lived in the same quarters with a female presence since he’d been a child, and to do so now could bring nothing but absolute, appalling trouble.
And then he remembered the wistfulness in Miss Winslow’s face when they’d stood together in the last bedchamber, when the view from the windows had convinced him to make the house his own. He’d realized then that she’d saved the best for last, at once hoping and dreading that he’d love it the same way that she did. Clearly she did love the weary old place as if it were her own, and he understood the depth of her sorrow at seeing it go to another. She’d already lost her father, and now she was faced with losing her home as well. He understood, and he sympathized, a good deal more of both than was likely proper.
And now there was this damned clause imposed by those damned Trelawneys, tying his hands and hers too….
“I shall leave you to consider it, Captain My Lord,” said Potipher as he rose behind his desk and began bowing his way towards the office’s door. Feversham had sat empty for years, and clearly the agent meant to be as obliging as possible if it resulted in a sale. “Pray take as long as you need to reach your decision. But I fear I must remind you that there is not another property with Feversham’s special charms in all my lists, and keeping the housekeeper is such an insignificant, small condition for such a fine estate!”
“‘Special charms’, hell,” grumbled George as the door clicked shut. “The place is such a rambling, ramshackle old pile that they should be paying me to relieve them of it.”
Not that Brant cared one way or the other. “The housekeeper, George?” he asked, pouncing with un-abashed curiosity. “You’ve been keeping secrets from me again, brother.”
George sighed mightily. “No secrets, Brant, for there’s nothing to tell.”
“Nothing?” repeated Brant archly. “I’d wager ten guineas that this Miss Winslow isn’t the sort of black-clad old gorgon who ruled our youth with terror, else you would have already described her to me in the most shuddering terms. Instead you haven’t even mentioned her existence, which tells me infinitely more than any words.”
“You will make a wager of anything,” grumbled George. This was precisely the kind of inquisition that he had wished to avoid. If there was one area where Brant delighted in displaying his superiority over his younger brother, it was his far greater experience with women—a markedly unfair advantage, really, considering that George had spent most of his adult life at sea and far from any females at all, while Brant, with his fallen-angel’s face and a peer’s title, had absolutely wallowed in them in London.
“Well?” asked Brant, undaunted. “Is she?”
George glared. “Miss Winslow is neither old, nor is she a gorgon, though she was dressed in black.”
Brant waved his hand in airy dismissal. “Black can be an elegant affectation on the right woman.”
“Not if it’s mourning,” said George sharply. “You heard Potipher, Brant. The poor woman’s just lost her father.”
But Brant would not be discouraged. “Is she sweetly melancholy, then? A delicate beauty, shown off by that black like a diamond against midnight velvet?”
“You would not find her so,” said George, his discomfort growing by the second. He’d never cared for Brant’s manner with women. True, his brother’s attitude was shared by fashionable gentlemen from the Prince of Wales downward, but the way Brant combined a connoisseur’s fastidious consideration with a predator’s single-mindedness seemed to George to include almost no regard or respect for the lady herself.
Which, of course, was not how he’d felt about Miss Winslow. “She is tall,” he said, choosing his words with care, “and handsome rather than beautiful. Dark hair, fair skin, and eyes the color of smoke.”
“Ah,” said Brant with great satisfaction as he settled back in his chair, making a little tent over his chest by pressing his fingertips together. “You sound smitten, George.”
“She is not that kind of woman, Brant,” said George defensively. “Put a broadsword in her hand, and she’d become St. Joan and smite her villains left and right, but as for leaving a trail of swooning beaux in her wake, the way you’re saying—no, not at all. She’s prickly as a dish of nettles.”
“But you are intrigued,” insisted Brant. “I know you well enough to see the signs. You’ve had the sweetest cream of fair London wafting before you this last month, and not one of them has inspired this sort of paeans from you as does this housekeeper.”
“Paeans?” repeated George incredulously. “To say she is prickly as a dish of nettles is a paean?”
Brant smiled. “From you it is, my unpoetic Neptune of a brother. I say you should take both the house and the housekeeper. Regardless of her housewifery skills, she shall, I think, offer you other amusements.”
“Amusements, hell,” said George crossly. “That’s not why I’m taking the blasted house.”
“Oh, why not?” said Brant with his usual breezy nonchalance. “Our dear brother Rev has gone and married a governess, and now you fancy a housekeeper. I’ll have to look about me for a pretty little cook to become my duchess, and make our whole wedded staff complete.”
“Just stow it, Brant,” growled George. “Just stow it at once. Potipher!”
The agent reappeared so quickly that George suspected he’d been poised on the other side door, listening.
“You have reached a decision, Captain My Lord?” he asked, hovering with cheerful expectation.
“I have not,” growled George. “What if Miss Winslow wishes to leave my employment, eh? Is she a slave to the wishes of these blasted Trelawneys as well?”
Potipher blinked warily behind his spectacles. “Oh, no, Captain My Lord, not at all. Miss Winslow will be under no obligation to remain whatsoever.”
George sighed with a grim fatalism, drumming his fingers impatiently on the arm of his chair. At least that was some small solace. He would not wish any lady, especially not one as fine as Miss Winslow, to be obligated to stay with him. Yet if he wanted Feversham—which, of course, he did, now more than ever—then he was trapped into keeping Miss Winslow with it. George did not like feeling trapped, but least Potipher was also offering him a way out: what respectable woman, young or old, would wish to remain long beneath the same roof with the crew of the Nimble?
But then George thought again of the way Miss Winslow had smiled at him, bright and determined, as if she’d enjoyed their skirmishing as much as he had himself. Although he’d nobly scorned Brant’s suggestion that he “amuse” himself with the housekeeper, he couldn’t keep from considering all the wicked possibilities and justifications the circumstances would offer, and he nearly groaned aloud at the willfulness of his wayward thoughts and willing body.
Blast, he didn’t even know her given name….
Abruptly he rose to his feet. “Then it is decided, Mr. Potipher,” he said. “I shall take Feversham, and Miss Winslow with it.”
And trust the rest to fate.
“Ooh, miss, those look most wonderful fine on you!” exclaimed the girl behind the counter of the little shop as she held the looking-glass for Fan. “They say all the noble ladies be wearin’ such in London and Bath.”
Fan turned her head before the glass, making the gold earrings with the garnet drops swing gently back and forth against her cheeks. While her Company specialized in bringing in tea, there were others along the coast that carried more jewels and lace from France than in most of the shops in the Palais Royale, and even here in the tiny harbor village of Tunford, not three miles from Feversham itself, Fan could let herself be tempted by earrings that likely were the same as the noble ladies in London were wearing.
“You’ll fetch yourself a handsome sweetheart with those a-glittering in your ears, miss,” promised the girl,