Douglas: Lord of Heartache (3 page)

He trailed off, and they were quiet for a few moments, a not uncomfortable silence that allowed Douglas the privacy of his thoughts.

“You saved my daughter’s life, at the least.” Miss Hollister spoke quietly too. “You did so when you didn’t know her; when people, including her own mother, who should have seen to her safety, did not or could not. I owe you.”

Douglas did not interrupt what was clearly a difficult recitation, and as his hostess had earlier, he resorted to the study of her teacup. Unlike his sturdy, rosy little cup, hers was delicate green porcelain, with a parade of white unicorns encircling the rim.

Fragile and odd, but lovely.

“Because I owe you, my lord, and because I want—I need—to be beholden to no man, I will do as you ask. I will travel to Sussex and see this land of yours. I will make recommendations and offer advice. I will do so without remuneration because we have a family connection, but there will be conditions.”

He nodded. Every gain in life came with conditions.

“The terms, my lord, are these.” She took a deep breath and clutched the arms of her chair as if she were in anticipation of brigands appearing in her parlor, her calm voice and steady demeanor notwithstanding. “My role will not be as steward, but as some innocuous female, your cousin, something of that nature—not your wife.
Never
as your wife. Rose will come with us, and we will travel as discreetly as possible. You will provide a chaperone, and in that capacity, I believe my aunt, Lady Heathgate, will serve.” She shot him a very direct look, a challenging look. “Are we agreed?”

Though it beggared his pride, she was going to help him. For a bit of humility on his part, he would know if the hope—the stubborn, irrational, unbecoming, inconvenient hope—that had sprung up unbidden when Greymoor had made his offer was grounded in reality.

“We are agreed, Miss Hollister.”

He rose to take his leave shortly thereafter, and would have bowed over her hand again, except she dipped to fuss over the tea tray and came up holding out a linen serviette to him.

“The tea cakes, my lord. I’ve had enough for the present, and Rose certainly won’t be having any sweets for a while.”

He accepted the offering of sweets and tucked the napkin into his coat pocket. When Miss Hollister had called for his horse, he expected her to leave him at the front door of her home. Instead, she accompanied him out onto the wide front porch and showed no signs of abandoning him until the horse was brought around.

“I will call on you tomorrow to discuss the details of our journey,” he said as the groom named Ezra led the gelding out. “Tonight I will be a guest of your cousin, the Marquess of Heathgate. And, Miss Hollister?”

She shifted her glance from his horse—a big, shiny bay, who’d walked over to a tree full of hornets at his master’s simple request—to Douglas. “Yes, your lordship?”

“Rose…” he said, frowning at the fact that the irons had already been run down the stirrup leathers, which was not exactly a best practice. “You mustn’t be too hard on her. She was frightened, overfaced, and too proud to say so. In an innocent child, we cannot take very great exception to that, can we?”

He was away down the steps without giving her a chance to reply—what did he know about children or innocence?—then at the mounting block and up on his horse. “Shall we say ten of the clock, Miss Hollister?”

“If you are truly interested in learning to manage the land, my lord, make a day of it. Get here as soon after sunrise as you are able, dress as comfortably as you can, and be prepared to spend the day in the saddle.”

“I have my orders, ma’am.” He nodded politely, saluted with his crop, and turned Regis in a neat pirouette before cantering down the drive.

As soon as he was out of sight of the house and the woman standing on its porch, Douglas brought his mount down to the walk, withdrew the tea cakes from his pocket, and devoured them, slowly, methodically, one right after the other.

***

Gwen watched Douglas, Lord Amery, canter off, noting with one part of her mind that he had an elegant seat, even as the other, louder part began castigating her for this morning’s business.

If Rose hadn’t been up that tree, Douglas Allen could never have wrested this agreement from Gwen. But Rose
had
been up the tree, and worse, she could be laid out in the parlor at this moment,
dead
and
disfigured
as a result of her childish misadventure. And for just an instant, the man had looked…
desolate
. He’d looked as Gwen had felt so often, yet he hadn’t the comfort of even a child to console him.

