Trenton Lord of Loss (Lonely Lords) (2 page)

“Hiding,” Andy replied, taking Ellie’s hand and leading her back into the house. What did it say that the child must lead the adult indoors? For Ellie would have remained staring down that drive until nightfall.

As if she were expecting Dane to come cantering home, so she could tell him this happy news? 

“You would have made me sit with my ankles crossed, back straight, and only one scone to console me,” Andy accused—accurately. 

The child had her father’s blond good looks and his charm, which was fortunate. “I’d inflict such a dire fate on you and starch your pinafore until it crackled when you moved.” 

Andy sniffed at a bowl of roses wilting on the sideboard, though even from a distance, Ellie could tell the scent would no longer be pleasant. 

“You’re supposed to teach me manners, Mama.”

“You’re clearly in command of them, but, like me, you prefer theory to practice.” Also going without her shoes. “Speaking of practicing, what are you doing out of the schoolroom, young lady? Luncheon hasn’t even been served yet.” 

“Mrs. Drawbaugh sent me down to ask if we might picnic for supper. She says the weather is fine and time out of doors makes me behave better.” 

“She didn’t say that.” Minty and Andy had quietly decided time out of doors would do Ellie some good. The conspiracy of the schoolroom had grown only closer in recent weeks. 

Andy grinned like the little girl she was. “I said it, and it’s as true for me as it is for you, so please say yes. Mrs. Drawbaugh likes to be outside, too.” 

“Don’t bat those eyes at me, Coriander Eustace Brown,” Ellie remonstrated with mock severity. “The answer is yes, provided your schoolwork is done. If you dawdle on your exercises, Minty and I will enjoy nature without your company, while you have porridge in the nursery.” 

“Not porridge!” Andy lapsed into melodramatic gagging. “Never say it! Poisoned by porridge!” 

Ellie cut her off with a gentle swat on the backside and a hug. “Upstairs, and get your work done. I’ll expect a favorable report at supper.” 

“Yes, Mama.” Andy paused just out of swatting and hugging range. “Why was the baby lady here?” 

“She was paying a condolence call. People will start to do that, particularly when your papa has been gone three months.” 

“I’m not as sad now. Why offer condolences three months later and not when Papa died?” 

Because no matter when they were offered, the condolences did nothing to make the departed any less dead. Waiting three months gave a widow some time to adjust to that reality.

“Blessed if I know, but you’re stalling. Be off with you.” 

Andy scampered up the steps two at a time, leaving Ellie to wonder why she’d lied to the girl about the baby, when honesty was something Ellie and Andy both valued very much. 

* * * 

“Rest, eat regularly, mind the drinking, and don’t forget to write.”

Darius Lindsey sounded more like a stern papa than a younger brother as he delivered his parting admonitions. He hugged Trent once, then swung up on a piebald gelding and cantered off into the building heat of the summer morning. 

Trenton Lindsey—more properly, Viscount Amherst—stood outside the Crossbridge stables, already missing his brother and mentally searching for ways to put off, of all things, a damned condolence call.

“If I wait until later in the day, it will be even hotter, and I’ll be forced to swill tepid tea, while some puffy-eyed matron clutches her hanky and tries bravely to make small talk.” 

Arthur’s gaze suggested commiseration, for he’d be denied his grassy paddock or breezy stall for the duration of that call.

Two weeks ago, Trent had been drifting from day to day in Town, a widower whom others would have said wasn’t coping well more than a year after his wife’s death. He’d spent his days and nights clutching the male version of the handkerchief, more commonly referred to as a brandy glass, though his difficulty hadn’t been grief per se.

Darius had, to put it gently,
intervened
in his older brother’s life. 

“Darius is not a mile from our driveway, and I miss him already.” 

Arthur, ever a sympathetic fellow, swished his tail.

Trent needed the damned mounting block to climb into the saddle, which was a sad commentary on his condition.

