The Spinster and the Earl (16 page)

“That’s utterly ridiculous.” She gave a half-laugh of disbelief. Surely he was jesting? If anyone merited the title of the Earl of Drennan, to her thinking, he most certainly did.

She recalled all the many improvements he’d made on both the castle and the local estates. They were quite astounding.

She doubted any other gentleman would have had the muster, mettle, and strength to do so splendid a job. By taking firm command of what looked to be a broken-down castle and poorly run estates, he’d begun to make Drennan Castle sturdy and strong once more. The tenant holdings were turning into something more than just promising properties. The wool trade in town was thriving. Plenty of fine, healthy sheep were available to be raised. Hectares of unused plots were being planted with potatoes, insuring a good food source in hard times.

Many thought, upon seeing the improvements, a good firm future was now to be had in Urlingford for anyone willing to work. And all that was due to the new Earl of Drennan’s involvement.

“Your not being worthy to be the earl is complete and utter rubbish,” she said, a note of derision towards his family in her voice.

She put her hands defiantly on her hips, speaking in a voice she would have used to convince a wool dyer that he was looking at the finest wool in the parish.

“Your Grace, were you not legitimately named your priestly uncle’s predecessor before his death? Surely your family is blind not to realize how fortunate it is that the late earl decided to pass the title on to you, instead of deeding it all to the Church, or worse, forfeiting the title back to the crown?”

“Aye, so thought I. But my mother believed it ought to have gone to someone else,” he answered in a weary voice. “Never once did she contemplate that I might choose to disobey the family by leaving the seminary. I found a career that suited me better than what they’d planned.”

“By becoming a soldier,” she supplied.

“Aye. And not of the holy cross, as she had expected. But that of loyally serving king and country.”

“She expected you to become a . . . uh, celibate priest?” She almost choked on the words, so improbable was the idea.

Faith, the Duchess of Huntington must have been utterly mad. Try as she might, she could not picture this handsome figure of a man as a scholarly priest living a tranquil life in a tiny country cottage, his life dictated by the whims of the rich patrons of the surrounding parish.

This was not a man who took orders from anyone, unless he chose to. Nay, he would only take commands from someone as grand as himself, someone like Wellington perhaps, or the great Lord above. But as that higher power had not commanded him to take holy orders, she could not imagine anyone else dictating to him that he must take those most sacred vows.

She glanced back up at his saber scar, an outward reminder of his adventurous life. It added ruggedness to his handsome face. No indeed, no one could command this gentleman to do as they wished, unless he chose to let them.

She shook her head. Nay, this was a man of courage and the good Lord above had surely meant by his very nature for him to be out and about in the world seeking adventure and love. It was utterly, preposterously unthinkable that he should have become other than what he had chosen: a soldier, a gentleman, a rogue adventurer.

She smiled, remembering the intimate moments they’d shared together. The way he made her tingle with excitement and expectation like no other man, not even her ex-fiancé, had ever done before. Faith, this third son made a levelheaded spinster think the most wicked of thoughts just by being close to him!

A glimmer of a grin lined his stern face. It broadened into a smile and before she knew it, a low rumble of manly mirth was heard warming the air. His blue eyes sparkled with the joys of life.

“It’s a good joke that, isn’t it?” he chortled, slapping his breeches that encased his broad thighs. “Me, a priest?”

“Aye, Your Grace, that would’ve been a merry jest.” She nodded, her own light laughter joining his as she smiled warmly up at him. She was pleased to hear him laugh again, even if it was painfully over his family’s rejection of him.

“Come,” he said, brushing away his gloom with a broad gesture of his arm, taking hers companionably. “Let’s go over this confounded list one more time. Demme if we shan’t have a glorious celebration. Why even Prinney himself will wish he had attended!”

*    *    *

The sun broke through the habitual dark clouds of Kilkarney on the first day of the fête. The guests assembled were, for the most part, members of Ireland’s gold clover circle, the best the Emerald Isles had to offer. That is, when they were not busy carousing about London, or any of the other fashionable spots visited by the English court.

Notable among these dandies was the young Irish aristocrat, Beau Champ of Dankeckney House, who was known to keep a brace of pistols loaded and waiting on his supper table in case anyone said something he construed as an insult.

