The beleaguered Lord Bourne, Page 2

  Acknowledgment of her own guilt in leading the earl to believe she was forward kept Jennie from either slapping Kit’s face for his impertinence or dissolving into maidenly tears—as any well-brought-up young lady should have (any, that is, who had not yet taken refuge in a swoon).

  In the short minute that had passed since the termination of their nearly one-sided embrace, neither of them spoke. They just stood there and stared at one another, each intent on their own chaotic thoughts.

  Just as Kit was about to suggest renewing their acquaintance that night in some more secluded spot, visions of a cozy, candlelit supper followed by a mutually satisfying voyage of discovery upon the great barge of a bed in his private chamber, Jennie took him completely unawares by wheeling about, hiking up her tattered skirts, and racing pell-mell into the Home Wood.

  “Wait!” Kit called, watching in amazement as her fleeing form was quickly enveloped by the dense growth and concealing shadows. “Jennie, you silly chit. Wait!”

  No good would be served by pursuit, as the girl probably knew every tree and concealing rock and could elude him almost without effort. Besides, if he gave chase she might sacrifice prudence for speed, thus putting herself in danger of springing yet another of Leon’s deadly traps.

  Ah well, he decided, shrugging his wide shoulders, it wasn’t as if she were about to disappear from his life forever. He had only to question the resourceful Renfrew as to the whereabouts of one blond-haired miss named Jennie and he would be halfway home. Once he located her, it shouldn’t take more than a few soothing words (and perhaps a bauble or two) to coax the fair Jennie into his bed.

  Secure in his estimation of both Jennie’s character and the attractive lures his title and fortune must represent to someone of her modest circumstances, Kit returned to the manor, partook of a restorative luncheon, and then repaired to the library, where he penned his acceptance of one Sir Cedric Maitland’s invitation to dine with him the following evening.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “MISS JANE, iffen ya don’t stop squirmin’ about like some pig caught in a gate I ain’t never gonna get these tangles out, and Miss Bundy, that old cat, she’ll have my head on a platter iffen you be late comin’ down to table tonight. Just the thought of Miss Bundy tearin’ inta me is more than I thinks I can bear.”

  As this whining complaint by her maid, Goldie, was reinforced by means of a restraining tug on one of those tangled locks of hair, a tug that brought tears of pain to her eyes, Miss Jane Maitland subsided obligingly onto her chair and allowed her hair to be twisted into a loose knot on the top of her head. “And woe be to anyone who doubts that the meek shall inherit the earth,” Jane confided to her reflection in the mirror. “Forgive me, Goldie, my love,” she said more loudly. “Far be it from me to be the cause of your catching the sharp edge of my dear companion’s tongue.”

  “That’s good,” sighed Goldie, putting the last touches to her mistress’s coiffure. “Seein’ as how that woman’s got a tongue would clip a hedge.”

  “Not to mention a pair of ears that can pick up the sound of your foolish jabbering at a hundred paces, more’s the pity,” pointed out Miss Ernestine Bundy herself, who had entered the large bedchamber unnoticed.

  “Yoicks and away!” Jane chortled as Goldie hastily hiked up her skirts and propelled her ample girth toward the small door to the rear of the chamber, hell-bent on escaping the peal that Miss Bundy was otherwise bound to ring over her poor head.

  “Daft woman,” Miss Bundy commented, sailing into the room, her dignity in full sail. “Why any of us put up with that sad excuse for a maid, I find myself saying for what must be the thousandth time, is far beyond my limited comprehension. Really, Jane, sometimes I feel bound to point out to you that your grand gestures of charity do have the lamentable tendency of producing the most disappointing results.”

  “Now, Bundy,” scolded Jane, rising from her seat in front of the mirror to smooth down the skirts of her robin’s-egg-blue gown. “What Goldie lacks in talent she more than makes up for in heart.” Twisting about to peer over her shoulder, just making sure her departing self would do credit to her arriving self, she went on idly, “Besides, the poor girl was such a sad failure in the dairy.”

  “And in the kitchens, and as a housemaid, and as a seamstress, and—”

  “Enough, Bundy, else Papa’s dinner guests will find themselves welcoming me rather than the other way round.”

