Until You

52

Normally a full staff of footmen were always on hand to assist arriving guests from their carriages and see that the vehicles and horses were taken around back to the stables, but when Stephen returned from his jaunt to the village, no one came out of the house. The only servant in evidence was a lone footman who was standing in the drive, staring fixedly in the general direction of the hills that rolled gently away from the stables at the back of the estate. He was concentrating so hard on whatever it was he was trying to see, that he seemed not to hear the carriage wheels until Stephen pulled up behind him, then he turned with a guilty start and trotted over to take the reins.

"Where is everyone?" Stephen asked, noticing that the butler still had not dispatched more servants from the house, nor opened the front door, as was customary.

"They're down at the stables, milord. It's quite a show, if I may say so, and not one to miss. Or so I've heard from them that's watching from the back of the house."

Stephen took the reins back from the footman, having decided to drive around to the stables and see for himself what the footman meant by "quite a show."

A long stretch of fence enclosed the stables and the large grassy area between the buildings where the horses were walked and cooled before being put away. To one side of the fence, pasture stretched all the way to the base of wooded hills, dotted with hedges and stone fences that were used to train Claymore's horses for the hunt. When Stephen pulled the carriage to a stop at the stables, the entire length of fencing was lined with grooms, footmen, coachmen, and stable hands. Stephen helped Monica and Georgette down from the carriage, noting as he did so that the entire house party, minus his treacherous sister-in-law, were standing on the far side of the fence, as absorbed with whatever unknown spectacle was taking place on the hillside as the servants were.

Stephen studied his brother's inscrutable profile as he and his two companions joined the group, wondering if Clay had actually collaborated in Whitney's scheme, and unable to believe he would have. Since Stephen wasn't completely certain, he deliberately addressed his question to Jason and Victoria Fielding. "What are you watching?"

"Wait and see for yourself," Jason advised him with an odd grin. "It wouldn't be right to spoil it with an explanation in advance."

Victoria Fielding seemed to have a difficult time looking him in the eye, and her smile was overbright. "It's really quite amazing!"

It occurred to Stephen that the Fieldings and the Townsendes were both behaving oddly. There was a nervousness in the women and an uneasiness about the men. Either they were uncomfortable because they were surprised and unhappy about Sheridan Bromleigh's presence-or else they'd known all along that she was going to be here, and they felt guilty. Stephen studied the four people he regarded as particularly close friends, deciding whether or not that friendship was about to end permanently. The women had definitely known, he decided, watching color stain Alexandra Townsende's cheeks as she felt his gaze on her. Not once in the three hours since he'd looked up and found himself only a few paces away from his former fiancee had Stephen allowed himself to think about her. Shutting out the reality of her presence was the only way he could stomach staying here.

She had pretended to be someone she was not, and when she was about to be exposed, she had fled to DuVille, leaving Stephen to wait for her like a besotted idiot with a cleric and his family standing by.

In the weeks since her disappearance, he had gone over everything she'd said and done while she supposedly had amnesia, and he could remember only that one slip-when she'd objected to having a paid companion. "I don't need a ladies' companion," she'd blurted. "I am a-"

She was an amazing actress to have pulled off the whole sham so well, Stephen thought with a fresh surge of disgust for his own gullibility.

A stellar actress, he decided wrathfully, remembering the softness in her eyes during the few moments their gazes had locked this morning. She'd looked straight at him with her heart in her eyes, unflinching. Except she had no heart. And no conscience either, obviously.

She was going to make another try for him. Stephen had realized it within seconds of seeing that wistful expression on her lovely, deceptive face this morning.

He'd assumed DuVille had been keeping her neatly tucked away for his own pleasure all these weeks, but evidently he'd tired of her in a surprisingly short time and sent her packing.

Now she was working as a governess and obviously longing for a better life. Based on that sweet pleading look she'd given him, she was apparently hoping he'd be as stupidly susceptible to her nonexistent appeal as he'd been before.

He shifted his speculative gaze to the men, but Victoria Fielding's exclamation drew his attention.

"There they come!" she said.

Stephen tore his mind from furious thoughts of Sheridan Bromleigh and lifted his gaze to the edge of a wooded hillside where she pointed.

Two mounted riders were galloping at full speed, crouched low over the horses' necks, leaping hedges in graceful unison, side by side. Stephen recognized Whitney at a glance; she was one of the most skilled riders he'd ever seen mounted-man or woman. The lad who was challenging her was slight in stature, clad in a shirt, breeches, and boots, and he was even more skilled than Whitney. Riding at breakneck pace, he took each jump with an effortless, breezy unconcern for style that Stephen had never seen before. With his face pressed close to the horse's mane, there was a jubilation, a simplicity in the way he soared over each jump, as if he were one with his mount-confident, trusting, elated.

