Chapter 3 - Vera #2
“I’m not quite sure.” Vera tried to sound carefree, breezy, as if she were the sort of fashionable lady who was often invited to stay in grand houses for indeterminate lengths of time.
She thought her tone pulled off the illusion, even though she clenched the handle of her basket so hard it creaked.
Stephen’s eyes flicked down and she loosened her grip. She was unreasonably irritated that he’d picked up on the single detail that betrayed her inner turmoil.
“How long are you staying?” she snapped.
She regretted the words the instant they left her mouth. This was not the way to obtain his sympathy, his welcome. But there was something about him that she couldn’t even bring herself to pretend to like.
“It’s my house. I can stay as long as I like.”
Vera coated her lips with another cloying smile and tried again. “I only meant that you’re so dedicated to India. Surely you’re going to head back soon?”
Please, she thought, desperately. Please just go back to India.
“No.” It was a clipped, curt answer that left no wiggle room in interpretation.
“Why not?”
“I hardly see how that’s any of your business.”
She stopped in the lane, whirled to face him. “And yet, it’s your business how long I’ll stay?”
“It’s my house,” he repeated, doggedly. “Of course it’s my business how long guests stay.”
The emphasis he put on the word had her narrowing her eyes. He said it as if he doubted its truth, as if it meant something completely different than the traditional definition, but for the life of her, Vera couldn’t figure out what.
What he said was true—it was his house. It was his business how long guests stayed. As the owner, he could see her out on the front stoop that very instant, and she wouldn’t have anything to say about it.
Vera turned her face down the lane and began walking once more.
“Where did you say you were from, again?” he asked.
“I’m from London.”
“You grew up in London?”
She nodded. It was mostly the truth. Of course, she’d been to the countryside a few times in her youth, but the bulk of her life had been spent behind the brick walls of the London townhome of her parents, Lord and Lady Ashbury, of middling fortune and even lesser fame.
Now, she didn’t even have claim to that.
“How did you end up in Devon?”
“I came with the Duchess of Canterbury.”
It was the truth, though Candace hadn’t been the duchess at the time.
Another story for another day—Vera certainly wasn’t going to tell the baron the truth of that.
He seemed to want to believe the worst of her for some reason; she wasn’t about to tell him that Candace had been running from a scandal when she left London, and that Vera had been running from home.
“But she wasn’t the duchess yet, was she?”
“What precisely is your point?” She stopped again, met his eyes again. She was tired, and if he had some charge against her, she’d rather he just spit it out and be done with it.
“Why aren’t you staying with her, if she’s such a close friend?”
“She’s newly married.”
“So?”
Vera’s cheeks flushed. How to explain that Candace had been so distracted with her whirlwind engagement, with all that had transpired, and then her new marriage, that she’d simply forgotten Vera, left her behind in her brother’s house like a forgotten shoe?
Vera hadn’t so much as seen her for more than a fortnight. They hadn’t had a falling out or anything of the sort—Candace simply had different priorities now. She had a new husband, a new household, a new son. Of course she was busy. Of course Vera had slid far down the list of Candace’s concerns.
Vera didn’t blame her for that; there was nothing wrong or unseemly about it. But the way the baron said the words implied there was. The way the baron said the words, it sounded like he thought Vera was a liar of the finest order.
“The duchess is busy with her new household,” Vera said, with all the patience she could muster—which wasn’t much. “A houseguest wouldn’t be welcome at the moment. I’d be in the way.”
“Montclare is mammoth.” He gestured wildly in the vague direction of the house, even though it was well out of sight.
“Perhaps once you are a newlywed, you’ll understand. I have heard that congratulations are in order. Where is your bride-to-be?”
His expression iced over faster than a shallow puddle in winter. “You’ve heard wrong, madam. I am not betrothed.”
Vera frowned. The baroness had been quite clear about one of his recent letters. How could she have misunderstood so completely?
“My apologies.”
“No need.”
There didn’t seem to be much to say after that. Vera set off again, the baron following at her side, frowning down at her every few moments.
Their footsteps were crunching across the gravel drive of Bertforth House when he said, “Why don’t you return to London, if that’s where your family lives?”
Drat—she had almost made it in the front door without another question. “Perhaps you’ve been so long away from England that you’ve lost all your manners. Is that it?”
“Pardon me?”
She gave him a dazzling smile. “You are pardoned. Thank you for asking.”
Then she darted through the front door and up the stairs toward her bedroom without so much as a backwards glance.