Almost Heaven by Judith McNaught
From the corner of her eye Elizabeth had been watching Ian Thornton, who was listening to all of this, his jaw rigid, a muscle beginning to twitch dangerously in the side of his neck.
Lucinda, however, was either unaware of or unconcerned with his reaction, for, as she picked up her skirts and turned toward the stairs, she turned on Jake. “You may show us to our chambers. We wish to retire.”
“Retire!” cried Jake, thunderstruck. “But—but what about supper?” he sputtered.
“You may bring it up to us.”
Elizabeth saw the blank look on Jake’s face, and she endeavored to translate, politely, what the irate woman was saying to the startled red-haired man.
“What Miss Throckmorton-Jones means is that we’re rather exhausted from our trip and not very good company, sir, and so we prefer to dine in our rooms.”
“You will dine,” Ian Thornton said in an awful voice that made Elizabeth freeze, “on what you cook for yourself, madam. If you want clean linens, you’ll get them yourself from the cabinet. If you want clean rooms, clean them! Am I making myself clear?”
“Perfectly!” Elizabeth began furiously, but Lucinda interrupted in a voice shaking with ire: “Are you suggesting, sirrah, that we are to do the work of servants?”
Ian’s experience with the ton and with Elizabeth had given him a lively contempt for ambitious, shallow, self-indulgent young women whose single goal in life was to acquire as many gowns and jewels as possible with the least amount of effort, and he aimed his attack at Elizabeth. “I am suggesting that you look after yourself for the first time in your silly, aimless life. In return for that, I am willing to give you a roof over your head and to share our food with you until I can get you to the village. If that is too overwhelming a task for you, then my original invitation still stands: There’s the door. Use it!”
Elizabeth knew the man was irrational, and it wasn’t worth riling herself to reply to him, so she turned instead to Lucinda. “Lucinda,” she said with weary resignation, “do not upset yourself by trying to make Mr. Thornton understand that his mistake has inconvenienced us, not the other way around. You will only waste your time. A gentleman of breeding would be perfectly able to understand that he should be apologizing instead of ranting and raving. However, as I told you before we came here, Mr. Thornton is no gentleman. The simple fact is that he enjoys humiliating people, and he will continue trying to humiliate us for as long as we stand here.”
Elizabeth cast a look of well-bred disdain over Ian and said, “Good night, Mr. Thornton.” Turning, she softened her voice a little and said, “Good evening, Mr. Wiley.”
When the ladies had both retired to their bedchambers Jake wandered over to the table and rummaged through the provisions. Taking out some cheese and bread, he listened to the sounds of their footsteps on the wooden floor as they went about opening cabinets and making up their beds. When he’d finished eating he had two glasses of Madeira, then he glanced at Ian. “You ought to eat something,” he said.
“I’m not hungry,” his friend replied shortly. Jake’s eyes filled with puzzlement as he gazed at the enigmatic man who was staring out the window into the darkness, his profile taut.
Although there had been no sounds of movement from the bedchambers above for the last half hour, Jake felt guilty that the ladies hadn’t eaten. Hesitantly, he said, “Shall I bring some of this up to them?”
“No,” Ian said. “If they want to eat, they can damn well come down here and feed themselves.”
“We’re not being very hospitable to ’em, Ian.”
“Not hospitable?” he repeated with a sarcastic glance over his shoulder. “In case you haven’t realized it, they’ve taken two of the bedchambers, which means one of us will be sleeping on the sofa tonight.”
“The sofa’s too short. I’ll sleep out in the barn, like I used to do. Don’t mind it a bit. I like the way hay smells, and it’s soft. Your caretaker’s brought up a cow and some chickens, just like the note said, so we’ll have fresh milk and eggs. Looks to me like the only thing he didn’t do was have someone clean this place up.”
When Ian made no reply to that but continued staring off into the dark, Jake said hesitantly, “Would you be willing to tell me how the ladies came to be here? I mean, who are they?”
Ian drew a long, impatient breath, tipped his head back, and absently massaged the muscles at the back of his neck. “I met Elizabeth a year and a half ago at a party. She’d just made her debut, was already betrothed to some unfortunate nobleman, and was eager to test her wiles on me.”
“Test her wiles on you? I thought you said she was engaged to another.”
Sighing irritably at his friend’s naïveté, Ian said curtly, “Debutantes are a different breed from any women you’ve known. Twice a year their mamas bring them to London to make their debut. They’re paraded about during the Season like horses at an auction, then their parents sell them as wives to whoever bids the highest. The winning bidder is selected by the expedient measure of choosing whoever has the most important title and the most money.”
“Barbaric!” said Jake indignantly.
Ian shot him an ironic look. “Don’t waste your pity. It suits them perfectly. All they want from marriage is jewels, gowns, and the freedom to have discreet liaisons with whomever they please, once they produce the requisite heir. They’ve no notion of fidelity or honest human feeling.”
