Sin With a Scoundrel: The Husband Hunters Club (14 page)

Instead she was, well, disappointed.

So she sat in silence, pretending to look out of the window as the countryside began to change. The narrow streets and buildings turned to single houses and then a house or two among the fields, until the world became green and leafy. She knew she should laugh and make conversation, show Horace what a perfect companion she was, but her heart wasn’t in it.

She felt as if she were trapped in his coach, just as she was trapped into seeking their marriage. Her skin prickled, and her headache grew worse, until she began to find it hard to bear.

She tried to focus on the scenery outside. They had entered a forest, and it looked so dark and cool. She wondered if there was a stream nearby and how it would feel to dip her feet in the cool water. To sit in the silence and breathe the fresh air and forget all about the family expectations weighing her down.

“I say, Tina, are you all right? You’ve gone very pale.”

It was Charles who spoke, and he looked worried. Perhaps he’d sensed her change of mood after all.

“No, I’m not,” she said sharply. “I need to get out. Please ask the driver to stop.”

The forest was as cool and shadowy as she’d hoped, and for a moment Tina took deep breaths, regaining her composure. The silence was actually not silence at all, but a choir of sweet birdsong.

“Miss, are you well now?” Maria was by her side, dark eyes anxious.

Tina sighed.

“It is just that the coachman is worried.” She glanced back, and Tina could see the man in his coat, seated up high on the coach, peering through the trees. “He says there are robbers in these woods, miss, and we’d be wise to get through them as quickly as possible.”

Horace had already taken up the subject, exclaiming loudly, “Robbers? Along here?” as if he found the idea of them daring to even think about robbing him infuriating. “We are armed, aren’t we?” this aside to the coachman.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Well then, I think any robbers who came upon us would be very sorry indeed.”

“But, my lord—”

“Allow the lady to take the air, coachman, and we’ll hear no more of robbers.”

Tina found herself smiling at his sheer arrogance, and she reentered the coach in a much better frame of mind.

“Are you better now, miss?” asked Maria, as they settled themselves again on the comfortable seats.

“Yes, quite better. But I shall be happy to arrive. I’d forgotten how much I detest traveling in a coach. Even one as fine as this one,” she added hastily, aware that Horace was listening.

“I should have brought my curricle,” he said mildly, “and you could have had the wind in your face. Put some color into those pale cheeks, Tina.”

“You could always sit up with the coachman,” Charles added, a twinkle in his eye. “Get plenty of color in your cheeks up there, sis.”

Suddenly their banter was comforting rather than irritating, and Tina was able to smile and say with perfect truth, “Thank you both, but I am quite content where I am.”

R
ichard was making a similar journey, traveling with Will Jackson. He knew Will quite well although he had never considered him a friend, but this journey was proving a surprise for he found himself enjoying Will’s company very much.

They didn’t discuss Guardian matters, not with Archie in the coach with them, and had to find other topics. To Richard’s surprise they seemed to find plenty of those. Still, he’d be glad when they reached Arlington Hall, Sir Henry and Lady Isabelle’s country estate.

Archie spent most of the time dozing in the corner, or pretending to. Richard had found his manservant rather a disappointment when it came to his spying activities with Tina’s maid. Archie had discovered very little, or at least he had told Richard very little. He had a suspicion that Archie was growing fond of Maria, and perhaps his emotion for her was affecting his job.

Richard frowned.

It just went to show, it did not do to allow one’s emotions to interfere with one’s work. He should remind Archie of it. And remind himself, he thought wryly. Emotion had no place in his life—not until he’d completed his mission.

S
ir Thomas and Lady Carol had waited until their children had departed before setting out on their own journey. It was a final effort to find the funds to keep the house in Mallory Street, and it was a vain hope, but it was one they felt it necessary to make.

They were heading for Sir Thomas’s brother, Harold Smythe.

Harold had already rejected the pleas for help Sir Thomas had made by letter, but he was confident—or so he told his wife—that a face-to-face meeting would do the trick. “Harold won’t see me go down,” he said, as their hired coach bumped out of London. “Turn on the waterworks when you see him, old girl. Harold could never abide women crying all over him.”

His wife gave him a scathing look. It was the sort of look she’d been giving him a lot lately, and in his heart he couldn’t blame her. This was all his fault. He’d lost everything. But the house, the material things, he could manage without them. It was his wife as she used to be that he missed, and he was beginning to wonder how he could live without her love.

Chapter 18

A
rlington Hall sat in an undulating valley, surrounded by acres of grounds. There were woodlands behind the house, but the view from the front was of manicured lawns, roses, lilies, and all manner of other English flowers, as well as some of the more exotic plants, with vistas over a wide stretch of the river. As the coach drew up on the circular entrance, under a wide, sheltering portico, Tina could smell lavender from a central bed where a fountain played.

