"No. You'll ride with her, this afternoon, while Will is out with the twins. We'll make sure he knows about it as soon as he returns. That should make him think twice about taking her for granted."
Deaf to Basil's ironical comments regarding her powers of persuasion, Lady Jess stepped away briefly to tell the grooms to have horses ready for Mr. Trevelyan and Miss Ashmore directly after luncheon.
This done, she turned back to her victim. "Now you must go use all your wiles to persuade her to ride with you."
"I?" he asked indignantly. "I’ve only agreed to go along with the scheme, if you can effect it. Didn't I just tell you she won't—"
"If she won't, then you're not the man you were. Even if she hates you, you must know some way to get round her, Basil. Lud, Will could do it without thinking half a minute." Lady Jess knew her man, after all. It wanted only the one hint—that Will's powers of persuasion were superior to his own—to effect complete capitulation. Basil agreed to do as he was told.
Though he knew Miss Ashmore's citadel was not to be so easily stormed, he resolutely waylaid her after she'd left the schoolroom and was descending the stairs. He proceeded to offer such a variety of abject apologies, with every possible expression of penitence, as well as some quite impossible ones, that he soon had her laughing in spite of herself. Having obtained a rather choked pardon for his inexcusable misconduct of the previous day, he then went on to the trickier business of coaxing her to ride with him.
He'd intended to goad her into it. If she refused, he'd say she was afraid of him and incapable of keeping one mischievous gentleman in order. But those green eyes, sparkling with amusement, drove his planned scenario right out of his head.
"Will you ride with me then?" he asked. Seeing her face stiffen, he went on hurriedly, "Jess is furious that her brother's abandoned you for a pair of idiots, and she's determined that you're to teach him a lesson and I'm to be the means. And though I don't especially care to do him any favours, what choice have I when this is the only way I might have your company all to myself?"
Alexandra looked away and addressed her remarks to the bannister.
"I believe," she told that gleaming object, "this gentleman attempts to play on my wounded vanity and my unwounded vanity simultaneously."
"Of course I do. You know I'm the sort of man who stops at nothing."
"In that case, a sensible woman must forego your company, I think."
"Then don't be sensible, Miss Ashmore. I'd like nothing better than to ride with you. I've missed you horribly."
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he urgently wished them back again. He heard them for what they were—Truth—and that wouldn't do at all.
Of course, she didn't believe him. Her face attested to that plain enough though she was still looking at the bannister. Yet, her reaction changed nothing. He had missed her horribly. Why else would he have given in so easily to Jess? Even now, as Alexandra hesitated, he was wondering what he would do if she refused. He was unable to invent a satisfactory answer.
"Well, I suppose you can't help it," she said finally, with a teasing smile that rather surprised him. "Though you momentarily forgot to mention it, the sun does rise and set on my fair countenance, and you can't sleep for thinking of me, and—what else?"
"And," he answered steadily, "if you don't come riding with me, I shall be the most miserable wretch that ever lived."
"Oh, yes. I wonder how that slipped my mind."
"Then you will ride with me?" he persisted. What was she to do? He claimed to be sorry. He'd apologised in every way his fertile mind could invent. If she was willing to ride with others, wouldn't it look odd that she wouldn't ride with him? After all, he did claim it was Jess's idea, and one could always ask Jess about that. In short, after a little more hesitation, and a little more persuasion, Miss Ashmore convinced her mind to agree with her heart and consented.
Jessica pounced on him after luncheon, as soon as he was alone. "Well? Have you done it?"
"Yes."
"Good. I knew you could. Now you must keep her out until teatime—later, if you can manage it. That'll have Will in a frenzy."
"Until teatime! What do you expect me to do? Tie her to a tree?"
"Get lost. Have your horse throw a shoe. Have it throw you. Surely you can think of something."
"I can think of a great many things," he answered, his face a perfect study in wickedness. "However, I understood it was your brother you wanted shackled—not me."
