Chapter 17 #2
“So you were married legally,” West said slowly, needing to understand this. His heart pounded thunderously, his ears drowning with the pressure and the sound. “But not in actuality? It was not valid in the . . . common sense?”
He couldn’t make himself say the words, for whatever reason. He just had to know.
Elena’s smile was wry now, the glassy look in her eyes gone.
“The marriage was never consummated, no. As I said, Leonard never visited. He wrote the occasional letter, but only if I had asked a question that truly required an answer. But they were short, terse, and dismissive.” She waved a hand as though she could brush the lingering ghost of Leonard away from the table.
“Anyway . . . immediately after the wedding, I went to the solicitor’s office and made certain I had the authority to make decisions for the estate, and I fired Rokesby. ”
“That was an excellent decision,” West grumbled. “He earned such a percentage from the miners who ruined our fields, it is astonishing the house itself still stands rather than being razed for the land beneath it.”
“The only thing he ever managed was his own finances,” Elena said with an agreeing nod.
“His own interests. He only cared about his status as the estate manager, not what the estate actually looked like. Or needed. And since I had married Leonard, officially, the dowry went into the estate accounts. I just happened to divert it specifically so that it would not go to Leonard’s European accounts.
” She grinned widely, showing her teeth in an almost feral manner.
It was the most adorably vicious thing he’d ever seen from her, and she was so proud even with that look that he just had to laugh. Hard and loud.
She began to giggle in response, but not in a simpering, musical way like other young ladies did. Her giggles were throaty and bubbly, like a deep, flowing brook as it rippled over rocks.
He loved the sound of it. The energy of it.
The ease of it. The way it would not shift, no matter the volume, and would be just as delightful as a whisper as it would a bellow.
Her eyes squeezed shut with her laughter, her rosiness rising in her cheeks like a sunrise.
Tendrils of her dark hair floated around her ears and her brow, framing the utter perfection of her face.
He couldn’t look away. Didn’t want to look away.
Didn’t dare look away.
Deuce take it, he was obsessed. That was new.
She’d always been pretty, that was no secret.
But this captivation with the very sight of her, which seemed to be giving him life and breath, was a bit like an evening with a good whiskey before a fire.
Warm and gently burning and reflective and connecting his soul with the deepest parts of himself.
He needed sleep. He was exhausted from London and travel, and hearing about Elena’s past. He just needed to recover, and his usual manner and style of thinking would return to him.
And once he immersed himself in the estate matters again, everything would feel more natural to him.
“Thank you for telling me all of this, Elena,” West murmured when their laughter faded.
“I know I’ve given you little reason to trust me, especially about your past. But I’ve come back from London with a determination to be your friend, if for no other reason than because this place is still functioning because of you and you alone. ”
The widening of her eyes only heightened the brightness of her smile, and he saw her shoulders droop in relaxation.
That had to mean trust, didn’t it?
He hoped so. He needed her to trust him. Needed to be someone worthy of her trust.
“Is that the dulcet tones of my favorite cousin I hear?” Fred’s voice bellowed from the corridor outside the kitchen.
Elena snorted and covered her mouth with her hands.
West gave her a scolding look. “You’ve been encouraging him, haven’t you?”
She shook her head quickly, whimpering a negative sound from behind her hands. But he saw the tears of mirth in her eyes.
He heaved a long-suffering sigh and looked up at the ceiling. “Now Mrs. Andrews will have to feed him luncheon as well.”
A soft voice cleared a throat before the woman herself appeared. “I was already preparing for that, my lord,” Mrs. Andrews assured him with a warm smile. “Mr. Gates is very prompt in his desire for luncheon.”
“My stomach is better than any clock known to man!” Fred crowed as he entered the kitchen, patting his belly encouragingly.
West looked at him a moment, then back to Elena. “It’s a good thing he did not come to Fenmore before I inherited. You’d never have been able to support his meals without the additional funds.”
Elena dropped her hands, fighting a smile. “I think we’d have managed. It’s astonishing what you can do with vegetables, broth, and breads these days, even if you make up the recipes as you go. He would never have known that he was eating things actually good for him.”
Nodding soberly, his smile entirely mental, West nodded. “He has never met a vegetable he willingly ate.”
“Hey!” Fred yelled in a plaintive tone, making them all laugh again.