Page 43 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

Chapter 14

Alistair’s library at Rylemoor was considerably more impressive than the one in Town, with bookshelves lining three walls, a mahogany desk, and a Turkish carpet covering the stone floor.

Not that anyone ever journeyed all the way into Devonshire to be impressed by a library. In point of fact, no one came here at all.

Nevertheless, some previous Earl of Ryland had furnished the room in what was then a modern style, eschewing the monastic austerity of much of the rest of the abbey. It adjoined the drawing room, similarly furnished, and the two rooms together could have entertained a houseful of guests, if Alistair were either circumstanced or inclined to entertain.

Truth be told, he preferred the shabbier comforts of the family sitting room. But there was work to be done, work that required concentration and privacy, and the library fairly rang with silence. Even though his sisters were just above him in the schoolroom turned studio, no doubt boisterous in their attempts to learn whatever it was that Constantia—Miss Cooper—had elected to teach them, he heard nothing of it through the thick floors and walls.

Not that he escaped the effects of her presence entirely. One or more of them reported over dinner every day what progress was being made or some witty remark that had fallen from their teacher’s lips.

Lips he had kissed. Lips that had kissed him.

With a groan he dropped his head into his hand and rubbed his eyes until he saw spots. Nothing wiped away the memory, though.

Just as nothing erased the numbers in the ledgers piled at his elbow.

It seemed, in spite of all his efforts, matters at Rylemoor had only grown worse. The estate’s lands were mostly moor, as the name implied, rather than fertile farmland. His few tenants cut and sold peat and struggled to pay their rents. He had extended their leases anyway—those poor souls had nowhere else to go, and what they might have contributed to his coffers would not have made a dent in his debts.

Or rather, his father’s debts, in the form of spendthrift habits, investments gone sour, and a mortgage on everything as far as the eye could see.

When Alistair had inherited those debts, along with the title, he’d made it his mission to right the wrongs his father had perpetrated and keep the estate running as best he could.

The abbey required constant repairs, only the most desperate of which it received. It needed a staff at least twice the size of the one he could afford. Even with all of his cost-saving measures, he was staring down a pile of bills he couldn’t pay: interest due on loans, taxes owed to the Crown.

And then there was the matter of dowries.

Seven of them, to be exact.

In his will, his father had written down sizable numbers, made outlandish promises he expected his son to keep. But he had never actually set aside any funds.

Bernie’s husband, Lord Brinks, had need of the money—new curricles and cattle were not cheap—but when Alistair had begged leave to defer payment, Brinks had professed himself too much in love to wait and married her anyway. Then he’d made up for the loss by withholding his new wife’s pin money until she produced an heir, who still had not arrived.

Charlie’s husband, Mr. Powell, who did not have need of money and also claimed to be head over heels in love with his bride, addressed the matter of the unpaid dowry differently: by having his solicitor send a polite reminder of the balance due every quarter.

Eddie had fallen in love with Samuel Forster, the village curate, who could surely never afford to marry her if she brought nothing but her gentle nature to the match. Danny had sold herself into servitude with Aunt Josephine and might never have the opportunity even to meet an eligible man.

If all that weren’t bad enough, he had Freddie, Georgie, and Harry yet to manage. The elder two had begged for a London Season. Pretty dresses. Balls. He had taken them to Town this year expressly to introduce them to good society. And to keep his eye on them.

And because, even with all the expensive temptations on their doorstep, Haythorne House was smaller and less costly to run.

Still, he’d had to deny them more than he would’ve liked. And in the end, taken aback either by their headstrong natures or their lack of dowry, or both, every promising suitor had melted away.

The only thing worse than having seven dowries to pay was having seven unhappy sisters, most of whom were only going to grow more miserable as the years went on.

With a muttered oath, he slammed shut a ledger and shoved it aside. His best efforts would never be enough. Everyone would be better off if Rylemoor Abbey sank into a bog . . . and took him with it. Perhaps whatever distant relative who presently stood to inherit the title had a mint.

He shoved away from the desk, stood, and strode to the window. Wind was whistling through the cracked lead around the diamond-shaped panes. He would have liked to have built up the fire to drive back the icy fingers of air. Instead, he tugged his coat more snugly around him and reached up to draw the drapery. As he did so, a flash of bright copper down below in the courtyard caught his eye.

Constantia was sitting on what appeared to be a three-legged milk stool, her sketchbook propped on one knee. The wind had pushed down the hood of her green wool cloak and was now whipping her hair around like tongues of flame.

He wasn’t surprised to see her. She’d been seated thus every afternoon. Though he couldn’t make out her drawing at this distance, she was obviously working on a sketch of the abbey in the hours after her lessons were done.

While he stood watching, she rose and walked toward the crumbling west wing, closer and closer, until she had to crane her neck backward to look up at what remained of the bell tower, a jagged peak piercing the gray sky.

Alistair found it, well . . . not soothing, exactly, to watch her sketch. Compelling would be the better, more accurate, word. What had begun in the carriage, where there had been little else to attach his interest, had become a habit. Each day, he found it more difficult to tear his eyes away.

Over the course of a week, her gait had lost its stiffness. Though her wrist was still bandaged, the plaster on her cheek was long gone, and the scrape and bruise it had covered were already beginning to fade.