The Thirteenth Earl (4 page)

The lady in question, no meek miss, took the seat at the head of the table. Miles scurried to pull her chair out, but his manners were a half step off. In order to seat himself, he had to borrow a chair from the corner, far too plush to properly fit at the table. He sank in, creating the illusion that he was a child, his feet scraping at the floor and his chin near the plates. This might be Thaxton’s best morning in years.

“Allow me to explain, Cassandra,” Miles said, turning his back on Thaxton. “Despite anything my cousin may have told you, I bear him no ill will. I pity him. His sickness has made him paranoid.”

“I am not sick,” he snapped, unable to catch the protest. “My father is.”

“Ah, yes,” Miles said, swiveling. “How is the Earl Vane?”

“His situation does not change.”

“How awful,” Miss Seton said, meeting his gaze from behind Miles’s glare. “It must be difficult for you.”

Thaxton felt a weird stab in the area of his heart. He did not like it.

“It is . . . manageable,” he said, cursing the slight hitch in his voice.

A silence spread in which Miles faded out of the room and Thaxton could only see Miss Seton, her dark eyebrows a straight slash of disquiet across her forehead.

“If you would excuse us,” Miles said, “as much as I sympathize with your plight, Thaxton, my fiancée and I have a lot to catch up on.”

“That is not my fault,” he returned with a serenity he had not felt for months. “It is yours.”

“Let it go, Miles, please,” Cassandra said, with a bit of a waver. “Lord Thaxton obviously needs to eat . . .”

“Obviously,” Thaxton agreed.

“. . . and he is doing us no harm. Ignore him and tell me about Scotland.”

Miles made a solid go of sitting upright in his chair. Thaxton snickered.

“There is not much to tell,” Miles said, speaking directly to Cassandra. “I was hoping to find an occupation in order to supplement your dowry, along with returning my family’s abandoned Scottish estate to its former glory. I knew that once my father passed, I would have to deal with expenses on my own. But, I tell you, after growing up around such excess—the viscount here would be a good example—it is quite hard to do an honest day’s work.”

“Pssh,” Thaxton said, wiping his mouth. He had decimated a good portion of their food. “Growing up around nobles is not the reason you have trouble being a man.”

Though she might have denied it, he saw Miss Seton smile. Miles was apparently deciding whether or not to retort. He chose to continue.

“As it stands, I found nothing that would suit me, except possibly academic work. The estate renovations have progressed enough to make it our home and will conclude once we have . . . a bit more money to spend. But, my darling, how have things been here?”

Thaxton tried to clamp his mouth shut, to not say anything. It was futile. He could not let the man’s utter neglect and insensitivity stand.

“Miles, have you any idea,” he cut in, “what Miss Seton must have had to endure the years you left her here? What you sentenced her to, playing around in Scotland? If you think gossip is anything less than vicious, you are naive.”

Miss Seton’s mouth fell open a bit, a delicate oval. Conversation at the table ground to an unceremonious halt, saved only by the entry of Spencer and Eliza.

“Miles,” Spencer said, not exactly with warmth. “I trust you had a safe trip.”

“Too long. I was
so
anxious to get back,” Miles answered, dewy-eyed.

Don’t scoff, Jonathan,
Thaxton told himself.
Just don’t.
He noticed the countess fix on him, regarding his presence as an intrusion.

“What a nice surprise, Lord Thaxton,” she said, with forced sincerity. Eliza hated when things did not go according to her plans, and Thaxton at the private breakfast had not been in her plan, he knew. “We expected just Miles and Cassandra.” She took in his appearance. “You look well.”

“I feel magnificent,” he said, which was the truth.

Spencer laughed. “Wonders never cease. Say, Thaxton, we were about to invite Miles and Cassandra to tour the gardens. You are welcome to join us.”

Thaxton saw Eliza flick her eyes at her husband in reprimand.

“Thank you, Spencer,” he said. “I think I will.”

He rose, pushing his empty plate away.

“Finish your food, Cassie,” Eliza said, seeing that Cassandra had been about to stand. Thaxton’s weird ebullience verged on disconcerting. He gave her a lazy smile as the countess continued. “Relax, talk with Mr. Markwick, and meet us in the garden when you’re through.”

“Thank you, Countess,” Miles said, as if he had been holding a breath in for a very long time.

Thaxton followed the Spencers as they left, but he could not resist clapping Miles on the back on the way out. Miles glared at him, and he returned the dazzling smile he normally reserved for placating children.

Spencer grabbed Thaxton’s arm and held him back as Eliza went ahead, floating as she always did. They strolled down the hallway to the outside while they talked.

“I have seen that look before. You kissed that girl,” he said. “Might be a bad move, mate.”

“To be fair—she kissed me.”

“However it happened. I am sure you put up a fight.”

Thaxton could have argued that point. He felt he had presented Miss Seton with some very good reasons as to why they should not embrace. For Spencer’s sake, he did not press it. He just said, “It was inevitable.”

“Even so. The only outcome of this is trouble. You will ruin the house party with scandal, and Eliza will have my head on a stick.”

The countess looked back. “What are you two whispering about?”

“I never whisper”—Spencer smiled at her—“outside of the bedroom.”

He lifted the heavy latch on the gate to the gardens—a giant arching monstrosity, old as the ground it was hammered into and elaborately structured with lengths of metal vine. The sunlight shone through it, casting the pattern in shadow on the grass.

