Lord Loxley's Lover (4 page)

“It isn’t my place to say,” Mr. Rochester said, closing off behind the excuse of
valet
once again.

“No,” Lord Loxley agreed. “Even as my friend, Mr. Rochester, this isn’t your concern.”

Angry and upset, Lord Loxley turned and left the room.

T
he following Saturday
, Lord Loxley and Mr. Rochester went to Lady Mathilda Loxley’s estate for dinner.

Lord Loxley arranged for Mr. Egby to serve as coachman, which allowed Mr. Rochester to ride in the cabin with Lord Loxley, and would further free Mr. Rochester to follow Lord Loxley around and do his habitual hovering once they arrived, which satisfied them both.

In the two weeks that Mr. Rochester had served as valet, he had more than doubled the Loxley Manor’s income for the month. Much of this was accomplished by the simple expedient of tracking down defunct accounts and persuading them that their past-due amounts would be dismissed as long as payments were resumed promptly, and the rest was accomplished by uncovering neglected industries and inventories, such as the question of the orchard. Mr. Rochester was quickly able to determine that the trouble with the orchard was that Mr. Kepley, who saw to the orchards, had once had an assistant and had once been much younger, and the combination of these two troubles had caused the orchards to become neglected, which reduced their output. Within a day, Mr. Rochester had secured employment and apprenticeship as gardener’s assistant for a young man from the village whose mother had been having difficulty paying her rent for reasons that even Mr. Rochester agreed were legitimate, and the young man and Mr. Kepley set about the lengthy process of revitalizing the neglected orchards.

Incredible though Mr. Rochester’s accomplishments were, Lord Loxley was beginning to rather feel that he was being
avoided
, which was a difficult feat for a personal valet. Unless Lord Loxley provided him with an immediate task in direct proximity or left the manor far enough to require overprotective supervision, Mr. Rochester performed his duties and then promptly removed himself in the interests of further improving Lord Loxley’s estates. He was so good at the latter that it was hard to complain, and Lord Loxley was more than happy to do the sums and record the accounts based on the inventories and payments that Mr. Rochester brought him, but there hadn’t been so much as a single kiss since the original incident in the study.

It was becoming maddening. Lord Loxley had taken it into his head that he would need to take drastic action, whereupon he spent several days in indecision regarding what
sort
of drastic action it might be effective to take and had still not decided on the day that they took the carriage to Lady Mathilda Loxley’s stately home, which was quite a bit larger than Loxley Manor.

The company in the carriage was stiff and tense, and Lord Loxley was cold from the rainy May weather. He made two abortive attempts to discuss the weather, but Mr. Rochester’s disinclination to converse was greater than Lord Loxley’s skill at creating conversation and in short order he gave up and resigned himself to riding in silence with his surly, resentful, and unreasonably handsome valet.

As they arrived at Lady Mathilda Loxley’s estate, they were greeted by a very charming and enthusiastic young lady who Lord Loxley hoped desperately was
not
Miss Sarah Meriwether, on account of her being only about thirteen.

She nearly barreled past them in the front hall, stopped short at the sight of them, and stared.

Quite startled, Lord Loxley stared back.

The young lady gazed between the two of them in surprise, and settled upon approaching Mr. Rochester with a friendly, curious smile. “Are you Lord Loxley?”

Lord Loxley winced preemptively on the young lady’s behalf in anticipation of Mr. Rochester’s ill temper, and was exceedingly surprised when Mr. Rochester gave her a kind smile and offered his hand in greeting. “I am Mr. Miles Rochester. This is Lord Loxley.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the young lady said, bobbing a half-curtsey in better manners than she’d shown thus far. “I am Miss Lucy Meriwether.”

Lord Loxley sighed in relief.

Lucy looked the two of them over with continued interest. “You won’t tell that you saw me running in the hall, will you? I’d be in such trouble, and Lady Loxley is so
very
disapproving.”

Pressing his lips together to try and contain a smile, Lord Loxley nodded reassuringly to her. “We shan’t tell. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Meriwether.”

“They’re all in the drawing room taking tea,” Lucy told them. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you, but then, I’ve only just
escaped
.”

“I’m afraid I’m already quite resigned to my fate,” Lord Loxley said.

Miss Lucy grinned and darted past them out the door.

Feeling rather bewildered by the encounter, Lord Loxley stared after her. “She was lively.”

Mr. Rochester grinned very slightly, and the two of them went in to tea.

