An Early Engagement (5 page)

Red-faced with fury, Morgan shook his own fist inches from her nose. “And good riddance to bad rubbish. I’ll declare you a runaway and pocket your bloody allowance. Then how will you and your precious Nanny live, huh, raising pigs?”

“Better that than living with them!” she shouted.

That’s when he hit her.

No one had ever struck her before. Of course she had gotten her own back and snatched up the special license before fleeing to her room—expensive be damned! He could go through forty inheritances purchasing the blasted things before she would go along with his plans. She would burn it later, when she had enough patience to build a fire. Now she just had to get out of there, put space between herself and that worm. She did not even have a riding habit that fit her, thanks to him. No matter. Emilyann thrust her feet into her riding boots, tore open the confining collar of the black gown, rolled up the sleeves, and headed for the stables.

“Hey, Lady Em,” Jake called from the side of the barn, where he sat polishing tack in the sun so his knotted joints moved better. “Where you goin’ lookin’ like thunderclouds? And no hat on neither.”

“I’m getting out of here, that’s all,” she threw back over her shoulder as she led her mare out. “No hat, no saddle, and I don’t need you to accompany me either.” She mounted herself from a railing, hiking her skirts to straddle the horse and showing a deal of leg above the boot “Don’t worry,” he heard on the wind, “I’ll be back. Unfortunately.”

Jake shook his head, knowing he’d never catch up, not when missy was on her mare Coco, not in that mood. Not that he could blame her, knowing the master was back. Jake spat tobacco juice at a passing beetle. Some master, hah! How this place was going to ruin, and young miss wasting away like some faded rose, all on account of that loose screw.

“I should of been drivin’ the coach that day,” Jake told himself, not for the first time. He shook his head and spat again. “Damn, I should of. There be none of this nipfarthin’, nor branglin’, and missy’d be all set up like the little princess her father intended. No jumped-up caper-merchant actin’ like king o’ the hill, neither.” But he hadn’t been driving and things had been going to hell in a handcart ever since, and hanged if he could think of a way out.

Emilyann rode and rode—and hanged if
she
could think of a way out. She did not notice the sweat, the twigs caught in her hair from low branches, the growing shadows, not even the early crocuses lining the hedgerows. She saw nothing except the passing miles until the mare’s heaving flanks finally brought her back to reality. So she got off and walked, no destination in mind, no haven in sight, nothing but the need to put still more miles between her and her horrible relations.

Marry Bobo? Old Toby’s plowhorses would dance at Almacks first, wearing white gloves and pearls. Her dear stepcousin had grown from a repulsive boy to an even less attractive man, only slightly better dressed. Now he stuffed his extra tonnage into the latest fads, like the yellow pantaloons he wore to dinner the previous evening, his legs like two giant sausages dipped in egg yolk. With an aqua jacket and puce waistcoat—all this in a house of mourning—the cocklehead resembled nothing so much as a silk balloon half inflated for launching.

“I only wish he would fly off somewhere,” Emilyann told the horse as they tramped on. “But he’s so stupid he couldn’t find the sky if he had wings.”

As nasty and light-fingered as ever, Bobo had added leering to his list of charms. “Just what the world needs, another bacon-brained lecher.” Coco pricked her ears but made no comment. “How could any woman think of marrying him?” Emilyann couldn’t stand being in the same room with the slug. The thought of him touching her with his bloated fingers, kissing her with his damp mouth— “Ugh!” she exclaimed. The horse snorted in alarm so Emilyann stopped her marching to reassure the beast with a nose rub. “It will never happen. My father’s heirs will not be slimy little mushrooms who paw at housemaids and have gravy spots on their shirtfronts. Never.”

So she would not marry Bobo; that was the easy part. But how? “Think, Emilyann,” she told herself, hiking on, dragging her skirts in the dust. Mr. Baxley might listen, but he was in London, a long, expensive way away. Too, he was growing old, and might agree she would be better off wed. He would certainly never countenance her showing up on his doorstep like an infant in a basket—if she could afford the stagecoach ride. It best be a letter. There had to be somewhere she could go meantime, somewhere she could be safe. Nanny’s little cottage was inviting, but Uncle Morgan was sure to just fetch Emilyann back, despite his threats to let her rot there in poverty.

