Historical Jewels Read online

  Another volley cannoned over the net. The red-haired woman ran backward, arm extended. A difficult shot under any circumstance, and one she nearly made. The ball caromed off the edge of her racquet like a grouse startled from a bush and winged down the snow-covered slope.

  To his astonishment, the redhead threw back her head and laughed. Though he could hear nothing, her body moved with laughter; without restraint, full of exuberance and joy. James’s sister, Diana, laughed, too. Hands on her hips, she watched the redhead start after the ball. Several of the watching gentlemen closed in on Diana. No one followed the redhead even though she was, to his mind, the more appealing of the two.

  Sebastian shifted on the chair, but nothing eased his discomfort. His ribs hurt like the devil. And yet he wanted desperately to be up and about. Inactivity suited him in neither body nor temperament. Outside, the light turned, and he could once again see through the window. The redhead walked toward the hedges, sliding now and then on the snow-covered slope. Though not yet near enough to make out her features, for a small woman, which she was, her figure struck him as lively.

  “Your sister’s grown quite tall.” He’d met James’s sister—half-sister, since they had only their mother in common—five years ago when he’d visited the Fitzalan estate in Middlesex. He’d been a third Lieutenant then, newly promoted. Andrew was there, too. The last time ever he saw his brother.

  James glanced at the window. “Yes.”

  Sebastian remembered fetching her a glass of lemonade. Strange how he remembered that detail but hardly any about her appearance. Youth. Blushes. A plump figure. Blue eyes, he thought and, even at her age, an air of sophistication. He’d left the following morning for Falmouth and the Indian Ocean. If she was willing, why not? Marrying Diana would be an excellent solution to the problem of ending his single state.

  By now, the redhead had come near enough that he could see she was older than he first thought, into her twenties, but with skin much suited to the winter skies of Cumbria. He’d been so long sailing the ocean—twelve years in all and the last five without port in England—the change in feminine fashions astonished him. Yet, even he could see the redhead’s clothes were not in style. No embroidered hems. No pelisse with puffy sleeves, no Brussel’s lace. Just white muslin and an encircling ribbon several inches above her natural waist. And the insistent red of her hair, bright against the snow. She crouched, angling toward the window as she searched for the ball in the dense foliage of a low hedge. Her mouth moved in a triumphant shout. She rose, ball clutched in one hand. A breeze riffled her hair, blowing copper curls across her cheek.

  To his surprise, his heart did an awkward turn in his chest at about the same time his body registered significant interest to the south. She was pretty. Very pretty. With a smile that made him want another. He watched the sway of her bottom as she dashed uphill to James’s sister. Significant interest.

  “Who is the redhead?”

  “One of your guests, of course.” James coughed into his hand. “Though,” he said carefully, “not quite a country lass.”

  “The sixth,” Sebastian said. “The one I am not to choose.” The hound pushed its head forward beneath his fingers. Its eyes closed when Sebastian rubbed behind one ear.

  “My lord,” said McNaught.

  His valet’s glass hovered inches from his face, floating like some ghostly apparition. He kicked the blanket off his lap in the hope McNaught would be distracted from his deuced potion. Pain licked up his side, a searing reminder that he was far from healed. Oh, he could hobble about well enough but anything truly energetic, blanket-kicking or pointless games of tennis, or, for that matter, embracing one’s wife-to-be, remained out of the question. But he’d begun to think it possible to one day walk in his newly acquired garden instead of admiring the prospect from an invalid’s chair.

  James waved one lace-cuffed wrist. “Diana was London’s reigning debutante this season past. Absolutely without mercy. Broke at least a dozen hearts. Probably more.”

  “Why isn’t she married?” He meant the redhead, but the moment the question left his mouth, he knew James would misunderstand, and so he did.

  “Saving herself for you.”

  Sebastian glanced at his friend, taking in the golden hair and angelically male features of James, viscount Fitzalan. “Now, why should she do that?”

  “All the young ladies want to be your wife. Including Diana. God’s truth, Sebastian, old man. You’ve no notion how celebrated you are in Society. Hero of the Indian Ocean. Pirates. Battles. Prize money. And that’s without the title. With it, well…”

  He rolled his eyes. “You exaggerate. As usual.”

