The Earl's Mistress Page 5

  “Must you go so quickly, Bella?” she asked. “Lady Petershaw’s friend must be in a frightful rush.”

  Forcing a smile, Isabella picked up Georgina’s hair ribbon and tied off the blonde plait. “Wealthy gentlemen are always in a rush,” she said, her motions deft. “Mr. Mowbrey’s library is vast, I’m told, and will take weeks to catalog.”

  Georgina twisted around on her dressing stool. “And there won’t be any little boys at this house?” she said again, her little brow furrowing. “Or any little girls? At all?”

  “No, my only little girl is right here.” Isabella crooked her head to set her lips to Georgina’s temple. “And I will long for her madly—and for my big girl, too. Still, I did enjoy telling you funny stories about Lord Petershaw and his brother.”

  “They were so wicked,” Georgina giggled. “Remember, Bella, when they put the mouse in the chalk tin?” The child flashed a grin that showed the gap where her bottom front teeth should have been.

  The impossibly tiny teeth had been the first to appear, Isabella remembered wistfully, and now the first to go. Where would she be, Isabella wondered, when the rest of Georgina’s teeth came out?

  Most likely in the mysterious Mr. Mowbrey’s bed, she thought bitterly, at least for the next two incisors. Beyond that, she might not hold his attention.

  Still, that was how one remembered one’s life, she supposed, when a child was the center of one’s universe. Such memories became the milestones by which one measured happiness. The small triumphs and tragedies—like Jemima’s first fall from her pony in the ring at Thornhill. Or the time Jemima cut off all Georgina’s hair with the gardener’s shears. Or the day she’d taught both girls to skip rope in Green Park.

  Dear heaven, how she would miss them! For an instant, she shut her eyes, already struggling against the yearning.

  When her father and stepmother still lived, Isabella had spent her holidays and every other Sunday at Thornhill. After their deaths, Lady Petershaw’s mansion had been but a six-mile walk from this little cottage. Buckinghamshire seemed, by contrast, the backside of the moon. And yet she was fortunate, she knew, to be going no further; lucky, really, that she wasn’t stuck halfway to the Highlands with the wicked Earl of Hepplewood chasing her round the schoolroom trying to toss up her skirts.

  Isabella drew the comb through the other side of Georgina’s hair. “No, I shall have no little imps to manage this time,” she said pensively. “Just books, mostly.”

  “And bones,” added Jemima sullenly. “And dead bugs and stuffed birds and even dried lizard bits, I daresay.”

  Isabella glanced at the clock, hating the fib she’d told. “A natural philosopher might have any of those things, I suppose,” she said, swiftly twitching the braid back and forth. “I will simply have to catalog them, Jemma, not carry them round in my pockets.”

  “Well, you don’t look like a governess,” said Jemima, “or a librarian, or whatever it is you’re going to be.”

  The ugly word Lady Petershaw had used flashed through Isabella’s mind.

  But she must not think of that now. She must think only of all the back rent she had just paid, and of the monstrous goose Mrs. Barbour had just hung in the larder.

  “Promise me, Georgie, that you will behave for Mrs. Barbour,” Isabella said, reaching for the comb, “and for Jemma, too. I’m counting on you both. Help wash and clear after dinner, please, and clean your teeth without being asked.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the girls in unison.

  “I hope you will like Mr. Mowbrey,” Jemima added more hopefully, “and that he’ll give you lots of time to write home.”

  “Of course he will,” said Isabella, “so long as I get the cataloging done.”

  But Isabella deeply disliked misleading the girls, and the notion that had seemed so tolerable a few days ago in Lady Petershaw’s withdrawing room had begun to feel more like a trip to the gallows.

  “Am I done?” Georgina craned her head back.

  Isabella snatched the last ribbon and tied it. “Yes, off to school with you,” she said, giving the girl a little scoot. “Quick, kiss me. Oh, have you your reader and copybook?”

  “I left it in the kitchen.” Hastily, the child gave Isabella one last peck on the cheek. “Love you, love you, love you, Bella!” she said, darting out and down the stairs, her tiny footsteps light.

  But Jemima was still sitting on the edge of the bed, one coltish leg dangling. “I like your hat,” she said in a voice that was uncomfortably grown-up. “That shade of aubergine becomes you.”

