Wicked Earl Seeks Proper Heiress (The Husband Hunters Club #5)

Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

“Y ou should have told me, James.”

James swallowed and tried to smile. He felt as if he were sinking in a quagmire and just wished it could be over soon. “Told you what, my love?”

Beth had followed him into the billiard room and was now glaring at him over the moth- eaten table. “About your plans to use my Averil in your schemes to save Southbrook Castle. I suspected but you should have been honest with me.”

He poured himself a drink. “Is she really your Averil?” he said weakly. “She’s a grown woman, Beth, who certainly seems to know her own mind. In fact she has rather a nasty temper. Rufus is probably well out of it.”

“James.”

He sighed and set the glass down and turned to her. He wondered if she realized how very difficult this was for him, being brave. Facing her, when he knew how angry she was with him. In the old days he would have run off and drunk himself stupid and gambled away a fortune at the tables in London, and then drunk himself stupid again to try to forget.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I thought about telling you but I knew you’d disapprove. It really was my idea, Beth. Rufus didn’t want to do it, and he only agreed because he was worried about Eustace and me, and he so wants to be a good earl of Southbrook. He’s the only one of us who is worthy of the name, if you want my opinion.” He grimaced. “Which I don’t suppose you do.”

“James,” she sighed. “I wish you had told me. I wish Rufus had told Averil. She values honesty above all things, he must know that. Her mother leaving her, her father refusing to speak about it, and her sister’s whereabouts kept from her. All these things have shaped her as a woman.”

He nodded, idly plucking at a hole in the green surface of the table. “I see that now. Frankly I wouldn’t care if Southbrook Castle fell down, but Rufus loves the place, and then there’s Eustace to consider. I’m sorry,” he said again, taking a deep breath. “Will you still marry me?” His mouth curled up in a smile that verged on tears. “I swear to you I haven’t got any designs on your fortune, Beth.”

She managed a laugh. “Just as well because I have no fortune. Some savings, but not enough to mend your castle.” She glanced about with distaste.

“We wouldn’t have to live here,” he assured her. “In fact, I would insist we didn’t. London, Beth, that’s the place. We can camp in the Mayfair house until Rufus has to sell up, and then . . . well, we’ll find somewhere. As long as you’re with me, I don’t mind.”

He could see her eyes were shining with tears, too. Was that a good sign? Her lips wobbled. It was too much for James’s soft heart. He came around the table and took her in his arms, kissing her and holding her close.

She rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m very cross with you,” she said softly. “Everything was going along so well and now . . . I can’t marry you, James. You must see that. Not with Averil so upset. How would she feel if I married a Southbrook when her heart is broken?”

“What about my heart?”

She looked at him, but whatever she saw in his face didn’t sway her from her resolve. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t.”

She touched his cheek and slipped out of his arms, and then straightened her back and walked away with a determination he couldn’t help but admire, even as he felt his happiness dissolving around him.

* * *

After Averil had reached her room, she began to pack, throwing her belongings higgledy- piggledy onto the bed, her sight blurred with tears that were a mixture of anger and hurt. She tried to deny the hurt, telling herself it was fury that was making her heart ache. She’d let herself be lured into a trap, had believed her own heart knew best, when all along he had been going in an entirely different direction.

How could she have been so stupid? Surely her time at the Home had taught her that men were devious and women weak? Surely her own mother’s actions had shown her the frailties of the heart? And yet she had fallen into Rufus’s trap so ridiculously easily.

She wanted to smash something, and her eye fell on a green porcelain vase. She was just considering the satisfying sound it would make as it hit the wall, when her door burst open.

Hercules came bounding into the room and leapt onto the bed. Behind him was Eustace, his face a white blur as he flung himself into Averil’s arms, nearly knocking her over. “Please stay,” he wailed. “Please, Averil. Please. I want you to stay and marry Papa.”

Automatically Averil’s arms closed about him. In the doorway Violet was looking distressed. “Sorry,” she mouthed. “I couldn’t stop him.”

“Oh, Eustace,” she murmured and held him tight. After a moment she was able to pry him away and sat down on the bed with him, trying hard to ignore Hercules rampaging among the pillows.

“Your father and I aren’t getting married,” she began gently, looking into his dark eyes, so like his father’s. “There are reasons . . . Well, it doesn’t matter. We can still be friends. I can see you, and you can visit me, Eustace.” She hoped Rufus would see it that way.

A flicker of hope lit the boy’s eyes. “And Hercules?” he asked. “And Violet? They’re my friends, too.”

Averil smiled at Violet, who had come across the room and now rested her hand on Eustace’s shoulder. “I’m sure they will still be your friends, too.”

He seemed to accept that, although he added wistfully, “It would be better if you married him, though, Averil. Then we could always be together.”

Averil hugged him again. There was no point in making promises she couldn’t keep, and at the moment her thoughts were in disarray. She needed to get away, return to London, and try to forget what had happened.

“Hercules! Bad dog!” cried Violet in dismay. The dog had torn one of the pillows and was causing a snowstorm of feathers. Eustace chuckled and went after the animal, trying to catch it, but of course Hercules thought this was another game. With a ruff, he took off out of the room with the pillow in his jaws.

Violet lingered. “Are we going back to London now?” she asked, her eyes on Averil’s face.

“Yes,” she said firmly, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that she had been crying. “I have to. There are so many things there needing my attention, Violet. And you must be missing your work at the Home . . .?”

Violet didn’t look as if she was. “I suppose. I want to see the women and help them, but . . . I think I could do more good here, if the women came up to live here.”

