Читать книгу The Viscount’s Veiled Lady - Jenni Fletcher - Страница 12

Frances weaved a slow and reluctant path along the beach, stopping occasionally to pick up a pebble and skim it across the tops of the oncoming waves. She didn’t bother to count the bounces. Her record was fourteen in a row, but today the stones felt like lead weights. She was dragging her feet so heavily that if she didn’t hurry then the tide would be all the way up to the cliffs before she could make her escape back to Whitby, but at least she knew the tempestuous North Sea and its shoreline well enough to know exactly how much time she had.

Besides, she reassured herself, her errand wouldn’t take long, just a few minutes to deliver the message and get a response. For her sake, she hoped it was a yes, if only to prevent Lydia from sending her back again. For Arthur Amberton’s sake, however, she hoped it was a definitive no. Family loyalty aside, she couldn’t help but feel that he’d been the one who’d had a lucky escape six years before. He might have been head over heels in love with her sister, but he hadn’t known her at all.

Frances’s stomach had been performing a series of unwanted contortions at the prospect of seeing him again, her emotions torn between excitement and dread. After his surprise return, she’d hoped to catch a glimpse of him in Whitby, if only to reassure herself that he was truly alive and well, but to no avail. According to the local rumour mill, he rarely came to town, let alone attended social functions, and after a while she’d given up hope.

Which was, she’d eventually decided, for the best. As much as she’d wanted to see him, she’d had absolutely no desire for him to see her. If they’d met again, then she would have had to explain the veil that she habitually wore out of doors and then listen to the inevitable words of sympathy and reassurance. She was heartily sick of those words, shallow platitudes that meant nothing, especially from men, though perhaps not from Arthur...

Would he have behaved any differently from Leo if he’d been in the same situation? she wondered. She didn’t want to believe that Arthur would ever have been so fickle, but he was still a man, and men seemed to value beauty in women above all else. Lydia was living proof of that and Arthur had been smitten with Lydia... In which case, yes, he probably would have behaved like Leo after all!

She stopped short, shocked by the direction of her own thoughts. They sounded bitter in her own head and she didn’t want to be bitter, even if it was hard not to be sometimes. Besides, what did it matter how Arthur would have behaved? What did it matter what he thought of her veil? This visit had nothing to do with her. She was there to talk about Lydia, that was all.

She tossed her last pebble into the sea and then started up the sandy slope towards a gap in the cliffside. According to Lydia, Arthur’s farm was located just before the small fishing port of Sandsend, half a mile from the shore and accessible along a gorse-lined path from the beach.

She made her way along it, skirting around the perimeter of the village to join a dirt track on the other side. It was steeper than she’d expected and rutted with holes that made walking difficult, so that she was panting by the time she reached the edge of the Moors, where lush green fields gave way to brown heathland. Breathless, she stopped at a wooden gate, taking a few moments to admire the view. From this vantage point, she could see the sea spreading out like a shimmering turquoise carpet all the way to the horizon beyond. It was a beautiful position for any dwelling, even a ‘woebegone, old farmhouse’, though as she trudged on through the gate and around the side of a small woodland copse, she could see that it was anything but.

Far from dilapidated, it was clearly a working farm, a scene of well-organised chaos with giant bales of hay stacked along one side of a three-storey stone house and what looked like a newly built log store on the other. It was hardly deserted either. On the contrary, there seemed to be animals everywhere: pigs in a sty, goats and sheep in two separate pens, at least two dozen chickens and five lazy-looking cats roaming wild, not to mention a pair of horses peering out from over the top of a stable door.

Frances stopped in the centre of the yard and turned around slowly, searching for any sign of a human in the midst of so many animals, but there seemed to be no one, just a brown-and-white speckled dog sitting by the front door of the farmhouse, its head tipped to one side as if it were the one in charge. Judging by its short coat and piercing blue eyes, she guessed it was a sheepdog, though fortunately it seemed to be friendly as well.

She bent down to ruffle its ears, struck anew by the impropriety of her situation. She was an unmarried, unchaperoned, uninvited lady, trespassing on behalf of her widowed sister in order to persuade a single gentleman—a viscount, no less!—to accept a request that he’d already refused! Only Lydia would ask such a thing. Only Lydia would expect it to work!

But she was there now and she might as well get the whole mortifying scene over with. Lydia was more than capable of carrying out her threat and telling their parents about her fledgling business if she didn’t do what she wanted and her work was too important for her to risk that. She’d tell them about it herself eventually, once she’d earned enough to stand on her own two feet if necessary, but not yet. She had her own plans for the future and she’d reveal them when she was good and ready.

Bolstered by that conviction, she lifted her hand to the front door and knocked. There was no answer, though the door swung open on its hinges with a loud creak.

