The Yelverton Marriages

Chapter Two

At last, there was a gruff but almost painful anxiety for the lost girl in his voice and Marianne had been accusing him of not caring about her ever since she heard Juno Defford’s sad story from a panicked Fliss yesterday morning. He had treated the poor child like an unwanted package he could hand over to his mother to be rid of however she chose and look how the wretched woman had chosen to do it. The very idea of such an April and December marriage for the girl had made her shudder with revulsion, so goodness knew how alone and desperate such a young woman must have felt when she realised what was being planned for her. Taking a deeper breath to calm her temper and trying to remind herself there were two sides to every story, Marianne struggled to be fair to him, although it really was a struggle.

‘No,’ she said starkly. She could not give him false hope. There had been no sign of the girl yesterday and no late-night knock on the door to usher in a soaked and exhausted Juno.

‘God help us, then,’ he murmured wearily, as if hope his ward was here was all that had kept him riding on for what looked like days and the loss of it meant he might collapse after all. ‘What must I do to find her?’ he added despairingly.

Marianne knew he was not speaking to her when he shut his eyes and swayed as if her No was a felling blow. She watched him battle exhaustion and despair and her temper calmed at such signs he really did care about that lonely little rich girl whose only refuge in a storm was her former governess, but something told her sympathy would only revolt such a proud man so she had best not risk it for both their sakes.

‘We looked all the way from here to Worcester yesterday and searched every hiding place we could think of on the way back,’ she explained curtly. ‘The rain was so heavy in the end we could only see a few steps in front of us, so we were forced to give up the search for the night. It will begin again as soon as all the searchers are awake after their long and weary day yesterday.’

‘I would not have stopped,’ he muttered almost accusingly.

She felt fury flare again and was glad it stopped her having to feel sorry for his lordly arrogance. ‘Then you would be no use to anyone now, would you? I told you we could not see for the force of the rain. If you had been out looking for her in it with no idea of the local terrain, we would now be put to the trouble of rescuing you as well as finding your niece.’

‘You were out in it as well, then?’ he asked incredulously.

‘Of course I was. Did you expect me to sit at home sewing while a young woman was lost and alone and with all that brooding cloud about to warn us that a heavy storm was on the way?’

‘I expect nothing, ma’am. You are a stranger to me and still in my way.’

His hard expression and stony look of indifference made her temper flare, hot and invigorating this time, and there was no reason to hold back now he had made it so obvious her opinion did not matter a jot. ‘Then expect me to be furious about a girl’s lonely and probably terrifying journey from London to Worcester on the stage. She must have been easy prey for a petty thief and thank God she met with nothing worse than robbery, unschooled as she must be in the ways of rogues and con men. I dare say she has never even travelled by post before, let alone on a public stagecoach, and I admire her for getting as far as she did.

‘So you can expect me to admire her courage in walking into an unfamiliar countryside when all her money was stolen and I doubt she is used to much more than a leisurely stroll in the Park. And expect me to pity a lonely, put-upon girl who felt the only person she could flee to for protection was her former governess. But please don’t expect me to think you care a snap of your fingers for your niece and ward, my lord. I cannot believe you can possibly do so when you left her so alone and friendless under your noble London roof that she felt she had to come all this way on her own to find sanctuary with the one person who would love and support her come what may.’

‘I expect nothing of you. I do not even know who you are,’ he replied shortly.

She might have felt her temper hitch even higher if not for the flat weariness in his blue eyes as he stared back at her as if he could hardly see who she was for utter weariness and worry. ‘Just as well,’ she said grumpily because she did not want to feel compassion for him. Loathing for the haughty and indifferent family who gave a shy girl no choice but to run away from home had powered her through anxiety, fatigue and the threatening storm all day yesterday. She did not want to be fair to him until Juno Defford was safe and she was still very tired herself. She had fallen asleep waiting up for Juno to knock on Miss Donne’s door and walk in out of the endless rain. Obviously she needed to be angry with someone to keep on doing whatever had to be done to find the missing girl and he would do very well.

‘Who is it, Marianne?’ Miss Donne’s sleepy voice demanded from the top of the stairs and Marianne could hear the painful anxiety in it.

Lord Stratford used the momentary distraction to move her out of his way as if she weighed nothing. He was inside the house before she could protest or counter his sneaky move. Oh, drat the man! She cursed him under her breath. She should never have lowered her guard for even a second and now he was sure to get in the way of the search for his niece. He would throw orders out left, right and centre and he had no idea of the shape of the countryside or any of the places where a girl might seek shelter from a storm. Marianne shut the door behind him with an outraged sniff and glared at his lordly back. She had been right about his arrogance and bad manners all along then. How stupid of her to feel even an iota of pity for the man when he obviously did not deserve any.

