Elisabeth Fairchild (28 page)

“Stealing your home is it?” Miles hadn’t the energy to argue. “Well, Ramsay, as much as I would love to stand in the rain trading insults we must make an appointment to continue this slander at a later date. I’ve prior committments at the moment.”

The third gentleman had said nothing to this point. He was the handsomest of the lot, a great, tall fellow with long dark, auburn curls and even darker sidewhiskers and brows above eyes the same deep Wedgewoodue as Miles was used to seeing stare from Rupert’s mild expression. These eyes were bright and watchful, not at all mild, despite lids held at a deceptive half-mast, as if their owner were bored with the whole proceeding. A dark patch beside the man’s mouth, in the style of the previous century, added a touch of mystery to his appearance. He laughed now--he had a pleasant laugh--and held out his hand.

“Roger Ramsay,” he said. His every gesture had flair. “May we call on you this evening, sir?”

“You may.” Miles agreed. This one, he thought, was perhaps the most dangerous of the lot. His emotions were not on the surface and easy to read, like his brothers, like Aurora. A pity, Miles thought, if the man really was wasting away of the pox. He had a cynical sort of beauty, a subtle air of intelligence and manners that Miles liked.

“Come Jack, Gordon.”

Ah! Jack and Gordon were their names. Miles made a mental note.

Roger beckoned his siblings with a negligent wave. With the same negligence he turned to Miles, his eyes lazy. “By the way, how is Rupert? I understand you and I may now be brothers, if gossip has the story of his recent nuptials straight.” His brow arched suggestively.

“He is married to my sister, sir, and as her husband I do not think I would be overstating the matter to suggest he has never been happier.”

He smiled at that. “I look forward to meeting my new sister. Rupert, of all of us, deserves to be happy.”

“Can you tell me where your sister might be found? I must speak to her.”

Roger shrugged lazily, “Look for Lord Walsh, sir, and you are sure to find Aurora.”

With a sense of foreboding Miles cornered the first footman he encountered within the walls of Holkham Hall. “Where may I find Miss Aurora Ramsay?” he asked.

The man shrugged. “Couldn’t say, sir. Shall I ask around for you?”

“Yes,” Miles said. “And please have hot water sent to my room immediately.”

He bounded up the stairs tapping on the panel of Aurora’s bedroom door in passing. No response. That would have been too easy.

In his own room he flung off coat, waistcoat, cravat and shirt. He was preparing to remove breeches as well when a knock sounded on the door. Thinking it either the footman come with news of Aurora’s whereabouts or the valet with hot water, Miles called out eagerly,” Come in.”

His brother Matthew opened the door and walked in, chin set in dissatisfaction.

“Where in blazes has Grace gotten herself off to?” Matthew spoke with the severe tone he adopted when the world did not measure up to his expectations. “I entrusted her to your care, Miles. How could you let her run off to Gretna with a penniless one-legged man? For God’s sake, put on some clothes.”

He flung his hat onto Miles’s bed and sat himself heavily in the most comfortable chair the room had to offer. “I expect a full reckoning of the entire episode.”

Miles crossed to the bed, picked up his brother’s hat, and returning it to him, said, “I will tell you all after I have had a change of clothes, a shave and a most pressing interview with one other person.”

Matthew refused to take the hat from his hand. “I’ve no intention of budging until I have had the full story.”

Another knock upon the door. Miles, shirtless, his brother’s hat in his hand, shouted “Enter,” once again. Surely this knock heralded the entrance of the much wanted hot water.

“Yes,” Miles tossed his brother’s hat onto the bed again and delved into his wardrobe on a search for clean linen.

“Well, I would not interrupt, but there is a gentleman here to see you who was most insistent I bring up his card. I have him situated downstairs in the library.”

“Is he a redhead?” Miles withdrew from the wardrobe sliding his arms into a clean shirt.

Coke laughed. “He is not one of the Ramsay brothers if that is what you are asking. Here is his card.”

He handed a solicitor’s card to Miles. Uncle Lester’s solicitor waited below.

“Shall I put him off?”

Before Miles could answer in the affirmative, yet another knock sounded on the door.

