below stairs wafted the comforting aroma of freshly baked gingerbread. Angela gulped a deep, soothing breath of it and immediately felt her agitation begin to ease. Determined to put Lord Daventry out of her mind, she followed the mouthwatering smell down to the kitchen.
There, true to her nose, she discovered two large pans of gingerbread cooling on the counter, permeating the air with their spicy sweetness. The cook, a tiny scrap of a woman, was endeavouring to wrestle a large roasting pan into the oven.
“Here, Tibby, let me help.” Angela scrambled to bear some of the pan’s considerable weight. “What’s for supper?”
“A roast of mutton and batter pudding,” replied Mrs. Tibbs as she shut the oven door. She pushed a few lank strands of grizzled hair back up under her cap. “It’ll be a while yet. Do you fancy a cup of tea and morsel of gingerbread to stay your stomach until then, my pet?”
Angela nodded readily as she pictured Lucius Daventry buried beneath a sweet, stodgy mountain of gingerbread, seed cake and lemon tarts. She fetched cups and saucers, while Tibby cut her a morsel of warm gingerbread that would have satisfied a starving field laborer.
“I hear tell Lord Lucifer ventured out in broad daylight to call on you,” said Tibby a few moments later, as she poured the tea. “I told Hoskins he ought to have stood guard by the sitting room door to see that no harm came to you. He just laughed, the old fool. Won’t hear a word against his lordship.”
“While you never have a good word to say about him,” Angela reminded the cook, as if she needed to. In an effort to distract Tibby from the subject, she added, “This gingerbread is heavenly! Just what I needed after working up a sharp appetite in the garden.”
Never would she admit, least of all to a notorious tattle like Tibby, that it was not her hours digging in the garden but his lordship’s unexpected call that had sent her scurrying for the kitchen.
“What did Lord Lucifer want with you?” The cook peered over the rim of her teacup at Angela, her small black eyes glittering with curiosity.
“I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” Angela protested. She should have known Tibby would not be diverted easily from her favorite subject of gossip. This quiet corner of Northamptonshire provided few quite so piquant. “The poor man was wounded in the service of his country. We should take pity on him, rather than pay heed to all that ridiculous talk about deviltry.”
She had never quite managed to reconcile the dutiful grandson of the earl’s fulsome accounts or the brave but sardonic cavalry officer of his own letters with the sinister reputation Lord Daventry had acquired since retiring to Helmhurst.
Their meeting this afternoon had only perplexed her further.
“Humph! You wouldn’t call it ridiculous if you’d ever met him walking abroad after dark.” Tibby shivered. “Mrs. Hackenley vows he put a curse on their well and the Babbits had two swine disappear without a trace.”
Angela’s mouthful of tea sprayed out over her gingerbread in a fine mist. “Tibby! Surely you aren’t accusing the heir to an earldom of being a common pig thief, on top of everything else?”
The cook raised her sharp, thin shoulders almost to her ears. “I don’t say he is, and I don’t say he ain’t.”
Her eyes narrowed to mere slits and her voice dropped to an eerie whisper. “But I hear tell pigs’ blood and entrails is used for…sacrifices.”
The back of Angela’s neck rose in gooseflesh, but something compelled her to scoff, “Nonsense! His lordship doesn’t go out much in the daytime, because his eyes are sensitive to strong light.”
Tibby digested that scrap of information. “You still haven’t told me what he wanted with you.”
If she didn’t tell Tibby something, it would probably be all over the neighborhood by tomorrow morning that Lord Daventry had been recruiting her to join his coven, or something equally daft. Though Angela herself had sensed a dark, even dangerous, side to the man, she knew he could not be as evil as ignorant gossip painted him.
“Did I not mention it?” She tossed the words off in the most casual tone she could feign. “His lordship came to ask for my hand.”
Tibby’s pointy little chin fell, leaving her mouth agape. Her eyes looked in grave danger of popping out of their sockets and rolling across the table.
Angela struggled to keep a sober face as she ate more of her somewhat soggy gingerbread. The mellow sweetness on her tongue and the warm weight of it in her stomach were providing their accustomed comfort. Or perhaps it was Tibby’s excessive suspicion of Lord Daventry that made her own earlier misgivings about the man seem so foolish.
Whatever the reason, Angela found herself becoming more favorably disposed toward Lucius Daventry by the minute.
“Lord-a-mercy!” The cook crossed her flat bosom. “What did he say when you refused him? I heard him stomping off, then the door slam shut. He hasn’t put a curse on Netherstowe, has he?”
“Calm yourself, Tibby.” Angela washed down the last of her gingerbread with a mouthful of tea. “His lordship didn’t say a word about a curse.”
Mrs. Tibbs blew out a shuddering breath.
Some unlikely impulse of devilment made Angela ask, “What makes you so certain I refused him?”
“You can’t mean to wed such a creature?”
“Why ever not?” Was she trying to convince Tibby…or herself? “It isn’t as though I have my pick of suitors. I haven’t a penny in the world. I’m not clever or accomplished or beautiful. This could be my only chance to have a home of my own.”
Why was she talking as if Lord Daventry had offered her a real marriage? Angela wondered. Certainly she dared not tell Tibby the truth and risk word finding its way back to the earl.
“Not beautiful?” sputtered the cook. “Do you never look in a glass, girl? You’re clever enough to suit most men, and you’ve the kindest heart in the world. If her ladyship would only take you to London or Brighton as she ought, you’d soon have your pick of swains.”
Angela shook her head, “You’re too partial. I know my own shortcomings well enough.” Her aunt and cousins had made her well aware of them over the years. “I’m sure there are plenty of young ladies who’d be delighted to tolerate Lord Daventry’s eccentricities for the chance to be mistress of Helmhurst.”
“More fools, them,” muttered Tibby.
“I think his lordship would make an ideal sort of husband. Sleeping most of the day, then wandering abroad at night.”
Angela’s conscience warned her she should not tease poor Tibby, who’d been a better substitute mother to her than Aunt Hester ever had. Yet, she had never been able to keep herself from defending anyone under attack. Not even if that one was the powerful Lord Daventry and the attack nothing more than silly gossip.
“Don’t fret yourself, Tibby. I didn’t accept him. In any case, I’m not altogether certain he still wants me. I must have offended him somehow, for he said proposing to me had been a ludicrous idea. That’s when he stomped off.”
What had provoked him so?
