A Husband for Hire (The Heirs & Spares Series Book 1) Page 12
“Sally, help me out of this dimity. I want the purple damask with the jet trim and ring for May. She is very good with hair. I wish mine up.”
“Ma’am? The purple damask?”
“Yes, it strikes exactly the right note.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It took her an hour to reach a state where she felt ready to receive an agent of the Prince Regent and another hour before she felt the agent might be ready to receive her.
“Mr. Ludlow. I am Lady Miles Everleigh. How may I help you?”
Eleanor swept into what she’d always considered an overly-ornate and incredibly-ugly blue parlor, a holdover from a deplorable splurge on gilded French Rococo excess inflicted upon Rutledge Manor by one of her father’s predecessors and addressed the gentleman staring at the vaulted ceiling painted sky blue with a baroque scene of naked cherubs and white clouds. She knew why he stared. Several of the cherubs were engaged in amorous activities that were anything but celestial. He smelled strongly of fortified wine and cupped a large crystal goblet in one hand. An impassive footman in formal livery stood immediately inside the door beside a gilt and blue paint console and held a decanter less than half-full of golden brown liquor.
Her visitor stopped his staring, cleared his throat with a loud, “Ahem,” and acknowledged her with a brief bow. Irritation edged his voice. “Ivan Ludlow, Senior Investigative Agent to His Royal Highness George Augustus Frederick of Hanover, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, and Baron of Renfrew.” He sniffed. “My lady, is it your intention to fog my mind with drink? I’ll have you know, it won’t work.” He held her in a glassy-eyed gaze of indignation and swayed ever so slightly.
“I cannot imagine what you mean, sir.” Her charming smile oozed naiveté. “I merely thought to provide you with a high treat while I rid myself of the stables and changed into something more suitable to receive an agent of His Royal Highness. You are partaking of The Earl of Rutledge’s favorite port. He never shares it with anyone.” She perched on the edge of a diminutive, powder-blue, satin double-sofa and indicated an unusually low-to-the-ground, eminently fragile-looking, slipper chair. “Please, be seated, sir. Take your ease.” She smiled brightly. “Tell me what business the Prince Regent can have with me.”
The agent eyed the unstable-looking furniture with obvious doubt and descended onto the narrow seat with an overabundance of caution. When he was fully seated, the chair creaked in an ominous fashion, and his knees lacked only a foot of being at his chin.
“I don’t desire concourse with you, madam, I want to speak with your master, Lord Miles Everleigh, but I am informed he is not receiving. Equally, I am given to understand that your father is too ill. So…since neither of the heads of this household are available, I must make do with you.”
He must “make do” with her? Eleanor wanted to hurl the Meissen shepherdess figurine on the sofa table at his head, but she “made do” with smiling vacuously and blinking like an ingénue. “For the second time, how may I help you?”
The agent regarded her with a narrowing of the eyes.
She smiled wider and if possible, more vacantly, with much batting of her eyelashes.
“The Prince Regent has come into possession of the premarital contract signed by yourself and your husband and has strong misgivings as to the legitimate nature of your union.”
“Heaven save me!” She sprang to her feet necessitating that Mr. Ludlow rise also. The man’s knees produced multiple sounds resembling a dead chicken being disjointed. “Are you suggesting we are not legally married?” Before he could answer, she sank back onto the sofa.
The agent clenched his jaw, and slowly returned his posterior to the fragile chair, which once again complained about his weight. “I, on behalf of the Prince, have several questions to put to Lord Miles Everleigh concerning the financial settlements accruing to him upon his marriage to you.”
Once more she bolted upright in alarm. “My husband and I enjoy the greatest of domestic harmony. Do you imply that Lord Miles received recompense to marry me! What an infamous suggestion.”
Forced to his feet again, Ludlow grimaced and cleared his throat with some exasperation. “Ma’am, I cannot have a rational discussion with you popping up and down like… like… some demented gopher.”