Matthew made a derisive noise from his chair. “Come in,” he shouted.

Lord Walsh popped his head in the door. “Hallo!” he said. “Am I interrupting? I wanted the latest news.”

“Come in, come in,” Miles gestured. “I was told you might know where Miss Ramsay is.”

Walsh nodded. “Said something about fetching a painting when I spoke with her this morning.”

“Painting?” Miles tried to make introductions and puzzle out why the mention of a painting rang a bell with him. “You remember my brother, Matthew?” He waved an arm, as he slid it into a clean waistcoat.

“Of course,” Walsh exchanged pleasantries.

Again, the door took a beating. “Come in,” sounded a chorus of voices as Miles, his brother and Tom Coke responded.

Miles, feeling driven, like a sheep before dogs, threw a clean cravat around his neck and loosely knotting it, went to open the door.

This time it was hot water. Miles politely held the door open, allowing the laden servant to enter with his wide-wheeled cart. Then he stepped quietly out of the room and shut the door behind him.

He made his way down the hall, hurrying more than was his habit.

“Miles!” A voice called out behind him. He knew it was his brother. Studiously he ignored the summons inherent with such an utterance. He meant to find Aurora, had a good idea where he might find her, and nothing was going to stop him.

Nothing but the weather. The sky opened up. The portico was dripping rain when he stepped out of the door. The wet gave him pause, but for no more than a moment. His coat was upstairs in room full of people he did not want to talk to.

“Miles!” Matthew was catching up, no mistaking his imperious outcry.

Miles turned up his collar. Darting into the wet, he made a dash for the barn.

Propped in the doorway of the Doric temple, her picnic basket beside her, a folded blanket beneath her hips, Aurora fell asleep. It was inevitable that she should sleep. She had not passed a peaceful night at Holkham since her brother had run away with Grace Fletcher. She could not lie down in her bed without being troubled by burning thoughts of her last passionate exchange with Miles Fletcher. But here, in the shaded portico of the temple where she had spent so many pleasant hours she could not help but drowse. The humming of bees lulled her, the hushing of the trees in the wind soothed her frayed nerves and a pair of doves cooing high above her head while clouds threw alternate light and shadow over her respite closed her eyes entirely. There was a storm brewing, but no need to seek shelter more comforting than this.

Before she shut her eyes Aurora had, from the doorjamb she leaned against, an excellent view of Holkham Hall and its reflection in the clouded waters of its channel. She had chosen this place because of its view. She hoped Miles Fletcher meant to return today. She would see the arrival of his coach if he did. Her life would become quite complicated if he did not. Life was a tangle and she had no idea how to go about unknotting it.

Her brothers were ready, even eager, either to marry her to Lord Walsh or to take her away with them. And while she had told them she had other plans she could not tell them what or who those plans involved. Roger might understand, given a great deal of explanation, but Gordon would not and Jack had come with every intention of insisting that Miles Fletcher return to him the land he had so foolishly gambled away.

Aurora knew it was also possible, though she did not like to admit it, that Miles Fletcher would lose his desire for her in following in his sister’s rash footsteps. He made her no promises, offered her nothing of substance. She had no serious proposal off him. She possessed only the certain knowledge that she loved him above all others, above all reason. She could no longer imagine a future without him.

She woke from troubled dreams when rain drenched the clearing. Not the sound of rain pelting the leaves woke her, it was the pounding rhythm of hoofbeats. Aurora started up out of the void of her lethargy with a strong premonition that something of moment was happening.

Through the rain-laced clearing a horse raced, a gentleman in shirtsleeves, and those quite soaked, clinging to his back. She did not immediately recognize the man. The horse was one of Tom Coke’s. So drenched was the mounted gentleman, so wet and plastered to his form were his clothes, that she could read far more of the shape of him than she was either accustomed to or comfortable in someone of the opposite sex. She was reminded, as the sleek wet horse came charging toward her, of the paintings in Tom Coke’s attic. There was something larger than life, something wild, even dangerous in this stranger’s approach.

Picking up the picnic basket and blanket, Aurora held them before her like a shield, to face this stranger standing rather than in a huddle at his feet when he flung himself from the horse’s back to take shelter with her beneath the portico.