“I heard he even broached a cask of claret one time with a single shot,” whispered the footman to the cook, Mistress Reagan, upon the arrival of the gentleman’s well-sprung carriage and matching team of grays at the castle’s front portal. “The gossipmongers say a bet was made over the shot. He won one hundred guineas.” He nodded in admiration.

“Well, lad, he best be behaving himself and not make such foolish bets here, or the master will saber ’im with that walking stick of his,” answered the stalwart cook with a disapproving shake of her white-frilled cap. Beau Champ had a tidy brown beard and corpulent round figure. A couple of equally well-fed spaniel dogs trotted closely at their master’s red-heeled shoes.

“Who are they?” the lad asked, giving a low whistle of admiration as another white phaeton with a matching team of blacks arrived. It carried one of the most interesting families in Ireland.

“That’s Laeticia and Edmund Powers, brother and sister, they be. I’ve seen them before when I worked in Dublin last season.” The cook nodded knowingly.

“He’s a magistrate with an estate in County Tipperary. They call the brother, ‘Beau Powers.’ He’s here, no doubt, for the grand hunt the master has planned. Loves his horses and wine, that gentleman does.” Mistress Reagan sighed, thinking of the many casks she’d stored in the cellar in anticipation of such gentlemen as Beau Powers. She eyed the country gentleman with approval. He was wearing dark leather breeches, shiny Hessian top boots, and a snowy white cravat.

Beau Powers was one of those rare English eccentrics of the Golden Clover Circle, as the haute ton of Dublin were known as. She’d not mind serving him. Unlike most of these English, feast-swilling absentee landowners who were now in London dancing attendance upon the prince, Beau Powers was not one of those Cromwellian-spawned dandies squeezing all they could from their penniless Irish tenants. The English Beau Powers was an exception. A true gentleman of integrity, who loved his adopted country, Ireland.

“A dandy kind-hearted master you’ll find him to be, lad, if you be so fortunate as t’ find yourself serving him,” she said beaming. She remembered the way he’d heavily tipped her and the other servants the last time she’d worked a party he’d attended. The gentleman had given her a whole guinea for bringing him an extra bottle of claret to his private chambers. Didn’t even try and pinch her bottom, neither. Although she wouldn’t have minded much if he had, the handsome devil.

“But . . .” She frowned in hesitation, her chubby, round face pinching a little in disapproval at the smiling buxom maid who stood at the ready to take the gentleman’s traveling cloak. The young housemaid’s cheeks flamed under the dandy’s notice.

“I think it be best we lock them young country lasses we hired in their chambers tonight. Who knows which one of these pea-brained colleens will take it into her silly cap to try and slip into that gent’s well-made bed? For I’m telling you true, lad, there won’t be any bairns born on the wrong side of the blanket coming from
this
castle. Not while I’m in charge here.”

The Beau’s sister, Mistress Laeticia Powers, followed him from behind, daintily stepping down from the open carriage. Her young, curvaceous figure made her the portrait of a fully clothed Venus come to life. The striking dasher wore a blue traveling gown and sported a wide-brimmed hat bedecked with matching striped bows. She appeared to have just stepped out of the latest fashion gazette in her fine traveling coat. She gave a long, white-gloved hand to the gaping footman who helped her down.

The pocket Venus, upon meeting the new earl, enthusiastically threw her full white arms around him. Beneath her beribboned hat, blonde curls bounced on each side of her round, heart-shaped face as she kissed him on the cheeks in greeting.

“I’m so delighted for you, Captain James,” she gushed openly, holding onto him as if she had no intention of ever relinquishing him. Her dimples deepened into a cherubic smile as she gazed up at him adoringly. “So . . . so . . . terribly thrilled t’ hear of your good fortune.”

She batted her thick eyelashes up at him, her tightly corseted body in the empire style, which had been à la mode since the war’s beginning. It exposed to the elements her splendid bosom which brazenly bounced up and down against his starched white shirt with each excited breath. She left no doubts as to her intention of trying to snare his manly attention.

Laeticia knew a good catch when she met one. At the moment, the young earl was considered to be one of the best-titled ones on the marriage mart. And as her family held no peerage, as yet, she was determined to marry into a good family.

