Only a Kiss by Mary Balogh

5

The afternoon brought visitors.

Somehow word had spread that the Earl of Hardford was in residence, and since the correct thing to do was to call upon him, people called. Besides, everyone was agog with curiosity to make his acquaintance at last.

Imogen had been planning to spend the afternoon at the dower house, although its roofless state made even the downstairs rooms almost unbearably chilly. She had missed luncheon because she could not bear the thought of making polite conversation with that man, who had provoked her to rudeness but who would no doubt be all smooth charm with the older ladies. She had also been feeling agitated after telling him her story, brief and undetailed though she had made it. She almost never spoke of the past or thought of it when she could help it. Even her dreams were only rarely nightmares now.

Before she could set out for her own home, however, the first of the visitors arrived, and it would have been ill-mannered to leave even though they had not come, strictly speaking, to see her. She just wished she did not have to be sociable on this particular afternoon, though. For everyone was enamored of the Earl of Hardford as soon as they met him. His very presence here was sufficient to please them, of course. But his youth and extraordinary good looks, coupled with the excellence of his tailoring, dazzled the ladies and impressed the gentlemen. His charm, his smile, and his ready conversation completed the process of bowling them over. He assured everyone that he was delighted to be here at last, that there was surely nowhere else on earth to compare with Hardford and its environs for beauty, natural and otherwise.

Those words and otherwise were spoken, as if by chance, while his eyes rested upon Mrs. Payne, wife of the retired Admiral Payne. Mrs. Payne, whose mood usually hovered on the edge of sourness, when it did not spill quite over into it, inclined her head in gracious acceptance of the implied compliment.

The Reverend Boodle, though, was the first to arrive with Mrs. Boodle and their elder two daughters. The admiral and his wife came next, and they were soon followed by the Misses Kramer, middle-aged daughters of a deceased former vicar, with their elderly mother. Those three ladies could not admit to the social faux pas of calling upon a single gentleman, of course. They had come, the elder Miss Kramer explained, to visit dear Lady Lavinia and Lady Barclay and Mrs. Ferby, and what a surprise it was to discover that his lordship was in residence. They could only hope he did not think them very forward indeed to have intruded all unwittingly thus upon him. His lordship, of course, responded with the predictable reassurances and soon had the three ladies quite forgetting that they had come to see Aunt Lavinia.

Imogen would undoubtedly have been amused by it all if she had not taken the man so much in dislike. Though actually, she thought, these visits were probably akin to excruciating torture for him and were therefore no less than he deserved. She met his glance as the malicious thought flashed through her mind and knew from the infinitesimal lift of his eyebrows that she was right.

As the Reverend Boodle and his female entourage were leaving after a correct half hour, Mr. Wenzel drove up in the gig with Tilly. Imogen greeted the latter with a brief hug and sat beside her in the drawing room. But even Tilly was not immune to the earl’s charm. She leaned toward Imogen after a few minutes and murmured beneath the sound of the general conversation.

“One has to admit, Imogen,” she said, “that he is a perfectly gorgeous specimen of manhood.”

But her eyes were twinkling as she said it, and the two of them exchanged a brief smirk.

Mr. Soames, the elderly physician, came with his much younger second wife and his three daughters and one son of that second marriage. Mr. Alton arrived last with his son, a gangly youth who had been wrestling with facial pimples for the last year or so, poor boy. He was soon in the throes of a serious case of hero worship, having been complimented by his lordship on the knot of his cravat, which looked like a perfectly ordinary knot to Imogen.

She gave the earl a penetrating look. She really did not want to believe that he was kind. He had not paid any compliment to Mr. Edward Soames, a good-looking young man who had been affecting the appearance and manners of a dandy since making a brief visit to London last spring to stay with one of his older half sisters.

By the time the last of the visitors had taken their leave, the four residents were left in possession of a number of invitations—to a dinner party, to an evening of cards, to an informal musical evening, to a picnic on the beach, weather permitting, of course, for the eighteenth birthday of Miss Ruth Boodle, though that would not be until the end of May. They had also been informed by each wave of callers that the next dance in the assembly rooms above the village inn was to be held five evenings hence, and it was to be hoped the Earl of Hardford would condescend to grace it with his presence—as well as the ladies, of course.

