Page 6 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

Well, of course not. He’d break the lily simply trying to take her into his arms. He had dismissed her on sight as well, but it was aggravating to have to do the pretty and murmur the courtesies as his grandmother completed the introductions.

So he wouldn’t. “You may call me Pedr,” he said abruptly, cutting short Miss Elizabeth’s communication of sympathies to Lady Wilkins for the loss of her grandson, the previous baronet. Peter wore a black armband out of respect and at his grandmother’s insistence, but that was all the mourning he intended to observe for a cousin he’d scarcely known the existence of and never exchanged words with in his life.

“That is my Welsh name,” he added, for the mere pleasure of saying his former name, vexing Barbara, and seeing how Miss Elizabeth would react.

Her eyes were pale and blue as the sky in Wiltshire, nothing like the robust hues of Wales. “I will address you as Mr. Wilkins, of course,” she said in the tone that women used to dampen the pretensions of a man coming on too strong.

He pegged her as just past a score of years, shy of his own age, but women seemed to mature into social understandings well before men did. For a certain, Pete had never learned the skill of drawing room conversation, and he had no interest in learning now.

Miss Elizabeth seemed to realize this and quickly dismissed him from the conversation. “Lady Wilkins, Mama sent some of her redcurrant jam for you.” The girl reached into a basket on the small table beside her. “Jane helped the housekeeper prepare the last batch.”

“She must give my housekeeper the receipt,” Barbara replied. “I am training up a new one, you know.”

The household seemed to have recently undergone a significant turnover in staff with the departure of several senior servants. Pete wondered at the cause and supposed he would find out eventually. No great house could keep its secrets. Gossip was currency in the servant’s world, and the troubles of the family were as good as guineas. Pete had made much use of this economic network in his past life.

“Peter,” Barbara said, intentionally ignoring his Welsh name, “you must ask Miss Elizabeth about the entertainments our region has on offer. You might go to Devizes or Marlborough for proper assembly rooms, but the Bear Hotel and the Duke of Cumberland in Chippenham will occasionally host parties.”

Did he appear a man who engaged in dancing? His grandmother would have him pretend to be a gentleman when he wasn’t, and didn’t want to be.

“How is Chippenham on providing real entertainments?” Pete asked. “Bear baiting, cock fights, bareknuckle boxing—that sort of thing.”

His grandmother delivered a basilisk stare that ought to have frozen him on the spot. Miss Elizabeth’s eyes widened in alarm.

Was she about to faint? That would be entertaining. Pete hadn’t held a woman in his arms since one of the viscountesses he’d helped kidnap had fainted on the ship where she’d been taken prisoner. He couldn’t have very well let the woman fall, and so he’d dared lay his rough hands on a lord’s wife. The lord was dead, as he’d understood it, and the lady was comely.

She’d filled his arms proper, lush curves everywhere a woman should have them, and she’d smelled of powder and bluebells. That scent and the feel of her body pressing against his came back to Pete at odd moments, especially when he lay at night in his new feather tick in the baronet’s bedchamber and wondered what in hell’s name he was supposed to do with a new inheritance, a new life, and burdens he’d never asked for.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know the least thing about fighting,” Miss Elizabeth said coolly, and Pete suspected he’d moved himself to the not at home if the gentleman calls category. All to the good. Despite his grandmother’s ambition to see him matched with a proper wife and furnishing the baronetcy with heirs before the devil came for her at the appointed time, Pete had no wish to bring a woman into the mess his life had become.

Too bad he hadn’t arranged to see the lovely, sweet-smelling viscountess one more time before he left. He’d wager her temperament was as soft and sweet as the rest of her. But the summons from his grandmother announcing Barnaby’s death and Pete’s quite unexpected inheritance had arrived while Pete was pleading for a pardon from the local Newport magistrate, arguing that his employment with the Black Hound ought to be forgiven on account that he’d turned his coat, joined forces with the Viscount Penrydd, and had helped Penrydd and his men capture a good number of the Black Hound’s men, blow up his ship, and bring an end to his nefarious operations.

No one here knew anything about that part of Pete’s past, and they never could. Inheriting a baronet’s title and estates, along with a good word from milord Penrydd, had saved Pete from being transported or thrown in the hulks, and now that he’d escaped with his neck intact, he intended to reform.

At the end of a strained fifteen minutes, Miss Elizabeth recalled some unidentified task for which her mother required her and Jane’s presence. Barbara ordered Pete to see the girls home, claiming it would be too fatiguing for them to walk, though the distance was less than a mile. While Pete waited for the groom to ready the whiskey and harness the cob, Barbara engaged Miss Elizabeth in conversation that revealed her many accomplishments, which expanded beyond jam-making to netting, singing, painting in watercolors, and packing baskets for the residents and scholars of the Hungerford Almshouses and school.

Pete nodded along. His grandmother had moved in the world of the genteel for her entire life; she had no conception of what lay beyond, any more than these flower-petal Guy girls did.

“I’ve been by the Almshouses,” Pete said, feeling it was time he contributed to the conversation. The charity had been established by Lady Margaret Hungerford, who had inherited the magnificent Tudor mansion of Corsham Court, which Pete had driven by simply to gawk at, having never seen the like. The English had never built such grand houses in Wales; they didn’t dare. They built stout castles, which the Welsh did their best to sack and burn.

“Even heard about Lady Margaret’s Ordinances,” Pete added. This was the list of requirements that the puritanical Lady Margaret had left behind to govern the inhabitants of her charities, as if their conduct would somehow reflect on her name though she was dead and gone a century and more. “Cursing, gambling, dicing, playing cards, and drinking prohibited. That’d cross me off the list straight away.”

Miss Elizabeth blinked at this confidence. Barbara resorted to another basilisk stare.

Miss Jane hid a snicker behind her hand.

But he’d made his point. As they gratefully escaped the pea-green drawing room for the fresh air of the front drive, Pete reassured himself that the Guy girls would spread word that the new Baronet Wilkins was not at all the type to set one’s cap for. He’d be spared more of these painful interviews, which was all to the good.

Pete eyed the beast in its harness as the groom handed over the ribbons. The cob, a sturdy gelding named Creon, seemed as reluctant to acknowledge Pete as his master as did Lady Wilkins. Tare and hounds, was everything set against him in this cursed place?

Gritting his teeth, Pete helped Miss Elizabeth into the seat, then levered himself up the step-iron beside her. The cane-built body sagged under his weight. Miss Elizabeth leaned as far to her side as was possible. Jane, with the unself-consciousness of a country girl, hopped onto the tiny platform at the back that served as a luggage rack and held on.

“It really is not necessary to drive us,” Miss Elizabeth said as they took the roundabout lanes that circled his land and led to the hamlet of Westrop, where the Guys lived. “Jane and I are accustomed to walking.”

“My grandmother is not, so she assumes no one else must be,” Pete said. “Does your father farm?” Several farmhouses cropped up beside the lane as they neared the sliver of a stream that fed into Corsham Lake. Pete didn’t know all the inhabitants yet, but in time he would need to make their acquaintance. He had so much to learn.

Miss Elizabeth sniffed. It was such an echo of Barbara’s puffs of disdain that Pete smothered a laugh. “I couldn’t say,” she answered, and that was that. Miss Elizabeth was not aiming to become a farmer’s wife.

“Apparently, I have sheep. Flocks and flocks of sheep,” Pete said.