"No. You'll ride with her, this afternoon, while Will is out with the twins. We'll make sure he knows about it as soon as he returns. That should make him think twice about taking her for granted."
Deaf to Basil's ironical comments regarding her powers of persuasion, Lady Jess stepped away briefly to tell the grooms to have horses ready for Mr. Trevelyan and Miss Ashmore directly after luncheon.
This done, she turned back to her victim. "Now you must go use all your wiles to persuade her to ride with you."
"I?" he asked indignantly. "I’ve only agreed to go along with the scheme, if you can effect it. Didn't I just tell you she won't—"
"If she won't, then you're not the man you were. Even if she hates you, you must know some way to get round her, Basil. Lud, Will could do it without thinking half a minute." Lady Jess knew her man, after all. It wanted only the one hint—that Will's powers of persuasion were superior to his own—to effect complete capitulation. Basil agreed to do as he was told.
Though he knew Miss Ashmore's citadel was not to be so easily stormed, he resolutely waylaid her after she'd left the schoolroom and was descending the stairs. He proceeded to offer such a variety of abject apologies, with every possible expression of penitence, as well as some quite impossible ones, that he soon had her laughing in spite of herself. Having obtained a rather choked pardon for his inexcusable misconduct of the previous day, he then went on to the trickier business of coaxing her to ride with him.
He'd intended to goad her into it. If she refused, he'd say she was afraid of him and incapable of keeping one mischievous gentleman in order. But those green eyes, sparkling with amusement, drove his planned scenario right out of his head.
"Will you ride with me then?" he asked. Seeing her face stiffen, he went on hurriedly, "Jess is furious that her brother's abandoned you for a pair of idiots, and she's determined that you're to teach him a lesson and I'm to be the means. And though I don't especially care to do him any favours, what choice have I when this is the only way I might have your company all to myself?"
Alexandra looked away and addressed her remarks to the bannister.
"I believe," she told that gleaming object, "this gentleman attempts to play on my wounded vanity and my unwounded vanity simultaneously."
"Of course I do. You know I'm the sort of man who stops at nothing."
"In that case, a sensible woman must forego your company, I think."
"Then don't be sensible, Miss Ashmore. I'd like nothing better than to ride with you. I've missed you horribly."
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he urgently wished them back again. He heard them for what they were—Truth—and that wouldn't do at all.
Of course, she didn't believe him. Her face attested to that plain enough though she was still looking at the bannister. Yet, her reaction changed nothing. He had missed her horribly. Why else would he have given in so easily to Jess? Even now, as Alexandra hesitated, he was wondering what he would do if she refused. He was unable to invent a satisfactory answer.
"Well, I suppose you can't help it," she said finally, with a teasing smile that rather surprised him. "Though you momentarily forgot to mention it, the sun does rise and set on my fair countenance, and you can't sleep for thinking of me, and—what else?"
"And," he answered steadily, "if you don't come riding with me, I shall be the most miserable wretch that ever lived."
"Oh, yes. I wonder how that slipped my mind."
"Then you will ride with me?" he persisted. What was she to do? He claimed to be sorry. He'd apologised in every way his fertile mind could invent. If she was willing to ride with others, wouldn't it look odd that she wouldn't ride with him? After all, he did claim it was Jess's idea, and one could always ask Jess about that. In short, after a little more hesitation, and a little more persuasion, Miss Ashmore convinced her mind to agree with her heart and consented.
Jessica pounced on him after luncheon, as soon as he was alone. "Well? Have you done it?"
"Yes."
"Good. I knew you could. Now you must keep her out until teatime—later, if you can manage it. That'll have Will in a frenzy."
"Until teatime! What do you expect me to do? Tie her to a tree?"
"Get lost. Have your horse throw a shoe. Have it throw you. Surely you can think of something."
"I can think of a great many things," he answered, his face a perfect study in wickedness. "However, I understood it was your brother you wanted shackled—not me."
