The Brynthwaite Boys - Season One - Part Three Read online

  “How do you do?” Lady E. extended a hand, and when St. Germaine stepped forward to take it and kiss it, executed a perfect nod and a flirtatious smile.

  “Quite busy, my lady.” St. Germaine met her smile with an amused grin, flicking a glance to Jason.

  “Good friend?” Lady E. placed her gloved hand over her chest when St. Germaine released it. “I was so hoping you would introduce me as something more…inspired than that.” She laughed and batted her lashes.

  The ever-present coil of tension in Jason’s gut when Lady E. was present twisted tighter. He hummed, clasped his hands behind his back, and rocked from one foot to the other. “Yes, well.” He had no idea what to make of Lady E. in the best of times these days, but with Marshall’s business still looming—not to mention Lawrence’s, which he would have to make an effort to catch up on as soon as possible—he didn’t bother trying to form a response. “You will let me know when you learn more about the court hearing?” he asked St. Germaine.

  “Of course, sir.” St. Germaine nodded to him. “Now I’d best be going and leave you to your more important business.” The spark in his eyes sent a chill down Jason’s spine. St. Germaine had been with him for years, after all. Enough years to get entirely the wrong impression of his intentions toward Lady E.

  As St. Germaine turned to leave, Jason straightened his back and prepared to deal with whatever Lady E. had come barging into his office for. With any luck, she had heard rumors of him and Flossie that had escaped before he could stop them and had come to put an end to his pursuit of her. Or was it her pursuit of him these days?

  “What is the full situation with your friend, Dr. Pycroft?” she asked, swaying further into the room. She stopped when she was beside one of the chairs and rested a hand against the chair’s back, leaning into it enough to show off the long, lithe line of her body.

  “Dr. Pycroft’s late wife’s family has absconded with his girls,” he explained as generally as he could. “Marshall is trying to win them back, but it will be a difficult path.”

  “Yes, I heard that much,” Lady E. said.

  Jason narrowed his eyes. “How much did you hear?”

  “Only that there was some sort of a court hearing, and that it has been rescheduled.”

  Jason unclasped his hands behind him and rubbed the bottom half of his face with one. “Yes,” he began hesitantly. “There will be a new custody hearing in January, apparently.” He walked to the table at the side of the office and rested his hand on the edge.

  “Tell me more,” she said, a sharp light in her eyes.

  It occurred to Jason that she was thinking along the same lines he was. “Clara Pycroft’s family, the Danforths, are well-connected in legal circles.”

  “Yes, I heard your man say that. I also heard him say you need someone who can give a push in Dr. Pycroft’s favor. Someone with a greater influence at a higher level.”

  Jason paused, studying her. Lady E. was not entirely without intelligence. She was certainly a master of maneuvering to get what she wanted. He still didn’t see what she could do, though.

  “True,” he said. There was no point in dodging the heart of the matter. “Do you have any such connections?”

  The smile she gave him was enough to inspire him with hope and fill him with dread at the same time. “Of course,” she answered. She pushed away from the chair and came to stand only a few feet in front of him at the side of the table. “Father is an earl, as you know, but his uncle is Lord Elderton.”

  Jason’s breath caught. Lord Elderton was as old as Methuselah, but he was a peer. His son, Lord Merion, was a force in his own right, and while Jason knew him mostly from the depraved circles of the debauched that he had traveled in the worst of his afflictions in London, he was well aware that men bowed to Lord Merion’s slightest suggestion, if only to keep their names out of the scandal sheets.

  “I can see by the calculation in your eyes that you know precisely what that implies,” Lady E. went on.

  Jason flicked his glance up to meet hers. “Are you on close terms with that branch of the family?”

  The smile that spread across her face would have reduced a lesser man to a quivering pile of cinders. “I keep in close correspondence with all of my relatives,” Lady E. answered. “You never know when a connection might prove useful.”

  The pure triumph in her eyes was enough to fill Jason with relief. The Danforths could rally their forces all they wanted, but if he could sway Lord Elderton and Lord Merion to Marshall’s side, if his own money could be at all useful, the girls would be home by Christmas, let alone January.

