The Heir Read online

  Lady Ann said, her voice far too gentle for Sir Ralph’s liking, “My dear Arabella, surely it would be best if Sir Ralph did contact your father’s solicitor. After all, there is so very much for us to do already.”

  “No, Mother.” Arabella turned cold gray eyes to Sir Ralph’s flushed face. The earl’s eyes, there was no doubt about that. And that coldness of hers, just like the late earl’s. Yes, this damned impertinent girl probably also had her late father’s arrogance, not that Sir Ralph would ever say that the late earl did not deserve every whit of arrogance he chose to exhibit.

  “We appreciate your kindness, Sir Ralph, but it is for us—my mother and me—to make whatever arrangements are now necessary. Please extend our gratitude to the Prince Regent. His words would touch the coldest of hearts.”

  Now, what did that mean? Sir Ralph did not appreciate irony. It annoyed him. He disliked having to decipher it, having to puzzle over it only to discover that no irony at all had ever been intended. But what had come to him loud and quite clear was that the damned girl was dismissing him. Him! To give himself time so he wouldn’t box the girl’s ears, Sir Ralph slowly pulled off his spectacles and raised his ample bulk equally as slowly from the chair.

  Arabella rose also, and to Sir Ralph’s chagrin, her cold gray eyes were on a level with his. She had winter eyes, he thought, as cold and harsh as her father’s. He wondered if they ever warmed, as he had once seen her father’s warm when he had touched a very lovely young courtesan’s exquisite white shoulder. He shouldn’t remember something like that, particularly in the widow’s presence. He would forget it, now.

  The daughter extended a slender hand. Her voice was clipped, yet even the most ardent of sticklers would have found no fault with her. “Thank you, Sir Ralph. As you can see, the news has been quite a shock to my mother. If you will forgive us, I really must see to her needs now. I will have Russell show you out.”

  He found himself reacting to her just as he would have to her father. He moved quickly. He spoke in his most conciliatory voice. “Yes, yes, of course. My dear Lady Ann, if there is anything I can do, anything to relieve you of the burdens that now afflict you, do not hesitate to call upon me. I will be here instantly to assist you.” And he was thinking, just as long as this bitch of a daughter isn’t with you. He preferred his women gentle, soft-spoken, and obedient. Like Lady Ann. But then, he wondered, why had the earl kept a mistress in London, a mistress in Brussels, and frequented brothels in Portugal, from all Sir Ralph had heard. Ah, but a fragile creature like Lady Ann surely wouldn’t be expected to service such a demanding man, as the late earl surely was. As for the daughter, he would admit that she was beautiful, ah, but so cold, so forthright, so unconciliatory.

  The countess had averted her face and did not rise. Only a slight nodding of her fair head acknowledged his words. By all that was holy, she was exquisite. He really didn’t want to leave her, but he had no choice, not with that dragon of a daughter looking at him as if she’d like to chop him into small pieces with a knife she doubtless carried at her waist.

  “Good-bye, Sir Ralph,” Arabella said, her voice as wintry as her father’s eyes.

  Again, he thought regretfully that he would have liked to clasp the small trembling hands of the countess in his own, to assure her that he would protect her, comfort her, share her grief, not that the late Earl of Strafford had afforded him all that attention, the earl having paid very little attention to anyone he did not deem worthy of killing the French. He was not, however, in a position to carry out his wishes. He looked unwillingly away from the beautiful countess into the set, unsmiling face of the late earl’s daughter.

  As the parlor door closed with a snap behind him, he was again struck with the thought that the earl’s daughter was molded in his very image. Their physical likeness was striking—the same ink-black hair and dark arched brows set above haughty, arrogant gray eyes. But it was not simply their physical similarities. How very alike in temperament they were. Proud, autocratic, and most damnably capable. Even though Sir Ralph was displeased at being dismissed by an eighteen-year-old girl, he felt it rather a pity that the girl could not have been born a boy. From what he had just witnessed, she could have most ably filled her father’s position.

  The Countess of Strafford raised wide blue eyes to her daughter’s fine-featured face. “Really, my dearest, were you not a bit harsh with poor Sir Ralph? You must know he meant well. He was trying to spare both of us unnecessary pain.”

