Donna was talking in the doorway to Jem. ‘Help Mr Wilkins. See that he gets home safely, please, Jem. And see if you can find his pigeons, will you?’ she added, with a vituperative glance at Sparrow.
‘Sparrow, leave us,’ Marcus, ordered, apparently from between clenched teeth.
As the man closed the kitchen door behind him, Antonia remarked conversationally, ‘I presume, Your Grace, that you will be placing that man on a charge of common assault for breaking Wilkins’ nose?’
‘Do not try my patience further, Antonia. This is madness. Are you so penurious that you must give every ne’er-do-well in the county licence to poach on your lands?’
‘My hard-working and deserving tenants are merely harvesting the land, as I have explained. They are not responsible for my father’s recklessness, but they have to suffer the consequences. I do what little I can to mitigate their poverty.’
‘And your own,’ he added quietly. 'I do not understand your stubbornness, Antonia. I have made you an honest proposal to buy, and I would offer you a fair price – and for the house as well, if you would accept it. It would allow you to return to London and to live as a gentlewoman should. Not like this.’ His scornful gaze once more swept the bare flagged floor, the scrubbed deal table with the shabby chairs drawn up to it.
‘Are you suggesting that this household is anything less than respectable, Your Grace?’ Donna had re-entered the kitchen unobserved and Antonia could have smiled as her small figure bristled with indignation at the insult.
‘Forgive me, Miss Donaldson,’ he said with a satirical twist to his lips. ‘I have no doubt that the moral tone of this establishment is as a nunnery. However, it strikes me that Miss Dane might have a better chance of catching herself a husband were she in London.’
Antonia had, for the most fleeting of moments, allowed herself to indulge in thoughts of the pleasures of living in Town: shopping in Bond Street, driving in the Park, co
ngenial evenings at Almack’s where she could dance the night away, her card full. But Marcus’s remarks about her lack of success in the Marriage Mart was as good as a pail of cold water over her head.
‘Catch myself a husband?’ She pulled herself up to her full height and glared at him. ‘Let me assure you, Your Grace, that a husband is something I regret the lack of not one whit.’
Marcus was also stirred by some emotion or another, it seemed. ‘Take it from a disinterested observer, ma’am, in your case a husband would be a most desirable thing. Very well, then, you have made your hard bed, so lie upon it. Perhaps after a country winter, you will apply a more reasoned judgement to my offer.’ He paused to pull on his gloves. ‘I can wait.’
‘Then you will wait a long time, Your Grace. For I intend to lease this house and grounds forthwith to a most respectable tenant.’
‘Indeed?’ Marcus’s dark brows drew together. ‘And supposing you find a person deluded enough to take on this ramshackle estate, where do you intend to live?’
Antonia hesitated, at a loss. He had provoked her into a wild statement of defiance and now she had no answer to his very pertinent question.
‘Why, in the Dower House, of course,’ said Donna calmly, from the shadows.
Marcus’s laugh rang round the kitchen. ‘A neat device, ladies. I must congratulate you upon your optimism.’
‘Optimism?’ Antonia repeated with a calm that masked an urge to throw crockery. ‘Why describe a perfectly practical solution so dismissively, Marcus? Or do you wish me gone from here so much?’ She realised, as soon as the words were out, that she wanted to know the answer to that latter question very badly indeed.
‘Your whereabouts, Antonia, are of little concern to me, provided that you are not inciting your tenants to lawlessness as this episode would suggest.’ Marcus smiled thinly. ‘I shall watch with interest your attempts to gull some Cit into taking on this liability of a house. I wish you good day, ladies.’ He nodded curtly to them both and stalked out.
As the door closed behind him, Antonia clutched the edge of the table to support her shaking legs. That had been exceedingly disturbing and Marcus Renshaw was having the most appalling effect on her equilibrium. She wanted him to like her, to support her efforts to keep her family estates together despite overwhelming odds. She wanted him, full stop. Oh dear.
And he was so inexplicably hostile. She could only conclude that he disliked her – which, she was honest enough to realise, was a disappointment – but that he wanted her lands badly enough to maintain the connection.
‘Well, that was a nasty show of temper,’ Donna remarked as she tidied away the tea things. ‘But I suppose we should be thankful for it because it provoked me into thinking of a solution. Do you truly think it is feasible for us to move to the Dower House?’
‘I thought that was just something you said upon the spur of the moment to irk the Duke, Donna. Were you truly serious?’
‘Yes, I was. I do believe we could live most comfortably there, for from what you told me it is just of a size for the two of us. However, it grieves me to admit it,’ she added with a wry smile, ‘but the Duke is quite correct about this house. How are we to lease it in its present state of repair? We have just agreed we do not have the resources to make it habitable.’
Antonia got to her feet and began to pace up and down the flagged floor, her under-lip caught between her teeth. Where indeed were they to find the money? She passed her small income and the few pieces of jewellery she had inherited under review. Even with Donna’s tiny pension it would not do. There was only one option. It came hard, and the example of her late father, a man ruined by debt, was hard to ignore, but she had little choice.
She took a deep breath. ‘l shall borrow the money. I can put the estate up for security and repay the loan from the rent.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Donna’s brow creased. ‘Debt makes me so nervous. Only consider your late parent’s predicament and what it cost you to retrieve it.’
Antonia remembered only too well the awful moment when their man of law had explained how little remained of the previously substantial family fortune once Sir Humphrey’s debts had been cleared. But she had little alternative other than to borrow.
She leaned across the table and explained, desperate to convince Donna, and herself as well. ‘But this is different. Father borrowed with no intention of repaying the money, unless by gaming. I do not intend to continue borrowing beyond this one contingency. Look on it as an investment, one which should soon realise a return. Pass me Pigot’s Directory and we’ll see which banks there are in Berkhamsted to which I may apply.’
They scanned the commercial directory together. ‘There is only one,’ Donna said, running her finger down the column. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you went into Aylesbury.’