Page 16 of Runaway Countess (Those Wild Whitbys #2)
Chapter Sixteen
T he servants’ quarters at Whitby Manor were really quite comfortable. Jenny was given a little room at the back of the house, where it was cool and quiet, with a small window that gave her a glimpse of the lush green gardens she had so admired on the drive up.
Lord Beeston must have been right about the number of servants. She had the room to herself, though there were two beds in it.
She wished there were some way of letting Sebastian know that she was alone and longing to speak with him. He had not come to see her after returning from Appleby. She did not even know whether he had met with Uncle Fitz.
She did know, however, that Sebastian would be tormenting himself once more, wracked with guilt over what he imagined was his betrayal of Lord Beeston. But there was no need for him to torture himself. Jenny had made her decision. Not from fear, this time, nor in haste, but from a truer understanding of the woman she was. She knew now what affection her heart was capable of, and knew just as certainly that she could never feel it for Lord Beeston.
She would not settle for less than love.
Beeston would not bankrupt Sebastian’s father. She had his word on it.
The next time Sebastian kissed her, he need not feel guilty. She was nobody’s bride – unless she could be his .
She could not wait to tell him.
It seemed to Jenny that she had not slept a wink all night, but when the knock came to rouse her with the other servants, it took her ten minutes of blinking confusion before she remembered where she was and why. Breakfast in the kitchen was a strange, subdued affair. All the servants of Whitby Manor were whispering amongst themselves, sharing the scraps of gossip they had overheard, murmuring questions about who might be kept on and who would be dismissed. There was a strange tension in the air, the sticky, thick feeling that came just before a thunderstorm. Jenny was glad when Nurse Thomas appeared, fresh from attending Lord Beeston, and sent her to the orangery to gather some leaves for a tisane.
She took her time walking across the courtyard, enjoying the warmth of the early morning sunlight, taking in the fresh scent of the roses clambering the walls. She paused for a moment to make a half-attempt at counting the neat rows of windows set into the ancient stonework. Which one was Sebastian’s bedroom? The gentry rose late, but Sebastian was more sailor than gentleman. Could he be looking out, just the way she was looking in?
Her question was answered only a few moments after she let herself into the orangery, nodding to the solitary gardener who was moving between the pots with a watering can. As she took up a pair of secateurs and began wandering through the rows of glossy, fruit-laden trees, the door opened again behind her. The gardener gave a broad smile and a low bow.
Sebastian was standing in the glass arch of the doorway, the chill morning air streaming in past him. His gaze raked Jenny, hot and hungry and wretched.
She took a step towards him, then remembered the watching gardener and dropped a quick curtsey, pressing a hand to her thundering heart. “Good morning, Captain Whitby.” No – that was wrong. Servants were not supposed to address the upper classes unless spoken to first.
“There’s a fox digging up the rose beds,” said Sebastian to the gardener. The young man coughed awkwardly.
“Begging your pardon, Captain, but I am not permitted to leave the orangery. Your mother’s orders.”
Sebastian wheeled on the gardener, his eyebrow raised. “You mean to say my mother has imprisoned you in this greenhouse?”
The gardener touched a hand to his hat and kept his eyes low. “No, sir. Your mother asked that no more young ladies and gentlemen be left alone in the orangery, sir. Not after that business between Lady Isobel and Mr Lucius.” He risked a glance up at Sebastian, full of agonised apology. “Mrs Whitby was very stern, sir.”
Sebastian made an angry gesture in Jenny’s direction. “This is Lord Beeston’s nurse, man! What do you think I am going to do – ravish her against a lemon tree?” He blinked and raised a hand to his eyes. “Please tell me that my brother did not ravish Lady Isobel against a lemon tree.”
The gardener held his watering can out in front of him like a shield. “No, sir! Not that I would know of!”
“Look,” said Sebastian, pressing his hands together as though in prayer. “Every servant in this household is about to lose their position, whether my mother wishes it or not. You have nothing to gain by following her orders.”
The gardener clutched the watering can tighter. “That I do, sir, because – if you’ll forgive my saying – your mother in a rage is a terrifying sight.”
Sebastian groaned and flung out his arm towards Jenny, the other hand clutching through his sandy hair. “All I am asking for is one moment of privacy with this – this nurse, who is respectable and married and armed with a pair of secateurs . I give you my word that, should I be suddenly overcome by the need to ravish her, you will be the first to know about it. Now please. Get out of the orangery. Find yourself something else to prune. Go .”
The gardener glanced from Sebastian to Jenny, back down at his watering can, gulped heavily, and scurried out through the door.
Sebastian closed it and leaned against it, as though the glass screen offered any kind of privacy. “Finally,” he groaned.
Jenny set the secateurs down on a workbench. “Really, Captain Whitby, you are a master of deception. I’m sure that young man has no suspicions whatsoever.”
Sebastian gave a guilty start and glanced over his shoulder at the gardener’s retreating back, blurred through the glass. “I suppose he’ll think I’ve been carrying on with ‘Nurse Hughes,’ but we’ll have to get rid of her soon enough, anyway. Your uncle, aunt and cousin are in town.” He moved towards her, hand outstretched, but stopped just short of reaching for her.
