CHAPTER THREE #3
He had sat long over his port, for some unfathomable reason unwilling to resume battle.
Stefan knew he had badly mishandled the girl.
Misjudged her character? He was not in the habit of examining his own methods.
Over the years he had found ways of dealing with Corisande that invariably succeeded.
As for Dion, she might be a minx but in general she accepted his dictum, even if she debated with him.
His servants naturally did just as he instructed.
Never before had he been obliged to quell outright rebellion. Lucy Graydene was a novel experience.
It struck Stefan he had spoken nothing but the truth when he compared her temperament to his uncle’s.
She had come back at him in fury, and the loss of control merely strengthened the similarity.
His uncle Beves had been a man of intemperate passions, quickly roused, and as rapidly doused.
Paulina shared something of his character, but in her it led to sulks rather than tantrums. A tendency she might have learned at her father’s knee.
Paulina’s mother had died young from the scarlet fever, and she had been brought up largely by servants and her governess.
His uncle had made but a poor fist of parenting.
Her putative half-sister had been luckier perhaps, for the loss of Lucy’s mother had gained her an excellent father.
There was no knowing what sort of a woman had given birth to Lucy, and Stefan could not but wonder what inherited traits might be lurking in Lucy’s armoury.
Meanwhile, he must find a better way to deal with her. If she had professed herself determined on going, Stefan was equally so on her remaining. But he had no desire to engage in a pitched battle to ensure her obedience.
The port had sunk considerably in the decanter by the time he decided upon his best approach.
If Lucy were requested to name all her objections, she must, Stefan reasoned, argue herself out of them.
What else could she do then but give in with a good grace.
He had entered the Red Saloon with the intention of putting this admirable plan into action.
But the note of despair in Lucy’s words went straight to an untouched nerve, causing him to make a precipitate retreat.
Without thinking what he did, he made his way to a side door and slipped out into the gardens. The cold night air hit him on the instant, but he did not flinch. In his mind, the tragic note played and replayed, the simplicity of Lucy’s words lost in the turmoil of emotion.
There was something about the girl. Had he not been struck by the self-same note in the air she had worn just this morning?
Was it only this morning? It felt like a lifetime.
It was hard to remember yesterday, when all he had known of Lucy Graydene was a letter to his uncle that he had taken as a harpy’s threat.
Anything less like a harpy it would be hard to imagine. Lucy Graydene was…
His mind blanked. Stefan had no words to describe her. She was an enigma. He did not understand her. At one moment, a passionate termagant; at another, a creature lost in the wilderness. Yet she could equally appear withdrawn, cool and hard-headed.
Stefan spent some time in contemplation of Lucy’s differing moods without deriving any benefit from the exercise beyond a feeling of frustration.
He was regretfully obliged to acknowledge that he had no notion how to deal with her.
Were it not for the inconvenience of conscience and honour, he would abandon the whole scheme.
Driven back into the house by the frosty night air, he returned to the hall and ran lightly upstairs, traversing the corridors towards his own apartments. At a bend in a narrow passage, he came plump upon Lucy, dressed in her greatcoat and bonnet, a bandbox in one gloved hand.
“What in the world are you doing?”
The harsh tone spurred Lucy’s determination. “I am leaving.”
He barred her way. “In the middle of the night? Are you mad?”
Lucy clutched her bandbox more tightly. “I don’t care.”
She had acted on impulse. Arriving in her bedchamber, Lucy had intended nothing more adventurous than changing into her nightgown and climbing into the bed which had been made ready for her.
Even the sheets had been warmed, she had found, when she felt them, just as she had always done for Papa, checking to see if Jenny, the vicarage’s all-purpose maid, had been diligent.
Quite suddenly she had been overwhelmed with an urgent need.
Without thought, she had heaved her bandbox on to the bed, thrust everything into it and strapped it tightly.
Seizing her bonnet, she had jammed it all anyhow on her head, tying the black ribbons with feverish haste.
Lastly she had thrust her arms into her coat, hardly troubling to do up more than one or two buttons, and quickly left the chamber before she could change her mind.
It was the most curst mischance she had run almost immediately into Lord Pennington.
