Housemaid Heiress

His voice was gentle as he contemplated the privations of an orphan’s life, and Thea felt guilty once more as she considered her very privileged existence as one until just lately. Grandfather had given her everything she asked for, apart from stubbornly insisting she must wed a man with a title. He even specified it in his will, and of course Granby had a title. She shuddered at the very thought and moved closer to the warmth of the fire.

‘They didn’t hurt you, I hope?’

He had evidently seen that shiver. She felt the burden of untruth weigh heavy on her slender shoulders, but too much depended on her staying out of the Winfordes’ clutches to resort to the truth now.

‘No, but I had to run away from my last place.’

‘Considering you find this place preferable, I can only imagine that the alternative must have been dire indeed.’

‘It was,’ she replied and could not hold back another shudder as she recalled the repulsive feel of Granby’s damp hands roughly thrusting at the neck of her gown as she gagged from sheer horror.

‘Not all men are brutes, you know.’

‘No, some try honey before resorting to vinegar,’ she said cynically, recalling some of the titled suitors Grandfather had lured to Hardy House.

Those poor and desperate men had soon put her off becoming Lady This or the Marchioness of That.

‘You have been unfortunate. Somewhere there must be an honest young fellow just waiting to value your youth and wit.’

‘Yes, most of them can’t wait to stone me from any parish that might be burdened with the burying of me, after they let me starve to death within their bounds,’ she said bitterly.

‘With a chance of earning an honest living, you might meet someone.’

‘And, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, now what of this poor man you were supposed to be so concerned about?’

‘Is the water hot yet?’

‘Any hotter and it’ll do him more harm than good.’

‘Hold that light as steady as you can then, while I see what the idiot’s done to himself this time.’

Thea gulped and reminded herself that she was a soldier’s daughter, even if she could hardly remember either of her parents. Her mother had eloped with a handsome subaltern, so perhaps this ridiculous attraction to the military was in her blood. Within five years both her parents were dead and her grandfather insisted she carry his name, then made the best of a bad job.

It took all her flagging courage to do the same now, and she gasped in shock when the warm water finally soaked the poor man’s dressing off, and revealed the angry slash marring the length of his upper arm. She gazed down at the puckered wound and the number of stitches holding it closed, and wondered how the unconscious man could have borne the jarring that riding must have inflicted on his wounds.

‘He should be in bed!’ she exclaimed.

‘If I hadn’t brought him with me, he was threatening to set out alone as soon as my back was turned. He always was stubborn as a mule.’

Thinking of this man’s determination to get his own way by fair means or foul, Thea raised her brows sceptically in the useful gesture she had learnt from her bitter enemy. He flashed her an unrepentant grin, then distracted her from thinking about the leap of her heart that it had caused her by bending down to sniff the wound.

‘According to his long-suffering doctor, if it starts to smell sweet I’m to get him to a sawbones as fast as I can tie him to his horse and force him there. Otherwise the damn fool stands as much chance of keeping his beloved arm as he might if he had had the sense to stay in bed in the first place.’

‘In other words, he’s getting better?’

‘So I concluded, but when he fainted on me tonight I began to think he was as big an idiot as his physician.’

‘And instead he’s just a run-of-the-mill idiot?’

He chuckled. ‘Nothing about Mad Nick is commonplace.’

‘Nevertheless you are very fond of him, I think?’

‘Maybe,’ he said, but Thea had seen his affection for his relative in his actions tonight and perhaps he thought it was too late to pretend to mere duty. ‘We both suffered for our respective mothers’ sins, so I understand him better than most, I suppose.’

‘I don’t see how you could be made to suffer for your mother’s deeds.’ She forced bitterness into her voice by remembering her grandfather and his twin brother, abandoned on the doorstep of the foundling hospital.

‘Oh, we weren’t, at least not in the way you must have been. Anyway, I must get this mess cleaned and rebandaged, so, for the sake of Nick’s sensibilities, perhaps you could water the horses and give him freedom to swear like one of his troopers? Not even he can sleep through that, and you will inhibit him sadly.’

She hesitated, fighting her fear of the dark wood.