‘Lord Scorborough?’

She called out his name, but there was still no answer. No sound at all, in fact. Tentatively, she took a few steps inside and along a darkened hallway, poking her head around another door into what looked like the kitchen. That was empty, too, though there was a large iron kettle steaming on the range. Perplexed, she lifted her veil and pulled it back over her bonnet for a clearer view. Clearly somebody was nearby, but why weren’t they answering?

She felt a tremor of unease, resolving to go back outside to search the yard again, when she heard the click of a door opening further down the hallway. Quickly, she turned around, ready to explain her intrusion, only to find herself face to face with a complete stranger wearing nothing more than a pair of short, cotton under-drawers.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed aloud, sucking in a breath of panic as the stranger came to an abrupt halt, uttering a series of vividly descriptive expletives whose meanings she could only imagine. His legs and upper body were completely exposed so that, in the time it took for her to recover her wits, she had a close-up view of powerful calves, a muscular chest and arms that looked to be around the same circumference as her waist.

‘Oh!’ She wasn’t sure why she repeated the exclamation, only that it seemed appropriate as she dragged her gaze to his face. His rugged appearance was almost as alarming as his lack of apparel. Close-cropped hair and dark stubble gave him the look of a convict. Was he a convict? His colourful language certainly wasn’t that of a gentleman. She felt her palms break into a cold sweat, panic mounting as her heartbeat started to hammer erratically. The wrong farm! She must have come to the wrong farm, she realised, berating herself for the mistake in the split second before their eyes met and she spun on her heel and fled...

* * *

Arthur Amberton, the Fourteenth Viscount Scorborough, had just finished bathing. He’d just stepped out of his bathtub, rubbed himself down with a sheet and pulled on a pair of under-breeches as an afterthought—an impulse for which he was now extremely grateful. Since he didn’t keep servants and rarely had any visitors, he generally had no qualms about wandering around his own house completely naked, especially during the hot summer months, so that to find a black-clad woman standing in the corridor in front of him had come as an equal, and in his case somewhat uncanny, surprise to both of them.

She’d run away at the sight of him. Fled for dear life, more like... Which at least proved she wasn’t a ghost, though now he supposed he’d have to go after her. Much as he resented any intrusion into his privacy, he really ought to find out who she was and what she was doing there, not to mention apologise for his less-than-enthusiastic greeting. Her end of the corridor had been dark, casting her face into shadow, but judging by the style of her clothes she was a lady.

He mounted the stairs to his bedchamber three at a time and pulled on the shirt and trousers he’d laid out earlier. He was supposed to be dining with his brother and sister-in-law that evening, though he would have preferred going to bed early instead. Working ten acres of land on his own meant he was usually exhausted by late afternoon, but at least it meant he was mostly too tired to think.

Dinner at Amberton Castle, however, was a standing weekly appointment, a compromise he’d made to stop Violet from worrying about him. His tiny sister-in-law’s refusal to accept that he wasn’t unhappy or lonely was more than a little irritating. He wasn’t depressed, he didn’t want or need companionship, and he especially didn’t care for intruders.

He ran back down the stairs, jamming his boots on at the front door before charging out into the farmyard. He’d only been gone a couple of minutes, but already there was no sign of his mysterious visitor.

‘Some guard dog you are.’ He glared at Meg, his sheepdog-in-training, but she only wagged her tail enthusiastically. ‘Which way did she go?’

It was a rhetorical question, of course. There was only way she could have gone, back along the track that led to the village, unless she’d decided to take refuge in the pigsty. Quickly, he made his way towards the path, splashing his newly polished boots in the process, though he’d barely rounded the corner of the copse before he found her again, sitting in a muddy patch on the ground and clutching her leg.

‘Are you hurt?’

She seemed to leap halfway into the air at the sound of his voice, twisting her head away to fiddle with something at the front of her straw bonnet. He slowed his pace, not wanting to alarm her any further, though she kept her face averted as if she were too embarrassed to look at him. Oddly enough, there was something familiar about that bonnet.

‘I slipped on the mud.’ Her voice sounded muffled.

‘Farms have mud. You shouldn’t have run away.’

‘You shouldn’t have scared me, walking around half-naked!’

‘You ought to be glad it was only half.’ He glowered at the back of her head, her refusal to look at him only increasing his irritation. ‘And I don’t believe there’s a law against it in the privacy of your own home. Unlike trespassing, I might add.’

‘Well, you should answer your door when somebody knocks!’

‘For the record, I didn’t hear you knock and that doesn’t excuse you just walking in. It’s my house!’

