The Sherbrooke Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 1)

Mrs. Peacham was twisting her black bombazine skirts.

The earl was riding at the eastern end of the Sherbrooke property, inspecting two tenants’ cottages that had suffered badly in the heavy rainstorm.

What to do?

Hollis tried again. “Please, my lady, you must wait. You aren’t well enough yet to travel. Please, wait for the earl’s return.”

“I shall walk if you don’t have a carriage fetched this instant, Hollis.”

Hollis was very tempted to let her walk. She wouldn’t get very far before the earl caught up with her. Damn the boy! Hollis couldn’t be certain that he would go after her. He had the first time, but now? Why hadn’t he come to grips with anything? He’d been foul-tempered with everyone since his return from O’Malley’s cottage. Hollis didn’t blame the countess. He put the blame squarely on the earl’s shoulders. He deserved to be whipped. “All right, my lady,” Hollis said at last, nearly choking on the bitter taste of defeat. He instructed a footman to have a carriage fetched from the stables and he also instructed the footman to have one of the stable lads search out the earl. “Have the lad find him quickly, else I’ll have his ears in my mutton stew!”

Ten minutes later Alexandra was settled in one of the earl’s carriages, John Coachman instructed to take her home. Her single valise sat on the seat opposite her. She was leaving only with what she’d brought with her.

Life wasn’t going at all well.

When John Coachman suddenly pulled up the team at a shout from another carriage, Alexandra poked her head out the window to see what was happening.

She came face to face with an older woman who had the look of the Sherbrookes, a woman who simply stared at her, as gape-mouthed as Hollis had been.

A young face appeared, a quite lovely young girl who said happily, “Why, are you Douglas’s new bride? How wonderful, of course you are! I’m Sinjun, his sister. This is marvelous! You are Melis—no, no, you are the other sister! Welcome to the Sherbrooke family.”

Alexandra looked skyward. Her luck, which she’d thought was on the rise, she now saw plummeting to earth, and soon her face would be rubbed in the dirt.

The other woman, doubtless Alexandra’s soon-to-be-annulled mother-in-law, sniffed with alarming loudness, and said, “I don’t understand why you are still here. You shouldn’t be out visiting tenants for it is not your responsibility. You are nothing compared to your sister, from all I have been told. You are nothing at all out of the ordinary. My son would never have selected you.”

Alexandra felt the clout, but she said calmly, “You are certainly right about that. Your son doesn’t want me. I am not visiting the tenants. I am leaving. No, don’t say it. I am delighted to give you the pleasure of my departure.”

She was on the point of telling John Coachman to continue, when the door to the other carriage opened and the young girl jumped to the ground. “Do let me ride with you!”

Alexandra closed his eyes, ground her teeth until her jaw hurt, and cursed, one of Douglas’s colorfully lurid expressions.

The other woman yelled, “Joan, you will come back here this instant! The chit is going away, let her go!”

The girl ignored her, flinging open the carriage door and bounding exuberantly inside. Alexandra was facing her soon-to-be non-sister-in-law.

“Where are we going?” Sinjun asked, smiling brilliantly at Alexandra.

CHAPTER

12

ALEXANDRA STARED HARD at her sister-in-law. “I want you to get out, please. You heard what I said—I am not visiting tenants or anyone else. I’m leaving Northcliffe Hall and I have no intention of returning ever again.”

Sinjun gave her the placid look of a nun. “I will go with you, of course. It’s all the same to me. Please don’t make me get out. I am your sister now by marriage and I’m not a bad person, really, and—”

“I don’t assume you’re a bad person, but I am leaving your brother, just as your mother obviously wishes, just as your brother wishes, just as, doubtless, the backstairs maids wish. I cannot be responsible for you. Goodness, I don’t even know you or you me! You must go about your business. Would you please get out of the carriage?”

Sinjun found this complication profoundly interesting. So this was marriage in the making. It was far more engrossing than any of the Greek plays she’d read by candlelight at midnight in Douglas’s library. It was closer to the Restoration plays she’d read by Dryden and Wycherley. Though she didn’t understand all the speeches of the plays, she understood enough to laugh herself silly. She also knew enough not to tell Douglas that she’d read them. She had this feeling he wouldn’t be at all amused.

“Why are you leaving Douglas?”

“Please, get out.”

Instead, Sinjun waved to the other coachman and the carriage rolled away. Alexandra’s mother-in-law was still looking out the window back at her. There was a look of confusion mixed with hopefulness on her face. She didn’t attempt to halt the carriage.

“Now there is no choice unless you want me to walk. No, I didn’t think you would. You must talk to me.”

It was simply too much. Alexandra merely shook her head, opened the door, grabbed her valise, and stepped to the ground. She looked up at the homely appalled face of John Coachman. “Take her home, if you please.”