  Ernestine Bundy, governess and now companion to Miss Maitland, had watched her charge grow from an entrancingly lovely child into an awkward, too thin adolescent until, over the course of the year following her eighteenth birthday, she had blossomed into the young woman who now descended the wide stairway ahead of her: an astonishingly beautiful creature of high intelligence, quick wit, a ready smile, and a charming way about her that could coax the very birds down out of the trees.

  If she was just a teeny bit strong-willed, this was only to be expected in a doted-on only child, and surely her generous nature and propensity for seeing only the good in people would never harm her as long as her fiercely protective father and Miss Ernestine Bundy were around to cushion her from some of the more distasteful realities of life.

  Openly preening over her no little involvement in the creation of the exquisite creature now politely awaiting her at the bottom of the stairway, Miss Bundy had no way of knowing that one of those “realities” was already lurking in the shadows (or, in this case, in the drawing room of Maitlands itself), ready to pounce.

  LORD BOURNE had been at Maitlands only a few minutes—just long enough to be introduced to his host and dinner partner, be asked his preference as to liquid refreshment, have his antecedents inquired about, and his personal history vetted—all accomplished in the politest of ways and with a thoroughness a member of the Inquisition would envy.

  Miss Abigail Latchwood, a spinster of some indeterminate years and, Kit assumed, a frequent visitor at Maitlands, was quite the noisiest person Kit had heretofore chanced to encounter, and he had encountered quite a few in his time. Obviously her presence tonight was Sir Cedric’s way of assuring himself that news of his coup—being the first of his circle to host the new earl under his roof—would reach even the farthest corners of the neighborhood with all possible speed.

  All in all, Kit found himself to be incredibly bored with the whole affair, and took rapid inventory of his brain, searching for a plausible excuse that would get him shed of Sir Cedric and his inquisitive guest immediately after brandy and cigars. The benighted countryside around Bourne was a far cry from the frenetic activity of a Spanish battlefield, and the soldier in Kit was not so easily mellowed that the boring duties of his new title could yet be borne with any real grace.

  If only the so-estimable Renfrew had been more helpful in the matter of Jennie, the teacher’s daughter—that normally helpful man having disclaimed any knowledge of either father or offspring residing in the area. There were two Jessies in the village, and the blacksmith had a niece named Jackie visiting this month or more—although that damsel had hair as dark as pitch and weighed half again as much as the smithy—but nary hide nor hair could be found of any blond wench named Jennie.

  Ah well, thought the earl, smiling politely as Sir Cedric described in great detail his latest triumph on the hunting field, he’d be leaving for London within another week and Jennie’s bucolic beauty would soon fade from his memory, to be replaced by one or more of the many comely opera dancers he intended to honor with his favor.

  Kit allowed a half smile to soften his features as he swirled his drink and thought his private thoughts. Boring dinner partners and a nonexistent social life were a small price to pay for the opportunity to call Bourne Manor his own. For a certainty it beat wallowing in the mud of Ciudad Rodrigo all to sticks—and the rank of earl brought with it benefits no mere major could dream to command.

  While the aging Miss Latchwood preened delightedly, the proud Sir Cedric recounted his brilliant out-maneuvering of some
hapless fox, and Lord Bourne smugly contemplated a season of wallowing in the fleshpots of London, Miss Jane Maitland stood outside the drawing-room doors enduring her companion’s last-minute adjustments to her charge’s perfectly draped skirts.

  “Papa will demand to know the reason for my tardiness, Bundy,” Jane warned her companion, just now fussing over a loose thread daring to peek below the hem of the blue gown, “and demand an explanation for it. I shall be forced—for you know I would not be so mean as to implicate you voluntarily—to explain that my companion delayed my appearance by some fifteen minutes while she searched out nonexistent flaws in my toilette.” Jane heaved her shoulders in a heavy sigh. “And then Papa will rant and bluster, and I will have recourse to tears, and you will be called for and roundly scolded for your impudence in thinking there existed even a single flaw on the person of his only daughter, and then you will be cast posthaste out into the snow—”

  “It hasn’t snowed in Bourne for three years,” Miss Bundy was moved to point out, placing her hands on Jane’s shoulders and pushing her in a circle as her shrewd eyes made one last appraisal. “You are to dine with the new Earl of Bourne, missy,” she went on, heedless of Jane’s sudden harsh intake of breath, “and I am under strict instructions that you are to look your very best for the gentleman. Your papa is aiming rather high, if you ask me, which he certainly did not, but I must admit Lord Bourne would have to look far and wide to find a countess as fair as you, my dear.’ Giving one last unnecessary pat to Jane’s coiffure, Miss Bundy stood back, surveyed her handiwork, and exclaimed, “There! No mere man could ask for more.”

