Page 11 of Nice Earls Do

He had no notion of how much time had passed when he heard footsteps in the corridor. Mrs. Rushworth appeared on the threshold. He hadn’t bothered to close the door.

“I beg your pardon, my lord—”

“Mrs. Goode and Mr. Oliver are waiting for me in the dining room, I suppose?”

The housekeeper’s head moved in something that might have been intended as a nod. “I daresay, sir. It’s gone past six. But I—”

They would be smiling and laughing at one another across the table, content in their own company. Perhaps they hadn’t even noted his absence. “Tell them, please, to go on without me. I find I haven’t any appetite this evening.”

“Of course, sir. Right away. Only...” She stepped forward, and he could see a letter clutched in her hand. “A message has come for you, my lord.”

From the way she held it, he could guess the sort of information she feared it must contain. Hadn’t he had enough bad news for a lifetime?

“Well?”

Reluctantly, she held the folded paper out to him. He took it and broke the seal.

Only a few sentences, with nothing of flair or flourish. Still, he fished his spectacles from his pocket and read the note twice over, just to be certain he’d understood.

“It’s from Mr. Fleming.” He looked over the top rim of his spectacles at a worried Mrs. Rushworth. “Captain of the Seaflower.”

“The ship on which Mr. Edmund’s children are to sail?”

“The very same. Only it seems there was some misunderstanding—perhaps a mistranslation in the letter I received. The Seaflower is not to sail. It has sailed and is in fact presently anchored in Gravesend, with two small children among the passengers who disembarked. When I did not arrive to meet them, the captain himself generously undertook to bring my niece and nephew the rest of the journey to Ferncliffe.” He laid the letter on the table beside him and contemplated taking up the tumbler of brandy once more. “They will be here tomorrow.”

Mrs. Rushworth’s steady exhalation of relief turned into a gasp. “Tomorrow?”

“Indeed.” Screwing shut his eyes, he reached beneath his spectacles to pinch the bridge of his nose. The empty nursery rose in his imagination.

No, not empty. Beth stood there. Smiling.

In the arms of the dashing Mr. Oliver.

“Shall I tell Mrs. Goode?”

The sound of Mrs. Rushworth’s voice made him start. Every castle he’d built in air seemed to have come crashing down about him all at once. Such was the use of dreams. “Please tell her that under the circumstances, her assistance is no longer required.”

“Sir?” The housekeeper’s eyes were round as saucers.

No time left now to worry about paint and decoration. “We shall manage very well without her,” he insisted—hoping with those words he might also at last convince himself.

* * * *

From her seat at the table, Tabetha watched Oliver stroll about the dining room. They were alone; the liveried footman had helped her to her chair, poured the wine, and left them to wait for Lord Stalbridge. Oliver first stopped to survey an oversized landscape in the style of Claude Lorrain. Then he paused to rub the fabric of one dark blue drapery panel between his fingers and thumb before tsking and shaking his head.

She admired her stepson’s incisiveness, his ability to see past the surface, his refusal to bow to another’s tastes. When she looked about, she saw only too much gilt and too many mirrors—and a room somehow still so dark she’d been tempted to ask for more candles. After just half a day, she was inclined to agree with Kit: Ferncliffe’s grandeur was far from an improvement on the happy but considerably more humble home in which he and Edmund had been raised.

She was not surprised that Kit had been reluctant to spend—before reading Mrs. Goode’s thoughts on the matter, she might have said waste—time and money on the house when there was really nothing wrong with it. No peeling plaster or leaking roofs. Simply a difference of taste from the previous earl.

But as Oliver had been at pains to explain in his letters about the renovations of the townhouse, taste mattered. A home ought to be a reflection of the people who lived in it. And at heart, Kit was a man who cared for people, who wanted them to be comfortable, who was happiest just being himself.

About this “Mrs. Goode” business...

When she’d agreed to spend a few days in Hertfordshire calling herself Mrs. Goode, she certainly had not anticipated the project would involve so much self-reflection. But being around Kit had a curious effect on her, making her think about the girl she had been, the young woman everyone had expected her to be, the person she was now.

And Kit’s kiss had left her questioning what was yet to come.

They’d shared a past, but did they dare look forward to a future?