Patricia Rice (13 page)

Cassandra sent him a sidelong look. “I am a married woman
now, my lord, you must remember. I am entitled to a household of my own.”

“You have found a bower of honeysuckle and roses over which
to preside?” Merrick asked in amusement as they trampled across a neglected
field in the direction of her former home.

“Something like that,” Cassandra replied.

She stopped as they crossed into the weed-strewn remains of
the old carriage yard. A few blackened stable timbers stood in stark relief
against the cloudless sky. Ivy had covered much of the fallen debris of her
former home, and a wild morning glory bloomed rampantly over a fallen beam. The
once magnificent stable had returned to nature.

She held out her hand to Merrick. “Thank you for
accompanying me, my lord. I do hope you will not mind if I take occasional
liberties with Mr. MacGregor’s knowledge. I promise not to interfere with his
work.”

Wyatt looked from the vine-covered stable across to the
empty stone walls of the once enormous mansion. Some former Marquess of Eddings
had shipped expensive limestone from north of London to the Kentish countryside
to build this palace of his imagination. That had most likely been the
beginnings of the end of the Howard fortune. The impressive edifice had
outshone the countryside, but the surrounding lands could not support the army
of liveried servants required for upkeep. “Pride cometh before a fall” was as
apt a quotation for the Howards as any.

“I mean to see you safely home, my lady. These ruins are no
safe place to be. The roof on that section there is likely to crumble at a
moment’s notice, and any loud noise or vibration could send stones cascading to
the ground. I know you must feel sentimental about your home, but it needs to
be razed to the ground. I have told Duncan so on several occasions. The local
children are fascinated with it, and they can only come to harm if allowed to
play here.”

Cassandra made a wry moue. “I am aware of that. I have had
to persuade several of the more intrepid youngsters that it is not polite to
play in other people’s houses uninvited. I think they are beginning to get the
message.”

Wyatt felt as if the message were escaping him. Cassandra
had removed her cotton kerchief in the warmth of the sun, and her red-gold hair
shone gloriously against the backdrop of evergreen vines and blackened stone.
Daringly he looked into the vivid aqua of her eyes and read the truth there.

“You are not staying
here
?”
he whispered hoarsely.

“I will agree with you if that makes you happy.” Cassandra
shrugged blithely. “Just take my farewells and leave. Perhaps it is better if
you remain uncertain. I have no wish to have Duncan or my husband informed of
my whereabouts.”

Unreasoning anger swept through Wyatt at this callous
dismissal of his fears and worries of these last weeks. He had spent weeks
chastising himself for having left her alone in the carriage, for not having forced
Duncan to give her up in marriage, for not having done any of countless things
to prevent the tragedy of that night. He had berated himself and piled guilt
upon sin at the thought of her innocence violated at the hands of a brute like
Rupert.

His worst nightmare been that she had done away with
herself, and only when no trace of her body was found had he allowed himself to
believe she might still live. She had turned his life into a raging chaos, and
she dared dismiss his concerns with a shrug and a lie!

Grabbing her arm and ignoring the startled look she threw
him, Wyatt dragged Cassandra toward the crumbling pile of stones. “Show me
where you live. Convince me you are safe and protected here.”

Cassandra jerked her arm from his grip. “It is no business
of yours whether I am safe or not. It has not mattered to anyone but myself and
my mother for these past nineteen years. Do not extend your concern at this
late date, my lord.”

Nineteen. It was mid-May now. Wyatt vaguely recollected gala
birthday parties thrown in the child’s honor when she had lived here long ago,
right about this time of year. She had turned nineteen alone in this crumbling
pile of stone. Merrick strode after her as she slipped from his grasp and
disappeared around the corner of the house.

He followed the drive around the blank walls of the
kitchens, the private side entrance now buried under an avalanche of scorched
rock, and to the once impressive grand facade of the front.

The fire had burned hottest in the kitchen, leaving the
portico and front steps relatively unscathed, but even a casual observer could
see the sky through shattered casements. The tiled roof had fallen through to
the attics, and years of rain and neglect had collapsed any unburned portions
of the interior.

