A Gamble on Love Read online

  Pride was a terrible thing, Relia conceded as she frowned, unseeing, over her ledgers. Her husband could stay in London forever, she truly did not care. But that he should be tending to business with one hand and enjoying the favors of someone named Eleanor with the other was outside of enough. Terrible man! Did he not recall that he was married?

  It would seem he did not. For there had not been one word about a new steward, nor so much as a line in response to her letter about his sister. Though he must have received it, for a trunkful of Miss Lanning’s belongings had arrived at Pevensey only that morning.

  “Aunt Browning is delighted to be rid of me,” Olivia had announced provocatively, but Relia thought she caught a rather woebegone plaint beneath Miss Lanning’s bravado. Not that she could not sympathize with Olivia’s Aunt Browning, for, in spite of her promises, the chit tended to be as wilful as her brother. Prodded by a horrified Gussie, the girl had apologized for her remark about Mr. Lanning’s mistress, but the words she had blurted out hung there, refusing to away.

  Snap! Blankly, Relia stared at the now broken quill she had been holding in her hand.

  Her husband was a rake.

  Yet . . . could a Cit be a rake? Somehow Relia had always thought that a term reserved for gentlemen. Nor did the Thomas Lanning she had seen so far seem to be in the petticoat line, as Harry would say. Dear Harry. She should have taken him while she could and settled for the simple life of a country mouse.

  Which she was, of course, compared to the grand, sophisticated Eleanor Ebersley.

  Scowling fiercely, Relia dug through the desk drawers, searching for another quill. When would the new steward arrive? Surely, there had been ample time—

  No doubt her dear husband was allowing her to become heartily sick of ordering supplies, supervising repairs, keeping meticulous account books, and dealing with all the daily cares of a vast estate. While he lived royally in London, chasing courtesans on her income!

  A second quill snapped in half.

  “Ma’am,” said Biddeford, who had just entered the room, “Mr. Arnold has informed me that the refurbishment is complete. If you would be so kind as to inspect his work? I believe he wishes to set out for London this very day.”

  Grateful for the interruption, Relia made the long climb from the basement to the bedchambers far above. Her praise for Mr. Arnold’s handiwork was all that he could desire. The two bedchambers, their respective dressing rooms, and the sitting room set down between were truly so transformed that she could no longer picture her parents living here. Yet a second calculating look at her own bedchamber turned Mrs. Lanning’s approving smiles to a frown. “I believe . . . yes, I believe I have erred,” she mused. “The silk draperies and bedhangings are too light for winter. I fear I would take a chill.”

  “The satin is very thick, madam,” Mr. Arnold protested.

  “Nonetheless, I have decided I prefer velvet. These will do very well for summer, but for winter I must have velvet.”

  “Ma’am? I fear I have no samples of the proper color with me.” Mr. Arnold’s strangled tone revealed quite clearly he saw his return to London for the holiday disappearing on m’lady’s whim.

  “You are aware of my tastes by now, Mr. Arnold,” Relia said, taking pity on the poor man. “On your return to London I trust you to select the correct fabric and send it to me. Along with your instructions for the seamstress. I am certain that after managing these”—Relia waved her hand at the silk satin draperies and bedhangings—“she will have the new fabric done up in a trice.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Mr. Arnold breathed, with a bow so deep Relia feared he would topple over. “I shall tend to the matter as soon as I am in town. But . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “May I say, ma’am, that velvet of that particular shade of peach may not be easy to find.”

  “I did not think it would, Mr. Arnold.” Mrs. Thomas Lanning’s lips turned up in a tiny little quirk. “I did not think it would.”

  “And who is this delightful young lady?” oozed the latest, and most unwelcome, visitor to Pevensey Park.

  Aurelia gritted her teeth as Mr. Twyford Trevor whipped up his quizzing glass and examined Miss Olivia Lanning from the halo of dark curls framing her piquant face down to the delicate slippers peeking out from beneath her far-too-thin sprigged muslin gown. Good manners, however, prevailed. The introduction produced a decided gleam in her cousin’s eye as he pounced on the young lady’s name.

  “The Cit has a sister, imagine that!” Mr. Trevor declared with something akin to glee. “How very fortunate—for me,” he added with a graceful bow in Miss Lanning’s direction , “that I decided to call and see how my dear cousin was going on.”

