Lady Anne's Lover (The London List) (4 page)

Mrs. Mont said nothing to contradict him. Gareth was sure she thought his housekeeping methods were sadly substandard. It was a wonder how much she’d done since she arrived, not that he really cared if the house was clean. But when he tried to sell the property in the spring before the bank took it, it would help that the prospective buyers were not totally repulsed by dust and dead vermin. The rat poison had been extraordinarily successful. He wondered if he should not add some to his gin one day.

“You’ll have Sunday morning, of course. The closest place of worship around here is chapel, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t attend services of any kind.”

He raised an eyebrow and waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. Gareth was himself not a churchgoer. He believed in the power of
something
or he would not be sitting here nursing his tea, but was sure God could not be found in the four walls of the miserly cold building his parents had dragged him off to in his youth.

“Then we’re both non-Nonconformists,” he joked. “Commune with nature Sundays if it suits you.”

“If it stops raining,” Mrs. Mont said rather wistfully.

“It always rains in Wales. When it’s not snowing. Did you grow up in London, Mrs. Mont?”

She shook her head. A flush of color spread across her cheeks. Surely that question wasn’t too personal.

“We’re rather far away. Won’t you miss your family?”

The blush deepened. “No, I will not. I have no family.”

“Then we have that in common, too. I’m the last of the Riptons and almost the last of my branch of the Joneses. All my relatives are buried in the churchyard, but I don’t think I’ll be joining them.”

Her lips twitched. “Planning on eternal life, Major?”

“Nay. I’ll die when my time comes, but not here. I suppose I should tell you the bad news. I’ve lured you up here on false pretenses.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There are mortgages held against Ripton Hall. They come due soon, and I have no way of paying them. My father’s doing, not mine. For all his chapel attendance, he gambled and he lost with alarming frequency. My mother was not around to stop him—she died some years ago. My schemes to save the Hall came to naught when I lost my arm last year. So I’ll have to settle the debts somehow. Sell the place before the bank forecloses and still have some coin in my pocket, if I’m lucky.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “You lost your arm only last year?”

“Oh, you thought it was a consequence of war, didn’t you? And I did not correct you earlier. I’m sorry. Oddly enough, I escaped mostly unscathed after a fifteen-year career in the army.” He’d joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a lad of seventeen, full of anger and bravado. There had been plenty of opportunities to lose an arm and even his mind over the years—he had been in the thick of battles in Albuera, Badajoz, Salamanca, the Pyrenees, Nivelle, Toulouse, and Waterloo. His regiment had been the last to leave Spain, thorough to the end.

“How did it happen then?”

“I fell from a tenant’s roof last Christmas and broke my arm. Shattered it, really. It could not be set.” He shrugged. It had been agony; now it was over and simply inconvenient. For a one-armed man he managed. One only needed one hand to pick up a pint or stroke one’s cock.

His left leg had been broken, too, but that had healed cleanly, with nary a limp to show for the months he’d spent in bed. Some people would consider him to be a lucky man.

After the accident, Bronwen wouldn’t have him with his deformity. Just as well they had waited to marry after observing a decent period of mourning for her late husband. How wretched it would be to wake up to a wife’s disgust every single day as well as his own.

Bronwen had not loved him. That discovery was worse than losing his arm.

“How awful.” Mrs. Mont was pale now, each golden freckle visible.

“So now you know my secrets. What are yours?”

She stood up abruptly. “I have none, Major. None. Thank you for your honesty about the length of my employment. I’ll have to see about making other arrangements immediately.”

Gareth felt a flare of alarm. His tongue had been too loose. “You won’t leave me yet? The house needs to be presentable for a sale. And who knows—I might find an heiress to marry before the notes come due. Who would not want me, an impoverished cripple?”

It was his own fault he’d not been wed long ago, when his reputation was still burnished. But he’d wanted Bronwen. Unobtainable,
married
Bronwen. And now she was lost to him forever.