Douglas Allen had the ability to proceed calmly with the next necessary task, though, and that was a fine quality in a man who intended to find his salvation in the land. And he’d been right about something, too: Rose had been frightened out of her wits, and unable to ask for help. Gwen knew that condition intimately, and she would not judge another harshly when suffering the same state.

“So why,” Amery asked, “do you have calves arriving in the autumn?”

“Some calves,” Gwen corrected him. “For a late heifer, or one slow to mature, the extra six months before her first calf is a blessing. Autumn grass is rich, and the cooler weather agrees with the babies more than the summer heat. We get fewer cases of scours, and we aren’t competing with all of the spring market gluts, so we get better prices for them. The same is true of autumn lambs, if you can get the rams and ewes to cooperate.”

They were on horseback, which made conversations about rams and ewes and other earthy, reproductive things less mortifying—for Gwen, at least.

“If it’s such a good idea, why don’t you have all your calves in the autumn?”

She wanted to say the bulls would go into a decline if limited to a single breeding season, but Amery would get that pained look on his face, an expression between bewilderment and disappointment.

“We have two primary calving seasons to spread the risks.”

“Can you clarify that? Spread the risk how, Miss Hollister?”

Please elucidate further, Miss Hollister. Can you give me an example, Miss Hollister? Why is it done thus, Miss Hollister? His lordship was a sponge for knowledge, but if he hadn’t patted his horse from time to time, Gwen would have feared she was riding out with an automaton.

“With the land, there is always risk,” Gwen said, though she far preferred those risks to the ones she’d face if she ventured back into the view of Polite Society. “You risk drought in the summer and try to manage that risk with irrigation. You risk severe cold in the winter and try to manage that with good fodder and shelter. You hope for a good hay crop but manage that risk by leaving some land in pasture and planting corn in addition. You dodge what nature throws at you if you can’t turn it to your advantage, and you pray constantly as you try to predict the weather.”

Not that different from the challenges of parenting.

Amery went silent, though Gwen was getting used to this aspect of his companionship. His silences were mentally industrious. He sorted, tagged, cataloged, and prioritized all incoming information in those silences, and Gwen was happy to leave him to it. Wherever they went—the dairy, the home farm, the kitchen gardens, the home wood, the fields and cottages—he had questions, and she answered until he fell silent again.

“You are attached to this place,” he observed as they rode into the stable yard at midday.

Such was the caliber of the viscount’s conversational gambits. “Lord Amery, this is my
home
.”

He’d dismounted while Gwen remained on her gelding, answering the groom’s question about a lame plow horse. When she unhooked her knee from the horn of her sidesaddle, Amery stood beside her horse, as if they’d just ridden in for the hunt breakfast.

She could shoo him off, though she sensed she’d offend him if she refused his assistance, or worse, hurt his feelings.

Assuming he had any, beyond dignity and pride.

Gwen put her hands on his shoulders and found herself effortlessly lifted from the horse and standing in the narrow space between Lord Amery and her mount. She paused there awkwardly, unable to step back and unable to meet his gaze. In close proximity he had a beguilingly pleasant, woodsy scent, and he was appreciably taller than she.

“I believe, Miss Hollister, the customary response is ‘thank you, sir.’” He kept his hands on her waist, and she, foolishly, found her hands were still on his rather broad shoulders. He stepped back and dropped his hands just as Gwen murmured, “Thank you, my lord.”

“You are welcome,” he replied, offering her his arm. His gesture was a reflex born of bone-deep manners and habit, but still she hesitated long enough that he could not have failed to notice. He solved the issue by reaching for her hand and placing it in the crook of his elbow.

“Miss Hollister,” he began in patient tones as he matched his steps to hers, “it would save us both much confusion were you to recall I am a gentleman. I might growl, but I do not bite; I do not press my attentions on reluctant young ladies; and being titled, I do not suffer a lack of females who welcome my interest.”

He was strolling them up to the house while Gwen was torn between outrage at his lecturing and a real desire simply to run from him.

Except she had given this man her word that she would assist him, and it couldn’t be any harder for her to leave her hand on his arm than it had been for him to climb into a tree full of angry hornets.

“I beg your lordship’s pardon. I am out of the habit of enduring a man’s polite company. I do not mean to give offense.” She was also out of the habit of justifying her reactions, must less apologizing for them—rather like an old dowager, set in her ways and hard of hearing.