The fragrant, humid air suddenly seemed far too hot for Jenny to breathe. “Elspeth is in Appleby?”
“She’s distraught,” said Sebastian, his eyes darkening. “She believes you have fallen terribly ill. It seems your uncle isn’t chasing after me because he suspects I helped you escape – he wants me to keep quiet about the note that you left in the bedroom. He is trying to convince everybody that you were struck by a sudden fever, and that you still wish to marry Lord Beeston – and he’s been to the local magistrate to recruit a posse of constables to help him make his point.” He stopped, watching Jenny with an oddly wary expression, as though she were a keg of gunpowder that he had just given a kick.
“Oh,” she breathed, her hand landing on a nearby pair of garden shears. “That man. Do you know, Sebastian, sometimes I – I really think Uncle Fitzherbert is…”
She took a deep breath. Sebastian waited, hands poised to seize the shears from her, a slow smile beginning to curve up the corner of his mouth.
“Is not very kind ,” said Jenny, finally, with a burst of emotion that felt like a dam had burst in her chest.
Sebastian’s smile broadened. He nodded and gently took the shears away. “There. Feel better?”
She pressed a hand to her mouth, as though she needed her fingers to confirm that it was really her lips that had spoken the words. “Yes. Yes, in fact, I do. Oh, poor Elspeth. She must be so worried. Can you deliver her a letter from me? Put it into her hands, so that it cannot go astray.”
“Of course. Though I’ll need to come up with some clever way to do it. Since I’ve sworn off fighting duels, I won’t be able to do much in the way of defending myself when your uncle finds out I’ve been hiding you all along. I’ll pack an overnight bag in case I’m arrested for kidnapping and hauled before the magistrate,” he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and jutting out his chin as if he did not care much if he were. Jenny was not deceived.
“I will never let that happen to you,” she said, taking hold of his lapels and giving it a little shake for emphasis. “I will tell them all the truth. I’ll keep saying it, over and over, so that nobody has any choice but to believe me. This is all my fault, Sebastian. I never meant to hurt Elspeth, or to put you in danger. I will find a way to make it right, I swear.”
His eyes lingered on her fingers, caught up in his topcoat, and his mouth went soft and sad. “There is one sure way to do that, my lady. Go upstairs to your husband. Fling yourself on his mercy. Explain it all away as a bout of premarital nerves. Your cousin will be glad, and your uncle will be satisfied.” His eyes flickered up to hers. “You know now that Beeston is not a monster. You are no longer afraid of him. I’ve done all I can for you, and I wish you joy.”
Jenny clenched her hands into fists, pulling Sebastian closer. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “You will have to go to prison after all.”
His eyes widened, lit from within by the hint of their old spark. “I will?”
She closed her eyes and breathed out the words on a sigh. “I have written Lord Beeston a letter releasing him from our engagement. I enclosed it in a letter to Helen, and she will forward it to him tomorrow, so that nobody suspects it came from within the house. I am no longer his fiancée, Sebastian. I am free. And… and you may now kiss me without betraying him.”
She froze for a moment, waiting for the kiss that she expected, that she trembled with longing for – but which did not come. Her eyes opened.
Sebastian was staring at her, mouth part-open with shock. He took a step back.
Her hands fell from his jacket. “Sebastian?”
He scrubbed a hand across his face, staring at her in astonishment. “I – I must go and find that gardener.”
“What?”
“Well,” he said, breaking into an utterly disarming grin, “I did promise he’d be the first to know…”
“You wicked man,” she said, and he laughed as she pulled him close again, and then he caught her up in his arms, lifting her from the ground, and spun her through the air before his mouth met hers.
If the lemon trees were scandalised by what followed, at least they had the gardener to confide in.
“You clever girl,” he said, when at long last they broke apart from the longest and sweetest kiss yet. “Do you know, I think you have solved the first of our problems.”
Jenny frowned up at him from her position with her cheek resting on the strong, broad expanse of his shoulder. He chuckled and ran his finger from the furrow in her brow to the tip of her nose, then planted a line of kisses everywhere his fingertip had touched. “Your letter,” he said, between kisses, “will be postmarked from Shepton Mallet.”
Reluctantly, Jenny reached out and put her finger to his lips, forcing him to stop. “I don’t understand you. There was nothing clever about it – only that I could hardly send it directly from Whitby Manor, addressed to Whitby Manor. The butler would simply bring it back.”
“And thank goodness for that, because nothing travels faster than the post. Tomorrow morning, Beeston will hold in his hands what looks to be incontrovertible proof that you were in Shepton Mallet today. Don’t you see? All we must do is keep you from being discovered a day or so longer, and then your uncle will leave Appleby to find you, and while he is busy leading his constables around Shepton Mallet, you can turn one and twenty in peace. Then you will really be free of him.”
“Two and a half weeks,” she breathed.
Sebastian brought his face close to hers, so that she felt the heat of his breath on her lips as he whispered, “Two and a half weeks. And a lifetime of freedom.”