An Untitled Lady: A Novel Read online

  She shot away from him anyway, stopping near the night-dark windows. The rain had started in earnest, he saw in her wavering reflection.

  Deacon paced to the desk, and then turned back to Nash. “Brilliant. I would never have thought of it. Do you think Ellspeth will cede the field now? Bad form not to, really.”

  The lady shuddered.

  Nash fought the unexpected urge to comfort her. He was just as puzzled by her outburst as Deacon. Unlike his brother, though, he’d seen the flash of shock at Deacon’s reception of her news.

  She had expected to be welcomed.

  Almost without realizing it, he was closer to her, within arm’s reach. “You thought we would all know, didn’t you?”

  Deacon prattled on. “Come, come now, spill. You know you can’t keep a secret, Nash.”

  “Bollocks. And I’m no part of this.”

  “What can you mean? Wait. Little lost Wetherby, are you in league with your uncle? This smells of his doing.” Deacon’s light tone darkened. “It’s far too jocular for something my dear brother would do.”

  She snapped around to stare at him. “Absolutely not.”

  Deacon at last turned to look at her. His eyes widened, finally catching on. “You were serious?” He collapsed into the chair in front of the desk

  “Pray, sit,” Miss Wetherby said acidly.

  Nash took his father’s chair, realizing at the last moment that it swiveled. He braced his palms on the cleared expanse of the writing surface to steady himself. He rather liked this view of his brother, bewildered and in the beggar’s seat. But Deacon was old news; the lady was the draw. With a raised eyebrow and a slight dip of his head, he directed her to the chair beside Deacon. She took the hint, stepping directly in front of it and sinking down slowly and so neatly she did not need the arms to support her. A lady, to the bone.

  Deacon sat, hands twitching but mouth closed, his current of words at a brief ebb. Nash cleared his throat. They both looked up to him, Miss Wetherby in wariness, Deacon in supplication. He liked this power, too, and chose to use it on the lady first.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Your father.” Her words cast a chill across the room.

  “Merciful heavens.” Deacon slouched in the seat, throwing an arm up, as if pleading with his god. “The man reaches out from his grave to direct our lives.”

  Nash waved his hand, distracting his brother and cutting the rant short. “Explain, please, Miss Wetherby.”

  She centered her round-eyed gaze on Deacon, who seemed to be staring at the ceiling. “We entered into a contract, sir, of marriage. I saw some papers, a draft. I was given to understand that you had promised, as well.”

  Lord Shaftsbury launched forward and slapped his hand onto his knee with a sound crack. She flinched as if it had been a physical blow. “I did no such thing. The man who promised you was already married.”

  “Not to him. He promised me to you. That is what I have been in training for all these years.”

  “I can’t believe my father trained up another tyrant to replace him when he shuffled off. You, ma’am, are no lady.”

  Miss Wetherby closed her eyes, drawing in a breath as if containing her temper against the ranting of a child. “Who made the agreement is not my concern. I merely seek to honor it.”

  “You mean, you did not agree, either? That’s rich. Two unhappy souls bound for eternity.”

  “Hold fast.” Nash tried to regain the line of his thinking. “What do you mean, in training?”

  She answered, again not taking her eyes from Deacon. “I’m to be your complement. I know the crops your tenants raise, and how they remedied the blight from aught nine. I can explain why the irrigation routes on your back twenty look askew but do, in fact, work. I’ve kept the books for Miss Marsden’s Academy, including tenants, sharecroppers, and charity payments. I acted as chatelaine these past three years. And I’ve studied the history and maintenance records of Shaftsbury, as well as your places in London and the estate in Scotland.”

  Deacon sighed theatrically. “I suppose you’ve got my maiden speech in Lords written up, as well.”

  Though her jaw shut tight, her feline eyes started to moisten. She was as much the victim as they were. Perhaps more.

  She must have believed his father, the old tyrant. Must have thought he had her interests at heart. She was wrong. They all were.