It was lavish indeed. Sir Thomas had spoken of Sir Henry Arlington’s wealth, but Tina hadn’t really understood just how wealthy Sir Henry really was. Until now. She stared up at the elegant red Georgian house, with its chimneys and the gleam of many windows, and tried to imagine living in such a place.

Servants came out to help with the unloading of the luggage, and Tina, Horace, and Charles were ushered inside by the Arlington housekeeper, who showed them upstairs to their rooms.

“Sir Henry and Lady Isabelle are in the salon with their other guests,” she informed them, as they followed her around the curve of the grand staircase toward a bank of stained-glass windows.

“Many arrived yet?” asked Charles, who was never intimidated by anyone.

“You are the last,” the housekeeper said, making it sound like a failing on their part.

Horace and Tina exchanged an amused glance. They’d always shared a sense of the ridiculous, and surely that was a good thing, if one were to marry? And yet these three days in the coach with Horace hadn’t soothed her concerns as she’d hoped they might. She needed time to think when there was no time at all. She was being bustled along by her family and fate toward something that in her heart she did not want.

Tina’s room was beautiful, the walls covered in hand-painted rose wallpaper and the furnishings light and feminine. There was a window seat under bay windows overlooking the vast gardens, which she saw were terraced all the way down to the river.

“Lady Isabelle chose this room especially for you, miss,” said the housekeeper haughtily. “It’s one of the nicest rooms in Arlington Hall.”

“It is beautiful. I will tell Lady Isabelle so.”

Her obvious pleasure seemed to pacify the housekeeper, who announced she’d send a servant to show Tina to the salon in half an hour.

Maria and the luggage arrived a short time afterward.

As they rushed about, changing Tina’s traveling clothes for something more in keeping for a visit to the salon, and Maria brushed Tina’s hair and arranged it into a loose knot with a profusion of ringlets, there didn’t seem to be time to enjoy the peace and quiet of the country.

Tina stood in front of the looking glass, turning this way and that. “Will I do, do you think?” Tina asked her maid, suddenly uncertain. Perhaps it was the grandeur of the house or the haughty housekeeper, but she felt like an imposter. A young lady with very few prospects and no dowry, on the hunt for a rich husband.

“You look beautiful, miss,” Maria reassured her. “Mr. Eversham is here, and Archie,” she added, sounding breathless. “I passed him on the servants’ stairs, on my way here.”

Tina continued to examine her reflection, which seemed even less impressive than before.

“Did you hear what I said, Miss Tina? Archie and Mr. Eversham are here.”

“I heard what you said,” Tina said quietly, and left it at that.

After a servant girl had come to collect her and take her to the salon, Maria tidied up and began to put things away in their proper places. She felt a little shaky herself after meeting Archie on the stairs. He’d given her a wink, as if they were conspirators in a plot, and she couldn’t help but smile back at him.

He had that effect on her. Life would never be dull with Archie if she chose to follow that road, but as yet she wasn’t at all sure that she would. All these years, she had dreamed of saving up and returning home to Spain, and now she had enough to go. There was nothing stopping her, apart from Miss Tina and the Smythes, but that would not be forever.

No, Maria told herself decisively, there was nothing stopping her at all.

C
harles and Horace were already in the salon with Sir Henry and Lady Isabelle and several other guests. Tina was relieved to see the familiar faces of both Anne Burgess and Margaret Allsop among them.

“Ah, Miss Smythe,” boomed Sir Henry. “There you are. So pleased you could join our little party. The men are shooting tomorrow, if the weather holds. As for the women, I believe my wife has something planned, haven’t you, my dear?”

Lady Isabelle had come over to greet Tina, her color a little hectic, her eyes a little bright. “Tina, here you are. I do hope you like your room?”

“It’s delightful, Lady Isabelle. That wonderful view—it’s as if the very walls are perfumed with roses.”

Lady Isabelle was delighted with Tina’s enthusiastic response. “Thank you, Tina. When I decorated the room, I thought it would be for my daughter . . . well, I am so glad you like it.” Sadness drew down her mouth and doused the glow in her eyes.

“Time yet, my dear,” her husband said bracingly. “Plenty of time.”

“Of course there is,” she agreed, rallying. “I am being maudlin again. I promise to be the life and soul of the party from now on.”

Sir Henry looked as if he thought that was a worse idea, but he gave a dutiful smile.

Just then Anne and Margaret came to join her, and Tina engaged with them in some lively conversation about the journey. “Charles is here, somewhere,” she added, looking about.

“I saw him,” Anne said, and then blushed. “I mean, I saw Horace, too.”

“I’m sure you did,” Tina soothed her, but she couldn’t help but smile. Was Anne still enamored of Charles despite her parents’ warning? Whatever her own feelings in the matter, it seemed unlikely she would go against their wishes when it came to marriage. Anne was a practical girl—the sort of girl Tina had always believed herself to be—and romantic love would take second place to duty and practical considerations.