Jake’s brows lifted at that. “Can’t say as I ever noticed you took the petticoat set in aversion,” he remarked, thinking of the women who’d warmed Ian’s bed in the last two years— some with titles of their own.
“Speaking of debutantes,” Jake continued cautiously when Ian remained silent, “what about the one upstairs? Do you dislike her especially, or just on general principle?”
Ian walked over to the table and poured some Scotch into a glass. He took a swallow, shrugged, and said, “Miss Cameron was more inventive than some of her vapid little friends. She accosted me in a garden at a party.”
“I can see how bothersome that musta been,” Jake joked, “having someone like her, with a face that men dream about, tryin’ to seduce you, usin’ feminine wiles on you. Did they work?”
Slamming the glass down on the table, Ian said curtly, “They worked.” Coldly dismissing Elizabeth from his mind, he opened the deerskin case on the table, removed some papers he needed to review, and sat down in front of the fire.
Trying to suppress his avid curiosity, Jake waited a few minutes before asking, “Then what happened?”
Already engrossed in reading the documents in his hand, Ian said absently and without looking up, “I asked her to marry me; she sent me a note inviting me to meet her in the greenhouse; I went there; her brother barged in on us and informed me she was a countess, and that she was already betrothed.”
The topic thrust from his mind, Ian reached for the quill lying on the small table beside his chair and made a note in the margin of the contract.
“And?” Jake demanded avidly.
“And what?”
“And then what happened—after the brother barged in?”
“He took exception to my having contemplated marrying so far above myself and challenged me to a duel,” Ian replied in a preoccupied voice as he made another note on the contract.
“So what’s the girl doin’ here now?” Jake asked, scratching his head in bafflement over the doings of the Quality.
“Who the hell knows,” Ian murmured irritably. “Based on her behavior with me, my guess is she finally got caught in some sleazy affair or another, and her reputation’s beyond repair.”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
Ian expelled his breath in a long, irritated sigh and glanced at Jake with an expression that made it clear he was finished answering questions. “I assume,” he bit out, “that her family, recalling my absurd obsession with her two years ago, hoped I’d come up to scratch again and take her off their hands.”
“You think
“She’s a liar and an excellent little actress,” Ian said icily, without taking his gaze from the papers. “Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get her out of here and off my hands.”
Something in Ian’s face made Jake ask, “Why the hurry? You afraid of fallin’ fer her wiles again?”
“Hardly.”
“Then you must be made of stone,” he teased. “That woman’s so beautiful she’d tempt any man who was alone with her for an hour—includin’ me, and you know I ain’t in the petticoat line at all.”
“Don’t let her catch you alone,” Ian replied mildly.
“I don’t think I’d mind.” Jake laughed as he left.
* * *
Upstairs in the bedchamber at the end of the hall over the kitchen, Elizabeth had wearily pulled off her clothes, climbed into bed, and fallen into an exhausted slumber.
In the bedchamber that opened off the landing above the parlor where the two men talked, Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones had seen no reason to break her normal retiring routine. Refusing to yield to weariness merely because she’d been jounced about on the back of a wagon, ignobly ejected from a dirty cottage into the rain, where she’d contemplated the feeding habits of predatory beasts, and then been rudely forced to retire without so much as a morsel of bread for sustenance, she nevertheless prepared for bed exactly as she would have done had she spent the day over her embroidery. After removing and folding her black bombazine gown she had unpinned her hair, given it the requisite one hundred slow strokes, and then carefully braided it and tucked it beneath her white nightcap.
Two things, however, put Lucinda so out of countenance that once she had climbed into bed and pulled the scratchy blankets up to her chin she actually could not sleep. First and foremost, there had not been a ewer and basin in her crude bedchamber that she could use to wash her face and body, which she always did before retiring. Second, the bed upon which her bony frame was expected to repose had lumps in it.
Those two things had resulted in her still being awake when the men below began to talk, and their voices had drifted up between the floorboards, muted but distinct. Because of that she had been forced to be an eavesdropper. In her entire fifty-six years Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones had never stooped to eavesdropping. She deplored eavesdroppers, a fact of which the servants in every house where she had ever dwelt were well aware. She ruthlessly reported any servant, no matter how high in the household hierarchy, if she caught him or her listening at doors or looking through keyholes.
Now, however, she had been relegated to their lowly level, for she had listened.
She had heard.
And now she was mentally going over every word Ian Thornton had spoken, examining it for truth, weighing each thing he’d said to that socially inept man who’d mistaken her for a menial. Despite her inner turmoil, as she lay upon her pallet Lucinda was perfectly composed, perfectly still. Her eyes were closed, her soft white hands folded across her flat bosom atop the coverlet. She did not fidget or pluck at the covers, she did not glower and frown at the ceiling. So still was she that had anyone peeked into the moonlit room and seen her lying there they might well have expected to find candles lit at her feet and a crucifix in her hands.
