Sweet Bargain (9 page)

"Will you take my arm?" he offered. "I'll walk you back to your family."

He was looking at her again with that unsettling intensity. "No . . . that is, you must excuse me. I must ..." She reached up to catch a curl at her neck. "... do something with my hair and gown."

"I can wait," he said.

"No," she protested. She could not regain her composure if he stood there looking at her as he was. "You needn't wait. I know how heartily you disapprove of me."

At that a different expression crossed his face, almost of embarrassment, she thought, and he looked away toward the river.

"You hardly know how I think of you at all," he said, his voice low. "I have been rude. Let me be civil this once."

"Why?"

"I want your good opinion," he said.

"And you think a moment's accidental gallantry can win it after what you have said about the Shaws—about me?" She didn't know why she was belittling his kindness except that he looked at her in a way that recalled all her foolishness at dinner and her thoughts of kissing and her embarrassment at every encounter between them.

"Accidental? You think me incapable of courtesy? I suppose you might. Having met your brothers and seen such gallantry as you are accustomed to from your suitors, I see you can have no notion of how a gentleman might behave. But your ignorance of gentlemanly behavior does not excuse me from the exercise of it. So I will wait, and I will escort you back to your family."

"Gentlemanly behavior," she scoffed. "Your courtesies are no better than Darlington's advances if you force them on me."

"Think what you will, but until someone comes along the path to rescue you from my excesses of civility, you are as trapped with me as you were with him." Somehow during this exchange the earl had closed the distance between them, and Bel could see a dangerous glint of resolve in his eyes. He paused. "Now," he said, "I'll turn my back if you wish to straighten your hair and gown."

He did so, blocking the path so that she could neither pass him through the tangle of willow branches nor step around him through the mud and reeds at the river's edge. She stared at his elegant back in the gray coat. How could she have thought him at all shepherd-like? The man had not an ounce of humility in his whole person.

She smoothed her gown and hair as quickly as she could.

"I'm ready," she said. He turned, and she refused to look at him but took the arm he offered. Once or twice as they walked along, she felt him looking at her and thought that he might speak, but she kept her face resolutely turned from his. When the path brought them back to the wide sloping lawn behind the vicarage, the boating party was landing, and Darlington was nowhere in sight. The ladies had come down from the rose garden, and Ellen was loudly lamenting the soaking her gown had received in the heat of the race. There was the noise and confusion that always attended a Shaw gathering so that Bel and the earl were hardly noticed, except that Bel's mother cast them a sharp glance, and Auggie stared at Bel on the earl's arm. Kit and Sarah, running up, crying "Auntie Bel," gave her a ready excuse to leave the earl's side. He let her go with a simple bow. She stayed with the children, helping her sister-in-law coax them into the house and into their carriage.

She believed her encounter with the earl had escaped scrutiny. Then, on their return to Shaw House, as she mounted the stairs to her room, her mother called.

"Isabel."

The quiet firmness of her mother's voice made Bel turn. The knowing gray eyes were upon her.

"I'd like to speak with you tomorrow morning after breakfast, in my sitting room, please."

Chapter 10

NICK WOKE FROM a dream in which he lay kissing Bel Shaw, her white gown spread against a bed of sweet crushed grass. He groaned and lay still, willing his heart to slow its tempo, his heated body to cool. What a fool he was to have gone to that dinner. He knew the inescapability of his own desires. He was his parents' child after all, and he should have known—had known in some recess of his mind—that seeing Bel Shaw would stir him.

"Nicky, run along, Mama's busy."
His mother's words came back to him, spoken as often as not from the embrace of one of his tutors. They had been a singularly handsome group of young men, who had spent as much time in his mother's bedroom as in the schoolroom. The wonder was that one of them had actually found the time to teach Nick to read. Left to his own devices, Nick had wandered the house, often finding his father similarly engaged elsewhere.

As he grew older, he had become so perfect in discretion that he could pass through these scenes for a book or a meal or whatever he needed without disturbing his parents or their guests in the least. He had come to believe himself invisible in his parents' household until the summer he turned fifteen. That was the summer he had discovered how powerful his own desires could be.

