The Decadent Countess Page 9

  Pendle stiffened like a pedigree hound offered second-rate offal. ‘You mistake the matter, madam. These are his Grace’s servants. To offer them recompense would be the direst insult, to them and to him.’

  ‘Direst insult?’ she repeated hotly.

  Pendle allowed himself a faint, humourless smile. ‘As head of the Fitzgibbon family, his Grace has a duty to care for his relatives. Gratitude is all that is required from you, madam.’

  Miranda opened her mouth, but what could she say? She was in the most awkward of situations.

  Pendle gave her a slight bow. ‘Excuse me, madam, there is a great deal to be done if we are to set this house to rights.’

  Outflanked, Miranda retreated into the parlour. She dearly wanted to send the lot of them back to Ormiston. She wanted to storm up to his Grace’s door and tell him exactly what she thought of his, and Pendle’s, high-handed behaviour.

  But she did neither.

  From the moment she had arrived in that rickety village cart, and fallen in love with The Grange, Miranda had dreamed of living here. But her dreams had never included a chronic shortage of funds, dishonest servants and lack of the same. For a person of practical disposition she had been very naïve.

  If she sent the peremptory Pendle away now, she might as well sell up and return to Italy. He was right, she did need help in getting the place into some sort of order, to make a proper beginning. And she did need help until Mr Ealing was able to send her the monies Julian had left her. To make a scene and demand Pendle leave might gratify her momentarily but it would be very short-sighted.

  Miranda sighed. In any other man but the Duke of Belford, this sort of high-handed action might be classed as a kindness, and at first Miranda had believed he was being kind. Pendle’s arrival had violently changed her opinion.

  Miranda had heard that the Duke had a highly developed awareness of his position and the duties attached to it. It was this that had sent him—albeit unwillingly—to her rescue. Even though he detested her, and she detested him equally, in some perverse manner he was probably enjoying her gratitude.

  ‘Mistress Fitzgibbon?’ Esme’s shy, whispery voice broke into her reverie.

  Miranda looked up and forced a smile. The girl was hovering in the doorway. ‘Yes, Esme?’

  ‘Will you…will you still be needing me here at The Grange. Now that Mr Pendulum’s here?’

  Miranda bit back a smile. Pendle would not enjoy being renamed, but it helped to reduce his ogrelike presence to something more mundane.

  ‘Certainly I will still need you, Esme! All of these people are very efficient, and no doubt The Grange will soon be spick and span, but they are the Duke’s people, not mine. Eventually they will go, and we will be left again to fend for ourselves.’

  At least she hoped so!

  ‘My brother works in the stables at Ormiston, mistress,’ Esme confided, pushing back her over-large cap.

  ‘And does you brother like working there?’ Miranda asked curiously.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Esme squeaked. ‘He says it’s better even than going to London!’

  ‘Well, there’s no accounting for tastes,’ Miranda replied. ‘Thank you for staying, Esme. I am grateful, and I won’t forget.’

  Esme blushed and bobbed one of her wobbly curtsies before closing the parlour door behind her. Miranda picked up the list of urgent tasks she had begun yesterday, but it was useless. She could not settle to it. Beyond the door the movements of Leo’s invading army constantly disturbed and distracted.

  She would have to thank him.

  The acknowledgment caused her to wiggle uncomfortably in her chair. Remembering their conversation yesterday, or as much of it as she could bear to, she could not find a proper thank-you in it anywhere. Not that he had behaved at all well himself! In fact he had been overbearing and rude and—

  Miranda stopped herself. His behaviour did not excuse hers. A true lady would have been icily polite and unfailingly civil. Though Belford did not, she reminded herself, think of her as a ‘lady’, true or otherwise. He believed her to be the wicked and flirtatious Adela, and she had allowed him to believe it in order to punish him for his error at their first meeting.

  Quite suddenly she wondered what he would do if she were to be wicked and flirtatious with him. The idea held appeal in a shocking sort of way. Would he resist or would he be quite willing to forget his scruples and enjoy a little flirtation with the Decadent Countess? She rather thought, and Miranda allowed herself a knowing smile, remembering that kiss at Armstrong’s, that it might be the latter.

