He hadn’t come to Cornwall expecting to buy a house but the manor had been there—just the right size, in just the right place, not far from a village and close enough to the sea, with a view from all the front rooms, including his bedroom on the first floor, that allowed him to appreciate the storms and drama of the weather that swirled past this stretch of coast.
Entirely unexpectedly he’d fallen in love with the place. He hadn’t had a real home, not since he’d been orphaned at age six. Until he’d seen the manor, he hadn’t known he wanted one, but the simple house with its quiet grace had reached out and snared him.
As yet he hadn’t changed anything; the furniture was an eclectic mix of styles that somehow suited both the rooms and him. He’d wait for a few months and see if anything grated.
The pouch in his hand, he headed back to the parlor and Jennings. The man had worked for him in London until, a month or so ago, Malcolm had suggested a sojourn in the country might be wise. Jennings had taken the hint and gon
e to visit his aunt in Exeter. On leaving London, Malcolm had decided to investigate Cornwall, not least because of the mines; he’d found Jennings in Exeter and had beckoned, and his erstwhile henchman had followed.
He’d left London not just to escape the heat but to leave behind the cloying stench of his guardian’s suicide and the slavery scheme Lowther, a law lord, had run. Malcolm, through Jennings, had been instrumental in arranging the details, but he hadn’t been sorry to see the scheme undone. He’d never understood the rationale of acting illegally in order to amass wealth, not when there were so many ways to accumulate funds while remaining entirely on the right side of the law.
Tin mining being one.
Opening the parlor door, he crossed to Jennings and dropped the pouch into his hand. “Try the alehouses and taverns in Falmouth. Any intinerant heading for the Lizard Peninsula is most likely to come through there.”
She was never going to try reasoning with Gervase Tregarth again.
The day after she’d been goaded into allowing him to try to seduce her, Madeline climbed the castle steps, sternly quelling an unsettling notion that she was walking into a tiger’s hunting ground.
The front doors stood wide; she continued into the hall beyond. Gervase was standing by the central table speaking with Mrs. Entwhistle; lit by slanting rays from the afternoon sun, he turned his head and watched as she approached.
She refused to look away, refused to allow any of her very real consciousness to show.
“Claudia.” Halting beside Gervase, Madeline nodded to Mrs. Entwhistle, then gave him her hand. “My lord.”
His fingers closed about hers; his eyes touched hers, then his lips curved. “Madeline. You’re in good time.”
He looked past her to where other members of the festival committee were entering.
“I believe that’s all of us,” Mrs. Entwhistle said, peering myopically toward the door.
Neither she nor the latest arrivals saw Gervase’s fingers slide over Madeline’s before he released them. Ignoring him and her cartwheeling senses, she turned to accompany Mrs. Juliard into the drawing room where Sybil and Lady Porthleven were waiting.
She’d had every intention of sitting between two other ladies; instead, somehow—and that she didn’t know quite how did not auger well—she found herself sitting beside Gervase on one of the small sofas set to form a semicircle before the hearth.
“Now, after the festival is formally opened—Reverend Maple and Lord Crowhurst will do the honors from the front porch—the first display to be judged will be the knitted works. Mrs. Juliard will be in charge there. We’ll leave twenty minutes for that, then…”
Madeline struggled to keep her attention on Mrs. Entwhistle’s tortuously detailed schedule of events, hideously aware of the large male body filling the sofa beside her.
She could feel the heat emanating from him, could sense the hardness of his long limbs, another subtle temptation…her mind slid back to those moments on Lady Porthleven’s terrace….
That kiss had been…something quite out of the ordinary, at least in her limited experience. Perhaps that was the reason her resistance to the notion of allowing him to try to seduce her wasn’t as strong as she felt it should be. Trying meant more kisses, but surely there couldn’t be any great harm in indulging her curiosity that far, if nothing else in the interests of her education and ultimate self-preservation; assessing just what, in him, she faced, what temptation he might bring to bear….
“Madeline?”
She blinked. Everyone was looking at her.
“Sorry.” She shook her head. “Woolgathering. What did you say?”
Mrs. Entwhistle blinked; several other pairs of eyes widened. Madeline inwardly cursed. Since when did she drift off in meetings? She was usually the one keeping everyone else focused and up to the mark, ensuring all went smoothly and swiftly so she could get on with whatever was next on her schedule.
“The carthorse contest,” Mrs. Entwhistle said. “How may entrants do we usually have?”
She dredged the answer from her brain. “Eight, sometimes as many as ten. But over the last four years, there’ve been at least eight.”
“I’ll get Robinson to lend a hand with the judging,” Squire Ridley put in. “Truth be told, he’d be insulted if he weren’t asked.”
Robinson was the farrier for the district. Madeline nodded, then looked attentively at Mrs. Entwhistle—and willed her senses away from the distraction beside her.