Cassandra was nowhere in sight.

A torn vine waved in the breeze over the gaping hole of the
front entrance. Merrick angled his high riding boots over a fallen lintel and
ducked beneath the canopy of greenery to enter the towering foyer. One glance
upward revealed glimpses of sky through moldering wood and crumbling dusts of
plaster.

Scavengers had carried off polished wood that the fire had
missed. What stones could be lifted had been trundled off in wheelbarrows and
added to barn foundations and pigsties over half the county. The tiled floor
had deep cracks through which weeds and shrub trees pressed, or had the last
time he had been here. Merrick noted their lack now with suspicion.

Voices further into the interior of the house provided the
final piece of evidence for his suspicions. Climbing over tumbled lathes,
Merrick traversed the center hall in search of the occupants.

The laughter spilling through the abandoned rooms could have
only one source. Merrick stopped and hesitated beneath the railless circular
stairway. She had not invited him in here. Every moral precept that he had ever
learned insisted that he leave at once.

Instead, he strode ahead to throw open the charred door to
the flag-stoned terrace room and conservatory.

Caught in the act of arranging a bouquet of flowers,
Cassandra halted with a bright-colored tulip in her hand. The young maid
laughing with her turned, gave his forbidding look a swift glance and hastily
departed.

Merrick studied the newly cleaned floor, the charred but
still solid stone walls, and glanced cautiously to the cracked cherubs on the
ceiling. The wall of shattered windows facing the south slope of the park had
been recently boarded over. Merrick could see that the airy ironwork and glass
in the conservatory had received the same treatment, blocking out light as well
as the elements. Lanterns placed around the room provided the only
illumination.

“I apologize for intruding, my lady,” Merrick replied
stiffly to the question in her eyes. “I could not in all conscience allow you
to come to harm because of my failure to warn you of the dangers of these
walls.”

“They are my walls.” Cassandra set her tulip in its place in
a cracked but still usable delft vase. “You really need not fret yourself, my
lord. As I told you, it is none of your concern.”

What remained of his patience ran out. “Cassandra, you are
behaving like a petulant child. You are endangering yourself and your servant
by remaining here when there is no need. I will be only too happy to provide
you with shelter of whatever sort you choose. Come back to the house with me,
where we can discuss these things reasonably.”

Incredulous blue eyes lifted to bowl him backward with their
volatile fire. “Your home? To that termagant mother of yours? She has all but
turned the dogs loose on me. No, thank you, my lord. I am quite comfortable
here.”

Merrick sensed her impatience for him to leave. She had placed
him in an insupportable position. He could not leave her in this crumbling
ruin. Equally, he could not carry her off screaming to his own home. Only a
Howard would be mad enough to dream up this bedevilment.

An emaciated scarecrow of a man entered silently. The
anxious maid crept in behind him.

“Could I be of assistance in seeing you out, my lord?” The
man bowed courteously from the waist, but the insolence in his tone was thinly
disguised. He straightened and regarded the earl with jaundiced eye. “The path
can be somewhat treacherous to the uninitiated. Let me lead the way.”

She was having him thrown out! Merrick turned to the
marquess’s lovely daughter for confirmation and caught the faint nod of her
head. The smile had gone from her lips and a shadow of sorrow darkened her
eyes, but she did not stop this charade.

Irate, Merrick whirled on his heel and stalked out ahead of
the cadaverous butler. Butler! He shook his head in bemusement at the thought.

The brilliantly lovely daughter of the late Marquess of
Eddings, the wife of the fabulously wealthy Sir Rupert Percival, an
Incomparable yet to grace the halls of London society—living like a hermit in
an abandoned ruin with a butler and a lady’s maid to attend her.

Only a Howard could do it.

Shaking his head, Merrick marched out into the spring
sunlight and wondered where the clouds had come from.

Cassandra closed her eyes against the crack of sunlight shining
through the chink in the ceiling. Once there had been two floors and a roof
above this room to keep out the elements. She didn’t want to know what remained
between her and the world outside right now.