“I—I’ll have to think on it. Ev—Mr. Ramsey will know what to do.”

“Don’t write to
The London List
just yet. We have months to muddle through. Miracles happen.”

“Do they? I hadn’t noticed,” Mrs. Mont said softly. She crossed the kitchen and shut her door firmly behind her. Gareth heard the turn of the key in the lock. He wondered if she locked herself in every night or if it was because he still sat at the table. Did she fear ravishment?

Gareth wouldn’t touch her, no matter the temptation. He still had one hand—that was good enough to touch himself.

He had been too honest, always a flaw. She would leave, and he’d be forced to advertise anew. The local women wouldn’t work for him. Bronwen had seen to that in life, and even more so in death. She haunted him still.

He pushed himself back from the table, leaving his half-empty cup. There was the bottle in his room, and this time he wouldn’t trip down the stairs in haste to get to it.

D
amn and damn
. Anne could not say she was happy here, but she was getting used to the place, and proud that her efforts had immediate results. Things were much less cobwebby. She’d beaten the dust out of the sofa so one could sit on it without sneezing one’s head off and moved the few pieces of ugly furniture in the parlor into a pleasing seating arrangement at one end of the cavernous room. The kitchen pots may not have gleamed, but the crusty burnt bits had been scraped off. The slate floors were swept if not scrubbed, the pictures straightened, the candle wax removed from where it had made little volcanic mountains. Her hands were blistered and her back ached, but she felt
useful
for the first time in her life.

Now she’d have to move to another household, a place where a sober employer might be more observant of her utter unsuitability to be a servant.

She needed to be hidden away for two years. She couldn’t get her money until she was twenty-one or married, and the chances of her marrying anyone now after all she’d done were nil. Even the most desperately debauched rakehell would not want her after the scandals she’d caused. She was a
rakeshame,
although her antics had really been more silly than sinful. But she had tiptoed to the precipice, walking out of Garrard’s “forgetting” she was wearing that diamond necklace, kissing Miss Rosa Parmenter on the lips in her father’s theatre box before the lights dimmed, tattooing a daisy on her left ankle and raising her skirts often so that anyone could see it.

Anne knew now that she’d been mistaken in her method of rebellion. Her father was never going to let her go. But she could not bear his increasingly frequent attempts to touch her. She was fleet of foot and sharp of tongue and had so far restricted his damage to her person. A few unwelcome kisses and cuddles were not going to kill her, though they had made her feel filthy. She wondered if she could ever bear any man’s touch.

A tear slipped down her cheek. Blast! Tears would not help. She’d cried an ocean of them at first after her mother died, prayed on her knees, made bargains with God. Nothing had changed. There was something wrong with her.

She crawled under the moth-eaten blankets and shut her eyes. She could hear the major moving around the kitchen, jiggling the tricky damper on the old stove, trudging slowly up the back stairs to his bedroom above. When he had fallen earlier, she had been as wide awake as she was now, shivering beneath the thin covers. She expected to find him dead from the thunderous fall, although his wild laughter soon disabused her of that notion.

Anne supposed he had reason enough to drink—the loss of his arm as well as the pending loss of his home was a dreadful thing. She had no home herself now, no friends, no family. Just rooms full of lonely dirty work and dismal wages. One day off a week. Sunday mornings to repent and regret her follies.

And by spring she’d be turned out, hopefully with a real reference this time.

By spring she’d probably welcome leaving Ripton Hall and its unlucky owner.

Anne punched up her pillow and snuggled deeper into the mattress, but her mind turned in a curious direction. The man should advertise for a rich wife in
The London List
just as he’d advertised for a housekeeper! There were plenty of matrimonial ads. She’d read them herself when she dreamed of being some desperate man’s bride.

