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“No,” he interrupted, feeling heat flush his cheeks. Since his luck at the tables had been out of late, her comment about his ability to provide himself with food and raiment cut a bit too close for comfort. “My dear, my time with Clorinda was spent dining on delights far more arousing than any chef could devise.”
She batted his arm. “If you’re trying to put me to the blush, you’re all out. Domcaster says I have no sensibility at all. Very good! I’ll send you the invitation.”
He bowed. “As you command, my lady.”
“Stuff!” she said, making a face at him. “No, you needn’t see me to my carriage,” she added as he opened the door and made to walk her out. “My maid Berthe is waiting.” She pointed down the hall to a young woman who stood by the staircase, a liveried footman beside her. “Until next week, then. It is good to see you again, Will,” she added softly before she turned to stroll away.
“You, too, Lucilla,” he murmured, returning her wave before she disappeared down the stairs.
Slowly Will reentered his room and sat back down in his chair. Lord Tavener of Brookwillow Manor. Could he really become such a man? Restore his house, revive the land, take up his music again, build a true scholar’s library? Find someone who wished to share that life?
It seemed too good to be true…but in the last nine years, he’d not found any other way to achieve that dream. He discovered quickly enough after leaving Oxford that gaming, the only source of income open to a gentleman of no resources who wished to remain a gentleman, provided too irregular an income to facilitate the restoration of his birthright, nor after meeting his basic needs was there ever enough left to invest in some capital-generating venture. Nothing less than a substantial influx of cash—the sort that could be provided by the richly dowered bride Lucilla proposed to find him—could accomplish the task.
Already in poor condition at the time of his father’s death, Brookwillow had been too modest a property and too needful of time and serious investment to set it to rights to induce his uncle and guardian, the Earl of Pennhurst, possessed as he was of so many grander and more extensive lands, to bother with it. The last time Will had visited his estate, rain was dripping through the dining-room roof and birds nested in the upper guest chambers. The Phillipses managed to keep the servant’s quarters and kitchen habitable, but could do little with the rest.
As for the land, a few tenants still worked small plots around their cottages, but there weren’t nearly enough acres under cultivation to produce a saleable crop. Not that, after spending his youth at boarding schools, he had any idea how to go about transforming the estate into a productive agricultural property.
In short, his indifferent uncle’s provision of the bare modicum of a gentleman’s upbringing had left Will with few resources and no useable skills. His only innate talent, beyond music, scholarship and a way with cards and horses, seemed to be the ability to beguile bored women into his bed. Though at first that unexpected aptitude had amused him and kept loneliness at bay, of late, even this facility had lost its charm. And no matter how many sessions he battled every contender who dared challenge him at Gentleman Jackson’s, he could no longer box away the sense of emptiness inside.
While he was pondering the possibilities, Barrows walked back in. “So to what did we owe the honor of Lady Domcaster’s most improper visit?”
Will smiled. “It seems I am to become a respectable member of the gentry, Barrows. Leave off gambling, shun immoral women, and find a tender bud of an heiress who will embrace me willingly, love me madly and hand over her fortune so I can restore Brookwillow.”
Picking up the glass Lucilla had left, Barrows drained the last of the wine. “Do you know anything about charming a respectable maid?”
“About as much as I do about farming. But Lucilla insists I have naught to lose by attempting it. Perhaps ’twill be entertaining to attend some ton parties.”
“You’ve always derived enjoyment from your cousin’s company,” Barrows pointed out. “And I have perceived of late that you seemed disinclined to accept some of the lures cast at you. Why, Lady Marlow practically—”
“Not you, too,” Will groaned.
“If pursuing the improper sort of female has left you dissatisfied, attempting to entice the other sort might at least add a spice of variety to your life.”
“I expect we shall see. Count how many coins we’ve set aside, won’t you? It seems I must visit the tailor. I’m to make my grand entrance soon at Lady Ormsby’s rout.”
“At once, m’lord.” Raising the glass to him, Barrows walked out.