“Though how much sadder is it that I’ve written to the children only once?” The guilt of that mixed with a sense of abandonment at Darius’s parting to make the morning oppressive rather than pleasantly warm.

Arthur sniffed at Trent’s boot, which fit a damned sight more loosely than it should. 

Trent passed the beast a lump of sugar. “Do not wipe your nose on my boot, sir. Even guilt can be viewed as progress when a man has stopped feeling anything.”

He arranged the curb and snaffle reins, pleased to note that his hands, after two weeks of regular meals and infrequent spirits, hardly shook at all. 

In the interests of dawdling in the shade, Trent pointed the gelding toward the home wood, a great sprawling mess of trees, underbrush, bridle paths, and meandering streams. Small boys could spend entire summers in such a wood and never miss their beds. Of course, Trent was not a small boy. 

Arthur’s ears pricked forward in the sun-dappled depths of the wood, drawing Trent’s thoughts away from shady hammocks and long, peaceful naps. He followed Arthur’s gaze and heard splashing from the largest pond on his property. Trent urged the gelding a few feet off the path and swung down from the saddle. 

How he’d clamber aboard an eighteen-hand mount without a step was a puzzle for another time.

The horse obligingly cocked a hip and settled in to doze in the shade while Trent passed noiselessly through the brush. Another splash, then a female voice singing a folk tune—something about “green grow the rushes”—carried across the summer air. 

The woman had a sturdy contralto, suited to a sturdy tune, and she was sturdy as well. Trent was taken aback to find her standing in the shallows of the pond happy-as-she-pleased, wearing only a summer-length shift—and a
very damp
summer-length shift at that. Her long, dark hair rippled down her back as she trailed a line-and-pole fishing rod across the water and sang—to the fish?

A dairymaid playing truant on a pretty summer day, or a laundress or other menial. She had the defined arm muscles of a dairymaid and the earthy ease with her body that Trent associated with females unburdened by the designation “lady.” While he stood mesmerized, she set the pole on the bank and, still standing in the water, began to plait her hair. 

God above, she was a lovely sight. Trent resisted the urge—even urges had deserted him until recently—to tug off his boots, shed his clothes, and wade out to her side, there to do nothing in particular but be naked in the sunshine with her.

Sobriety could make a man daft, but not that daft. Rather than yield to his impulses, he stood among the trees and looked and gawked and looked some more, as if his eyes had been thirsty for this very image. 

For anything that might make him
wake up
.

The lady was comfortable in the water, occasionally reaching down to splash herself. The shift became an erotic enhancement to bare flesh, outlining her figure, peaking her nipples, and creating a damp shadow at the juncture of her thighs. Her shape was thoroughly feminine—she had real breasts, real hips, not some caricature created by whalebone, buckram and clever stitching. When she lifted her arms to pin her braid on her head, the wet material shifted so one pink, tightly furled nipple slipped momentarily into view.

The image was purely, bracingly lovely. Trent mentally thanked the Widow Lady Rammel for causing him to be in that spot at that moment. He resolved to come fishing himself in the same pond and to vicariously join the dairymaid in her pleasures. The thought wasn’t even sexual—he hadn’t had
those
impulses for some time—but it was a sensual, happy thought.

And precious as a result. 

He silently withdrew and walked Arthur some distance before using a handy stump to mount. Reluctant to leave the wood, he let the horse wander up one path and down the next until the hour approached noon.

“Come along,” he said, turning Arthur to the east. “We have a widow to condole. No more of your prevarications.” 

All too soon, Trent was ushered into a pleasant family parlor done up all in cabbage roses; pale, gleaming oak; and sunshine. He steeled himself to endure not only the thoroughly feminine décor, but also fifteen minutes of social hell, tepid tea, and useless platitudes. When he turned to greet his hostess, however, the only thought in his head didn’t bear verbalizing: 

She’s not a dairymaid. 

