Valentine

Chapter One

London - June 1810

"Marry one of them? Good God, man, don't be absurd." Sylvester Gilbraith, fifth Earl of Stoneridge, stared incredulously at the nervous little man sitting dwarfed behind the massive desk in the lawyer's office on Threadneedle Street.

Lawyer Crighton cleared his throat. "I believe his lordship was very fond of his granddaughters, my lord."

"What has that to do with me?" demanded the earl.

The lawyer shuffled the papers on his desk. "He wished to ensure they were well provided for, sir. Their mother, Lady Belmont, has her own substantial jointure and requires no additional provision. She will, of course, remove to the dower house as soon as you are ready to take up residence at Stoneridge Manor."

"The mother doesn't concern me," the earl commented curtly. "Be so good as to explain in words of one syllable the precise conditions of my cousin's will. I feel sure I must have misunderstood you."

The lawyer regarded his client unhappily. "I don't believe so, my lord. There are four granddaughters, the children of Viscount Belmont and Lady Elinor…"

"Yes… yes… and Belmont was killed at the Battle of the Nile twelve years ago, making me, by virtue of the entail, Stoneridge's heir." The earl began to pace the room, his large stride eating up the narrow space from window to door. "Get to it, man."

Lawyer Crighton decided that the new Earl Stoneridge was even more intimidating than his predecessor, the crusty, gouty fourth earl. Sylvester Gilbraith's clear gray eyes were uncomfortably penetrating in his lean face, and the white scar slashing across his forehead lent a menacing cast to his well-bred countenance. His mouth was a taut line of impatience, one characteristic he obviously shared with his late cousin.

"Perhaps it would be best if your lordship were to read the conditions for yourself," he suggested, selecting one of the papers in front of him.

A glint of sardonic amusement enlivened the cool eyes. "Afraid to be the presenter of ill tidings, Crighton?" His lordship extended a slim white hand and twitched the paper from the lawyer's grasp. He flung himself into a chair, crossing one buckskin-clad thigh over the other, and began to read, flicking all the while at his top boots with his whip.

The long case clock in the corner ticked, a fly buzzed indolently at the open window, and the shout of a costermonger rose on the June air from the street below. Lawyer Crighton swallowed nervously, and the sound seemed magnified in the tense stillness of the room.

"Good God!" Stoneridge flung the paper onto the desk as he sprang to his feet again. "It is iniquitous. I inherit the title, Stoneridge Manor, and the London house, but not an acre of land or a penny of the old curmudgeon's fortune unless I marry one of these girls! This couldn't stand up in a court of law, it's the will of a lunatic."

"I assure you, sir, the will is perfectly legal. His lordship was in sound mind, and I witnessed it myself, together with two members of this firm." The lawyer pulled his chin. "Only the title and the two properties are entailed. His lordship had the right to do as he pleased with the rest of his fortune."

"And he's left it to a gaggle of girls!"

"I believe them to be very personable young ladies," Crighton ventured. The earl's expression indicated he found the observation less than reassuring.

The lawyer cleared his throat again. "Lady Emily is twenty-two, my lord, and I understand she is betrothed. Lady Clarissa is twenty-one, and I believe unattached. Then there is Lady Theodora, who is approaching twenty. And Lady Rosalind, who is still a child… not quite twelve."

"So I seem to have the choice of two," his lordship said with a grim smile. "If I refuse to make such a choice, my cousin's fortune is divided among his granddaughters, and I am left with an empty title and not a feather to fly with." He swung toward the fireplace, resting an arm on the mantel, gazing down into the empty grate. "The bastard was determined to be revenged for that entail somehow."

The lawyer cracked his knuckles, and the earl raised his head, casting him a look of powerful dislike. Hastily, Crighton rested his hands on the desk. The violent estrangement between the Gilbraith and Belmont branches of the Stoneridge family was as well-known to him as it was to the London ton… but its genesis was lost in family memory.

The fourth earl had never been able to reconcile himself to the fact that his distant cousin's family would come into the title. It had added gall and wormwood to his bitter grief at the death of his only child.

"I don't believe it's as simple as that, my lord," the lawyer said diffidently. "There is a codicil."

The earl's clear eyes sharpened. "A codicil?"

"Yes, my lord." Crighton drew out another piece of heavy vellum. "The young ladies and their mother are not to be informed of these conditions of the will until one month after you have been notified."

"What?" A sharp crack of disbelieving laughter broke from the earl. "For one month they are to believe they inherit nothing? And you say the old man was fond of them?"