  “Mr. Trevor,” said Miss Augustina Aldershot with little subtlety, “we are surprised to see you. I understood that you had business elsewhere.”

  The Terrible Twyford gave a negligent wave of his hand. “A party here, a party there, don’t you know? On dits flying in every direction. When I heard my dear cuz might be all alone, and she so newly married, I thought company might be welcome.”

  The sly insouciance of Mr. Trevor’s smile was enough to make Relia long to throw something at him. “Mr. Lanning has a great many interests in London which he cannot abandon at such short notice—” Oh, no, she could not have made such a foolish error!

  Mr. Trevor’s brows shot up. “I was under the impression your betrothal was of long-standing, dear cuz. Surely, even a Cit such as Mr. Lanning could have arranged his affairs so he could spend a proper amount of time with his bride.”

  “My brother has a great many affairs!” Olivia Lanning interjected, sitting very straight in her chair and glaring at Mr. Trevor, as if she had not spent the last ten minutes casting simpering glances in his direction.

  “I have no doubt,” The Terrible Twyford replied, with a distinct smirk. Gussie made a strangling sound, while Relia turned pale.

  “I trust you are now on your way home for the holidays,” Miss Aldershot stated when she had recovered her countenance.

  “Indeed.” Mr. Trevor concurred, once again turning the full force of his personality on Miss Lanning.

  It was, Relia thought, rather like a bull assessing a new-born lamb. How could Thomas Lanning have had the arrogance to think his dragonslaying permanent? Her cousin Twyford was turning out to be more like the multi-headed Hydra. Destroy one head, and two, even more dangerous, took its place.

  “But now,” Mr. Trevor said, continuing to use false charm like a bludgeon, “I believe I will accept the invitation to Gravenham after the holidays.”

  “Gravenham?” Relia echoed, surprised to hear the earl was entertaining as word had come of Captain Alan Fortescue being wounded on the Peninsula.

  “Yes,” her cousin preened at being the bearer of significant news, “it seems the captain’s wounds were not so terrible that a few months at home will not have him right as a trivet. So Lady Gravenham is planning a party of Fortescue’s old friends after the holiday. The captain is, I believe, expected home in time for Christmas.”

  The remainder of the conversation flew by unheeded as Relia clasped her hands tightly in her lap and willed herself to stay upright on the sofa. Alan Fortescue was coming home! If only she had waited, she might have—

  She was the wife of Mr. Thomas Lanning and must make the best of it.

  Of Mr. Thomas Lanning, the Cit, who had not even been able to rid her of The Terrible Twyford!

  “Ma’am? Ma’am?”

  “Aurelia!” Gussie prodded.

  Mrs. Lanning broke out of her disconcerting thoughts to see Biddeford standing a few feet away, looking more than usually portentous. “Yes?”

  “There is a traveling coach coming up the driveway, ma’am. I thought you would wish to know. ’Tis possible it is Mr. Lanning, ma’am.”

  Olivia, heedless of propriety, jumped to her feet and ran to the window at the far end of the drawing room. “Yes, yes,” she cried, “I’m nearly certain ’
tis papa’s old coach. Thomas never uses it, but . . . yes, I see him. It is he! Oh, no!” Miss Lanning added on something between a shriek and a groan. “He cannot have brought the Beast. He always goes to the Wilsons for holidays. Aunt Browning would not have him in the house.”

  Beast. What beast? Relia wondered. Had Mr. Lanning brought a dog? One thing was certain, she would not lower herself to ask.

  As Gussie ordered Miss Lanning back to her seat to await her brother as a proper lady should, Relia noted that Mr. Twyford Trevor had disappeared. Simply vanished without so much as a farewell. Perhaps she had maligned Mr. Lanning’s dragonslaying skills a bit too soon. At this very moment The Terrible Twyford was likely slipping down the back stairs.

  And then her husband was standing in the doorway, framed in ornate plasterwork, and looking larger and even more intimidating than she recalled. A big man, though lean and graceful like some giant jungle animal to whom all other creatures granted a respectful amount of space. He was more attractive, also, than she had allowed herself to remember, although it had been quite impossible to forget his strength as he had kept her from tumbling down those lethal-looking flagstone steps in Tunbridge Wells.

