Chapter 23
Peaches would have preferred not to remember the remainder of her first foray into polite London society.
Guests had been ushered out of Chattam Hall without delay and without an explanation for the absence of their hostess.
Peaches hadn’t been able to blame her. Lady Louise had disappeared to points unknown with Stephen when a messenger from Kenneworth had arrived, a briefcase full of proof in his hand. Neither of them had returned.
The rest of the company was still in the library in various states of distress. Peaches had helped Megan distribute beverages of all kinds, tried to make innocuous conversation with her sister, then decided that just sitting was going to drive her nuts.
She didn’t understand how it was possible for a man to gamble away an entire estate on a single hand of cards. She also wasn’t sure how Andrea’s father had wound up with something that should have been in the possession of the heirs of Kenneworth.
What she could understand, however, was that Andrea wanted Stephen. Blackmailing him to marry her was original, though. It was obvious Andrea didn’t know him at all if she’d thought that was going to work.
Or so Peaches hoped.
She paced along the hallway, trying to keep herself awake. Chattam Hall was absolutely gorgeous, full of all kinds of Victorian and pre-Victorian antiques. Peaches admired for a bit, then continued on down the hallway.
She shouldn’t have stopped by the half-open door, indeed she told herself quite specifically that she was an idiot to stop in front of a half-open door, but her feet seemed to be acting of their own accord.
She heard the voices and knew she should have continued on, but something wouldn’t let her.
She leaned against the wall just outside the door and eavesdropped shamelessly.
“There is no hope for the thing,” Lady Louise was saying grimly. “It is as he says.”
“Impossible,” Stephen said firmly. “He’s a—”
“Yes, yes, I know what he is, but in this, he has a case.”
Peaches shook her head in silent admiration.
The world might have been lying in ruins around her, but Lady Louise Heydon-Brooke would soldier on in spite of it.
Stephen sounded less determined than furious, but Peaches couldn’t blame him.
She didn’t want to believe that David had any claim to Artane, but it was difficult to deny what she had seen with her own eyes.
“I’ll find a way to fund this,” Stephen said.
“Yes, indeed you will,” Lady Louise said briskly, “and you will do this by marrying.”
There was a conspicuous silence, and then Stephen cleared his throat.
“I believe, Grandmother, that I am far past the age when—”
“You are inclined to give into foolish dalliances? Yes, I should hope so. You will wed, sir, and you will wed the girl I choose for you. She will possess not only a title but vast resources. It is the only way.”
“No—”
“It is your duty, Haulton,” Lady Louise said with a crispness that made Peaches flinch. “It is a duty, I add unnecessarily, which you have been shirking for at least a decade and which you will shirk no longer.”
“Ridiculous,” Stephen said shortly. “Grandmother, with all due respect, I will not be told whom to marry. Not even by you.”
“You will,” Lady Louise said icily, “or you will never see a bloody penny of my money.”
“Do you actually believe I care for any of that?”
“You will, my boy, when you are the Earl of Artane and need to repair your roof.” She made a noise of disbelief.
“Is this how you were raised, Stephen? To throw away everything your ancestors fought and bled for, guarded, shepherded through countless wars and intrigues, simply because you continue to entertain a preposterously romantic notion of marital love?”
Peaches listened to a silence that went on for several minutes.
“Have you a list, Grandmother?” Stephen said finally.
“I do,” Lady Louise said shortly, “and I will choose someone suitable from it. I absolutely refuse to see that pile of stones that is your father’s heart and soul be sold off to silence that damned fool from Kenneworth. Worse still that it should fall into his hands.”
More silence ensued.
“Keep her for your mistress if you like, for she is very lovely. But you will not wed her.”
“Is that all, Grandmother?”
“That is all, Stephen.”
Peaches tried to run away before the door opened fully, but she couldn’t. Stephen looked as if he’d just finished a marathon and thought throwing up might be a good thing to do next. He took her hand and pulled her along with him.
“You shouldn’t,” she said, pulling her hand away.
He stopped and looked at her. His eyes were a dark, stormy gray. “I suppose you heard all that.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Well, she damn well meant you to,” he said angrily. He took her hand again and pulled her with him. “We’re going home.”
“I can ride with Tess and John—”
“You will most definitely not ride home with them. You will come home with me.”
“Listen, buster, I’m not going to be your mistress.”