  “I believe it’s time that you and I had a talk,” Lady E. cut through his victorious thoughts.

  Jason gripped the edge of the table and met her piercing gaze. As fast as the certainty of victory for Marshall had come over him, a premonition of doom swept in to ground him.

  “I am at your disposal.” He bowed to her, hiding his worry with strict formality.

  Lady E. laughed. “Come now, Jason. We are friends, you and I. There is no need to treat me with such stiffness. I have your best interest at heart.” She stepped closer to him, resting her hand over his on the edge of the table.

  A tremor shot through him. After everything he’d just driven home to his staff, after the tenderness of devotion he’d felt toward Flossie after both of their illnesses and the fallouts thereof, he still couldn’t bloody well stop his body from reacting to Lady E.’s simplest touch or the scent of her so close.

  He clenched his jaw, but before he could think of a single thing that might extricate him from the humiliating situation he’d fallen into, Lady E. said, “Where is Flossie?”

  Jason blinked and stepped back. She didn’t ask in a clandestine manner, as one might if they were hoping for an assignation. No, she asked more in line with open curiosity, as though she genuinely wanted to know.

  “About her duties, I expect,” he said. A moment later, he remembered the errand he’d sent her on, a mission to buy herself a whole new wardrobe for work. “She is not on the premises at the moment.”

  “Then we should go and find her,” Lady E. insisted.

  Jason blinked in surprise. “Find her? We?”

  “Yes.” Lady E.’s coy smile returned. “For I wish to speak with you both.”

  “Both?” Warning sirens blared in Jason’s head.

  “Of course, for as I discovered during your convalescence, it is impossible to make plans with one of you without the involvement and consent of the other.”

  Cold prickles broke out down Jason’s back, the same kind that might overtake a man who had fallen into the ocean and was in imminent danger of drowning. He swallowed. “Flossie has gone into town.”

  “Then we shall go find her.”

  Lady E. smiled brightly and took his arm. She nudged him to walk, and only with an immense force of will was Jason able to force himself to put one foot in front of the other to follow her out of his office and into the lobby.

  She didn’t stop there. With his heart pounding in his throat and a sense that no good could come out of such a simple stroll, he found himself striding out through the hotel’s front gate with Lady E. and starting down the street toward the heart of Brynthwaite. It was one thing to tell his staff that not a word of the happenings inside of the hotel walls should make its way to the general populace, but as he walked by Lady E.’s side, he was overcome by the sudden need to explain to each passerby that his attachment to Lady E. was not what it seemed.

  He considered himself a blessed man that they came across Flossie relatively quickly, as they crossed in front of Brynthwaite Chapel.

  “Ah, Flossie,” Lady E. waved to Flossie as she crossed the street, bags in both of her hands.

  Flossie glanced up at her name, then stumbled to a stop when she saw Jason on Lady E.’s arm. Her eyes flew wide with surprise.

  “Do come and join us for a moment,” Lady E. cut straight to the point. “We’ve come in search of you bec
ause I have something of great importance that I should like to discuss with you.”

  Flossie glanced both ways down the street, then hurried to join them on the sidewalk before a pair of carriages could cross at the point where she had been standing. “Me, my lady?”

  She hopped up on the curb, stopping a few yards down the sidewalk from Jason and Lady E. her eyes strayed to the way Lady E. hugged Jason’s arm, then met his eyes. All Jason could do was keep his gaze steady to suggest he had no idea what was going on. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

  “Yes, of course you,” Lady E. laughed. “After our conversation the other day, I thought it was understood that we should become friends.”

  “Your conversation the other day?” Jason blinked. Dear God, he was in trouble.

  “Didn’t Flossie tell you?” Lady E. batted her lashes at him. “We encountered each other in the lobby of your hotel the day I brought you those lemon drops and had a bit of a chat.”

  “I remember the lemon drops,” Jason said. Deceptively sweet, punishingly tart underneath. Yes, he remembered.