  But reality soon reasserted itself. Miranda glared at the defenceless list. As if Leo Fitzgibbon would ever be drawn into a desperate flirtation with someone like Adela. He was far too cold and far too proper. Yes, and far too aware of his own consequence.

  No, she would leave such fairytales to Mrs Radcliffe.

  Leo gave his mount its head, exhilarating in the stallion’s power and grace as they raced across the countryside. He had not had many moments of freedom of late. He had been busy with estate matters, and it was now several days since he had sent the incomparable Pendle to create order at The Grange.

  Leo felt an unfamiliar twinge of guilt. He need not have sent Pendle, there were others who would have done nearly as well. Pendle demanded perfection, and not many people were tolerant of perfection. But Leo was well aware that Pendle would have The Grange running perfectly, faultlessly, in no time. The Countess would have nothing more to worry about—that frightened, desperate look he had momentarily glimpsed upon her face when he came upon her that day would be erased.

  That, he told himself, was his main reason for sending the faithful Pendle.

  And Pendle had, when the matter was explained to him, risen magnificently to the occasion.

  Apart from Leo’s good intentions, there was the question of the effect the arrival of such a paragon would have upon the Countess. Leo had spent many quiet moments since, reflecting upon the scene. Pendle’s appearance at her door, the Countess’s fury…it must have been prodigious. Leo would not have been surprised if Pendle and his band had been returned to Ormiston forthwith.

  But that, of course, would be underestimating Pendle.

  Pendle had not returned, and Leo had even received a polite note thanking him for his kindness. It was signed Miranda Fitzgibbon, by which name, Pendle informed him, the Countess preferred to be known. The note had been so stilted and so unlike the woman Leo had had dealings with so far that he had tossed it aside in disgust.

  He didn’t want her thanks. He hadn’t acted in the expectation of receiving them. To be honest, he did not himself fully understand why he had done what he did. Except that she had moved him in some profound and surprising way.

  In the past, Leo had never felt the least compulsion to help Julian out of his financial difficulties, despite the fact that he’d known for years The Grange was falling to pieces and the servants were dishonest. Julian hadn’t cared about those things, so why should Leo? Besides, Julian would have been mortified if his cousin had interfered.

  What had swayed him this time? He had claimed he felt a family responsibility, and maybe that was partly so. But what about the rest?

  Had he been moved by the woebegone look in her lustrous dark eyes? The faint tremble of those soft pink lips? Although not a cruel man, Leo would not have said he was particularly compassionate. Within his own sphere he was fastidious in fulfilling those duties he felt due to his tenants, family and friends—some people thought this kindness—but to the world in general he was largely indifferent.

  Why, then, this sudden urge to play the good Samaritan? He could pretend it was due to a dislike of what others would think if he left his cousin’s wife in such dire circumstances, but Leo well knew that at the time such considerations had not occurred to him.

  To add further to his worries, Aunt Ellen had had the news of his impulsively generous act from her cronies, probably the Misses McKay, a pair of voracious gossips who lived
in genteel poverty in the village. Julian’s mother had written him a letter which had the distinct aroma of smelling salts about it, and was crossed and re-crossed so many times as to be almost unreadable.

  Leo had replied with a letter of his own, hinting that he was playing a deep game with the Countess and Aunt Ellen should not listen to idle gossip. He supposed, in a way, he was telling the truth. He was playing a deep game. If the Countess was grateful enough to him for his assistance in her time of need, she might well agree to his proposal and quit the country.

  His mount quickened its stride, and Leo saw the wall directly in front of him. It was constructed of piled stones and appeared dangerously uneven. He still had time to pull up and normally that’s what he would have done.

  But today he did not feel like pulling up. He was tired of pulling himself up. Leo bent low in his saddle and allowed the horse its head. They jumped…and landed safely.