She swung back towards him at that, her face obscured by a black veil that appeared to be pinned to the hair beneath her bonnet. Was that what she’d been fiddling with? He grunted with exasperation. For pity’s sake, surely she couldn’t be so embarrassed. She hadn’t even seen that much of him and it was a lot less than she might have... Still, there was something familiar about the voice as well as the bonnet, something that prodded his memory.

‘I wish I hadn’t walked in!’ The eyes behind the veil flashed. ‘I think I’ve sprained my ankle. Isn’t that punishment enough?’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake.’ He crouched down beside her. This day was just getting better and better. ‘Are you certain that it’s sprained? Here, let me look.’

‘No!’ She tugged her ankle away as he reached for it, putting her weight on the other foot as she tried to stand up instead. ‘I can manage. Ahhh!’

‘Sit down, woman, or you’ll do even more damage.’ He reached for her waist as she tumbled downwards again, but she jerked even further away from his touch, landing with a fresh squelch in the mud.

‘I can’t sit down...’ Her voice was tinged with panic now. ‘I have to go or I’ll be late.’

‘You were eager enough to see me a few minutes ago.’

‘I was looking for somebody else, but it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come.’

Somebody else? His frown deepened at the words. Who had she expected to find there but him? ‘Who were you looking for?’

‘I...’ She started to speak and then stopped. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

He folded his arms, not bothering to conceal a sigh of irritation. ‘You know if you tell me, there’s a fair chance I might be able to help.’

‘Yes, but... Oh, very well.’ She threw her hands up as if conceding defeat. ‘I was told that Lord Scorborough lives here.’

‘He does.’

‘He does?’

The head twisted towards him again, but it was impossible to see past the veil. Who on earth was she? It was obvious she had no idea who he was, though he supposed he couldn’t blame her for that. He didn’t look much like a gentleman these days. He kept his hair cropped short for practicality’s sake, to keep it out of his face when working, and he preferred being clean shaven to the current fashion for long moustaches and beards, but he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days either. He’d intended doing so after his bath, had been boiling water for that very purpose when he’d found her in the corridor, so that he was probably looking more than a little weatherbeaten and bristly. It was no wonder she’d been so frightened. Still, he couldn’t just abandon her there, no matter how much they might both prefer it.

‘Come on. You’re not walking anywhere on that ankle.’

‘What...?’ Her voice rose in alarm as he curled one arm beneath her knees and the other about her shoulders. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing to sound so shrill about.’ He lifted her up, liberally splattering his new clean clothes with mud as he carried her back the way that they’d come. ‘I’m taking you inside so that I can bind that ankle.’

‘I can walk!’

‘No, you can’t. You could try, but you’d probably break something.’

‘I won’t...’

‘Believe me, I’m not thrilled by the prospect either, but I don’t think either of us has a choice.’ He kicked open the farmhouse door and carried her back through the hall to the kitchen, a curious-looking Meg trotting alongside as he deposited her in a tattered-looking armchair by the range and then reached up on to a shelf for some bandages. ‘There. Now, what did you want with Scorborough?’

‘It’s private.’

‘Private business with a viscount? Sounds intriguing.’

He deposited a roll of bandages on to the table with a thud. Her voice was still muffled by the veil and he had to fight the urge to tear it away. Wasn’t she ever going to remove the blasted thing, even indoors? He might not have been in polite society for a while, but surely his appearance wasn’t so shocking? At least not so much that ladies felt the need to cover their faces at the sight of him. He rubbed a hand over his stubbly chin. Just how fearsome exactly did he look?

‘It’s nothing like that!’ She sounded indignant.

‘Really?’

He folded his arms again, a new suspicion taking shape in his mind. Despite his somewhat chequered personal history, he was still a viscount and society still considered him a prize catch. He’d endured a number of probing visits from ambitious, matchmaking parents when he’d first moved into the farm, though thankfully they’d stopped when he hadn’t returned the calls. The sight of him in his farm clothes might have had something to do with it, too, he supposed, but perhaps this woman was simply more determined than the rest.

‘Really!’

She sounded so genuinely offended by the suggestion that he almost believed her. Almost. But he’d believed a woman once before and look where that had got him. He knew firsthand what good actresses women could be.

‘Yet here you are, wearing a veil over your face and visiting a gentleman’s house without any kind of chaperon? Forgive my scepticism, but to most minds that would suggest something of a personal nature.’

‘How could it be personal when I thought I had the wrong house? I haven’t even seen Arthur in six years!’

‘Arthur?’ He quirked an eyebrow in surprise. The way she said his name suggested they were already acquainted.

‘Yes.’ The veil face tipped downwards as if in embarrassment. ‘But it’s not illicit at all. I only came to deliver a message. He has no idea that I’m here.’

‘On the contrary.’ He drew up a stool and placed it in front of her, sitting down with one arm draped over his knees. ‘He’s fully aware of the fact. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Scorborough.’