“Sir! Your comments are beyond insulting.” Eleanor clutched her hand to her breast and gave every evidence of being mortally offended as she once more sank to the love seat. She tried, unsuccessfully, to manufacture tears, though she did dab at her eyes with a hastily procured handkerchief and was quite proud of the quiver she injected into her normally direct tones.
With obvious ill-ease, Ludlow once again perched his buttocks on the tiny chair with all accompanying sound effects and scrubbed his face. “Apologies, ma’am. Can’t think what…” He blinked as if to clear his vision. “When might I speak with Lord Miles Everleigh?”
Eleanor rose and drew herself up to her full six-foot height. She snickered internally as the agent regained his feet with an unmistakable grunt and much protest from his joints.
“That I cannot tell you, sir. Lord Miles has gone to the continent on a horse buying trip. The date of his return is uncertain. I have your card. I will send notice to you upon Lord Miles’ return to Rutledge. Now, good day.” Having issued the latter in her most imperious voice, she turned and swept out of the room.
As she gained the second-floor landing, she met her butler coming from the direction of her parents’ apartments and paused. “Brilliant move putting him in the Blue Parlor, Walters. He was half disguised on Father’s port and much distracted by the ceiling.”
The man inclined his head. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. “Yes, madam.”
She lowered her voice. “Did you advise Father of Ludlow’s presence?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Ludlow won’t be satisfied until he speaks with Lord Miles.” With a long sigh, she smoothed the front of her elegant gown and played with the pieces of black jet that adorned the skirt. “I can think of no other option than to make a personal appeal to Lord Miles and throw myself on his mercy.”
“Yes, madam.”
“I suppose I should consult with Father before taking any action, though I do hate to burden him.”
“Yes, madam.”
Eleanor smiled wryly. “Enlightening conversation, Walters. I appreciate your always astute contributions.”
“Yes, madam.”
The Earl of Rutledge watched from his bed as his daughter left his bedchamber and closed the door quietly behind her.
“Laura, please step outside. I’ll ring when you may return.”
“Yes, sir.” The pretty nurse rose from the chair where she sat stitching and dipped a curtsy.
When she, too, had exited, he reached an age-spotted hand sideways and clasped that of his wife. “You wanted private speech with me?”
She gazed at him, intelligence alive in her blue eyes.
“Rutledge, I’m worried that our daughter will make a misstep in this tricky business with the prince, and she has one hand tied behind her back in her efforts to keep her true standing with Lord Miles from us. Shouldn’t we tell her we know? Offer her our support?”
He lay back and closed his eyes. “If we confess to our knowledge, we will also have to confess to how we came by such knowledge. Knowing Eleanor, she will be gravely wounded by our manipulation of what she very rightly considers her private affairs.” He paused, laboring for breath. The simplest things had become such a struggle. It quite wore him out. “I still think silence is our best ally. She’ll do the right thing. She made the correct choice for a husband, after all.”
His beloved wife considered his comment in thoughtful silence then offered in a quavery voice, “I quite like Julia’s eldest. Lord Miles was an excellent selection, darling, but really… you and Penwick offered her little else to choose from.” She gave a theatrical shudder. “A drunkard with eleven c
hildren … I’d as soon have had the opium-eater or the Nancy boy.”
He chuckled dryly. “I’d have preferred the older brother, Duncan, for her, but he removed himself from consideration when he bought his commission. A dead husband is of no use to me. I couldn’t take the chance of some mishap on the battlefield. As you know, I have always liked that family; we would not have introduced Lady Julia to His Grace otherwise. Still… there is something very havey-cavey going on with the first son. The old Duke was tireless in his lauds for all but his first-born. Retreated into tight-lipped silence whenever Edgar’s name was mentioned.”
“Still, I do wish we could openly help her, and I can only wonder what happened between her and Lord Miles that she should refuse to offer him the hospitality of Rutledge for even one night.”
He squeezed his wife’s hand gently. “Don’t worry, my love. It will all come right. They have too much in common and are too sensible not to see it in the end.”