  “What can I do for you, my lady?” Flossie asked, calm, her demeanor pleasant even though she was laden with bags from shopping.

  Lady E.’s sly smile dropped as she glanced around. “We should find someplace quieter to talk.” She let go of Jason’s arm enough to turn and stare into the churchyard. “Ah, yes. In here.”

  She charged through the ivy-covered archway into the yard. Jason exchanged a glance with Flossie, then followed.

  “What does she want?” Flossie whispered as she caught up to Jason’s side.

  They followed Lady E. along a row of graves, past the spot where Clara Pycroft had been buried, and on to the hedge garden where Jason had confided his unfortunate condition in Lawrence all those months ago. If memory served, that was the same spot where Flossie had overheard them, which had led her to make her stunning suggestion about their arrangement.

  Oh Lord.

  “I can’t imagine,” Jason answered her, though a menacing itch at the back of his neck told him that yes, if he stretched, he could indeed imagine. Either Lady E. was going to take them to task for carrying on behind her back and cast him aside forever, or…not.

  “Yes, this should do nicely,” Lady E. said ahead of them. She stood at the entrance to one of the contemplative nooks, turned to be sure Jason and Flossie were following, then ducked back behind the boxwoods.

  When Jason and Flossie turned the corner, she was waiting for them, lace-gloved hands folded in front of her as she stood beside a low, iron bench.

  “Please sit down,” she said, gesturing to the bench as a hostess would at a garden party.

  Jason exchanged another worrisome look with Flossie, then slid carefully onto the edge of the bench.

  “Both of you, if you please,” Lady E. ordered when Flossie didn’t move.

  Flossie opened her mouth to protest, but closed it. She glanced between Jason and Lady E., then sat, depositing her bags on the grass beside the bench.

  “Good.” Lady E. smiled and shifted to stand in front of them. She would have resembled one of the dormitory mothers from the orphanage, about to give two naughty wards a well-deserved scolding, but for her smile. “Now,” she began, pivoting to pace in the tiny distance back and forth in front of the bench. “It has come to my attention that your…connection has become public.”

  Jason swallowed. It was the moment he’d hoped for and dreaded after all. Ending things with Lady E. would be a relief. So why did she make him feel six inches tall?

  “My sincere apologies for any embarrassment this might have caused you,” he said to her.

  Lady E. laughed. The hair stood up on the back of Jason’s neck.

  “Oh, I don’t care about that,” she said. “I have no interest in who you take to bed, and I have known about the two of you for quite some time.”

  Jason scowled, confused. Flossie’s cheeks burned bright red, the irritation in her eyes making her seem every bit the dragon that Jason was always accused of being.

  “If you have known, my lady,” she asked, “then why would you continue to pursue your own connection with Jason?”

  Good question. Jason sat straighter in anticipation of an answer.

  “It is precisely because of the arrangement between the two of you that I would pursue a closer connection for Jason and I,” Lady E. said.

  Jason let out a breath. “Forgive me, but that makes no sense at all.”

  Lady E.’s smile was downright condescending. “Of course you would say that. You’re a man.”

  “But I am not, and I do not understand any more than Jason does,” Flossie added.

  Jason had to admit, he was proud of the mettle she was showing in the face of such an odd conversation.

  “Oh, I think you probably do.” Lady E. fixed her with a sisterly look that shut Jason out entirely.

  Something in the slyness of that look set off further warnings in Jason’s mind.

  Lady E. took a breath and went on. “I see you are anxious for me to get to the point, and since I have no great wish to draw out the drama, I will bring us all to it.”

  “Thank God,” Jason muttered.

  Flossie gouged his arm with her elbow.

  Lady E. smiled with delight at the gesture. She cleared her throat and went on. “My point is this. I have waited too many long weeks for you to offer for my hand, Jason Throckmorton. I assumed it would be easy to elicit a proposal from you, until I discovered that the relationship between you and Flossie runs deeper than a carnal dalliance.”

  Jason frowned. If she put it that way….

