Ripe for Scandal (18 page)

“We could invite the neighbors,” Gareth said with forced cheerfulness. “As the new arrivals, we’ll be expected to do something.
Especially as the house has been unoccupied for some thirty years or more.”

Beau nodded her head, grateful that Mrs. Peebles chose that exact moment to return with a well-laden tea tray. Beau ate one
Naples biscuit after another, suddenly ravenous. Outside, the rain had begun to fall more heavily, the darkening sky leaving
the room as gloomy as her husband.

“Garderobes,” Gareth said with horrified awe as Mrs. Peebles pointed out the two small doors just off the master’s bedchamber.

His wife gave him a slightly exasperated look, and Gareth let the topic go. The house was worse than he’d feared, but Beau
seemed determined to like it, and to force him to do likewise. The dark paneling she called
cozy
. The beds, raised up on daises and engulfed in ancient, rotting curtains, were
impressive
. But even she could find nothing better than
historical
for the intact garderobes.

There was an impressive long gallery on the first floor, lined with tall, empty bookcases separated by caryatid columns. It
ran over the entry, its windows looking out on a sweeping view of the lane leading up to the house and the lawn that led down
toward the chalk cliffs and the road to Kingstown.

Beau wandered away from him and Mrs. Peebles, running her fingers along the windowsills. Her lips were moving, as though she
were talking to herself.

“Cursing my father?”

She shook her head. “Making a list. Every house needs books. I’d never thought to create a library from nothing though. It’s
a bit daunting.”

“It does give one the option to leave out fusty sermons and improving tracts,” Gareth said. Mrs. Peebles shot him a scandalized
look before dropping her eyes. Gareth snorted. It was best that she know right from the start whom she was working for.

“We never had many of those at home,” Beau said. “We had a Bible, of course. Several in fact, but the duke is not fond of
religious treatises. Unless they’re Roman and advocating the proper way to worship Mithras or the like, that is. Those he’d
display with glee.”

Mrs. Peebles hands were clenched into tiny fists, the knuckles burning white. Gareth bit his tongue and let Beau continue
to rattle on about pagan deities and just what sorts of books they should send for. He gave the Peebleses a month at most
before they gave their notice.

After a few minutes, the housekeeper excused herself to check on the preparations for dinner, and Gareth gave into the amusement
that had been slowly overwhelming him. His guffaws echoed back from the barrel-arched ceiling, making it sound as though the
room were filled with laughing men.

“What?” Beau said, looking adorably confused. “You’re not allowed to say you don’t want a library. And you’re certainly not
allowed to laugh at my penchant for novels.”

“Buy all the novels you like, brat. But for heaven’s sake, don’t start the library out with your sister-in-law’s donation.
I think that really would be the last straw for poor Mrs. Peebles.”

“Oh,” Beau said with dawning understanding. She caught her lower lip between her teeth as she always did when worried or perplexed.
“Do you think she’s packing at this very moment, or might we simply be on notice?”

“Definitely on notice, the both of us. I thought it was going to be just me, but then you had to go and talk about filling
the house with odes to pagan gods.”

“And novels. Don’t forget the novels. Surely those are every bit as bad.”

“If not worse,” Gareth agreed. “Shall we see if we can find our way back through the rabbit warren to the parlor? I’m beginning
to lose all sensation in my fingers and the
night isn’t going to get any warmer.” He rubbed his hands briskly together for emphasis.

After several false starts and roundabout journeys, a somewhat startled maid led them back to the parlor. “Is it me,” Gareth
said, “or have the chairs shrunk since we were last here?”

“Perhaps you’ve grown,” Beau said, reclaiming her seat on the settee.

“Those,” he waved his hand at the chairs, “are going to have to be banished to the nursery, assuming we have one. We must,
mustn’t we? All old piles do. Can you imagine Thane attempting to balance his great carcass on one of them?”

Gareth cringed as soon as the words left his mouth. Beau blinked, clearly afraid to respond. Damn it all. They’d been on tenterhooks
ever since their encounter with Lady Cook in Hyde Park. His former mistress had waylaid him with a plea for help with her
stirrup, and things had deteriorated from the moment he’d swung out of the saddle.

She and Vaughn were both busy portraying him as a villainous seducer. Vaughn out of anger, Lady Cook out of a thirst for revenge.
She’d accused him of slighting her. As though he were somehow her possession.

Bad enough that he was
persona non grata
with the League. He’d expected problems there, though perhaps not quite such serious ones. Lady Cook was bent upon reminding
the
ton
of his every misstep. She wanted his transgressions fresh in their minds.

And no one was going to give him the chance to explain, except perhaps Devere, who seemed as blasé
about this as he did about everything. The fact that almost every member of the League had known Beau since she was a girl
thundering about behind them on her pony could only have served to make things worse.

Sisters were sacrosanct. Everyone knew that.

CHAPTER 24

T
he first three days of their life at Morton Hall took place in a deluge. It was like living inside a goldfish bowl. By the
time the storm broke, they’d explored every inch of the house, from the attic to the kitchen.

Gareth had claimed one of the smaller parlors on the ground floor for his study, and Beau had left him there, poring over
the spider scrawl in the account books while she went outside to explore the remains of the gardens.

