Captain Durant's Countess(52)

“A female friend, I presume.” His spy.

“Jealous?” David waggled an auburn brow. “We did have some good times, didn’t we, my dear? Though you lost your nerve after so brief a time. I never did get to teach you a fraction of what a woman needs to know to please a man. I wonder how you managed to entice my old uncle back into your bed. It was my understanding he was quite beyond performing his husbandly duties.”

Maris stood straighter. “Your informant was incorrect, David.”

“Was she? I wonder. Maybe you had a fling with the gardener or a footman, perhaps even with Uncle’s permission. I wouldn’t put anything past the old boy to cut me out. He might even have watched from the sidelines.”

“David! You are disgusting!”

He was getting dangerously close to the truth, but he could have no way of knowing.

“So my wife tells me every chance she gets, which, thank God, is not often. I will arrange to send her here when she darkens Kelby Hall’s door. As for myself, I’m bound for London this day. The Season, you know. There might be some pretty girls to lure into the bushes. An earldom is so very useful to throw a bit of added glitter into the mix. The mamas have such hopes for their daughters when they see me coming.”

He was delusional. At almost thirty-eight, he was showing the years of dissipation. His dark red hair was graying, his mouth bracketed by deep lines, his middle a bit thicker than she remembered. Once, Maris had thought him handsome, but she’d realized too late that his charm had ever been false.

“Happy hunting, then,” she said lightly. “How disappointed they will be to discover you have a wife and child tucked away.”

“There’s no reason yet for anyone to know. If I’m lucky, Catherine’s coach will tumble down a ravine and I’ll be a grieving widower. Oh, don’t look at me like that! Murder is not my style, Maris, else I should have snuffed out Uncle Henry years ago.”

“How reassuring.” Maris went to the bellpull and Aloysius appeared instantly. “Please see my nephew-in-law out, Aloysius.”

The young footman gave David a dark look. “With the greatest of pleasure, my lady.”

David threw back his head and laughed. “Such fierce loyalty. I’m gone. For now. But you have not seen the last of me.”

Maris collapsed in her chair once he was on his way. It might not be long before she was perfectly safe from him. If she weren’t afraid of being able to get up without assistance, she might even get down on her knees and pray.





Chapter 30


June 1821

Reyn was bent over one of the ledgers scratching in information. It had been difficult to settle down to work at his desk, remembering what had occurred on his office floor a week ago. All he could see in his mind’s eye was Maris, her head over him, lovely lips on his cock, her dark lashes fluttering as she took him as deep as she dared.

It had been heaven, and now it was hell. He’d heard nothing from her since he left her with that bounder David. Maris had sent Ginny a proper thank-you note for her hospitality the next day, but there was no secret message therein for Reyn. He had not been able to stop himself from riding to the copse of trees every day, sometimes twice. There had been no token from her tied on a tree branch, no letter professing her love tucked into a hollow, no schedule when he might expect to be schooled by the woman, Miss Holley. He had checked, mooning about in the grass until he felt like a complete fool.

Mr. Swift had seen her, however, and by the time he’d arrived after Reyn sent him, David Kelby had gone. Left for London, in fact. At least Maris wasn’t being tormented by the man.

Until his next visit.

Blast. There must be something he could do to protect her from Kelby. Reyn threw the pen down, splattering ink across the pages. He looked down as his work-roughened hands, curling his fingers into his palms, raising the thumbs and turning them until his knuckles met. b was on the left and d was on the right—or was it the other way around? It was hopeless.

He might have stared at his hands indefinitely except he heard the knock on his office door. Hurriedly he closed the ledger. “Come.”

It was young Jack, bearing a crisp white piece of stationery, folded but unsealed. Double blast.

“What have you got there?”

“A message from Hazel Grange, Captain. One of the footmen brought it. Said he couldn’t stay but a second to deliver it. Had to get to the village before something else happened.”

Reyn’s throat dried. It was much too soon for the baby. “Something else happened? He didn’t say what?”

