‘Miss Defford may be walking into town after sheltering from the storm as we speak,’ she made herself say bracingly.
Chapter Three
Alaric stared down at the fire and tried to do as Marianne said and put the worst of his terrors out of his head. He could not call her anything else because he had no idea who she was and where she fitted into brisk little Miss Donne’s household and perhaps Miss Grantham’s life as well. Speaking of whom, where the devil was the woman? He glared at the door between this cosy room and the rest of the oddly silent and empty-feeling house and sensed yet another mystery on the other side of it. A pity his brain seemed so slow and dazed with lack of sleep since he really needed it smartly aware and on parade with its buttons polished and boots blacked.
It was lack of sleep that made him puzzled and foggy about the unfamiliar new world he seemed to have been wandering in ever since he had reached Stratford House—however long ago that now was—and found out Juno was missing. He would probably find a genuine housemaid, dazzling and quick-witted and even a little bit compassionate towards such a bumbling idiot right now. And wholly delicious and so very unconscious of her own attractions. Tall and slender and just the right height for a lofty lord like him as well, his inner idiot pointed out as he tried to pretend he was as unaware of her as a woman as she seemed of him as a man.
Marianne seemed to be doing her best to pretend he was not even here as she bent cautiously to push the already-filled kettle hanging on its iron arm over the fire without coming anywhere near him. She swiftly stepped back and away as if he might be contagious and he knew he was filthy and smelt of horse and mud and whatever had been in the barn before he took shelter in it last night. He was lucky both ladies had much better manners or a lot more compassion than his mother.
He only had to imagine the Dowager Lady Stratford’s hard grey eyes icing over with contempt at even a glimpse, or a whiff, of him right now and he felt all the coldness of his childhood at his back like a January wind from the Arctic ice caps. Shivering in his boots despite the fire and the calendar telling them it was high summer, he tried to gauge whatever it was they were being so careful not to tell him about Miss Grantham’s prolonged absence.
He had told himself all the way to Paris and back it was sensible for him to marry kind, well-bred and beautiful Miss Grantham so he could provide a much better home for Juno and a loving mother to his children when they came along. At least he knew enough about bleak and unloving childhoods to want better for his sons and daughters than the one he endured. Yet now he was here and Miss Grantham might have decided to accept his sensible offer of marriage, he felt as if he had left something crucial out of his calculations. Surely he could not have felt as if Marianne was all the warmth and impulsiveness and loyalty he had ever wanted at first glance if there was any more than polite friendship between him and Juno’s former governess? How could he have thought common interests and civility were enough, that instant of surprised and horrified recognition had whispered, as he had stared at a very different female when she had opened the door? He wanted her until his bones ached and a lot more besides he had best not even think about now.
‘Tea, my lord?’ Miss Donne asked and it felt as if he had to come a long way back to the now sunny-again kitchen to look at her as if he had never even heard of the stuff.
‘Hmm?’ he heard himself say like a looby.
‘A beverage made with leaves from the tea plant and imported from China at great expense,’ Marianne pointed out impatiently and with a wave at the fat brown kitchen teapot on the scrubbed table as if he might not have seen one before.
‘I do vaguely recall the idea,’ he said with a smile of apology for Miss Donne and a wary glance at Marianne in case she had any idea why he had been lost in his thoughts. From the frown of impatience knitting her slender honey-and-brown brows almost together, he imagined to her he was just being an annoying sort of lord again instead of a lustful and predatory one. So at least he had been excused the shame and indignity of being rejected by Marianne Whoever-She-Was before he could do more than stare at her like a mooncalf. That was one horror to cross off his list, then. He did not know if he could face another furious lady telling him how hateful he was and how bitterly she wished he had never been born after his mother did just that when he found out what she had done to Juno and challenged her selfishness and lack of feeling. ‘The French seem to prefer coffee,’ he added, ‘or drink chocolate at breakfast time.’
‘You can hardly expect us to roast and grind coffee beans or ask our closest wealthy neighbour to lend us cocoa beans and her chocolate pot when you have turned up on the doorstep with the dawn uninvited, Lord Stratford.’
‘Now then, Marianne, that is hardly polite and invitations are unimportant at a time of crisis,’ Miss Donne said and Alaric could have hugged her, except he liked her too much already to engulf her in the reek of sweaty man and the less savoury smells of the road.
‘Thank you, Miss Donne. Miss...’ he let his voice tail off because he could hardly call her Marianne.
‘Mrs,’ she
