Cold-Hearted Rake Page 34

  West leaped forward as if he were about embrace him, then checked the movement. He shook Devon’s hand violently and proceeded to thump his back with painful vigor. “By God, I love you, you pigheaded bastard!”

  “What the devil is wrong with you?” Devon demanded.

  “I’ll show you. Let’s go.”

  “I have to wait for Sutton. He’s in one of the back carriages.”

  “We don’t need Sutton.”

  “He can’t walk to Eversby from Alton,” Devon said, his annoyance fading into laughter. “Damn it, West, you’re jumping about as if someone shoved a hornet’s nest up your —”

  “There he is,” West exclaimed, gesturing to the valet, motioning for him to hurry.

  At West’s insistence, the carriage proceeded not to the manor, but to the eastern perimeter of Eversby Priory, accessible only by unpaved roads. Devon realized they were heading to the acreage he had just leased to Severin.

  Eventually the vehicle stopped by a field bordered with a stream and a stand of beech. The rough fields and hillocks swarmed with activity; at least a dozen men were busy with surveying equipment, shovels, picks, barrows, and a steam-powered engine.

  “What are they doing?” Devon asked, mystified. “Are those Severin’s men? They can’t be grading the land yet. The lease was signed only yesterday.”

  “No, I hired them.” West pushed the carriage door open before the driver could reach it. He swung to the ground. “Come.”

  “My lord,” Sutton protested as Devon made to follow. “You’re not attired for such crude terrain. All that rock and clay… your shoes, your trousers…” He regarded the pristine hems of Devon’s gray angora wool trousers with anguish.

  “You can wait in the carriage,” Devon told the valet.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  A heavily misted breeze blew against Devon’s face as he and West walked to a freshly dug trench marked with flags. The fragrance of earth, wet sedge, and peat wrapped around them, a fresh and familiar Hampshire smell.

  As they passed a man with a barrow, he stopped and removed his hat, bowing his head respectfully. “Your lordship.”

  Devon responded with a brief smile and nod.

  Reaching the edge of the trench, West bent to pick up a small rock and handed it to Devon.

  The rock – more of a pebble – was unexpectedly heavy for its size. Devon used his thumb to scrape dirt from it, uncovering a ruddy surface banded with bright red. “Ore?” he guessed, examining the pebble closely.

  “High-grade hematite ore.” West’s tone was filled with compressed excitement. “It makes the best steel. It commands the highest price on the market.”

  Devon glanced at him with sharpening interest. “Go on.”

  “While I was away in London,” West continued, “it seems that Severin’s surveyors did some test boring here. One of the tenants – Mr. Wooten – heard the machines and came to see what was afoot. The surveyors told him nothing, of course. But as soon as I learned of it, I hired a geologist and a mining surveyor to do our own testing. They’ve been here for three days with a rock-boring machine, pulling up sample after sample of that.” He nodded to the hematite in Devon’s hand.

  Beginning to understand, Devon closed his fingers around the hard lump of ore. “How much of it is there?”

  “They’re still assessing. But they both agree that a massive bed of banded hematite lies close to the surface, just beneath a layer of clay and limestone. From what they’ve observed so far, it’s eight feet thick in some places, twenty-two feet in others – and it extends for at least fifteen acres. All your land. The geologist says he’s never seen a deposit like this south of Cumberland.” His voice turned husky. “It’s easily worth a half million pounds, Devon.”

  Devon had the sense of reeling backward, even though he was standing still. It was too much to take in. He gazed at the scene without really seeing it, his brain striving to comprehend what it meant.

  The soul-crushing burden of debt that had weighed on him ever since he’d inherited the estate… gone. Everyone at Eversby Priory would be safe. Theo’s sisters would have dowries large enough to attract any suitors they chose. There would be work for the men of Eversby, and new business for the village.

  “Well?” West asked expectantly as Devon’s silence stretched out.

  “I can’t trust that it’s real,” he managed to say, “until I know more.”

  “You can trust it. Believe me, a hundred thousand tons of stone is not going to vanish from beneath our feet.”

  A slow grin worked over Devon’s face. “Now I understand why Severin tried so hard to obtain the mineral rights.”

  “Thank God you’re so stubborn.”

  Devon laughed. “That’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me.”

  “And the last,” West assured him.

  Turning a slow circle to view their surroundings, Devon sobered as he glanced at the woodlands to the south. “I can’t let the estate’s timber be razed for furnaces and forges.”

  “No, there’s no need for us to mine or smelt. The hematite ore is so pure, we’ll only need to quarry. As soon as it’s taken from the ground, it can be transported.”

  Completing the circle, Devon caught sight of a man and a small boy walking around the rock-boring machine, viewing it with great interest.

  “First an earldom,” West was saying, “then the railway lease deal. Now this. I think you may be the luckiest sod in England.”

  Devon’s attention held on the man and little boy. “Who is that?”