  This time the breath she took in shook her shoulders, breaking training. “Do you wish to read the agreement? I have the letters in my trunk.”

  “She has it in writing.” At Deacon’s mocking tone, she narrowed her eyes.

  “What do you know of contracts?”

  “Nothing. He’s the expert, ask him.” Deacon looked to Nash for support.

  Nash leaned back, careful not to swivel, and steepled his hands. “He knows as much about business as he does estate management.” Irresponsible sot.

  “That’s not fair.” Deacon’s puppy eyes had long lost their powers over Nash.

  Miss Wetherby appeared equally unaffected. “I have a contract with this family, with this estate. I have honored that agreement through my actions over these past six years. I have trained, worked, and waited. I have done my part. I expect you to do yours. As a gentleman.” She shifted back, not crossing her arms but somehow giving the impression she had.

  Deacon dropped the soulful look. “Don’t know many gentlemen then, do you?”

  “Stow it, Deacon. Miss Wetherby, we will need to look at your correspondence, yes. I assume you have no formal, notarized, contract?”

  “But he promised.” She worried at her bottom lip a moment, then a thought seemed to accost her “You believe I lie?”

  “Do you blame us? You reappear, claiming to be a long-lost neighbor. The only person you claim to know is safely deceased.”

  “Your butler knew to expect me. And Mr. Perkins.”

  Deacon sighed, a shade less theatrically. “Perkins. Where is the man?”

  “You dismissed him, remember? Said he smelled of the old earl.”

  “And so he did.”

  “But he apparently informed Emmett of Miss Wetherby’s arrival on his way out the door.”

  She nodded. “He wrote to me for the details of my travel.”

  “Funny that he never spoke of it to me.” Judging by the lady’s moue of displeasure, she did not find it so.

  “Deacon, think. Where would the old codger have kept such correspondence? You wrote him, as well, I expect.”

  “Dashed if I know.”

  This room was floor to ceiling bookshelves, like the library, but here the shelves were mainly bare. His father preferred to work in a Spartan office. To preserve his ideas of lineage and family pride, though, he had the family ledgers made up in beautiful bindings, neatly arrayed on the first two rows of shelves. He kept the family Bible here, too, with its record of births and deaths and families of origin. If only he had arranged his correspondence as neatly.

  When Shaftsbury had died of sudden apoplexy, his desk had been a solid mound of correspondence. Only he and poor Perkins knew the method of it, and Perkins had taken that knowledge with him.

  Nash pulled out the top drawer at the side of the desk. The quarterly books, half-completed, in their nude state before binding. Middle drawer appeared to be for dog toys. They had not had a hound in the house for years.

  Deacon rose and drifted to the bookshelves. He ran his hand across the open page of the Bible, and turned to the flyleaf. “I’m still blessedly unattached on the family tree, thank heavens. And how on earth did my pater come to choose you?”

  “You chose me, he said. You told him once that you loved me.”

  “When you were four.”

  “I believe you were eight at the time. I was not yet four.”

  Deacon tapped a finger on his cheekbone. “Eight years old. In the summer?”

  In the bottom drawer, Nash found dozens of bundles of letters, each tied with string. He pulled them all out, making a pa
per dune on the surface of the desk.

  “I remember now.” Deacon clapped his hands, as if delightfully surprised by a cake made just for him. “The little heiress, all dimples and curls. An angel. But your hair was gossamer. Now it’s mouse.”

  “The winds of time change us all, my lord.”

  “A fallen angel then. But you’re still an heiress?”

  “Deacon.” Nash shot him a glare.

  His brother raised both eyebrows. “What? Isn’t that part of the contract?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve nothing but the interest on two thousand pounds. Your father said I’d no need of anything but pin money as he’d provided me a husband.” Deacon crossed his arms.

  Most of the old earl’s correspondents franked their letters. Nash quickly put those aside to his left, as a girl at boarding school was unlikely to have a peer to frank her correspondence for her. But one such package caught his eye, anyway, as it was in his mother’s spidery copperplate. He set those to his right. Another set traveled under military seal.