When had that happened?

“Do you think
I
mean to give offense?” Amery asked, though his question was rhetorical. “When I commit the unpardonable affronts of assisting you from your horse? Offering escort? Holding a door for you?”

“I will ring for luncheon,” Gwen said, dropping his arm as they reached the house, lest answering his questions try her manners beyond tolerance. “If you would like to freshen up, you may use the first bedroom on the right at the top of the stairs. I will join you in the breakfast room shortly, my lord.”

She gave a nominal curtsy, which he returned with a nominal bow, and then they went their separate ways, like pugilists retiring to neutral corners at the end of a hard fought round.

***

The breakfast parlor was along the southern side of the house, and when Amery arrived, Gwen was standing near a window, her back toward him. She knew the instant he’d crossed the threshold to the room, but didn’t turn until he scraped his boot on the floor—deliberately?

He was that attentive to his infernal manners. He stood in the doorway, unwilling even to enter the room without her permission, a punctilio that struck Gwen as more stubborn than considerate.

“My lord, shall we be seated?”

Amery held her chair for her, blast him, and waited for Gwen to serve him.

Something in her expression must have betrayed her feelings, for Amery sighed as he spread his serviette on his lap. “Madam, you cannot be bristling and cringing every time I am in the same room. If it’s that difficult for you to be in my company, I will withdraw my request for your assistance.”

Gwen considered him and considered his point. She had spent the entire morning mentally castigating him for a lack of warmth, but perhaps she was guilty in some regard of a lack of… hospitality.

A lack of nerve.

“Please help yourself, my lord,” she said, indicating a towering plate of sandwiches. “I decided informal fare would better suit a productive luncheon conversation.”

He plucked a sandwich at random from the tray. “I appreciate that I have raised an awkward topic, Miss Hollister, but you are prevaricating.”

She was.
Where
to
begin?

He tore into his sandwich—no prevarication there.

“I am out of the habit of allowing men into my… into proximity with me. My cousin Andrew is the only fellow who does not respect my wishes in this regard, and I must tolerate him.”

Amery reached for the teapot and poured for them both. “In that case,” he said, adding sugar to his tea, “you must simply add me to the appallingly short list of men you tolerate. Sugar?”

She took the sugar bowl from him. “I can fix my own tea, thank you very much.”

“And you can learn to tolerate me,” he said, sipping his tea.

Gwen stirred cream and sugar into her favorite cup rather vigorously. “Why can’t you learn to keep your distance from me?”

He sipped his tea again, and yet Gwen had the sense all his monumental calm hid a volcano of impatience, waiting to erupt and spew masculine indignation all over her.

“I could learn to keep my distance from you, of course, Miss Hollister. My proximity to you is a function of courtesy and expedience, it being inconvenient to learn husbandry of the land from you exclusively by post, and I having been raised with the manners of a gentleman. Why can’t you use me as an opportunity to reacquaint yourself with the harmless exponents of my gender?”

Gwen snorted. “Your gender has no
harmless
exponents, yourself included.” She chose a sandwich from the opposite side of the tray from where he’d taken his.

His lordship put down his teacup and regarded her with an intensity that made Gwen wish she could bolt out of her chair and hide in the attics as Rose did when she’d misbehaved.

“What?” she asked, not liking his silence or his perusal.

“Whoever he was,” Amery said at length, “I believe I must stand in line behind your cousins should an opportunity arise to shoot the bastard—pardon my language. Eat your sandwich,” he added. “You must be famished after the morning we put in.”

She was. She was also too unsettled to eat, and Amery was too perceptive.

Gwen put her sandwich on her plate and addressed herself to it. “This simply isn’t going to work.”

Amery, who was halfway through his second sandwich, returned that unnerving blue-eyed regard to her.

“We have to make it work, Miss Hollister. Here.” He took her hand in his, lacing their fingers. Because they were at table, neither wore gloves. Gwen just had time to be shocked at his boldness—and to notice that he had a warm, steady grip—when he extricated his hand from hers. “Now what was so terrible about that? Eat your sandwich.”