"I believe, my lord, that his lordship wished to be fair… to give you a fair chance," Crighton said. "There will be some incentive for one of the young ladies to favor your suit… should you, of course, decide to press it."

"And just how am I supposed to pay court immediately after his death to a young lady in deep mourning for her nearest male relative?" The earl's eyebrows disappeared into his scalp. "I'd look an egotistic fool… but perhaps that was my cousin's intention."

Lawyer Crighton cleared his throat yet again. "Lord Stoneridge instructed his relatives that there was to be no formal mourning period. They are forbidden to wear mourning or to refrain from their usual pursuits." He scratched his head. "If you knew his lordship, sir, you'd understand that such instructions were quite in character. He was not a conventional man."

"And why is he going to such lengths to give me a fair chance, as you put it?" The earl shook his head in disbelief.

Crighton was silent for a minute before saying, "His lordship would not care to see Stoneridge Manor go to rack and ruin for lack of funds to maintain it, and I also believe he wished it to remain in the hands of a member of his son's family."

"Ah." The earl nodded slowly. "One could almost feel sorry for the devious old devil… torn between loathing the idea of a Gilbraith in residence and ancestral pride."

He drew on his York tan gloves, smoothing the fine leather over his fingers, a deep frown between his chiseled brows, wrinkling the scar. "A union between a Gilbraith and a Belmont would be something indeed."

"Indeed, my lord."

"I give you good day, Crighton." Abruptly, his lordship strode to the door.

The lawyer bounced up to bow his client from the room and down the narrow flight of stairs to the street door. He waited politely as the earl mounted the glossy black being held at the door by a street urchin and rode off down Threadneedle Street toward Cheapside.

Lawyer Crighton returned to his office. It was to be hoped the young Belmont ladies hadn't heard the scandalous accusations dogging the heels of the Earl of Stoneridge. Such rumors would hardly endear a prospective suitor, particularly one of Gilbraith parentage – surely sufficient a disadvantage.

Sylvester rode back to his lodgings on Jermyn Street. Two years ago he would have gone to one of his clubs and sought companionship, port, and a game of faro. But he could no longer bear that instant of silence as he walked into a crowded room, the averted eyes, the stiff acknowledgments of his onetime friends. Never the cut direct – except from Gerard. He'd been acquitted, after all. But he'd not been exonerated.

Cowardice was a charge that clung like slime.

"It's insufferable! How can we possibly be expected to live five miles from a Gilbraith!" The young lady at the pianoforte slammed her hands onto the keys in a crashing chord. "I don't understand why grandpapa should have insisted on such a thing."

"Your grandfather didn't insist we live in the dower house, Clarissa," Lady Elinor Belmont said mildly, examining her embroidery with a critical frown. "I think a paler shade of green…" She selected a silk from the basket on the table beside her. "But while we're hardly in danger of debtors' prison, we need to husband our resources. If I dip into capital to set us up in our own establishment, it'll cut into your dowries."

"I don't give a hoot about a dowry," Lady Clarissa declared. "And neither does Theo. We've no intention of marrying, ever."

" 'Ever' is a big word, dear," her mother remarked. "And there's still Emily and Rosie to consider."

Clarissa swung round on the piano stool, her big blue eyes stormy. "It's just so galling," she said. "To have to remove to the dower house, when we've always lived here."

"Don't fuss so, Clarry. We've always known it would happen… ever since Papa was killed." A tall young woman looked up from a fashion magazine, a ray of sunlight picking golden glints in her dark brown hair. "And the dower house is very spacious. Besides, once Edward and I are married, you can all come and live with us."

"Poor Edward," murmured Lady Elinor with an amused smile. "I hardly think a young man, even one so accommodating as Edward, would relish starting married life in the company of his mother-in-law and three sisters-in-law."

"Oh, fustian, Mama!" Her eldest daughter leaped to her feet and flung her arms around her mother. "Edward loves you."

"Yes, I'm sure he does, Emily, dear, and I'm much obliged to him," Lady Elinor said placidly, returning the hug. "Nevertheless, we shall remove to the dower house and make the best of it."

Her two elder daughters knew the tone. Behind their mother's mild exterior lay a will of iron, rarely exerted but never to be ignored.

"Mama, where's Theo? She promised to help me cut up these worms." A young girl wandered into the room, extending a cupped hand.

"Rosie, that's revolting! Take them away," her sisters commanded in unison.

The child blinked through large horn-rimmed spectacles. "They're not revolting. Theo doesn't think they are. They're to be part of an experiment… a bio… biological experiment."