  “No. I don’t. Diana, like every other young lady of society, spends hours imagining herself married to you. And probably dreams of you at night.”

  The truth was his recollection of Diana was faded and incomplete. Brown hair, light eyes and very little more. He remembered she was pretty. She must be if she’d broken the hearts of a dozen of London’s most elite bachelors. Except, he needed a wife. Not a debutante. A sensible, capable woman. Not an orchid in need of fretting care. No, his wife must be content to live simply. If it came right down to it, he wanted a woman who wouldn’t mind life on a ship and, at minimum, a woman who wouldn’t resent long stretches alone while her husband sailed the seas. The familiar excitement for the waves and salt air failed to materialize. “I’m cold,” he complained, staring at the blanket forlorn on the marble tiles.

  “You can marry anyone, Sebastian. No one is out of your reach. But I’d be pleased,” James said, “if you married Diana.”

  “Arrange it, then.” His indifference ought to worry him, but it didn’t. How had such a pretty woman as the redhead stayed unmarried at her age? Some abiding fault perhaps. A distemper of manner, or a horsey laugh. Or perhaps no sense of humor at all. Remembering her laughter, that seemed unlikely. Perhaps she was vain or haughty. He sighed. In fact, he would be quite satisfied if he were to wake up one morning and find a wife at his side, a ready-made helpmeet braced for a life in the country. He had no intention of living in London. Ever. “Get her to agree, and I’ll marry her tomorrow.”

  “I’ve done what I can. She’s at least amenable to the notion, for it seems that in addition to your reputation, you made quite an impression when you met her before. At the least, she already loves your naval record. Shouldn’t be hard to convince her to marry you. Nothing could be easier, I expect.”

  “What about the redhead?” The sight of that flame-colored hair unsettled him, but he recalled with interest the nature of his response to his first sight of her. Significant interest, and that was encouraging for the improving state of his health. He’d been coddling his injury too long and as a result, let his resolve to action grow soft. For years he’d solved his own damn problems, and here he was letting James take over his life. Was she as passionate as that hair of hers? “Is she a Scot?”

  James turned his head to look at him, his smile gone. “That’s her, Sebastian.” He lifted his palms in a defensive gesture. “From everything I’ve heard, it’s a miracle she didn’t die with your brother and his wife.”

  Sebastian absorbed James’s revelation with typical self-possession. “I’m surprised she came.”

  His grin reappeared. “You are the leading citizen of Far Caister, Sebastian, in need of a spare for your dinner table. When Diana arrived without her companion, her most bosom friend whose name escapes me just now, I took it upon myself to importune the vicar for help. By merest chance, her name came up, and she was soon convinced to remedy our predicament of numbers. She could not refuse. Your patronage might do her a world of good. Besides, by reputation at least, she is a lady of breeding, I assure you. Impoverished. But a lady.”

  “Not what I expected.”

  “No family to speak of. Next thing to an orphan. Mother’s an invalid, so I’m told.” James waved a hand. “The proprieties are satisfied, the numbers once again even. Our spare is tolerably attr
active, more than tolerably intelligent and quite enough on the shelf not to upset the other young ladies. Her reputation is nearly unassailable.” His white-toothed grin reappeared. “And you are free to question her to your heart’s content. For all the good it may do you.”

  Through the windowpane, Sebastian scowled. “The spare.”

  “Like you, in a manner of speaking.”

  “God-awful hair.” But he saw himself with his hands buried in curls free from pins and cascading over her shoulders.

  “There,” James said, “you are much mistaken.” His half-lidded glance swept the window. “Wonderful exuberance.” Sebastian shot him a glance because he heard something in his friend’s tone. “Wonderful.” James’s voice dropped a notch and turned into a whisper, a sound of endearments exchanged in a darkened room. “I do fancy her.”

  McNaught cleared his throat. “My lord.” The potion inched downward.