That impression, however, was no reflection on the activity in her mind. With scientific precision she was examining everything she’d heard and considering what, if anything, could or ought to be done. She knew it was possible that Ian Thornton had been lying to Jake Wiley—that be had been professing to have cared about Elizabeth, to have wanted to marry her—merely to cast himself in a better light. Robert Cameron had insisted that Thornton was nothing but a dissolute fortune hunter and an unprincipled rake; he’d specifically said that Thornton had admitted he’d been trying to seduce Elizabeth merely for sport. In this instance Lucinda was inclined to think Robert had been lying out of a desire to justify his shameful actions at the duel. Furthermore, although Lucinda had witnessed a certain fraternal devotion in Robert’s attitude toward Elizabeth, his disappearance from England had proven him a coward.
For more than an hour Lucinda lay awake, weighing everything she’d heard for truth. The only thing she accepted unequivocally was the one thing that other people of inferior knowledge and intuition had wondered about and refused to believe for years: She did not doubt for an instant that Ian Thornton was directly related to the Duke of Stanhope. As was often said, an impostor might be able to pass himself off as Quality to another gentleman in an exclusive club, but he’d better not present himself at the gentleman’s home—for an observant butler would know him as an impostor at a glance.
That same ability extended to skilled duennas whose job it was to protect their charges from social impostors. Of course, Lucinda had the advantage of having been, during her early career, companion to the niece of the Duke of Stanhope, which was why she’d taken one look at Ian Thornton tonight and placed him immediately as a close descendant of the old man, to whom he bore an absolutely startling resemblance. Based on Ian Thornton’s age and her recollection of the scandal surrounding the Marquess of Kensington’s break with his family over his unsuitable marriage to a Scottish girl, Lucinda had guessed Ian Thornton to be the old duke’s grandson within thirty seconds of clapping eyes on him. In fact, the only thing she hadn’t been able to deduce within a moment of meeting him downstairs was whether or not he was legitimate—but only because she had not been present at his conception, and so could not know whether he had been conceived before or after his parents’ unsanctioned marriage thirty years before. But if Stanhope was trying to make Ian Thornton his heir, Which was the rumor she’d heard time and again, then there was no question whatever of Thornton’s parentage.
Given all that, Lucinda had only two more matters to contemplate. The first was whether Elizabeth would benefit from marriage to a future peer of the realm—not a mere earl or count, but a man who would someday bear the title of duke, the loftiest of all noble titles. Since Lucinda had made it her life’s work to ensure that her charges made the best possible matches, it took her less than two seconds to decide that the answer to that was an emphatic affirmative.
The second matter gave her a trifle more difficulty: As things stood, she was the only one in favor of the match. And time was her enemy. Unless she was wrong—and Lucinda was never wrong in such matters—Ian Thornton was about to become the most sought-after bachelor in all Europe. Although she’d been locked away with poor Elizabeth at Havenhurst, Lucinda kept up correspondence with two other duennas. Their letters had often included casual mentions of him at various social functions. His desirability, which apparently had been increasing apace with news of his wealth, would increase a hundredfold when he was called by the title that had been his father’s—the Marquess of Kensington. That title was rightfully his, and considering the trouble he’d caused Lucinda’s charge, Lucinda felt he owed it to Elizabeth to bestow a coronet and marriage ring upon her without further delay.
Having decided that, she was faced with only one remaining problem, and it posed something of a moral dilemma. After a lifetime devoted to keeping unmarried persons of the opposite sex apart, she was now considering bringing them together. She contemplated Jake Wiley’s last remark about Elizabeth: “That woman’s so beautiful she’d tempt any man who was alone with her for an hour.” As Lucinda knew, Ian Thornton had once been “tempted” by Elizabeth, and although Elizabeth was no longer a young girl, she was even more beautiful now than she’d been then. Elizabeth was also wiser, therefore she would not be so foolish as to let him
12
Jake opened one eye and blinked confusedly at the sunlight pouring through the window high above. Disoriented, he rolled over on a lumpy, unfamiliar bed and found himself staring up at an enormous black animal who flattened his ears, bared his teeth, and tried to bite him through the slats of his stall. “You damned cannibal!” he swore at the evil-tempered horse. “Spawn of Lucifer!” Jake added, and for good measure he aimed a hard kick at the wooden slats by way of retaliation for the attempted bite. “Ouch, dammit!” he swore as his bootless foot hit the board.
Shoving himself to a sitting position, he raked his hands through his thick red hair and grimaced at the hay that stuck between his fingers. His foot hurt, and his head ached from the bottle of wine he’d drunk last night.
Heaving himself to his feet, he pulled on his boots and brushed off his woolen shirt, shivering in the damp chill. Fifteen years ago, when he’d come to work on the little farm, he’d slept in this bam every night. Now, with Ian successfully investing the money Jake made when they sailed together, he’d learned to appreciate the comforts of feather mattresses and satin covers, and he missed them sorely.