  “Thank you, Jemma.” Isabella stood and smoothed her hands down her skirts. “I like it, too.”

  The carriage dress of aubergine velvet had come with Lady Petershaw’s letter, along with a faintly frivolous velvet hat with a dramatically curling black feather. Isabella had recognized both as having belonged to the marchioness. And while the ensemble was by no means outré, it was the sort of thing Isabella had not worn in a very long while.

  “You look glamorous, Bella, as you used to do at Thornhill,” said Jemima quietly. “Before all the gray, when I was very little.”

  Isabella wanted to stroke the child’s hair and tell her that she was still little. That she was a good, sweet child who deserved to be protected from the world’s harsh realities. But the realities already told in Jemima’s fraying cuffs and in the disquiet that shadowed her eyes.

  “It is going to be all right, Jemma,” said Isabella, bending over to tuck a loose lock of hair behind the girl’s ear. “I promise. Things are looking up for us.”

  Just then there was a harsh tattoo upon the door. “She’s come, Mrs. Aldridge,” said Mrs. Barbour through the planks. “I daresay you’d best go down.”

  Isabella tipped up Jemima’s chin. “I’m off, then, my love,” she said. “I wish I did not have to ask you to look after your sister, but I do.”

  It was a dance they had done a score of times before. Jemima slid off the bed and silently hugged her.

  “I can do it, Bella,” she finally said.

  “I know,” Isabella whispered into the girl’s hair. “I’m counting on you. And thank you.”

  There was little more to be said. After a moment, Isabella released her stepsister, blinking back an unexpected tear. “Well, then,” she managed. “Don’t be late for school.”

  Then, before she began to cry in earnest, Isabella turned and went out the door to find Mrs. Barbour still standing there.

  “I shall say it again, miss,” the elderly cook grumbled, handing her the marchioness’s ivory calling card, “but I don’t like the sound of this business.”

  “Oh, pray do not scold me, Barby,” said Isabella as they went down the stairs. “It will be quite all right.”

  “And your aunt and cousin?” she said fretfully. “You’ve seen to them, ma’am?”

  “Oh, yes! I wrote Lady Meredith yesterday,” Isabella said over her shoulder, “and refused her invitation to Thornhill. Indeed, I told her as much in the train station eons ago. I begin to wonder if Everett is desperate? Now, do let Lady Petershaw know if I’m needed, and she will send for me straightaway.”

  “Hmph,” said the old woman, jerking her head toward the parlor door. “Well, I’ve put her in there, miss. Now hug my old neck before you go tearing off again. Natural philosophy, indeed!”

  Isabella did, then kissed the old woman’s cheek. “What a dear thing you are,” she said. “And what would have become of those poor children without you, I shudder to think.”

  “And I never thought I’d see the day you’d be so burdened,” the old woman returned, starting down the kitchen stairs. “That Sir Charlton is Old Scratch himself, and your cousin Everett and his mother are worse. They could have spared you this.”

  But Isabella had long ago learnt there was no point in grieving over right and wrong. Sir Charlton had refused to support his sister’s children, or even to bring them up—not that Isabella could have borne surrendering them.

  Retu
rning her attention to Lady Petershaw’s plan, she turned, gathered her courage, then pushed open the parlor door, trying to look willing and properly grateful.

  But the marchioness did not herself look willing. She turned from the windows that overlooked the lane, her beautiful face a mask of pique.

  “Well, my dear, I am come as promised.” She crossed the small room to hand Isabella a folded paper. “Here is the direction and Mrs. Litner’s letter of introduction. But I shall tell you straight out, this leaves me a trifle uneasy.”

  “Does it? Why?” Isabella glanced down at the address, scarcely a three-hour drive away.

  The marchioness’s brow furrowed. “I cannot recall a Mr. William Mowbrey, and I know nearly everyone. I also didn’t like the look I saw in Mrs. Litner’s eyes yesterday.” She made an airy, uncertain gesture, lace swinging from her cuff. “Oh, I cannot call it fear—no, it was not that—but it came an inch too near desperation for my comfort.”

  “What did she say about Mr. Mowbrey?”