  West followed his gaze. “Ah. That’s Wooten. He’s brought one of his sons to see the machine.”

  Wooten bent with his torso parallel to the ground, and the little boy climbed onto his back. Hooking his arms beneath his son’s legs, the young farmer stood and carried him across the field. The boy clung to his father’s shoulders, laughing.

  Devon watched the pair as they retreated into the distance.

  The sight of the child summoned an image to the forefront of his mind… Kathleen’s blank face, limned in fire glow, as she’d told him there would be no baby.

  All he had been aware of was a puzzling feeling of emptiness.

  It was only now that Devon realized he had assumed she would be pregnant – which would have left him no choice to marry her. Having lived with that idea in the back of his mind for a fortnight, he had become accustomed to it.

  No… that wasn’t quite accurate.

  Shaken, Devon brought himself to face the truth.

  He’d wanted it.

  He’d wanted the excuse to make Kathleen his in every way. He wanted his baby inside her. He wanted his ring on her finger, and every marital right that it conferred.

  He wanted to share every day of the rest of his life with her.

  “What are you worrying about?” he heard his brother ask.

  Devon was slow to reply, trying to retrace the steps that had led him so far away from everything he’d always thought he was. “Before I inherited the title,” he said dazedly, “I wouldn’t have trusted either of us with a goldfish, much less a twenty-thousand-acre estate. I’ve always shunned any kind of responsibility because I knew I couldn’t manage it. I’m a scapegrace and a hothead, like our father. When you told me that I had no idea how to run the estate and I was going to fail —”

  “That was a load of bollocks,” West said flatly.

  Devon grinned briefly. “You made some valid points.” Absently he began to roll the hematite between his palms. “But against all odds, it seems that you and I have managed to make enough of the right choices —”

  “No,” West interrupted. “I’ll take no credit for this. You alone decided to take on the burden of the estate. You made the decisions that led to the lease deal and the discovery of the iron deposits. Has it occurred to you that if any of the previous earls had bothered to make the land improvements they should have, the hematite bed would have been discovered decades ago? You certainly would have
found it when you ordered the drainage trenches dug for the tenant farms. You see, Eversby Priory is in good hands: yours. You’ve changed hundreds of lives for the better, including mine. Whatever the word is for a man who’s done all that… it’s not ‘scapegrace.’” West paused. “My God, I can feel sincerity rising in my chest like a digestive disorder. I have to stop. Shall we go to the house for you to change into some field boots? Then we can return here, talk to the surveyors, and have a walk around.”

  Pondering the question, Devon dropped the pebble into his pocket, and met his brother’s gaze squarely.

  One thought was paramount: None of this mattered without Kathleen. He had to go to her at once, and somehow make her understand that during the past few months, he had changed without even being aware of it. He had become a man who could love her.

  God, how madly he loved her.

  But he had to find a way of convincing her, which would not be easy.

  On the other hand… he wasn’t a man to back down from a challenge.

  Not any longer.

  He glanced at his brother and spoke in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. “I can’t stay,” he said. “I have to go back to London.”

  The morning of Devon’s departure, Helen didn’t come downstairs for breakfast, but sent word that she was suffering a migraine and would stay in bed. Unable to remember the last time that Helen had been ill, Kathleen was deeply concerned. After giving Helen a dose of Godfrey’s Cordial to relieve the pain, she applied cool compresses to her forehead and made certain that the bedroom was kept dark and quiet.

  At least once an hour, as Helen slept, Kathleen or one of the twins tiptoed to the doorway of her room to look in on her. She didn’t awaken during any of the visits, only twitched like a sleeping cat and drifted through dreams that seemed far from pleasant.

  “It’s a good sign that she has no fever, isn’t it?” Pandora asked in the afternoon.

  “Yes,” Kathleen replied firmly. “I expect that after the excitement of the past week, she needs rest.”

  “I don’t think that’s what it is,” Cassandra said. She had perched on the settee with a brush and rack of hairpins and a fashion periodical in her lap, experimenting with Pandora’s hair. They were attempting to copy one of the latest styles, an elaborate affair that consisted of locks of hair rolled and pinned into puffs atop the head, with a loose double chatelaine braid falling down the back. Unfortunately Pandora’s chocolaty hair was so heavy and slippery that it refused to stay in its pins, the locks sliding free and collapsing the puffs.

  “Be stern,” Pandora encouraged. “Use more pomade. My hair will respond only to brute force.”

  “We should have bought more at Winterborne’s,” Cassandra said with a sigh. “We’ve already gone through half the —”

  “Wait,” Kathleen said, staring at Cassandra. “What did you just say? Not about the pomade, the thing you said about Helen.”

  The girl brushed out a lock of Pandora’s hair as she answered. “I don’t think she needs rest because of too much excitement. I think…” She paused. “Kathleen, is it tattling if I say something about someone else that’s private and I know they wouldn’t want it to be repeated?”

