Tremaine's True Love (25 page)

Who was nowhere to be found. Tremaine prowled the library, the parlors, the estate office, even the corridors of the family wing. He came upon Lady Della, nose down in Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s eloquence, in a cozy parlor graced with a hearth and two braziers.

“I beg your pardon for disturbing you, my lady, but I can’t seem to locate any of your siblings.”

Nor would Tremaine ask the servants for the whereabouts of his prospective in-laws, lest talk ensue. Lady Nita had said an announcement at the assembly was in order, and until then, Tremaine would observe utmost discretion.

“We’ve been abandoned,” Lady Della said. “Do come in lest you let out all the warmth I hoard so jealously.”

They were to be family, so Tremaine closed the door. Lady Della was at a dangerous age, when young ladies could get themselves into trouble with what felt like daring but was in truth foolishness, and yet Tremaine liked what he knew of her.

“Nita and Kirsten have saddled up in the interests of enjoying fresh air, though I suspect they’ll visit the Chalmers household,” Lady Della said, putting her reading aside. “Susannah went with them, intent no doubt on the lending library, and George rode as escort to ensure no riots ensued when all of my sisters rode out at once.”

From her cozy parlor, the junior sibling somehow knew the whereabouts of four adults, none of whom Tremaine had been able to track down. A farewell visit to the Chalmers family was understandable, or perhaps Lady Nita would entrust their welfare to Lady Kirsten.

“Why didn’t you go with them?” Tremaine asked.

The snow had kept everybody on the Belle Maison premises for several days, though Tremaine had seen Bellefonte himself wearing a path to and from the stables. His countess occasionally went with him, though nobody rode out.

“I have a sniffle.” Lady Della sniffed delicately, mocking Tremaine, herself, or polite fictions in general. “I like your Mrs. Wollstonecraft, and I like better that you’d wave her at Susannah.”

An ally among the in-laws was never to be taken for granted. “Everybody needs a break from Shakespeare.”

“Also from
Debrett’s
. My come-out was delayed thanks to Papa’s passing, but Nicholas’s grandmother would have me recite from
Debrett’s
as if it were Scripture.”

“I’ve found it useful,” Tremaine said, taking a place near the fire. In cold weather, even a cozy room had chilly floors, a situation Lady Della managed by keeping her slippered feet up on a hassock.

“Will you and Nita make an announcement at the assembly?” She fired that salvo while casually draping a brown and red wool afghan over her knees. As the only dark-haired Haddonfield, the colors flattered her.

“An announcement?”

“Coyness is not your greatest talent, sir. Nita has been different lately. She smiles inwardly and isn’t so brisk outwardly. I saw you coming from her room the other night, and I saw her the next day. She wore ear bobs to dinner.”

Little sapphire and gold drops that went marvelously with Nita’s eyes and with her smiles. The countess had mercifully seated Tremaine next to his intended, so he could torment himself with sidelong glances and the occasional brush of hands under the table.

Nita was owed a bit of wooing, though the sooner they were wed, the better.

“Perhaps the lady and I were merely having a late-night chat about a medical condition.”

“You weren’t suffering from a medical condition,” Lady Della said, “though it apparently afflicts some men worse than an ague. If Susannah and Mr. Nash make no announcement, then I’d beg you and Nita to keep your news quiet as well.”

“I haven’t said we have news.” Though Lady Della had a point. If Susannah were not engaged, kindness suggested an announcement should wait.

“I am the youngest,” Lady Della replied, sounding not very young at all. “I am the smallest, and sooner or later you will hear that I’m an indiscretion for which the old earl forgave my mother. Susannah needs to wed, Mr. St. Michael. I know you want those sheep, and I mean no insult to your regard for Nita, but Susannah needs those sheep more than you do.”

Tremaine took a seat beside Lady Della uninvited. “You should not confide the circumstances of your birth to even me, my lady. While your situation is common enough among titled families, the information could be used to your detriment.”

She held out a plate of biscuits, not ginger for they were too pale. Lemon, maybe. Tremaine took one to be polite.

“Nita said you were kind,” Lady Della said, setting the plate down beside Mrs. Wollstonecraft. “I don’t like Mr. Nash, but I can tell you Susannah has
need
of him, and that means she needs those dratted sheep.”