After the small hurricane they had encountered in the front hall, the drawing room was exactingly decorous and very quiet. The solemn tick-tick of the clock was near deafening in the silence.

Lady Mathilda Loxley sat at the table, asking the occasional firm question, which made the encounter more of an interview than a conversation, despite the other ladies’ polite efforts to pretend otherwise. Accompanying her were two women who must be Miss Sarah Meriwether and her mother. Miss Sarah Meriwether was a pretty brunette with a very well-practiced polite smile, which managed to almost convincingly present the falsehood that she was enjoying Lady Mathilda Loxley’s company, and her mother was a petite and plump woman with an earnest face. All three of the women looked up at the gentlemen’s arrival.

There were two empty chairs at the table, a fortuitous situation which had resulted from Miss Lucy having excused herself. Lady Mathilda Loxley must have realized the problem this presented almost as quickly as Lord Loxley recognized the opportunity, as she promptly gave the two of them a stern, warning frown.

“Good day, Aunt Mathilda,” Lord Loxley said, greeting her with his most charming smile as he took the chair next to his aunt.

“Fitzhenry,” Lady Mathilda Loxley said, as Mr. Rochester took the second empty chair, next to Mrs. Meriwether. “May I introduce to you Mrs. Elizabeth Meriwether and her daughter, Miss Sarah Meriwether. Mrs. Meriwether, Miss Meriwether, this is my great-nephew Lord Fitzhenry Loxley.”

She paused. Lord Loxley guessed that she was considering whether to sharply reprimand her gentleman guests for their presumption, or to save face and conceal the fact that her guests were dining with a valet.

“And Mr. Miles Rochester,” she finished, giving Lord Loxley a steely glare that promised he would regret this, “son of Baron Rochester.”

The Meriwethers expressed their sincere pleasure to meet Lord Loxley and Mr. Rochester.

Throughout tea Miss Sarah Meriwether was very quiet, offering only occasional reserved commentary on topics brought up by her mother or Lady Mathilda Loxley, or answering in the affirmative when Lady Mathilda Loxley prompted her on different parts of her upbringing and education. It seemed that Miss Sarah Meriwether was very capably educated, fluent in French and German, and a great help to her parents’ management of the household.

Afterward the group retired to a nearby parlor, where Miss Sarah Meriwether and Lord Loxley were stranded on a small couch at one end of the room while Lady Mathilda Loxley and Mrs. Meriwether chatted at the other end of the room. Lord Loxley was fairly certain that the idea was to give the young people a measure of privacy in order that they might deepen their affection for one another, but the two of them simply sat in awkward silence, with only the occasional stilted effort at conversation. Miss Sarah was almost as discouraging of conversation as Mr. Rochester, although she was at least more polite about it.

Mr. Rochester himself hovered nearby, which didn’t help, although he was perfectly quiet and unobtrusive as he stood by the wall in some blend of valet, friend, and chaperone to Lord Loxley. Shortly thereafter, Miss Lucy returned from wherever she had gone, and came to stand by Mr. Rochester, mimicking his posture in a way that made all of the young people cough and bite the insides of their cheeks to fight laughter. Lady Mathilda Loxley watched them from the far end of the room with rising disapproval, and Lord Loxley found himself very surprisingly enjoying the company of the Misses Meriwether on that account.

Miss Lucy quickly tired of the game of mimicking Mr. Rochester’s unmoving posture, and she came over to the couch to pester the potential couple. “Sarah, you ought to come see the gardens. They’re quite the go.”

“Perhaps we ought,” Lord Loxley agreed, thinking that it might give them an excuse to escape from Lady Mathilda Loxley’s close scrutiny. He got to his feet and crossed the room to his great-aunt. “Aunt Mathilda, I thought I might take the Misses Meriwether out for a stroll in the gardens before dinner.”

“Very well,” Lady Mathilda Loxley agreed, though she did glance disapprovingly toward Mr. Rochester.

The four of them escaped as swiftly as they could while maintaining a polite dignity, out onto the grounds. The weather was variable, a motley of blue and clouds, some of which spat idle droplets of rain. Lord Loxley walked with Mr. Rochester and Miss Sarah Meriwether on either side, with Miss Lucy inclined to wander on ahead of them. Lady Mathilda Loxley’s gardens were very pristinely kept, with broad lawns and neatly manicured paths.

“There aren’t any faeries here,” Miss Lucy complained, as she inspected the flowers. “It must all be too strict and disapproving for them.”