  “Aurelia, Miss Aldershot, Livvy.” He nodded to each in turn, then stepped further into the room. Reaching one hand behind him, he dragged forward a youth of some eleven or twelve years. Already handsome, if yet an unlicked cub, the boy gave every evidence of being the image of the man beside him when he grew up.

  Relia, who had been about to rise to greet her husband, realized her legs had turned to water. Olivia might have turned out to be Thomas’s sister, but this—the Beast—must surely be his son.

  “Nicholas, make your bow to your new sister,” Mr. Lanning ordered.

  Sister. Sister. Somehow Relia, still seated, managed a welcoming smile. In his stiffly new high-topped trousers and short jacket, his cravat tied in a flourishing bow and his hair freshly combed, young Nicholas Lanning looked anything but a beast. The expression on his face, however—holding, as it did, traces of hostility, belligerence, bravado, and something close to panic—promised a challenging holiday season, to say the least. Years of challenge, more like, Relia amended, unless she could somehow make friends with the boy. But Nicholas Lanning gave every evidence of being as wilful as the other members of his family. If not more so.

  “Our mother was papa’s second wife,” Olivia contributed when Thomas remained silent, seemingly absorbed in studying his wife’s reaction.

  “Then the resemblance is even more remarkable,” Miss Aldershot noted. “I take it you both look like the late Mr. Lanning?” she said to Thomas.

  “Peas in a pod, that’s what papa always said,” Olivia confirmed. “But papa was never a beast,” she emphasized with a vicious glare at her younger brother. “Nor Thomas—well, not very often.”

  “Am not!” Nicholas hissed.

  “Are too!”

  “Silence!” Thomas snapped. “Nicholas, you will go with Biddeford, who will find you a suitable room.”

  “If you do not mind, I shall accompany him,” Miss Aldershot declared, leaping at this further challenge like a firehorse racing to the smell of smoke.

  Mr. Lanning gave her a small bow. “I should be pleased, Miss Aldershot. Thank you. Though you should know,” he added in a tone that came as close to chagrin as anyone had ever heard from Mr. Thomas Lanning, “he has been requested not to return to school until spring term. I fear he will be here for a while.”

  “Olivia, you will join us,” said Miss Aldershot in a voice that allowed no room for argument. As the three left the drawing room, Gussie carefully shut the door behind her.

  “I am sorry,” Thomas declared stiffly to the pale stranger, his wife. “Although I confess I had thoughts of your introducing Livvy to the ton at some time in the future, I did not expect to bring either one of them down upon your head so soon. When Nicholas is not in school, he spends his time with the families of his friends, who have been exceedingly kind to him since his mother’s—ah—departure. I anticipated neither Livvy’s rejection of her Aunt Browning nor Nicholas being sent down from school. When it happened, only the day before I received your letter about Livvy, I realized I had no choice. Although I have a house in London, it is not . . . a home. It is not equipped to deal with youngsters.”

  Nor was she, Relia thought. “All the time we were in Tunbridge Wells and I told you of my life here at Pevensey Park, yet not once did you mention their existence.”

  “I thought . . . it seemed we had enough problems confronting us. It was foolish to add more, if it were not necessary.”

  “But now it is.”

  “Yes.”

  Relia raised her chin. “Please sit down . . . Thomas.” Mr. Lanning, flipping up the tails of his jacket, though never taking his eyes off his wife’s face, sat in a chair directly across from her. “I have made your sister welcome here,” she informed him coolly, “and I am happy to do the same for your brother. You are quite correct. This should be their home. I have loved Pevensey Park all my life, and it is my duty to share it with them. I had no brothers or sisters, so I fear I am ignorant on the subject of children, but Gussie is a marvel and will undoubtedly make up for my mistakes.”

  “You are most gracious,” Thomas responded with as much formality as if he were speaking to a duchess, “yet I fear they will be a considerable disruption to the quiet life you cherish here.”

  Relia bent her head, hiding her expression. Her husband certainly had the right of it, but she was not such an ogre that she could not feel sympathy for orphaned children, no matter how difficult they might be. Nor did a Trevor ever shirk her duty. This was her hired dragonslayer, and even if he had not yet done as thorough a job as she might have liked, she was honor-bound to fulfill her part of their peculiar bargain.

  “Aurelia . . . is the renovation of our bedchambers complete?”