She sat up and fumbled with a candle and the tinderbox. Evangeline had helped her pack for the trip to Wales, had even given her one of her very own nightgowns which had dwarfed Anne before she’d hemmed it in crooked stitches since the newspaper editor was so much taller. There had not been much time to prepare for the journey, and she’d borrowed clothes from Evangeline’s strange little maid and the trunk to put them in. But buried beneath the newly-acquired dull brown and black clothes, the dress she had worn to Evangeline’s and her sable muff were a few old editions of the newspaper.

Anne had been featured prominently on the front pages the past two years –once she’d filled an entire scrapbook with the articles Evangeline had written about her. But that scrapbook, like her sapphire ring, was in her bedroom at Egremont House. Evangeline had not understood why Anne would want to be reminded of her past transgressions, but had given her some back copies of the paper anyhow.

She got up and dug through the trunk. The yellowing newssheets were months old, but by following their example, one could get a sense of what one might write to attract someone suitable in words paid by the inch. One could not simply say:

And I’m a drunkard
, Anne reminded herself.

She tucked her feet under her and began to read. Some ads were ridiculously flowery and undoubtedly false.

Any
lady, good-looking or ugly? Anne thought that was entirely too wide a net. Lord X was in want of a broodmare—surely he was interested in what the eventual brood might look like.

And the pangs of pleasure bit—no, no. A gentleman didn’t brag about his prowess. In her experience, men were so often mistaken in their evaluation of their abilities.

She read the next one, then reread it out loud in a French accent just for amusement’s sake.

No children wanted in this one. What sort of elderly ladies would want a young Frenchman?

Flexible ones, apparently.

On to the next advertisement.

Alonzo. How could one look at an Alonzo over the coffee cups every morning and not giggle?

But she was not looking for herself, she was looking for the major. Anne scanned the rest of the issue, then read the lead article. She remembered the night she’d plunged into the fountain in her father’s garden. The gentlemen with her had been drunk as lords—actually, they
were
lords, Baron Benton Gray among them. He’d offered his coat but she had refused, hoping he would like what he saw enough to propose.

Alas, he did not. He now owned
The London List
and was turning as dull and respectable as a country parson, except for his affair with Evangeline. Anne had promised not to speak of it, but she had once heard them going at it like rabbits. She’d been shocked, entirely misunderstanding the event at first, then
jealous
that two people could enjoy themselves with such abandon. She could not imagine ever being in such a position.

Her father had ruined that for her.

No
. She mustn’t let him. Someday she might want to be kissed.

Really
kissed by someone she cared for, not the clumsy fumblings in the bushes she’d allowed from rakes and rogues to make her father angry. Kissed in love, touched in tenderness.

And more.

There was no point in feeling sorry for herself. The major was doing enough of that for both of them.

Tomorrow she would broach the subject of acquiring an heiress for him. Evangeline was an absolute wonder— she was a paramount problem solver. Just look what she had done for Anne, arranging to hustle her out of London in less than twenty-four hours.

Blowing the candle out, she returned to her nest under the covers. The cock might crow at any moment—there was one, and laying hens also which she’d discovered gave delicious eggs. Eggs were easy to cook.
The Compleat Housewife
had told her how to fricassee them, but as she didn’t have gravy or artichokes or anchovies (anchovies!), plain hard-boiled ones would do for the major’s breakfast.

 

The cock did crow in what seemed like minutes, without a speck of light to motivate him. Anne groaned and stretched, then stripped out of the worn nightgown and washed with the cold water in her ewer and her precious bar of lilac soap. How she’d love a proper bath. She found it amusing that as everything got tidier around her, she was getting dirtier. Her nails were black with grime. She’d have to ask Major Ripton-Jones where the tub was hidden. Surely there was one? Anne would spend her entire day off in it.

She would pick tomorrow. It was New Year’s Day. She’d start the year off in quiet contemplation and cleanliness. The prospect of a bath tomorrow brightened today, and she dressed quickly to get into the kitchen.

