Page 25 of The Wordsworth Key (Regency Secrets #3)

Chapter Fourteen

Loughrigg Tarn

‘M iss Fitz-Pennington?’

Blast! The viscount had tracked her down to the back garden where Dora had hoped to avoid him among the weeds.

‘My lord.’ Being on her knees, trowel in hand, gardening gloves on, she confined her welcome to a nod.

He parted the trailing ivy to expose her hideout. ‘What are you doing?’

She thought it obvious. ‘Clearing the weeds from the peas. What are you doing?’

He folded his arms and stood one boot on a stone fallen from a wall, the other on the path, unconscious pose of command. ‘I meant, what are you doing with my brother?’

There were several cheeky replies she could make but she confined herself to: ‘Nothing he doesn’t want, I assure you.’ She dug out a nettle and cast it aside.

‘Now be reasonable. You must see that he has prospects.’

‘Hard to argue against that.’

‘He could make a good marriage and settle down as a doctor if he must continue in the profession.’

‘If that’s his choice, he may do so. I’m not stopping him.’

‘With his connections he could serve royalty, he could get an appointment at court.’

‘I imagine with your help that would be possible.’ She patted the earth smooth from where she’d ripped up the weed.

‘I see you understand. It’s not because I think any less of you– no doubt you are a good sort of woman in your own way, and I can see that he likes you– but in the long run he will make you both miserable.

Society will not accept such an unequal partnership.

I’m trying to spare you both future pain. ’

Doubtless many would agree with him. She was all too aware of the cost of stepping outside what society thought of as acceptable behaviour.

The problem for the viscount was that she refused to let that rule her fate.

This was the freedom she had bought herself at great cost. She sat back on her heels.

‘Why are you talking to me and not your brother, sir?’

He pulled a face like one biting into a sour cherry.

‘Ah, I see,’ Dora continued. ‘Because you have done so already, and he’s rejected your advice. Well then, perhaps you should consider the matter closed?’

He clenched his jaw, an angry tick in the corner of his cheek, gathering himself for his next onslaught. Here it came:

‘Your client appears to be dead, therefore you have no excuse to stay. If you left, then there would be no “matter”, as you call it, open or closed. Consider it as doing my brother a favour.’

Did he really say that? She stared at him speechless, and he took that as encouragement.

‘Five hundred pounds, if you get in the carriage and go wherever you wish, as long as it is away from Jacob.’

The foils were off, were they? Feeling at a disadvantage on her knees, she got to her feet, calves prickling with pins and needles. Such verbal sparring needed to be conducted on the same level. ‘Lord Sandys, you appear to be labouring under a misconception. I am not, and never will be, for sale.’

He gave that supercilious chuckle of the man who knew better than the little woman. ‘Come now: we all have our price.’

‘Is that so? Then you haven’t found mine with that offer.’

‘All right. Eight hundred.’

‘Do you even hear yourself?’

‘A thousand– and that’s my final offer.’

‘You are impossible! I have no connection to you, and certainly no relationship that means I must obey your wishes to arrange my life to your satisfaction, and yet you assume you can order me to go away. Let me say this clearly so we have no repeat of this unfortunate conversation: I will not be bribed.’

‘You insist on ruining a good man with your attentions?’

‘Good day, sir. I have business elsewhere.’ Brushing off her hands, she took her basket and trowel and stalked past him into the house.

‘You’ll regret not taking my offer!’ he called after her.

She slammed the kitchen door on him.

* * *

William rode back to Levens in the Landau. The viscount seemed to accept that he would not be able to bundle Dora into a carriage with a sizeable bribe never to see Jacob again, but neither did he leave.

‘Have you and my brother quarrelled?’ Jacob asked as they walked to Ambleside later that morning to find out if any news had come through from Hawkshead.

The irate viscount had been left to the soothings of Ruby.

Jacob led Nero, as they planned to hire a hack and go to Cockermouth once their business in the village was complete.

Dora plucked a blackberry from a bramble that scrambled over a fence and dangled in their path.

The berry was still tart and could do with a few weeks of sunshine to sweeten.

‘I wouldn’t say it was a quarrel. A difference of opinion.

’ It would probably be best not to mention the attempt to bribe her.

Jacob might well march straight back and punch the viscount on the nose for that.

‘The difference being?’