"Theo doesn't know the first thing about biological experiments," Emily said.

"But at least she's interested," Rosie responded with asperity, peering at the contents of her palm. "If you're not interested in things, you never learn anything. That was what Grandpapa said."

"That's very true, Rosie, but the drawing room is not the best place for worms," her mother declared.

"Alive or dissected," Clarissa put in, closing the lid of the pianoforte. "Take them away. Theo's gone fishing… heaven only knows when she'll reappear."

Lady Belmont bent over her basket of embroidery silks so that her daughters couldn't see the tears glazing her eyes. While they'd all had a close relationship with the old earl, Theo had been the closest to their grandfather and was struggling with a well of grief that Lady Belmont understood as perhaps the other girls didn't. Theo had needed a father. Kit's death when she was seven had left her with needs that her mother couldn't satisfy. The others had adapted, it seemed, and their grandfather's influence had been important, but not as vital as their mother's. It had been the opposite with Theo.

In the days since the earl's death, she had plunged herself into the affairs of the estate and the solitary pursuits that had always pleased her with a single-minded dedication that would shut out her grief. She paid little or no attention to the household routine these days. Clarissa was right – Theo would return before dark, but there was no knowing exactly when.

That same afternoon Sylvester Gilbraith downed his tankard of ale in the tap room of the village inn and leaned back, resting his elbows on the bar counter behind him. The room was dark and smoky, and he was aware of the surreptitious glances of the inn's customers as they drank and spat into the sawdust at their feet. They didn't know who he was and speculation was rife. Not many gentlemen of quality fetched up at the Hare and Hounds in Lulworth, demanding a room for the night.

But it didn't suit Lord Stoneridge to declare himself just yet. He guessed that the village inhabitants and the estate workers would share the Belmont hostility to a Gilbraith. Such attitudes were passed down from the manor and rapidly became entrenched, even when the reason for them was long forgotten.

He pushed himself away from the bar counter and strolled outside. Summer had come early this year. The village street was bathed in sunshine, the mud hard-ridged, and the groom in the stableyard drowsed against the wall, sucking a straw, the brim of his cap pulled well down over his eyes.

He straightened, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles as his lordship beckoned. A sharp command brought him running across the cobbled yard.

"Saddle my horse."

The lad tugged his forelock and disappeared into the stable, reemerging after five minutes leading the earl's black.

"Is there a cross-country route to Stoneridge Manor?" His lordship swung himself astride his mount, tossing a coin to the lad.

"Aye, sir. Through the village, and take the right fork. Follow the footpath 'cross the fields, and it'll bring you onto Belmont land be'ind the manor."

Lord Stoneridge nodded and turned his horse. He'd never seen his ancestral home, except in paintings, and for a reason he couldn't identify wanted to familiarize himself with the house, its grounds, and its dependencies before he announced himself.

He followed directions and found himself approaching the house from the rear. He broke through a spinney, and the long, low Tudor manor house faced him on a hill, across a swift-running stream, spanned by a narrow stone bridge.

Stoneridge Manor. His home… and it would be the home of his children. Gilbraith children. A surge of grim satisfaction rose in his breast. In two hundred years a Gilbraith had not set foot in Stoneridge. Now it would be theirs. The Belmonts' unfortunate tendency to produce female progeny had finally excluded them.

Except…

With a muttered oath he turned his horse to ride along the stream. The house and its immediate park were nothing. The wealth lay in the estate – its woods and fields and tenant farmers. Without access to those revenues, the house itself was merely a gentleman's residence, and devilishly expensive to maintain. In fact, he couldn't possibly maintain it with the mere competency he'd inherited from his own father.

But what the hell did four chits and their mother know about running an estate, about managing the affairs of tenants? They might imagine they could rely on a bailiff, but they'd be robbed blind. The land would run itself into the ground in a few years.

The fourth Earl of Stoneridge had been demented… whatever that idiot lawyer had said.

He slashed at a gorse bush with a vicious stroke of his riding crop, and his horse whinnied, throwing up its head in alarm.

"Easy." Sylvester patted the animal's neck as they moved through a stand of oak trees. As he emerged into the sunlight again, he saw a prone figure some way along the bank of the stream. There was something about the intent stillness of the figure that intrigued him.

He dismounted, tethering the horse to a sapling, and approached, his footsteps soft and muffled in the damp mossy ground.

He spotted the girl's sandals a few yards from where she lay on her stomach, her bare feet in the air, the hem of her unbleached linen dress lying against her thighs, revealing slim brown calves. Two thick black plaits lay along her back. Her sleeves were rolled up and both hands were in the brown water of the stream.