  Leo’s heart was pounding. How long since he had taken a jump like that and damn to the consequences? How long since he had put himself at risk for risk’s sake? Too often he thought only of his position as the Fifth Duke of Belford.

  How long since he had felt truly, tinglingly alive?

  When he had been a boy, Leo had dreamed of performing mad and daring deeds. Sailing his boat directly into a storm, jumping from the highest tree in the grounds at Ormiston with only a handkerchief to see him safely to earth, wagering the entire estate on the turn of one card. Staggeringly crazy things. Things that made his heart thud and his blood pound, things that made him laugh aloud.

  What had happened to that boy?

  Not that the man he was now contemplated for one moment attempting such senseless and dangerous acts, but that wasn’t the point, was it?

  Leo pulled his mount to a halt and took a deep, gulping breath. Had he really become so joyless? He thought of his life and what it had been and would be, stretching out before and behind him like a straight and steady road, and suddenly wondered how he would bear it. And yet the position he held demanded he behave in a certain way, and that could not be changed. His life could not be altered because he had suddenly decided he no longer enjoyed it.

  He was the Duke of Belford. It was fact, and he must learn to endure.

  Voices in the distance alerted him. Leo looked up and realised he had ridden much further than he had realised, for there, in the hollow below him, were the tall chimneys of The Grange.

  She would be there, flashing him angry looks from her marvellous eyes. Offering him, in a way he did not as yet understand, a glimpse of something he was beginning to crave.

  For a moment the temptation to go on was so strong Leo had actually urged his horse forward. It was doubt and confusion, rather than good sense, which drew him up. He could not go down there, he could not so soon engender another scene between himself and the Countess. He could not meet her again now, not when he did not feel at all himself.

  Whatever that was.

  No, he must wait. He must…he must consider. Every particle of sense inside him was crying out for him to turn back, to remember who he was, to do the proper thing.

  Leo turned his mount for home. He rode with exaggerated caution. He did not jump any more fences. He told himself that he had done the right thing, the proper thing. He was the Duke of Belford, and she…she was a nobody with an appalling reputation.

  Then why did his restraint give him no joy?

  Two days later Leo was back in Miranda’s house. He had found it impossible to stay away longer, but he told himself that was because he needed to ascertain if she had thought over his offer and come to a decision.

  It could have nothing to do with his need to set eyes on her again, no, indeed!

  The visit did not proceed as he had envisaged.

  When Pendle let him in, it was to find that the vicar had also decided to pay Miranda a visit, and she was presently engaged in pouring tea and handing out sandwiches. The cool glance she gave him upon greeting was enough to inform Leo that he had little option but to put aside their differences. He prepared to join them in a polite tète-à-tète.

  The vicar was an affable fellow, though sometimes a little too obsequious for Leo’s taste.

  ‘Your Grace is in good health? And your sister? And, of course, your dear aunt, sir, how is she?’

  Leo’s murmured replies to the vicar’s polite questions were distracted. He was watching Miranda and wondering, in some amazement, how the simple act of pouring tea could suddenly have become so enticing.

  The sun, shining through the long windows, had become entangled in her hair, like gleaming threads of golden and copper. She held her chin firm, but there was a softness to her jaw, that vulnerability he had sensed before, so at odds with her hardened reputation. A flush of pink highlighted aristocratic cheekbones, and her lips were tender and full. And, dear God, so kissable.

  The vision before him shimmered, drew him in like the sirens on the rocks in Homer’s tale. Of a sudden Leo imagined her seated in the saloon at Ormiston, smiling as she poured tea, her dark eyes seductive beneath the heavy fall of her lashes, her hair aglow against the windows with their famous view of his park.

  The picture was perfect. Alarmingly so. His heart thudded heavily in his chest, as if it were fighting to free itself, and shake off the shackles of the past eighteen years. As if this fantasy in his mind could somehow become reality.

  ‘Duke, please, you are staring.’

  Her soft reprimand made him blink. He realised then that an uncomfortable silence had fallen, the polite chatter from the other two occupants of the room stumbling to a halt. He had been staring. It was his observance of her that had brought the faint flush to her cheeks, the glitter to her fine dark eyes.