‘Viscount Stratford,’ she called out to warn Miss Donne exactly who had broken into her house at an outrageous hour of the morning. Yet her shoulders still felt the echo of his leashed strength under that fleeting touch. She refused to let that be because awareness of him as a man had shot through her when he put her aside as if she was weightless.

‘Oh.’ Miss Donne’s voice gave away her horror at such a visitor arriving at her door at dawn with Fliss not here to greet him.

A few moments of tense silence stretched out and Marianne hoped His Lordship was squirming with discomfort as the wrongness of forcing his way into a lady’s residence at such a ridiculous hour of the day finally hit home. No, of course he was not, she decided as his impatient frown stayed firmly in place. He was not capable of examining his own actions and could only pick holes in all they had done yesterday to find his unfortunate niece.

‘Then of course you must let His Lordship in, Marianne, dear. Ask him to wait in the front parlour while I dress. I will come down and explain what little we know of his niece’s movements as soon as I am fit to be seen.’

Miss Donne’s voice faded as she went back to her room and shut the door behind her and Marianne was left eyeing the filthy viscount dubiously. She raised an eyebrow to tell him he was not fit for a lady’s parlour, particularly not one as neat and clean as Miss Donne’s. ‘You could always come back when you are cleaner and more civilised and in a better temper,’ she suggested coldly.

‘Where is the kitchen?’ he barked as if she had not spoken.

‘Of course, silly me. You are not humble or polite enough to go away to bathe, shave and change out of your riding clothes and come back later, are you? How could I be so stupid as to think you might act like a gentleman instead of an aristocrat?’ she carped as he shot her an impatient glance, then strode down the corridor leading to the cheerful best kitchen Miss Donne and Fliss used as a dining and sitting room when they did not have company. She had left the door open when she stumbled towards the front door still half-asleep to stop his rattle on the front door. Silly of her, she reflected now, as he spotted the obvious place for a filthy and travel-worn gentleman and Marianne had to tag on behind like a sheepdog keeping a wary eye on a fox.

‘All I care about is my niece, everything else can wait,’ he told her and looked around the sunny room as if they might be hiding Juno in a corner.

Now she had to admit to herself he really was desperate to find his niece and he seemed so much safer when she could fool herself he was heartless. He sighed when he realised he was wrong about Juno perhaps being hidden in here from the likes of him, then he frowned down at the last faint glow of last night’s fire as if he had never seen one before. That traitor pity for his desperate state of mind and body turned her heart over; followed by embarrassment when she realised her own nest of cushions and covers was still lying on a Windsor chair like a discarded shell and betraying her own largely sleepless night.

She hastily folded the quilt Miss Donne’s maid had found for her when Marianne insisted on waiting up just in case the missing girl found her way to Miss Donne’s house despite the downpour and nobody heard her knocking. She might as well have accepted the guest bedroom Miss Donne offered her. Then at least she would not have woken with a crick in her neck and half her wits missing when this man hammered on the front door and startled her out of the rest of them. Marianne plumped up the cushions that had shaped themselves around her while she slept and would have knelt to rekindle the dying fire if he had not got there first.

Silence stretched between them like fine wire this time as he concentrated on reviving the fire and ignored her as best he could. Who would have thought he even knew how, let alone be considerate enough to sweep up the cold ashes on the stone slab to save them spilling out into the room? He looked at the brass shovel full of them when he had gathered them as neatly as he could as if he did not know what to do with them. She was glad of something to look disapproving about as she took it off him without a word, then went outside to add them to the neat ash pile by the back-garden gate. She paused out in the fresh air to frown at a new pall of cloud trying to blot out the early morning sun.

‘I really hope it is not going to rain again,’ she observed as she re-entered the room. He seemed taller and darker without the sun to lighten the place with a little hope.

He frowned as if it might be her fault it had gone in. ‘Where the devil can Juno be?’ he barked and glared at her as if she should know. Apparently their brief truce was over now he had got the fire burning nicely and Miss Donne would be down shortly for him to be a lot more polite to.

‘If I knew that I would not have been out looking for her most of yesterday,’ Marianne snapped because she had only had a couple of hours’ uneasy sleep as well and she did not see why she should play the perfect lady when he was being such a poor gentleman.

‘If you truly want to help my ward, then tell me everything you know about her journey and the search so far.’

‘I doubt if I know much more than you do.’