  Jane wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Are you sure, Bundy? Perhaps my price tag is showing. Tell me, dearest Ernestine, is the marriage settlement to match my dowry, or will Papa throw in Mama’s diamonds to sweeten the pot?” A slight flush lending even more lively animation to her features, Jane goaded further. “Dearest, sweetest Bundy. First you served as nanny, then governess, then companion. I had not realized your real calling was that of procuress.”

  Miss Bundy did not have an immediate spasm at her charge’s audacity. Indeed, she did not so much as blink her pale gray eyes. All Miss Bundy, that long-suffering servant, did was to pinch Jane’s cheeks to give them color, step back out of sight of the double doors to the drawing room, signal the snickering footman to step lively and announce his mistress to the company, and retire upstairs to the small brown bottle she kept concealed beneath her knitting. Life at Maitlands had long ago taught the woman the best way of dealing with either Sir Cedric or his audacious daughter was by prudent withdrawal. Jane would apologize, as she always did whenever her tongue ran away with her—not that the poor girl hadn’t cause enough for anger, being paraded about for the new earl like a prize calf—and in the end Miss Bundy would allow her sensibilities to be mollified by the way of Jane’s pretty pleas for forgiveness. It was a game they played, the two of them, with Jane tugging more and more at the leash of obedience every year as she grew from submissive girl to self-sufficient young woman.

  Jane waited until Miss Bundy’s receding back disappeared around the curve in the stairs and then, her softly rounded chin held high, she took a deep breath, sent up a quick prayer that Lord Bourne wasn’t any more of a fool than he could help, and allowed herself to be announced.

  The first person she saw when she entered the candle-lit chamber was Miss Latchwood. So, she thought wryly, Papa is leaving nothing to chance. If the poor earl so much as smiles in my direction that old biddy will have the entire countryside believing we have posted the banns. Nodding pleasantly to the older woman, who winked conspiratorially back at her, Jane turned her gaze in the direction of her father, just then posing at the mantelpiece under an obscure (for good reason) artist’s rendering of one of Sir Cedric’s epic exploits with the Mowbray men. “Good evening to you, Papa,” she intoned sweetly, dropping the man a curtsy. “Please forgive my tardiness, but the time just seemed to run away with me.”

  Sir Cedric, seeing before him the reincarnation of his beloved deceased wife allowed himself to be charmed into forgiving Jane for keeping him from his dinner. Taking one of her small hands into one of his own huge paws, he turned her slightly so that he could introduce her to their guest of honor.

  “Lord Bourne,” the proud father began, “allow me to introduce my daughter—”

  “You!” loudly exclaimed the earl, fairly goggling at the girl as the very air between them suddenly began to crackle.

  “So much for prayers,” Jane muttered disgustedly under her breath as she glared at the fashionably dressed young man with the gaping jaw.

  Abigail Latchwood leaned forward in her chair, her powers of intuition telling her she had chanced to secure herself a front-row seat at what should prove to be a most interesting spectacle.

  “I WOULD BE MORE THAN HAPPY to listen to your suggestions as to a solution to our problem, my lord, but I do not wish a dismal retelling of the problem itself. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You do not wish! I do not wish, damn it, and since it is my feelings that concern me and I am forced to dismiss them I see no gentlemanly need to trifle over your paltry sensibilities.”

  Jane paused to mull Kit’s words over a moment or two, and decided that she may have been looking at him in the wrong light entirely. Perhaps he was not the enemy. Perhaps she had been in the process of berating the only ally she had in the entire world—what with her father, Bundy, and even Goldie firmly listed among her adversaries in this matter.

  “You are against this marriage plan of Papa’s?” Jane asked the man now standing across from her in the herb garden, his ebony hair gleaming in the bright morning sunlight. He nodded his head in the affirmative. “Then why,” she asked with a sudden return of heat, “didn’t you stop Papa when he first proposed the idea last night? You don’t strike me as a man who is usually at a loss for words.”

