Chapter Two #3
“Excellent, thank you. I’ll track him down.”
It took him a day or two, but by sending a footman to Cressy Lane with a letter addressed to Lord Blaxland, the man, by dint of trial and error, eventually found which house it was. The letter, of course, was blank inside. Marcus had no intention of warning Edgar Blaxland of his interest.
He was shocked by what Barney had told him. Two marriages already, and both to wealthy old men. He could scarce believe it.
It was almost eleven in the morning when he turned the corner to approach her house. As he did, the front door opened and Edgar ran down the steps, climbed into a hackney cab and drove off.
Perfect. He could speak to her without Edgar’s interference.
He rang the doorbell. A man—a shabby sort of butler—opened the door, but when Marcus asked for Lady Hewitt, he said indifferently, “Milady is not at home.”
But Marcus could see Tessa standing on the landing of the stairs behind the butler, looking cool and serene in a pale green dress. She said nothing, just stared down at him, a troubled line between her brows.
The chaperone from the other night seized her by the arm and pulled her back. “She is not at home,” the woman called down.
Marcus pushed past the butler and stepped inside.
“I told you, Milady does not accept callers,” the butler said crossly and, grabbing Marcus by the sleeve, tried to pull him away.
Marcus didn’t move. The man’s ineffectual attempts to oust him had no effect whatsoever. He just looked up at Tessa and waited. If she wanted him gone, he would go, but until then . . .
She had a low inaudible conversation with the chaperone, then shook off the woman’s grip, saying, “It’s all right Hodges, Lord Alverleigh can enter. Show him into the drawing room and bring us a pot of tea, if you please.”
The woman shrugged and went back up the stairs, leaving Tessa alone with Marcus. Strange behavior for a chaperone, he thought, though he welcomed the privacy.
“Why did you come?” Tessa said once they were settled and the butler had departed.
“I had to see you, speak to you.”
“It’s very kind of you, but really”—she hesitated—“I don’t see the point.”
“Why? We were friends as children, and now we are adults, why should we not continue that friendship?”
She glanced away. “It’s all different now.”
“In what way?”
The butler returned with a tray bearing a pot of tea, cups and saucers, sugar and a plate of biscuits. Tessa busied herself pouring the tea and passed Marcus his cup.
She sat back. There was a short silence. Marcus sipped his tea—he didn’t want it: he was just being polite. But the ritual of serving tea was a soothing one.
After a few minutes’ silence, he set his cup down and repeated the question. “Why is it all different now?”
“Because we are different people now, of course.”
“We’re both older , that’s true. But I don’t see that as a problem.”
She sipped her tea, avoiding his eyes. He waited, then added, “I’m worried about you.”
“Worried?” she said with a brightness that didn’t ring true. “Whatever for?”
He wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t want to reveal what Barney had said about her and her brother. “I didn’t like the way your brother treated you at the ball the other night.”
She made a dismissive gesture. “That was nothing. He was a little bit drunk.”
“Nevertheless—”
“I can handle Edgar.”
He set down his cup. “To be frank, I heard a rumor that your brother was arranging a marriage for you—”
“No.”
“—to the gentleman your brother introduced you to the other night at the ball.” He waited, holding his breath.
There was a short silence. Outside a carriage rolled past. A dog barked.
She stirred her tea slowly, then lifted her chin. “It’s true that Edgar wishes me to marry again but I’m not doing it. Sir Henry Lester has asked for my hand, but I have refused him.”
Marcus swallowed. The relief he felt at her cool, firm words surprised him.
“I married twice for the sake of my family, and that was enough. I will never marry again.”
Never? He frowned at the coldness in her voice, then asked her the question that had been eating at him since Barney first told him about her. “How old were you when you married your first husband?”
She looked away, pressing her lips together, and for a long time he thought she wasn’t going to answer him. He waited. Eventually she met his gaze and said in a level voice, “Almost sixteen.”
Almost sixteen? So, she’d been fifteen—still a child. “Good God, why?” The question was out before he could stop himself.