“Do you suppose I should write to Julia and ask her to … assist?”
“I have already done so. The Dowager Duchess of Chelsony replied that she will do whatever she can manage discreetly. It helps that Lord Miles has moved her into his new property and out from under Chelsony’s neglect.”
“Poor Julia. I wonder sometimes if we did the right thing in introducing such a young woman to such an older gentleman…but, she so loved her duke—and he her.” His wife squeezed his hand. “Rutledge, I want for our daughter what you and I have, what Julia found.” Tears stood in her eyes. “I want her to find love.”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the paper-thin skin. “As do I, darling. As do I.”
Chapter Twelve
T
he following morning, crumpled sheets of ink-stained paper littered the carpet in front of the fireplace in the library where Eleanor labored to compose a letter that would both be diplomatic—not her strongest attribute—and yet convey the urgency of the situation. She propped her forehead on the heels of her palms and gazed unseeing at the padded leather protecting the surface of the desk. Straightening, she rang for her footman. Her orders were direct.
“Tell John Coachman to put the grays to the light carriage. I’m going to Newmarket. I want to leave within the hour.”
As the miles rapidly passed, she prepared her words, rehearsing them aloud in the carriage.
“Lord Miles, as your wife, I command your presence at Rutledge … no… Everleigh, you must accompany me to Rutledge immediately… no… Lord Miles, if you have any regard for me whatsoever, I wish you to… no.” She sighed. She couldn’t address him while prickling like a hedgehog.
For once in her life, she needed to unbend her pride and confess to needing his assistance if she was to stave off disaster. She’d already penned a letter to him in which she thanked him profusely for Day Dreamer, but she’d passed the mail coach to Newmarket at the last toll gate. Now she could express her immense gratitude in person.
Perhaps it would be best to start with the thanks? So how would that go? “I want to express my deepest joy over the gift of Day Dreamer. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. Now, having said that, I require you to abandon Fairwood and return with me to Rutledge Manor for an indeterminate length of time and enter into your role as my husband—in name only of course; you’ll not participate in the day-to-day activities at Rutledge. For how long? Probably for months. Perhaps as much as a year. I feel you must stay through the probation of my father’s will. And how shall I occupy myself as I while away the months? Well…I’ve been told our library has an outstanding collection of …”
She slumped into the cushions of the coach and moaned. Oh yes, that would send him sprinting to her side. Somehow, she had to soften her tone, put away all her defenses and allow her sincere feelings to guide her words. She had another three hours to cobble together a speech that would sway him. Pastoral scenes of English countryside rolled past unnoticed as she stared glumly out the window.
Eleanor looked around the elegantly appointed drawing room with great curiosity. Cream plastered walls and French doors overlooking a covered portico gave the intimate space an openness it might otherwise lack. When she’d driven through the gatehouse to Fairwood Stud and had first glimpsed the manor house outlined on the horizon, she’d been unwillingly impressed with its graceful antiquity. After knocking at the front door for several minutes before the housekeeper answered, she’d requested speech with Lord Miles Everleigh and had been shown into this cozy chamber. That had been forty minutes ago. She was becoming impatient—and increasingly nervous.
The door opened and a lovely brunette of indeterminate age, certainly not in her first bloom of youth but not aged either, entered, followed closely by a footman bearing a tea service which he placed on the low table in front of her loveseat. Eleanor stood.
“Hello.” The brunette smiled sweetly. “I’m the Dowager Duchess of Chelsony, but I wish you will call me Julia, and you must be Eleanor, Miles’ wife.”
This youthful woman with a slight French accent was Miles’ mother? Eleanor dipped into a curtsy. “Your Grace.”
“S'il vous plait, please, I shall be very distressed if you don’t call me Julia, and perhaps in the future, ma mère, Mother? After all, you are now my daughter, and I’ve so longed for a daughter. Besides, I’ve never felt family should stand on ceremony. Please sit. May I offer you some tea?”
