Hester came down one step. ‘Will Aunt Susan be able to manage without me? Dinner tomorrow is quite elaborate, and I had planned on a treasure hunt for the children.’
‘I am sure any domestic crises can await your return. Nor will it harm the children to remain in the charge of their nurses for one afternoon.’
Hester looked more relaxed immediately. ‘About dinner,’ she began hesitantly.
‘No need to put in an appearance unless you want to. Have a tray up in your rooms, if you like. If you want a gossip with Henrietta about Barny’s progress, or whatever else it is you two girls find to talk about, you could always invite her to one of those midnight feasts you used to have when you were schoolgirls.’
Hester shook her head. ‘Uncle Thomas, those midnight feasts were supposed to be secret.’
‘With everyone who was invited to them having to traipse through the servants’ hall to get to your staircase?’ he asked. ‘Stealing biscuits and jugs of lemonade from the kitchen on the way?’
Hester felt a warm surge of affection for her uncle, for his forbearance with her prickly insistence on maintaining the complete privacy of her rooms. Nobody went into them without an express invitation, not even a maid to clean.
She had felt at a loss when she first came to live at The Holme after her parents had died during an epidemic of typhus. They had been so demonstrably affectionate, and her uncle was rather gruff. But when she had removed up to the attics he had supported her decision, as though he sensed she needed some territory she could still call her very own. She did. Her rooms were her sanctuary.
‘I will give it serious consideration, Uncle Thomas. Em always manages to talk me into a more reasonable frame of mind. And entertaining my own chosen guests, in my own rooms, will certainly be preferable to being downstairs with him prowling about the place like a caged tiger.’
What a relief. No need to dread any more confrontations with the insufferable Lord Lensborough. She went up to her rooms in a more cheerful frame of mind than she had experienced for weeks.
Chapter Six
‘Of all the dull days that we’ve spent in this Godforsaken hole,’ Lord Lensborough drawled late the following evening as he tossed back his second brandy, ‘Sunday has to rank as the dullest.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Stephen countered, stretching his legs out towards the fire, which crackled cheerfully in the grate of their shared sitting room. ‘I got a great deal of amusement from attending church this morning.’
Lord Lensborough shot him a look of loathing.
‘Julia informed me over dinner,’ he remarked, barely able to keep a straight face, ‘that the congregation has not been so large since the pig-face lady passed through this district on her way to the fair at Scarborough. People attended from several adjoining parishes in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a genuine marquis.’
‘If you think I enjoy being trotted out like some specimen at a freak show…’
‘And then, of course, we must not forget the treat of coming across the divine Miss Dean, the lovely Emily.’ Stephen raised his glass in tribute.
‘Good God.’ Lord Lensborough’s eyes narrowed as he saw the lustful expression on his friend’s face. ‘You are contemplating setting up a flirtation with the vicar’s daughter.’
‘Well, as you yourself pointed out, what else is there to do in this neck of the woods? You have appropriated every single female within these four walls, although…’ He stared abstractedly into his brandy glass for a few seconds, before continuing, ‘I feel obliged to warn you that you are not likely to be successful if you decide on Cinderella.’ Stephen had so nicknamed Hester on account of her station in the house, her marked shabbiness in contrast with the two girls who were vying for the marriage prize, who were sisters, though not hers, nor the least bit ugly.
‘What? Why not?’
‘Well, for one thing, you are no maiden’s version of Prince Charming. You have no charm whatsoever.’
Lord Lensborough snorted in derision. ‘I do not turn on the charm in order to seduce innocents into my bed, if that is what you mean. I have never had any taste for that sort of game.’ Then, running with the metaphor Stephen had begun, he said, ‘However, there is a certain appeal in making the attempt to rescue Cinders from her life of drudgery. Her wicked stepmother—’
‘Fuddled aunt,’ Stephen corrected him.
‘—would not even let Cinders out for meals today. She took them on a tray in her rooms.’ He neatly omitted to mention that only a few days previously he had believed that was exactly where the poor relation should take her meals. ‘Attic rooms, no less, which can only be reached by going through the servants’ quarters.’
Stephen raised an eyebrow and grinned at his friend. ‘You have been busy. Where did you come by all this information?’
‘My valet,’ he said. ‘And when she wasn’t shut away up there today, she was banished to the vicarage in Beckforth on the pretext of visiting Miss Dean, who is purported to be her dearest friend in the neighbourhood.’
‘There. I told you I should flirt with the lovely Emily. It will help your own suit no end if we were to take to visiting the vicarage together.’
‘I have no need of your help.’
‘No, you are beyond help. But it will amuse me no end watching you make a cake of yourself. I shall always treasure the moment when Cinderella rated you below the value of her knitting. I should think everyone in the drawing room heard her berate you for making her drop a stitch.’
‘She has a temper.’ He shrugged. ‘And we got off on the wrong foot, that is all. There was a misunderstanding.’
He frowned. He never had really made a decent apology for his awful behaviour during their first encounter. She might still harbour some resentment, but the prospect of the lifestyle he was offering would more than make amends for all that.
‘And of course her uncle has repeatedly warned her to keep away from me. He wants me for his own daughters. So she has not dared think of me in the light of a suitor. She is naturally on edge whenever I pay her a little attention in case her family think she is putting herself forward. Once I manage to declare myself, and promise her that I will prevent her family from exacting retribution, you will see a marked difference in her attitude towards me.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so. What woman would not go instantly into raptures upon receiving a marriage proposal from a marquis?’
Immediately after breakfast the next morning, Hester tied her hair out of the way with a brightly embroidered cotton scarf, rounded up the children, and took them up to the long gallery for a game of indoor cricket.
It was not long into the game when she gave thanks that all the breakables had been removed, for Harry, her twelve-year-old cousin, younger brother to Julia and Phoebe, had a powerful swing.
She leapt as high as she could in an effort to catch the tennis ball he had just struck, but was not surprised when her fingers closed on empty air. What did surprise her was his cry of, ‘Oh, well caught, sir,’ and the smattering of spontaneous applause that rippled among the other players.
As Harry dutifully lowered the tennis racquet he was using to guard the upturned coal scuttle which was his wicket, Lady Hester turned to see which one of the fathers had taken the unprecedented step of visiting his offspring, rather than the stables, so early in the morning.
But it was Lord Lensborough who was striding towards them, tossing the