He was looking at her in the dim light of his candle, searching her face. Lucy huddled into herself, as if she would draw away from his scrutiny.
When he spoke again, his voice has softened almost to a caress. “Oh, Lucy. You poor, lost little soul.”
As she stared at him, bemused, an unprecedented rush of some unnamed emotion spread through her bosom. Absurdly, she wanted to weep.
“Don’t, Stefan,” she uttered brokenly. “Pray don’t.”
“Don’t what? Feel sorry for you?” His hand reached out to hers and Lucy relinquished her bandbox into his hold without knowing what she did. “Come.”
Before she knew it, she was being led back down the corridor and into her bedchamber. Stefan set down her bandbox and thrust her unceremoniously to sit upon the bed. Then he leaned against one of the posts, looking down at her.
“Lucy, I put it badly. I should not have spoken to you as I did this afternoon.”
Still beset by discomfiting pressures in her chest, Lucy could not answer. Was this the man who had driven her into fury? How had he changed?
As if he heard her thought, Stefan spoke again. “I’ve been thinking it over and I realise I had not considered your feelings in all this.” His smile was rueful. “I am not in general given to examining feelings.”
He sat on the bed, a short distance away, and Lucy instinctively pushed herself back, out of his reach. Stefan threw up a hand.
“Don’t fear me.” He glanced about, seeming to realise for the first time the impropriety of his situation. “I should not be here, but no matter.”
Lucy found her tongue. “Why are you here?”
“You can ask that? When I find you escaping at dead of night? What possessed you, Lucy?”
She looked away, all too conscious of the stupidity of her conduct, now the feelings which had prompted it were past.
“I don’t know. I feel alien in this place.”
“As you would do anywhere,” Stefan said gently. “Lucy, I am not ordering you. I am asking you. Please stay. At least for long enough to take stock and decide what you want to do.”
What she wanted to do? Not what he wanted her to do. Lucy could not prevent a rise of suspicion.
“Why are you being like this? Is it to trick me?”
He sighed. “I can’t blame you for thinking so, but no. Let me help you, if I can. If, after a time, you still wish to go your own way, then so be it.”
She eyed him. He appeared wholly sincere. If only his attitude had not been so unlike all she had known of him earlier, she might be induced to believe in a change of heart. She took refuge in prevarication.
“I cannot stay here. I have no clothes, for one thing. For another, I have to complete arrangements at the vicarage.”
“What arrangements?”
“There are some more of Papa’s things to be disposed of, and my own to be packed up and stored — somewhere.”
For a moment he said nothing, merely looking at her in a fashion suggesting he was thinking of something else. Then he nodded with an air of decision.
“Very well. We shall journey to your home as soon as may be and I will help you complete your arrangements.”
Shock suspended Lucy’s mind. Then she said the first thing that came into her head. “I cannot travel with you alone!”
Stefan grinned. “I hadn’t thought of that. We will take Dion along. She will make an adequate chaperon. Besides, I have no doubt at all she would refuse to be left behind.”
February had arrived by the time the expedition finally set off on the following Monday. For this delay, Stefan blamed both the Lord’s Day, upon which he surmised Lucy would not care to travel, and his secretary.
“Barnsley will not suffer me to depart without settling a number of matters requiring my attention.”
Lucy, who had recovered her composure, if not her suspicions of his lordship, could not forbear a dig at this. “I am surprised you allow Mr Barnsley to dictate to you, my lord.”
She was niggled by the amused gleam in his eye that was rapidly becoming familiar to her.
“I may get my way with everyone else, Lucy, but to my secretary I am as a cypher. He commands, and I have but to obey.”
“That I refuse to believe,” stated Lucy.
“My lord,” he put in, grinning at her. “You must always add that in when addressing me, or I shall begin to think you accept the relationship between us — cousin.”
Lucy could not help a choke of laughter. “Well, I am not used to your brand of informality.”
“Yet. I feel sure you will become accustomed.”
Lucy rather thought he was right. Her ruffled feathers had been thoroughly soothed by the change in his attitude towards her, so much so she was in a fair way to accepting the move to Pennington Manor as permanent — a frame of mind which she tried to avoid falling into.
It was all very well in the intimacy of the family circle, but what of a wider frame of reference?