This morning, while he’d been busy rejoicing at finding the impeccable Miss Hawkins doing something wrong and becoming flustered, his fingertips had tingled, desperate to smooth the little wrinkle between her eyebrows. It was a good job she only looked at him with disdain; he would be sunk if she gave him the attention he seemed to crave. It would be a work of nothing for her to turn him into a mindless follower.
Freddie never let anyone get close enough to him to know him properly. All the people with whom he spent time saw only the person he had created, the laughing lackadaisical joker he had become to hide the truth. He didn’t want anyone to know the details of his many failings, but it would be a thousand times more awful if Miss Hawkins found them out. He let no one have control of his mind. No onewould ever be able to hurt him like his awful guardian and he had a horrible feeling that Miss Hawkins would be able to do far worse damage if he let her.
As it was, he spent far too long staring at the space into which she’d disappeared until his body finally got the message she was not coming back. His brain reminded him that this was a good thing because if they were discovered together, he would be obliged to marry her and while his body got very excited by the idea, he knew that would be a disaster. They would kill one another within weeks.
He slowly returned to the house, his footsteps dragging as the austere building came closer. It had been strange coming back to live here, moving his belongings into one of the many empty bedrooms in Glanmore House. It was lavishly decorated but was as welcoming as an ice-covered lake. It must have been decorated by his late mother, because he could not imagine Tobias doing any such thing, and it had been kept in pristine condition ever since. It should make him feel closer to his long-deceased parent, but it didn’t. Both his parents were a distant memory; they probably hadn’t given much attention to him and his brothers before they’d died, but he had the vague feeling they’d been slightly more pleasant than his aunt whose mantra had been to assume they were always doing something wrong, even when they were just sitting still. Her punishments had been creative for a woman who had very little imagination: keeping the brothers divided and not allowing them to form an alliance. It had been a staggering relief when Tobias had finally gained his majority and turfed her out of the London home, relocating her to a vast property deep in the countryside. By then it had been too late; the ties that should have bonded the five brothers together had been worn too thin and they were not friends.
Freddie had never been sure how Tobias could stand to live at Glanmore House full time. Although the dukedom came with manyproperties, Tobias seemed to prefer the London home whereas Freddie could happily have never stepped back inside the place. It was only because of his niece that he had returned. He wasn’t quite a prisoner but he also wasn’t free to leave, not unless he wanted to be the reason his niece was sent to live in a version of hell.
He came to a stop outside one of the entrances to the house, but his body refused to take him over the threshold. Instead, he veered to the left, wending his way around the more manicured part of the garden until he reached the shed. Tom, Glanmore’s head gardener, was rearranging pots on a wide, rickety table. Freddie watched and waited. Tom was not a man to be rushed. Not that Freddie minded. He loved the quietness of the wooden shelter, the smell of earth mixed with wax. Nobody made demands of him when he was in here. Tom had been the one to inspire Freddie’s interest in gardens and it was Tom who had shown him that he could have a future that didn’t involve the need for books. Written words were Freddie’s greatest enemy.
‘Freddie,’ Tom grunted, when he finally caught sight of him.
‘The wall is down towards the bottom of the garden.’
Tom shot Freddie a look he couldn’t read.
Freddie rubbed his chin, uncomfortable for some reason. ‘I think we should leave it as is.’
A long silence stretched out. Freddie shifted on his feet, waiting for Tom to question his directive; not that he’d have a clue what he would say in response. He had no idea why he would allow Emily Hawkins to cross into the garden whenever she wanted. Well, he had some idea, he wasn’t an idiot no matter what some people thought, but he didn’t want to dwell on his decision because it made no sense. It wasn’t as if she was suddenly going to like him because she enjoyed the way the trees he’d had planted there years ago let the light through in a certain part of his brother’s garden or because she glimpsed apretty flower amongst the foliage. She would never know that it had been his idea to grow that secluded area, trying to bring a little bit of the country to the barren landscape of London. That Emily liked it for the same reason he did was neither here nor there.
‘Does Glanmore know ‘bout the wall?’ asked Tom.
‘Er, no. At least, I doubt it. I have not seen him in the garden since I have been back.’ Tobias kept to his study as far as Freddie could tell. Freddie had been eating alone since he had returned to live at Glanmore House, which was what he was used to and he did not mind being by himself.