No, he would ride down like a marauding Hun to reclaim his missing meal ticket, then he would make the old woman’s life hell. Emilyann could not chance his petty vengeance affecting anyone else. She realized that she’d been unconsciously headed for Stockton Manor this whole time, and heaven knew there was not much ill he could do there, not in the deplorable condition the last earl had left it.

The only Stocktons in residence, however, were skitter-witted Nadine, at fifteen the biggest flirt in the county, and her equally flighty aunt, no protection at all. Those two were barely holding household and needed another penniless mouth to feed as much as they needed another leak in the roof. There was no other house in the neighborhood where Emilyann could just drop in and announce: “I do not like the husband my evil guardian has selected for me, may I stay here for eight years?” They would lock her in chains, right before sending a message back to Arcott.

“But I
can’t
go back, I just can’t,” Emilyann wailed, dropping to the ground and beating her fists on her knees. The mare nudged her before ambling off to find a patch of new grass. “Fine help you are,” the girl complained, getting up to fetch the reins before Coco remembered she was missing her supper. “You would most likely go home without me.”

Home. No money, no friends, no loving family. Home, where Bobo would torment her and her uncle would batter her with words, meanness, and greed. She could stand up to his harassment—she was her father’s daughter, after all— but how long could she endure this new physical abuse?

She could make one of the maids sleep in her room, and keep one of the dogs by her side and a pistol in her pocket, but she knew from that gleam in Morgan’s eye that he would never give up. She would never be safe again. How long, dear Lord, could she live like that? How long before she took Bobo to wed ... or took a life, Morgan’s or her own?

She buried her face in the horse’s mane and wept.

* * * *

“Hell’s bells, Emmy, don’t tell me you and the mare have parted company. I wouldn’t have believed it.”

She’d never even heard the horse and rider approaching, but she looked up quickly, wiped a dirty hand across her face, and smiled at her old chum Geoffrey, the youngest of the Stockton boys, now grown to a gangly sixteen-year-old, dark like all the Stocktons.

“Don’t believe it, you clunch. Coco would never be so rude. But whatever are you doing home, Geoff? Not that I’m not delighted to see you, of course.”

He waved one hand in the air with studied nonchalance as he dismounted, saying, “Oh, the usual.” His wide grin ruined the effect.

“Sent down
again!
Oh, you great looby!” It may have been true, but it was spoken with a deal of warmth as the two shared a quick hug of affection.

“I say, though, Em, if you haven’t taken a toss, why is it you look like you’ve been dragged through the hedge backward?”

“Now, that’s a pretty thing to tell a lady,” she said, stalling, bringing a blush to her friend’s cheeks.

“You know I ain’t in the petticoat line, Em. ‘Sides, if you were hanging out for compliments, you’d be reclining on a sofa dressed to the nines, like m’sister Nadine.”

Emilyann shook out her skirts in a cloud of dust, avoiding his eyes. “Uncle Morgan’s home.”

“Uh, right.” Nothing more needed to be said, so they walked on, leading their horses. After a bit Geoff murmured, mostly to himself, “Damned lucky I didn’t take the shortcut and miss you at the Hall.”

“Dashed lucky,” she corrected him automatically. “Aunt Ingrid is visiting in Cheltenham, so you wouldn’t have had to make your bows there, and I doubt dear Uncle was receiving. Only he and Bobo came for the visit,” she added bitterly.

Geoffrey wrinkled his brow in an effort to figure out what wasn’t being said, then he gave it up. “We’ve got company over at the manor, too. M’brother Thornton and his wife, Cynthia, stopped by on their way from London.”

“Oh?” She couldn’t drum up much interest. Reverend Thornton and his wife were as dull as ditchwater, with minds as stilted as the social conventions they worshipped. “Is he still hoping for a preferment?”

Geoffrey laughed. “Not after this week, I’d guess, to hear him rant about all of us ramshackle Stocktons ruining his chances of advancement. What a dust-up there was.”

“About your being sent down again? What has that to do with—”

“That ain’t the half of it. They were already up in the boughs when they got here, and well, there’s no wrapping it in clean linens, the manor ain’t in prime gig. Something about mice and cobwebs and the ceiling falling on Cynthia while she’s in her bath. Aunt Adelaide got her all calmed down enough for sherry before dinner, in the ‘good’ parlour. Only Nadine decided it was a good time to show Thornton she’s old enough for a season in London.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes. Red dress, damped petticoats, painted cheeks, and tossing off Madeira like it was mother’s milk.”