There was a short silence, as if she was debating with herself whether to speak or not.
He ate a biscuit and waited. Finally she said, “Papa was heavily in debt to some bad men. They were threatening to hurt him, maybe even kill him. Lord Holgrave was a friend of his, and he offered to pay all Papa’s debts if I married him.
” She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“I didn’t want to marry him, of course, but with my father’s life at stake, what could I do except agree? ”
Refuse, Marcus thought, but he could see that at such a young age it would be hard to go against her father.
But what sort of a father would do such a thing, sell his innocent young daughter, not yet sixteen, to a man old enough to be her grandfather?
A perverted old man at that, who would take a child-bride to wife.
“And Lord Hewitt?” he asked when he had mastered his anger.
Her eyes dropped again. There was a short silence, then she said quietly.
“Papa was dead by the time I was widowed, but gambling is in the Blaxland blood: they can’t help it.
This time it was Edgar who was in trouble with bad men.
I didn’t want to do it then, either, but”— she shrugged—“it happened anyway.” Marcus pursed his lips.
There was something in her expression that made him think there was more to that than she was saying.
He had his doubts about the ‘bad men’. Oh, he could well believe that there were debts—the Blaxlands were notorious gamblers—but he couldn’t believe that first her father and then her brother had been in such dire straits as to have to sell a child in marriage.
They’d counted on her youth and innocence—and loyalty.
Her father and brother had rarely visited Ferndale when Tessa was growing up wild and neglected and unloved, except by servants. The lonely little girl would have been eager for their approval, desperate for their love.
Putty in their hands.
Marcus frowned. “You’re a beautiful woman. Why not marry a young man and settle down to raise a family—you don’t yet have children, do you?”
She flushed and looked down. “No,” she said in a low voice. “No children.”
“Do you gamble?”
She gave a huff of humorless laughter. “Never. It doesn’t appeal to me at all. I don’t even like playing cards, though of course I do to be polite. Though not for money—chicken stakes if I must. But I avoid it when I can.”
“And Edgar is planning a third marriage for you. What is his reason this time? Is he in debt again?”
She was silent a long time. She picked up her cup, hesitated, put it down, then sighed. “It’s much worse than that. He says I must marry again to save Ferndale.”
“Ferndale?” he repeated, surprised.
She nodded. “It’s my home, you see, and belongs to me.”
“I know that, but—”
“It belonged to Mama, not Papa. It was in her marriage settlements that it would come to her first-born daughter—which is me—on my twenty-fifth birthday. That’s later this year.
I would have gone to Ferndale immediately after Lord Hewitt died, but there was his estate to be disposed of which was a lot of work.
And since he’d willed everything to me, I had to remain to sign the various documents.
Edgar handled it of course, as he’d overseen the disposal of my first husband’s estate and knew what had to be done. ”
In other words, Edgar had been stripping every last penny from their estates.
“I also needed to arrange pensions for his servants. Some of them had been with him for decades.”
“Then after that was done, why did you not leave?” Marcus had a creeping suspicion of what was to come, but he wanted to hear it from her.
“Because as it turned out there was not a penny left. And then there were the mortgages to be sorted, of course. I didn’t realize—Edgar manages all that side of things for me, as Papa did before him.
And, of course, banks and lawyers and people who arrange mortgages won’t do business with females anyway.
Which is very frustrating, but what can you do? ”
“Which mortgages are these?”
“The Ferndale mortgages. Apparently the estate is deep in debt and has been for years—mortgaged to the hilt, Edgar said. I had no idea. And the man who holds the mortgages is threatening to foreclose. I couldn’t have that, I just couldn’t.
Lose my home?” She shook her head vehemently.
“Never! And since we have no money to pay the mortgages, Edgar insists that the only solution is to arrange another marriage for me—which would be my third and my last. If I married Sir Henry Lester, he would pay off the mortgage.” She shuddered.
“But I won’t do it—I couldn’t bear it. There must be another way. ”
There was a short silence. Marcus couldn’t speak for the anger that was choking him.