A gypsy tickling trout was Sylvester's immediate conclusion.

"We thrash poachers where I come from," he observed to her back. The girl's position didn't change, and he realized that his approach hadn't startled her. She must have heard his footsteps, soft as they were.

"Oh, we 'angs 'em in these parts," she said in a soft Dorsetshire drawl, still without looking around. "Less'n we're feelin' kind. Then we transports 'em to the colonies."

He couldn't help smiling at this cool riposte. Clearly this gypsy wasn't easily intimidated. He stood silently, affected by her intense concentration as she engaged in a battle of wits with the fish lying inert in the shadow of a camouflaging flat brown stone. Sunlight danced on the smooth surface of the water, and her hands were utterly still while her prey became accustomed to them. Then she moved. Her hands shot up from the water, flourishing a speckled brown trout.

"Gotcha, master trout!" She chuckled, holding the thrashing fish in the air for a second before tossing him back into the stream. The fish leaped out of the water, an agile flashing curve, sunlit drops of water along its back, and then it was gone, leaving a widening circle of bubbles on the surface.

"Why on earth did you throw it back? It looked big enough for a substantial dinner," Stoneridge asked in surprise.

"I'm not 'ungry," she said in the same cool tone as before. Rolling over, she sat up, squinting at him against the sun. "We shoots trespassers in these parts, too. An' you're on Belmont land… boundary's just beyond those trees." She gestured with an outflung arm.

"If I am trespassing, I'll lay odds I'm in good company," he said, his eyes narrowing as he examined her face. A gamine face, brown as a berry, with a pointed chin and small, straight nose. A fringe of black hair wisped on a broad forehead over a pair of large pansy-blue eyes. Quite an appealing little gypsy.

She merely shrugged and scrambled to her feet, shaking down the folds of her coarse linen smock, tossing the heavy black plaits over her shoulders. "Not your business what I do. You're not from these parts, are you?"

She was standing with her bare feet slightly apart, her hands resting on her hips, and there was a distinct challenge to her stance and the tilt of her head. He wondered if it was unconscious – her habitual way of viewing the world. It amused him. And she really was quite an appealing gypsy.

He stepped toward her, smiling, reaching out a hand to catch her chin. "No, I'm not, but I've a mind to become better acquainted with them… or rather with their Romanys." His hand tightened and he brought his mouth to hers.

The Earl of Stoneridge never fully understood what happened next. One minute he was standing upright, his lips pressed to hers, the sun-warmed scent of her skin in his nostrils, the firm line of her jaw in his palm, and the next he was lying on his back in the stream. Someone had instructed the gypsy poacher in the martial arts.

"Rat… cur…," she yelled at him as she stood on the edge of the bank, dancing on her toes, her eyes almost black with outrage. "That'll teach you, you filthy toad… tryin' to take advantage of an honest girl. You come near me again and I'll cut your -"

The rest of the tirade was lost in an indignant screech as he lunged off the bed of the stream, braceleting her bare ankles with finger and thumb. A violent jerk and she thumped onto her backside onto the hard ground. She yelled, grabbing at tufts of mossy grass, trying to save herself as he yanked her off the bank until she was sitting, hissing and spitting, in the thick mud of the shallows.

Sylvester stood up, glaring down at the livid girl. "Sauce for the goose, my girl," he declared. "Whoever taught you to wrestle omitted to teach you not to crow too soon." He dusted off his hands in a gesture that he realized was futile and squelched out of the stream, clambering onto the bank.

The girl picked herself up out of the mud. "Don't you call me 'your girl'!" she yelled, gouging a lump of mud from the bank and hurling it at his retreating back. It caught him full between his shoulders, and he swung round with a bellow of anger.

She had scrambled onto the bank, and there was murder in her eyes. He looked at the sodden, mud-smothered figure all set to do battle in whatever fashion presented itself, and suddenly he burst out laughing as the absurdity of the situation hit him.

He was soaked to the skin, his boots full of water and probably ruined beyond repair, all because that bedraggled bantam took exception to a kiss. How was he to have guessed that a gypsy girl would react with all the outrage of a vestal virgin?

He threw up his hands in a gesture of appeasement. "Let's declare honors even, shall we?"

"Honor?" she spat at him. "What do you know of honor?"

The laughter died in his eyes and his body became rigid, his hands dropping to his sides, curling into fists.

You stand accused of dishonoring the regiment. How do you answer, Major Gilbraith?