Such was the gentle kindness of the request that Eleanor couldn’t refuse, though she felt one hundred kinds of a fraud for doing so and wondered what in the name of heaven Miles had told his mother about her. She collected her skirts and sat. “Tea would be lovely. Milk, one sugar.”
Miles’ mother poured her tea and handed Eleanor the cup and saucer. She then poured her own and settled back onto the facing loveseat and addressed Eleanor over genteel sips. “Miles tells me that your marriage is a business arrangement to preserve your inheritance and protect you from the greedy fingers of His Royal Highness.” Sip. “He states neither of you harbors tender feelings for each other.” Sip. She smiled innocently at Eleanor. “Bah. Men can be so blind—even intuitive men like my son.” Sip. “Don’t you agree?”
If someone had whacked Eleanor alongside the head with a coal shovel, she could not have been more dumbstruck. She held her teacup suspended in front of her mouth and blinked.
The lovely brunette pursed her lips and shrugged delicately. “It is plain to me that you have engaged Miles’ affections, and you cannot be indifferent to him.”
Eleanor shook herself and set her cup and saucer on the table in front of her. “How did you arrive at that conclusion…ah, Julia?”
A lovely trill of laughter filled the intimate room. “Oh, my sweet Eleanor. The three-year-old filly. To have given you such a horse, Miles must hold you in the highest regard... and, well…” Julia raised one elegant shoulder. “Miles is Miles.” She shook her head ruefully. “Oui, I am his maman, but nevertheless, Miles is irrésistible. I would never tell him that, of course. It would give him the big head, but you’d be a very odd woman if you hadn’t fallen a little under his spell.”
She had fallen under his spell. Eleanor conceded it was her unwanted feelings that made his existence such a trial. Such a damning truth to confront and in front of his mother of all people.
In the last few months, emotions of unrelenting worry, ecstatic joy, profound humiliation, and building grief had played havoc with her normally rock-steady equilibrium, jerking it hither and yon until the slightest overset provoked unreasoned emotion. At least, that was the justification she gave herself for the slow filling of her eyes. One blink and the tears released to wet her cheeks.
“Oh, my darling girl, you have been through so much and with no one to help you carry the burden. Donc très courageux. So very brave. Here, you must let me… ” Julia swept across the space dividing them and pulled a lace and linen handkerchief from her cuff. She daubed at Eleanor’s tears and hugged her gently to her breast with soft murmurings of
comfort.
Eleanor’s discomposure was such that, without thought, she permitted Julia to cuddle her, an action her own mother hadn’t dared since Eleanor was six.
“Now…my lovely Eleanor, please tell me how I can help you? I solemnly vow whatever you say to me shall never leave this room; it will remain between only you and me.”
Snugged in the comforting embrace of the Dowager Duchess, Eleanor gave ragged voice to her distress. “Your Grace, I am not myself anymore. I hardly recognize the woman I have become. I have never spilled tears for any man until your son, and now it seems I cannot stop. I am so weary of it.” She sniffed back her tears and swiped at her eyes and cheeks with the ball of her thumb.
The Dowager Duchess petted the crown of her head with gentle strokes. “Mon petite, men are very good at making us women cry. They can be wearisome and vexing. I must apologize on behalf of my son as he isn’t here to make his apologies himself. He was summoned to London.”
“London?” Eleanor stiffened in alarm and straightened. “When do you expect him back?”
“He should be home tomorrow or the next day.” The Dowager Duchess’s sympathetic gaze captured hers. “Now, why are you here? Is there anything I can do to help you?”
Eleanor poured out the entire story. The Dowager Duchess sat and listened with only an occasional nod and murmur of commiseration and sympathy. Such was Eleanor’s comfort with the maternal air of nurture and warm concern projected by the Dowager Duchess, she revealed much more than she had planned.
“Well, my dear, you must first speak with Miles.” His lovely mother cast an inquiring look at Eleanor. “I assume I cannot entice you to remain at Fairwood until my son returns?”