‘You should rest for a while.’
The words sounded sharp and short but even as he uttered them her breathing changed, the old woman standing closest grabbing at the bowl on the table and the visitor’s head disappearing as she heaved violently into it.
‘Mrs King, could I have a private word with you?’
‘Of course, sir.’
After making sure they could not be overheard from this far down the passage Phillip spoke softly. ‘If the St Claire party needs to stay tonight, offer them a place to lay down their heads. I will leave it to you to see that they are gone in the morning.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He left then, striding through to his library with intent. God, he did not need another sick woman around him. Gretel’s malady had lingered on and on, until even she was tired of her inability to find peace at the end of it.
There was brandy in the cabinet. His brother had always been an expert on good liquor and Phillip was pleased for the four bottles of vintage cognac lined up on the shelf.
Finding a glass and opening a bottle, he poured himself a liberal amount. It was good, he thought next, the smooth taste improving his mood. He’d stay in here till the unwanted group were either departed or settled upstairs and that surely could notbe too far away. With resolve he lifted one of the many heavy farm ledgers down from the shelf behind him and began to read.
The man who had just left was the most beautiful male Wilhelmina Evelyn St Claire had ever seen in her entire life. Oh, she knew beauty to be a fleeting and shallow thing, and such physical blessings should hardly make a difference to one’s worth, and yet for some reason this man’s looks had her normally far more sensible heart beating at a pace that was worrying. The fact that such an unexpected Adonis had seen her at her very worst, head in the ceramic basin bringing up that dreadful chicken pie purchased last night from the inn on the road towards London, was something she could hardly change. So she simply lay back and admitted defeat.
She knew who he was, of course she did. Mr Phillip Moreland, the eighth Earl of Elmsworth may have been unpopular in Society because of his arrogance but nobody had ever disputed his beauty. She just had not expected his eyes, that was all, filled with a sadness and a sense of guilt that had made the scowl on his face less alarming somehow. He had his demons, for sure, but he also had that particular and familiar grief that loss left marked upon his body with a howling truth.
He had loved his wife. She had heard that said many times, the beautiful, ethereal, slight and pale Miss Gretel Carmichael, a debutante who had conquered her season like no other woman had before or since. A love match. Rare. Exceptional. Extraordinary.
Her own marriage had been nothing like that.
She could hear the McAllistair sisters talking with the housekeeper. The woman was offering their party rooms for the night, and the chance to recover in comfort until they resumedtheir journey across to London on the morrow. She stated firmly that it would be of no inconvenience whatsoever.
Did the Earl of Elmsworth know such arrangements were being suggested? Willa doubted he would, which in itself was intriguing. Given that the servant did not fear reprisals for such a proposal, she could only assume that Lord Elmsworth was not a master who ruled his roost with an exacting and formidable iron fist. If she had felt even a smidgeon better she would have refused the offer and got back in the carriage, but the waves of nausea were not leaving her and she felt too wrung out for an argument. The long journey to London was too much to consider and sitting upright and constrained in a moving vehicle would be the very definition of impossible. She wanted darkness and silence. She wanted to be in a prone position with a soft pillow beneath her aching head and the chance of complete and utter stillness.
She also wanted desperately to be away from the unending and shrill chatter of the three elderly McAllistair sisters.
Swallowing back the tears she could feel welling behind her eyes, she took in a deep breath. She hardly ever cried and almost never felt overwhelmed by circumstance, for eleven years with a difficult husband had cured her forever of passionate feeling. When Lionel had slipped off the balcony and died she had simply tidied him up and called the undertaker before making arrangements for his burial. Then she had left Belton Park and never returned until this journey, taken to dispose of unwanted possessions before the sale of the property. After Lionel’s passing she had made a troth to live every subsequent day in her life as if it was her last and she had made a fine job of such a promise thus far.
Well, not today, obviously. Her stomach growled and the ceramic bowl wiped with strong alcohol and mint made her heave.
She felt like death. She wished she were home in her rented town house in London. She wished her companions were all returned to their shared abode and that she could be completely by herself with no one at all to see her or hear her.
Then she might be able to cry properly, she mused, that observation so ridiculous that she smiled for the first time in hours. One day this might all seem like an amusing story, the gloriously handsome Earl of Elmsworth, her plight, the basin, the competent servant and the three fussing old sisters. But right at this moment, it was not even remotely humorous.
She wondered where Phillip Moreland had disappeared to and hoped that she would not see him again before she left Elmsworth, which would be as early as feasible on the morrow.
It was late. The clock had just chimed out the hour of two and Phillip knew he should be making an effort for bed and sleep, but he felt out of kilter and restless.
The cognac had knocked the edge off his tiredness and this house, for all its faults, was a solid enough place when set against the rising north-west wind. He had returned home without servants and so he had no one to answer to, which was a relief, though the housekeeper had been here a few hours ago informing him of the presence overnight of the unexpected guests and asking if he would like a manservant sent up to see him to bed.
He’d refused and instructed her not to have a servant remain to attend to him. He had been largely alone during his last two years’ travelling around America and had grown to appreciate the lack of being beholden to anyone for anything.
But he was hungry after partaking in his study of an early dinner and Mrs King had informed him that there was breadand cheese left out on the bench if he did find himself with an appetite in the middle of the night.
The kitchen was fairly dim when he walked in but a movement to his left had him turning, and there, standing very still, was the young woman who had been the patient this afternoon. She looked completely different. A little pale still perhaps but greatly recovered, a dressing gown pulled tightly in and her hair down.
It was the colour of autumn, browns and reds and blackness curling thickly to her waist. For a second he wondered what it would feel like to run his fingers through such abundance and was disorientated by the thought. Gretel’s hair had been pale and thin, and, threaded as it was in gold and white, she had never been able to grow it past her shoulders as much as she had tried.
The surprise of seeing him here was in her eyes, darkened by the lack of light.
‘I am sorry, Lord Elmsworth. I was hungry and so I came down. I will leave.’
‘No.’ The word stopped her and he wondered why he had said it with such force. ‘I need to eat, too, and there is cheese and bread here. Would you like some?’