“Lucy, hush,” Miss Sarah Meriwether scolded.

“I don’t suppose I’d live here, if I were a faery,” Lord Loxley said. “No matter how nice the gardens are.”

Miss Lucy smiled at him for that and scampered ahead of them again.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Sarah Meriwether said. “She’s rather old for faeries, but she remains quite devoted to the idea.”

Lord Loxley didn’t know what to say to that, being not at all bothered by Miss Lucy’s whimsy, and he looked hopefully to Mr. Rochester, who would likely know the polite response to Miss Sarah’s comment, but Mr. Rochester was refusing to look at either of them. As their walk progressed, Mr. Rochester remained surprisingly cordial and long-suffering toward Miss Lucy’s antics, but quite cold and reserved toward the polite Miss Sarah. Neither Lord Loxley nor Miss Sarah were particularly gifted at making small talk when the conversation lagged, and Lord Loxley did not much think that Miss Sarah wanted to marry him any more than he wished to marry her.

It was almost a relief when a footman ran up to bid them all in for dinner, even though that meant returning to the company of Lady Mathilda Loxley, but dinner turned out to be much of the same. Miss Sarah attempted to carry the conversation on the merits of the latest styles and news from London, of which Lady Mathilda Loxley was almost unanimously disapproving, and at length Miss Sarah abandoned the attempt entirely, leaving the dinner party as a social ruin with no sound but the clink of silver on plates and the sonorous ticking of Lady Mathilda Loxley’s clock.

Finally freed from the misery of dinner, the party dispersed, and Lord Loxley returned to his carriage. As soon as the door shut, he groaned and slumped down in his seat, dispensing with the strict posture that he had kept throughout the visit. “Well, that was miserable.”

Mr. Rochester sat across from him, silently staring out the window, as if Lord Loxley was so dull as to be beneath his notice.

Sitting slantwise in the carriage, Lord Loxley huffed indignantly about being ignored, and resumed his consideration as to how he might go about rekindling Mr. Rochester’s tendency to very inappropriately steal kisses.

“Miss Sarah was quite lovely, however,” Lord Loxley said, watching Mr. Rochester very closely so that he didn’t miss the slight irritated narrowing of Mr. Rochester’s eyes at that statement. “Both gentle and beautiful,” he added, and saw Mr. Rochester’s shoulder twitch. The evident—though tightly repressed—jealousy was deeply satisfying to Lord Loxley, who continued. “How do you suppose she kisses?”

That earned him a glare, but no action. The carriage rattled on through the falling dusk, with just the one lantern along the front of the carriage that left the cabin mostly dark. Mr. Egby was unlikely to overhear their conversation, unless they were unusually loud about it, and it would be over an hour back to Loxley Manor. Lord Loxley had Mr. Rochester quite trapped.

“Probably nothing like you, which is a pity,” Lord Loxley continued, pretending to gaze idly out the window. “Although I’d quite enjoy it if she did.”

From the corner of his eye he saw Mr. Rochester’s hand clench. “There are words for men who let their wives rule them.”

“None of which, I trust, you would sully yourself to repeat,” Lord Loxley said. He could feel Mr. Rochester’s temper like a heat or a tension within the cabin, and kept on goading it in hopes of results. “Do you suppose she would rule me in the same manner you rule me?”

Mr. Rochester’s irritable glare turned into a furious scowl staring Lord Loxley down with steady wrath.

Quailing slightly under the force of it, Lord Loxley resumed sitting decently in the carriage instead of sprawling across the seat. After a minute, Mr. Rochester looked away.

Lord Loxley sighed. “
Why
do you hold back, Miles?”

Mr. Rochester’s lip curled, voice icy. “You will refer to me as Mr. Rochester.”

Deeply unhappy, Lord Loxley sank back in his seat and kept quiet the rest of the way home.

C
oins clinked
as Mr. Rochester set a small purse down on Lord Loxley’s desk. “Rent from Mr. Hutchins and Mr. Angley’s shops in the village. It is my recommendation that some of the funds be used to commission repairs for the shop roofs along the west path of the village. If the matter is put off much longer, the expense of it will increase.”

“See to it,” Lord Loxley approved, counting the coins, recording the sums, and making a note of the need for repairs. When he glanced up, he saw Mr. Rochester halfway to the door. “Mr. Rochester.”

Mr. Rochester paused and glanced back.

“I should commend you—“ Lord Loxley’s voice faltered. “You manage the estates far more deftly than I ever have.”