Lady Della’s expression was disconcertingly determined, and she was regarded by her siblings as adept at gathering information. She appeared to be a darling little aristocratic confection, but something—or someone—had roused her protective instincts where Lady Susannah was concerned.

Tremaine took a bite of biscuit and yielded to the prodding of instinct.

“Do you make a habit of catching your sisters in their rare improprieties?” he asked. For Lady Della had seen something, caught a glimpse of liberties permitted or even vows anticipated. Did Nita know Susannah had misstepped? Did Susannah know her lapse had been observed?

No wonder Bellefonte often wore a harried expression.

“I make a habit out of looking after my siblings,” Lady Della said, that cool, adult thread more evident in her voice than ever. “They look after me. I’m simply returning the favor. That goes for George too.”

Whatever His Handsomeness had to do with the topic at hand.

“I’ve already decided I can’t ask for the sheep to be included in Lady Nita’s dowry,” Tremaine said, finishing a scrumptious lavender-flavored biscuit. Why he should share his decision with Lady Della was a mystery. Perhaps one spoke thus with siblings, even when they were acquired by marriage.

“So you’ll buy them in a separate transaction six months hence,” Lady Della retorted, “and Nicholas will be the soul of accommodation in this scheme because he’s another dunderheaded male. I’m telling you, Susannah needs those sheep.”

“If I could find the earl,” Tremaine said, “I’d cheerfully negotiate settlements with him that will preclude me from ever owning those damned sheep, but he’s eluding my notice. Given his size, this suggests he doesn’t want to be found.”

Given the earl’s besottedness with his countess, it suggested his lordship was elsewhere in the family wing, perhaps using a snowy morning to further secure the succession.

“Nicholas makes birdhouses when he’s wrestling with a problem,” Lady Della said, offering the biscuits again. “Leah sometimes helps him or joins him in his workshop simply to bear him company and get away from the rest of us.”

Her comment brought a memory to light, of Beckman Haddonfield hanging a fantastical birdhouse in the lower branches of an oak at Three Springs. The miniature chalet, complete with a tiny carved goat on the roof—a bearded, horned male—had been a wedding present from the earl.

“Bellefonte
makes
those birdhouses?” The workmanship had been exquisite, far too fine to hang in a tree. “Those birdhouses could fetch a pretty penny as parlor ornaments.”

Tremaine betrayed his mercantile soul with that comment, and the look Lady Della sent him—eyes dancing, lips threatening to turn up—said she knew it. He stuffed half another biscuit in his mouth before he could utter more ridiculousness.

“Nicholas will be cheered to hear that his woodworking passes muster,” Lady Della said. “He’s also quite skilled with a muck fork, which I’m sure his countess took into consideration when he asked for her hand. His workshop is at the back of the stables. Go into the saddle room and you’ll find a small door on the back wall. Nobody ever thinks to look for Nicholas behind a small door.”

Nor would they think to find a small sister guarding his welfare.

“My thanks,” Tremaine said, rising. “Shall I have a footman bring more coals for your brazier?”

“And have the staff know I’ve been closeted with you? No, thank you.”

She dismissed Tremaine by the simple expedient of resuming her study of
A
Vindication
of
the
Rights
of
Woman
. Like all the Haddonfields, Lady Della was clever, but she wasn’t restless with it the way Nita and Kirsten were, nor did she enjoy Susannah’s domestic inclinations.

Lady Della was lonely though, Tremaine would have bet William on that. That’s what her announcement of her age, size, and bastard status had been about. She was lonely and expecting to be overlooked by her newest sibling-by-marriage.

Tremaine would not overlook her—or underestimate her. By supper at the latest, she’d figure out that an agreement preventing him from owning the sheep would pose no bar to his
leasing
the same animals.

Which left Tremaine to puzzle over why Nita had neither told him she was paying one last call on the Chalmers family nor invited him to escort her.

Susannah’s birdhouse had been easy. Nick had devised a structure that looked like a set of shelves holding various volumes—Fordyce’s
Sermons
, Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, Wordsworth’s latest poems. These, Nick fashioned into a home for birds, two stories of books high, the finished product fooling the eye from only a few feet away.

