quite agree, Mrs Wheaton,’ Luke muttered to the January air. ‘So what the devil have you done to me this time, my conundrum-in-petticoats?’
No point trying to sit and work on the letters of sympathy and solutions to estate matters now. All he’d see out of the window now was an image of himself, tangled so tight in kissing Virginia’s protégé he’d forgotten where, when and what they were. He couldn’t settle for the ordeal ahead and hardly knew how to live in his own skin without Chloe to remake him every time he set eyes on her.
The very thought of her as she was just now set his pulses jumping and his manhood rigid with need. Yet she was Virginia’s housekeeper-cum-companion; a lady already burned by the chilling harshness the world showed those who fell from grace; a woman who’d wed recklessly, then found herself alone with a babe to support when she should have been in the schoolroom herself.
Recalling her list of activities for crass males, Luke wished he could ask for a hack to be saddled and ride for hours to avoid longing for more unsuitable meetings with the Farenze Lodge housekeeper. No, there could be no more of those and it was high time he turned his mind to the sad and solemn occasion ahead of him.
If he’d had his way they would celebrate Virginia’s long life and the fact she was reunited with her beloved Virgil, instead of mourning the passing she had begun to long for of late. Instead, he was chief mourner at a solemn funeral and must hide his grief as best he could for the sake of those who looked to him as head of the family and master of the house and estate.
His great-uncle’s will left his wife only a lifetime tenure on the house they had built so lovingly between them with ultimate ownership going to Luke. He’d been too wound up in baby Eve and playing down the chaos Pamela had raised on the Continent when Virgil died to take much notice, but lately he’d tried to discuss the future of Farenze Lodge with Virginia and got nowhere even faster than usual.
‘Virgil left you this house and estate to save me having people constantly badgering me to leave it elsewhere,’ Virginia told him.
‘But why me?’ he asked. ‘James might change if he had an estate of his own. You have told me he needs to be his own man.’
‘Let me worry about James,’ she said mysteriously, ‘you’re the only man we wanted living here after us, Luke. You love and understand it as we did, so enjoy it as a holiday from that grim barrack you live in most of the year. You can retreat here when the rigours of Darkmere become too great for your wife.’
‘I don’t have a wife, nor shall I until Eve is wed,’ he replied, meeting her level gaze steadily to show her he meant it and there was no point scheming to pair him off with some hopeful young lady she might have handy before then.
‘One day you’ll have to take that armour off and learn to be happy,’ she had replied with a knowing smile he didn’t want to question, so he shrugged and accepted their decision, since he could hardly do otherwise now the deed was done.
And now the whole world seemed to be conspiring against his long-held plan to find a convenient wife once Eve was old enough to marry. Virginia, Eve and even Tom Banburgh seemed to think he ought to wed for something warmer than mere convenience and surely they were all wrong?
‘There you are, m’lord,’ Josiah Birtkin’s bass voice rumbled at him from the doorway leading from the gardens to the stableyard and Luke swore at himself for getting distracted from all he had to cope with today.
‘So it would seem,’ he replied mildly enough.
‘Thought you should know,’ Josiah went on as if words had a tax on them.
‘Know what?’
‘Cross said they was followed back from the gallops just now.’
‘Why on earth would anyone follow a schoolgirl?’ Luke mused.
‘Don’t know, m’lord.’
‘Have you any idea who it was?’
‘No, he stayed well back. Cross thought it was his fancy to start with.’
Luke frowned even more darkly at the thought of Chloe’s daughter as quarry. ‘It makes no sense,’ he muttered and Josiah shrugged as if nothing his fellow humans did made much of that. ‘Where is he now?’ Luke asked, resolving to confront the rogue and demand what he was about.
‘Rode off when they got back to the paddocks, and, since he managed to look as if he was on his way somewhere else, nobody thought to challenge him.’
‘And you saw him close up, I hope?’
‘No, he was some way off by the time Cross mentioned him and had his hat pulled down over his eyes and a scarf over his mouth.’
‘It’s a cold day and a traveller might cover up against it, I suppose.’
And why trail a schoolgirl back to Farenze Lodge when a few casual questions would reveal her mother was only housekeeper here? And why would Verity Wheaton’s location matter to anyone but her mother, after all the years when nobody outside the household took any notice of either of them?
‘His beast had some Arab in him though, m’lord, and if the man wasn’t dressed like a farmer I’d have to call him a gentleman.’
‘Keep a lookout for him and I’ll have the watch doubled at night. If Miss Wheaton or my daughter ride out again, please make sure you or Seth stay with them and go armed, Josh, just in case,’ Luke ordered with a frown. ‘Be discreet about it; the fewer people who know the better since I don’t want panic breaking out, or the man scared off before we find out what he’s up to.’
‘Trust me not to blab,’ Josiah said, looking offended anyone might think he could, let alone Luke who’d known him since he was set on his first pony at Darkmere while still in short coats.
‘Aye, of course I do,’ Luke said with a wry grin and sent him back to the stables with orders to keep an eye on those who came and went on what would be a busy day for them all.
Luke intended to catch the man haunting Verity Wheaton and challenge him, so why was a prickle of apprehension sliding down his spine like ice water? He didn’t know the girl, had only set eyes on her a few times since she was a baby. Yet Eve had taken to her instantly and Chloe adored her, so how could he not be furious at any man who might try to harm or bother the child?
He would feel so about any girl, he reassured himself, and it was probably true, given the appalling hazards that could stalk a child as distinctive as Verity Wheaton. She had her own version of the striking colouring he found so irresistible in her mother. Her hair was closer to blonde and her eyes a paler blue than her mother’s stormy ones, but they shared the same fine-boned build and heart-shaped faces; the same fierce intelligence as well, he suspected, and some of the mother’s stubborn will and pride had been passed on to her child, if Verity’s determination to be with her mother at this sad time was any indication.
Luke frowned and decided he must make time to ask Chloe about Verity’s father sooner than he wanted to. Until then he’d trust Josiah’s sharp eyes and Eve’s company as well as his own vigilance to keep the child safe while her mother was managing his house and seemed barely to have time to eat, let alone sleep soundly.
* * *
A few hours later Chloe and the maids stopped work and wrapped themselves up in shawls and mittens before going out on the balustrade roof to watch the funeral cortège wind its way towards the church where the fifth Viscount Farenze was buried. The sombre procession went in and out of sight as it crossed the park and Chloe wished she could attend the service. As she was a female and a housekeeper with a house to prepare for cold and sorry mourners to return to, she bowed her head and recited the Twenty-Third Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer in memory of their beloved mistress and silently wished her ladyship Godspeed with all her heart.
When that was done they watched with tears in their eyes when the horses were taken out of their harness so the male servants and estate workers could drag the sombre rig the last stretch to the church instead.