‘All I know is my ward has been missing in the wilds of Herefordshire for far too long. I rode to Worcester, expecting to find out she had taken the Leominster stage to get here at last only to discover some cur took every penny she had so she could not buy a seat. If only I had got to her a few hours earlier I could have saved her the ordeal of wandering penniless and alone through a strange countryside. If only I had left Paris even a day before I did I could have made sure she got here safe and well or that she need not flee in the first place. Because I failed to find her in time my niece is probably lost and frightened half out of her wits at this very moment and even if she has not fallen into the hands of a villain she could be soaked to the skin and in a high fever.’

She had wanted him to show some sign of emotion and now he had she was not quite sure she knew what to do with it all. ‘Stop imagining the worst,’ she told him briskly. ‘For either of us to be of any use in this search we must believe your niece had the good sense to find shelter last night. After having her pocket picked she is sure to be wary of being seen walking alone, so even not finding sight or sound of her is a good thing when you think about it rationally.’

‘Where is she, then?’ he asked starkly.

All she could do was shake her head in reply because she was tired as well and the girl had seemed to vanish from the face of the earth from the moment she walked across the New Bridge at Worcester and out into the countryside. It was probably as well brisk footsteps on the stone-flagged floor announced Miss Donne’s arrival and stopped them both imagining Juno in all sorts of terrible situations now he had put them back into her head.

‘Have you brought us good news of Miss Defford, my lord?’ Miss Donne asked rather breathlessly.

Marianne marvelled hope could blind such a shrewd lady to Lord Stratford’s grim expression and weary eyes.

‘Only that she is still lost, ma’am. I hoped to find my niece when I got here and I was bitterly disappointed,’ he said wearily.

‘Indeed?’ Miss Donne said with a sigh as if a heavy weight was back on her shoulders. ‘Then we must begin searching once again,’ she said resolutely and looked at Marianne as if she would know where to start.

‘Miss Defford may be walking into town after sheltering from the storm as we speak,’ she made herself say bracingly.

Chapter Three

Alaric stared down at the fire and tried to do as Marianne said and put the worst of his terrors out of his head. He could not call her anything else because he had no idea who she was and where she fitted into brisk little Miss Donne’s household and perhaps Miss Grantham’s life as well. Speaking of whom, where the devil was the woman? He glared at the door between this cosy room and the rest of the oddly silent and empty-feeling house and sensed yet another mystery on the other side of it. A pity his brain seemed so slow and dazed with lack of sleep since he really needed it smartly aware and on parade with its buttons polished and boots blacked.

It was lack of sleep that made him puzzled and foggy about the unfamiliar new world he seemed to have been wandering in ever since he had reached Stratford House—however long ago that now was—and found out Juno was missing. He would probably find a genuine housemaid, dazzling and quick-witted and even a little bit compassionate towards such a bumbling idiot right now. And wholly delicious and so very unconscious of her own attractions. Tall and slender and just the right height for a lofty lord like him as well, his inner idiot pointed out as he tried to pretend he was as unaware of her as a woman as she seemed of him as a man.

Marianne seemed to be doing her best to pretend he was not even here as she bent cautiously to push the already-filled kettle hanging on its iron arm over the fire without coming anywhere near him. She swiftly stepped back and away as if he might be contagious and he knew he was filthy and smelt of horse and mud and whatever had been in the barn before he took shelter in it last night. He was lucky both ladies had much better manners or a lot more compassion than his mother.

He only had to imagine the Dowager Lady Stratford’s hard grey eyes icing over with contempt at even a glimpse, or a whiff, of him right now and he felt all the coldness of his childhood at his back like a January wind from the Arctic ice caps. Shivering in his boots despite the fire and the calendar telling them it was high summer, he tried to gauge whatever it was they were being so careful not to tell him about Miss Grantham’s prolonged absence.

He had told himself all the way to Paris and back it was sensible for him to marry kind, well-bred and beautiful Miss Grantham so he could provide a much better home for Juno and a loving mother to his children when they came along. At least he knew enough about bleak and unloving childhoods to want better for his sons and daughters than the one he endured. Yet now he was here and Miss Grantham might have decided to accept his sensible offer of marriage, he felt as if he had left something crucial out of his calculations. Surely he could not have felt as if Marianne was all the warmth and impulsiveness and loyalty he had ever wanted at first glance if there was any more than polite friendship between him and Juno’s former governess? How could he have thought common interests and civility were enough, that instant of surprised and horrified recognition had whispered, as he had stared at a very different female when she had opened the door? He wanted her until his bones ached and a lot more besides he had best not even think about now.

‘Tea, my lord?’ Miss Donne asked and it felt as if he had to come a long way back to the now sunny-again kitchen to look at her as if he had never even heard of the stuff.