“What did Thornton do?”

“You know that look he gets when he’s going to start a sermon? Eyes raised to heaven, hands clasped in front of him, a big breath so he won’t have to pause for hours? Well, he takes his big breath and sneezes—the dust, don’t you know—and spills his glass all over Cynthia, who’s hopping up and down and screaming so loud that
more
plaster comes down.”

Emilyann was laughing so hard she could barely get out the words, but she just had to know: “What about Aunt Adelaide? Did she ‘go off’ as usual?”

Geoffrey grinned back. “Of course. Right over on the couch. I didn’t hang around to hear anymore.”

“Coward!”

“Genius, you mean. Besides, I thought you might want Everett’s present.”

“Smoky sent a present? Why didn’t you say so, you gudgeon! How is he, and where, and is he coming home?”

“Slow down. He’s fine, I think, from what I could get out of Thornton, who, incidentally, insists we call Ev Stokely now, as befits his title.”

“Oh, pooh, as if Smoky would ever stand on his dignity!”

Smiling, Geoff handed her a rumpled package from his saddlebags. “Well, he is a captain now, in addition to being an earl. Here, this one’s for you. He sent one for Nadine and Aunt Adelaide, too, and a bang-up knife with designs etched up and down the blade for me.... Thornton said it’s called a
mantilla,”
he explained as Emilyann unwrapped a gossamer length of sheer white lace and an ivory comb. “The Spanish ladies wear them in their hair.”

Emilyann tenderly covered the lace again in its paper before it got soiled. “It’s beautiful. Is Smoky still in Spain, then?”

“No, and that’s what set Thornton off in the first place. Old Ev is in London, or he was, at any rate. He’s supposed to leave tomorrow. He had two or three days’ leave only, presenting papers to the War Office from Lord Wellington, so he could not come north.”

“Just enough time to cut a swathe through London, I’ll wager!”

“And have Thornton running to the bishop. Then Thorny thought he could give big brother a lecture on what was due the family name, and how he ought to sell out and see to the properties. I don’t know what he thinks Ev can do, when we all know his pockets are as much to let as ever, what with paying off the governor’s mortgages so we don’t lose the estate altogether, and my allowance and—I say, Emmy, are you all right?”

Big tears were splashing onto the wrapped package. “I ... I don’t have a handkerchief.”

“And that’s why you’re turning into a watering pot?” he asked, offering his none-too-fresh cloth. Years of living with his sister and aunt had cured him from turning into a blancmange at the sight of feminine weeping. “I never thought you’d be one to go all missish, damned if I did.”

“Danged,” she sniffed, before explaining about her father’s wretched will and Uncle Morgan’s greed and the threats, and Bobo.

“Why, that bleeding—sorry, that bleating bast—hell, Emmy, you know what I mean.” He straightened his shoulders. “There’s nothing for it; I’ll go call him out.”

“Don’t be a cabbagehead, Geoff, he wouldn’t meet a puppy like you, and anyway, you’re not a good shot. Too bad I can’t challenge him—I already thought of that—and it’s just so unfair, being a woman and all. I can’t take care of my own money, I can’t decide where I’ll live or whom I’ll marry, I can’t even defend my own honor!”

“Now who’s being harebrained? You need a husband for all that. Tell you what, Em,” he said after a long moment’s considering, “I’ll marry you myself. It won’t be so bad,” he conceded, “you’re a dashed fine rider, for a girl.”

Emilyann giggled. “Is that how you’ll pick your bride, by how well she rides?” She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “But thank you for the compliment, and thank you for the offer, my good friend. You can rest easy. I won’t take you up on it, for we’d never suit, you know. I’m a restless, managing sort and I like you too much to make your life a misery. It wouldn’t fadge anyway. Uncle would just have the marriage annulled because we’re both underage. If not, he could withhold his permission, so he would never have to release my inheritance to us. There’s no way we could live, unless you’ve come into a fortune recently.”

He grinned cheerfully. “Not a sou. I’m even below hatches till next quarter-day. There’s no appealing to Thornton either. He’s as tight as a clam when it comes to parting with the blunt. I already tried.” He shook his head, rearranging the dark curls. “It’s the deuce of a coil all right.”

Emilyann kicked a pebble out of her way. “I bet Smoky would know what to do.”