material to keep our dear Miss Blakelow writing for another ten years.”
“Do not joke about such a thing, I implore you.”
“In fact, I might even send her some stories to get her started.”
“Robert, I count you as a good friend, but really , I deplore your sense of humour. This is serious. We have to do something.”
“I really don’t care, Ju,” murmured his lordship.
“Don’t care?” he repeated. “You have to care. She wrote a very neat pamphlet condemning your morals and your lifestyle. It has been published to wide acclaim and every Christian church-going busy body across the land has lapped it up. She knows that people love a scandal and they love gossip and they love both in relation to the Earl of Marcham.”
“Then I applaud her business acumen. Can I eat my breakfast now?”
A grim smile settled upon Sir Julius Fawcett’s thin lips. “Well, she will soon discover that to be the object of desire of such a man is not at all pleasant. She will soon discover that any woman whose name is linked with yours, is inevitably tarnished by the acquaintance even if you have exchanged nothing more than words. To be talked about in that fashion is not very nice. She will discover what it is like to be on the receiving end of some of the vitriol she has poured onto others.”
“Do you know Ju, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that she has made you angry.”
Sir Julius smiled. “I am angry, I admit, but so are you.”
“ Me? Am I?” replied the earl with a laugh. “How on earth do you arrive at that conclusion? I have already told you that I care nothing for what this nobody has to say.”
“You hide it well, but I know you. I have known you for years. I saw you get that leg wound. I was there, remember? I know what it means when you get that look in your eyes.”
“What look?” said his lordship, laughing and spreading his hands.
“The one that you’d get when we were loading our weapons ready to fight the Frenchies,” said Sir Julius, fixing him with a knowing look. “ You , dear boy, are preparing for battle.”
Lord Marcham smiled but the expression did not reach his eyes. “Indeed? How well you think you know me. But I assure you that I am utterly uninterested in anything that woman has to say or do.”
“Hmm,” said Sir Julius. “And I’m Genghis Kahn.”
Chapter 3
The big black door was about to slam in her face.
But the young woman, who had waited a month for the appointment with the earl and who had ridden two miles in the rain to his estate at Holme Park, was not about to be undone at the last hurdle by his lordship’s pompous butler. She thrust her foot into the rapidly closing space between the door and the frame, resisting the urge to yelp as the impact seemed to crush every bone in her foot.
“I must see Lord Marcham,” she said, pushing the door back in the startled servant’s face.
“I have already informed you that his lordship is not at home to visitors,” said Mr. Davenham, his voice becoming high pitched with panic in the face of this determined young lady.
She brushed past him and into the hall and stood looking about her. It was a large affair with a polished marble floor and paintings of lords and ladies past frowning down at her from all sides.
She was a trim woman, tall, and by no means in the first flush of youth. Mr. Davenham thought her around the age of thirty and someone’s governess to boot.
She was dressed entirely in black, suggesting a recent bereavement, and the overlarge clothes hung off her slender frame, suggesting that they were someone else’s cast offs. The garments were well made but outmoded and shabby, as if they had been made some time ago. Her face was pink and flushed from the exercise of riding and she possessed a short slim nose and generous lips that were curved in a smile guaranteed to break down the butler’s defences. Under her bonnet could be seen the frill of a mob cap and a pair of green eyes