Wild horses could not keep him away, the earl had assured everyone. He had solicited a set with the eldest Boodle daughter, the eldest Miss Soames, and Mrs. Payne. The elder Miss Kramer meanwhile had promised herself a comfortable coze with Aunt Lavinia and Cousin Adelaide while the young people danced. And Mr. Wenzel and Mr. Alton had each reserved a set of dances with Imogen.

“Well,” Aunt Lavinia said when everyone had left, “that was all very gratifying, was it not? As you have seen, Cousin Percy, we are not without genteel neighbors and genteel entertainments in the country here. There is little chance you will find time hanging heavily on your hands.”

“That Kramer woman who does all the talking for her mother and sister is a bore,” Cousin Adelaide remarked. “You may have a comfortable coze with her during the assembly, Lavinia. I shall choose more congenial company.”

“It would seem,” Imogen said, “that you are doomed to remain here for at least the next two weeks, Cousin Percy, since you have accepted invitations extending that far into the future. Not to mention Ruth Boodle’s birthday party more than three months from now.”

“Doomed?”He smiled with what she recognized as his most practiced, most devastatingly charming smile at her. “But what a happy doom it is sure to be, Cousin Imogen.”

God’s gift to womankind, Cousin Adelaide had said. And to mankind too. That was what he thought he was, and it seemed that everyone who had called here today was only too eager to confirm him in that opinion. He was in reality an empty shell of vanity and artificiality and arrogance and peevish temper when he was thwarted. He was in sore need of a good setdown.

But it really would not do to allow herself to continue being ruffled by someone who had done nothing more lethal to harm her than to demand of her and who the devil might you be? She was not usually one to bear a grudge.

His smile had become more genuinely amused, and she realized that she had been holding his gaze. She got to her feet and pulled on the bell rope to summon a maid to remove the tea tray.

Had he been right earlier when he had suggested that she resented him because he was in the place Dicky should have been? She hated to think it might be so.

Her eyes rested fondly on Aunt Lavinia for a moment. Imogen’s mother and Aunt Lavinia had been at a girls’ school together in Bath for several years and had remained fast friends afterward. Imogen had come here often as a girl, sometimes with her mother, sometimes alone for extended periods. Aunt Lavinia had always declared that Imogen was the daughter she had never had. Being rather on the tomboyish side, Imogen had played with the son of the house from the start. They had become fast friends and comrades. They had never really fallen in love. The very idea seemed a little absurd. But at some point after they grew up they had made the mutual decision to continue their friendship into marriage so that they could remain together. Imogen could not even remember if there had been a marriage proposal and, if so, which of them had made it. Everything had always been mutual with them.

She had loved him dearly. There had, of course, been the sexual component too after they married. That had always been vigorous and satisfying, though it had never been central to their relationship. Perhaps she was incapable of that emotional condition people called “being in love.” Which was just as well under the circumstances.

“Who, with the name of Alton,” the earl asked of no one in particular, “would name his son Alden?”

It was clearly a rhetorical question.

He shook his head as though to clear it and fixed his gaze upon Aunt Lavinia.

“About the strays,” he said.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “But they have remained in the second housekeeper’s room all afternoon, Cousin Percy. Please do not make me send them away. It would be worse than ever for them to become strays again now that they have experienced a roof over their heads and regular feedings. And a little love. Please do not make me send them away.”

“I will not,” he assured her. “Those that are here now may remain, though I will doubtless live to regret that decision. But there must be no more.”

“It is so hard to turn any away,” she said, clasping her hands to her bosom, “when they are starving and look at one with such hopeless pleading in their eyes.”

“Might I make a suggestion?” Imogen said.

Those blue eyes turned on her, dark eyebrows arched above them.

“Please do.”

“The strays always look far more attractive,” she said, “after they have been tended and fed for a while. They gain weight, and their coats become thicker and shinier. There are surely a number of people who would be more willing to take in an attractive pet that needs a home than a mere stray which has never had one.”

“Oh, dear Imogen,” Aunt Lavinia said, “I am sure you must be right. All little girls want a cat or a dog. I did. Little boys too, I daresay. And perhaps the Misses Kramer or . . .”

“I never wanted an animal,” Cousin Adelaide said, winning for herself a look of acute distress from Aunt Lavinia and one of fleeting amusement from the earl.

