Page 19 of Runaway Countess (Those Wild Whitbys #2)
Chapter Nineteen
“ A rthur,” Jenny began, and realised she had absolutely nothing else to say.
Lord Beeston regarded her coolly from his chair, one hand resting lightly atop his cane, the other cupping his chin.
No – wait – of course she knew what to say next. The very same thing she had been saying multiple times every day since the bleak morning she had arrived on Uncle Fitzherbert’s doorstep in her black mourning gown, aged eight.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
Lord Beeston – Arthur – whoever he was to her now – gave a single, harsh bark of laughter.
“Perhaps you ought to take a seat, Miss Cartwright,” he suggested. “I will ring for Mrs Thomas to come and act as your chaperone. Assuming she is, in fact, a nurse, and not – oh, I don’t know – the Empress of Austria in disguise.”
“She is a nurse,” said Jenny. “But please – please don’t –” She pressed her hands to her cheeks, which felt as though they were burning, and collapsed back into her chair with a thump .
Lord Beeston paused with his hand on the bell rope. “Are you afraid of being discovered?”
Jenny nodded. He let the rope go.
“Please,” said Jenny. “I didn’t mean to trouble you. I didn’t mean to meet you at all.” He arched an eyebrow at that, but did not interrupt. “If you can simply forget that you ever discovered me, I will be on the mail coach to Shepton Mallet tomorrow morning, and I will never trouble you again, I promise.”
Lord Beeston cocked his head, his dark eyes unreadable. “It is not me who frightens you, then.” His fingers stroked thoughtfully against the polished handle of his cane. “Your uncle is a formidable businessman. It strikes me that a man who could rise so far from such humble beginnings might also, perhaps, be somewhat formidable at home.”
Jenny nodded again. Lord Beeston’s eyebrows drew together.
“And you think that a greengrocer can defend you from his wrath better than a peer of the realm, do you?”
Jenny’s mouth fell open. “My lord, surely you do not consider yourself still bound by our engagement. I certainly do not expect you to marry me after all this.”
“And why not?” he asked, surprisingly light-hearted. “It was an economic proposition, never a romantic one. I remain in need of money. You remain in need of a husband – if for no other reason than to protect yourself from Mr Smythe.”
“I… Well, I am very grateful to you,” said Jenny, “but that is simply not the sort of protection I want.” She thought of Sebastian, and the way she felt so absolutely safe at his side, and her eyes filled with tears that she refused to let fall. “I really am sorry.”
He nodded, his chin raised and his shoulders set as though he had just received an order from the Admiralty. An order which he did not necessarily like, but which he would not dream of disobeying. “Well. That is all settled, then.” His hand whipped out and jerked the bellpull, as though he did not wish to give himself another moment to think about it. “I will get on perfectly well with one nurse. I’d as soon do without any, if I didn’t think Whitby would give himself indigestion worrying about it.” His dark eyes fell for a moment on the cane at his side, and though the expression of his face did not change, a heavy swallow moved visibly through his throat. “I suppose… you must be fond of dancing?”
He raised his eyes to her, the pain and regret so searing that he could not quite mask it.
“No!” said Jenny, warmly. “No, it is not that! Arthur.” It felt right to use his first name, though she knew she no longer had the right to do so. “Your wound had no influence on my decision at all.” She hesitated, but there were only a few short moments before Mrs Thomas came in, and it was a question of ploughing ahead now or never. “It was, I think, the extra thousand pounds you requested as recompense for my sister’s husband being a greengrocer.”
“Ah.” He gave a wry grin. “So you were in the market for a romantic proposition, and not an economic one.”
“I’m afraid so.” She smiled in return. “My sister and her greengrocer are extremely happy together, you see.”
Lord Beeston sighed. “Whitby gave me hell over those letters. Or rather, the letters I apparently should have written. No doubt he would have made a much better fiancé than I.”
“You must not blame him for any of this,” Jenny said quickly. “He had nothing to do with it – except what I forced him to. And he kept insisting that when I got to know you, I would change my mind. That is the only reason he agreed to help me.”
