Nicola Cornick (15 page)

In the confusion, no one had noticed the arrival of Sir William Weston until the girl, now standing in the yard supported by two burly footmen, looked up and a smile broke across her strained features.

‘Will, oh, Will, I am so very glad to see you…’ She started to cry. Annabella felt very much like following suit. This tender reunion, following on so swiftly from the shock of meeting the woman and the child, was a little too much for her. She watched as Will swept the girl up into his arms with negligent ease. Her arms went about his neck and she turned her face against his chest. The housekeeper was holding the little girl by the hand as they followed them indoors. A pang of pure jealousy wrenched at Annabella so fiercely that she almost cried aloud.

‘Don’t try to talk now, Amy. You are quite safe.’ Annabella watched as the girl’s head drooped against Will’s shoulder and her eyes closed. She turned away, her throat choked with tears, determined to drive straight out of the yard without another word.

Sir William paused momentarily. ‘Jem, stable Mrs St Auby’s horses; Barringer, show her into the green drawing-room, if you please. I shall be with you directly, ma’am.’

Their eyes met. Annabella opened her mouth to say that she was leaving, but the words died unspoken. There was something so compulsive in Sir William’s gaze, compounded of a bright anger and even stronger
demand, that made her hold her tongue. In silence, she accompanied the little party into the house and watched as Will carried the girl upstairs, before the butler’s gentle voice broke into her thoughts and she followed him meekly into the drawing-room.

‘Well, Annabella, what new calumnies have you imagined against me by now?’

Annabella had not heard Will enter the room, for she had been rapt in her attention to the portrait on the wall, which was of a man, presumably the luckless Sir Charles Weston, who had the same distinctive blue eyes as all his family. The contemplation of his picture had helped her to pass the long minutes since she had been left alone and also helped her not to think too much. Now she jumped and spun round.

‘The lady…Will she be all right?’ she asked spontaneously, then, realising that he had already spoken, said, ‘I beg your pardon, what did you say, sir?’

A shadow of what might have been surprise touched Will Weston’s face.

‘Amy—my sister-in-law—will be fine. Mrs Jenner is with her now, and has some experience in such matters. She assures me that we do not need to send for the midwife. It will be a little time before I am presented with a new niece or nephew.’

Annabella sat down rather suddenly. ‘Your sister-in-law!’

A faint smile touched Will’s mouth, but left his eyes cold. With a small shock, Annabella realised that he was angry. It was a cool, contained anger rather than a wild fury, but nevertheless it was frightening. Even when she had provoked him so at Larkswood
that day, he had only appeared amused with her. But now there was no amusement in him, and no kindness.

‘You are so easy to read, my dear Annabella! In that split second in the yard, I had ascertained that you had seen Charlotte’s blue eyes, noted—obviously—Amy’s condition, thought about her asking for me…and made some rather large assumptions!’

Annabella blushed bright red. ‘I did not…I was not aware…’ Her voice faded away as she realised that she had no suitable excuses to hand.

Will’s sardonic smile deepened. Annabella got to her feet again rather quickly. ‘I really should be going now—’

‘Oh, no,’ Will said softly. ‘Not this time!’ He was standing with his back to the door, leaning his broad shoulders against the panelling and giving every indication that he was unlikely to let her out of the room. ‘This time,’ he added pleasantly, ‘you will do me the courtesy of giving me a proper hearing.’

‘But…’ Annabella cast about desperately for a reason to escape ‘…I am expected back directly! I am already late, for we have guests tonight and I was supposed to be collecting some vegetables from the farm on my way back…’ Again her voice trailed off under his pitiless gaze.

‘I have already sent a messenger to Oxenham to assure your sister that all is well,’ Will said calmly. ‘No doubt they will make shift to provide for their guests in some other way!’

Annabella sat down for a second time. ‘Oh, but—’

‘I wish to explain about Larkswood.’ Will drove his hands hard into his pockets. He moved across to the fireplace beneath the picture of Sir Charles, and
rested one booted foot on the fender. ‘But first I should tell you about Amy—’ those very blue eyes met hers expressionlessly ‘—in order that there is no misunderstanding.’