‘Take this if it’ll make you feel better,’ he offered, handing her an evil-looking pistol, which she examined as if it might bite. ‘It’s loaded, so just draw this back and pull the trigger when you’re close enough to disable your quarry.’

Thea gulped as she contemplated actually using a gun on her fellow man. Even if Granby was lurking out there in the darkness, she would not be able to shoot him, so she pulled back from it with horror.

‘Couldn’t I scream for you?’

‘It might be too late by the time I find you, but since this is England and black night I dare say you’ll be safe enough.’

‘Yes, I dare say,’ she said, with the oddest feeling of disappointment she had ever suffered in her life because he didn’t think her worth protecting.

‘Well, then, if you would not mind, Miss…We appear to have omitted to introduce ourselves. The gentleman on the floor is Captain Nicholas Prestbury of the 10th Hussars and I am Major Marcus Ashfield of the 95th Rifles and at your service, ma’am,’ he said with a half-mocking bow.

She bobbed him a perfunctory curtsy, copied from those long-suffering maids at Hardy House. ‘Hetty Smith, Major,’ she lied.

‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Smith.’

‘I doubt that, sir.’

‘How did you come to that conclusion, my dear?’ he asked, acute interest suddenly lighting his dark gaze.

‘I ain’t your dear.’

‘Odd how that accent of yours comes and goes, is it not?’ he mused and Thea cursed her own carelessness, even as she wondered how she could explain her lapses.

‘Now then, children, I’m not up to playing referee,’ a weak voice chided from the floor where the sufferer lay.

‘The devil—how long have you been awake?’

‘Long enough, Marco, long enough.’

‘You always had peculiar ideas of entertainment.’

‘I hail from a peculiar family.’

‘And are commonly considered the pinnacle of our eccentricity.’

‘I don’t usually waste time interrogating pretty girls in the middle of the night, so I could argue with that, were I feeling up to it.’

‘No doubt you soon will be, so if you will excuse us, Miss Smith?’

‘You’ll come if I scream?’

‘Trust me,’ he said with a rueful smile that did something to her heartbeat.

Dazed, Thea went out into the night without her usual feeling of dread dogging her every step. She doubted Granby’s thugs would be a match for her tall rifleman and his fearsome artillery, so at least tonight she was unlikely to be captured and forced up the aisle.

Murmuring soft endearments to reassure the nervous black charger, she carefully untied his reins. The stream ran only yards from the back of the hut and she knew Marcus would never have sent her out here if he thought there was the faintest degree of danger, but he was not to know what devils stalked her footsteps.

She caught herself thinking that, if only some of the lords Grandfather lured to Hardy House had been more like him, she might have wed before Granby’s mother realised what an opportunity was going a-begging. Anyway, the Major wasn’t a lord, so there was no earthly reason why he should want to marry her. If she did not wed a titled man, her fortune would be tied up so tightly only her grandchildren would receive more than a pittance.

Now her reputation was so comprehensively ruined, no self-respecting gentleman would marry Miss Alethea Hardy, and she instinctively knew Major Ashfield was one of those. All she could hope for was to stay out of the Winfordes’ reach until her twenty-first birthday, then live in obscurity on her hundred a year. It was so much less than her once-grand expectations that she almost sat down and cried.

By the time she had repeated the process of gently leading a horse to water and letting him drink with Hercules, she was resolved to be on her way as soon as dawn lightened the way.

‘I was beginning to think you a figment of my fevered imagination,’ Nick joked weakly when she crept through the ill-fitting door at last.

‘Funny, I hoped I was having a nightmare,’ she replied, wondering crossly why his darkly romantic looks had no effect on her silly heartbeat.

‘I like your waif, Marcus.’

‘You liked every pretty female you ever set eyes on.’

‘Well, they like me,’ he replied smugly.

Thea chuckled and got a penetrating stare from his cousin that she met with proud contempt, in case he thought her susceptible.

‘Will the Captain be fit to ride tomorrow?’ she asked at last.

‘He wasn’t fit today, but that didn’t stop him.’

‘You’ll be on your way at first light, then?’

Marcus frowned. ‘I shall be, but I hope you’ll stay while I fetch our cousin’s carriage to take him to Rosecombe.’

‘To the Park?’