  Abruptly, Mrs. Lanning returned from righteous self-satisfaction to the realities of the moment. “Nearly,” she responded, plucking an invisible spot of lint from her gray woolen gown. “I did not expect you back so soon.”

  “Nearly? And pray tell just what remains to be done?”

  “The sitting room and your bedchamber are complete. You will find them most comfortable, I am sure. Mr. Arnold was a most clever man.”

  “But your room is not ready, I take it?”

  “Ah . . . no. Mr. Arnold is in London searching out the precise fabric I require.”

  “I see.” Such innocence in those gray-blue eyes, Thomas thought. Almost, he believed her. “I see no evidence of holiday decoration,” he commented casually, as if dismissing the incomplete refurbishment as of little importance. “Perhaps you may make use of Nicholas’s services in that regard. He is one who needs—ah—a good many tasks, preferably interesting ones, to occupy his time.”

  “Of course,” his wife responded smoothly, “an excellent suggestion. And now, perhaps you would care to see what has been done to your rooms?”

  An hour later, Thomas Lanning sent for his wife’s maid. Tilly, as he recalled, had seemed to approve of him after his rescue of her mistress from almost certain injury. The tale he pried out of her, however reluctantly, turned him even more stony-faced than usual. Dismissing the maid, he rang for Biddeford.

  “You will restore the bedhangings and draperies Mr. Arnold provided for my wife’s room,” he told the butler. “Immediately.”

  “I fear there may be some delay, Mr. Lanning,” Biddeford replied, stoically loyal to his mistress, though he could not quite hide his apprehension. “They have been boxed and sent to the attics. The draperies match the bedhangings, you see, sir, and Mrs. Lanning’s room has a good many windows. There are a staggering number of boxes, ” the butler concluded, trailing into silence.

  Though still scowling, Thomas, a reasonable man, nodded, for it was late in the day, nearly time to dress for dinner. “Very well, you and—what is the housekeeper’s name? Ah, yes, you and Mrs. Marshcombe wi
ll see to the matter in the morning. And then you may supervise the removal of Mrs. Lanning’s belongings to her new room. Thomas paused, skewering the butler with his sharp gray eyes. “I trust I make myself clear, Biddeford?”

  The elderly butler drew himself up into a stance as stiff as a soldier under inspection by a general. “Yes, sir. Indeed, sir. I assure you, Mr. Lanning, all will be as you wish it.”

  As he reached the hall, Biddeford’s shoulders slumped. Poor Miss Aurelia. She had married a sharp one. Wasn’t taken in by her tricks one little bit. And with two more Lannings come to Pevensey Park—and neither of them with cobwebs between the ears—it was going to be a lively holiday. Most lively.

  For a moment Biddeford allowed his lips to curve into a smile. It was possible . . . yes, indeed it was, that they had all become too set in their ways at Pevensey Park. The new broom had swept clean; a new era had begun. For a short while it looked very much as if young miss had sacrificed herself, but now it appeared as if Mr. Lanning had no intention of abandoning his wife to her own devices in the country. No, indeed. Almost . . . yes, almost Biddeford could hear a creaking of timbers, the soft swish of silken hangings as the old house stirred to life. Perhaps even the patter of little feet on the stairs, childish shouts of glee, Miss Aldershot’s stern admonitions rising over all . . .

  With his shoulders returned to their customary stately grace and his face to its impassive butlerish mask, Biddeford pushed open the door and headed toward the kitchen.

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twelve

  Relia’s steps increased in pace as she moved down the hallway until, by the time she reached her room, she was close to a jog. Bursting through the door, she slammed it behind her, stalking to the center of the bedchamber, where she stood, breathing hard, eyes squeezed tight and fists clenched. The serenity of her household had disappeared up the chimney like so much unwanted smoke. At dinner, Gussie had concentrated her attention on the two younger Lannings, who seemed to require constant supervision to keep them from quarreling like toddlers on leading strings. Which left her husband as her sole conversational partner. And he—abominable man!—except for assuring her he would search out a tutor for young Nicholas so the boy did not always have to eat with the adults, quickly reverted to the dull, innocuous phrases that had marked their brief sojourn in Tunbridge Wells. To everyone in the household he turned a face full of animation, even fire. To his wife, however, he presented nothing more interesting than a whitewashed wall.