a new resolve in her eyes she began quietly, ‘Thank you for your help tonight, your Grace. Michael is dear to me and without him—’ She stopped, unable to go on, and he nodded as he saw what it was she was trying to say to him, though she hurried on as she guessed he was about to speak. ‘I consider your debt to me paid in full. A life for a life, yours for Michael’s. It’s a well-fulfilled obligation and I hold you in no arrears…’ She hesitated then, unable to phrase the obvious final conclusion, though he stepped forward and did it for her.
‘So you’re saying that now you want me gone. Is that it?’
Said like that, after all that he had done, it seemed so callous she could barely agree, though when she lifted her eyes to his she was amazed at the wry amusement that had settled there.
‘I’ll bow out on one condition, Brenna,’ he said softly and a frown creased her forehead as she searched without success for his meaning. ‘I want both you and Michael to come to my ball.’
Another social gathering! Unsureness knotted in her stomach.
‘Why?’
‘Your life is too narrow and you’re too young to live like a nun.’
‘And you think it’s up to you to change it?’ She coloured, angry now as she tossed her words at him with little care. ‘Your title affords you lordship only over your demesne, Nicholas Pencarrow, and lies far from deciding what may be best for me.’
‘Then you won’t come to my ball?’ he countered lazily, a muscle ticking at the back of his cheek, making a lie of his carefully placed indifference.
She felt caught. He always made her feel like that. If she rejected his offer, he still might meddle in her life, and if she accepted, all the old dangers lay very close at hand. A room filled with the game of love, dancing and flirting. Hard violet shards raked across him.
‘If I accept, it will be on one condition only,’ she mirrored his words and his smile deepened.
‘What’s that?’
‘I won’t dance.’
Fresh merriment filled his voice. ‘As you wish.’ He held out his hand but she failed to take it, angry at his teasing in a way he would never understand.
‘I don’t have a dress.’ The words were out even as she thought them—childish, she knew, but she wanted to diminish some of his pleasure at having cornered her and let him worry about what it was she would wear.
‘I’ll send you one.’
‘You will not.’ Shock ran through her body at the intimacy of his suggestion.
‘Then come in navy. It always suits you.’ His face creased into a wide smile as he continued, ‘I’d even be happy with the paint-splattered white smock, just as long as you’re inside it.’
She blushed again, her whole body roiling at his unspoken meanings. Nicholas Pencarrow was flirting with her? Her, when he had the choice of every other London female? Without wishing it, she softened her tone, disarmed against the power he was so pointlessly offering, and deep dimples appeared.
‘I begin to think it would have made my life more tranquil had I just left you to the mercy of the highwaymen, your Grace.’
‘Tranquillity can sometimes be equated with boredom, Brenna. You have to take risks in life to get what you want.’ Gentling his teasing when he felt her withdrawal, he added, ‘I missed you at the ballet the other afternoon.’
She had the grace to look slightly guilty. ‘I had business in Worsley. We’re selling Airelies.’ She disguised the hurt well, she thought, her businesslike tones hard across the softer sorrow.
‘That’s the house I came to with your gun?’ Nicholas asked.
‘Yes, I was brought up there from the age of twelve.’ She added, ‘It’s home,’ before she could stop herself.
‘More so than this one?’ He gestured at the building they stood in.
‘Michael brought me there first after York…’ Halting in mid-sentence, she realised the extent of what it was she had just revealed to him, and cursed herself for the inadvertent slip of both tongue and mind. The arrival of Dr Weston-Tyler at that moment saved her from any awkward explanations.
‘Will he be all right?’ she asked, her legs readying for flight upstairs should his answer prove different from what she hoped.
The older man nodded. ‘He’s had a severe attack of asthmatic bronchitis, Miss Stanhope, due largely, I gather, from the fact that you were not here to send him off more quickly to a physician.’
Brenna’s face crumpled. ‘’Tis much the same as I told him. I’m afraid he’s very stubborn.’
‘And no longer a young man.’
‘That, too.’
‘This condition is worsened, you see, by two things: age and worry.’ He gave the prognosis as if he had just read it from a textbook and Brenna paled as she answered grimly.
‘He’s suffering from both, I fear, and there’s not much I can do about either.’
‘Then take him on a holiday,’ the doctor answered nonchalantly with the universal prescription he meted out to all his rich patients.
Where could they go, thought Brenna, and with what money could they get there? The realisation hit her in that second that neither the doctor nor Nicholas Pencarrow would ever know the curse of dire financial straits. Why, the fee from one consultation alone would probably cover a week at a resort on the south coast beaches and the Duke of Westbourne’s legendary wealth was common knowledge amongst all.
‘Well,’ continued Dr Weston-Tyler as he made much of packing away his gleaming equipment, ‘there’s nothing more I can do here.’
Nicholas watched, his hands tightening behind his back. God, couldn’t Clive understand there was no money? How plain did she have to be? How humble did she need to become, or had Clive tripped so much in the world of luxury that he now failed to understand its other face of hardship? Nicholas interrupted, putting the moment of uneasiness at an end.
‘I am sure Sir Michael and Miss Stanhope will find some solution. Are there medicines to be left?’
The practitioner nodded. ‘I’ve made a list…’ He went to hand it to Brenna, but Nicholas took it instead.
‘I’ll get these,’ he murmured, tucking the paper into his jacket pocket before Brenna could insist otherwise. ‘And I’ll give you a ride home, Clive.’
Brenna walked towards the door, ushering them into the small hall and opening the front portal with obvious relief, though Nicholas stopped as he stepped through.
‘I will send Thompson back with the medicines as soon as they’re made up and I will include the invitations.’
Brenna looked at him uncertainly.
‘For the ball,’ he enlightened her. ‘As you promised, minus the dress and the dances.’