Chapter Two

Ellie’s first thought was that Trenton Lindsey, Lord Amherst, had been to war. They’d been introduced at a local assembly several years before, and then he’d been an impressive specimen. Tall, fit, and possessed of dark, sparkling eyes to go with his dark, thick hair. He’d had an animal magnetism that Dane, for all his blond good looks, had lacked. 

Now, Amherst was gaunt, his eyes shadowed, his clothing beautifully tailored but too loose and several seasons out of fashion.

“Lord Amherst.” Ellie curtsied and held out her hand. “A great pleasure. It’s too hot for tea, and the veranda will allow us some shade. May I offer you lemonade, hock, or sangaree?” 

“Anything cold would be a pleasure.” 

Ellie attributed his surprised expression to her sortie out of first mourning attire. She was in lilac, one of her favorite colors and one abundantly represented in her summer wardrobe. Dane would not have been pleased with her departure from strict decorum.

Which was just too perishing bad.

“We are neighbors, are we not?” Ellie inquired as he offered his arm and escorted her to the back terrace. The gesture reminded her that Amherst had married several years back. Thus, he sported the kind of understated good manners husbands usually acquired—some husbands. 

“Your land marches with mine this side of the trees,” Amherst replied. “I don’t recall your gardens being this extensive.” 

Had Dane even noticed the gardens? 

“They used to be smaller, but I am not prone to idleness, and when the weather is fine, I like to be out of doors. Gardening provides the subterfuge of productivity and the pleasure of the flowers.” Then too, even new widows were permitted to dig in their own gardens. 

He tarried at the door to the shaded veranda to sniff at a potted pink rose. “Which is your favorite flower?” 

Amherst snapped off the rose and offered it to her, the gesture so effortlessly congenial it took Ellie a moment to comprehend that the rose was for her. 

“Forgive me,” he said, his smile faltering the longer Ellie stared at the rose. “I do not socialize a great deal, and my small talk is rusty.” 

Ellie accepted the bloom, careful of the thorns. “Please allow your small talk to crumble into oblivion. I am heartily sick of sitting through every recipe in the shire for restorative tisanes, and everybody’s favorite Bible passage for difficult times. At least a discussion of flowers is novel.” 

Her escort was quiet. Had she disconcerted him or even shocked him? Maybe mourning went on so terribly long because months were needed to get the knack of being a proper widow.

A proper,
discreet
widow? 

“You’ll not be planting lilies again,” Amherst said. 

Because they were standing in the doorway, Ellie caught his scent. 

He smelled wonderful—masculine but sweet, spicy, alluring, clean, intriguing. She could have stood there all morning, trying to sort and classify the pleasures of his scent. 

Carrying a child did this—made the faculties more acute, more delicate. 

She picked up the thread of the conversation. “I won’t be planting lilies, no. I’ve already put off blacks at home. Scandalous of me.” 

“Sensible of you. The departed are gone. They don’t care what we wear.” 

“You don’t think my late husband is peering down at me from some cloud? Commenting to St. Peter that I never was a very biddable wife?” That would be the least of Dane’s complaints. 

“You didn’t force him onto that horse, Lady Rammel.” Amherst’s voice was so calm, so quiet, Ellie almost missed the keen insight of his observation. 

She stayed right where she was, next to him in the shady doorway, while birds sang to each other in the nearby wood, and flowers turned their faces up to the welcoming sun. 

“Say that again, my lord.” 

“Your husband’s death was not your fault,” Amherst said slowly, clearly. “By reputation in the clubs, Dane Hampton loved to ride to hounds, loved the drunken steeplechase, loved to cut a dash on his bloodstock. He died doing what he loved, and he was lucky. You are lucky, in fact, that he died while frolicking with his hounds. His demise wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t a bad death.” 

Ellie wanted to make him say those same words all over again, but instead searched for a rejoinder. 

And found none.

“Thank you.” She’d focused so intently on his words that it came as something of a surprise to see her hand still tucked in the crook of his elbow. Life was brimful of surprises recently. “These calls ought to come with a manual of deportment, and what you’ve just said should be the first required words.”