Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
West’s head was absolutely pounding, and he hadn’t even had a drop of alcohol.
That day.
Mostly because the house didn’t keep anything stronger than Madeira in its stores, which was likely for the best, but it was deuced inconvenient when he’d had a day like this.
West was in an even worse mood now than he had been when Elena had informed him of the state of the dower house.
Or rather, it’s lack of state.
How had he missed that the building was gone? He hadn’t gone about the entire estate yet, of course, but he’d seen quite a bit of it. And the dower house was just off the . . . well, it was over by the . . .
Hmm. He couldn’t seem to remember exactly where it had been, but that was only because the dower house was the landmark on the estate that he had used to orient himself to other things rather than other locations on the estate being relative to that house itself.
He would admit that the dower house had never been anything remarkable or noteworthy, even for its intended purpose. He’d thought so when his mother had resided there, and he could only imagine how much worse it had gotten before it was torn down.
Elena had been the one to make that decision, he had no doubt.
Leonard had been away, by all accounts. He had always been away.
Elena, who had no notion how significant the dower house had or had not been to the family, apart from what Mrs. Havens or Worsley could have told her.
Elena, who had no ties to the land, the house, the title, or the family apart from an engagement.
Elena, who had likely been the only one who could have made that decision without sentimentality and emotion in favor of the greater needs of the estate and the promise of a better future.
He wasn’t certain if he wanted to thank her or wring her neck.
He and Fred had spent the day going through the house and making notes on the most significant repairs needed, and he was already overwhelmed.
It might have been better to reconstruct the inner half of the wing, all things considered.
The courtyard-facing windows and walls were far worse than the front-facing, and he had no idea why.
The stables had been dismantled, ostensibly by the miners who had come through over the years.
With no one to protest or protect the land, what was to stop them from stripping the building of the wood for their own ends?
The makeshift stables currently housing his horse, Fred’s horse, and the estate’s horse were all that remained.
And they were all tending to their own horses, which was not a massive trial, but certainly not how Fenmore did things.
It was not how he wanted Fenmore to do things.
But what he wanted and what he was able to do were entirely different matters.
And now he couldn’t even get rid of his mysterious scandal in the form of Elena.
He really ought to be thinking more of the plan of his estate than worrying about her, but she was like an itch he could not scratch—always there, and growing more irritating the longer he thought about it.
He’d never be able to think clearly about the estate while she was here.
There was a knock at the study door, and West barely restrained a growl. “Come,” he barked out, wishing he could say something else.
Fred poked his head in, grinning madly. “You didn’t want to say that.”
“Then why did you open it?” West mumbled, rubbing at his brow.
“Because I love doing what you don’t want.”
He heard his cousin enter the study fully, close the door, and approach, but he did not look up at him. “What do you want?”
“There’s a dance in the village tomorrow night,” Fred informed him, sounding practically gleeful with the announcement.
West groaned and buried his head in his hands, dropping both to the surface of the desk. “No.”
“Oh yes.”
“I don’t want to.”
Fred chortled loudly and reached across the desk to pat the back of West’s head. “What are you, six? It is a dance, Weston, not a form of torture.”
“I don’t like people,” West replied, his voice muffled by his hands and the wood.
“And people don’t like you in return,” Fred quipped, “but you need to step into your role here, and you can’t afford to not like people, or for them to not like you, until they’ve accepted you.
After that, feel free to become a recluse.
But a benevolent recluse. With a functioning estate.
One who hires locals. And has the best harvest suppers. And—”
“You’re making me the most social recluse that ever was called a recluse,” West interrupted grumpily. “Somewhat defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
Fred sputtered dramatically. “I am trying to make you an anti-villain, man. Buck up!”
“No.”
The pat on his head became more of a blow, making West grunt in discomfort and swat a hand in his cousin’s general direction.
He seemed to move away, and West rose up blearily to meet his eyes as Fred sat in a chair opposite the desk, propping his feet on the surface lazily. “Oh, you look like hell. What happened?”
West grimaced and scrubbed his hands over his face quickly before slumping back in his chair and resting his arms on the rests. “Elena. Again. I tried to have her arrange flowers today.”
Fred roared a laugh and applauded several times. “And how did that go, dear Cousin?”
“About as well as you think, I’d guess.” West shrugged in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner, but was too tense to manage.
“I was trying to provoke her, get her out of my way, but she just turned it back on me. It is as if she is determined to not be ladylike, and I don’t understand it.
She’s furious about opening the rooms, even though we only did it to air them out and start to look at them in natural light.
She wouldn’t let me explain to her, Fred. ”
“And how hard did you try?” came the drawling response.
West winced, recalling how he hadn’t even managed the beginning of an explanation to her when she’d walked away. Instead, he’d decided she was too stubborn and it was better not to involve her in any way.
“You’re an idiot.” Fred heaved a sigh before grinning crookedly. “I’d wager she looked positively delectable all in a temper at you. Those brilliantly blue eyes afire with ice, her cheeks flushed with a delicate pink.”
“Shut up!” West said quickly with a silencing hand. He already knew how stunning Elena was, whether in a temper or not. He did not need his cousin to remind him.