“Nita took me by surprise,” Nick informed a fat, white tomcat who sat on the workbench washing its right paw. “One hardly knows what to give her, she’s so damned independent.”

The sketchbook in front of Nick was open to a blank page, the same blank page he’d been staring at for an hour.

“Sheep, maybe, because she’s attached the affections of the Sheep Count, but what if she disdains his suit?”

Nick drew the pencil from behind his ear and tried a few lines in the direction of a woolly merino.

“Sheep don’t typically hang about in trees.” Neither did books, come to that. “Cats do.” Kirsten might like a cat-shaped birdhouse if ever she found a man she couldn’t demolish with feminine indifference.

Fifteen minutes later, Nick tossed down his pencil, disgusted, for his birdhouse sheep all looked like clouds with cloven hooves.

“Nita might have cornered St. Michael in some cozy parlor and made him recite more poetry to her, might have dragged him into the village to get the gossips excited, might have gone off to count lambs with him, but no. She must deal with some colicky infant or worse.”

The cat stropped its head on Nick’s chin and left a trail of brown paw prints on the white page.

A tap on the door interrupted Nick’s musings, while the cat switched directions and made another pass beneath Nick’s chin. Nick’s countess had doubtless come to rescue him at last from his doleful musings.

“Come in, lovey,” Nick said without turning. “I’ve missed you sorely and need some kisses to cheer me up.”

“I’d be happy to indulge you, Bellefonte,” said an accented male voice, “but your brother George might become jealous, to say nothing of your countess’s consternation.”

Well, hell.
Nick closed the sketchbook and pivoted on his stool. “St. Michael, good morning. I was expecting my countess.” And what had George done now to provoke such a comment?

“You make your birdhouses here?” St. Michael stood inside the door, studying Nick’s workshop. He wore riding attire, his greatcoat was open rather than buttoned, and his hands were bare.

“I do, and I come here to think.” The cat put two paws on Nick’s shoulder, as if contemplating assuming a perch there.

“Lady Nita has accepted my suit,” St. Michael said, reaching for a “book” then drawing his hand back. “A
trompe
l’oeil
. Very clever. I didn’t think old Fordyce would be to your taste.”

“I have sisters, and thus Fordyce graces our library. They read him when they’re in want of merriment. I suppose you’ve come to talk about the damned sheep?”

In other circumstances, St. Michael might have been a friend. He was shrewd, did not stand on ceremony, and enjoyed the pragmatic outlook of those born to a former generation of Continental aristos, and yet he wasn’t quite what Nick had envisioned for Nita.

“I’ve come to talk about Lady Nita’s settlements, assuming you’ll bless our union.”

St. Michael left off inspecting the birdhouse and moved on to the tools Nick had hung along one wall. Some Nick had made himself, the grips smoothed to exactly fit his grasp.

“You aren’t like any earl I’ve met before,” St. Michael murmured, “and I’ve met plenty.”

“You aren’t like any sheep farmer I’ve met before. With respect to the settlements, my father set aside funds for each of my sisters, but his means were modest.”

“I am not marrying your sister because I need more coin, Bellefonte,” St. Michael said gently. He lifted a hammer off the wall. “This could do some damage.”

The handle was oak, the weight one Nick had forged as a younger man.

“Stop playing with my toys, St. Michael. The purpose of the settlements is not to entice you to offer for the lady.
She
is your prize, and woe to you if you don’t realize that. The settlements are for Nita, so she knows we value her and will see her provided for should she be widowed.”

Though Papa hadn’t managed to set aside enough to guarantee that outcome, unless Nita was widowed in great old age. Nick had explained these circumstances to his sisters and had yet to find a remedy for it.

The cat commenced kneading Nick’s shoulder, needlelike claws digging through the fabric of his shirt and waistcoat.

St. Michael set the hammer back in its bracket and plucked the cat away just as Nick would have set the beast on the floor. The dratted pest commenced purring as St. Michael scratched it under the chin.

“How can I have a serious negotiation, Bellefonte, when you allow even the beasts to do as they please with your person? What is your position on the sheep?”

“Leave the sheep out of this. I’ve had other offers.”