One of his parents' male guests had been called away, leaving his partner, a widow, unattended. She had had a love for the pianoforte, and Nick had been ordered to turn the pages of her music for her, patiently observing the rise and fall of her creamy breasts and enduring the brush of her sleeve against his body.

Then one afternoon he had been sent to the widow's room to return a shawl she had left in the garden. At her bidding he had entered to discover her rising from her bath. It was only later that he realized how contrived that meeting had been. The widow had nearly completed his seduction the afternoon his parents had been drowned, but their deaths had ended the party, sent all the guests seeking gayer quarters elsewhere.

But he had learned about kissing, and the knowledge, once gained, had not been easy to put aside. It had haunted him in London; it haunted him now. But he no longer saw the breasts of the temptress, now he saw Bel Shaw's mouth, her chin, her eyes, the curls about her face.

He would kiss her. If she had the power to disturb his sleep, to render him witless, then he would have to kiss her. But he could not let himself be caught by such kisses. He would have to set some limit, keep some check on his own desires so that he did not become what his parents had been. This much he had decided sometime between the last owl's screech and the first cock's crow.

In her blue sitting room Serena Shaw had all the authority and dignity her husband possessed upon the bench. That her children were seldom called to the room lent a further awfulness to the occasions when they were. Bel herself had not been called for years, not since her fourteenth summer, Tom's last summer at home.

Her mother sat embroidering white on white, a collar for Diana, her elegant hands swift but unhurried, her whole person placid, as unruffled as a still morning. Bel seated herself opposite and waited.

"My dear, when you behave in a manner uncharacteristic of yourself, I must take note and wonder at it," her mother said. "Is something troubling you?"

"No, of course not," Bel replied, sure that if she said it rapidly enough before there was time to consider, it was not precisely a lie.

"Then, my dear, I find it hard to understand why you, who have such scruples, should have started a rumor about the village that our new neighbor was ill. For that is what I have heard from too many to doubt its truth."

"I meant no harm, Mother."

"I understand that no fewer than a score of persons called upon the earl in a single afternoon, not to mention others later in the week."

"Surely there was no harm in their showing him such kindness?"

"Ah, but perhaps he did not wish his privacy so ... so invaded. He is in mourning, after all."

"Perhaps he did not."

"And did you know that William and Price called upon him?"

"No." The mention of these two poor old soldiers who had been languishing for want of work since the war and who could not have made the trip up to Courtland easily caused Bel to spring up and turn from her mother.

"Do you suppose the earl was the more pleased or the more offended by his callers?"

"I really couldn't say, Mother."

"Ah. Which do you suppose is the wisest course in regard to such a man, a man of power and influence beyond even the boundaries of Ashecombe?"

"Why, honesty and courtesy."

"Just so," said her mother.

If Bel's interview with her mother had wounded her conscience and self-regard, her next interview promised to be still less endurable. She had been sent with Auggie as a companion to apologize to the earl. Serena had made it clear that nothing could excuse Bel from this duty or justify any delay. The ponies were hitched to the cart, and Auggie called from the schoolroom. He sulked at her side, halfheartedly guiding the ponies and shouting encouragements to Honey, who trotted alongside, occasionally annoying the ponies.

"I thought you hated the earl," Auggie complained.

" 'Hate' is too strong a word. I am indifferent to the earl," she replied.

"Then why were you hanging on his sleeve last night?"

"I was hardly hanging on his sleeve. I had to accept his help, that's all."

"You had to? Hah!"

"Well, I did."

"Why?"

"Because of Darlington, that's why."

"Oh." Auggie averted his eyes.

"Is that all you have to say? I thought
you
hated Darlington."

"Not anymore."

"Well, I wouldn't trust him, Auggie. He's angry with me and like to take it out on you and Arthur."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?" She looked directly at her brother, but he would not meet her gaze. "He has before."

