Page 14 of Beguiling the Baron

Chapter 9

Hal kicked the marble dust off his shoes, sending a small shower of dark mortar to the floor. He really should clean this room, but somehow it never seemed important enough. The stairs leading up to the folly’s door were gritty too, from weathering, but as his were the only feet ever to tread that way, he’d never seen fit to sweep them.

As he picked up his chisel once more, a sound from outside made him miss his mark. Cursing softly, he glared across at the embrasure, widened in this room to admit more light.

Where usually the only sound was the sighing of the wind in the trees or the shouts of rooks and clatter of pigeon wings, he could hear voices.

He turned again to the statue, brushing away the dust from the misplaced scrape. Not too deep. He could remedy the fault.

Another snatch of conversation. Deuce take it! He’d given explicit instructions no one but himself should approach the folly. When a certain voice drifted up to him more clearly, he rolled his eyes. He’d heard that one before, defying him to his face.

Had the Wyndham chit any idea with whom she was dealing?

There was no need to look out the window to confirm his suspicions. Yet his feet carried him there, and when he could see nothing, he dropped his chisel on the workbench and headed up to the roof.

It was a fine day. He supposed he couldn’t blame anyone for choosing to be outside in it, but with gardens covering twenty acres and a park extending a good hundred, there were plenty of other places where people could be.

He bent over the parapet to see what was happening below but swayed forward as the nausea took him again. As he did each time he came up here, he experienced the pull of the ground as an irresistible force, compelling him to leap out into oblivion.

No. At least, not until the statue was finished, and Polly able to hold her own amongst her peers. But she could only do so if Miss Galatea Wyndham stopped being so damned soft on her.

He would have to confront the disturbers of his peace. Hal dragged himself down the spiral staircase of the tower and eventually burst out into the sunlight at its foot. Locking the door with trembling fingers, he crunched and slithered down the steps, took a deep breath at the bottom, and strode around the base of the tower.

“Lord Ansford. Good morning, and a most pleasant one it is too. Say hello to your papa, Polly.”

He shifted his gaze from Miss Wyndham’s face and found his daughter gazing up at him with gray eyes the match of her mother’s. The stabbing ache in his gut intensified cruelly.

Anger was the best refuge against the pain.

“Miss Wyndham,” he snapped, “Once again you trample on my rules and violate my privacy. You must learn—”

“Polly, your father needs a drink of water. Pray run along to Cook and fetch some. Walk nicely as I’ve taught you and be careful not to spill it.”

Hal glowered as his daughter hurtled off toward the house, kicking her heels up behind her. No one ever interrupted him mid-sentence. Fury warred with astonishment.

“Miss Wyndham, I’m not in the least bit thirsty. Why—”

“Sir, you are pale and trembling, as if you’ve seen a ghost. Indeed, you rather resemble one. Did you know you were covered in dust?”

He started to brush at his chest but stopped himself. Why should he care what he looked like in his own home, on his own estate?

The chit’s eyes followed the movement of his hand, before locking defiantly on his face. She tilted her chin. “I assume you are come to ring a peal over me for approaching your horrible folly tower. That’s why I sent Polly away. To be disrespectful to me in front of the child would undermine my authority.”

It was an effort not to gape like a fish at this assertion and the temerity of its author. “Surely you are aware, Miss Wyndham,” he snarled, quaking with fury, “the folly and its environs are out of bounds to all but myself?”

“I thought we’d managed to keep a respectful distance away. We’re sketching the tower, you see. I’m teaching Polly how to work with pencils, and the grayness of the stone made it an admirable subject. There seems to be a lot of holes between the stones, my lord. I can’t help but wonder if rain is eroding the ash away, or charcoal, or whatever the dark stuff is that’s been mixed in with the mortar.”

“Ash? Be damned to ash! Stop trying to wriggle off the hook, Miss Wyndham—it will not do.”

Her half-smile faltered, and he recognized only too well the expression of steely determination lurking in her velvet-brown eyes.

“If you are so averse to the distant sound of muted voices—for we didn’t exactly shout while we were sketching—maybe you could put something in your ears, so you are not disturbed?”

Hal stared at his opponent. And stared some more. A peculiar sensation rose from the pit of his stomach to his diaphragm.

It was so unfamiliar, he almost forgot his vow of rigid emotional control. No—he must never laugh, particularly not in front of this defiant little minx.

“Thank you for the suggestion,” he replied with some effort, “but it’s much easier if you simply keep away from my folly. And while we’re on the subject of your inability to do as you’re told, I’d like to know what you mean by stealing books from my library. What need have you of a book on the decoration of Grecian urns, pray? I think a nine-year-old girl too young to be examining images of naked fornication, don’t you?”