“Heavens!” Miss Nichols and her friends had rushed forward. “What’s happened?” She climbed the stairs to stand next to Hope.
Lord Tensford climbed after her. “Leave the girl alone,” he told Bardham in a menacing tone. He turned then, and bowed to Hope. “It was a pleasure, Lady Hope.” With nods to the gathering guests, he turned and stalked into the house.
Bardham whirled and went back the way he’d come.
“Gracious,” someone murmured.
“What was that about?” another one asked.
“Are you well, Lady Hope?” Miss Nichols looked concerned.
“I’m fine, thank you.” She was looking off after Tensford.
“What happened to Lord Bardham?”
She hesitated. “An accident?” she offered. “What else could it have been?”
The murmurs hiked up a notch.
“And Lord Terror? Did he mistreat you?” someone asked.
“No!” She looked around, determined that Tensford should not be subjected to further disparaging rumors because of her. “Lord Bardham seems quite . . . not himself this evening. But Lord Tensford was nothing but kind.”
“Hard to believe that,” someone said nastily.
“Please do believe it, nonetheless,” she insisted, raising her voice so that all could hear her. “I only just met Lord Tensford this evening, but he treated me very kindly indeed. Almost tenderly,” she added, in a whisper, to herself.
Someone laughed.
“Don’t tease her.” Miss Nichols put her arm around Hope. “Come, let’s go and get you a glass of wine.”
She nodded and let herself be taken in by the considerate girl. And though she watched carefully for the rest of the evening, she did not see the Earl of Tensford again.
Chapter 2
My dearest readers, it is true. Even Lady X can make a mistake. And it does seem that I, and indeed all of London, have been mistaken in Lord Terror. He attended the Loxton ball and was seen aiding not one, but two damsels in distress! At first I thought it a trick, but having heard the stories, I am convinced. Indeed, it seems we must change his moniker, dear readers. He is Lord Terror to us no longer, but, borrowing the words of one of the lucky damsels, we dub him our Lord Tender!
--Whispers from Lady X
Tensford breathed deeply as he looked up from his accounts. Something smelled good. He felt hungry, really hungry, for the first time in a long while. Surprising, considering the state of the numbers he was working on, and the fact that he was no closer to solving his real dilemma.
But not so surprising, perhaps, since he felt the first glimmer of a lighter mood in months—and it had been brought to him along with a smile in a pair of dark, shining eyes.
He stood, stretching, as Higgins, his butler, entered with a tray. “Tea, sir. And Mrs. Agnew sends you some scones. They are not ginger cookies, alas.”
“Ah, but ginger is pricey these days, Higgins, or so I hear.”
“Yes, but they are your favorites, my lord. And you are the earl.”
“We make do. And these smell good, too.” He raised a brow at the man. “And we are lucky men, in the end. A good woman who is also a good cook? Mrs. Agnew is worth her weight in gold.”
“I know you are correct, sir.” The butler’s expression changed but a moment. “Mrs. Agnew knows it, too.”
Tensford grinned into his tea. His butler and cook shared a tumultuous relationship that kept the rest of the staff on their toes.
Higgins left and Tensford took up one of his ledgers.
He was going to have to reach a decision soon. Greystone Park needed an influx of cash. He’d done what he could with economies, with reorganization, and with the strict enforcement of budgets that had so upset his assorted female relatives.
He had spared no one, not even himself. To the horror of his mother, he had let the manor house at Greystone, leasing it for a year to an extremely wealthy merchant who wished to introduce his family to the social niceties of the gentry’s country life before he took them up to Town. The servants had all stayed on and Tensford had moved himself into an empty tenant’s cottage.
Even that had not been enough. Especially as the harvest was in danger this year, after such a disastrously wet and gloomy spring. It was hard enough keeping his people fed. How would he do it if they had a bad season?
He picked up the round, fist sized rock on his desk. Absently, his fingers traced the outline of the fossilized sea urchin that stretched over the curve of it. He’d found it on an expedition with his father. Fossil hunting had been the hobby they shared when he was a boy. It was still his hobby, in point of fact. It was peaceful. Quiet. His best hours were spent away at the riverside cliffs at Greystone, exploring the rocks, looking for signs of ancient life, caught forever.
When he’d first inherited and learned of the difficulties his estates were facing after years of his mother’s stewardship, he’d hoped that his fossils might be their salvation. Good specimens fetched decent money. If he could find something really unusual, something large and intact, or something never seen before, it could bring in a fortune.
But he’d looked. Every spare minute, when he wasn’t working at the estate, but he’d had to conclude that nothing valuable enough was to be found. He had to find another way.
He’d had an idea that he was developing with his steward. Much of Greystone Park’s vast acreage was wooded. He could sell the timber. And if he set up his own mill and milled the lumber himself, he’d make an even higher profit. And he could mill for
