“She is not going untilafterthis baby arrives,” Philip answered. “And that’s final.”
Apparently, they had battled over this. Eleanor was sorry to have brought it up. She didn’t know much about the give-and-take—or downright battles—of married couples. Both her sisters had married happily, though they’d had a few rocks in their paths along the way to matrimonial bliss.
In any case, Eleanor had encountered no gentleman during her first or second Season with whom she was interested in battling or giving her heart. At least,notin London. Moreover, she had particularly missed Beryl during the past year. The stifling rigidity of the social events was bad enough, but to go to endless balls, picnics, dinner parties, and the like without her favorite companion had made it worse.
Everyone in her family knew London’s Season might not suit the youngest Blackwood sister. Known to her family as a nature lover, Eleanor preferred the outdoors in all types of weather to gleaming tiled floors, and she chose sunlight and moonlight over crystal chandeliers. She could be found sketching or reading at all hours, sitting under a tree, perfectly content.
It had been difficult to get a peaceful moment trying to sketch in Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens with hundreds of Londoners and visitors strolling or riding around her. St. James’s Park had been hardly any better. And the smoky, foggy air always seemed to choke her at night.
When Eleanor retired to one of Angsley Hall’s guest rooms that evening, a heavy thunderstorm still raged across the landscape on an early autumn wind and refused to let up. Accompanied by lightning and silvery sheets of rain, she sat next to the window overlooking the back terrace and gardens, feeling peaceful.
Bedfordshire was bliss, with so much greenery and the lovely River Great Ouse flowing through both her sister’s Turvey House and the Angsley Hall estate. Eleanor had caught fish in it when visiting Maggie in the past, and she hoped to catch more in a few days during her extended stay with her sister and her sister’s husband, the Earl of Cambrey.
More importantly, she was also looking forward to being once again in close proximity to the raven-haired Grayson O’Connor, the Turvey House estate manager, who looked more like Eleanor’s idea of a pirate than Beryl’s captain. Or perhaps Grayson reminded her more of an anguished inhabitant of a dreary castle from one of her beloved Gothic novels. Whatever the case, in her regard, he was beyond anyone she had met in London.
Grayson was born right there on the grounds of Angsley Hall to the Angsleys’ seamstress. However, he had lived at Turvey House from the time he was a boy, as a companion to young John Angsley, then the heir and now the Earl of Cambrey. Over the course of one spectacular Season, the earl had fallen desperately in love with Maggie—as most men did—making her his Countess of Cambrey.
How fortunate for Eleanor as that meant she had been introduced to Grayson.
Each and every time she had encountered Grayson, she found she liked him more. His humor was to her liking, as was something about his slightly lopsided smile, which appeared often and was always reflected in his dark eyes. He’d taken her riding and fishing and didn’t mind spending hours pointing out birds and plants on the Cambrey estate, around Turvey House.
Then there was his sensual mouth, which she truthfully hadn’t noticed until about two years earlier, and now found impossible not to look upon when he spoke.
She sighed. Grayson was certainly not a man to be found in an insipid, stifling ballroom!
At that moment, a flash of lightning split the sky, directing her attention to the fields, where…she gasped, a lone horseman rode hell bent toward the very manor in which she was residing.
As the lightning’s glow faded, she could barely see more than a dark, four-legged shape coming ever onward, obviously drenched.
Gracious!Who would be out so late and in this weather? And why? A shard of lightning could mean instant death for the rider and the horse.
Standing, she tried to keep her eyes trained on the horseman until he disappeared into the shadows near the stables. She waited a while to see the man emerge but didn’t. Perhaps he was still tending his horse, or perhaps he had slipped out of the stables, and, in the pitch darkness, she’d missed his passage.
Though her room was on the third floor, Eleanor listened intently, thinking to hear the mysterious intruder come into the manor, perhaps seeking sustenance as well as shelter. Surely, the servants would be roused if not Lord and Lady Angsley, Beryl’s parents.
All remained eerily silent.
Eventually, Eleanor climbed into the four-poster bed with its thick, soft mattress and settled in, trying to imagine why someone would come so late and yet not come indoors.
Hopefully, the morning would see all her questions answered.
*
At first light,Eleanor was up, washing her face at the basin in her room, unbraiding, combing, and re-braiding her brown hair before tucking it up with a few pins. What’s more, she needed no help from one of the Angsleys’ maids to dress as her buttons were in the front, and her day gown was positively plain.
After all the frippery, frills, and finery of the Season, she was positively gleeful wearing a simple, yellow, cotton gown and only one petticoat, along with her corset and chemise.
She had always been an early riser, smiling to herself thinking how she’d often tugged Beryl out of bed when they were visiting Turvey House together.
Wondering if any of the other Angsleys were up, Eleanor went quietly down the stairs and into the morning room. Breakfast had not yet been laid out, but a serving girl was quick to offer her tea or coffee and whatever she wished to eat before a buffet was set out.
Drats!She’d forgotten to ask for extra milk. Dashing after the girl and down the passageway to the rear of the house, she caught Mr. Stanley the butler coming indoors, his boots damp, shaking water off his coat in the anteroom next to the kitchen door.
They stared at one another for a long moment, and she had the feeling he hadn’t wanted to be seen entering.
How strange!
“May I help you, Miss Blackwood?”