  “My father need not be dead now,” Arabella said in a cold flat voice. “Such a stupid waste. Stupid, stupid war to appease the ridiculous greed of stupid men. Dear God, could there be anything more unjust?” She flung away her mother’s open arms and pounded her fists against the paneled wall.

  My poor foolish child. You will not let me comfort you, for you are too much like him. You grieve for a man whose very existence made mine an endless misery. Is there no part of me in you? Poor Arabella, to shed tears is not to be despicable and weak.

  “Arabella, where are you going?” The countess rose quickly and hurried after her daughter.

  “To see Brammersley, father’s solicitor. Surely you know who he is, Mother. He has tried to flirt with you every time Father has been out of England, the inept buffoon. Damnation, I detest dealing with him, but Father trusted him, more’s the pity. Speaking of buffoons, I do not believe the Ministry sent Sir Ralph. Goodness, I thought he would try to seduce you right here.”

  “Seduce me? Sir Ralph? That paunchy old man?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Arabella said with great patience. “Are you blind?”

  “I noticed nothing amiss with Sir Ralph’s presentation. He was quite proper. But, dearest, surely you are in no fit condition to go out now. Surely you would wish a cup of tea? Perhaps a rest in your bedchamber? Perhaps, although it is a bit far-fetched, you might even like to talk to me, Arabella?”

  “I am not tired or weak or lily-livered,” Arabella said over her shoulder. “I always talk to you, Mother. We speak at least three or four times every day.” But she didn’t slow. She was consumed with bitter, raging anger and boundless, helpless energy. She was suddenly pulled from her own pain at the sight of her mother’s pale, pinched face. “Oh, God, I am such a beast.” She dashed a hand across her forehead. She would not cry. She would not. Her father would send a lightning bolt down to dash her to the dirt if she cried. “Mother, you will be all right without me, will you not? Please, it is something I must do. I could not bear that Father not be given a proper service before there is any disposition of his estates. I will make the arrangements to leave London. We must return to Evesham Abbey, I will see to it, I must see to it. You do understand, do you not?”

  The countess held the stormy gray eyes in a steady gaze and said slowly, with only a hint of sadness, “Yes, my love, I understand. I shall be quite all right. Go now, Arabella, and do what you must.”

  The countess felt immeasurably older than her thirty-six years. It was with an effort of will that she dragged herself to the front bow window and sank down into a winged chair. Thick gray fog swirled about the house, twining itself about tree branches and obscuring the green grass in the small park opposite the house.

  She saw John Coachman holding the skittish horses. And there was Arabella crossing the flagstone in her long, sure stride, looking dismal in her black gown and cloak. Arabella would arrange everything and no one would know that her determined, implacable energy cloaked a despairing grief.

  Perhaps it is better that she will not even seek comfort from me. For then I, too, would have to feign sorrow. She cannot even see that his death means only the end of my imprisonment. Her furious energy will burn out her grief. It is just as well. Dear Elsbeth, innocent elfin child. Like me, you are now to be freed. I must write you, for now you belong at Evesham Abbey. Now you may return to your home, to Magdalaine’s home. Such a short time you lived, Magdalaine. But your daughter will know my care. I will take care of her, Magdalaine, I promise you
that. Thank you, God. He is gone. Forever.

  The countess rose from her chair with such a spurt of activity that her blond curls trembled about her face. She threw back her head and walked purposefully to a small writing desk in the corner of the parlor. It was a curiously odd gesture, one of confidence, reborn as if by instinct after eighteen years. With crisp, almost cheerful movements, she dipped the quill into the ink pot and plied her hand to a sheet of elegant stationery.

  4

  EVESHAM ABBEY, 1810

  Lucifer’s massive hooves sent loose gravel pitching from the lime tree-bordered drive. The rhythmic, powerful beat brought little comfort to his rider.

  Arabella turned in the saddle and looked back toward her home. Evesham Abbey stood proudly in the hazy morning light, its sun-baked red brick walls extending upward to innumerable chimney stacks and gables. There were forty gables in all; she had counted them. As a child of eight she had eagerly announced this arithmetic feat to her father, received a startled look, a hearty laugh, and a powerful hug that had left her small, sturdy ribs bruised until Michaelmas Day.