  “Who did the old man know from the Navy?”

  “Just you.” Deacon drew closer to the desk. “Good lord. Did he write everyone in the kingdom?”

  Miss Wetherby rose, as well. “Perhaps I might assist.”

  “You would know your own hand, I trust.” Deacon flinched away as she neared. Nash pushed half the remaining stack toward her. She reached for the top set.

  “It’s no good. It will never do.” Deacon shook his head. “If father orders it from beyond the grave, even if his ghost takes to haunting me in my sleep, I’ll not marry you. That is the good part of being the earl.”

  “You cannot mean it.” She dropped the pages and turned to look at him.

  “I damned well mean it.”

  She drew her spine taut. “What will happen to me?” Deacon said nothing. “You would throw me into the streets?”

  “Don’t be hysterical.”

  “Why not?” Her voice cracked on the words.

  “You’ll return to the bosom of your family, none the worse for wear. We’ll find you a chaperone somewhere. No one will be the wiser.”

  “The bosom of my family is a crypt.” She sagged, leaning back on the table for support.

  “Unfortunate. We’ll send some blankets along.”

  “I wish your father were here.”

  “Be glad he’s not, or we wouldn’t be having even this civil a conversation.”

  “If your—if the previous earl had not passed away, would we even be having this discussion?”

  He grimaced. “Likely not. But he’s not, is he? Wait, hear me out. The earl—the old earl—ruled over us. Reigned, is better. An old-fashioned despotism. We could not question an edict, much less quarrel with one.”

  “Mr. Quinn did not quarrel?”

  “Mr. Quinn,” his voice dripped sarcasm, “ran away.”

  “So now you are free of your despot. Now you are king.”

  “Right. It’s six months on, nearly, we’re finally out of our black, most of us anyway, and we’re dashed well enjoying our liberty.”

  “And the king is responsible for his kingdom.”

  “Responsible? I try not to think on it.”

  “And as earl, you maintain your properties and meet everyone’s expectations of you, all your promises.”

  “Heavens, no.”

  “Because you are no longer merely responsible for yourself, but for your grieving mother, your workers, your staff.”

  “Mama takes care of all that.”

  “For the moment.”

  “You morbid little thing. Don’t you threaten Mama. She won’t have it.”

  Nash looked up. She had her back to him, fists on hips.

  Deacon sat unmoving, staring at her as if she were Medusa in the flesh. “I’ve found them.”

  { 3 }

  Even Maddie’s plan to take a moment’s solace in the bedroom while she retrieved her side of the correspondence was thwarted. Three underbutlers stood on chairs by the windows, under the direction of a fourth, hanging a familiar shade of silk. The old curtains, perfectly fine to her eyes, lay across the bed.

  Her trunks also had been brought up, and two maids were unpacking, unfolding, and unraveling the lot of it. For a moment, she thought to tell them not to bother. She and her baggage might well be tossed out on the morrow.

  But the longer it took the maids to pack it all up again, the longer she would need to stay here—and the more time she had to argue that she should stay forever.

  Of all the scenes she had pictured in her dreams, all the conversations, all the visions of their first fateful meeting, she had never, ever considered that the new Lord Shaftsbury would have no idea of her at all. How could it be possible, when nearly all her thoughts revolved around him? It didn’t seem fair, or right.

  The trunk with her books and papers sat beside a dainty writing desk. She sank onto its matching chair and pushed the lid open. The bundle of letters, too big now to squeeze into her Psalter, lay under her books and before her music in a browned paper folder marked Accounts. She found it in seconds, but continued to lean down, pretending to rummage among her things. A tear fell on the missal, quickly wiped away. She would not cry. She could still make a success of this and it wouldn’t do to fall apart in front of the help.

  It took only a moment to gather herself back into order, if not ladylike serenity. She sat up, careful to avoid looking into the dresser mirror or at the window’s reflection. She didn’t quite trust her quickly found balance.