‘Hmm?’ he heard himself say like a looby.

‘A beverage made with leaves from the tea plant and imported from China at great expense,’ Marianne pointed out impatiently and with a wave at the fat brown kitchen teapot on the scrubbed table as if he might not have seen one before.

‘I do vaguely recall the idea,’ he said with a smile of apology for Miss Donne and a wary glance at Marianne in case she had any idea why he had been lost in his thoughts. From the frown of impatience knitting her slender honey-and-brown brows almost together, he imagined to her he was just being an annoying sort of lord again instead of a lustful and predatory one. So at least he had been excused the shame and indignity of being rejected by Marianne Whoever-She-Was before he could do more than stare at her like a mooncalf. That was one horror to cross off his list, then. He did not know if he could face another furious lady telling him how hateful he was and how bitterly she wished he had never been born after his mother did just that when he found out what she had done to Juno and challenged her selfishness and lack of feeling. ‘The French seem to prefer coffee,’ he added, ‘or drink chocolate at breakfast time.’

‘You can hardly expect us to roast and grind coffee beans or ask our closest wealthy neighbour to lend us cocoa beans and her chocolate pot when you have turned up on the doorstep with the dawn uninvited, Lord Stratford.’

‘Now then, Marianne, that is hardly polite and invitations are unimportant at a time of crisis,’ Miss Donne said and Alaric could have hugged her, except he liked her too much already to engulf her in the reek of sweaty man and the less savoury smells of the road.

‘Thank you, Miss Donne. Miss…’ he let his voice tail off because he could hardly call her Marianne.

‘Mrs,’ she snapped crossly, and he suspected her tiredness was almost as huge as his when she seemed to repent her brusque impatience with a sigh. ‘My name is Mrs Turner,’ she admitted as she avoided both their gazes and poured tea into all three breakfast teacups without waiting for any more foolish arguments from him.

Just as well since jealousy and acute hatred of the lucky Mr Turner shot through him in a hot arrow of frustration. He was too late, he let himself mourn silently as the absurdity of being too late for a woman he had not even met an hour ago tried to snap him back to sanity. She obviously did not like him, so that made his feral longing for another man’s wife feel even worse.

‘I am a widow,’ she told him almost defiantly and with no idea she had just freed him from a fire he had never wanted to burn on. He did not have to want another man’s wife so unmercifully he was having trouble keeping hold of the elusive thread of this not quite a conversation as well as his dignity.

‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he lied.

‘Thank you,’ she said as if that was the last she wanted to hear on the subject. ‘Do not let your tea get cold,’ she advised him. ‘It might not be coffee or chocolate, but it is hot and you look as if you need reviving, my lord.’

‘Well, really, my dear,’ Miss Donne chided, as if personal comments mattered at a time like this, ‘this is not the time for picking at one another with Miss Defford still to find and time a-wasting.’

‘No, you are right,’ Mrs Turner admitted. ‘We need to eat and be out and ready for the search as soon as the others are awake,’ she added.

Alaric could only nod his agreement and drink his tea. Both ladies were right, they did need to eat and drink so they would have strength for the resumed search for Juno. His niece was all that mattered and never mind his foolish obsession with a honey-haired widow with dreamy blue eyes and a mouth a man would ride a hundred miles to kiss, if only those eyes were dreamy for him and her mouth half-asleep still after a night of hot and heady loving in his bed.

When Miss Donne’s Bet came downstairs, tying her apron and struggling with her cap, she blurted out the story of Fliss walking off into the hills in the pouring rain last night to look for Miss Defford before she even noticed the travel-worn lord lurking in front of the kitchen fire. So then Miss Donne had to tell His Lordship Marianne’s brother, Darius, had gone after Fliss and neither of them had returned yet. Lord Stratford had tersely demanded directions and marched out of the back door as soon as Bet could gasp them out. By the time Marianne put her damp shoes on and stumbled after him, the viscount was almost out of sight and obviously in a fine temper. She had been forced to pant after him up the winding lane out of town and even then she only just managed to keep him in sight.

She scurried into earshot just in time to hear why he was in such a hurry. Apparently Darius had compromised Fliss before Lord Stratford could marry her himself. From the dreamy way Fliss was looking at Darius, Lord Stratford would not have got his way even if he had got here in time to keep them apart last night. Then the viscount said Fliss had recently inherited a fortune and accused Darius of being a fortune hunter. How ironic when Darius had tried so hard to resist his attraction to Fliss because she was a poor governess and he thought he should marry money. If Juno’s disappearance was not so sharp in all their minds, Marianne might have been amused by the sight of Lord Stratford frustrated of a rich and suitable viscountess.