"Oh, stow it, Basil. If you keep her sufficiently amused, she won't notice the time passing."
Without waiting for any more evil hints of the amusements he contemplated, Lady Jessica took herself off to her sitting room and the latest publication from the Minerva Press awaiting her therein.
"Going riding, are you?" Lady Bertram enquired as she bestowed a look of approval upon her goddaughter's wine-coloured habit.
She'd been right to send the girl to Madame Vernisse. The modiste had settled upon simple, clinging lines in rich colours, ignoring the fussy furbelows currently in fashion, since they did not suit Miss Ashmorc at all. Yes, Alexandra would do very well.
"Y-yes," came the nervous answer. "With Mr. Trevelyan."
"I see."
"Unless you think I shouldn't."
"Whyever not? Can't have Farrington thinking he's the only male in Creation, can we? You're quite right. Do him good. And Basil, too. The boy's so fidgety lately, he's bound to get into trouble out of sheer boredom. You'll be doing him a favour—not that he deserves it—but you know that. I don't need to tell you to box his ears if he misbehaves."
Alexandra, who'd been critically examining her gloves, looked up quickly. "Misbehaves?"
"I mean, child, if he behaves in any way you don't like. Which, as I said, I don't need to tell you."
Giving her goddaughter a kindly smile, the countess took herself away.
Chapter Ten
If Alexandra neither noticed the time passing nor felt obliged to box the gentleman's ear that was probably because her companion was behaving so well. He was entertaining, as usual, but in such a friendly, nonthreatening way that she felt much in charity with him as they ambled in leisurely fashion about the enormous estate.
Estate was hardly the word. With its great expanses of field and meadow, its gently rolling lulls and rich valleys, its little ponds and waterways, the Hartleigh property was more like a small kingdom. The estate even had its own forest, an extensive stand of wood left much as Nature had made it, though the clear trails showed that the same care was given to this wilderness as to the rest of Lord Hartleigh's beautifully groomed domain.
She had certainly admired the estate during other rides but Basil took her along paths she hadn't travelled before and talked of childhood escapades, sharing his associations with this stretch of meadow and that golden field and this little duck pond. The stories vividly conjured the childhood of this puzzling man and helped her, at least to some extent, to understand him better.
He had, naturally, been into mischief practically from the day he was born. He had, furthermore, been dreadfully spoiled by his parents, but especially by his indulgent Mama, who’d lost several babies before and after producing him. Under her doting tutelage, the precocious boy had learned early how to wheedle his way out of a scolding with a show of penitence. So, too, had he learned how sweet words could melt away anger and clever phrases turn disapproval into laughter. He'd begun early practising these and the hundred other arts of which he was now the consummate master.
Small wonder it was so difficult to resist him when he was determined not to be resisted. Nature had given him both a fiendishly quick mind and a handsome face and form. Nurture had showed him how to use these to his advantage, and somehow along the way, self-discipline had never come into the picture.
Not that it was so terribly helpful to understand him better. What she learned about him only made her heart warm towards him in a way that was not at all sensible.
/> She was a greater fool than any of the Osbornes, certainly. They at least had stupidity as an excuse. Still, it was impossible to be unhappy now when he seemed so determined to make the ride a pleasant one, free of teasing innuendoes. He'd actually provided her an escape of sorts. No worrying, as she always did when she was with Lord Arden, about whether she was behaving too warmly or too coldly. Nor was there the guilt she always felt about allowing the marquess to court her when she was promised to another, or about building a friendship with his sister under the same false pretences. What would they think of her if they learned the truth?
"You're thinking unhappy thoughts," Basil chided, breaking in on her meditations, "which is most inconsiderate when I'm confiding my deepest secrets to you. Or is it the secrets that make you frown?"
"Oh. Not at all. I was only envying you your playmates," she improvised hastily. "We lived very quietly, you know, and I hadn't any."
"Then you saved yourself and your household a deal of trouble."