  Lady Petershaw snorted. “That he is thirty-something, handsome, widowed, and wildly rich, if that comforts you,” she answered.

  The vision of Lord Hepplewood’s mouth hovering over hers went skittering through Isabella’s mind. What would it be like, she wondered, to go to his bed? Would the mysterious Mr. Mowbrey be as handsome?

  He could not possibly be as arrogant—or as dangerous.

  “I suppose handsome and widowed is better than ugly and married,” she said with a shrug.

  “Very true.” The marchioness smiled. “But she admits, too, that so far as she’s seen, Mr. Mowbrey cannot be pleased; that you are the fourth or fifth young lady of grace and beauty to whom she has ‘introduced’ the gentleman—and if you will not do, she means to give up.”

  “So I’m her last-ditch effort?” Isabella lifted her gaze from the paper. “Is that why she didn’t bother to meet me?”

  “Count yourself fortunate,” said Lady Petershaw with a sniff. “Louisa Litner is decidedly common.”

  “Then I wonder any gentleman acknowledges her?”

  Lady Petershaw had paced back to the window to glance down at the waiting carriages. “I wonder a little, too,” she said pensively, “so I’ve decided on an insurance plan.”

  “An insurance plan?” echoed Isabella.

  “I’m sending you in my unmarked carriage,” Lady Petershaw said, pointing at the plainer of two carriages parked on the grassy verge. “My under-coachman will drive you. Dillon’s a clever lad. I’ve instructed him to remain nearby for a fortnight.”

  “Yes? To what end?”

  “I’m of the opinion that Mowbrey is an assumed name,” said the marchioness, “one taken merely for discretion’s sake, I hope.”

  “An assumed name?”

  The marchioness shrugged. “It’s a common ruse when a well-known gentleman is scouting about for a new mistress,” she said, “but it makes my scrutiny difficult. So if you find the gentleman acceptable, kindly hang a handkerchief out your window each evening. Just a few inches will do. It is but a small lodge in the countryside; there cannot be too many windows.”

  “I expect not,” Isabella agreed. “But why?”

  “If no handkerchief appears on a given night, Dillon will come to collect you the next morning,” the marchioness answered evenly. “He’s to say there’s been a death in your family—we could do nicely without Lady Meredith, could we not?—and you’re wanted immediately.”

  “How extraordinary,” murmured Isabella.

  “One cannot be too careful in such matters,” said the marchioness knowingly. “If Dillon is given any nonsense, the next face Mr. Mowbrey will see shall be mine.”

  A silence fell across the shabby parlor, punctuated only by the clatter of bare branches beyond the window. “My lady,” Isabella finally said, “why are you doing all this for me?”

  The marchioness flashed a wincing smile. “If I do not help you establish yourself, you’ll do it anyway, my dear, and make a hash of it,” she said. “And yet, if I get you into it, I feel it falls to me to get you out again. Moreover, I deeply dislike seeing intelligent women forced into poverty through the vindictiveness of men.”

  “Lady Petershaw, my problems with Cousin Everett—the current Baron Tafford, I mean—are my own.”

  The lady shrugged, then patted Isabella’s hand. “Now, you will write to me as soon as you have judged the man sane,” she reminded her. “If I’ve had no letter in that first fortnight, I will assume the worst—handkerchief or no.”

  Isabella nodded. “In which case I can again expect my aunt’s demise?”

  “Followed by my visit if you don’t turn up on my doorstep the next day,” Lady Petershaw added.

  “Thank you,” said Isabella, bowing her head.

  The marchioness flicked a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. “I thought you should leave at once,” she said, “before dread sets in. Your trunks are already loaded—the brown one was full of books—and I assume you’ve a portmanteau?”

  Isabella did, now filled with garments of lace, and even a bottle of perfume she would otherwise never have dared purchase. But the tools of her trade were no longer books and chalk, Isabella considered, but something altogether different.

  “There’s little point burdening your horses with the brown trunk,” she said quietly. “Where I go now, I shall scarcely need schoolbooks.”

  “No,” said the marchioness a little somberly. “No, you will not.”

  Then she went to the front door, threw it open, and shouted at Dillon. “Bring in the brown one,” she commanded, “and carry it upstairs.”