  He could now see McNaught’s fingertips, ending the illusion the glass had been floating in the air. “Oh, all right.” He grasped the tumbler and tossed down the contents. Took it like a man, he did. Peppermint, he thought. Licorice. And a sharp aftertaste of some sort of patent remedy not quite strong enough to mask whatever ingredient gave off the faint smell of rotten eggs. Sulfur? Shuddering, he held out the empty glass. It vanished from sight. “The spare.”

  “Yes. The spare.”

  “Twenty-four years old.” In all the times Sebastian had thought or read about his brother’s death, the lone survivor of the tragedy had never been more than an abstraction to him. A name in the official records, without face or character, no existence outside her having been at Pennhyll. Now that he saw her, the reality jolted him. “Never married. Daughter of Sir Roger Willow, deceased.” Miss Olivia Willow, formerly a governess for Admiral Bunker, found near death at Pennhyll Castle with the bodies of Andrew, earl of Tiern-Cope, and his wife Guenevere. The earl and countess each dead of a bullet wound. In the coroner’s opinion, they had died quickly. A crack shot, their murderer. Miss Willow, too, had been shot, but in her case, the bullet went a hair to the right and spared her the fate of his brother and his wife. Unfortunately, she remembered nothing of the night in question. The conclusion of the inquiry was that Miss Willow had surprised the culprit during the commission of his crime and as a result sustained near fatal injury. Only the alarum raised by household staff saved her from death. No one doubted she would otherwise have been killed. The man responsible escaped into the night.

  James glanced at McNaught. “A spinster, Sebastian, of advancing age with no male relatives looking out for her welfare and no dragon-eyed mama guarding her virtue. In short, a woman who will keep me entertained while we are here in the midst of all this frozen…vegetation. What is it? You look like someone’s kicked your favorite hound.” His face fell. “Don’t tell me you fancy her, too. I saw her first, damn it all.”

  Sebastian stared at the windowed wall through which he could see the wild splash of red hair coming free of its pins. He didn’t care how pretty she was or how lovely her smile. She was his best hope, likely his only hope, of discovering who killed his brother. He meant to have what was in her head, no matter the cost to him or to her. “As long as I get what I want from her, she’s all yours, James.”

  Chapter Two

  January 5

  Olivia smiled because her role was to be pleasant at all times, to be at all times agreeable. She must pretend she did not feel the least bit awkward about being back at Pennhyll where three days had vanished from her life. A legion of emotions contributed to her disquiet, starting the moment she walked into the Great Hall; the fear of those lost days tangled up with the anticipation of meeting Captain Alexander. Whatever her anxieties about Pennhyll, she was done avoiding the past, done with living as if nothing terrible had happened to her. Something terrible had happened, and she was done with the pretense. She accepted the invitation because she wanted those days back. After a year without remembering, she’d come to believe Pennhyll was the only place she could recover those days.

  For the moment at least, no one here remarked her much. They seemed content with her role as the spare. She was herself well-used to a house crowded with guests and even more used to near invisibility. Old enough now to be a chaperone and with the distinct advantage of being neither rich enough nor young enough to threaten the prospects of younger, better-situated ladies. She was the second-best umbrella, the one no one wants until the other can’t be found. As befitted her status, she sat on a stool equidistant to fireplace and door; the very outskirts of the gathering but at the ready in case of need.

  Snow had forced their luncheon indoors so that instead of a walk to the lake and a meal served in the crisp January air, they cowered inside, glad to be out of the sudden damp. Four of their number fell into the category of parent or guardian. The rest were younger. Five gentlemen and six young ladies, if she counted herself, all but Miss Diana Royce from nearby, and thus well-known to Olivia. Since they knew her they paid her little attention. Twice touched by tragedy, she occupied a peculiar position in society. By birth and long family history, she belonged to the gentry, no one denied that, but no one of her class wanted to befriend her. The taint of death and scandal clung too close.

  To a man, the fathers held their Madeira and broke rank only if some feminine request demanded the semblance of attention. Mothers watched their charges with hawk-eyed stares that swept the room for signs of attachment, suitable or otherwise. Young ladies sat by each other with the bachelor gentlemen hovering near. One of the ladies played the harp well enough to be ignored. Another hour at least before she could excuse herself to wander the castle, hoping something would spark a memory.

