Page 28 of Vanquishing the Viscount

“Emma! I mean…er, Miss Hibbert. Forgive me. I was quite taken by surprise.”

Surprise didn’t even begin to cover it. James felt as if he’d fallen down some dark chasm, only to be jerked to a halt at the very last minute before hitting the ground.

His senses reeled, and he would have stumbled if he hadn’t taken tight hold of Lawrie’s reins. Damn that dismal, mold-covered inn he’d rested at last night—they must have given him some spoiled meat.

“Forgive me,” he said again. “I’m not quite myself. But is it truly you? Not some bizarre waking dream?”

The vision of female loveliness stiffened her spine and said briskly, “Of course it is I. Good afternoon, my lord.”

“James,” he corrected, smoothing his hair back from his damp forehead before replacing his hat. It was awfully humid this afternoon—small wonder he felt unsteady. “For a moment I thought I’d come upon a nixie emerging from the water.”

He smiled weakly. Where had that utterance come from?

“A nixie?”

“No need to look offended, Miss Hibbert. A nixie is a water sprite, like the naiads of classical literature. Although, you probably won’t have read— Again, my apologies. My tongue runs away with me. May I inquire how I come to find you in such a place and in such…er, disarray?”

Disarray that made her beauty shine out like a beacon. Like some nymph from a carved Roman relief, her hair rippled to her waist in waves of chestnut, edged with a halo of gold where a finger of sunlight penetrated the willow fronds. Her figure was as slender as the trees themselves, cinched in at the waist by a long apron. Her delicate forearms were bare to the elbow, and her small, elegant feet peeped out from beneath the dusty hem of her gown.

As he struggled to find something sensible to say, a vision of Belinda flashed before his eyes. Belinda, with her guinea-gold curls, stylishly arranged, and her clothing primped and pressed to perfection—the complete opposite to Miss Emma Hibbert, who looked as if she’d sprung from the earth like an ancient goddess, shameless and untamed.

His body responded viscerally, arousing something deeper, more primitive, than anything he’d ever felt for Belinda.

Suddenly, he understood Charles’s designs on the young woman before him. But unlike Charles, he preferred love to be a matter of the heart, of the soul—not something born of lust.

He’d almost forgotten he’d asked a question, when she tilted her chin at him and said, “I live here.”

“Here?” He gestured at the pond.

“No,” she said, her stiffness melting just a little. “Nearby, at Tresham Hall.”

“Tresham Hall?” he repeated, removing his hat to wipe his forehead again. “Surely not? I understood the place was completely dilapidated, which is why it’s being sold.” By the owner, a Mr. d’Ibert, not a family called Hibbert.

He’d said the wrong thing again, if her scowl was anything to go by.

“Not at all dilapidated,” she refuted. “The house has been cleaned and tidied a great deal since I arrived. It’s being sold from financial necessity, not because it’s falling down.”

Ah yes, she’d once told him her family had fallen on hard times.

Then it struck him. What a complete numbskull! Hibbert—d’Ibert… Why had he failed to see the obvious similarity? Hibbert wasn’t her real name. She was a member of the d’Ibert family, and Tresham Hall was her home.

In which case, she ought to be delighted he was interested in buying the place.

“I’m pleased to hear it’s not in disrepair. I wish to look the place over with a view to purchasing it.”

She stared at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “You’re interested in buying Tresham?”

“Obviously, I’ll need to see it first. I need somewhere suitable for conversion into a veterans’ home.”

“A veterans’ home?”

“Indeed,” he said, warming to the subject. “Remember, I was raising funds for it at the masquerade ball? I think the soldiers and their families would be more at home in an older building. I’d probably have to remove some of the internal walls to create large spaces, and widen some of the corridors, but there’s now plenty of money in the pot for building works.”

She lowered her head, and her expression was hidden by the fall of her hair. Had he said the wrong thing?

Again?

“I suppose I’d better show you the way, then,” she murmured. “Although I still have plenty to do here.”