Tom nodded. ‘Very well.’ He turned back to his pots without any further comment on the wall, leaving Freddie unsure as to whether he would leave it down or not. Labouring the point would only lead to questions Freddie didn’t want to answer, even to himself. ‘You going to stand there like a lummox or are you going to help?’ added Tom.
Freddie snorted. He doubted Tom spoke to any of his brothers like that, certainly no other retainer spoke to him like Tom did, but Freddie didn’t mind the blunt speech. Tom was more like a father to him than the real one had ever been. He showed far more interest in what Freddie was up to than anyone else ever had and the large garden at the ducal residence had been Freddie’s sanctuary long before he’d understood what the word meant. He began to roll up his sleeves. ‘What are we potting?’
Chapter Four
All around her people were talking, the background babble making it impossible to discern individual words. The meal was delayed due to the late arrival of the guest now sitting next to her, but the wine had been served prior to his arrival and guests had made good inroads into it until the dinner was finally served.
‘The land was getting boggy, you see.’
Emily nodded as the man, whose name had escaped her and who was seated to her right, as he kept talking. She was sure he didn’t require her to actually answer his question. She couldn’t even if she wanted to; she had no idea to what land he was referring.
‘I could not let the situation continue, you understand?’
Emily half nodded, half shook her head, unsure of the correct response. Although she’d forgotten the man’s name, she knew he was a baron and he was unmarried—the two most pertinent facts, according to her mother. Emily needed to marry. Not only was the life of a spinster about as appealing as drinking water straight from the River Thames, but Emily could not countenance another year of living with her mother. Not if she wanted to keep some semblance of her dignity intact.
‘And then, Burbidge suggested tiles.’ The baron laughed. ‘I can see you are as surprised as I am. Who would have thought of such a thing in a field?’
She widened her eyes to show that she was indeed very surprised by this turn of events. The baron seemed pleased with her response and carried on this one-sided conversation, leaving Emily to mull over her options. Somewhere, deep down, her mother probably loved her, but her love was so deep down Emily would probably have to employ miners to extract it. In the guise of getting Emily ready for the marriage mart, her mother ran an almost constant litany of criticism on everything from Emily’s height,‘you are too tall,’ and her bust, ‘you do not have one,’ to Emily’s love of learning, ‘no man wants a clever wife,’and Emily’s conversational skills, ‘you do not have any.’
Emily had to find a husband this season and she was trying, despite what her mother thought, but it was far harder than anyone had ever made out to make a flirtatious comment when the man with whom you were supposed to be engaged in conversation kept talking about something which you had no ideas about at all. The baron was of an appropriate age for her, and had his own hair and teeth. The title wasn’t a prerequisite for Emily, but she knew it was something that had eluded their family up until now and to marry into oneshouldmake her mother happy.
She tried to keep an interest in him, she really did, but her attention kept snagging on the delicate gold candle that rested on the table in front of her. The artist who had made it had wound intricate leaves around the base that glittered as the light flickered above it. It reminded Emily of the way leaves danced in the wind and how much she loved to sit in the duke’s garden and watch the way the trees gently rustled as a breeze brushed through them.
Looking at the candle and the patterns it made was preferable to giving her attention to the man seated on her left. The man she was concentrating on ignoring so much that her neck hurt.
She’d already taken her place at the dining table and was being talked at by Baron Drainage when she’d been made aware of the latecomer moving towards the vacant seat next to her. She’d been ready with her polite, societal smile tilted towards the man and then she’d realised who it was. She’d been glad that there were no mirrors around, because her face had felt frozen into what was surely a ghoulish expression.
Frederick Dashworth had been all smiles for the other guests, but the congeniality in his eyes had died the moment he had caught sight of her looking up at him. They were in polite society, where they would be easily heard by other diners and so they could not trade insults, but they were way past trading platitudes too.
‘Good evening, Miss Hawkins,’ he’d murmured, as he’d taken his seat before promptly turning to talk to the lady sitting on his other side.
Even though Emily was ignoring him with every fibre of her being, he appeared to be emitting heat. There was no other way to explain how she could sense him whenever he lifted his glass to take a sip or when his knife moved across his plate. Whatever he was discussing with his dining partner must have been highly amusing because not a moment had gone by without her tinkling laugh ringing out over the general chatter in the room. The noise was grating against Emily’s skin as surely as Baron Drainage’s conversation.