He stood again in the crowded courtroom at Horseguards, heard again the dreadful hush from the benches of his fellow officers of His Majesty's Third Dragoons, felt again the gimlet eyes of General, Lord Feringham, presiding over the court-martial. How had he answered? Not guilty, my lord. Yes, of course: Not guilty, my lord. But was he? If only he could remember those moments before the bayonet struck. If only Gerard had testified to what Sylvester believed had happened: He'd been holding an impossible position at Vimiera; Gerard was to come up in support; but before he could do so, they'd been overwhelmed and suffered the greatest military disgrace to befall a regiment – they'd lost the colors. Gerard, his boyhood friend, said he'd been on his way in support. He hadn't been aware of a renewed French attack on the isolated outpost… but whatever had happened, they'd arrived too late. Major Gilbraith had been taken prisoner, his men left for dead, the colors captured.

Major Gilbraith's head wound had kept him lingering between life and death in a foul French prison for a twelve-month, until he'd been exchanged and brought home to face a court-martial. Had there been a renewed French attack before Captain Gerard could come to his aid? Or had he yielded his colors prematurely?

No one had an answer. Sylvester could remember nothing of the minutes before the bayonet had driven into his skull. Gerard said he'd seen nothing and could have no opinion on the issue of honor. And there the matter lay. There was no concrete evidence to convict… but neither was there concrete evidence to exonerate.

And people believed what they chose. It was clear enough what Gerard believed. His shoulder had been the first to be turned.

That ominous feeling crept up the back of Sylvester's neck, the little prickles, the weird surge of unfocused energy in his head, tightening his scalp. His hand went to his forehead, to the slash of the scar, as he tried to relax, to will the promise of pain to disappear. Sometimes he could divert the coming agony if he caught it at the very beginning and was able to be still, close his eyes, change the seething thoughts, defeat the rise of this hideous panic.

But he was standing in hot, bright sunlight, far from the cool darkness he would need. A jagged flash of light appeared in the corner of his vision, and he knew it was too late. He had perhaps twenty minutes before the ghastly, degrading pain took over… twenty minutes to reach his room at the inn.

Theo Belmont stared. What was happening to him? He looked as if he were standing in a graveyard alive with spirits. His face was deathly white, his eyes suddenly dulled, his shoulders sagging. It was as if muscle and sinew, his very life-blood, had been leached out of him. Abruptly he turned from her and stumbled over to his horse tethered at the stand of trees. He mounted clumsily and rode off, slouching in the saddle, his head lowered almost to his chest.

Who was he? Not that it mattered. Strangers passed through Lulworth often enough, rarely causing a ripple on the surface of tranquil village life. Generally, though, they kept to the roads, not straying onto other people's property.

She shrugged and bent to wring out the dripping folds of her smock, thrusting her feet into her sandals. Absently, she rubbed her backside… it had been a very hard fall. The stranger clearly made no concessions when it came to avenging himself – but then, he'd had a pretty hard fall himself.

She grinned, remembering the neatness of her maneuver. Edward would be proud of her.

Theo made her dripping way along the bank toward the stone bridge. She crossed and hurried up the hill toward the house, shivering as a stiffening sea breeze pressed her wet clothes against her skin.

"Theo, whatever happened to you?" Clarissa appeared on the long stone-flagged terrace outside the drawing room. "I saw you coming up from the stream."

"I fell in, if you must know," Theo said, for some reason reluctant to give a full account of the encounter. She hadn't exactly come out of it bathed in glory, and honesty forced her to admit that she had been playing a game that could have given the stranger the wrong impression.

"Fell in?" Clarissa persisted. "How?"

Theo sighed. Her sister never let go until she was satisfied. "I was leaning over, trying to tickle a trout, and I lost my balance." She stepped through the open doors into the drawing room.

"Theo!" Emily squeaked. "You're dripping all over the carpet."

"Oh, sorry." She looked down at the puddle forming at her feet.

"Theo, dear, I'm not going to ask how you come to be in that condition," her mother said, laying down her embroidery. "But I think it would be best if you were to go out again and come in through the side door. This carpet is not ours to ruin."

"Of course… it belongs to a Gilbraith now. I was forgetting. Forgive me." Theo turned on her heel and marched out again.

Lady Belmont sighed. There was no point ignoring the facts. They were going to have to get used to it eventually – and the sooner they were reconciled, the happier they would be. But she was under no illusions about Theo, who was going to have the most difficulty. The house and the land were in her blood. A most powerful spiritual legacy from both father and grandfather to the girl child they'd adored.