“Edgar has apologized about the mortgages. He says he forgot the last few payments, but I’m sure it was a lie.
My brother, like our father before him, is a hopeless gambler—it’s in his blood—and neither of them have been particularly lucky.
I’m sure he had the money ready to pay the mortgage but then, no doubt .
. . ‘There was this horse. And it was a dead cert to win.’” She shook her head sadly.
“Of course, it didn’t. None of his ‘dead certs’ ever do. ”
She stared into her tea for a moment. “But I’ve made it clear to Edgar that I will never marry again, not to Sir Henry, not to any man. And so he has gone out this morning to try again to get a loan to cover the mortgage interest payments. He’s trying very hard, but it won’t be easy.”
Marcus gritted his teeth, holding the words back.
He rose and strolled toward the mantlepiece, his back to her, as if warming himself—though the grate was empty—while he tried to master his rage and work out how to tell her.
And how much to tell her. Would she even believe him if he told her the unvarnished truth?
Probably not. Nevertheless, she had to be told. He couldn’t let her be persuaded to sacrifice herself a third time because of the lies her swine of a brother had told her—and this time Marcus knew for certain it was a lie—a big one, possibly the worst of all.
She wasn’t the mercenary ice-maiden Barney had warned him about.
He understood more now, and when she’d talked about her beloved Ferndale, her voice had warmed and he’d caught a glimpse, beneath the cool, polished facade, of the scruffy little girl who’d been passionate about her forest and the wildlife in it, and who cared nothing for riches or position. She wanted her home back.
But it was the one thing she couldn’t have.
It was none of his business—she was none of his business—but he couldn’t help himself.
She was his little friend of the forest, and her company had made his adolescent years at Alverleigh almost bearable.
He was damned if he let her go on thinking her sacrifice would save her home, but how to explain it without telling her the whole story? It was the devil of a coil.
He resumed his seat. “You say Ferndale is mortgaged to the hilt?”
She nodded. “Yes, and the mortgage holder is threatening imminent foreclosure unless we pay him immediately. That’s why Edgar was in a hurry to get me married. But I’ve convinced him to look for a different solution.”
Marcus took a deep breath. “I don’t quite know how to tell you this, Tessa, but the Ferndale estate was sold two years ago.”
She stared at him, then shook her head. “No, you’re mistaken.
It can’t have been sold. The Ferndale estate belongs to me and came to me from my mother.
She—or more likely my grandfather—must have known of the Blaxland tendency to gamble, and so it was written into her marriage settlements.
So you see it can’t possibly be sold without my permission— and I would never sell Ferndale. Never.”
“Nevertheless, it was sold two years ago.”
Two spots of color rose in her cheeks. “You’re wrong, I tell you. It’s not possible.” Her knuckles were white around her tea cup.
“Do you think I’d make such a mistake about an estate that borders my own? Ferndale has changed hands. Another family is living there now.”
“No.” Her complexion turned chalky. “It can’t have been sold. It can’t.” She was almost whispering, as if trying to convince herself. But he could tell she more than half believed him.
She rallied. “Edgar can’t have sold it, not without my permission. And I would never give it, never.”
“You mentioned he used to get you to sign documents.”
She stiffened. “Sometimes.”
“And do you read them—every detail?”
She looked at him, stricken. Her expression said it all.
There was a long silence. She put down her barely touched tea cup and pushed it away.
The clock in the hallway chimed the hour and she jumped and rose to her feet.
“My brother will be back soon, and he won’t be happy to see you here.
He dislikes callers and can get quite unpleasant about it, so I will bid you good day, Lord Alverleigh.
It was kind of you to call.” He could tell her mind was still elsewhere, no doubt reeling from the news he’d given her.
Marcus rose. “We used to be Marcus and Tessa.”
She shook her head sadly. “Goodbye, Lord Alverleigh.”
He moved toward the door, then turned back. Producing his silver card case, he took out a card and handed it to her, saying, “If there’s ever anything I can do for you, let me know.”
She glanced at it, but made no move to take it, so he placed it on a small side-table and left.
The butler slammed the door behind him.