Edith Layton: How to Seduce a Bride

Nor did he look at her that way now. That wasn’t what made her uneasy. It was that he no longer looked sad, or weary, and most of all, now he didn’t look that old anymore. He was still dressed casually, but now in fashionable clothes. He looked prosperous, fit, robust, healthy. She wondered why he was still unmarried. She also wondered how many mistresses he had, and didn’t doubt he probably had at least one. Because now he looked like a man who would and could use a woman, and not just for show.

That wasn’t what she’d been expecting. That wasn’t what she’d traveled halfway across the world to find; it was never what she wanted.

She didn’t want to be caught staring so she turned her attention to the earl’s guest, and found him watching her. She looked away again, quickly. The viscount was always watching her. But he didn’t eye her with any kind of lust; instead he seemed merely amused and curious. She wondered at his friendship with the earl; the two didn’t seem to have much in common.

He was years younger than the earl, and far more fashionable, even though his tall, thin frame must have made the perfect fit of his clothes difficult for his tailor to achieve. He had a long face, high cheekbones, and a long nose. Those watchful eyes were dark blue. His light brown hair was just overlong enough to make a fashion statement, and his curling smile was half mocking and half self-mockery. None of this, she thought with annoyance, should have been as attractive as it was.

He was dressed wonderfully well, from his tight blue jacket to his intricately tied neck cloth, to the sapphire pin he wore in it. He wore a quizzing glass, though he never used it to look at her. That, she thought rebelliously, would have been the outside of enough. But it would have given her a reason to dislike him, and she didn’t have one, which annoyed her, because he made her uncomfortable and she didn’t know exactly why.

She forced her gaze, if not her attention, back to the luckless baked prawn sitting on her plate. There was only one thing for her to think about now. What about her plans? What was she going to do?

“Don’t you find the prawns to your taste?” the earl asked her.

“Oh, they are, but I had a late breakfast,” she said, telling partial truth. She smiled an apology. “And a big one. I haven’t learned to nibble in the mornings the way I hear London ladies do. I still wake up and tuck in, as though I had a day of work ahead of me.”

The earl laughed.

“What sort of work?” Leland asked. “Excuse me, of course it’s not my business,” he added when she didn’t answer right away. “Do forgive my insatiable curiosity.”

“No, that’s all right,” she said, her irritation with him giving her the courage to look him in the eye. Why not tell him? If she didn’t, Geoff would. And it would be fun to shock this lazy dilettante.

“My work?” she asked. “I woke at dawn, dressed, ate, and then fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, came back and cleaned the house. We had help, but I had to oversee everything and do much of it myself so it would meet my husband’s specifications. I helped wash the laundry, and there was a lot of it. My late husband used his sleeves the way the gentlemen here use napery or towels. He was also a horseman, or fancied himself one, and there was always dust and dirt on his clothing.

“I also tended the garden in summer, knitted and sewed in the winter. I shopped and helped prepare our meals, and cooked them, too. We were well enough off and could have hired more help. God knows servants in the Antipodes were cheaper than dirt. Recently freed convicts are always eager to earn a stake so they can start over with their own houses or businesses, or else they need the money for fare for passage out of there. But my husband became a real skint. I told you that,” she said to the earl, with a smile.

If the viscount was shocked at her candor or her history, she didn’t catch it. When she looked back at him, he was smiling with appreciation.

“A mighty lot of work for such a delicate-looking lady,” he commented. “I commend you.”

It didn’t sound like that to her. It sounded sardonic. After all, why would such a peacock admire a woman who had worked like a peasant?

“So what are you going to do now?” the earl asked, his real concern clear to see by the furrows on his brow.

She had to make up her mind, and found she had. Things looked different, but nothing had really changed but her perceptions, and they could be wrong. And so she’d change nothing until she saw she had to. She gave Geoff her sweetest smile, and told him most of the truth, which was always best, her father had taught her, because there was less danger of being caught in a lie when you had to lie.

“That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know. My greatest plan was to get here. I can’t believe that I actually did that. Now? I suppose I want to find a place for myself.”

“Not a husband?” a cool, amused voice drawled. “That is what most single females I know are after.”

“But I’m not one of them, am I?” she replied as sweetly. “And you don’t know me.”

“Alas, my loss, which I feel more acutely each moment,” the viscount said, hand on his heart.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “How many ladies do you number among your acquaintance who were jailed and then sent to the Antipodes? Not a whole lot, I’d wager,” she said with a roguish wink at Geoff.

She looked at her inquisitor again. “I didn’t kill anyone, so you don’t have to pick up your knife in case you have to defend yourself, my lord. Actually, all I did was hold a brace of partridges my father brought home for me to cook. They were one brace too many, especially after the trout he’d taken the week before. Because they were poached from the woods of our neighbor, his dearest enemy, as our dinners often were. This time, the squire had my father followed. So we were caught with the goods and removed from the premises, as they put it. We were also speedily tried and convicted of a long string of similar offenses.”

She raised her chin, and spoke in her haughtiest accents. “You can do a great many things in this country, my lord, but God help you if you take a ha’penny from a gentleman’s purse, or money in the form of a rabbit or a trout from his property. My father, who had been wellborn, was unfortunately overly fond of spirits and not lucky at his favorite sport: gambling. He was also in the habit of lifting his dinners when the spirit moved him, and it frequently did. He also particularly loved to vex the squire.”

She gave a pretty shrug. “I suppose the squire had second thoughts at the last. My father had been a gentleman in the neighborhood before he drank and diced away his own house and lands, and gentlemen have a code of honor, I’m told. So the squire had our sentence commuted to transportation rather than hanging. And so there I was, and now here I am. Not in need of a husband at the moment, thank you very much,” she said with a sly smile, aping his exaggerated way of speaking. “Just happy to be home again at last, safe, and,” she added with a soft look to Geoff, “among friends.”

“You are that!” the earl declared. “Don’t mind Lee. He teases unmercifully but there’s no real harm in him.”

“Gad!” Leland murmured. “That sounds dreadful! Worse than if you thought I meant harm.”

“The thing is that you are here now, as you say, Daisy,” the earl went on. “I’d like to help you settle in, if you’ll let me.”

She felt the hard knot of tension ease in her chest. She gave him her best, most winning smile, and the whole truth. “Oh, Geoff,” she said on a sigh. “Of course. Thank you. That is exactly, precisely, absolutely what I wanted you to say.”