The room was full of shadows, the scent of ashes strong. It was cold enough to light a fire in the cavernous fireplace as well as the stove. Anne opened the flue and stirred some coals to life. After five days, she and the stove were on more friendly terms, just as she felt Major Ripton-Jones was emerging from his fog to become a friendlier employer. However, in four or five months he wouldn’t be hers unless she found him a wealthy wife or discovered a priceless painting in the attics. As she’d gone exploring upstairs already, a wife was much more likely.

Anne hesitated a moment before she poured ale into a mug to go along with the slice of cold ham and wedge of cheese she’d fixed for the major’s breakfast. There were eggs on the boil as well—there would be plenty in his stomach to absorb the alcohol. Gentlemen thought nothing of imbibing from breakfast to midnight supper. Even supposed saints like her father drank all day. Anne had tried any number of ways to numb herself, but had found wine and brandy and gin ineffective. The truth of her life always hovered around the edges of whatever bliss she’d contrived.

She chuckled ruefully. No bliss was to be found this cold dark morning. But all the hard work to be found at Ripton Hall had been good for her. It was so boring and repetitive it gave her time to think about her future and what she might expect from it. It was obvious her reputation among the ton was ruined—she’d done that to herself with her elopement and escapades. She’d have to immigrate to America where no one—not even that Alonzo—would have heard of her.

That would take money and pluck. She had plenty of the latter. The money would come when she turned twenty-one or married.

The fork she was holding dropped to the slate floor with a clang. Lord but she was a nitwit. The major needed a rich wife, and she needed her money to become independent. Major Ripton-Jones could marry
her
! Not a real marriage, of course. She hardly knew the man and what she did know did not bode well for any Mrs. Ripton-Jones. Who wanted a sot for a husband? For all his assurances that his habits were harmless most of the time, she was suspicious. He had a melancholy look about him quite apart from any depression he felt over the loss of his house. He was too lean (and wouldn’t be apt to fatten up from her ministrations unless she studied her cookery book with more diligence) and darkness hung over him like one of the ever-present Welsh clouds.

Anne heard the groan of floorboards above. She had two propositions to put before her employer this morning—he could advertise for a wife, or he could enter into an agreement with her. If they married, he’d have enough to pay the mortgages and there would be plenty left over for Anne to start a new life somewhere else.

That would be tricky—all property a bride brought into a marriage belonged to the husband. She would have to trust him to do right by her, and so far she didn’t trust him an inch. He might marry her and then refuse to release any funds to her, and she’d be stuck in this backwater forever.

And he could insist upon his husbandly rights. If she didn’t comply, Gareth Ripton-Jones needed no one’s permission to beat her. Nobody would lift a finger to intercede between a man and his wife.

Marriage was altogether an undesirable state for a woman unless she was so keen to have children that she could overlook the disgusting and difficult way they came about. Anne had no interest in sticky, squalling infants that ruined one’s figure and caused one to prattle on about them as if they were little miracles. Her friends—when she’d had them—had lost all sense in thrall to their husbands’ heirs, cooing and gooing until Anne thought she might be sick. Children were
fiends,
and their fathers little better.

Maybe offering up her fortune was folly. Would her unwanted husband let her leave once her trustees released her funds? There were far too many questions rattling around her brain for such an early hour. Perhaps it was best that she stick to her first idea of advertising for a rich bride and see how that was received.

Anne set a boiled egg in an eggcup and surveyed the major’s breakfast. It was her finest culinary achievement yet.

Major Ripton-Jones ducked his head under the doorframe and entered the kitchen. “Good morning, Mrs. Mont. I want to thank you for coming to my rescue last night.” He sat and whacked the egg with a spoon. Should Anne have removed the shell for him? What would a proper housekeeper have done?

“You’re welcome, Major. When you’ve finished your breakfast, I’d like to speak with you. About another rescue, if you will.”

The major looked up from peeling his egg with his thumbnail. Flecks of shell arced onto the pine table, where he swept them under the rim of his plate. “You’ve intrigued me, Mrs. Mont. I believe I can eat and listen at the same time.”