“Aurora!” Miles Fletcher gasped, combing dripping hair away from his rain beaded face with an equally drenched hand.

Aurora was startled, so changed was the gentleman before her. There was none of the cool, unruffled collectedness she associated with Mr. Fletcher. His blue eyes, framed by wet hair and lashes, had a wild look about them, staring as they did from an unshaven face. His entire being seemed changed. There was about him an urgency, a pent energy, that seemed to drip from him along with the rain.

“Tell me you do not mean to marry Walsh. Tell me you have not accepted his proposal.” His voice was as breathless as his approach.

She studied him a moment as though he were a stranger. “I do not mean to marry Walsh,” she said softly, almost frightened by the strange, unfettered wildness in him.

He smiled, the blue of his eyes glittering wetly like the rain in his hair. “Do you love me, then, Aurora?”

She backed into the door of the temple with the feeling she had been cornered by a wet and hungry wildcat. How could he ask her such a question without first declaring his own feelings, his own intentions?

“Did you catch up to them?” She hoped to divert his attention, to stop his advance.

He smiled broadly. There was nothing halfway ab the emotion that curved his mouth today. “I did not come here to talk about my sister’s runaway passions, Aurora.”

“No?” Aurora swallowed hard. “Perhaps you mean to explain to me then how could you go on day after day pretending to be my friend when in reality you had already taken from me that which I held most dear? How could you berate me for marrying for land as opposed to marrying for love, when you had my land in your possession all along?”

“You know the answer to that already.” His gaze never strayed from her face. “Else you would have accepted Walsh’s offer.”

She backed into the domed central chamber. He followed. The sound of falling rain was superseded by the drone of the bees, the drip of water from Miles’s clothes and the sticky drip of honey from the beehive above.

“Did you think to salve your conscience in helping me to win Walsh?”

Still he smiled. Heated emotion looked at her through his eyes. “You might say that. I came to Holkham Hall specifically to find you--to see that you were not paupered by my Uncle’s last moment of good fortune. It was his dying wish.”

“So you meant to marry me off to Walsh, and then ride away absolved of all guilt?” 

He slowed in his pursuit of her. “I meant to see you happy. I meant to see your future secure. I came to fulfill your heart’s desire, and yes, then I would have gone away absolved of guilt. I had no intention of falling in love with you.”

She met his declaration with silence. At last, the words she had hoped to hear. He loved her. And yet, doubt still gnawed at the edges of her peace of mind.

“How can you expect me to believe such a statement when you have done nothing but push me into Walsh’s arms?”

His gaze moved past her, lingered a moment and then returned. He smiled at her then so sweetly her heart ached to see it. “Why did you come here today, Aurora?”

She knew what it was he had seen. Grace’s painting leaned against the wall. She turned to look at it again. It was really quite striking now that it was finished. There was a light, airy quality to the brushwork, an effect too easily muddied by the novice. Grace was more talented than anyone realized.

The temple, created by the very absence of paint, other than a few pale washes to indicate shadow, was pale backdrop to the gathering of happy souls picnicking beneath sunlit trees. It was unmistakably Miles who bent to whisper in the ear of the female who wielded a fan. That female had hair the very color of her own.

Miles had a glint in his eyes that reminded her of the last time they had stood within this temple. He raised a dark eyebrow. “Did you come for the painting?”

She could not continue to meet his gaze. He read her too clearly.

“Would you hang your passion on the wall, Aurora, as Princess Stolberg hung hers?” His voice held so much understanding Aurora felt like crying or laughing or shouting at him. “Do you love me, Aurora? Please say you do.”

He advanced on her again, dripping effusively with every move.

This time she did not back away. She closed her eyes and felt the drops of water, like fingertip touches on her sleeves, skirt and skin.

“Of course I love you,” she said gruffly. “Why else would I throw myself at you the way I have?”

He threw his arms about her then, soaking her to the skin with his embrace, crushing the picnic basket she still clutched, to her chest. “Will you throw yourself at me again, my dear?” There was tenderness inhe way he said those simple words, a tenderness echoed in the curve of his lips and the warmth of his eyes, that filled Aurora’s heart to overflowing.