“She might make me a perfectly pleasant wife,” Fred mused.
West glared at him, his jaw aching with the clenching of his teeth. “She would murder you.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” Fred smiled almost dreamily at the prospect. “But if she was willing to marry Leonard, she must be desperate. And now she has no money either, and I’ve got enough to be comfortable, which should suit her, considering she’s been staying here in the servants’ quarters.”
“She’s been what?” West cried, shooting to his feet.
Fred gaped, wide eyed and still, before giving him a delighted grin. “Oh . . . oh, his lordship doesn’t like that, does he?”
West froze, suddenly uneasy and wanting to bolt despite the fire that had just been pumping in his veins. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing at all, my lord.” Fred winked audaciously before chuckling to himself.
“Why does it bother you that she’s been sleeping there?
She’s not your intended. And with the state of the rooms we’ve seen, it shouldn’t surprise you that she’s chosen the simplest place.
And the portion of the house where others were residing. ”
Slowly, West sank back down in his chair. “She didn’t want to be alone,” he murmured in realization.
Fred shook his head very slowly. “She did not. And think of all the work involved in opening a family or guest bedchamber that hasn’t been used for years, and what would go into maintaining it.
Can you see her wanting Mrs. Havens or Worsley to bother with all of that for her when the rest of the house looks as it does? ”
No, West could not see that. They hadn’t even known Elena for a week yet, but he knew she would have hated to have added more work to those who were already living in harsher conditions than they ought.
“I can’t send her to the dower house,” West confessed on a pained sigh.
“I didn’t think you would, scandal or no scandal,” Fred told him with a wave. “We’ll come up with some other excuse for her to be here. Cousin? Ward? Go straight into taking up your brother’s intended for your own?”
“Half,” West snapped before he could stop himself.
Fred beamed like a proud parent. “Love that you chose to correct that aspect first. Instinct never lies.”
West picked up an ink blotter and threw it at his cousin’s head. “That is not what I meant!”
“Leonard being your half brother?” Fred queried after dodging. “Fairly certain you did, mate.”
Pinching his nose, West exhaled roughly. “Why are you the way you are?”
“When you find out, let my mother and sisters know. They’ve wondered from my very beginning.” Fred lazily crossed his ankle over a knee. “So you can’t send her to the dower house. Is that why you are emotionally incapacitated tonight? Your heart feels too hot and your skin doesn’t fit?”
West stared at his cousin, horror and amusement and confusion blending in a medley of sensation and thought in him. “What are you talking about?”
Fred’s expression fell into one that matched his own, down to the puckering of his brow. “What are you talking about? You don’t want her to leave. You like her here and are willing to risk the scandal for her pretty fire.”
“Absolutely bleeding not!” West roared, trying to shoot to his feet again, but his knees caught the underside of his desk this time and sent jolts of pain radiating up and down his thighs, sending him back into his chair with a grunt of pain.
Fred cackled, one hand going to his eyes as he reveled in West’s pain, and only when he was wiping tears of mirth from his skin and the corners of his eyes did he meet West’s gaze again.
“Oh, Fate is clearly having a wonderful time with you, perhaps even punishing you for lies. But returning to topic: If that isn’t why she can’t go to the dower house, what is? ”
“There is no dower house, it seems,” West told him simply, rubbing at the tender spots on his thighs.
All amusement faded from Fred’s face entirely. “Wait, what?”
West nodded somberly. “We cannot send Elena to the dower house because the dower house was demolished two years ago. It was already crumbling, wasting space, and the fields had been destroyed by miners over the years, so they needed another plot to work while they tried to salvage them. She approved the house being razed and the land used as another field. Williams turned it into a safe cache of land while the other fields recovered, and it might have been one of the most genius things they’ve done. ”
“So an action that saved the estate has prevented you having a convenient place to stash the inconvenient woman, leaving you grateful but grumpy, while facing a scandal amidst attempting to continue saving the estate.”
That was the perfect way to describe things, and West didn’t know how to respond. “Erm . . . yes,” he managed to admit. “That sums it up sufficiently.”
Fred chuckled easily and cocked his head to one side.
“Should be an interesting puzzle to solve, eh? What to do with the mysterious woman to whom you owe your inheritance being worth something, but who irks you into madness? What to do, what to do? Perhaps we should take her to the dance as well tomorrow night.”
West shook his head immediately. “No. No, we are not doing that.”
“We cannot stop her from attending if she wishes to, you fool.” His cousin laughed, clearly amused by everything West objected to.
“Obviously,” he muttered. “But we are not going with her like some bizarre mosaic of a family unit. Are you trying to invite gossip? We are already going to collect it simply by being tied to Fenmore, but if we attend all together, it will put our situation on the tips of every tongue present. You heard the Fultons—everybody loves the incomparable Miss Ellie, which means everybody knows Miss Ellie, which means they know she lives at Fenmore. If she wants to go to the dance, she can most certainly attend, obviously. But not with us in one company.”
Fred sat silently, watching him for a long moment even after he’d finished speaking.
“Now what?” West snapped.
“I cannot wait to see what happens in this masterful scenario. It’s going to be vastly entertaining for me.”