  So many years ago. And now there was nothing. Nothing at all, except those forty gables. And they would remain until well after she was dead.

  They had buried an empty coffin in the marbled family vault. After the women, save for Arabella, had left the cemetery, four of her father’s farmers heaved a huge stone slab over the coffin and the local smithy set about his painstaking job of chipping and hewing out fragments of stone, leaving in the indentations the earl’s name and titles and the years that marked his life. The empty coffin rested beside Magdalaine’s, the earl’s first wife. It chilled Arabella to see the empty cavern to the other side of her father’s coffin, destined for her mother.

  She had stood in quiet command, stiff and cold as the marble wall behind her, until finally the smithy’s ringing hammer and chisel ceased their monotonous echoing.

  Arabella guided Lucifer off the graveled drive onto a narrow footpath that wound through the home wood to the small fishpond that nestled like an exquisite circular gem set amidst the green oak and maple forest. The day was too warm for the heavy velvet riding habit. The morning sun baked through the stark black material, plastering her chemise to her skin. Only a splash of white about her neck broke the somberness of her dress. Even the soft lawn ruffles about her throat made her skin itch.

  Arabella slid off Lucifer’s muscular back and tethered him to a low sturdy yew tree. She hadn’t bothered with a saddle. She remembered clearly how her father had drawn her aside one day when she was no more than twelve years old, and told her he didn’t want to take a chance on losing her, not when she was the best rider for her size in the county. Side saddles were death traps. He would not allow her to hunt in a side saddle. She could pose on one while an artist painted her, but that was all. She would ride astride or she would ride bareback.

  She lifted her skirts from the wet morning grass and walked slowly about the edge of the still water to the far side, careful not to tread on the long, silken water reeds. They were beautiful, those reeds. The thought of trampling them was anathema to her.

  What a blessed relief to escape from all those black-garbed visitors, with their long, unsmiling faces, nodding and bowing and reciting in low, doleful voices their mechanical phrases of sympathy. She marveled at how graciously her mother moved among them in her black rustling widow’s weeds, all in the latest style, of course, seemingly tireless, her charm and smile perhaps a bit brittle, but there and well in place. Lady Ann always knew exactly what was expected and executed every duty to perfection. Only Suzanne Talgarth, Arabella’s best friend from her earliest childhood, had pulled her aside, said nothing at all, and hugged her close.

  Arabella paused a moment to listen to the baleful croaking of a lone frog, hidden from her view in the thick reeds. As she bent down with a graceful swish of her black skirts, she chanced to spot a patch of black, quite at variance with the myriad shades of green, in a cluster of reeds but a few feet away from her. She forgot the frog, and with a frown furrowing her brow, moved slowly and quietly forward.

  She carefully parted a throng of reeds and found herself staring down at a sleeping man, stretched out his full length on his back, his arms pillowed behind his head. He wore no coat, only black breeches, black top boots, and a white frilled lawn shirt that was loose and open about his neck. She looked more closely at his face, calm and expressionless in sleep, and started back with a swallowed cry of surprise. It was as though she were looking at herself in a mirror, so alike were their features. His curling raven hair was cut close above his smooth brow. Distinctive black brows flared upward in a proud arch, then sloped gently toward the temples. His mouth was full, as was hers, and his high cheekbones accentuated his straight Roman nose. His chin was firm, stubborn. She was certain that his nostrils flared when he was angry. She had dimples. She wondered when he smiled if he had dimples, too. No, he looked too stern a man to have something so whimsical. Naturally, the dimples did not suit her either. She had never even entertained the notion that she was beautiful, but looking at him, she thought he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

  “You cannot be real,” she whispered, still staring down at the man, wondering, yet knowing who he must be. Then as the reason for his presence hit her, she cursed. “You damned bastard!” She was yelling now, so furious she was shaking with it. “You miserable scrap of filth! Wake up and get off my land before I shoot you! I might still whip you to within an inch of your miserable life!” She stopped then because she didn’t have her pistol with her. It didn’t matter. She still had her riding crop. She brought it up.

  The man’s heavily fringed black lashes parted slowly, and she found herself gazing into her own upward-tilted gray eyes. His were just a bit darker than hers, as were her father’s. Dear God, but he was beautiful, more so than her father.

