‘Good morning,’ he said to the room at large.
The two young men mumbled grudging greetings.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ Mary said with a polite calm. It wasn’t right to treat him like some sort of pariah in his own house. She wouldn’t do it. She would be civil. Even if it was hard to breathe now he took up so much of the air in the room.
His eyes widened a fraction. ‘Miss Wilding. Up and about so early?’
‘As is my usual wont,’ she replied, sipping her chocolate, not tasting it at all any more, because all she was aware of was him.
Heat rushed to her cheeks and she hoped he did not notice.
After responding to Manners’s enquiries about his preferences for breakfast, he picked up the newspaper beside his plate and disappeared behind it.
A strained silence filled the room. It demanded that someone break it. It was just too obvious that they had stopped talking the moment he entered. He would think they were talking about him. They weren’t. At least, not all of the time. It made her feel very uncomfortable, as if her skin was stretched too tight.
She waited until he had eaten most of his breakfast. Sally, widowed by two husbands and therefore an expert, always said men were not worth talking to until they had filled their stomachs. ‘My lord?’
He looked up, frowning.
Perhaps he hadn’t eaten enough. Well, it was too late to draw back. ‘May I request that your coachman drive me to St Ives this morning? It is time I returned home.’
He frowned. ‘Not today. Your presence is required in two hours’ time for the reading of the will.’
The will? What did that have to do with her? ‘That is not necessary, surely?’
He gave her a look that froze her to the spot. ‘Would I ask it, if it were not?’
She dragged her gaze from his and put down her cup. A tiny hope unfurled in her chest. Perhaps the earl had left something for the school after all. Had she been too hasty in thinking her quest unsuccessful?
The earl was watching her face with a cynical twist to his lips, as if she was some sort of carrion crow picking over a carcase. Guilt twisted in her stomach. She had no reason to feel guilty. The school was a worthy cause, even if it did also benefit her. And if she had previously hoped the earl’s summons had signified something more, something of a familial nature, those expectations had been summarily disabused and were no one’s concern but her own. ‘If it is required, then I will attend.’
The earl pushed his plate aside and pushed to his feet. ‘Eleven o’clock in the library, Miss Wilding. Try not to be late.’
She bristled, but managed to hang on to her aplomb. ‘I am never late, my lord.’
He gazed at her for a long moment and she was sure she saw a gleam of amusement in his eyes, but it was gone too fast for her to be certain. ‘Unless you become lost, I assume.’
Once more heat flooded her face at the memory of his rescue the previous evening and her shocking responses to his closeness. Her incomprehensible longings, which must not recur. It was ungentlemanly of him to remind her.
He departed without waiting for a reply, no doubt assuming his orders would be carried out. And if they weren’t then no doubt the autocratic man would find a way to rectify the matter.
‘I’m for the stables,’ Jeffrey said. ‘I want to take a look at his horseflesh.’
He wanted to mock.
‘Can I come?’ Gerald asked, his expression pleading.
‘If you wish,’ his cousin said, kindly, which made Mary think a great deal more of him. He bowed to Mary and the two of them strolled away.
Now what should she do? Go back to her room and risk getting lost? Sally hadn’t expected her to spend more than one night here at the Abbey, no matter what hopes Mary had secretly held. What she should do was despatch a letter to Sally telling her what was happening and why her return might be delayed by another day. She could while away the two hours before the appointed time in writing and reading more enjoyably than spending the time wandering the chilly corridors of this rambling mansion looking for her room.
‘Will you direct me to the library, Manners? I assume there is paper and pen there?’
The butler bowed. ‘Yes, miss. It is located further along this hallway. You cannot miss it.’
If anyone could miss anything when it came to directions, she could and would. But that was her own personal cross to bear. ‘Thank you.’
He gave her a kind smile. ‘There is a footman going to the village this afternoon, if you would like a letter posted, miss. Ring the bell when you are finished and he’ll come and collect it. You will find sealing wax and paper in the desk drawer, and ink on the inkstand.’
She smiled her thanks and made her escape.
The library proved to be exactly where the butler had said and she found it without difficulty.
Nirvana could not have looked any more inviting. Shelves, packed with leather-bound books in shades of blue, red and green, rose from floor to ceiling on three dark-panelled walls. Wooden chairs strategically placed beside tables of just the right height encouraged a person to spread books out at will. Deep overstuffed sofas and chairs upholstered in fabrics faded to soft brown tempted the reader who liked to curl up with a novel. Cushioned window seats offered comfort and light on dark winter days. All was overseen by a large oak desk at one end.
The delights on offer tested her determination to write to Sally first and read afterwards. But she managed it, sitting at the heavy desk, putting out of her mind what she could not say about the new earl as she wrote of the demise of their donor.
She flicked the feather end of her quill across her chin. Should she mention a possibility of some small sum in the will? It seemed a bit presumptuous. She decided to write only of her delayed return. A mere day or two, she said.
Having rung the bell and sent off her missive, she turned her attention to the feast of books. She selected a book of poems by Wordsworth and settled into one of the window seats.
She didn’t have long to indulge because, within the half-hour, Mr Savary, the solicitor who had been at the earl’s bedside, arrived with a box full of papers and began fussing with them on the desk.
Mary decided she would remain where she was, at the furthest point in the room from where the family would conduct its business.
At a few minutes past eleven, the family members straggled in. First Gerald with his mother. Mrs Hampton looked very becoming in black. It suited her air of delicacy. She would have been an extraordinarily beautiful woman in her youth. She and her son, who took after her in the beauty department, sat beside the blazing hearth not far from the desk.
Jeffrey, his saunter as pronounced as any Bond Street beau, came next. Not that Mary had ever seen a Bond Street beau, but she’d seen cartoons in the paper, read descriptions of their antics and could use her imagination. He struck a languid pose at the fireplace, one arm resting on the mantel while he gazed pensively into the flames. Regretting being cut out of the title? He didn’t seem to care much about anything. Perhaps it was the idea of the earl holding the purse-strings that had him looking so thoughtful.
The upper servants gathered just inside the doorway: the butler, the housekeeper and a gentleman in a sombre suit who could have been anything from a parson to a land steward. They must all have expectations. The old earl had proved generous to her over the past many years, so why not to his servants? Though, in truth, on meeting him, she had not liked him one little bit. There had been an air of maliciousness about him.
She was relieved they were not related. She really was.
But if he left the school a small sum of money,