"Oh, stow it, Basil. If you keep her sufficiently amused, she won't notice the time passing."
Without waiting for any more evil hints of the amusements he contemplated, Lady Jessica took herself off to her sitting room and the latest publication from the Minerva Press awaiting her therein.
"Going riding, are you?" Lady Bertram enquired as she bestowed a look of approval upon her goddaughter's wine-coloured habit.
She'd been right to send the girl to Madame Vernisse. The modiste had settled upon simple, clinging lines in rich colours, ignoring the fussy furbelows currently in fashion, since they did not suit Miss Ashmorc at all. Yes, Alexandra would do very well.
"Y-yes," came the nervous answer. "With Mr. Trevelyan."
"I see."
"Unless you think I shouldn't."
"Whyever not? Can't have Farrington thinking he's the only male in Creation, can we? You're quite right. Do him good. And Basil, too. The boy's so fidgety lately, he's bound to get into trouble out of sheer boredom. You'll be doing him a favour—not that he deserves it—but you know that. I don't need to tell you to box his ears if he misbehaves."
Alexandra, who'd been critically examining her gloves, looked up quickly. "Misbehaves?"
"I mean, child, if he behaves in any way you don't like. Which, as I said, I don't need to tell you."
Giving her goddaughter a kindly smile, the countess took herself away.
Chapter Ten
If Alexandra neither noticed the time passing nor felt obliged to box the gentleman's ear that was probably because her companion was behaving so well. He was entertaining, as usual, but in such a friendly, nonthreatening way that she felt much in charity with him as they ambled in leisurely fashion about the enormous estate.
Estate was hardly the word. With its great expanses of field and meadow, its gently rolling lulls and rich valleys, its little ponds and waterways, the Hartleigh property was more like a small kingdom. The estate even had its own forest, an extensive stand of wood left much as Nature had made it, though the clear trails showed that the same care was given to this wilderness as to the rest of Lord Hartleigh's beautifully groomed domain.
She had certainly admired the estate during other rides but Basil took her along paths she hadn't travelled before and talked of childhood escapades, sharing his associations with this stretch of meadow and that golden field and this little duck pond. The stories vividly conjured the childhood of this puzzling man and helped her, at least to some extent, to understand him better.
He had, naturally, been into mischief practically from the day he was born. He had, furthermore, been dreadfully spoiled by his parents, but especially by his indulgent Mama, who’d lost several babies before and after producing him. Under her doting tutelage, the precocious boy had learned early how to wheedle his way out of a scolding with a show of penitence. So, too, had he learned how sweet words could melt away anger and clever phrases turn disapproval into laughter. He'd begun early practising these and the hundred other arts of which he was now the consummate master.
Small wonder it was so difficult to resist him when he was determined not to be resisted. Nature had given him both a fiendishly quick mind and a handsome face and form. Nurture had showed him how to use these to his advantage, and somehow along the way, self-discipline had never come into the picture.
Not that it was so terribly helpful to understand him better. What she learned about him only made her heart warm towards him in a way that was not at all sensible.
/> She was a greater fool than any of the Osbornes, certainly. They at least had stupidity as an excuse. Still, it was impossible to be unhappy now when he seemed so determined to make the ride a pleasant one, free of teasing innuendoes. He'd actually provided her an escape of sorts. No worrying, as she always did when she was with Lord Arden, about whether she was behaving too warmly or too coldly. Nor was there the guilt she always felt about allowing the marquess to court her when she was promised to another, or about building a friendship with his sister under the same false pretences. What would they think of her if they learned the truth?
"You're thinking unhappy thoughts," Basil chided, breaking in on her meditations, "which is most inconsiderate when I'm confiding my deepest secrets to you. Or is it the secrets that make you frown?"
"Oh. Not at all. I was only envying you your playmates," she improvised hastily. "We lived very quietly, you know, and I hadn't any."
"Then you saved yourself and your household a deal of trouble."