  She had been holding this same folder the last time she’d seen the seventh earl of Shaftsbury, in Miss Marsden’s parlor in Bath. That time it had held duplicates of the castle’s accounts, carefully copied and with annotations. In previous years, it carried Latin exercises, history recitations, and, once, a poem to his honor.

  Each year, usually the end of spring, she would present herself, surprised all over again at his attention. He had an old relation in Bath, he said, but he also wanted to see how she was getting on.

  Each year, in her terror of not pleasing him, she would picture him an ogre, as stern and solemn as his letters. But when he appeared among the china and lacework in the parlor, he always looked more the squire than an earl, in dark clothes and sensible shoes. He was her first crush, and she dreaded that he would ever find out. Nash Quinn shared his square jaw and darkly handsome look; Deacon Quinn seemed fairy-born in comparison.

  And, like his second-born son appeared to be, the seventh Lord Shaftsbury was nothing if not decisive.

  “See here, Miss Madeline. You’re old enough to be leaving school, but my little toad isn’t ready for you yet. So my question for you is can you stand to stay here another three years, or shall we find a new occupation for you?”

  Maddie had had to sit at that question. She was all of sixteen, and no one had ever asked her what she wanted to do before. “What choice do I have?”

  “Stay here and Miss Marsden tells me she will let you continue to teach the young-formers. I’d have you pick up a bit more mathematics and the like, if you can find a suitable tutor. You’ll receive your stipend directly, most of which will still go for room and board, but you’ll be the mistress of the rest.” He tilted his head, gazing steadily at her. What did he see? “That’s one possibility. Another is you could travel, to Europe for example. Get yourself enrolled at university. Girls can do that there, did you know? Third, hire yourself out as a lady’s companion. Trouble with that is you’ll need to quit in a couple years to come back home.”

  “Back home? To Bath?”

  “Shaftsbury. To marry the viscount.”

  “The viscount?” She couldn’t hide the shock in her voice. Sure, she been training to run an estate, but as a housekeeper, or perhaps the steward’s wife.

  “Aye. It’s a debt of honor, you know. Deacon saved your life.”

  She had no memory of it. “I thought you did that.”

  “On his instruction, so to speak.”


  Maddie was ashamed to remember how the thought someone would want to save her went beyond her understanding.

  “No need to become maudlin, girl. You have grown up quite acceptably, by your own report as well as that of Miss Marsden’s. You’ll do.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Deacon is no prize, see, but you’ll have him well in hand in no time. And there are clothes presses full of benefits to being a countess. Problem is, you’re ready now but he won’t be for at least three years. We’ll do the deal in ’19. He’ll be twenty-five that spring. You come up then. Perkins will send you the details. So what do you say?”

  Maddie never was a quick study, and he’d just foretold for her an unexpected and wondrous future. Had she had leisure to decide, she might have chosen to travel. She had always wanted to search for Troy.

  “I am betrothed?”

  “Just so. You must act like you are, of course. No men on the side, if you know what I mean. And keep up your studies. The estate depends on you. You do wish to be part of the family?”

  Through the long years since that meeting, there was nothing she wished more. Nothing she wouldn’t do, and nothing she wouldn’t learn, even including the common illnesses of sheep. She had lost her own family like a quick tear in a bag of apples, the sole survivor of a winter carriage accident. No provision had been made for her in her father’s will—who thinks to change the will when a girl is three and her father a mere twenty-eight?

  She owed the Quinns her new life and the promise of truly being part of their family—forever—stole her breath away whenever she thought on it too long.

  Girls at school had complained, even whined, about their families and then happily went home for the holidays. She acted the good girl always, and never was allowed back home. But the earl’s promise had changed everything.

  She had dreamed of Shaftsbury castle. She’d memorized the floor plan, as well as the names of the surrounding villages and towns, even the waterways, hills, and mountains. She’d forced her mind to fathom accounting instead of the music that it loved. She’d learned about corn, and cows, and taxation.

  And in the end, all she had done was for naught—because once again, a man had died and left poor instructions.