‘He thinks he can tell me what to do.’

Jacob laughed. ‘I’m sure you put him right.’ He took her hand and swung it between them. ‘I apologise. Arthur can be a terrible bore.’

‘I’m the last person to blame you for your relatives.

’ She’d pick a concerned pompous Arthur over her disappointment of a father any day.

‘But he is correct in some respects, isn’t he?

We are thumbing our nose at society by trying something that’s not been seen before: a partnership of equals when all the world considers me your inferior. ’

‘If they only knew how wrong they were. You are my superior in every way that counts.’

‘Flatterer.’

‘I’m being sincere.’

She smiled at him. ‘I suppose a lady does want her lover to consider her with rosy optimism about her qualities.’

‘I see you very clearly, Dora Fitz-Pennington. There is only one thing I’d change about you.’

‘Oh? And what’s that?’

‘Your name.’

She had walked into that one, but it was dangerous ground.

Imagine the opposition they would meet if they took that path!

She wasn’t yet sure it would be good for their relationship.

Was what they felt enough to brave it out when everything and everyone was set against them?

It had only been a few months, testing ones to be sure, but not enough yet for her to stake her future on the outcome.

She wasn’t sure what sign she was waiting for, but it hadn’t yet arrived.

‘Be honest, Jacob: wouldn’t you rather take the easier path of an acceptable wife and a career that opens doors for you into all the right households? ’

His expression was sympathetic, little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes as he smiled at her, understanding her qualms all too well. ‘The person I’m considering is acceptable to me– and she opens all the right doors because in my profession we have to go both high and low in our investigations.’

‘Oh, you’re hopeless,’ she sighed, dropping the subject as they approached the village.

‘No, I’m hopeful– that’s why I’m not giving up on us.’

* * *

Langhorne lodged in a lane winding down from Ambleside to Waterhead.

He was at the top of the house which gave his narrow window a view to Windermere.

He looked across, in fact, to Barton’s cottage, a rather unsettling coincidence.

At night he would have been able to see the lights of the house and know whether his friend was in.

Their host was rattling around in his sideboard attempting to find something to offer his visitors.

‘Sherry? I think I might have some biscuits, though they’ll be hard tack by now. I’m not used to guests.’

Dora surveyed the room. It was a very modest bed-sitting room, his bed hidden by a curtain.

The best place was the desk by the window on which he’d stacked his favourite books and had a pile of notepaper.

He’d suggested Dora take his chair, which had left Jacob to perch on a stool by the hearth.

If Langhorne was going to sit, it would have to be the bed.

Langhorne returned triumphant with a bottle that still had an inch of liquor.

He served it with a flicker of his old rakish smile, but it was no longer the assured act of the gallant at the fishing party.

The basics of hospitality completed, he sat down on the floor, back against his bed, and sighed.

‘What a mess. I hate not knowing. Should I be mourning Barton or railing at him for running off like that? Does he mean to scare us?’

‘Do you think that likely?’ she asked. ‘Is he known to run away from his problems?’

‘Problems?’ he scoffed. ‘Barton has never had a problem in his entire life!’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jacob.

‘Erasmus Barton is the son of Elijah Barton, the cotton manufacturer. He’s got mills in Manchester, run by these newfangled steam engines– and there’s money in steam.’

‘You’re implying that he’s from an affluent family?’

‘Rich as the proverbial Croesus. Funny thing is Barton’s father was a mechanic once upon a time as humble as they come. He still speaks like a commoner, not like his son, who talks like a lord after having his accent beaten out of him at school.’

‘Beaten?’ asked Dora.

‘I won’t darken your day telling you what goes on in boys’ schools, Miss Fitz-Pennington. If Barton was ever bitter about anything, it was the cruelty he met with at Westminster.’

‘How did Barton senior make his money?’ asked Jacob.

‘From his brains. He dreamed up a design for some cog or piston in the steam process, don’t ask me how it works as I wouldn’t understand it.

He patented it and has been raking in the guineas ever since.

It’s a new world, Dr Sandys, and the manufacturers are our new nobility.

You’d better warn that brother of yours.

’ Langhorne revolved the thin-stemmed sherry glass between finger and thumb and glanced over at Dora.

‘You’re not here on a compassionate call on a grieving friend, are you? ’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Jacob.