He had stepped away from the door to allow two maids to enter and pick up the trays. Imogen noticed that his eyes rested thoughtfully upon one of them, a thin girl with stooped shoulders who was a deaf-mute, though he had no way of knowing that yet since he had not spoken to her. Mr. Soames, the physician, had been in the process of finding an insane asylum for her after her father, a farm laborer, died. But Aunt Lavinia had stepped in with a solution of her own.

“You are suggesting, Cousin Imogen,” the earl said when the trays had been borne away, “that we run a sort of pet-grooming business here, free of charge, to supply our neighbors with pretty cats and handsome dogs over which their children and womenfolk may coo with tenderness?”

Aunt Lavinia looked as if she was holding her breath.

“In a word, yes,” Imogen said. “Though I believe you used the wrong pronoun. I do not suppose for a moment that we would do any such thing. I cannot imagine you feeding or petting stray animals, Cousin Percy, especially ugly ones. Or loving them.”

“Oh, Imogen, dear,” Aunt Lavinia said reproachfully.

The earl pursed his lips. “My contribution would be the house and the food, I suppose,” he said.

“Yes,” she told him, “though I do think perhaps a corner of the stables could be prepared for Fluff, who will be birthing her kittens soon.”

“What?”His eyebrows snapped together.

“Oh, the whole world loves a kitten,” Imogen said. “They will be easy to place once they are ready to leave their mother.”

He gazed at her narrow-eyed and then transferred his attention to Aunt Lavinia.

“No more strays in the house, ma’am,” he said gently enough. “Besides, it is to be hoped that you have denuded the neighborhood of the lot of them by now. I will give directions for a nest to be prepared in the stables. Perhaps . . . Fluff will prove to be a decent mouser and can earn her living out there after delivering herself of her kittens. I shall talk to you some other time about the human strays. I believe I have just seen one of them in the guise of a maid.”

“Annie Prewett?” Aunt Lavinia said. “She is a good girl. She does exactly as she is told once she understands what that is. Provided she can see your lips as you speak and you speak slowly, she understands.”

He continued gazing at her for a few moments before looking back at Imogen.

“Has the waltz penetrated this far into the wilderness?” he asked her. “If so, you will reserve the first of them for me at the village assembly. If you please. I will not hoof it around the floor with someone who does not know how it is done, and I daresay you do.”

It sounded like a command to Imogen, though he had added the words if you please.

Mr. Alton was the one who usually waltzed with her, his plump, always somewhat moist hands at her waist and clasped about her own. Waltzing with the Earl of Hardford would surely be an improvement upon that severe trial. She felt an unexpected frisson of pleasurable anticipation.

“Thank you,” she said. “I shall consult my dancing card.”

He grinned at her suddenly, and that frisson leaped up into something that quite unsettled her stomach. For that grin was not his usual smile of practiced charm, but seemed to be one of genuine appreciation.

“I shall challenge to pistols at dawn any man other than myself who dares write his name next to the first waltz in your card,” he said, making her a slight bow.

Good heavens, was he flirting with her? Was his arrogance such that he thought he could draw even her within the orbit of his charm?

She raised her eyebrows and looked coolly back at him while Aunt Lavinia laughed and Cousin Adelaide snorted.

*   *   *

There was an image of the country gentleman that had always been singularly unappealing to Percy. It was that of the landowner who tramped about his land in ill-fitting coat and breeches and shapeless boots, sturdy staff in hand, faithful dog at heel, discussing crops and livestock and the weather with his foremen and laborers, and crop rotations and markets and the weather with his steward, horseflesh and bonnets and the weather with his neighbors, and the weather and the Lord knew what else with all and sundry while kicking up his heels at their various entertainments and admiring their hopeful, fresh-faced daughters.

Heaven help him, he thought during the following days, but he was in sore danger of becoming that country gentleman himself. He could be in London, he thought the afternoon following the first wave of visits—there were others—enjoying himself even if the Season had not yet begun and town was thin of company. He could be at Tattersall’s or Jackson’s boxing saloon or calling upon his tailor or his boot maker or be in his bed sleeping off the effects of last night’s carousing with friends—or enjoying the favors of a new mistress. Instead, he was looking about Ratchett’s dusty office and suggesting that with his superior skills the head steward—at that point Ratchett was the only steward, but that was a minor point—ought to be able to spend all his time in the office, engaged in the invaluable task of keeping the books in order, while a younger, less skilled and experienced man, an underling, in fact, undertook the mundane day-to-day task of running the farms and suggesting ideas for change and improvement. A second steward, that was, who could benefit from the advice and guidance of the head man. A subordinate, of course. A sort of disciple, in fact.

