‘We only met a week ago, my lord, and you know nothing about me.’
‘I have known Miss Grantham for several years and she likes and trusts you. Even on such a short acquaintance I can tell you are painfully honest. I just want Juno to be safe and happy and stop feeling like a misfit. My mother and I did that to her, Mrs Turner. Juno needs a better life and I hope you are willing to help her build it.’
‘I cannot see how having a companion who married beneath her, then spent five years travelling on the coat-tails of an army on the march could give her enough confidence to rejoin the polite world on her own terms.’
Alaric heard the defensive note in her voice and cursed the two years of grief and gossip Darius told him his sister had endured in Bath before they had come here this spring. He hated the idea of her being picked on because she was different and that was what bullies always did. They must have chipped away at her confidence and her brave marriage until she felt she must point out her unsuitability before someone did it for her.
‘It does not matter if she never wants to set foot in a ballroom again, but I do want to make her happy and the first step towards that is finding her an honest and caring companion like you, Mrs Turner.’
‘There must be plenty of genteel officer’s widows who would guide and help her much more surely than I can hope to,’ she objected.
He suspected from the thoughtful frown into the middle distance the notion was tempting her. She had a heart as soft as butter under her brusque manner and it was better to make this about Juno instead of her having somewhere to go after her brother’s wedding. ‘Can you think of one?’ he risked asking her.
She opened her mouth to give him a list and hesitated. ‘No,’ she finally admitted with a sigh.
‘Then will you think about filling some of the gaping holes my stupidity has left in Juno’s life?’
‘You could do that if you chose, my lord. She is very ready to love you.’
‘Being a lord is not all velvet and ermine and learning to walk with your nose in the air and not fall over. I have a great many duties and I cannot be with her as much as I would like, so this role is really to be her companion and friend and I believe you are the right person for it. I think you love your brother too much to stay here and resent playing second fiddle to your sister-in-law.’
‘Yes, yes—I admit you are right about that much at least. I do want him and Fliss to be left in peace to live well together and I know he is worried about me going back to Bath with our parents.’
‘Then why not come back to Stratford Park with Juno and help us and your family?’
‘Have you talked to Darius about this? You two seem to have been confiding in one another like a pair of bosom bows.’
‘This is only between you and me until and unless you say yes. I would not push you into doing something you do not want to do by underhand methods.’
‘I cannot make up my mind just like that. I need time to think, then discuss this offer of employment with my brother and sister-in-law-to-be.’
‘And there I was, thinking you made up your mind about things and then told your family.’
‘Then kindly give me time to do so.’
Alaric still felt like a bumbler for kissing her, then springing his wonderful idea for her future on her before she had hardly had time to catch her breath. Of course she would hesitate after that and he must let the dust settle and hope she came to the right conclusion now. Although if she was not going to be living under his roof and in his employ, perhaps... No, there was no perhaps for them. She believed in love and happy-ever-after and he most definitely did not and that was that.
Chapter Eleven
Marianne carefully avoided him for the rest of the day and one or two after that. It was not until his stone masons and carpenters began work on the chapel a couple of days later that she confronted Alaric over their mission.
‘You and Yelverton were so worried about your father making the journey to the next village and back to marry him to Miss Grantham I thought they might as well be wed here instead. The chapel is only a few hundred yards away, so there is no need to worry about carriages and delays if the marriage takes place here.’
‘How do you know the chapel is still consecrated?’
‘Because I asked your brother and he asked the local vicar.’
‘You would.’
‘I did and the reverend gentleman is happy to oblige the local lord of the manor so your father can perform the ceremony.’
‘Smug and managing,’ she said. ‘I have to admire you for it,’ she added, ‘although I am surprised Darius and Fliss are meekly agreeing to all your plans.’
‘Apparently true love means doing almost anything for your beloved.’
‘Does it indeed? I doubt it will ever do so for you, my lord.’
‘So do I,’ he said with a pinch of real sadness under his cynical smile. He doubted he could ever be undefended enough to love beyond reason.
‘And I am far too busy supervising all the maids and handymen now flocking about the house getting in each other’s way to stop here and argue with you any longer,’ she informed him and marched back to her housekeeping duties.
‘Avoiding me again?’ Lord Stratford asked softly from behind her a week after their bewildering conversation in the garden.
Marianne was surveying the now empty and—as clean as it could be got with mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes—grand dining room. ‘How do you manage to creep up on people like that when you still