  “Yes. Unless it’s about Helen and you’re telling it to me. Go on.”

  “Yesterday, when Mr. Winterborne came to visit, he and Helen were in the downstairs parlor with the door closed. I was going to fetch a book I’d left on the window ledge, but I heard their voices.” Cassandra paused. “You were with the housekeeper, going over the inventory list, so I didn’t think it was worth bothering you.”

  “Yes, yes… and?”

  “From what little I could hear, they were quarreling about something. Perhaps I shouldn’t call it quarreling, since Helen didn’t raise her voice, but… she sounded distressed.”

  “They were probably discussing the wedding,” Kathleen said, “since that was when Mr. Winterborne told her he wanted to plan it.”

  “No, I don’t think that was why they were at odds. I wish I could have heard more.”

  “You should have used my drinking glass trick,” Pandora said impatiently. “If I’d been there, I would be able to tell you every word that was said.”

  “I went upstairs,” Cassandra continued, “and just as I reached the top, I saw Mr. Winterborne leave. Helen came upstairs a few minutes afterward, and her face was very red, as if she’d been crying.”

  “Did she say anything about what happened?” Kathleen asked.

  Cassandra shook her head.

  Pandora frowned, reaching up to her hair. Gingerly touching the pinned section Cassandra had been working on, she said, “These don’t feel like puffs. They feel like giant caterpillars.”

  A swift smile was wrenched from Kathleen’s lips as she regarded the pair. Heaven help her, she loved the two of them. Although she was not wise or old enough to be their mother, she was all they had in the way of maternal guidance.

  “I’ll look in on Helen,” she said, standing. She reached for Pandora’s hair and separated one of the caterpillars into two puffs, using a pin from Cassandra to anchor it.

  “What are you going to say if she tells you that she had a row with Winterborne?” Cassandra asked.

  “I’ll tell her to have more of them,” Kathleen said. “One can’t allow a man to have his way all the time.” She paused reflectively. “Once Lord Berwick told me that when a horse pulls at the reins, one should never pull back. Instead, loosen them. But never more than an inch.”

  As Kathleen let herself into Helen’s room, she heard the muffled sounds of weeping. “Dear, what is it?” she asked, moving swiftly to the bedside. “Are you in pain? What can I do?”

  Helen shook her head and blotted her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown.

  Kathleen went to pour a glass of water from the jug on the nightstand and brought it to her. She propped a pillow beneath Helen’s head, gave her a dry handkerchief, and straightened the covers. “Is the migraine still bad?”

  “Dreadful,” Helen whispered. “Even my skin hurts.”

  Pulling a chair to the bedside, Kathleen sat and regarded her with aching concern. “What brought this on?” she dared to ask. “Did something happen during Mr. Winterborne’s visit? Something besides discussing the wedding?”

  Helen responded with a minuscule nod, her jaw trembling.

  Kathleen’s thoughts whirled as she wondered how to help Helen, who seemed on the verge of falling apart. She hadn’t seen her this undone since Theo’s death.

  “I wish you would tell me,” she said. “My imagination is running amok. What did Winterborne do to make you so unhappy?”

  “I can’t say,” Helen whispered.

  Kathleen tried to keep her voice calm. “Did he force himself on you?”

  A long silence followed. “I don’t know,” Helen said in a sodden voice. “He wanted… I don’t know what he wanted. I’ve never —” She stopped and blew her nose into the handkerchief.

  “Did he hurt you?” Kathleen forced herself to ask.

  “No. But he kept kissing me and wouldn’t stop, and… I didn’t like it. It wasn’t at all what I thought kissing would be. And he put his hand… somewhere he shouldn’t. When I pushed him away, he looked angry and said something sharp that sounded like… I thought I was too good for him. He said other things as well, but there was too much Welsh mixed in. I didn’t know what to do. I started to cry, and he left without another word.” She gave a few hiccupping sobs. “I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

  “You did nothing wrong.”

  “But I did, I must have.” Helen lifted her thin fingers to her temples, pressing lightly over the cloth that covered them.

  Winterborne, you ham-handed sod, Kathleen thought furiously. Is it really so difficult for you to be gentle with a shy young woman, the first time you kiss her? “Obviously he has no idea how to behave with an innocent girl,” she said quietly.

  “Please don’t tell anyone. I would die. Please
promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “I must make Mr. Winterborne understand that I didn’t mean to make him angry —”

  “Of course you didn’t. He should know that.” Kathleen hesitated. “Before you proceed with the wedding plans, perhaps we should take some time to reconsider the engagement.”

  “I don’t know.” Helen winced and gasped. “My head is throbbing. Right now I feel as if I never want to see him again. Please, would you give me some more Godfrey’s Cordial?”

  “Yes, but first you must eat something. Cook is making broth and blancmange. It will be ready soon. Shall I leave the room? I think my talking has made your migraine worse.”