“The dower house.” She sighed. Tears burned her eyes again and she struggled to keep them from falling. “All my plans. And now everything is in tatters.”

Violet hesitated and then rested a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “Never mind,” she said bracingly. “Perhaps you’ll find somewhere better? Everything happens for a reason, that’s what . . . someone I know says. You’ll see.”

Averil looked at her. “I wish you’d tell me what you’re afraid of, Violet, because I know you are afraid. I will help you in any way I can.”

Violet considered her a moment, and then she smiled, and Averil thought it was the smile of an adult to a child. “You’re very kind, Lady Averil,” she said, “but I think you are an innocent in a lot of ways. There are things out there . . . well, I really hope you never know them. For your sake. And for my sake,” she added in an undertone.

She’d hurried away before Averil could stop her, and left her sitting alone on the bed.

Averil bit her lip on the urge to cry. She didn’t have time, she told herself. She had to go home. She would throw herself back into her work, and be so busy that she’d soon forget all about the earl of Southbrook. Her heart would soon mend and- and . . . But she wondered in despair whether that was possible. She’d loved him almost from the first moment she saw him, at the opera. She still remembered the strange sensation in her heart when their eyes met. Today at the dower house, she’d given herself to him willingly, and believed their lives would continue on many years into the future. Marriage and children and loving each other.

Averil knew she couldn’t recover from that quickly. It would take a long time. Perhaps forever.

* * *

Rufus sipped his brandy and stared moodily at his boots. Around him his castle slowly crumbled to dust and he thought it was apt, because at the moment he felt as if he, too, might soon be dust. He’d made a complete and utter mess of matters with Averil and then watched from this very window, as his coach took her away, back to London.

She hadn’t taken Hercules, but he couldn’t even manage to feel annoyed about that. Eustace had told him that Averil had left the dog on the understanding that, when Eustace went off to school, he would bring Hercules back to her. It was a kindness on her part, he supposed, and Eustace had probably persuaded her to agree.

And she might have left her monstrous hound, but she’d taken Beth and Violet with her, which meant James was moping about, inconsolable. Eustace, too, had taken to looking at him with sad eyes, murmuring about how much he missed Averil. “She smelt nice,” he said, when Rufus asked him what he missed about her. “And she was always kind to me, even when I forgot to tie Hercules up and he ate some marzipan and was sick. You let her go back to London, Papa. Why did you do that?”

It was all his fault, it seemed.

Rufus told himself he had only wanted to do the right thing by the Southbrook family— the honorable thing— and he’d ended up making a complete hash of it.

He was miserable. He couldn’t remember ever being this miserable. He felt as if the world had gone gray around him, leached of all color. As if winter had come early.

“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

Rufus looked up and then groaned. James again, and this time Eustace was at his side. Separately they were bad enough, but now they’d teamed up he didn’t know if he could bear it. He took a deep sip of his brandy to fortify himself.

“I asked her to marry me,” he said stoically. “That was what you wanted, wasn’t it? I swallowed my doubts and my pride and my honor, and I asked her to marry me.”

James wasn’t impressed. “You asked her because you love her. You should have laid your cards out on the table, Rufus. A girl like that, she needs you to be straight with her. She’s been let down before. Her mother and all that . . .” He said it knowledgeably, as if he hadn’t heard it all from Beth.

Rufus’s eyes flashed. “I don’t blame her for saying no. God, if I were her I’d run a mile!”

“You’re helping her to find her sister,” James reminded him. “No one is forcing you to do that. You offered the dower house to her. No one asked you to do that. You look at her as if she’s your heart and soul. You love her, Rufus. Admit it and do something about it.”

Rufus curled his lip. “You only want me to fix it so that Beth will marry you.”

“Yes, I do, but I also want to see you happy, old chap. And look at Eustace here, he needs a mother. She’s perfect. Go down to London and fix it, Rufus, or-or . . .” he floundered.

“We’ll disinherit you,” Eustace announced.

Rufus stared. “I don’t know if I can fix it.” His voice was bleak.

“You can,” James retorted. “We believe in you. Do what you have to do, Rufus. If it means selling this pile, then do that, too. Do you really want to spend your old age living here in the cold and damp, with the castle falling down around you? The Southbrooks are more than that. Our name, our family, will go on without Southbrook Castle. It’s time we took a new road. What do you say, Eustace?”

Eustace looked thoughtful. “I would miss the castle, I suppose, but if it meant we’d have Averil instead, and Papa would be happy . . . Yes, I think that would be a good exchange, Uncle James.”

Rufus looked from one to the other and knew when he was beaten. “I don’t want to put a damper on your hopes, but she may refuse to speak to me, you know. Averil is very strong- willed, and when she makes up her mind about something . . .”

James snorted rudely. “She’s left her dog here, Rufus. Don’t you think that means something? She wants you to go to her.”

Rufus doubted that, but he decided to believe it was a good sign. He would go to London. Perhaps he would find Averil’s sister and then he would have something to bargain with? Yes, there was a plan. Suddenly he felt brighter and more confident. He stood up and strode toward the door.

“Send to the stables to have Midnight saddled,” he said over his shoulder to the two eager faces. And then, his eyes narrowing, “Don’t follow me. Stay here and await further instructions.”

“Of course,” James said, echoed by Eustace.

Their innocent looks didn’t inspire his trust, but Rufus didn’t have time to worry. He was going to London and he told himself that when he came back he would bring Averil with him.