He went on to give examples. The Farrington children habitually spent part of the summer at Hartleigh Hall, where Jessica had early cultivated the disagreeable habit of tagging after the boys.
"One day she annoyed Will so, he tied her to a tree, but not nearly well enough. The little thing—and she was barely six years old—got herself free, then proceeded to stumble into a ditch. Nothing daunted, the child stumbled her way out again and marched home, muddy and bruised. She swore up and down she'd been kidnapped by gypsies. Jess would never tattle, one must say that for her. Even so, Will earned himself a flogging, and I—at my advanced age—was kept indoors for a week and required to copy pages and pages of dreary sermons."
"I daresay you copied them beautifully and learned a great deal from the experience."
"And I can tell by the look on your face you think I'd have been better for a flogging. Yet it never did Will any good, did it? He tried, in fact, to drown her not long after. Shall I show you the melancholy scene of his attempted crime?"
Without waiting for an answer, he led her deeper into the wood through such a maze of paths that she lost her bearings completely. Not that she was capable of noting the direction they took. Basil kept up a stream of nonsense as they proceeded, making such a tragicomedy of his anecdote that all she could do was follow him blindly, laughing all the way, until they reached the famous stream.
"We'd better walk the rest of the way," he told her. "The going is treacherous on horseback. At any rate, the beasts deserve a respite, and I'm thirsty."
He helped her dismount, and his touch at her waist sent a tremour through her. Rather unsteadily, she followed him to a curve of the bank where large rocks made a safe and comfortable sitting.
"A childhood paradise," he said, after they'd refreshed themselves and leaned back to relax upon the great, smooth stones.
"Or even an adult one," she agreed. "It's so beautiful and cool here."
"Yes, it is. My cousin is a lucky man. There was a time I thought he'd never live to enjoy it and it would all be mine. He was involved in some rather dangerous intelligence work during the war, you know," he explained.
"As were you. And you both survived."
"Yes. What wonders we Trevelyans are." He appeared lost in thought, and not very pleasant thought at that. His features hardened slightly, and his amber eyes were shadowed.
"You didn't care for that work at all, did you?" she asked, after a bit.
"No. I hated it."
"Did your cousin feel the same?"
"He loved it—or at least the accomplishment. No one can like what he sees along the way. Of course, the accommodations are not always what they should be. He spent time in prison, and I soon learned to inspect my bed and boots before getting into them. When one is surrounded by unreliable allies, snakes and scorpions tend to turn up at the oddest times. At any rate, Edward knew what he was getting into and was prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. I'm not nearly so noble. I was sent away, you know, because—well, you must know that, too, by now. Ironic, isn't it? To be banished in disgrace, and then to find myself playing the hero. Hardly my style."
He'd never before discussed his exile, and the trace of bitterness in his tone surprised her. This wasn't the careless, complacent man she thought she knew.
"Yet you were—are—a hero," she answered carefully.
"In spite of myself." He tossed a pebble into the water. "I wonder," he said, after a moment, "what we'd become if we could do exactly as we wished."
"We should be in a sort of anarchy, of course. At least, that's what my governess always said."
"Why do I think, Alexandra, that you put little stock in what your governess said?" He tossed another pebble into the stream and turned to smile at her.
The smile was sunshine, breaking through the gloom that had clouded his handsome face. She smiled back, happy that she'd helped dispel his somber mood.
"Because," she answered lightly, "you've already discovered what an undutiful daughter I am."
"And if you could do as you wished? If there was no Randolph hovering like a tiresome ghost in the background?"
She closed her eyes briefly to shut out his smiling, sunlit face so that she could conjure up an acceptable response. "It would be pleasant to have a Season," she answered, opening them again. "I had one, but Mama was always nagging. Then she was so ill towards the end of it, and even back then, there was the Randolph ghost in the background. I'd like to be free to enjoy myself this time and make friends with aged debutantes like myself—"
"And flirt with all the gentlemen?"
She grinned. "Well, not all. That would be selfish, and then I shouldn't have any women friends, should I?"