He stopped so suddenly she almost tripped. He steadied her with his hands on her arms, then looked at her seriously.
“Do you think for one minute I would ask you to be?”
She shook her head, because she knew if she spoke, she would weep. And she never wept. She pointedly ignored the fact that she had suffered from a brief bout of the sniffles in Stephen’s library the evening before.
“I’ll see to this the old-fashioned way.”
“Are you going to shoot him?” she asked in surprise. “Or your grandmother?”
He blinked, then he smiled very briefly.
“She is a matriarch in the grand tradition, but she will see reason eventually. As for the other?” He put his arm around her shoulders and walked with her down the long hallway.
“No, I won’t shoot him, though I’m tempted.
It will take money and vast amounts of it. ”
“And where will you get that?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Do you believe him?”
He sighed deeply. “I have no reason not to.”
She paused with him as he bid a very short good-bye to her family and his brother and sister-in-law, then allowed him to bundle her up and help her into his car. The drive back to Cambridge was accomplished in silence, though he did put her hand palm down on his leg and hold it rather tightly.
They were pulling into his driveway before she thought she could speak casually.
“You can change your mind, you know.”
He glanced at her. “Peaches, darling, it would take much more than this for me to change my mind.”
“This is pretty big.”
“So is my affection for you.”
“Affection?” she asked, and she smiled because she couldn’t help herself.
“I’m trying not to frighten you off.”
She smiled truly then, because he was so utterly charming.
He turned the car off, then simply sat there in silence for a bit. “You could change your mind, you know,” he said finally.
“Why would I?” she asked. “I don’t have any money. If you don’t have any money, then we’ll both not have any money together. Though I’ll tell you now that I think I would be much more suited to a life of poverty than you would be.”
He shot her a look. “Do you, indeed?”
“Yes,” she said easily. “You with your very soft life, never pitting your considerable brainpower against obscure and obsolete languages, never getting off your fetching backside to do anything but trot from your soft office chair to an equally climate-controlled lecture hall.”
He laughed. “Climate-controlled, my arse.”
“Oh, is it chilly inside those ancient halls where you ply your dastardly trade? What deprivation you already suffer.”
He shifted in his seat to look at her. “Let’s leave that for a moment and discuss my fetching backside.”
“You, my lord, are a lecher.”
“And you, my love, looked absolutely breathtaking tonight.”
She smoothed her hands over the skirts of her gown. “I pulled the—well, I was going to say I pulled the tags off the gown so we can’t return it, but it didn’t have any tags which was very frightening. I’m not sure I could get your money back anyway, though. There’s sherbet on the hem.”
“When did you spill sherbet on the hem?”
“I didn’t spill it,” she said pointedly, “you did. While you were trying to grope me during dinner.”
He smiled and lifted her hand to kiss it. “I was trying to be discreet. Unfortunately.”
“You were taking liberties.”
“Darling, you have no idea the liberties—well, never mind. I wouldn’t have taken liberties, even if I’d had you to myself. A chaste kiss, perhaps, at the appropriate moment.” He unlocked the car and reached for the door. “Let’s go inside and see if that moment arrives.”
She waited for him to open her door for her, then chewed on her words until they were standing just outside his house. He put the key in the lock, then looked at her.
“What?” he asked quietly.
“What would you do if you lost it all?”
He shrugged. “Sell the car, move to France.” He glanced at her briefly. “We might grow grapes.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Neither do I. Apples, then, or olives.”
“We’d have to move to Italy for olives.”
“My Italian is terrible,” he admitted. “How is yours?”
“I could get us to the loo and onto a train, but that’s about it.”
He let her into his house, shut and locked the door behind them, then pulled her into his arms. “Thank you,” he said with feeling. “I needed a little levity.”
“Levity?” she echoed. “I have to be honest with you, Stephen, I’d much rather know you as poor and insignificant. Your titles and wealth are not assets.”
He looked at her gravely. “Can you live with them?”
“Your grandmother doesn’t think I should.”
“My grandmother talks too much.”
“I don’t think she’ll be the only one talking.”
“Do you care?”
“Do you?”
He shot her a look. “I absolutely do not.”
She only lifted her eyebrows briefly. She didn’t care what anyone said about her, but that was because she knew who she was, how she treated others, and where she was going. Comments on her choice of road or destination didn’t bother her.