Annabella flushed bright scarlet again. So he thought her a gossip who might damage his sister-in-law’s reputation, did he? The idea that he had so low an opinion of her was a hurtful one, but then she had done little to make him think well of her. Suddenly she deeply regretted the pride and disdain that had made her refuse to listen to him when he had tried to explain about Larkswood. Her arrogance did not reflect well on her. And now he had read her reaction to Amy Weston so accurately, and was angry, not indulgent.

‘You may remember that I told you at Mundell that my brother had married an American girl and lived abroad until his death last year,’ Will was saying. ‘He took a fever—it was a terrible tragedy. Since the death of Amy’s father, Peter had run the family plantations, but when he fell ill and died she could not continue there alone. She is not strong and, of course, there was the new baby on the way. She wrote to tell me that she would sell the estate and come to make her home in England.’ He shook his head. ‘I counselled her to wait until after the baby was born, fearing that such a journey would be too much for her, but I never heard from her in reply.’ He sighed. ‘Her letter telling me of her departure for England must have been lost in the post and is probably at the bottom of the sea by now. I had no notion of her coming here until today. Now, God willing, the baby will be delivered without difficulty…’

There was a knock at the door and Barringer entered with a tea tray. ‘Mrs Jenner has asked me to tell you that all goes well, sir, but that it will still be some little time,’ he said, primly. ‘Shall I put the tray here, sir?’

Will did not look as though he cared in the slightest about the location of the tea tray, and it was Annabella who gestured to the butler to put it down in front of her.

‘Only Barringer could serve tea at a time like this,’ Will murmured in exasperation.

Annabella poured a cup. ‘It is the done thing for expectant fathers, unless they are on the hunting field,’ she said, commiseratingly. ‘No doubt your butler felt the situation also applied to expectant uncles!’

That won her the faintest flicker of a smile. Will took the proffered cup and sat down.

‘You must be desperately concerned, sir,’ Annabella continued. ‘Surely anything else you may wish to say to me can wait until later? Larkswood is of no importance in comparison…’

Once again, that unfathomable blue gaze rested on her and Annabella, feeling discomfited, made a business of stirring her own cup of tea.

‘It surprises me to hear you say so, ma’am,’ Will murmured. ‘But I prefer all matters to be out in the open.’

Annabella’s heart sank. ‘As you wish, sir.’

Will stirred his tea vaguely, still looking at her in that reflective way, then he appeared to pull himself together for, when he spoke, his voice had regained its usual incisive tone.

‘You should know that I have decided to give up all claim to Larkswood.’

Annabella almost dropped her cup. He did not appear to notice. ‘My brother and I grew up there and it holds many of the happiest childhood memories for me. We moved here when my father inherited Challen, but I always preferred Larkswood, modest a property as it was.’ His gaze rested for a moment on the benign, fair figure in the portrait. ‘I was at sea when my father wagered the house. He wrote to me that he had been unable to find a tenant because of the isolated location, and that it had been easier simply to sell the place. I was surprised, but not suspicious.’ He put his empty cup down. ‘To his death, I never imagined that there was anything sinister in the sale. And then Peter told me what had happened.’ His gaze came back to Annabella and she almost flinched.

‘It seems my father had wagered foolishly in a game of Hazard against Bertram Broseley. The house was his stake. My father regretted it and later tried to buy the property back several times, but Broseley always refused…’ He made a slight gesture. ‘Father was too ashamed of what had happened to tell anyone, but when he was dying he let slip to Peter what had happened. His lawyer confirmed it.’

‘And you wanted Larkswood back,’ Annabella whispered.