Ratchett squinted at Percy’s left ear and muttered something about making inquiries in the neighborhood, though he did not know what a new man could do that was not already being done. But Percy had already written to Higgins, his man of business in London, directing him to find an experienced steward, a man who would be willing to be known officially as the understeward, though in reality he would be no such thing, and who would also be willing to incarcerate himself in the depths of nowhere for a somewhat better-than-average salary. The sooner such a paragon was found, Percy had added, the better he would be pleased. Soonest would be even better than sooner.

He had written the letter last night while his bedchamber was being cleaned up. He had discovered upon retiring that the fire was out and that a whole chimneyful of soot had descended into the room with a slightly charred, very dead bird. Crutchley, who had arrived in answer to his summons only moments after a distraught Mrs. Attlee, had given it as his opinion that the front rooms, especially this front room, were more likely to have such things happen than the back rooms, given that they got the brunt of any wind that happened to be blowing. Yet again he had advised Percy to move into the best guest chamber at the back. Yet again Percy, for no reason that was apparent to himself, had chosen to be stubborn. The earl’s apartments would be made habitable for the earl, and he was the earl. At least his bed, when he had finally climbed into it, was dry, as was the wallpaper, slightly water stained, beneath the window.

Percy had discovered during the morning that almost none of his land had been cultivated for a number of years and would not be this year either if plans to the contrary were not made soon. Ratchett and the old earl had apparently not held with crops, which required too many workers to seed them, then to tend them, and then to harvest them, and which were too much at the mercy of the weather at all three stages. There were sheep galore, however, and some of the new lambs had already put in an appearance, no one having warned them that it was still winter and they might be well advised to remain inside their mothers where it was warm and out of the wind for a little longer.

Most of the income of the estate came, in fact, from wool. But the sheep were reproducing at far too exuberant a rate for them all to remain comfortably on the land until old age took them off. Someone needed to manage the flock just as someone needed to manage the land. Percy was not a manager, nor did he have the slightest ambition to become one. The very idea! But he did recognize need when he saw it, as well as poor management or pretty much no management at all.

The farmyard, just beyond the confines of the park to the north, was looking considerably down-at-the-heels. It sported a few milk cows and would soon sport some calves too—Percy did not ask where the bull was that had made the latter possible. There were a few goats, which appeared to have no particular function, and so many chickens that it was hard not to trip over them at every turn as they pecked about the yard. It was also quite impossible not to step in their droppings. A duck pond had some ducks to complement it. There were a few sheep pens for the lambing and, presumably, to house the flock during shearing season and in particularly bad weather. The pens looked as if they would be perfectly happy to give up the ghost any day now.

The hay in the sagging barn looked somewhat gray, as though it might have been there as long as the barn itself. The mice within it probably lived in comfort and died at a ripe old age.

The farm laborers seemed to be mostly gnarled old men, their sons presumably having departed long ago for pastures that were literally greener. The stable hands and gardeners within the confines of the park showed somewhat more youth and vigor, though they did appear to include more than their fair share of the lame and decrepit, further evidence of Lady Lavinia’s tender sensibilities.

Percy hoped a new steward would be found sooner than soon and that he would gallop out here without stopping for food or rest along the way. He hoped the man would not take one look when he arrived and turn tail and flee.

Percy had worn his oldest clothes as he tramped about, though the fact was he did not possess anything that was much older than a year. Watkins would not have stood for it. The same applied to his riding boots, which were quite undeserving of the punishment they suffered in the farmyard. He did not carry a staff, but he did have a faithful dog at heel, that embarrassment of a skinny mutt with the grandiose name of Hector. The great Trojan hero Hector had shot the mighty and seemingly immortal Achilles in the heel and killed him. At least Hector the dog did not try to bite his heel. It had attached itself to him, Percy believed, only because the other dogs at the house, including that massive and lethargic bulldog and the sausage dog, shunned it and would not share their feeding bowls with it or allow it uncontested access to its own—and because the cats, especially the growling Prudence, intimidated it. Hector was, in fact, a sniveling coward and did nothing to enhance Percy’s manly image as he strode about his neglected land.