St. Michael’s fingers paused, and the cat commenced switching its tail. “Other offers? Plural? Does Lady Kirsten have a suitor perhaps?”

“None of your damned business, but if she did, he’d doubtless want those sheep too.”

St. Michael resumed studying the birdhouse, as if the books were truly titles on a library shelf. “If you are thinking of the sheep, I am their best option. I take excellent care of my livestock.”

“I’m thinking of my sisters. Edward Nash knows Susannah’s portion is modest, and he’s willing to accept valuable consideration in place of coin.”

St. Michael made a face, like a cat who’d chanced upon a cream pot undefended in the pantry and had taken a lick only to find the contents soured.

“Lady Nita does not favor a match between Mr. Nash and Lady Susannah,” St. Michael said as the cat purred in his arms. “Please ask her why.”

“Lady Nita has reasons of her own to take the Nash menfolk into dislike. I cannot allow her fancies to cheat Susannah out of a decent match.” Though Nick didn’t care much for Edward. The man dressed his widowed sister-in-law like a farm wife, took no interest in his nephew, and leered at tavern maids despite paying his addresses to Susannah. “Nash is the first man Susannah has looked upon with favor, and thus I am bound to encourage such a match.”

“Lady Nita’s objections to her sister’s choice are specific to Mr. Edward Nash. I strongly urge you, for the sake of Lady Susannah’s well-being, to speak with your sister.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” Nick asked, rising from his stool. “Nita Haddonfield could teach stubbornness to Irish mules. If she’s disinclined to broach a topic, it remains unbroached.”

St. Michael deposited the cat on the workbench. It sat upon Nick’s closed sketchbook, tail wrapped around its paws in perfect, insolent contentment. Nita’s suitor took Nick’s vacated stool, lounging back to prop his elbows on the workbench.

“You’ll be glad to give your sister into my keeping?” St. Michael asked.

Sisters were not livestock, to be surrendered in the marketplace for a sum certain.

“In the churchyard,” Nick said, “I will present a vapid smile for all the biddies, and I’ll accept good wishes on Nita’s account with my usual faultless good cheer. To all save my wife, I will pretend to be vastly pleased that Nita will be your
comtesse
, but, St. Michael, I’d hoped every one of my sisters would be treated to something of a proper courtship.”

“If I’ve found favor in Lady Nita’s eyes, isn’t that courtship enough?”

Apparently more than enough, if Della’s mutterings were to be believed.

“I am angry at my father,” Nick said, dragging a second stool up beside St. Michael’s. “I’m frequently angry at the late earl, which he likely considers repayment of a consideration long overdue.”

The cat’s scratchy tongue swiped across the top of Nick’s ear. The little beast had remarkably foul breath.

“My rage at my parents lasted years after their deaths,” St. Michael said. “My father’s willingness to die amid his wealth, I could understand—France was his home—but my mother had a choice. She could have remained in Scotland and raised her sons or returned to the greater comfort of my father’s holdings in France. She chose the luxury, despite the peril, and my grandfather, who might have stopped her, deferred to her husband’s authority. Lady Nita would choose her children. She’s a reliable partner, and she and I will get on well enough.”

Kirsten, George, and Della had each assured Nick that Mr. St. Michael was getting on with Nita
famously
.

At all hours, and in the privacy of her ladyship’s bedroom.

“I think you underestimate my sister,” Nick said, sitting forward, out of range of cat kisses. Let St. Michael deal with overly affectionate felines.

“Most men underestimate most women, and I suspect the ladies like it that way,” St. Michael said, dragging the cat off Nick’s sketchbook and holding the creature up like a feline rag doll. “Have you no respect, cat? Bellefonte is not one of your pantry strumpets, to endure your overtures.”

The cat was still purring, even dangling at St. Michael’s eye level.

“He can’t hear you,” Nick said. “Poor blighter’s deaf as a dowager duchess. I’ve a physician friend who pointed it out to me.”

“You’re sure he’s deaf?”

“David, Viscount Fairly, trained as a doctor in Scotland and is canny as hell. He demonstrated the cat’s disability in various ways. Poor creature can’t hear a thing, though he senses vibrations, has excellent eyesight, and does not lack for female companionship.”