She snuggled deeper into the goosedown pallet on which she
slept. Lotta and Jacob were amazingly resourceful. She wondered what farmer’s
wife had been persuaded to part with this lovely bedding, but she didn’t dare
question the pair too closely.

Musing over the oddity of the disparate coupling of the
voluptuous young maid and the lanky, formal gentlemen’s gentleman, Cassandra
was slow to notice the pounding and sawing some distance away. As the noise
gradually intruded on her consciousness, a scraping sounded at the doorway.

“My lady, Cass, are you awake?”

They had been friends too long for Lotta to maintain proper
decorum. Cassandra stretched and wrapped her woolen blanket around her
shoulders. The spring nights were still chilly, and they had yet to discover
any safe way of providing heat. What parts of the chimneys still remained
standing had become a harbor for sparrows and swifts. There wasn’t a chimney
sweep in the world who would risk climbing out on these roofs to clear them
out.

“What is it, Lotta? And what’s that noise? Surely Jacob isn’t
trying to put up more boards?” She remembered with a shudder the day the
valet-turned-jack-of-all-trades had attempted to cover one of the broken
windows.

The door jerked and creaked as Lotta lifted it on its rusty
hinges. The shaft of sunlight from the ceiling provided the room’s only light.

“That’s what I come about. There’s a swarm of men up there
on the roof hammering and banging away. Do you reckon Duncan sent them?”

Cassandra experienced alarm before she stopped to think.
Then she shook her head at the impossibility. She didn’t know how much money
Duncan had connived out of Rupert before the wedding, but it was a certainty
that he had received none since.

“Send Jacob out to find who sent them. I’ll get dressed and
join you in a minute. I suspect I know who’s behind this.”

Cassandra reached for the simple gown she had worn the day
before. She wanted to look like a scullery maid. She had no desire to ever see
another smoking pistol used in her name again.

When she had dressed and tied her hair back in a ribbon, she
let herself out through the newly built wooden door at the rear of the
conservatory. The tile and stone that had once kept plants cool and moist in
the summer had withstood the fire much better than the elegant paneling and
woods in the rest of the house.

She patted the limestone walls cheerfully as she stepped
into the sunlight.

A bevy of workmen crawled and pounded and worked at the low
roof over the garden wing that housed their small living space. They had
already leveled off a portion of the upper walls to provide a surface for new
beams that men on the ground were sawing to size.

Cassandra could think of only one man who could
single-handedly summon so much efficiency on such short notice. When Jacob
loped across the lawn to greet her, she was not surprised to hear Lord Merrick’s
name.

“They say they’re here on his lordship’s orders, my lady,”
Jacob explained at her question. “They won’t leave without his orders.”

Cassandra bit back a vivid curse. She didn’t need to be told
more. Work was hard to come by in these parts. These men wouldn’t be deprived
of a day’s wages without a fight. She had found them all too eager to come at
her beck and call for nigh on to nothing whenever she needed work done.

Well, Merrick could just put them to work on his estate. She
couldn’t afford them, and she wasn’t accepting his charity. She needed farmers,
not carpenters, not yet.

Lifting her hand to shade her eyes, she glared up at the men
clambering about on her roof. “All right, Jacob, I’ll see to this. Tell Lotta
to see if that lazy hen has laid any eggs this morning. I’ll be needing a
decent meal by the time I finish traipsing across these fields.”

Jacob gave her a speculative look. “Perhaps his lordship is
apologizing for his unwarranted intrusion yesterday. Would it not be proper to
be gracious and accept his unorthodox manner of apologizing?”

“I realize a sound roof will be more comfortable when it
rains, but I am not about to compromise his reputation or mine any more than
they have been. If I have learned nothing else, I have learned gentlemen expect
a return for their favors. No, thank you, Jacob. I am not my brother or Rupert.
I will get by without
anyone’s
charity. I will be sure to save sufficient cash to see you and Lotta paid at
the end of the quarter as usual. You know I will provide adequate references
should you wish to seek employment elsewhere.”