"I never knew that animal could jump like that!" Clayton exclaimed with an admiring laugh. Oblivious to Stephen's private doubts about his filial integrity, he added, "Stephen, you've ridden Commander in the hunt. He's fast on the flat, but did he ever soar like that over the jumps?"

Stephen squinted into the late afternoon sun, watching the riders jumping in perfect tandem, then galloping flat-out, soaring over the next hedge together. Since he couldn't demand answers about Sheridan from his brother at the moment, he reported what he could see of the lad who was riding in a flat, unemotional voice. "It appears that he's holding Commander back, to keep him from gaining on Khan-"

"Who is normally more willing to take the jumps than Commander," Clayton added to his friends.

The riders took the last fence, then turned their mounts in unison at full speed toward the open gate of the enclosure, where the spectators were gathered. Since Clayton had been trying out new trainers for the past year, Stephen naturally assumed his brother had probably decided to give the slightly built lad a chance at the position. As the horses thundered closer, he was about to suggest his brother make the position permanent, but two things happened at once that made him break off in mid-sentence: a stable hand rushed forward into the field and dropped a grain sack on the ground-and as Commander's rider began to lean to the right, her hair came unbound.

Piles of fiery tresses unfurled like a flag behind her, swirling about, and she leaned farther and farther down to the right, and began to fall. Monica screamed in fear, Stephen took an involuntary step, starting to run toward her… and Sheridan swept the grain sack off the ground while the servants and houseguests erupted in wild cheers.

In the space of one second, rage replaced Stephen's fear-rage that she had terrified him with her stupid stunt, and fury that she had been able to evoke any emotion in him at all. And while he was still struggling to get that under control, she headed the lightly galloping horse straight at Stephen. Monica and Georgette jumped back with cries of alarm, but Stephen folded his arms and stood his ground, knowing damn well she was in full control. Not until she was almost on top of him did she haul Commander to a smart stop, and at the same time, she swung her leg over the horse's back and slid gracefully to the ground. While the servants erupted in cheers, and the houseguests applauded, Sheridan landed on both feet in front of him, a smile on her soft mouth, her color gloriously high. But what Stephen noticed, as he gazed impassively at her, was the look in those liquid-silver eyes. They were imploring him to soften, to smile at her.

Instead, he raked her with an insulting glance from the top of her gloriously tousled flame-colored hair to the tips of her booted feet. "Didn't anyone ever teach you how to dress?" he asked contemptuously.

He saw her flinch at the same moment Georgette laughed, but Sheridan's gaze never faltered. With everyone looking on, she smiled at him, and said with a catch in her soft voice, "In days of old, it was customary for the winner of a tournament to bestow his favor on someone at the tournament as a gesture of his-his very high regard and-and deepest respect."

Stephen didn't know what the hell she was talking about until she held out the empty grain sack to him and softly said, "My favor, Lord Westmoreland-"

He took it before he realized what he was doing.

"Of all the brazen, the outrageous-" Monica exploded, and Lady Skeffington looked as if she were going to burst into tears of mortification.

"Miss Bromleigh!" she cried angrily. "You forget yourself! Apologize to these good people and then go at once and tend to your pack-"

"Tend to me!" Julianna interrupted sharply, linking her hand through Sheridan's arm and drawing her toward the house. "You must tell me when you learned to ride like that and how you did it…"

Victoria stepped away from the group and glanced at the Skeffingtons. "Miss Bromleigh and I are both Americans," she explained. "I am longing to talk to someone from my own country. Will you excuse me until supper?" she added, looking at her husband.

Jason Fielding-who had once been the subject of ugly gossip and an outcast from polite society-grinned at the young wife who had changed all that. With a tender smile, he bowed slightly and said, "I will be desolate without your company, madam."

"I, too, would love to know more about America," Alexandra Townsende announced as she broke away from the group. Turning to her own husband, she said with a smile, "And you, my lord? May I count upon you to be equally desolate without my company?"

Jordan Townsende-who had once regarded his marriage to a besotted young Alexandra as an "obligatory marriage of inconvenience"-looked at her with unhidden warmth. "I am always desolate without you, as you perfectly well know."

Whitney waited until her coconspirators were well on their way to the house before she fixed a bright smile on her face and prepared to invent an excuse to leave, but Lady Skeffington forestalled her.