Maybe deafness around females wasn’t entirely a curse.

“Interesting.” St. Michael set the cat back down on the workbench. “If you don’t do something with those sheep soon, they’ll develop all manner of ailments. You’ve a few smaller specimens among them already.”

To hell with the damned sheep. “You’re not getting those sheep, St. Michael. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

Now the cat perched, one paw on Nick’s shoulder, one on St. Michael’s.

“Will Nash get them?” St. Michael asked.

Persistent, the both of them, though it was some consolation that the cat liked St. Michael. Nick put the presuming feline out in the saddle room, while St. Michael remained at ease on his stool.

“I’m upset with the late earl,” Nick said, “not because his circumstances precluded lavish dowries for my sisters. Rents do not provide the income they once did, taxes climb yearly, and launching more than a half-dozen children is expensive. Papa did the best he could.”

“And yet you’d read dear Papa the Riot Act now if you had the chance,” St. Michael said. “Why? He did not abandon you in a strange country where you knew little of the languages and nothing of the customs. He did not go running back to his chateau, while you subsisted on tough mutton and endless church services.”

Beneath St. Michael’s curiosity lay hard memories. Nick hoped Nita, with her tender, lonely heart, was not marrying a hard man.

“Papa knew he was dying,” Nick said, though the words were difficult. “He sent us all away. Beckman was to take the Three Springs estate in hand. I was to find a bride. George lingered in the vicinity of Cambridge, mostly to keep an eye on Adolphus, and the girls were banished to relatives and house parties. My brother Ethan, from whom Papa had been estranged, was invited to make a final call, and Nita was allowed to remain at Belle Maison.”

“Because of her medical knowledge?” St. Michael suggested.

“Nita is very knowledgeable, but she’s still unmarried, for all she’s had her Seasons. I am angry with my father for taking advantage of Nita. She ran this place while my brothers and I were sowing wild oats, while her mother fell ill, while the old earl faded.”

Nick’s recitation was drifting from an explanation to a confession, and maybe that was appropriate.

“Lady Nita did a fine job,” St. Michael said. “Many women find ways to be useful despite spinsterhood.”

Nita would have her hands full with this one, but so too would St. Michael have his hands full.

“Nita did not graduate from the schoolroom to spinsterhood, you dolt. She graduated from the schoolroom to
widowhood
, without any of the intervening years of laughter and happiness, without any babies or grandbabies to love, without even the preservation of a spinster’s unworldliness. Her mother was something of a healer, but Nita has far eclipsed her mother’s example, and trespasses now on all manner of miseries with impunity.”

St. Michael’s features shuttered, suggesting Nick’s point eluded his grasp.

“I thank you for passing along your fraternal sentiments, Bellefonte, but we’ve yet to resolve the settlements.”

Leah had counseled Nick to patience where St. Michael was concerned, and as ever, the countess had seen clearly.

“Listen to me, St. Michael, or there will be no need to discuss settlements. Women like Nita need to feel needed. Papa took advantage of that, until Nita forgot she could say no, until she thought all the burdens she shouldered, the babies she could deliver, were the sum of her value. Leah has relieved Nita of the weight of running Belle Maison, and Nita has gone halfway into a decline over that kindness.”

Nick picked up his hammer, and as it had for years, it fit his hand perfectly.

“I’m guilty of colluding in this sad tale,” he went on, “but I’m charging you with setting matters to rights. Let Nita attend the lying-ins if you must, but no more sickrooms for my sister, no more tending gunshot wounds, no more putrid sore throats or gangrenous toes, no more—”

At the door, the cat scratched to be let in. Nick’s woodworking shop was the warmest place in the barn by virtue of braziers full of hot coals, in addition to the proximity of large, shaggy horses.

“You allowed her to deal with…that?” St. Michael said, abruptly appropriating a very French portion of dismay.

“Makes me bilious to think of it,” Nick said, using a hasp to stir the coals in one of the braziers. “The allowing started before my father fell ill, so yes. Nita knows her herbs, but she’s also a competent surgeon and physician. Dr. Horton is behind the times in his science, and most people around here know it and take advantage of Nita accordingly.”