Add a spice of variety to his existence. Yes, entering the ton should do that. After a lifetime of being an outsider, the child not wanted, the student left behind at school during term breaks, he had no expectation that Lucilla’s experiment would do anything more.
CHAPTER THREE
TWO WEEKS LATER, as she helped Mrs. Bessborough stack freshly laundered sheets in the linen press, Allegra reflected wryly that the changes the housekeeper had predicted had begun sooner than—and not at all in the manner—that good woman had predicted.
Captain Lord Lynton had still not arrived, although the household continued to expect him at any moment. Apparently unconcerned with how Lynton House’s new owner might view her actions, however, the day after her husband’s funeral Sapphira summoned a small army of merchants and craftsmen to measure windows, floors, mantels and stairs. She intended, Allegra overheard her telling friends, to refurbish her late spouse’s fusty old town house from attic to cellars.
And so she had, banishing the Chippendale mahogany furniture and brocaded hangings and replacing them with draperies in the startlingly bright colors she preferred and furnishings in the new Egyptian style.
When Hobbs, begging her pardon, objected to her wreaking a similar transformation upon the library until the new master determined what he wished to have done with his private domain, she’d sacked him and hired a sharp-faced younger man. She’d gone on to demote Cook to a mere assistant and hire a French chef whose expertise, she informed Mrs. Bessborough, would better please her discriminating guests.
“I visited Mr. Hobbs during my half-day,” Mrs. Bessborough said, pulling Allegra out of her contemplation. “So sad it was to see him, stripped of his duties, and he a man still in his prime!” She shook her head. “I expect at any moment she will turn me off, as well.”
“You needn’t fear that,” Allegra assured her. “Whatever her failings, Aunt Sapphira is clever enough to understand that with Stirling still finding his way about his butler’s duties, the household would come to a complete halt without your steadying hand at the reins.”
The housekeeper sniffed. “Indeed, for who would smooth down Cook’s hackles or calm the maids after one of Monsieur Leveque’s tantrums? She oughta be grateful you’re here, too, speaking that Frenchie’s tongue sweet as a lark and soothing his devil’s temper like you do. I declare, even with the both of us, sometimes ’tis a pure miracle she gets her morning chocolate and her fancy dinners on time!”
At a jangling sound, Mrs. Bessborough glanced over at the bell case. “The front parlor—that will be the mistress. Now, where is Lizzie?”
“I’ll go.” With a half-smile, Allegra added, “Aunt Sapphira is probably looking for me anyway.”
Wondering what chore her aunt would try to foist on her now, Allegra gave the last sheet to the housekeeper and took the stairs to the parlor.
Allegra suspected Lady Lynton’s speedy sacking of Hobbs and demotion of Cook was intended both to begin restaffing the household with key employees loyal only to her and to deprive Allegra of anyone in authority who remembered her as a valued family member instead of a poor relation kept to do Sapphira’s bidding. Welcoming the struggle as a distraction from her grief, since the new butler’s arrival Allegra had been fighting a small rearguard action to stymie Sapphira’s attempts to relegate her to servant status.
The day of his arrival, most certainly upon Sapphira’s order, Stirling had stopped her in the hall and commanded her to clean the fireplaces in the guest bedrooms. With a hauteur that would have done Lady Grace proud, Allegra raked the man with a frosty glance and informed him that as Lord Lynton’s cousin, she would determine for herself which tasks, fit for a gentlewoman, she wished to perform. Shrewd enough to realize the imprudence of challenging Allegra—at least not until the new master returned and made her position clear—he’d since ignored her.
Allegra also refused to Sapphira’s face any chore the widow tried to assign her that did not fall, by Allegra’s definition, within the scope of a lady’s duties. Though her aunt had several times vowed she’d have “that ungrateful foreign brat” thrown into the street, nothing so dire had come to pass. Allegra concluded that Sapphira either did not trust her new butler to lay hands on a self-proclaimed lady—or realized she could not count on any of the footmen to assist Stirling in carrying out an order to eject her husband’s unwanted relation.