Gwen couldn’t imagine consuming anything while this man was, was… touching her.
Bothering
her. His hands were warm, elegant, strong, and… too strong.

“It wasn’t terrible,” she said, though if she’d been asked, she might have admitted to fearing it could be. “A simple clasping of the hands can lead to other things, and those things can be terrible.”

Amery regarded her as if she were speaking Mandarin, then his expression changed, becoming frigid rather than his standard cool.

“I will not impose myself on you, nor will I suffer any man to impose himself on you, nor to visit harm upon your person. Eat your sandwich, please.”

He looked like he might say more, but his infernal decorum prevented him from whatever lectures were boiling up from his manly indignation. Abruptly, Gwen felt an absurd temptation to laugh—at herself. Amery shifted from casually demolishing her sandwich tray to offering her shocking assurances, and went about both pursuits with an intensity of focus Gwen could relate to easily.

“Do you believe me?” Amery asked, glaring at her over his plate.

She’d known him little more than twenty-four hours. He had been polite, if brusque and impatient. But his shocking assurances were something she had needed to hear, and because he was brusque and impatient, she also found she could trust him, at least a little.

Then too, Amery seemed incapable of flirtatious innuendo or deceit.

“I believe you,” she said, taking a bite of her meal. “Until I have evidence to the contrary.”

“That’s a start, I suppose. You are the despair of your cousins, you know.”

“What?” She couldn’t hide her consternation at that sally, so she took another nibble of her sandwich to safely occupy her mouth.

“You are,” he said, looking like he might consider yet another sandwich. Did nobody feed this man? “Heathgate, Greymoor—and I suppose we must add Fairly to the list—are quite protective of you. When you pull this sniffing and silence on them, it hurts their feelings.”

“It hurts their feelings because I’m reserved in their company?”

“Of course.” Amery put a second sandwich on her plate, though she wasn’t done with her first. “They are chivalrous men, and you insult them when you act as if they could have less than your best interests at heart. Or perhaps”—he paused and set the mustard nearer her elbow—“you bewilder them.”

“They are good men,” Gwen conceded, studying the crust of her sandwich. Why had the kitchen not trimmed the crusts on the rare occasion of company at Gwen’s table? “I do not mean…”

“Yes?” He’d moved on to the tray of tea cakes now, selecting the four largest pieces to add to his plate.

“I do not mean to be unwelcoming, your lordship. Reserve has become a habit.” She was using that word too frequently: habit, when refuge or crutch might have been more honest.

“Habits,” he replied, refilling his teacup yet again, “can be retrained. More tea?”

“Please.” She reached for a tea cake, then realized his perishing, bottomless lordship had appropriated all of the chocolate ones. Seeing her scowl, Amery held his plate out to her.

“My apologies,” he said gravely.

Gwen watched his eyes as she removed a chocolate cake from his plate.

“There. You see? You did it again.”

She set her cake aside untasted. “Did what?”

“You watched me as if at any second I were going to drop that plate and vault over the table to ravish you.”

“Nonsense. You’re not the ravishing kind, my lord.”

“Miss Hollister, if I am not the ravishing kind—which characterization I might find slightly offensive, by the way, did I fancy myself as a dashing swain—then why do you regard me so warily?”

She opened her mouth, prepared to put him firmly in his place, but nothing came out, so she took a bite of cake instead.

“Well?”

“I suppose, my lord,” she said when his stare had ruined her first bite of chocolate cake, “that having been betrayed by my judgment egregiously in the past, I am hesitant to rely on it now. Surely you can understand this.” She tried for another bite of her cake, hoping his lordship choked on the boldness of her implied admission.

“Miss Hollister,” his lordship rejoined so dratted gently, “it wasn’t your judgment that betrayed you, but a flesh-and-blood man who should be called to account for his sins.”

This topic—her lapse from propriety and its results—usually lurked beneath a conversation, whether she spoke with her tenants, her cousins, or the Enfield staff. That Amery would face it directly—and regard her as a wronged party—was a disconcerting relief.

“Perhaps he should,” she replied, “but that man is long gone, while my judgment remains on hand.” She took the final bite of her cake, pleased to have had the last word, though in truth, “long gone” was a stretch when Rose’s father spent much of the year in nearby London.