had overcome her weakness by stoking her anger against him. He was treating her like a parcel. She would not allow that.
He turned to look down at her. The very faintest tinge of redness had appeared on his cheeks. ‘I beg your pardon.’ His voice grew quieter. ‘It was not my intention to impose on you.’
She softened again, instantly. He had sounded arrogant, but he surely meant well. She had no right to let her inner turmoil betray itself in bad temper. ‘Your offer is most generous, my lord, but it is not necessary. My ankle is mending extremely well and the more I exercise it, the sooner I shall be fully recovered.’
‘Very well, ma’am.’ He made to sit down beside Mrs Aubrey.
‘And I would suggest,’ Beth continued, feeling increasingly in control of this unequal encounter, ‘that if your servants are underemployed, you should put them to work in the village. I am sure Mrs Aubrey can provide you with a long list of chores and repairs which need to be done.’
‘Beth! You go too far!’
‘No, ma’am. Miss Aubrey is quite right. I noticed yesterday, in spite of the storm, that some of the houses need urgent work. My agent has been most remiss in allowing such dilapidation. The repairs will be put in hand today.’ He took a cup of tea from Mrs Aubrey and rose politely to carry it across to Beth. ‘However, I fear I must disappoint Miss Aubrey. I doubt that my footmen have the inclination, or the skills, to carry them out.’
Beth took her tea with a demure nod and pursed lips. Was he roasting her? She hoped so. Strangers did not tease. But he had kept a totally straight face so she could not be sure. Until she was, she certainly must not laugh.
‘Do you remain at Fratcombe long, Master Jonathan?’ Mrs Aubrey poured his tea and handed it to him.
‘Not on this occasion, ma’am, though I expect to return again quite soon. It is a huge change, from the army in Spain to the English countryside, I may tell you. There, our duty was simple-to fight the enemy. Since my return, I have been reminded of my other duties. To my various estates, for example, and to my position in society.’ His voice grated, as if he was finding duty a hard taskmaster. Then, quite suddenly, he smiled warmly at the old lady in a way that transformed him. His face was softer, younger, and his eyes were dancing. ‘Here, at the rectory, I know that I am welcomed as just an unruly lad who happens to have grown up. A little.’
Mrs Aubrey nodded, trying not to return his smile, but she could not conceal her fondness for Jonathan.
Beth swallowed. A knot of anxiety formed in her stomach. He had had the run of the rectory when he was a boy. Did he intend to visit often, to renew his intimacy with the Aubreys? Oh dear. When he was relaxed like this, he was much too attractive. Soon, she would be dreaming of silver-clad knights again, and she must not! She could so easily betray herself. She must find some way of avoiding his company. It was the only solution.
Mrs Aubrey cleared her throat. ‘Perhaps you would tell us about your time in Spain?’
A sudden shadow crossed Jonathan’s face. ‘If you will forgive me, ma’am, I would prefer not to speak of it. Much of it was not…er…pleasant, particularly of late.’
‘I understand,’ the old lady said quietly. ‘We know that you were at the siege of Badajoz.’ They knew, too, that he had been mentioned in dispatches for his part in the final assault, but Mrs Aubrey would not embarrass him by mentioning it. ‘We read about the shameful outrages after the battle.’
He said nothing, but his face had assumed a very stern cast. Beth could not begin to imagine what he had experienced, or what he had seen, in that terrible siege and in the sack of the town which had followed. The casualties in the assault had been enormous, and the soldiers’ conduct in the town afterwards had been utterly sickening.
The awkward silence stretched between them. Jonathan did not even move to drink his tea, though his jaw and his throat were working. He was remembering terrible things, Beth was sure. She tried desperately to think of something to say, to distract him from his obvious pain.
Mrs Aubrey was before her. ‘So, Master Jonathan, what do you think of your lady foundling now? She has improved a good deal, would you not say, from the drowned stray you carried across our doorstep last Christmas?’
‘What?
Chapter Three
Shocked, and embarrassed, Jon moved in his seat to stare directly at the injured woman. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ he began, the words tumbling out in his haste to apologise. ‘I had completely forgotten the incident until Mrs Aubrey mentioned it just now, because you look so-’ He stopped just in time and cleared his throat.
Yesterday, he had assumed Miss Aubrey was a true lady, even if only a poor relation. But she was not an Aubrey at all. The bedraggled woman he had rescued could be anything, even a woman from the gutter! He recalled thinking at the time that she
She was really very attractive, now he took the time to look at her. He let his gaze travel slowly from her curly red-brown hair and perfect complexion down the slim curves of her body, finally coming to rest on her bandaged ankle. ‘Forgive me, but you look considerably more like a lady than you did then.’ It was no more than the truth. But it was too stark. He had spoken without sufficient thought. Again! What on earth was the matter with him? Coupled with his brazen scrutiny, his words were almost an insult. She had turned bright scarlet.
Recollecting his manners at last, and the wisdom of silence, he busied himself with his teacup while he tried to gather his wits.
After a long pause, he turned to Mrs Aubrey and said, in a polite but neutral voice, ‘So our foundling has been here with you all this time? And with the name Aubrey? You did not discover her true identity?’
‘We did everything possible, including advertising-discreetly-in the newspapers for a missing woman by the name of Elizabeth. But none of it produced any information at all. It is as though poor Beth had emerged out of nothing, like a phantom.’
Jon turned back to ‘poor Beth’. Her heightened colour had drained away completely. ‘I am heartily sorry that nothing could be done, ma’am. And you have had no memory at all, not the least flash of anything, in all these months?’
‘No, my lord. Nothing.’ Her response was very swift, and very definite.
Jon could not help wondering whether he should believe her. He had heard of cases where unscrupulous people had preyed on their benefactors by pretending to have lost their memory. Might that have happened here? Was Beth Aubrey a fraud? Perhaps that was why she had turned so pale? The Aubreys were a generous couple who would never look for such duplicity. ‘It is very strange, I must say. Has Dr Willoughby nothing to suggest on the matter? You have consulted him, I assume?’
‘If we had consulted him about Beth’s memory loss, it would have become common knowledge. Besides, what does a country doctor know of such things? So we-the rector and I-we allowed ourselves a little white lie. We gave out that Beth was a distant relation who had come to stay with us for a while, having no remaining close family of her own.’
‘I see. Then no one hereabouts knows how Miss Aubrey was discovered?’
‘Some of the gentry families suspect that Beth is not quite what she seems. I am sorry to say that some of them forget their Christian duty, and treat her like a servant, rather than a lady born and bred.’ Mrs Aubrey shook her head sorrowfully. ‘It is not what we would have expected of them.’
‘Nor I, ma’am. When I stayed here as a child, I was always struck by the kindness and generosity of all the great families of the district.’
‘That might have had something to do with the fact that you were heir to an earldom, sir.’ Miss Aubrey sounded waspish. Not surprising, perhaps, especially if her plight was genuine.
Jon looked assessingly at her and was struck by the direct way she met and held his gaze. She certainly had the air of a true lady. ‘As it happens, ma’am, I was not the heir then. That was my elder brother. But I do agree that my being the son of an earl might have coloured their judgement a little. And I am disappointed to learn that you have not always been accorded the respect due to a lady. The rector’s sponsorship should be enough for anyone, however high their status.’
Yet again, he regretted his words the moment they were spoken. After all, the rector’s word had not been
