He had surprised her by driving up to Miss Donne’s house this morning in his beautifully sprung curricle and demanding her company and please to hurry before his precious pair of perfectly matched Welsh greys caught a cold. Now Alaric looped the long tail of his driving whip neatly after giving the high-stepping pair the signal to risk the first part of the drive to this forlorn old house so she could take a closer look.
‘It needs someone to love it before it falls down,’ he finally admitted when the ruts in the overgrown lane made it criminal to risk his horses’ legs further by trying to get even closer, so he halted them again.
‘It might take a lot of effort to keep on loving it at times,’ she cautioned. ‘Most people you ask to come and repair it will advise you to have it pulled down and build something modern and convenient in its place.’
‘Would you?’
‘No, but I must be as totty-headed as you are because I would rather restore it and add a few modern touches to make it easier to live in.’
‘Such as?’
‘I need to see more before I am able to tell you that.’
‘Then we might as well go in and take a look,’ he said and heaved a vast bundle of huge keys out of the boot as the tiger shook out the rugs that had been folded up in there to cover the horses. ‘Walk them for me to save them from a chill, will you, Portman?’ he asked the wizened little man who had not said a word in Marianne’s hearing all the way here and just nodded and went to croon at his precious horses now.
‘You have already bought this sad old house, have you not?’ Marianne asked when Alaric offered her his free arm, since the other one was fully occupied with that ring full of ancient and heavy-looking keys.
‘I thought it would make a fine place for our orphans,’ he admitted with a slightly hunted look as she gave him a sceptical look, but still took his arm, because there were so many potholes in the unkempt drive it would have been foolish not to.
‘Your orphans,’ she corrected him nevertheless.
‘Don’t you like the idea of them learning to be happy here and growing up in the fresh air and sunshine?’
‘Of course I do. I am not sure what the locals will think if they are unruly as some of the children who used to trail along with the army on the march.’
‘There you are, you see, I shall need you to keep order.’
‘I doubt it, Lord Stratford,’ she told him severely, but she was warming to the scheme he seemed so set on carrying out whether she agreed to marry him or not and he knew it. ‘Now stop prevaricating and let me see inside.’
‘It is very bad,’ Alaric admitted half an hour later and even he looked doubtful now. ‘Perhaps those builders you told me about earlier are right. It could be better to pull it down and begin again.’
‘I think the kitchen will have to be rebuilt before any self-respecting cook will agree to cook as much as an egg in there and you are right—and the east wing is beyond repair, but the rest seems possible. There are even more cobwebs and several tons more dust in here than there were at Owlet Manor when I got there, but most of the timbers seem sound and even where the rain has got in they can be renewed or replaced once the roof is mended.’
‘And there are details it would be a shame to throw away, like the grand staircase and all this fine oak panelling. I am not sure I want to sleep in a state bed as vast as the one in the best bedchamber—I might lose you of a night.’
‘You have not got me to lose yet,’ she reminded him, but she was weakening and had just gone another step closer to giving in. She could feel him being a little bit smug and a lot more impatient again for her final ‘yes’ to Lord and Lady Stratford and their tumbledown old folly of a house.
‘There is all the world yet to gain then,’ he said with a pretend sigh. ‘How I wish there was even one room here clean enough to seduce you in and bend you to my wicked ways with hot kisses and a great deal more,’ he said with a serious question in his wary expression as he looked down at her this time.
‘So do I,’ she answered it quite seriously.
‘And your brother has finally taken his wife on a bride journey, now all his crops are in and they have a new farm manager in place to make sure there is at least some cider left when they come home.’
‘So he has,’ Marianne said dreamily.
‘And I have wanted to find out how far this place is from Owlet Manor ever since I first discovered it so that you will not feel cut off from your family when we live here.’
‘Do not push your luck, my lord.’
‘But, of course, there is the problem that without the prospect of a wedding there can be no bedding for us,’ he said virtuously.
‘You know how much you want me,’ she said and it was not vain of her to point that fact out, it was purely practical. She was so deep in love and longing and needing him now it felt like a fever in her blood.
‘I do, but I also know how much you want me, Mrs Turner.’
‘Do not remind me,’ she murmured and tried to blank out the gnaw of frustrated need burning at the centre of her that was threatening to become a wildfire blown out of control as he stared back at her with one of his own in his brilliantly blue eyes.
‘I will use any means I can to persuade you into my