  “My word,” the man said slowly, his voice as smooth as a stone at the bottom of a creek. He did not move, but narrowed his eyes against the glare of the sun to take in the flushed and furious face above him.

  “I declare, it is a lady I see. Look at those white hands, never done a day’s work in her life. Yes, doubtless it is a lady. But where, I wonder, is the tavern wench who spoke such foul curses at me? She wants to shoot me? She wants to whip me? Certainly, this is a dramatic situation better suited for Drury Lane.”

  He spoke well, like a gentleman. No matter. She continued to search his face, unmoved. There was a deep cleft in his chin that she did not have, and he was tanned, with a pirate’s dark face. She had always hated pirates. No, she wouldn’t let this man anger her. She asked, her voice as arrogant as her father’s had ever been, “Just who the devil are you?”

  Still he did not shift his position, just lay there, stretched out at her feet, as indolent as a lizard on a sunny rock. But he was grinning at her now, showing strong white teeth. She saw then that his gray eyes were flecked with pale gold lights. It was an odd distraction. Neither she nor her father had that. She was glad. She decided it looked common, those pale gold lights.

  “Do you always talk like a slut off the back streets?” he asked in a calm easy voice, bringing himself up to rest on his elbows. Those eyes of his were deep and clear, and there was an intelligence in them that she recognized and hated.

  “The way I choose to talk to an insolent ruffian lazing about on Deverill land cannot be questioned by the likes of you.” She brought her riding crop up from her side and slapped the leather thongs lightly against her black-gloved hand.

  “Ah, am I now to be whipped?”

  “It is very possible. I asked you a question, but your reason for not answering now occurs to me.” She stared at him thoughtfully and felt a sickening tightness in her chest. But she’d been taught to face even the most unpleasant things straight on, with no shying away. “You are obviously a bastard—my father’s bastard. You cannot be so blind as not to notice the great similarity between our features, and I am the v
ery image of my father.” She averted her face, unwilling to let him see her pain. Tears burned her eyes. Yes, she was the image of her father, but not the right sex. Poor father, he had not the good fortune to beget a son in wedlock. But he’d gotten a bastard son. She turned wintry eyes back to his face and said bleakly, “I wonder if there are others like you. If there are, I only pray that they do not all resemble him as closely as you do. I always wished for a brother, for now, you see, my father’s line will die out. I am only a female and thus not acceptable. I have never believed it fair.”

  “Perhaps it isn’t fair, but it is the way things are. As for a bastard of your father’s so closely resembling him, it would seem unlikely to me. But you appear to be in a better position to know of such matters than I. What, however, does seem likely is that if the earl sired children out of wedlock, they would have the good sense not to show their faces here.” He spoke with calm matter-of-factness, sensing her hurt. He rose unhurriedly to his feet to face her. He didn’t want to frighten her. He didn’t want her to feel threatened by him. That would happen soon enough.

  “But you are here.” She was forced to look up as she spoke. “Damn you to hell, you are even of his size. Dear God, how can you come here at such a time? Have you no sense of honor, no sense of decency? My father is dead and yet here you are, acting as if you belong here.”

  “You question my honor. I wish you would not do that. I do have some, so it is said of me.”

  She felt a terrible urge to slash his face with her riding crop. He stepped toward her, looming over her head, blocking the sun. Her nostrils flared and her eyes darkened, mirroring her violent intent.

  “Don’t do it, my dear,” he said, his voice as quiet and gentle as a summer rain.

  “I am not your dear,” she said, so angry with him, with herself, she backed away from him. Her eyes narrowed and she said with cold cruelty lacing her words, “You need not tell me your purpose for being here. I am a fool not to have guessed sooner. My father’s bastard, come for the reading of his will. You have no more honor than that croaking toad over there. Do you think to be acknowledged, to be given some of my father’s money?” She was shaking with anger, shaking with frustration, for he was the larger, larger than even her father, and she wasn’t a man and thus couldn’t beat him into the dirt. Ah, and she wanted to. She wanted to pound him. She wanted to grind him beneath her heel. She sensed his indifference to her as he leaned down, brushed twigs and grass blades from his breeches, and picked up his coat. She hated him for his indifference.