  ‘Duke!’ she said, more sharply than before. ‘I am not an object for your study.’

  The vicar cleared his throat. Leo sighed and set down his cup. ‘My apologies, Mrs Fitzgibbon. I did not mean to be impolite, if indeed I was staring. I prefer to think I was admiring the picture you made with the sunlight upon your hair. It was quite…quite…’

  ‘Mesmerising.’ The vicar supplied the word, and then cleared his throat again, noisily.

  Leo smiled. ‘Yes, I believe that is it exactly.’

  Miranda looked away, enchantingly disconcerted. ‘That is all very well, Duke, but it is rude to stare. I daresay your mama taught you that, and if she did not, then she ought to have.’

  He laughed. ‘She did teach me that, and several other principles of good manners. Hmm, let me see if I can remember them. Not to chew with my mouth open, not to lean my elbows on the table, never sip from the finger bowl—’

  Now it was Miranda’s turn to laugh, her expression one of delight and surprise. Clearly she had not imagined the Duke of Belford could be so charming or so playful. He had not, he thought uneasily, felt the need to be either for a very long time.

  The vicar was beaming. ‘Capital, capital!’ he declared. ‘Wonderful to see you both getting on so well, your Grace, Mrs Fitzgibbon.’

  His observation had the effect of immediately extinguishing the spark between them. The atmosphere became tense, suspicious. Soon afterwards Leo made his excuses and left. Later, thinking back, he did not believe the interlude could possibly have been as comfortable as he had imagined it. And yet, just for a fraction of time, over the tea cups and the laughter, Leo had felt very much at his ease with the Decadent Countess.

  Oak House was a pretty dwelling, built in the local brick, and though not large in comparison to the sprawling Grange, could certainly not be dismissed as of no account.

  Sophie Lethbridge had sent a carriage for Miranda upon learning she did not have a conveyance of her own. They were to enjoy a chat and Miranda was to meet Sophie’s father, Sir Marcus Lethbridge.

  Nervously Miranda smoothed her ankle-length skirts. She was wearing a high-necked dress of blue chintz, with long, close-fitting sleeves and a hem ornamented with Spanish trimmings. All very fashionable—flattering w
ithout being ostentatious—for Adela had chosen it for her, and Adela was never wrong when it came to good taste in clothing. Strange that she should have such bad taste in other matters!

  Sophie was waiting to greet her upon her arrival, and complimented her on her looks.

  ‘I believe you are happier than when I last saw you,’ she said with her characteristically breathless rush of words. ‘Your colour has returned and you have lost those shadows beneath your eyes. Is it because Leo has taken charge of The Grange? I heard that he had sent his servants there.’

  Miranda said nothing for a moment, seating herself in a yellow brocade chair and restraining with difficulty the urge to tear Leo Fitzgibbon’s character to shreds.

  ‘Perhaps that is it,’ she murmured with a forced smile.

  Sophie did not seem to notice. ‘Well, Leo can always be relied upon to take charge.’

  There it was, that malicious little sting that characterised many of Sophie’s artless comments.

  The servant arrived with tea and cake, and Sophie fussed about with milk and teacups and saucers. When they were settled again, Sophie asked her if she had become lost yet.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Sophie giggled. ‘In The Grange. It is very confusing. When we were children we used to play hide-and-seek. Julian knew so many places to hide we could never find him.’

  ‘I can well imagine that!’

  ‘I have had another letter from my brother Jack. He will be coming to stay within the week.’

  Miranda smiled and sipped her tea. ‘That will be pleasant for you.’

  ‘Oh, he is only coming because Leo is here. He wants to throw me in his way as much as possible. Poor Jack, he will never give up.’

  There did not seem much to say to this, so Miranda didn’t try.

  ‘When he has come we will arrange a little party, Miranda. Dinner, with some dancing. You must come and meet the neighbourhood families. They are all very friendly, no airs or graces.’