‘It seemed only fair,’ Will said savagely. ‘I was willing to pay the gambling debt, plus a generous rate of interest. I had been lucky with the prizes I had captured at sea, very lucky. And then a distant cousin of mine died and left me a tidy fortune. This estate, which could turn a good profit once it was properly
managed, was no drain on my resources. My father had been ill for some time, and his revenues had been declining, but I had little difficulty in improving matters. So you see…’ he shrugged ‘…if it had not been for my father’s misjudgement or pride, the house need never have been lost.’

It was an untimely moment for Annabella to remember George Jeffries’s words, but for some reason they rose in her mind and would not be dismissed. ‘I had already heard some tales of him falling in with privateers when he was in the Indies…how do you think he made his fortune?’

So there had been nothing in that particular nasty piece of gossip, she thought thankfully. Sir William’s money had come by the conventional routes of success as a navy captain and inheritance. And the other charge of cowardice—

‘What is it, Annabella?’ Will asked sharply. ‘You look as though you have seen a ghost!’

Annabella shook herself. ‘It is nothing…You do not surprise me, sir, with your account of my father’s dealings. He was ever one to drive a hard, if not an illegal, bargain, and he always preferred property to money for it appreciated in value.’

Sir William shrugged. ‘Naturally, the deal in itself was legal, if unethical. On my return from the war, Lovell, my man of business, told me that Broseley had recently died and had been found to have debts greater than anyone might have expected. It seemed a good opportunity to take Larkswood back. But Buckle—your lawyer, I suppose—refused to negotiate, and so I was reduced to making somewhat stark threats of legal action. And then there was Amy. I
thought that Larkswood would be the ideal home for her and Charlotte. Then I met you and was obliged to reconsider my position on the house, but since I hoped that you and I—’ He broke off, and began again with more constraint. ‘Anyway, I want you to know that I no longer wish to reclaim Larkswood. You pointed out to me, quite rightly, that without it you have nothing. I would not wish to take that from you.’

‘Why did you not tell me before…about Larkswood—?’ Annabella started to say, then broke off in confusion as she realised how close she was to tears. Will was right, of course; through her own ill-considered reaction to his behaviour she had lost the chance of an alternative future. She put her cup down on the table with a rather abrupt thump and got to her feet. ‘Your pardon, sir. That was foolish of me. I do not require an answer to that question. I really must go…’

‘Wait…’ Will had also got to his feet and the movement brought him closer to Annabella than was quite comfortable.

‘No, really…I must get back…the others…dinner—’ She knew that she was gabbling. ‘I am so very glad to understand a little of why you wanted the house…’ she swallowed hard ‘…and even more grateful that the rumours I had heard about your fortune were unfounded—’

There was a moment of complete stillness.

‘And which particular rumours would those be?’ Will asked, quite without expression.

Annabella was edging towards the door when he took her arm in a grip that was not painful, but which she certainly could not have broken without effort.
She knew that she had made a mistake but, preoccupied with escaping from the turbulent effects of his presence and the intensity of her own emotions, she had not been thinking about what she was saying.

‘I suppose,’ Will said, with the same hard, angry edge that had been in his voice earlier in the evening, ‘that I should not be surprised that you had been listening to unfounded gossip about me! After all, you have interpreted all my other actions in the worst light possible!’

‘That is unfair!’ Stung by his words, Annabella wrenched her arm from his grip and glared up at him. ‘I did not give any credence to what I heard! And I could not ask you—’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you had already gone—’

‘Of course, I forgot.’ Will’s tone was savage. ‘By then you assumed that I was trying to trick you over Larkswood! Was
that
the rumour you had heard, or were there other tales? Good God, what must your opinion of me have been, when all the time I was thinking—’

‘You are despicable to twist my words so!’ Annabella cried. ‘Yes, I’ll admit that Miss Hurst planted a doubt in my mind that you had some interest in me other than for myself! That was why I asked you, that night in the summerhouse…’ Her voice broke. ‘But you assured me that it was not so, and I believed you!’

‘Then what else has been said? Good God, I had no idea that Taunton was such a hotbed of speculation!’ But there was no humour in Will’s voice and he waited in stony silence for his answer.