“No, sir. In a right tizzy he was. Road off like his life depended upon it. Aren’t you going to read it?”

The pristine paper bore Jack’s smudged thumbprint. Reyn opened it and struggled to read it. To him, it looked like You hab detter come at once. The Countess neebs you. A.

Reyn ran the words through his head, translating what he saw into what was meant. “Aloysius brought this?”

“He didn’t say his name, sir. He was just a footman. But he wasn’t wearing a fancy white wig or even a bit of braid,” Jack sniffed, dismissive.

“Saddle up Brutus for me.”

“That devil?”

“Aye, that devil. Do as you’re told, sharp.” Reyn ran an inky hand through his long hair. Maris would have to take him as she found him. If she was in trouble, she wouldn’t care if his hair was unkempt and his tie entirely absent. He rolled his sleeves down, grabbed his old tweed jacket from the back of the chair, and went to help Jack with the tack.

Jack said Aloysius had taken the road, but Reyn rode over the fields hell for leather. When he spotted Hazel Grange over the ridge, all seemed normal. Pastoral. A lazy curl of smoke came from the kitchen chimney. Windows gleamed in the bright June sunshine. Urns of pale pink geraniums flanked the columned portico. The house looked like a gentlewoman’s home, and Reyn in his present state was unfit to enter it through the front door.

No matter. He rode around to the kitchen, Stephen Prall huffing to keep up with him and take Brutus’s reins.

“Is the Countess well?” Reyn asked as he dismounted. “I received a message.”

The man’s eyebrows knit. “Far as I know, sir. They’ll know more in the house.”

Reyn entered the kitchen, much to the alarm of the ladies present. They seemed to be assembling a towering tea tray with dozens of little treats, reminding Reyn that he’d been too busy to eat breakfast or lunch. “Good day. I’ve come to speak to Aloysius. Is he about?”

The maids looked to Margaret, Maris’s housekeeper. “I believe he’s gone on an errand, Captain Durant,” she said.

“Yes, to fetch me,” Reyn said, trying to smile. “Do you know what it’s about? His note indicated it was urgent.”

“Well, I don’t know as I would call it urgent, but I’m glad you are here, and that’s a fact. My lady has guests.”

“Guests?”

“Aye. A person who claims she is the Countess of Kelby, who seems to think this house should be hers. And a boy. Poor lamb to have such a mother.”

Not David Kelby, then. Reyn allowed himself to relax a fraction. “Has Mr. Woodley been sent for?”

Reyn had had a very discreet dealing with the old earl’s solicitor. The emerald was not his only payment for his brief time at Kelby Hall. Woodley professed he did not know the details of the private arrangement Reyn had entered into with Henry Kelby, but had paid him in full.

“Aye. Aloysius was riding into Shere after he went to Merrywood to get word to him by post. But who knows when Mr. Woodley will get here with the proper papers?”

“Perhaps I can help. This woman is not mad, is she? Dangerous?”

“She hasn’t whipped out a pistol. But she’s making quite a fuss. In her delicate condition, the poor countess should not be bothered.” Margaret blushed, recognizing that to discuss such a thing with a strange-ish man was not done.

“I’ll just follow you in with the tea tray, shall I?”

“Hold still.” In for a penny, in for a pound. As long as Margaret had begun to walk on the edge of impropriety, she smoothed Reyn’s windblown hair down and handed him a linen napkin to wipe the sweat off his face. “You’ll do, I suppose.”

“Thank you, madam.”

Who was the guest of Maris’s who thought she could move into Hazel Grange? Something very odd was afoot. He followed Margaret and one of the maids up a short flight of stairs to the main floor. Maris’s parlor door was open, and a woman’s voice immediately grated on his ears.

“If I cannot have Kelby Hall yet, I see no reason why Peter and I shall not have this house.”

“Mrs. Kelby,” Maris said patiently, then broke off as Reyn and the servants entered the room. She rose in an instant. “Captain! This is a most unexpected visit.”