Page 20 of The Lord Meets His Lady

Four

Once again, Genevieve journeyed late at night with all her earthly possessions alongside a man she barely knew. Lord Bowles drove a cart Mr. Beckworth had loaned him, his silver-gray horse tethered to the back. The latch on her traveling chest rattled like a scolding maid behind her.

Her plans for a new life kept sinking in a mire of questionable choices. A devil’s bargain. That was what Mr. Beckworth had called this arrangement. How perfect. She’d first crossed paths with Lord Bowles on Devil’s Causeway.

Her employer of three days had presented the facts, framing the decision to stay or go as entirely hers. The power was novel. In the end, pure emotion won. After much throat clearing, it was obvious Mr. Beckworth wanted her to say yes. He yearned for a new business venture to help his family, and she was the linchpin.

Reaching for a better place in the world…this she understood.

Slipping her hand into her apron pocket, the letter crinkled against her fingers. Another condemnation of her decision? Or news that she was truly free?

“Welcome to Pallinsburn,” Lord Bowles said.

She startled when he halted the cart before a dark cottage grander in size than the Beckworth home. Ignoring him, she counted eight sash windows. Taxes on those glass panes had to be outrageous for a cottage inhabited by only one man. Lord Bowles leaped off the cart and lifted a candle lantern from the footboard, studying her beneath the brim of his cocked hat.

“Give me a moment,” he muttered, hoisting her chest from the cart and striding toward the cottage.

Lord Bowles rammed his shoulder against the front door. Warped wood gave way, and he disappeared around the half-opened door. Genevieve pulled her cloak tighter about. Who knew night came in so many shades of black? Stars sprinkled overhead like scattered salt across a table. She’d never seen so many. In London, there was always light somewhere…a passing carriage, a tavern door opening, door lamps in better places.

But here? She shivered. The emptiness…

The cottage’s barren windows gaped blank-eyed at the road. A soft glow flickered from the door left ajar. She jumped down and picked her way past weeds sprouting by the doorstep. Sliding around the front door, she stepped onto a carpetless floor. Two sconces cast weak light inside the dark-paneled entry. Cobwebs fluttered from empty coat hooks high on a scratched pine settle. The floor’s center planks were faded, as though someone had left the door open and sunlight had bleached the wood.

Lord Bowles came around a corner, a lit taper in his hand. “Miss Turner. I’d hoped you’d give me a minute to tidy up and light a fire.”

One red-gloved finger skimmed beveled paneling. “And wait out in the cold? I think not. Besides, my purpose here is to do the tidying and lighting of fires.” She gave him a pointed look. “The appropriate fires.”

With his collar flipped high, a black tricorne on his head, and late-day whiskers darkening his jaw, the master of the cottage could be the villain in one of the Goose’s awful plays.

Dust dangled from her fingertip. “By the look of things, I have much work ahead.”

She flicked away the mess and stared past an open door leaning at an angle. A hinge was missing. Beyond the doorway, she glimpsed purple velvet, the rich color and fabric out of place in a country cottage.

“I hoped to make things more comfortable,” he confessed. “I didn’t think you’d be here until tomorrow.”

Her gaze shot from the velvet to him. “You planned this?”

“No.” The seam of his mouth parted, but no explanation came. The shine of his friendly visit in the Beckworth kitchen was long gone.

“No need to justify yourself, milord. Men of your ilk rarely do.”

Her blood simmered, cooled somewhat by their nighttime ride. Anger was one emotion she’d wrestled with; disappointment was another. Lord Bowles had proved himself to be the self-serving wastrel after all. That hurt. A single winter was all this sham of an arrangement required. She could endure one cold season with him.

Drawn to the purple, she breezed past her new employer. Lord Bowles followed her, the taper’s light guttering. Shadows danced across a violet settee tipped over, its cabriole legs thick with dust.

She pushed back her hood, sniffing stale air. “Your parlor, I assume. By the state of things and the smell, you’re not expecting visitors anytime soon.”

The musty cottage begged for someone to breathe life into it. Leaves skittered past her hem. A chill nipped her ankles. The front door had been left open, but neither moved to shut it. Lord Bowles raised the candle higher, showing cobwebs fluttering on cracked plaster walls.

His head tipped back as though he read the ceiling. “I tried to clean it myself. My time was spent these three days working on the barn, purchasing necessities, clearing out my bedchamber. Anything you do will be a vast improvement.”

“Me? You need more than one woman. This will take an army of skilled laborers.”

“You get an army of one, Miss Turner. Me.”

His last word echoed faintly, vibrating through her before sinking like a lonely rock inside her chest down to the soles of her plain shoes. Lord Bowles watched her, the tiny flame he held casting soft light on sculpted cheekbones and an arrow-straight nose.

“You’ve nothing to say about my offer to let you take charge?” he asked, a tad edgy. “Think of the vengeance you could exact on me, the housekeeper ordering her master about.”