The very formal pathways were all still intact, but the herbal borders had died away, and the beds contained nothing but a
deep layer of straw mulch. Some distance from the house, the geometric pathways and beds gave way to a lawn, the transition
marked by a long line of untidy yew sentinels.

Beau pulled the hem of her gown up through her pocket slits to shorten it and headed for the cliff’s edge. The ground squelched
underfoot, sinking beneath every step. Her half boots were soaked through by the time she caught her first view of the sea,
but the view was undeniably worth wet feet and ruined stockings.

The tide was rolling in, dark, white-capped waves crashing on the beach, slowly working their way closer and closer to the
base of the cliff. Down along the shore, she could make out the village of Kingstown. Tiny gray houses with dark roofs and
the occasional curl of smoke. Utterly different from the thatched cottages scattered about her father’s estate.

The wind whipped her hair into her eyes and pulled at her skirts as though they were sails. Beau braced her feet and took
a deep breath of the salty air. A deep, loud bark caught her attention. Down on the shore, a huge black-and-white dog was
running along the narrow strip of beach. A man on horseback spun about, cantering back toward the village. The dog stopped,
shook, and lay down, apparently content to have the beach to itself once more.

Beau turned back toward the house. From this angle, it really did look like a galleon. Like the storm that had wrecked the
Spanish Armada had swept one of the boats up, deposited it atop the cliff, and someone planted a garden all around it. Clip
the yews to look like dolphins, and the image would be complete.

Beau pushed her hair out of her eyes and let the wind push her back up toward the house. She found Gareth still poring over
the household ledger, a look of disgruntled annoyance on his face.

“It can’t be that bad,” she said, leaning in to look over his shoulder. Gareth sat back with a sigh. Beau perched on the edge
of the desk. She cupped his face, smoothing her thumbs over his brows, the thrill of having a right to do so still strong.
“It’s nothing money can’t fix.”

“Your money,” he said, the frown returning in full force.

“Legally, it’s
your
money now,” she replied.

“Said with the perfect nonchalance of someone who’s never fretted over an account or bill in her life.”

Beau jerked her hands back, anger flushing through her. “It’s unfair to behave as though you wished me to have been a penniless
bride.”

Gareth raised one hand and rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry, brat. That’s not what I meant at all. It’s just these damn columns
of numbers are making my head ache.”

Beau bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snapping back at him. She’d sworn to make him happy. Fighting over money, especially
a surplus of it, was ridiculous. “Leave them alone then and come back to them tomorrow,” she said, forcing a light tone.

The only reason that he was trapped here slaving over that ledger in a house he clearly hated was that he’d married her. And
she’d done everything in her power to leave him no choice. She’d got what she wanted, but she wasn’t entirely sure that Gareth
could say the same. The memory of his hand on Lady Cook’s ankle skittered through her brain. He’d given up a lot of things
to save her.

“Have the horses arrived yet?” he asked, his tone conciliatory.

Beau shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Why?”

“I was thinking we could go for a ride. Maybe tour the village. Introduce ourselves to the vicar.”

Beau forced a smile. His comment still stung, but he was trying. “I would like to know who our neighbors are. Whom to call
upon.”

“So, a frontal attack? Before Mrs. Peebles brands us as heathens and we have to turn Methodist?”

“Yes,” she said, accepting what she knew to be an olive branch. “We should begin as we mean to go on. And I’ve no intention
of hiding.”

“Newlyweds,” Mr. Tillyard said, his tone somehow implying that there was something suspicious about such a state. “And taking
up residence at Morton Hall.”

The statement hung in the air as though it were a question. Gareth found himself nodding, afraid to reply verbally to the
ancient vicar, lest he say the wrong thing. Beau was frozen beside him, her eyes a little too large, as though she too were
barely able to restrain herself.

“Yes,” Gareth said. “My father gave it over to me upon my wedding to Lady Boudicea.”

The old man nodded, the side curls of his wig bobbing in time with his head shakes. “Lot of work, setting a house like that
to rights. Been vacant as long as I’ve held the living here.”

“Yes,” Gareth said and nodded back. He was beginning to sound like some kind of parrot. Only able to reply with a single word.
And the vicar was right. It was going to be a great deal of work. Not to mention expense.

The estate might have a decent income—thank God that the hop fields hadn’t been left to go to rack and ruin like the house—but
they wouldn’t see any of it for nearly a year. The harvest had taken place only a few months previous, and his father had
sold the crop before bestowing the estate. He was going to have to broach the principal of Beau’s dowry to restore the house
and grounds
to a livable state in the meantime. He didn’t have any choice.

The thought made him slightly sick. Fortune hunter. Like it or not, that’s what he’d been reduced to. He’d gone from philanderer
to this. At moments like these, he was almost certain that his father had chosen this particular property as some kind of
punishment. Step out of line, boy, and you’ll see what happens.

And step out of line he had. He was never supposed to have married. Never supposed to have caused his family any unexpected
expense. And now that he had, he was being forced to pour his wife’s dowry into an estate that might never be truly habitable
if the state of their bedroom was any indication.

Between the hole in the sheets that he’d caught his toe in, the smoking fireplace, and the abysmal damp, they might as well
be living in a crofter’s cottage on his father’s estate. No, all the crofter’s cottages there had good, thatch roofs. There
were leaks aplenty at Morton Hall.