Jane Feather - Valentine

Sheuttered a short, savage execration, grabbed her gloves and whip from the table, and went back outside, striding round to the stable. The Earl of Stoneridge could go hang. She had work to do.

There was an uneasy silence in the dining room. "She'll come back, Mama," Emily said with faltering confidence.

"I trust so," Elinor said, laying down her napkin. "Rosie should be presented. Would one of you ensure she looks respectable?"

She left the room, and Clarissa and Emily sighed. "Theo's going to be difficult," Clarissa stated. "It's not fair on Mama."

"It's not fair on any of us," Emily asserted crossly. "I wish Edward would come back from that horrible Peninsular War and we could get married. Then you could all come and live with us and we could tell this… this Gilbraith to go to the devil!"

"Emily!" exclaimed Clarissa, torn between shock and sympathy with her sister's fervent wish.

"Come along, Rosie. You need to change your dress," Emily said with a return to elder-sisterly dignity. "See if you can find Theo, Clarry. She listens to you."

"Not always," Clarissa said, but went off in search of her younger sister.

Theo was nowhere to be found. The groom in the stable said she'd taken the new gelding for an airing. Full of tricks, he was, the groom said. Feeling his oats… it was to be hoped Lady Theo could hold him.

In a contest between Theo and a raw young gelding, Clarissa would back her sister anytime – particularly in her present mood. She returned to the house to change her gown and prepare herself for the upcoming ordeal.

Sylvester rode up the driveway of Stoneridge Manor, his nostrils flaring at the scents and sights of his ancestral home – his birthright. The lime washed, oak-timbered structure stood foursquare at the head of the crescent sweep of the drive – as it had done for three hundred years; the soft red-tiled roof glowed in the afternoon sun; the intricate diamond cuts of the mullioned windows sparkled. His eye took in the neat, well-weeded driveway, the perfectly clipped box hedges, the soft blue water of Lulworth Cove beyond the rose garden.

His – for a price. But this afternoon he'd get an idea of how stiff the price would be. Two sisters – Lady Clarissa, and Lady Theodora. Etiquette dictated that he consider the elder first, and unless there was something radically at fault with Lady Clarissa, he could see no reason to disobey the dictates of convention. It was to be a marriage of interest, on his side if not on the lady's. But the lady, thanks to her ever-loving grandfather, was not to know that.

He was smiling as he dismounted and handed his mount into the charge of a waiting groom.

"He's here!" Rosie catapulted through the long glass doors of the drawing room, her cheeks pink. "I watched him ride up the drive."

"What does he look like?" her sisters demanded in the same breath that their mother said, "That will do. Rosie, come here and sit quietly."

"He's riding an enormous black horse," Rosie confided, sitting beside her mother. "And he has a beaver hat on and a green coat and brown britches -"

"Lord Stoneridge, my lady," Foster intoned from the doorway, bringing a summary halt to Rosie's recitation.

His lordship bowed as the ladies rose to their feet.

"I bid you welcome to Stoneridge, my lord." With a courteous smile Elinor crossed the faded tapestry carpet, her hand outstretched.

The earl bowed over the hand, privately reflecting that Lady Belmont was a handsome woman with her soft brown hair, blue eyes, and elegant figure.

"May I present my daughters?"

Sylvester noted the diamond sparkle on Lady Emily's ring finger as he took her hand. The betrothed sister… but a most attractive young woman, very like her mother. He turned his attention with particular interest to Lady Clarissa.

"My lord." Clarissa twitched her hand from his grasp a moment too soon for courtesy, and Sylvester's lips thinned. Darker than her sister but with the same blue eyes. A shorter, less elegant figure… rather thin if the truth be told. But still passably handsome. Although not in the least friendly.

"And this is Rosalind."

He shook hands with a child who regarded him with frank curiosity from behind spectacles that completely dwarfed her face. "Are you interested in biology?"

"Not particularly," he said, taken aback.

"I didn't think you would be," she said as if confirmed in some negative opinion. "Gilbraiths probably aren't interested in that kind of thing."

Sylvester shot a startled look at Lady Belmont, who was looking chagrined. "You may return to the schoolroom, Rosie," she said sharply.

Rosie seemed about to protest, but Clarissa, sensing her mother's acute discomfiture, shooed her from the room. Theo's absence was bad enough without Rosie speaking her mind in her usual blunt fashion.

"Won't you be seated, Lord Stoneridge?" Lady Belmont indicated a chair as she resumed her seat on the sofa. "Ah, thank you, Foster. I'm sure Lord Stoneridge will take a glass of claret."

"Thank you." Devoutly hoping that wine would ease the tense atmosphere, Sylvester took an appreciative sip, commenting, "A fine vintage."

"Our cellars are well stocked, sir," the butler said. "The Gentlemen keep us well supplied."

"Oh, I didn't realize there was a smuggling trade on the Dorset coast."

"A very active one," Emily said. "But Theo deals with them. You should ask her if you wish to know how the system works."

"Theo?" He looked puzzled.

"My sister, sir."

"Lady Theodora?" He was still puzzled.

"She had some urgent business to attend to on the estate," Elinor said. "I'm certain she'll return shortly." But she wasn't in the least certain.

Sylvester put down his glass. It was time to come to business. "I wonder if I could have a word or two in private, ma'am."

Elinor rose immediately, relief apparent in her face that this awkward pretense at purely social intercourse was over. "Yes, there's much to discuss. Come into my parlor. Lord Stoneridge." She swept from the room, the earl on her heels.

"Well, what do you think?" Emily demanded as the door closed.

"Satanic," Clarissa said promptly.

Her sister went into a peal of laughter. "You're such a melodramatic goose, Clarry. But I own I can't like him… not that I was expecting to. His eyes are so cold, and there's an impatience… a haughtiness about him."

"That scar," Clarissa said. "A great slash across his forehead. I wonder how he acquired it."

"In the war, probably. I wish I knew where Theo was."

Emily wasn't the only one wishing that. In the parlor Elinor was listening to the earl's succinct proposal in stunned silence.

"I believe such an arrangement will make the transition easier for everyone," Sylvester said at the end of his explanation. "It will be more comfortable for you in the dower house if one of your daughters lives at Stoneridge Manor. And I will undertake to dower my wife's sisters."

"You are most generous, my lord," Elinor said faintly, although she felt that the dispassionate tone in which he'd laid out his plans was anything but warm. But he could have no motive other than generosity and some kind of family feeling.

That was a novel thought – a Gilbraith having family feeling for a Belmont.

"I take it you agree to my plan, then, ma'am?" Sylvester paced the small room, trying to hide his impatience. Four weeks was a very short time to court and wed, but if the knot wasn't firmly tied at the end of the month, the true conditions of the earl's will would be revealed. He needed the absolute support of Lady Belmont from the beginning.

"I'm not prepared to coerce one of my daughters into marriage, sir," Elinor said with some asperity.

"No, of course not. I wasn't suggesting such a thing," he said brusquely. "But I would like to feel I had your approval. My intentions are, after all, of the most honorable."