Page 4 of Marrying a Reluctant Lady
“I don’t know, I must admit,” Ophelia whispered back.
“Whowasthat?” Alice chuckled. “I must know...I think I’ve seen him before!” She was grinning, her blue eyes sparkling.
“I don’t know who it was, or what he was about,” Ophelia said lightly, trying not to look shocked. “But he was most rude. I hope not to see him in here again.”
She turned around and looked at the books quickly. She could hear her friend chuckling away, speculating about the man, murmuring that he was quite fine-looking, if in a severe way. Ophelia sighed.
She didn’t want to gossip or speculate. She wanted to read books and write poetry. That was all. And she would only have a few hours to do that before she had to hurry to prepare for the first seasonal ball.
Chapter 2
Owen stood on the pavement outside the library and drew in a deep breath. Around him, people walked briskly, carriages raced by, and vendors pushing handcarts yelled to advertise their wares. It was a normal London morning, all rush and chaos, but he couldn’t seem to focus. All he could see was the blue eyes, shocked and offended, that had stared up at him just a few seconds ago.
That woman had impacted him like nothing had in weeks.
He leaned back against the plastered building and made himself look down the street, trying to find focus again. It was a cobbled street, and the pavement was paved with stone, the railing of the fence across from him wrought iron. A peddler with a handcart yelled loudly as he bowled past on the pavement, making Owen jump. His mind was elsewhere, with the beautiful woman in the library he’d just clearly offended.
He recalled her neat face with its wide mouth and those huge blue eyes. She was easily the most beautiful woman he’d seen in a long time, and he had just been rude to her.
He swore under his breath. It shouldn’t matter. Nothing should matter. Papa was dead. Grantham was dead. Nothing else mattered to him.
He pushed himself away from the building and stalked down the street. There was a coach waiting for him, he hadn’t made that up to get away faster, but it was a paid Hackney coach and not his own. He fumbled in his coat pocket.
“Ivystone Manor, please,” he told the driver. The driver raised a brow.
“Of course, my lord,” he answered, seeming surprised at the address. Owen made a small, sorrowful face as he clamberedinto the coach. If the driver knew Ivystone, then he also knew that nobody ever called there. The place was ruinous. Owen didn’t know what to do about it.
The coach set out, rattling down the street. Owen gazed out at the mass of black-dressed men and women in cloaks huddled under an awning. It was raining again, and the streets were emptying swiftly. He stared out at the people. Some of them were laughing and his heart twisted. He’d forgotten how to laugh.
Papa. Grantham. A curse on you both for dying.
He swallowed hard, a bitterness in his mouth. He had been shocked for months, too numb to feel. Now, a year later, sometimes when he was alone, rage came to him. He hated his father for dying, hated Grantham for dying and for leaving Owen, the younger brother, who was never meant to inherit anything, to take up the earldom without help.
The coach rolled on through the streets, passing out through a gate and then rumbling onward down the road. The houses became poorer as they traveled onward and then, after a gap of green leaves, became richer again as they moved out of London and hit the first of the countryside estates. They rolled past stone-built manors in vast gardens and woodlands. They passed a stone wall he recognized, a sign that they were close to Ivystone. They rounded a corner and the coach slowed, moving toward the drive. Owen stared out, looking at the place, trying to see it objectively like a visitor might.
The first thing one noticed about the property was that the trees grew low and wild, since nobody had trimmed them in years. The hedge was overgrown and rank. The drive was gravel-covered, and the lawn was long and ranker still. Leaves were piled up here and there, as there was only one gardener for the whole estate and he barely had the time to trim the hedges before the wind blew all the leaves back to where they’d beenbefore.
Owen looked around as they rolled up to the house and felt his energy draining. He couldn’t look at all of that and not feel exhausted. He didn’t know where to start fixing it, or how to. And he couldn’t afford to do it, even if he had a plan to begin.
“Thank you,” he called to the coach-driver politely. He walked past swiftly, not looking to see what the driver was thinking. Ivystone was doubtless the most dilapidated manor he’d ever seen. Owen felt his heart ache.
I would do something about it if I could.
He opened the door and strode in, pausing to take off his boots. The entrance-way was marble-tiled, and should have looked grand, but the trees had grown such that the sunlight was blocked out, making the whole house dark and eerie.
He barely noticed it. His thoughts had returned to London and the trip of the morning. The woman’s face haunted him as he walked to his room. He'd managed to scare her, and he didn’t understand how or why. Had he become so uncouth, so withdrawn, that he’d forgotten his manners? The thought scared him. He was the Earl of Ivystone, and he needed to have some dignity.
Papa,he thought silently as he stared into the looking-glass,what should I do?
His own face looked back. Thinner than his father’s, with green eyes and a long nose, he reckoned he looked like his late mother. He had seen a portrait of her in the gallery, though it had been his butler, Mr. Crane, who’d shown him. Mr. Crane had said that it was the only portrait his lordship the earl allowed to be in the house. Nobody went into the west wing now. It had been hers, containing her apartments, and was one place in the house that was justifiably falling apart. Since her death, Papa had closed it up, unable to bear looking at it without being lost in his grief.
The rest of the manor house, Owen thought with a twist of pain in his stomach, was falling apart through nobody’s fault but his own.
That was not quite true. The house had been falling apart for years. The money had been lost in his grandfather’s day when shares Grandfather had chosen to invest in, mostly rope and silk, had suffered. All of Grandfather’s money had been lost.
That was twenty years ago, though, when Owen was just a little boy. He couldn’t even have understood what was going on at the time. He understood now, and it didn’t make any difference...he still couldn’t fix the debts.
“Damn all of it,” Owen swore as he strode to the study.