"I'd like to see that," was the surprising answer. "I'd like to see you at all the balls and routs, leaving dozens of broken hearts strewn in your wake. Including Will's. For that I'd even volunteer my own. The one you say I haven't got. You know, the little dark one. Looks something like this." He held up a pebble in illustration, then flung it carelessly over his shoulder.
"And is that what you'd like me to do with it?"
"With Will's, rather. Mine—"
Basil broke off abruptly. His thoughts were tending in a rather disconcerting direction, as they had earlier, and he wondered at it. But then, just look at her. She was so beautiful that it took one's breath away to gaze at her. She was always beautiful, even in those black rags she'd worn in Albania, but now her beauty was more than flesh and blood could bear. The ruby habit seemed to shimmer in the sunlight with every graceful movement of that slim, provocative body. A glass of exquisite wine, he thought, from which he longed to sip. Fortunately, he had sufficient self control not to say it aloud. To anyone else he would have said it. He couldn't understand what made her different, or why that difference made him hold his tongue. Perhaps, right now he'd rather not understand.
Looking into her eyes was like gazing into a quiet forest, a place of refuge, and her low, husky voice was a cool, soothing stream, murmuring beside him. Meanwhile, this actually was a cool, shaded place by a clear, sparkling stream; and it was a sort of refuge. She was close by with no Will, no Randolph, no irascible Papa, nor watchful relatives of his own to interfere.
He even wished, for one dreadful moment, that it could always be so, and that was the oddest thought of all. He wanted her. His desire hadn't abated in all this time. Nor was there any more prospect of that desire being assuaged than there'd ever been. In spite of all that, he felt peaceful and contented.
She'd shunned him, and he hadn't liked it. Now he was shunned no longer, and idiotically happy...So relieved, in fact, that though he wanted her no whit less than he'd ever done since he met her, he forebore to act. And that was something. That was rather an immense something. But he couldn't think about it now. Later, perhaps, when those cool green eyes didn't confuse him so. At the moment, they were gazing at him inquiringly. He wondered how long he'd been staring at her, speechless.
He gave her a rueful gri
n. "See? You've only to mention a Season, and I immediately begin cudgeling my brains how to get you one. In fact, I wonder what the matter is. Surely my aunt would pay your Papa's debt."
"She tried to pay Mr. Burnham directly, she told me. And he declined to accept. Most indignantly declined, she says. Not," she added hurriedly, "that she ought—"
"Aunt Clem is never troubled by 'ought' or 'ought not.' A trait that runs in the family, as you may have noticed. At any rate, she has no children of her own. Edward has always been a prodigy of virtue. Even I, despite every evidence to the contrary for over thirty years, have managed to get my own affairs in order. So you must be her offspring now. But it does puzzle me why there's only Will here courting you, instead of a few dozen competing for your attention."
Her face reddened. "You make me feel like the estate of a bankrupt to be auctioned off to the highest bidder."
"Why?"
"Because that's what I am." Though she spoke quietly there was suppressed emotion in her tone. He wasn't altogether surprised at what followed. "My father hasn't a Birthing to call his own, and I'm his only asset. One way or another I'm to be used to pay his debt. If I'm not the commodity he offers in trade to the Burnhams, then I must be the means of getting them compensation." She shook her head then, as though to toss off what troubled her. "I'm sorry," she said. "I make it sound like a melodrama."
"You're stating the facts," he answered gently. "And the main fact is that whoever does pacify the Burnhams for your Papa will have a hold on you all the rest of your life, and the prospect appalls you."
She looked at him in astonishment.
"I understand you better than you think. And now," he went on, with a teasing smile, "you've as much as told me that Will hasn't won your heart and I'm more put out with my aunt than ever."
The faint rose of her cheeks deepened, telling him that she knew what she'd inadvertently confessed. Feeling absurdly relieved, he went on. "Since she's made such a mull of the business, perhaps I should step in and see what can be done to mend it."