Chapter Nine
On the followingday, Miranda, with the express intention of calling on Cousin Harry, had Betsey prepare an early luncheon, then she took Lissy upstairs to her room in order to titivate her. Something Melissa bore with stoic resignation.
They were just about to descend the stairs into the parlor when a knock came on the front door and a cacophony of barks arose. Miranda hesitated and Lissy bumped into her from behind. In unspoken unity, they both peered out of the low window. A large, raw-boned black horse stood in the yard, his reins looped around a rail. Beneath the window, the balding, ginger head of Sir Julian Horncastle was to be seen, for its owner was standing far enough outside the small porch to be unmistakeable.
“Oh no,” Miranda whispered. “Not him again.” The last thing she wanted was another unwanted visitation from this particular neighbor with his horrible staring eyes that always made her feel he was undressing her. Everything about him unnerved her.
Lissy stepped back from the window. “What shall we do?”
On more than one occasion Miranda had instructed Crawford to tell Sir Julian she was not at home. But that had been at the Hall, with its endless rooms she and the girls could hide in. Here at the farmhouse they had no such luxury. “However did he find out we were here so quickly?”
Lissy shrugged. “This is the countryside.Gossip travels at mind-boggling speed.” From downstairs came the sound of Betsey opening the front door.
“Good day to you,” Sir Julian’s voice rang out, authoritarian, pompous and demanding, and despite his words, devoid of any hint of being polite to someone so menial as a maidservant. “I’ve come to call on Lady Madeley.”
What would Betsey say?
Miranda straightened her spine. She would have to come to her faithful maid’s rescue. With Lissy following reluctantly in her wake, she descended the stairs into the parlor, to find Sir Julian already standing in it, looking around with the slightest of sneers on his unlovely face. Perhaps he was thinking she might pop out from under a chair at any moment. Nero, their old pointer who’d once been used for hare coursing, was standing in the kitchen door, his lips curved in a snarl, Megs just behind him with her hand on his collar as though afraid he might attack Sir Julian. Miranda couldn’t help the uncharitable thought that it would be rather nice if Nero did just that. Only Sir Julian would then probably want the poor old dog shot.
Their visitor’s sneer vanished as he spotted her, to be replaced with a smile that had all the allure of a snake eyeing up its prey. “Lady Madeley. I made sure you would be here if I called. How very fetching you are looking.” His gaze fell on her bonnet and gloves. “Were you going somewhere?”
Sir Julian Horncastle was not precisely handsome, but for a man in his forties, he still possessed a fine figure, although, in a moment of irreverence, Mims had suggested that this might be due to the wearing of a gentleman’s corset rather than exercise. As he was so tall, from the front his lack of hair on top was not noticeable. The remainder, including his fluffy side-whiskers, was mainly a disconcerting shade of ginger with a strong affinity to carrots.
This was something Megs had pointed out on several occasions, fortunately not to his face, and had to be reproved for so doing.
He also possessed oddly colourless eyes beneath those carroty brows, and lips which had the habit of always looking a bit too moist and were a little too full for a man. In short, his appearance was not engaging. Not that he was aware of that. Mims, echoing Megs’ honesty, had not long ago declared that Sir Julian seemed to think he was God’s gift to ladies.
Had he been of a nicer character, Miranda would have chided herself for disliking him for his looks, but luckily his character matched his looks to a T, so she was of the same opinion as her children. And having him call here today of all days, when she was off to call on Cousin Henry, was most off putting.
“Might I wish you a very good morning,” Sir Julian, a vision in the height of what he obviously considered fashion, said, as he took off his beaver hat and bowed, something a man losing his hair should always beware of doing. “Delighted to see you looking so radiant, if I might say so. Yes indeed, quite radiant.”
He was always far too fulsome in flattery that was accompanied by an oddly manic look in his eye.
Drat the man for calling when she was about to take Lissy to call on their cousin. However, Miranda fixed her usual gentle smile onto her face. A smile that could hide plenty of less than charitable inner thoughts. Even though she longed to discourage Sir Julian, as her daughters correctly surmised, she found it hard to be anything but nice to people. “Good morning to you, Sir Julian. What a pleasure to see you again so soon after your last visit.”
Of course, he didn’t take the hint that he was calling too frequently. She hadn’t thought he would but it had been worth a try.
As he was already inside, she couldn’t very well invite him in. “You guess correctly, as usual. Melissa and I were about to walk up to the Hall to call upon Sir Henry Madeley. Our newly discovered cousin.” She was not about to offer him a seat or he’d be here forever and delay their departure.
Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed Megs dragging Nero back into the kitchen and Lissy slinking away to join her sisters and Betsey. The craven coward. At least she’d left the door ajar. No doubt all four of them would be avidly eavesdropping, as for some reason they found Sir Julian not only repugnant but also extremely amusing. At her expense.
Sir Julian cast his gaze about him at the parlor that had yesterday felt comfortable and cosy with Cousin Henry’s undemanding presence in it, but today felt shabby and inadequate. He would be assessing exactly how poorly off Geoffrey had left them and no doubt working on a plan to put such knowledge to good use. She suppressed a shiver. She’d known for some time that he harbored intentions towards her and always did her best to politely repulse any hint of them.
He was a tall, powerfully built man, whose rather dandyish appearance did nothing to hide the width of his shoulders nor the muscles on his sturdy thighs. She and Geoffrey had dined at his house, Thornby Grange, on a number of occasions over the years, and she’d known his late wife, a delicate woman who was often ill. Towards that lady’s end, which had come several years ago now, she’d been confined to her bed, and Sir Julian had been inclined to behave as if she were already in her coffin where the ladies were concerned. The only thing that had kept him away from Miranda had been Geoffrey’s sturdy, possessive presence. She’d blessed him for providing such a shield to her.
Only Geoffrey was gone now.
Sir Julian sat himself down in the high-backed chair by the fire without being invited, and Miranda, resigning herself, took the seat opposite, her gloved hands folded neatly in her lap.
Sir Julian raised his eyebrows. “You say you’re off to see the new baronet? He’s already installed himself at Windrush? Of course I’d heard he was found, and that you’d moved out because Geoffrey had left you only this farmhouse.”
How on earth was it common knowledge now that she was left so poorly off? But as Lissy had pointed out, this was the countryside where everyone knew everyone else’s business. Drat it.
Sir Julian eyed the parlous state of the rug at his feet. “That’s why I’m here today, to see if I can be of any assistance to you in your hour of need. Can’t keep anything secret around here. What’s this new fellow like? Married? A hunting man? Perhaps I’ll escort you there myself and we can meet him together.”
Damn it. The last thing she wanted was to arrive at the Hall in the company of someone she really didn’t like. But she’d long ago been well trained by her mother and smiled sweetly back at him. “That would be most kind of you. I’m taking Melissa with me, of course. Now she’s eighteen she needs to be out more in society. And I should tell you that we have already met my cousin, as he called upon us yesterday and that is why I am returning a call on him today. He seems a most agreeable young man.”
Sir Julian’s ginger brows rose and his eyes flashed with something that could have been menace. “He’s ayoungman, you say?”