All the way back to the first countess, Spencer House’s gardens had been improved and expanded by the lady of the house but never changed in any significant way. This gave the vast area a kind of stylized disorder, an equation with unequal parts. Eliza had added the newest piece—the butterfly clearing comprising flowers that were known to attract the winged insects—which she had yet to properly name. Not all of her predecessors had been so discerning. The third countess had built a copse of sculptures but had been unable to stop buying them, so that area became overrun with cherubs and angels and goddesses. The seventh countess did not have a knack for devising landscapes, so the Marion Quarter, as her contribution was called, exploded with clashing colors and contrasting plants. The fifth countess devised the giant hedge labyrinth.

Thaxton stopped in the main clearing. He could hear an orchestra warming up for a luncheon concert, Miss Seton would be joining them, and there had been no frenzied letters from his father. Air brushed his face lightly, a novelty since shaving the beard.

It felt like a good day.

After an hour at breakfast, Cassandra thought that Miles Markwick was handsome, well spoken, and amiable, but she did not want to marry him. He kept talking, doggedly saying nothing of import. It was almost as if he was afraid that letting her talk would be dangerous. She would have the chance to bring up their long estrangement.

“We should join the others in the garden, don’t you think, my dear?” Markwick’s smile thinned his lips. She could not help comparing it with Thaxton’s wide mouth, the prominent bow at the top and that plump bottom lip. She forced her awareness back to the present moment, where Miles was still talking, feeling no small amount of shame about her wandering thoughts.

“Before we do, I feel I should warn you. Though the viscount seems as if he is a charming eccentric, he is a nasty chap. We should do our best to stay away from him.”

She was interested in this. “Did he wrong you in some way?”

“I suppose not,” Miles mused. “We never got on. Boys, playing childhood pranks. His father always seemed to like me better and once even said he wished Thaxton could be more like me. Thaxton is in the branch of our family that thinks itself loftier; they would never visit our extended cousins, nor lower themselves to stay on outside of fashionable areas or posh country houses, like Spencer House. I think the viscount looked down on me in some ways because I would never be titled. He is like that. Superficial.”

Cassandra pursed her lips. That could be true, but it could be false. She had known Thaxton for a day. But she did not find him to be posturing; he was far too self-aware for that. She also thought he hated himself.

“My dear. What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking we should join the others,” she lied. “You need not worry about Thaxton. It is a big house party; we can avoid him.”

“That is exactly what I wanted to hear,” he said, kissing her fingertips. His eyes had taken on a seductive air, like they had the one magical night that they kissed. He had been wearing white, like any respectable fairy-tale prince, his dark hair a dashing sweep atop his head, slick and neat.

Miles offered his arm, smiling at her in a way that seemed too suggestive. She knew she should feel some sort of stirring, but it did not come. As they walked down the hallway, she went through her options. She could appeal to her father, tell him she did not want to marry. There was little chance of success that way. She could run away. This, too, seemed like it would be a disaster. Cassandra knew she was clever, but she also knew she would not last a week without a sure place to sleep.

“. . . and so, I became fascinated with it,” Miles said, finishing a sentence that she had not heard the beginning of.

“Pardon?”

“Spiritualism, Cassandra,” he said, sounding a bit exasperated. “You seem to get distracted easily. I know that are you used to discussing what you will wear to the next ball, but this is a bit more philosophical. I was telling you that while in Scotland, I met a group of people who can communicate with the spirit world. It is most mesmerizing.”

“Oh! I have heard stories about that,” she exclaimed, unable to mask her excitement. Communicating with spirits? It was just what she needed to solve the nettling issue of the wailing woman. “We—I heard noises in the estate last night. This whole house seems . . . eerie. Could we investigate it? Do you think there are people in England who do the same?”

Miles squeezed through the half-open gate, tugging her along with him. A nearby vine caught on her skirt and fell in a green coil to the ground. Cassandra loved the gardens at Spencer House, for all their eccentricity. She loved them precisely for that reason.

He smiled at her in the afternoon sun.

“Do you remember when we signed the marriage contract? It was only the second day we laid eyes on each other.”

“Of course I do; I was barely eighteen. That contract has shaped my life.”

Miles smiled at what he thought was an endorsement of the contract and took her hand, tucking it into his elbow.

“You were so nervous. You had no reason to be; I thought you beautiful and perfect. But somehow the nervousness made you even more delightful.”

“What a strange way to meet,” she mused. “Introduced by our parents, but already promised. I was told I would marry you before I had ever seen you.” She dropped her voice an octave. “The Marquess of Dorset gives this young woman in exchange for these working coalfields. Please sign here.”

“I was lucky to sign,” he said. “A few coalfields are nothing compared with you. My family got the better deal.”

She smiled at his pretty words. Words she had not seen in letters for some years. She also knew it was a lie. The coalfields Miles’s family had given up for a connection to a marquess’s family had been worth a fortune, easily enough that Miles would not have had to worry about money for the rest of his life. His father could not have known that, but hindsight made no difference. The senior Mr. Markwick passed away months ago, having never remarried after Miles’s mother died in a carriage accident when he was seven and in the little school he attended in his youth. When speaking of it, he always stressed that while Thaxton and Spencer went off to boarding school, he stayed home. With both of his parents now deceased, he was left in their wake with the Scottish estate he so prized—and a mound of debt.

“I have not been here in a long time,” he said, as they traversed the path. The wind carried a strain of violin, a tuning curled into the fabric of the air. Cassandra fell silent for a moment, letting Miles go through memories in his mind. She wondered what he was thinking, her mind full of questions she did not raise. Could they learn to love each other? What would a future with this man really look like? A tightness began in her chest.

“I think I hear Eliza,” she said, starting down the path toward her friend’s voice, which she thought was coming from the Rose Arena. Eliza was quite fussy about referring to specific areas of the gardens by their proper names. Cassandra barreled forward. If Miles was going to woolgather without explanation, she was not going to waste her time with him.