‘Yes, do you know it?’

‘I saw it on my way,’ she said casually, trying not to sound wistful.

From the road she had caught a glimpse of the beautiful neo-classical mansion through still-bare trees and thought it everything she could never have. Elegance and harmony, she thought now, and the protection of a loving family. These two men were inside that family, and she could not keep a twist of bitterness from her lips.

‘You dislike the aristocracy?’

‘No, I just wish they’d give me a job in one of their grand houses, but no respectable family employs a vagrant maid.’

‘Oddest vagrant I ever set eyes on,’ Nick observed faintly from his makeshift mattress.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, go to sleep,’ his loving relative ordered sharply.

‘Don’t see how I can with you gossiping.’

‘I’m going out, so I suggest you recruit your strength. Lydia won’t be best pleased with you as it is, without working yourself into a high fever.’

‘No, the little darling will no doubt give me the scold of my life.’

‘Then get some sleep, instead of fantasising over Cousin Ned’s wife.’

‘Got to be fresh tomorrow to greet the flower of the regiment,’ Nick said irrepressibly and closed his eyes at last.

After a few minutes they heard his breathing deepen and knew he was genuinely asleep at last. Marcus put a finger to his lips and quit the room with a significant nod at his patient.

Did he think she would make a bolt for the open road in the middle of the night then? Thea tried hard not to feel insulted. It seemed that the rifleman’s trust was hard won, and she wanted it for some reason. Which was ridiculous, she decided, stoking the fire from a dwindling reserve of logs before she sat against the wall next to the primitive fireplace.

The rifleman’s bedroll was under his cousin along with his own. Their cloaks lay over him, with Thea’s cherished blanket, but she didn’t expect to sleep. It wouldn’t hurt her or the Major to pass the night in a draughty shed, but their patient was a very different matter. She focused her tired eyes on the pallid oval of his sleeping face. She was supposed to be watching him, not thinking about his arrogant cousin.

Hours later, Thea felt someone shake her gently and came awake, panic stark in her startled face. Gracious! She was leaning confidingly against Marcus Ashfield’s mighty torso. No, she had snuggled into his warmth like a shameless hussy in her lover’s arms. Thea tried to put as much space as possible between them and her hair promptly fell out of the knot held in place by her diminishing supply of hairpins.

‘If you have a particle of sense you’ll hold still, if you don’t want to make me into the rogue you seem determined to cast me as,’ Marcus gritted as if an armful of bedraggled woman fighting sleep represented limitless temptation.

Finally realising her dishevelled state, she flushed and shook her head to try and clear it of the nonsense his coming upon her last night seemed to have stuffed it with, and felt her heavy locks fan out in an untidy cloak that threatened to enmesh them both.

‘Why?’ she managed to whisper at last, nodding at his scandalously positioned arms.

‘For warmth,’ he said abruptly and her heart sank ridiculously.

‘Of course,’ she mumbled and rubbed sleepy eyes before stretching against his muscular chest, feeling a terrible temptation to rub up against him like a luxuriating cat.

‘I could not have you catch your death, Miss Smith.’

‘No, I would be for ever on your conscience, I suppose.’

‘I think you could be anyway,’ he replied with a sombre look and Thea’s heart plummeted; she didn’t want to be numbered among an officer’s obligations, especially not his.

‘I’m an independent woman,’ she informed him crossly and felt him chuckle through the warm connection of their still-entwined bodies.

‘You’re a penniless runaway,’ he corrected and the growing daylight revealed that his grey eyes were shot through with hot silver sparks she should definitely be wary of, since excitement and curiosity were coursing through her in the most immodest fashion.

‘I still have my pride,’ she assured him crossly.

‘Does it keep you warm at night?’ he asked huskily and the feel of his superbly fit body lying so close said the rest for him.

He had kept her warm all through the night, and for the first time in her life she felt the traitorous stir of passions she did not understand, and could not hope to resist if she spent much longer in his arms.

‘No, but it ain’t so likely to land me back at the foundling’s in nine months’ time.’

‘I told you I honour my obligations, I believe,’ he informed her rather coldly and in turn shook his head as if to clear it of incendiary thoughts. ‘I must apologise if I have behaved in an ungentlemanly fashion toward you, Miss Smith. I promise I am not a vile seducer.’