"Never mind." She sensed Auggie was hiding something from her, and she was tempted to press him for his secret, but they were approaching Courtland and her mind was full of her impending meeting with the earl.

In the face of her mother's wisdom, Bel's behavior toward the earl appeared childish and unworthy of her training and her family. Furthermore, if she had offended a man who had it in his power to employ a good many people of Ashecombe who had been hungry for want of steady work ever since the war's end, she had behaved badly indeed. But what of his offenses? How could she explain to her mother the man's power to make Bel seem in the wrong and the Shaws appear rude and dishonest?

When the ponies drew the cart to the top of the earl's drive and Bel saw the bustle of activity about his manor, she felt the weight of her duty to the Shaws and the village press all the more heavily upon her conscience. It seemed the earl had hired dozens of men. Some were employed in removing ivy from the windows of the manor. Others were trimming hedges and scything the grass. Still others were on the roof of the stable, which was exposed to its framework of beams. As Auggie reined in the ponies, four men hefted a great beam onto their shoulders and carried it to a sling at the base of the stable wall. Two men slipped the sling around the beam while others on the roof began to pull at the ropes which lifted it. The strength and briskness of the men made the work look effortless. As the heavy beam rose in the air, the men on the ground stepped back, and at the sound of the ponies' hooves, they turned.

Bel gave a little gasp.

"What?" said Auggie.

"Haverly," she said. He had been one of the men carrying the beam, and now he was coming toward them, his quick stride closing the distance too rapidly for Bel to prepare herself. He was very much the shepherd again in his shirtsleeves and corduroy breeches and old boots, his dark hair wind-ruffled.

The dog bounded up to him, wagging her tail and barking a friendly greeting, until a curt command from Auggie brought her back to the pony cart.

"Good morning, Miss Shaw," said the earl, holding up a hand to help her down from the cart. He merely nodded to Auggie. "What brings you here?" he asked Bel. She put her hand in his and stepped down from the cart, pulling back from his hold as soon as her feet touched the ground.

"May I have a word with you?" she asked.

" 'But one word?' "

The line was familiar though she couldn't place it and she forgot to try, for the earl was grinning at her and she had never seen his face lighted by a smile before. His eyes flashed with a sparkle that made her think of the wooded stream below catching errant beams of sunlight, and for a moment she forgot her purpose. The clip of shears and the rustle of ivy vines falling as the men working on the manor exposed brick and stone recalled her to her situation.

"Must we speak here?" she asked.

"Would you care to step inside?"

She nodded. It would be so much easier to speak to him without an audience.

"And your brother?"

Auggie—she had forgotten him. She had no desire for him to hear what she meant to say. "Auggie, will you wait? I won't be long." He was slouching on the cart seat with a long-suffering air, but his eyes were sharp with wary curiosity.

"Shaw," said the earl, "you may take your ponies around behind the stable. Ask for Farre. He'll see that they're taken care of."

Auggie's look hardened resentfully, then he shrugged and set the ponies in motion. The earl offered his arm, and Bel accompanied him through the wide door set in stone and topped with a modest pediment. Inside, two girls from the village were dusting the rails of the great stair. The earl opened a door on the left and stood aside for Bel to precede him.

She stepped into a square white room with bare polished wood floors, brightened by two patches of sunlight from the tall, north-facing windows. There was the faint odor of paint and polish. Shelves lined the far wall, filled at one end with books. More books lay in several open crates on the floor. The earl was clearly unpacking an extensive library, and Bel could not help a little exclamation of pleasure at the pretty room.

"I do read," he said, smiling wryly now. "Would you care to sit down, Miss Shaw?" He crossed the room to one of two chairs before a fireplace on the interior wall.

"No, thank you," she said, recalling her purpose. He nodded and returned to face her. They stood in the center of the room, the sunlight at their feet, her back to the books, his to the door. He was looking at her in that way he had that quickened her pulse. She was uncomfortably aware that with the brown trim of her straw bonnet and brown fringe of her shawl opposite his brown breeches and dark hair they looked like a matched set of pastoral figures.