"I cannot imagine what has gotten into Sheridan Bromleigh," she said, her face red with ire. "I am always saying to Sir John that it is so very hard to find good help. Isn't that what I always say?" she asked him.

Sir John nodded and hiccupped. "Yes, my dove."

Satisfied, she turned to Whitney. "I must implore you to tell me how it is done, your grace."

Whitney pulled her thoughts from Stephen, who was conversing with Monica and Georgette as if nothing had happened-the grain sack Sheridan had sweetly offered him on the ground beneath the heel of his boot. "I'm sorry, Lady Skeffington, my thoughts wandered. You wished to know something?"

"How do you find adequate servants? Were it not so difficult, we certainly wouldn't be employing that brassy American woman. I have the gravest misgivings about keeping her in our employ for another hour."

"I do not regard a governess as a servant-" Whitney began. She had thought Stephen wasn't listening, but at that remark, he looked over at her and replied to Lady Skeffington in an acid voice, "My sister-in-law regards them as family. One might even say she holds them in higher esteem than mere family." His dagger gaze shifted to Whitney. "Don't you?" he snapped sarcastically.

It was the first remark he had addressed to Lady Skeffington since their introduction, and that lady seized on it as a source of great encouragement; at the same time she missed the sarcasm in his voice. Dropping the subject of a governess altogether, she hastened to his side and said, "My dear Julianna is the same way, as you will have noticed. She leapt right to Sheridan Bromleigh's defense. Julianna is such a wonderful girl," she continued, and somehow managed to squeeze herself between Stephen and Monica, "so very loyal, so sweet…"

When Stephen walked off to the house, she stayed at his side with Sir John trotting along in their wake.

"I could almost feel sorry for him," Clayton remarked idly, watching Lady Skeffington continue her one-sided monologue.

"I cannot," Whitney said, still stinging from his cutting remark about her misplaced loyalty. With a quick apologetic look at the men, she said, "I want to talk to Victoria and Alexandra."

They watched her leave, all three of them silent and thoughtful. "Despite what our wives think, this was a mistake," Jason Fielding said, echoing all their thoughts. "It's not going to work." He looked at Clayton and added, "You know Stephen far better than Jordan or I. What do you think?"

"I think you're right," Clayton said grimly, remembering the expression on Stephen's face when Sherry sweetly offered him the "favor."

"I think it was an enormous mistake, and Sheridan Bromleigh is the one who's going to be hurt by it. Stephen has marked her down permanently as a scheming opportunist who fled out of fear of prosecution, but who has now gained enough confidence because he didn't file charges against her to try to insinuate herself again. Nothing she says or does is going to matter, because she is going to have to prove he's wrong. And she can't."

Their wives, who had gathered in the blue salon to discuss the situation, were of a like opinion.

Whitney slumped back in her chair, staring dully at her hands, then she glanced around at her coconspirators, including the dowager duchess. "It was a mistake," she told her mother-in-law, who'd watched the "show" from the window of her bedchamber.

"I felt like crying when he ignored her gesture," Alexandra said with an ache in her voice. "Sheridan was so brave about it, so open, and so terribly vulnerable." She looked over her shoulder to politely include Miss Charity in the conversation, but the elderly lady had nothing to say. She sat on the window seat, her brow furrowed in concentration, looking straight ahead, giving the impression that she was either listening intently or not listening at all.

"We still have another full day and evening," Stephen's mother said. "He might soften by then."

Whitney shook her head. "He won't. I was counting on proximity to make him listen, but even if he listened, he wouldn't change his mind. I realize that now. For one thing, I discovered earlier that he knows she went to Nicki the day she left his house, and you know how he feels about Nicki."

Miss Charity turned her head sharply at that, her frown deepening with intense concentration.

"The thing is that Stephen wouldn't believe anything Sherry says without proof. Her actions spoke so loudly that nothing else matters. Someone would have to present him with some other viable reason for her to have run away-" She broke off as Miss Charity stood up and walked silently out of the room. "I don't think Miss Charity is holding up very well under the added stress of all this."

"She told me she finds it all very exciting," the dowager announced with an irritated sigh.

From Sheridan's perspective as she stood at the window of her room and watched Stephen laugh at something Monica said to him, the situation looked even more bleak. She couldn't get him off alone to try to talk to him because he clearly wouldn't cooperate with anything she wanted, and she couldn't talk to him in front of the others because she'd tried to communicate with him when she gave him her "favor," and that had been a disaster.