  Kit shook his head in astonished disbelief. “Please don’t tell me you’re that much of a clothhead. After your ridiculous hysterical outburst last night when we were introduced there was deuced little I could do to rescue the situation.”

  “My outburst?” Jane sniffed indelicately, correcting him. “I merely muttered a small involuntary verbalization prompted, my lord, by your inelegant bellow!”

  Kit had the decency to admit to a slight lapse of his own, caused, undoubtedly, by his surprise at seeing his wild-haired Jennie parading about as the so-proper Miss Maitland. “But,” he rallied quickly, “it was not I who then fell apart like soggy tissue paper in the rain and confessed to every tiny detail of our meeting at Bourne Manor—right down to that truly sickening, simpering recital of what in fact had amounted to nothing more than a simple stolen kiss. Miss Latchwood nearly swooned dead away.”

  “No she didn’t. She wouldn’t do anything so self-defeating—it might cause her to miss some juicy bit of gossip. Lord!” Jane shuddered at the memory. “I was hard-pressed not to offer her the loan of my handkerchief, she was drooling so copiously.”

  “So you instead offered her the notion that poor, innocent Miss Jane Maitland might just have been compromised by that nasty Lord Bourne,” Kit sneered. “Lord!” he pressed, aping Jane’s exclamation. “You may as well have gone traipsing over the countryside ringing a bell, calling: ‘Kit Wilde kissed me in the Home Wood; Kit Wilde kissed me in—’”

  “Don’t!” Jane begged, clapping her hands over her ears. “Papa never told me the names of our guests, you see, and I didn’t ask, as our dinner guests tend to be limited to Miss Latchwood, Squire Handley and his sister, or the vicar, and knowing beforehand just whom I shall be facing across the table does nothing to enliven my appetite. I only found out you were to be present a moment before I was announced. Under the circumstances I believe I did my best—”

  Kit, plucked a stray thread off his sleeve as he interrupted wearily, “Your best? How very sad. Please, Miss Maitland, I beg you to refrain from bringing my attention to your shortcomings, as I am depresse
d enough as it is without—”

  “When I am saying something, Lord Bourne,” Jane cut in with some heat, “you will oblige me by restraining your lamentable tendency to interrupt!”

  With his head still lowered, Kit raised his eyebrows and peered at his adversary. “Welcome back, my little tiger cat. I was wondering how long it would take for Jennie to loose her claws on me.” Temper definitely became the chit, Kit mused to himself, admiring the flush on Jennie’s cheeks and the way the slight breeze set the blond curls around her face to dancing as her agitated movements caused her casual topknot to come half undone.

  Jane looked back at him in disgust. She had requested this meeting with him this morning in the hope that together they would be able to find a way out of the muddle they had bumbled into the night before, but it was obvious now that she might just as well have saved herself the bother of eluding Bundy and engaging in what that very proper lady would only construe as yet another “tryst.”

  “If you are quite done salving your wounded ego at my expense, I suggest we either put our heads together to find a way out of this ridiculous coil or else terminate our meeting so that you can return to Bourne Manor and barricade the doors against Papa’s wrath.”

  If Sir Cedric’s wrath were all that was to be faced, Kit would have been more than capable of dealing with it in short order. But no. Once Jennie (he refused to call her Jane) had been escorted to her room by the so-properly outraged Miss Bundy and Miss Latchwood had been sequestered in the morning room with a half decanter of her favorite cherry brandy, Sir Cedric had confessed to Lord Bourne that he suffered from a “disky heart,” and any scandal surrounding his dear old child would as surely put him underground as would a bullet through the brain.

  Kit was prompted to wonder aloud about how such a hearty-looking specimen—a man who rode to hounds with such vigor—could possibly be in ill health, a tactical error that sent Sir Cedric tottering posthaste to a nearby chair, a hand clutching at his ample bosom as he called weakly for his manservant. While Kit looked on, his face still showing his skepticism, Sir Cedric’s solicitous valet administered a draught to the panting gentleman and, with the help of two sturdy footmen, had his employer hoisted aloft in his chair and carted off to his bed—a move that put quite an effective period to any hope of rational discussion.