  “We love each other,” Flossie stated boldly.

  “Yes, I know,” Lady E. answered. “Which is why I am including you in this proposal.”

  “Proposal?” Jason’s frown deepened.

  “Yes.” Lady E. nodded. She stopped her pacing and faced the two of them. “I propose that you and I marry, Jason.”

  He shook his head. “But Flossie just told you that we are in love.” The more he tried to wrap his mind around this bizarre conversation, the more he felt reality slipping away.

  “And I told you that I don’t care about any of that,” Lady E. went on. “I have no wish to marry you for love. And I have no intention of sharing your or any other man’s bed.”

  Her eyes flickered to Flossie as she made her pronouncement. Like a spring breaking inside of a clock, Jason’s grip on the situation snapped. Bloody hell. All this time he’d spend in hot pursuit of Elizabeth Dyson, and she was one of those kind of women?

  It was as jarring as losing his standing amongst his staff and feeling that he was no better than the orphan he’d been when he left Brynthwaite. Here he’d spent the greater part of his adult life aspiring to be worthy of a woman who would never have considered him anyhow.

  And yet, she’d just proposed marriage.

  He shifted on the bench, lifting a hand as his thoughts struggled for form themselves into words. “Am I to understand, then, that you do wish to marry me, but you do not intend to be married.”

  Lady E. blossomed into a smile. “Perhaps I underestimated you, Jason.”

  “But why?” Flossie sat straighter, scooting closer to Jason as she did. “Is this all about rank and wealth and connections?”

  “Yes,” Lady E. answered, letting out a breath of relief. “Oh, I am so pleased that we three are equally intelligent.”

  Jason peeked sideways at Flossie. She met his look with one that was just as wary. They had most certainly gone through the looking-glass.

  He cleared his throat. “Please explain.”

  Lady E. took a breath. “I can only accomplish so much in Cumbria. My father would never consent to me traveling alone. Why, you should have heard the way he raged against Alexandra just this morning when she refused to return to Hampshire with her mother after my aunt marries Anthony Fretwell.”

  Jason sat straighter. He felt Flossie tense at his side. Marshall wouldn�
�t like that one bit.

  “I wish to travel amongst society,” Lady E. went on. “It is the only way for a woman to be taken seriously in the world.”

  Jason could have argued, saying that he and many others took Flossie extremely seriously, but Lady E. went on.

  “As a married woman, I could live in London, in any one of your hotels, whether you were there or not. I could use your wealth and your connections to be introduced into society, and to entertain. I’m certain that given an opening, I could build quite the life for myself in town.”

  “While I remained here in Brynthwaite?” Jason suggested, though he spoke with reluctance. He wasn’t certain he wanted to hear the answers to this madness anymore.

  “Well, you would have to travel to London on occasion,” Lady E. said, gesturing as though it was no great thing. “And I suppose I could come up here to visit Father. I should, in fact. And it would be necessary for me to enter confinement far, far away in the country.”

  “Confinement?” Jason balked.

  “I thought you said you had no interest in Jason’s bed,” Flossie said, eyes narrowed.

  “I don’t.” Lady E. shrugged. “But I am assuming that you will not tire of it any time soon. What better way for Jason to acknowledge his inevitable bastard children as legitimate heirs than by passing them off as mine instead of yours?”

  “Now wait just a moment,” Jason began.

  “I would never consent,” Flossie yelped at the same time.

  “Hear me out, hear me out,” Lady E. stopped them both with raised hands.

  Jason clenched his jaw. Flossie huffed.

  “Yes, I know. It sounds barbaric and unfair. A woman should never have to give up her children or allow them to be passed off as someone else’s.”

  “I’ll say,” Jason growled.

  “But what if it meant that those children would be considered the grandchildren of an earl? What if it meant they were in line to inherit Huntingdon Hall and the Thornhill title?” She blinked prettily, smiling at Flossie. “Don’t you want your son or sons to be counted amongst the highest in the land? The eldest to be a peer? It would be quite a feat for the daughter of who knows whom.”