attentions. He is quite a catch, you know. Splendid family, the Montfords—wealth, a title. Why, you’re even friends with his cousin—what is that mousy little girl’s name?”
“Penelope,” Nicola replied through gritted teeth. “And she’s not mousy, merely quiet. Yes, I like Penelope, and her grandmother, too, but that has no bearing on how I feel about Exmoor. I don’t like him. I don’t like the way he looks at me or talks to me.”
“Oh, my dear,” her mother replied with a chuckle. “You’re simply too used to callow youths.”
“Well, I prefer callow youths to an old man!” Nicola flared.
“Really, Nicola, the way you talk…The Earl isn’t old. He’s in the prime of his life.”
“He must be close to forty! And I am only seventeen, in case you have forgotten.”
“Please, dear, there is no need for you to be rude,” Lady Falcourt said with a martyred sigh. “He is in his late thirties, but that’s scarcely too old to marry. Many men are quite a bit older than their wives. Your father, for instance, was sixteen years older than I.”
Nicola bit her lip to hold back the sharp retort that sprang to them. It had been clear to everyone that her father had married her mother for her youthful beauty and then had found her a dead bore once the infatuation had worn off. That was why he had spent most of his time in London.
“It doesn’t matter” was all she said. “I have no wish to marry anyone. I don’t plan to marry for a good many years yet, certainly not until I find someone I love. Grandmama left me a pleasant portion so that I would not have to marry at all if I didn’t want to.”
Lady Falcourt gasped and sank back weakly against her chair. “I don’t know where you get these radical notions.”
“Yes, you do. From Grandmama.” Her grandmother had been an outspoken and independent woman who had always looked somewhat askance at the fluttery, vapid woman who was her daughter. Her grandmother had been forced by family pressure into a loveless marriage, and she had made certain that none of her own three daughters had been compelled to do the same. She had often spoken to Nicola about following her own heart, and when she died, she left both her and Deborah sizable enough inheritances that they would be able to live independently if they chose to.
“Yes. And you get them from your aunt Drusilla, as well,” Lady Falcourt agreed darkly. Her sister Drusilla had never married, but had lived with their mother in London, where she maintained a social salon of great note and wit. Lady Falcourt understood her even less than the horse-mad Adelaide, Lady Buckminster. “Drusilla is no one to pattern your life after. A spinster…no children to brighten her days, no husband to look after or home to keep.”
Nicola sighed. This was a favorite theme of her mother’s, even though Nicola had rarely seen her mother lift a finger to organize the household or raise a child. “I have no intention of not marrying, Mama. However, it will be when and to whom I want. And that certainly will not be now or to Lord Exmoor.”
Still, there was little way to avoid the man unless she wanted to become a social recluse. He was bound to be at any local party or dinner; having an earl in one’s house was considered a feather in any matron’s cap, even one as supposedly unworldly as the vicar’s wife. Worse, her mother insisted on accepting any invitation he sent their way.
So it was that Nicola attended the hunt at Tidings, the Exmoor estate, and trotted into the yard, flushed from the activity, her hair coming loose in little tendrils around her face. As the Exmoor grooms rushed out to take the reins of the horses, Nicola looked down and found herself staring into one of the handsomest faces she had ever seen.
He was larger than most of the grooms, taller and leanly muscled. Dark, mischievous eyes gazed out from his tanned face, framed by a mop of thick black hair. A smile widened his mobile mouth as he gazed up at Nicola. Nicola stared back, feeling rather the way she had the time she fell out of the oak tree when she was little, as if the world had somehow stopped and she was floating free from it, as if her lungs no longer worked, but her heart was skittering double time.
He reached up his hands toward her, black eyes dancing. “Help you down, miss?”
She could not answer, simply pulled her foot from the stirrup and twisted off the sidesaddle, leaning down to him. His hands grasped her waist, lifting her down effortlessly, and she braced her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. She could feel the heat of his body beneath the rough woolen shirt, the hard stretch of bone and muscle. For an instant they were close, his face so near hers she could see the thick, dark fringe of lashes that shadowed his eyes. Then she was on the ground, and in the next instant, the Earl was there, stepping around the groom to take her arm and lead her into the house.
Nicola scarcely heard a word he said—nor much of any of the rest of the conversation through the hearty post-hunt brunch. Her thoughts were on the groom. She wanted to know his name, but she could think of no way to inquire about him that would not sound exceedingly strange. And even if she could have phrased it acceptably, she knew that it was doubtful that anyone would know who he was, even the Earl, who employed him. Servants might as well have been part of the furniture to most people of her social set, she knew, and though they knew the name of the most important ones—the butler, the housekeeper, their personal maid or valet—it was rare that they knew the names of the multitudinous footmen, maids and grooms. So she was forced to leave later without having learned anything of use to her.
After that, her mother no longer had any difficulty in persuading her to attend a function at Tidings. When her mother suggested they pay a thank-you call the following day, she acquiesced without a murmur, causing her mother to glance at her oddly. The next week she agreed to attend a small dinner party at the Earl’s house, and when he suggested a picnic up on the moor, leaving from his house, she smiled and agreed that the idea sounded lovely.
But despite all her efforts to be at Tidings—which had cost her a great deal of inner squirming—she did not catch even a glimpse of the groom. She surmised that he was not important enough in the line of command in the stable to be allowed to interact directly with guests unless there were such a large number present that they needed all the grooms, such as at the hunt.
She told herself that it was foolish to be so interested in the man. She had, after all, seen him only for a moment, and just because she had had that odd response, it did not mean that he was anyone special or significant. It could have been just some odd physical twinge, indicative of nothing.
She could not even have said what she hoped to accomplish by seeing the man again. All she knew was that she was restless and unsettled, that she had to see him.
Oddly enough, it was not at Tidings that she came face-to-face with him again two weeks later. It was at Granny Rose’s cottage.
Not long after she had moved to Buckminster, when she had administered a tonic to one of the upstairs maids for a head cold and given a salve to the gardener to ease the pain of his reddened knuckles, people had begun to tell her about an old woman in the area. Everyone called her Granny Rose, though Nicola surmised that no one was actually related to her. She was known throughout the countryside for her remedies. There were even those who superstitiously considered her a witch. It was said that she knew more about plants and their medicinal properties than anyone, and for miles around, people had long relied on her potions to ease the pain of childbirth or protect a wound from infection. Even the old Lord Buckminster himself, who had suffered terribly from the gout, had availed himself of her remedies to ease the disease.
Nicola immediately wanted to meet the woman, and after some cajoling,