  Isabella gave a long, inward sigh.

  Her journey into darkness had just begun.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mr. Mowbrey’s rural lodge lay in a long, low wood a few miles northwest of Chesham, approached by means of a carriage drive lined by fieldstone walls to either side. Isabella looked about, disconcerted by how deep in the countryside they were.

  Along the wall, the trees seemed to bow almost formally toward one another, forming a skeletal canopy of gray that would have been beautiful in the summer but now looked merely bleak. The lane was rutted, the center tufted with frostbitten grass, giving one the impression the road was rarely used. Isabella hung on to the strap, craning this way and that in hope of seeing some sign of civilization.

  But there was nothing until, after some two miles, a clearing came suddenly into view and the lane simply ended. She looked out to see a pretty Georgian manor of red brick with an arbor arching over the front door.

  The façade was nearly covered in creeper, now dormant, and the windows and doors were freshly painted white, yet the house still held an air of abandonment. The wide stone wall encircled the whole of it, separating the carriage drive from the house itself, as if visitors were being walled out.

  Or as if the people inside were being walled in. . . .

  With legs that shook, Isabella climbed down, told Dillon to stay put, then pushed open the wrought-iron gate and went up the path to the door. She could hear a hammer ringing in the back of the house, the sound like metal on stone, rhythmically cleaving the silence. She lifted the ornate brass knocker and knocked, but there was no response.

  After a second attempt, Isabella simply lifted her skirts and waded into the garden, her footsteps crunching on the stubbled, almost frozen, grass. She wished desperately to get through these first awkward minutes and to reassure herself that Mr. Mowbrey was not a murderous ogre before Dillon abandoned her to her fate.

  In the rear, another pretty gate gave onto a graveled yard with a coach house and stable block. Here, however, a section of wall had collapsed, leaving the gate listing drunkenly. A man was chipping away at a piece of fieldstone set on an old mounting block, swinging his arm with a rhythmic expertise and sending chunks of gray flying.

  He was bare to the waist, Isabella realized, his leather braces having been slipped off his shoulders to hang loose about a pair of lean hi
ps. A blindingly white shirt had been tossed over a nearby branch, and the man seemed intent upon his work, his muscles bunching thickly as he swung his hammer in cadent, cracking blows.

  Despite the cool air and the late winter sun, the man’s broad back was lightly sheened with sweat, and Isabella watched in mute discomposure for some seconds—long enough, apparently, for the man to finish his work. He laid the hammer aside with a grunt, then hefted up the stone and turned.

  Recognition slammed into Isabella, seizing her breath.

  It was the Earl of Hepplewood.

  She froze, gaping at his tall, rangy form that no longer looked so elegant.

  Indeed, absent the civilizing effects of a coat and neckcloth—not to mention a shirt—the man looked shockingly barbaric.

  Then, to her acute discomfort, he smiled and set the rock back down.

  “Mrs. Aldridge,” he said, snatching his shirt from the branch. “Welcome to Greenwood Farm. You’re a trifle early. I shall take it as a sign of eagerness.”

  Isabella stepped backward. “Eagerness?” she parroted, her eyes fixated upon a broad expanse of bare chest.

  Hepplewood moved with a languid grace, shaking out his shirt as he came. “I was glad to learn you’d taken my good advice,” he said, shoving an arm in a sleeve, “but the coincidence of the thing did take me aback—as it has you, too, I see.”

  But Isabella couldn’t begin to make sense of it; her brain felt stuffed with wool and her lungs had ceased to work. Hepplewood dragged the shirt on, his chest wall rippling as he drew it down his lithe, smoothly muscled torso.

  Somehow, she forced her gaze to his face, resisting the urge to run back to the carriage. “I beg your pardon,” she said again, blinking slowly, “but what are you talking about?”

  He propped one hand on the gatepost that still stood upright, his gaze sweeping her length. “My advice,” he said with a faint smile, “to give up the dull business of governessing for an option that better suits your . . . well, let us call them your God-given attributes.”

  Indignation welled up inside Isabella. “How dare you,” she said quietly. “I do not know, Lord Hepplewood, just what sort of deceit you employed to trick me here, but I will have—”