  All the setting lacked was their host. No one had met him, no one but Lord Fitzalan, who knew the earl before he was an earl, and his sister, who had met him once some years before. Lord Fitzalan, unmarried himself, numbered among the young gentlemen. For a nobleman, Fitzalan seemed sensible. High-spirited, a bit vain of his appearance, though not without cause, and not a dilettante. So far as she could tell, he was the only man here with more than an ounce of brain in his head.

  “Do come sit, Fitzalan.” Miss Royce, the viscount’s half-sister, reclining goddess-like on a chaise, lifted herself on one elbow. “I miss your company here.” How, Olivia wondered, did a nineteen-year-old girl acquire such ennui? The crowd around her shifted as Miss Royce patted the chaise. Her chestnut hair and dark, up-tilted eyes just slightly uneven made Olivia imagine her pining for an Italianate sun, one hand reaching lazily for another glass of wine or yet another sun-sweetened grape. What must London be like if girls Diana’s age learned enough of men and their natures to find them so tediously dull?

  Fitzalan sat on the edge of his sister’s chaise. “I am here, Diana, your abject slave.”

  “If that were true, you would have bought me that phaeton I wanted. Mama said it would flatter me exceedingly.”

  “You cannot drive a phaeton in Far Caister.”

  “I can if I am in Town. I would be so fetching a figure in a phaeton drawn by horses to match my eyes. What do you think?” Diana touched her brother’s arm while her gaze swept the admiring men, all of whom rang in with enthusiastic agreement. Miss Royce must have a phaeton. And cattle to match her eyes. Who could disagree? They’d none of them ever met a girl like Miss Royce, a natural flirt with the sort of brilliance one acquired only from a London Season and a Bond Street seamstress.

  “Until I met Captain Alexander, now the earl,” Diana said, “I thought my brother the handsomest man alive.” She pointed to the portrait in pride of place above the mantel. Miss Royce did have fine eyes. “But, dear James, you’re simply not.”

  “If I changed my mind about the phaeton?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Well, dearest James, since I know you are not sincere, I must say the same.”

  Fitzalan mimicked despair, and Diana giggled when he rolled off the chaise and pretended to lie dead at her feet. A few fat
hers or elder brothers looked over but, determining the cause of the commotion, returned to a heated discussion of the benefits of double lambing as considered against the health of the ewes. The viscount turned onto his side and, propping his head up with one arm, peered past the crowd surrounding the chaise. “What think you, Miss Willow?”

  Olivia, alarmed to find herself addressed, adopted her best flustered-by-his-attention expression. A woman’s loss of aplomb upon a handsome man’s notice rarely, if ever, caused offense. She liked to think she’d perfected an attitude of dizzy intensity. “My lord, I’ve no experience of such matters.”

  “But your opinion means the world.” Fitzalan laughed so that his teeth showed. “The very universe. Who is the more handsome? Me or the captain?”

  Now here was a fine predicament. If she chose Tiern-Cope, she’d insult Lord Fitzalan and vice versa. Drat the man. She wrung her hands. “Pray, my lord, do not rely on my opinion in anything to do with fashion.”

  “Let us say this once that we shall.”

  “I am sure Miss Royce would look exceedingly well in a phaeton the color of her eyes.” There existed a perilously fine line between the meekness she wanted to project and outright satire. From the tilt of Fitzalan’s head, she’d just crossed it.

  “My dear Miss Willow.” Fitzalan grinned. “My dear, charming, lovely, exquisite Miss Willow. For all that our gentlemen’s pride will be trampled like so much dirt beneath your feet, I hope you will not disagree with my sister. She would be utterly cast down to discover you do not share her opinion of our host.”

  Olivia let her eyes go still. Why did the only man here with any intelligence have to single her out? She did not want to be noticed. Second-best umbrella status suited her just fine. The Far Caister girls might not have Diana’s polish, but several, Miss Cage in particular, laid claim to some measure of beauty. Why didn’t he banter with Miss Cage? “To be sure, I have yet to meet a gentleman who isn’t handsome or a lady who isn’t beautiful.”