Page 80 of Nothing But a Rakehell
Her mouth twisted. “What will he do? Mock me? Call me a cripple? That’s going to happen in any case. It’s happened here, in my own family’s home.”
“Yes, he will mock you. To your face. To his friends. To the entireton. He’ll have broadsheets drawn up. He’ll publically call you a cripple, a hoyden, an adventuress. He’ll hire someone to write a song about it. He’ll print up pamphlets shaming you.”
She stared at him. “Don’t be absurd. Of course he would not do all of that.”
“He will. It’s what he does.” He set the cat down and started pacing again. “My mother kept a dog as a pet, a great, shaggy beast of an Irish Wolfhound. I adored that dog, and she returned my affections. She slept with me in the nursery and followed me about all day. Fern, the nursemaid, used to complain she was trying to steal her position. We were inseparable. Until one day, when the dog ate something bad for her. She grew very ill and my mother thought she would die. She tried to prepare me and I was inconsolable. My father was furious about the fuss. Eventually the dog did recover, to our relief. But he had it drowned—to teach me not to become so attached.”
She gasped and tears filled her eyes.
“That was just the beginning,” he said hoarsely. “After my mother died, the only person who would talk of her was Fern. She kept her memory alive. She tried to look after me, just as my mother would have wished. She sang me to sleep when I awoke in nightmares and tears. She told me the old tales my mother loved. She bandaged my cuts and scrapes. You asked about birthdays—she was the only person ever, after my mother died, to remember the day. My father, however, decided she was making me soft.”
“What did he do?” she asked fearfully.
“Bribed her away. He didn’t just fire her. He bought a boarding house and gave it over to her, just so I could see that she was choosing it over me.”
She shivered at the cruelty of it. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. The memory of her brother in law’s story came back to her. “And Saoirse?” she asked.
Startled, he raised a brow at her.
She blushed a little. “Tensford told me about her. I did push him a bit. He said you bought the horse yourself.”
“Yes. I wanted something of my own. Something he couldn’t take away or destroy. Lord, how we did ride! I went everywhere, anywhere, to escape the house and my father.” He scowled. “It didn’t matter that I owned her outright. He sold her the day after I left for school.”
It all made perfect sense. His reluctance to form connections. His trust in only his proven friends. “Keswick, I’ve asked to be your friend, practically forced it upon you. I want you to know, he won’t change that.”
“No. I’ve told him you mean nothing to me. He must believe that.”
“He cannot bribe me, or sell me, or shame me into abandoning you.”
“You don’t know what you are saying.”
“I do.”
‘You think so. You believe so. But you wouldn’t be the first woman he decided to drive away.”
She stilled.
“I won’t see it happen to you.”
“Whathappened?”
He heaved a great sigh.
“Tell me, Keswick.”
He leaned against the stall door. “I rode all over the estate, all over the countryside, really, in those days with Saoirse. I began to see the strengths of our estate, and some of the weaknesses, too. Places where a change in tenancy would do good, others where an application of modern methods might yield much better results. But the land agent, the game warden, even most of the tenants, they turned away from me. He had denied me a place in the running of the estate and they all knew it. None of them wished to bring down his wrath by encouraging or engaging with me.”
He slid down to sit on the dirt floor and his head dropped back against the door. “So, I began to ride farther afield. I spoke to other land managers, saw how other estates and villages were run, and noted which were thriving, and why. I was up near the old Heddon Mill when I met a man, a squire, in a pub. We struck up a conversation, and though he was older, he was interested in my ideas and willing to share his. We met up several times and talked and talked. One day, he invited me back to his house.”
He gave her a bleak smile and she stood up and went to sit beside him, their backs against the stall door. “His home wasn’t anywhere near as grand as ours, but it was so much better. Itwasa home, warm and comfortable and full of a real family—and all of the love and squabbles that went with it. I was enchanted—and I certainly liked the look of his eldest daughter.”
Glory swallowed, but said nothing. She’d wanted to know.
“She was small and blonde and quiet-mannered. So normal. She seemed pleased with my attentions and her parents seemed so, too.”
“But not your father?”
“She was a squire’s daughter. Solid gentry. Perfectly respectable. I wanted nothing more than to become part of their family. But my father would not have it. She wasn’t lofty enough to suit him. They had no connections in theton. He told me to end it.”