“Does she know the master well?” asked the lower footman, visibly swallowing at the sight of Mistress Powers’s exposed charms. “I, uh . . . was wondering if she mightn’t already have an understanding with His Grace. What I mean is—is she the one he’s chosen to be the new mistress ’ere?”

“Nay, lad. She’s just making His Grace’s acquaintance for the first time. Her brother there is the one who knows him best. They attended school together. The lass is trying to get her claws into him before them shy kittens over there give ’im a try,” said the cook. She nodded in the direction of a giggling group of prim debutantes.

The young ladies stood awkwardly by their relations and pale-faced female companions on the bottom steps of the front castle portal, looking like a group of white gardenias clustered around their more colorfully dressed guardians.

“Aye, Laeticia Powers is not the only young lady here eager to get herself attached to the earl. My bets, though, are not on that bold miss,” she whispered as Mistress Powers passed them, ascending the stairs, her backside swaying alluringly to and fro like a wide seagoing ship.

Lady Beatrice stood stiffly off to one side, watching the other lady smile in supreme confidence, as if she’d just laid siege to the castle and been proclaimed its rightful queen. Beatrice smiled coolly at the dasher and Laeticia made her obligatory curtsy before entering the castle walls.

“Dark shot though she be, ’tis to my thinking that Lady Beatrice would make the finest mistress of this castle,” said the cook with haughty finality. “She has backbone instead of wishbone, that lady does. Not like some of these simpering, pale moths standing over there.”

Tom stared at the tall lady in incredulous amazement. He’d heard strange talk concerning the aloof heiress’s game-of-the-hen ways at the local inn, the Boar’s Teeth. The tales of her escapades with her various greedy suitors were renowned throughout the tiny parish. They were frequently retold with wicked ribald humor to newcomers with unrestrained glee.

Eyeing the unsmiling lady, he could not find anything desirable in his master shackling himself with such an odd bluestocking. Even if, as they say, she be richer than Croesus himself.

“If I were the earl, I’d be after asking Mistress Powers,” he said dreamily watching the back of the stylish Dublin lady disappear indoors.

“Aye, to be sure ye would, untried youth that you be. But the master will be needing a lady with brains and grout. And as Lady O’Brien has plenty of both, ’tis she I be thinking who’d be the best choice . . . but mind, lad, the master best be quick about his business of doing the asking. There be others who are chasing after ’er.” She nodded knowingly in the direction of the young, colorful gentlemen assembled around the chattering debutantes.

“Plain spoken and all that dear lady be. Those giddy city chicks and their ne’er-do-well brothers are also in force among the guests. And those spendthrifts are terribly eager to tie themselves to her golden purse strings. Aye, twill be a most fortunate man who nabs her ladyship for his own.”

The gentlemen stood about uncomfortably, their mothers having dragged them away from the unprofitable gaming dens they habitually frequented. This in exchange for more profitable introductions and dancing partners for their marriageable daughters.

“Not that I don’t think your sister doesn’t stand a chance with the earl,” one dowager was overheard saying to her heir. She eyed with pleasure her pretty, but slightly bucktoothed daughter, as they waited their turn to greet their host and hostess. “But the word being bandied about, Reginald, is that His Grace is looking for a wealthy bride. As you know, our finances are rather badly scorched. I’m afraid your dear sister cannot compete for that gentleman’s august attention,” she murmured regretfully.

“However,” and at this the mother’s eyes lit up with Machiavellian expectations laced with old-fashioned guilt. “If we were to stop paying off your gambling debts, we just might be able to scrape together a splendid enough dowry for one of those other lords over there to take an interest in Felicity.”

She leaned into her son with a, ‘Listen, this is for your own good,’ look upon her full face. She whispered, “Now, if you were to marry a bride with unlimited wealth at her disposal, such as Lady O’Brien, why then it’d be your rich wife’s duty to pay off your debts. Wouldn’t it, my dear boy? And then we could arrange a proper marriage for our dear Felicity.” She gave him an encouraging nod in the wealthy spinster’s direction, hoping her son had at last understood the family’s position concerning his duty to marry well above his present impoverished means.