“Mr. Richard Eversham.”

The name was announced by a footman at the door, and at once Tina went hot and cold. If she were being dramatic, she’d say those three words struck her like a sliver of lightning, lodging in the region of her heart. She actually couldn’t find her breath and struggled to maintain a normal demeanor. When she finally felt able to, when she’d regained some control, she turned to look.

It was him. He was here, just as Maria had warned her.

He was wearing gray trousers and a well-fitted black jacket over a jade green silk vest and a gray cravat. His gaze caught Tina’s, and a smile curved his mouth, almost as if the instinctive movement were beyond his control. Before she could stop herself, Tina was smiling back.

“Tina!” Margaret hissed. “Why are you smiling at the disreputable Mr. Eversham?”

“Was I?” Tina answered vaguely, but her heart was thumping in her chest.

“He is handsome. And charming. What a pity he’s so unsuitable,” said Anne.

“Is he really all that unsuitable?” asked Margaret, somewhat wistfully.

“Only if you value your reputation,” Anne retorted.

If only they knew what she and Richard had done together! How very intimate they had become. Would her friends refuse to speak to her? Probably. Tina wondered if she would be cut off from society and branded a scarlet woman. Perhaps, she thought, watching Richard as he talked to Sir Henry and Lady Isabelle, but perhaps it might be worth it.

Tina half listened to her friends chattering and laughing, her thoughts miles away. For a practical girl, she was showing some alarming tendencies to daydream about matters that were most improper.

The last to arrive and be announced was John Little, who had, he explained, been delayed on business matters. He came and greeted Margaret with a solemn smile before turning to Tina.

“Miss Smythe, your parents aren’t here?”

“No, they were unable to attend due to another engagement.” Tina spoke the lie smoothly. She’d been telling a great many lies recently, and it was becoming easier each time.

“I must call upon them in London, to thank them again for their hospitality.”

Tina smiled but couldn’t help but wonder if he would find the house in Mallory Street closed up and shuttered, and no one home, and what he would think when he did. Would he seek them out at their hovel? Mr. Little did not seem like a snob, but he was a businessman, and if fraternizing with the bankrupt Smythes caused his business to suffer, she imagined he might make the hardheaded decision to drop them.

Tina glanced around, looking for Richard. There he was, by the windows. She thought about seeking him out, but every time she moved toward him, she was waylaid by her friends, until she finally gave up. Soon it was time to go upstairs to change for dinner.

Maria had laid out one of her new dresses, a deep buttercup taffeta with dropped puffed sleeves and a décolletage just short of scandalous—it was a sign of Lady Carol’s desperation that she had not quibbled over it. With the new dress Tina wore her garnet necklace and earrings, presented to her by her parents on her eighteenth birthday. She fingered the stones, wondering if she should have offered to sell them. Well, if Horace didn’t come up to scratch, she would have to, but for now she resolved to set aside her guilt and enjoy wearing them.

Maria was attending to her hair, watching her with a little frown, as if she was worried her young mistress might do something reckless.

She is right to be worried tonight,
Tina decided, for she felt reckless. She felt as if she might set aside all the rules, everything she’d been taught about decorous behavior, and do exactly as she pleased.

“You were right, Mr. Eversham is here, Maria,” she said. “I saw him in the salon although I didn’t speak to him. I thought it might not appear proper to speak to him in front of all those people.”

“His reputation—”

“I won’t speak to him in public, and yet I am quite willing to kiss him in private. Don’t you find that a little deceitful, Maria?”

“I find it very sensible, miss.”

“He’s a very good kisser, Maria.”

Maria tightened her lips and said nothing.

Tina smiled. “Have you seen Archie yet?”

“I don’t have time to worry about Archie,” said Maria sharply.

“I envy you, Maria,” Tina said dreamily. “You can marry whomever you want to, fall in love with whomever you want to. You don’t have to worry about anything except your own wishes.”

Maria smiled. “I am not quite as free and easy as you seem to think, Miss Tina. If I marry, I must find a man who will not take my savings and leave me without my shoes, or will not hit me when he has been drinking, or will not break my heart and then run off with another woman.”

“But at least you can marry a man you want to marry, even if you make a mistake. You do not have to take into account family connections and the critical eyes of society, and wealth and lineage, and . . .” She ran out of breath and shook her head, making Maria cluck her tongue as a curl bounced free.

“I think you are seeing the life of a servant through rose-colored glasses, miss. And who said I intended to marry anyone? Come, you are ready to go down to dinner. You should put aside all your cares for this evening and enjoy yourself.”

Tina smiled as she turned. “I will, Maria. And you must promise to enjoy yourself, too.”

Maria nodded decisively. “I will, miss, so I will.”