiently for the nightly rituals to roll inexorably on, she knew she should be feeling guilty at such deception. Instead she was impatient at having to wait so long before she could safely slip back downstairs. Having to undress and get into bed was a confounded nuisance, of course, but she managed a few artistic yawns before ordering her maid off to bed too.

Somehow Serena made herself wait, listening to the soft sounds of an occasional footfall on a creaking board as everyone finally went to bed. At last it seemed safe to get up and dress in an old black round gown she usually wore to walk the dogs, before draping a black crepe shawl over her unfortunate hair. Carrying kid half boots soft enough not to make much noise when she ran across the cobbled stable yard, she left her room, feeling as exhilarated as an errant schoolgirl escaping her stern governess.

Long ago she and her cousins had crept about Heron House in the dark when they were supposed to be in bed. Practising their staff work, her cousin Nick had called it at the time. According to her father’s household they needed no practice, already being limbs of Satan who would rather make mischief all night long than sleep quietly in their beds like good Christian children. Serena smiled and felt that childhood daredevilry rise on a shiver of pure rebellion as the dignified propriety George had insisted on his countess assuming at all times cracked irreversibly. Looking back, she realised it had just been easier to comply with his demands than argue with them and she was suddenly ashamed of what her marriage had made of her.

She could think of few things George would have hated more than to see her now. He would have been furious, she decided, with an impish grin her childhood partners in crime would have recognised with glee. She briefly wondered if she was really worried about Sir Adam’s fate, or just intent on enjoying her unaccustomed freedom. A bit of both she concluded, as that unwelcome picture of him lying injured in the darkness forced itself into her mind once more. Bracing her shoulders, and telling herself not to be a pessimist, she slipped the key to the garden door out of her pocket and turned it so stealthily it moved the mechanisms without so much as a click. At least good housekeeping occasionally paid off, she decided wryly, relocking the door and slipping the key onto a chain round her neck before she set off across the garden, blessing her night eyes for rapidly adjusting to the darkness.