‘I suppose stealth comes naturally to me and if I had not, you would have left before I could get here.’
She almost smiled—no, she nearly laughed and that was worse. ‘I am a very busy woman,’ she told him severely instead and wished she had managed to escape him yet again. He made her feel on edge yet almost excited when he watched her with that wary warmth in his clear blue eyes. A shiver of awareness always seemed to slip down her spine as soon as she heard his voice in the distance and made her tingle all over until she managed to find a task that demanded all her attention. She had to keep on reminding herself he only wanted her for her supposed skills as a companion and that kiss in the garden was an impulse he regretted just as much as she did. ‘Was there something you wanted, my lord?’ she asked.
‘Common sense,’ he told her.
‘You know I cannot supply that.’
‘No,’ he said with a stern look. ‘You have none to spare. You are working too hard to lay claim to any of your own, never mind giving some away.’
‘There is only a fortnight to go until my brother weds Miss Grantham now and there is so much left to be done.’
‘And you are doing far more of it than you need to, Mrs Turner. Please stop it before you wear yourself out and ruin the day for your family.’
‘My brother and Miss Grantham deserve the best wedding they can have and I will work morning, noon and night if that is what it takes to be sure they have it.’
‘Which is why I sent for as many of my people as could be squeezed in here, so you would not do it all yourself to save your brother money,’ he objected and he was right, drat him. ‘My servants are well-trained and work well together. All you need to do is set them going and leave them to get on with their work.’
‘They still need direction,’ she argued stubbornly.
‘Not with you to keep them going at the relentless beat you set yourself they do not.’
‘There you are then, I am doing my job.’
‘And wearing them out as well as yourself and I doubt your brother has ever thought of you as an employee, Marianne.’
‘You cannot call me that,’ she argued. She had to do something to stop it feeling so warm and intimate in this great echoing, empty room now he was in here as well.
‘Why not? There is nobody else to hear.’
‘I can and you know perfectly well it is not correct.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And I have already told you not to address me like an elderly lady.’
‘Some days there is just no pleasing you, Mrs Turner,’ he said with a cynical smile.
‘And if you came to badger me about your extraordinary offer that I should become Juno’s companion, please remember I know nothing of the polite world and please go away again.’
He stared at the newly whitewashed walls as if he found it very hard to talk about whatever it was he was planning to tell her to persuade her she was wrong. ‘I must plead, then, and tell you some family history you would probably prefer not to know,’ he said at last. ‘My mother is a cold woman, Mrs Turner,’ he admitted stiffly. ‘She loved my elder brother obsessively. I thought her love for George would transfer to his only child after my brother died, but what a mistake that was.
‘The Dowager Lady Stratford informed me when I confronted her with her appalling behaviour towards Juno that she had never forgiven her for not being born a boy. George’s son would have inherited his title and estates instead of me and I already knew she hated me for being alive when my brother is dead, but I was too much of a fool to see the Dowager Lady Stratford does not have another jot of love in her to spare and she despises poor little Juno for not keeping me out of George’s shoes when he died. So my niece grew up with the same coldness and lack of love in her life I endured as a child and you would not want her to turn out like me, now would you?’
She could hardly say he seemed to have turned out remarkably well, considering. ‘My mother can be exasperating, but at least she has always loved us under all her fuss and fancies,’ she told him instead and felt very lucky indeed.
‘I did not tell you as a bid for sympathy on my account.’
‘You still have it.’
‘She has reason to dislike me,’ he argued as if he actually believed it.
‘I doubt it. If you are a madman or a murderer, you hide it well and nothing less could justify her turning against her own child. Even you must have been a helpless innocent once upon a time and cannot have done anything to deserve it.’
‘I suspect just being born was enough to make her hate me.’
‘Why?’ she said.
He hesitated and seemed disinclined to say more and she badly wanted to know now—and not for Juno’s sake. ‘I should not discuss such matters with you.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, I am a widow—not a shrinking spinster likely to faint at the very mention of childbirth or the marriage bed.’
‘Very well, then. The Dowager told me when we were ranting at each other in London that she loathed the indignity of being with child even the first time, but at least she birthed a healthy boy and thought her travails must be over. My father did not agree and insisted on another boy as insurance before he would excuse her from her marital duties.’
‘I cannot believe you even thought about making a marriage of convenience with such an example in front of you,’ she said impulsively, then put a hand over her mouth when she realised where her tongue