It was enough to make any self-respecting gentleman farmer weep. Not that he wanted to be a gentleman farmer, at least not a gentleman farmer who behaved like one. Heaven forbid.

The following morning, after an uneventful night in his bedchamber, Percy walked purposefully across the lawn toward the dower house and found exactly what he had suspected he would find, namely a roofless edifice barren of any workers at all or any other discernible sign of life. He returned to the hall and changed his clothes. By the time Watkins had finished with him, he would have turned startled heads even on Bond Street—especially on Bond Street, in fact.

“My ebony cane, Watkins,” he said. “We did bring the ebony, I suppose?”

“We did, m’lord.” Watkins produced it.

“And my jeweled quizzing glass.”

“The jeweled one, m’lord?”

Percy fixed him with a look, and the jeweled glass was produced without further comment.

“And a lace-edged handkerchief,” Percy said. “And my ruby snuff box, I believe. Yes, the ruby snuffbox.”

Watkins was too well bred to comment on these ostentatious additions to a morning outfit, but the wooden expression with which he always demonstrated disapproval became almost fossilized.

“Be so good as to look through the window to see if my traveling carriage is at the door,” Percy instructed him.

It was. And a grandiose piece of workmanship it was too. He had inherited it from his father and seldom used it. He had brought it here only because Watkins would have been stoically disappointed if he had been forced to travel in a lesser specimen of coach.

Percy had ascertained upon his return to the house that Lady Barclay had taken the gig into Porthdare, as she had said at breakfast she intended to do. There was apparently an elderly lady with a sore hip who needed visiting. Women really could be angels on occasion, though it took a stretch of the imagination to consider his third cousin-in-law once removed and angels in the same thought.

Sometime later, having discovered the name and place of business of the roofer from his butler, Percy stepped unhurriedly down from his carriage outside the man’s shop, which was situated in Meirion, a village six miles up the river valley. He looked languidly about him, ignoring the smattering of gawkers who had stopped to watch the show—or, that is, him.

He nodded to his coachman, who had been surprised earlier by the instruction to wear his livery.

“His lordship, the Earl of Hardford,” the coachman now announced with clear enjoyment after flinging open the door of the shop.

His lordship stepped inside, shook out his handkerchief, flicked open the lid of his snuffbox with the edge of one thumb, paused, changed his mind—he did not enjoy taking snuff anyway—and snapped it shut again, put it away, and raised his quizzing glass to his eye.

“It has occurred to me to wonder why it is,” he said with a sigh as he regarded three saucer-eyed men through his glass, “that the dower house at Hardford Hall lost its roof in December and is still without a roof in February. I have wondered too why there are occasionally two men to be seen on the rafters, one hammering nails while the other watches. And yet, no sign of progress. It has been brought to my attention that it is altogether possible I may discover the answers here. Indeed, I must insist upon doing so.”

Less than fifteen minutes later his carriage was moving back along the village street, watched by far more than a smattering of spectators lined up on either side as though he were a parade. All the roofer’s workers had apparently been indisposed or busy with other jobs, but all had miraculously recovered their health or completed those jobs that very morning and had been about to proceed to the dower house at Hardford Hall when his lordship arrived and delayed them. The sly suggestion, though, that the presence of all those workers on one job would raise the price of the repairs had met with his lordship’s quizzing glass again, sparkling with blinding splendor in a shaft of light from the doorway, and the price had been instantly lowered below the original quote to an amount Percy guessed was only slightly inflated.

The Earl of Hardford had signaled his coachman, who had opened a fat leather purse and paid the roofer half the amount in advance. The other half would be paid upon the satisfactory completion of the job by Lady Barclay, his lordship’s cousin—there was no point in confusing the issue by talking about thirds and removes and in-laws. Her ladyship was to be informed that the price had been dropped in compensation for the unconscionable delay.

Sometimes, Percy reflected during the seemingly interminable journey home, being a titled aristocrat could be a distinct advantage to a man. Not that he would have been incapable of making mincemeat out of that particular tradesman even as plain Percival Hayes.