“Did he, now?” Lord Beeston laughed, heartily this time. “That is a surprise. You mean to tell me that Sebastian Whitby has really been aware of your deception all this time?”
Jenny opened her mouth, struggled to form any coherent sentence, and closed it again.
“Marvellous,” said Lord Beeston. “I shall subject him to endless torture over it. Ah, Thomas,” he said, as the nurse knocked and bustled in with a quick curtsey. Lord Beeston cleared his throat and went on in quite a different tone. “It seems Mrs Hughes has been urgently called away to visit her family. She is no longer in my employ and will be leaving us tomorrow morning.”
Nurse Thomas shot Jenny a sharp look, but merely replied, “Very good, my lord. I shall manage well enough alone.”
“Excellent. Take her downstairs and get her a cup of tea, would you? She has had a bit of a shock. Oh, and tell Plum to organise a place on the mail coach to Shepton Mallet for the morning.” He shot a last glance at Jenny. It appeared he was almost enjoying himself. “Does that suit you, Hughes?”
She rose to her feet and bobbed a little curtsey, relief coursing through her. “You are very kind, my lord.”
“Then this will be the last I see of you, and I bid you farewell.” His dark eyes met hers. “I wish you the best.”
She pressed a hand to her chest. “Thank you, my lord. I wish you the same.”
Sebastian went through Kendrick’s woods on his way home and hopped over a fence or two to come in at the back of the house rather than through the front door. He was still too angry with his father to suffer through a family dinner with anything like good grace. Besides, there were several pressing things he wanted to take care of first.
He avoided the dining room and went straight to the library, where he scribbled off a letter to his naval agent instructing him to arrange for the entire sum of his latest prize money to be transferred to Lord Beeston. It would not make too large a dent in his father’s debt, but it was a start.
He was not fool enough to trust wholly in Mr Smythe’s promise of the Fortitude . Until he had the orders from the Admiralty in his hands, a promise and a dream was all it was. Still, the time had come to put his faith in his future success. And only once he had made that symbolic gesture towards settling his accounts with Beeston could he set about the second, infinitely more pressing, task on his mind.
He dashed off a quick note to Jenny, folded it over, and snuck down into the kitchens in hopes of both spotting her and swiping a bit of bread and cheese in lieu of dinner.
Mrs Teasley, the cook, had always had a soft spot for him, and though ‘Mrs Hughes’ was resting in her quarters – a place where Sebastian would most certainly not manage to venture unobserved – he managed to charm his way both into a plateful of sliced ham and buttered toast, and safe delivery of his note.
He carried the plate upstairs to his sister Cassandra’s bedroom, bypassing the drawing room from which post-prandial murmurings indicated that his family had finished their meal. Cassie’s bedroom window was wide open, and the air was a little chilly, but he did not mind. He sat cross-legged on her bed and made a little picnic by himself, awaiting her return from dinner.
It seemed only right that he should inform his twin of the truth of all that had happened to him – of who Jenny really was, and what she meant.
He wouldn’t be asking his father’s permission, nor that of Mr Smythe. Cassie’s was the only blessing that mattered to him before he asked for Jenny’s hand.
The clock ticked onward. He heard his family come one by one to bed in the rooms along the way. Cassie did not appear.
Night fell. The house grew quiet and still. No Cass.
By the time Jenny’s soft knock sounded at the door, Sebastian had at last given in and got up to haul the window closed, only to see the unmistakeable shape of a pair of footprints in the soft soil around the base of the apple tree whose branches brushed Cassandra’s windows.
No flimsy rope of gauze and lace for Cass. She was too practical for that. Too accustomed, it seemed, to sneaking out of her bedroom window after dinner.
Sebastian flung open the door to let Jenny in, her soft smile barely checking the panic that was rising in his chest.
“My sister,” he hissed, gesturing frantically to the curtains waving in the breeze. “My bloody sister has run away.”