No, a wayward voice informed her, he would probably prove all too pleasant a one. She tried to rein in scandalous images of being locked in his strong arms, and learning things a proper young lady would never picture. Her baser self told her that if she was to lose her virtue, how much better to do so to a virile and attractive man like Marcus Ashfield rather than Granby. She shuddered at the memory of the night she spent in the dissolute baronet’s bedchamber, and tried not to protest when Marcus misinterpreted her revulsion and let her go, as if he had just unwarily touched a burning brand.

‘Will you stay?’ he asked abruptly.

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘I should reach Rosecombe by breakfast time, if I set off now. Unless yon lunatic wakes up and insists on coming too.’

The subject of lunatics reminded her what she was running from, and panic threatened, heedless of the injured man only feet away. Fighting it cost her a bruised lip as she bit down on her full lower one, but she managed it and looked up into his questioning eyes.

‘Please hurry,’ she pleaded in an urgent whisper she hoped would not wake the sleeping Hussar.

‘Don’t worry, I will, and you can keep my armoury.’

‘Take it, I will stand less chance of shooting myself.’

‘Nick could shoot the pip out of an ace left-handed even in his current state. If anyone sinister appears, wake him up and he will shoot for you. I would not leave you if I thought you were in danger. Oh, and if he decides to importune you with unwanted attentions as well, just squeeze his bad arm.’

She managed a weak smile, and watched him perform an abbreviated toilette by running his fingers through rebelliously curling dark hair and rubbing a rueful hand over his unshaven chin. Then, with a last look and a quick gesture of farewell, he left the hut with his boots in one hand and his rifle in the other.

The place seemed cold and empty as she listened to the faint noise he made resuming his boots and the jingle of Hercules’s tack and the indistinct murmur of a deep masculine voice reassuring both horses as he mounted, then rode away. Never had a room felt so silent and bereft as this ramshackle shed, despite the man sleeping in the dying light of the fire and the strengthening daylight round the ill-fitting door. Thea reminded herself of the realities of her new life and sat down to wait in the cold dawn for the injured man to need her, or his rescuers to come.

Chapter Three

Marcus rode away from the tumbledown hut with contrary feelings. Of course it was normal for a man waking up to a delicious armful of slenderly curved woman to be aroused by her. Just because the wench had stirred his baser instincts, he did not have to act on them. After all, he was a gentleman—no, he was a nobleman now, and one did not always preclude the other.

His grandfather’s death, only ten days after that of his direct heir, had brought the new Viscount Strensham home to try to sort out the havoc his father’s wild spending had wrought. Julius Ashfield must be turning in his grave now that the son he had despised had inherited the title he had coveted so long for himself. Although, according to the family lawyer, his father had made damn sure only crushing debt accompanied the family honours—maybe he was having the last laugh after all.

There was one clear solution, and he would take it if there was truly nothing left, but a man who was contemplating matrimony to the richest woman he could cozen into becoming his viscountess had no business seducing the first attractive female to fall into his arms. He considered Miss Hetty Smith with a reminiscent smile. No doubt the fiery little creature would read him his fortune if he offered to set her up as his wife in watercolour, and he couldn’t afford her even if she surprised him and said yes.

A picture of her, flushed with sleep and delightfully ruffled, rose in his mind’s eye. With his attention wandering from his quest, it was just as well that Hercules had realised comfortable stables lay close as they neared Sir Edward Darraine’s country home. She had looked enchanting with that heavy mass of tumbling nut-brown curls falling about her slender shoulders and down her back, Marcus remembered with a wolfish glint in his eyes. Yet the sleepy mix of puzzlement and heat in her blue-green eyes indicated she was an innocent, in that if nothing else.

He reflected on the presence of his untouched purse in his pocket and decided he did her dishonour. She was certainly no thief, nor willing to earn her bread on her back. The grim truth was that she would starve without recourse to one of those undesirable occupations, and he found the idea of her being forced into either repulsive.

It went against his baser instincts, but he must provide her with an escape from poverty if he was not to exploit her vulnerability to get her into his bed. Shocked by the potent drag of desire at the thought of having her under him, he knew he must reject such a venal notion out of hand. If either of them was to come out of this with any self-respect, the less he saw of her, the better for both of them.

A very resolute Major Ashfield rode into Ned Darraine’s stable-yard ten minutes later and issued a set of precise orders to the staff, who found themselves running to obey before they questioned his right to hand them out as if he was with his old brigade.

‘Marcus, good to see you, old man!’ The master of the house greeted him as if they had parted yesterday, instead of over a year ago when Ned had inherited his own title under very different circumstances.

‘Same goes for you, Ned, but where’s Lyddie when I need her?’

‘Getting dressed of course. Where else would she be at this unearthly hour of the morning?’

‘In the old days she would have been up and about for hours. You have become a fine pair of slug-a-beds since you came home.’

Ned just smiled an extremely smug smile. ‘One day you’ll understand,’ he assured his cousin, and the memory of where he had awoken himself drove all desire to tease from Marcus’s mind.

‘I need you too,’ he insisted instead and Ned knew he wouldn’t ask if he didn’t need it.

A plan was taking shape in Marcus’s mind for rescuing both his charges, so he had better get on with it before his baser self gave in to temptation.

Luckily it took less than half an hour for the Darraines’ travelling carriage to be fitted out with quantities of cushions, an ominous-looking box from Lady Lydia Darraine’s stillroom and the noble lady herself.

‘Marcus will come with me,’ she told her husband, who meekly ordered a groom to lead the second-best hunter in his stable for the Major to ride back.

‘Ned hates being cooped up in a coach, but now you can tell me just what you have been up to,’ her ladyship informed him. ‘And don’t leave anything out.’

Marcus left a considerable amount out; after all, he needed Lydia’s sympathy for his waif, not her abiding mistrust.

‘You ordered the poor little thing out into the dark to water your horses, after forcing your way into her refuge and terrifying her half to death? Marcus, how could you?’

‘Nick was faint and there was nothing but a disreputable hedge-tavern for miles.’

‘If you had had a woman with you, things would have been so much easier on the girl.’

‘No, they wouldn’t, Lyddie. You know very well women can play up like the very devil if they scent a rival.’

‘I didn’t mean one of those blowsy creatures who used to shamelessly chase you and Nick in Spain. A lady of quality would have put the girl at ease, and made sure you were the one fumbling about in the darkness, attending to two great horses.’

‘Such a lady would have been compromised the moment we set out from Southampton,’ he pointed out helpfully, or so he thought.

‘I was speaking hypothetically.’

‘Then please don’t, it confuses me.’

‘Doubtless your waif is a runaway, and I will have some unprincipled employer turning up on my doorstep and demanding her return if I take her in. Anyway, how would I convince Ned she will not try to run off with the silver, or, even worse, one of his precious horses?’

‘I can’t argue with the first. The wench admitted she ran from her last place because of some man who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She also let out that she was raised in a foundling hospital.’

‘Poor thing. They raise those unfortunate children to be deeply ashamed of their beginnings. It made me cross whenever I visited one of the places with Mama to take clothes and books. I knew they would strip any ornament off the clothes and sell the books to buy improving tracts.’

‘Surely not all of them are so austere?’

‘You should try visiting one, but that’s beside the point. We must do something about the poor girl if she truly is respectable. You can put your mind to finding some practical way to reward her for looking after Nick, presuming he and his kit are there when you get back.’

‘They will be,’ he said confidently and in that at least he was right.

By the time they got to the clearing, Lady Lydia had come to a decision. After insisting two strong ex-army officers were quite sufficient to heft Captain Prestbury out of his hut, she ordered the grooms to stay and protect the coach from marauding villains.

Sweeping into the dilapidated hut, she took a comprehensive look around and sniffed loudly. Thea almost flew to the defence of her makeshift home for the last two days, but she was eager to escape it and kept quiet. One look at this stunningly beautiful golden-haired creature, dressed in the very latest kick of fashion, had made her feel more like a beggar-maid than usual. Watching the Captain being carried out by Major Ashfield, and his cousin, at least she could be sure he was safe. It was high time she put as much distance as possible between herself and the acute major’s family.