Season for Temptation

Chapter 5. In Which the Viscount Intentionally Walks through Manure

James’s first full day at Stonemeadows Hall had already brought surprise after surprise, and it was still not yet noon. Thus the viscount was almost looking forward to having an extremely odd conversation with Lord Oliver about his eldest daughter’s marriage plans, and in this he was not disappointed.

The older man welcomed James heartily into his study, but once the two were face-to-face across the baron’s large, untidy desk, James felt unsure how to begin.

“Lord Oliver,” he started, then paused as he met his future father-in-law’s expectant gaze.

Should he say that the wedding was indefinitely postponed? Should he even try to discuss marriage terms at all? Was there any point until he and Louisa set a date?

He cleared his throat and tried again. “Lord Oliver, I’ve just been speaking with your daughter—”

“Emilia? Or Elise?” The older man’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Not Anne. Or is it? Has Annie been bothering you to play bilbo catch with her again? I’ll have Lady Oliver speak with her at once.” He rose from behind his desk and began to head for the door.

James stood, too, but just stared after him for a second, trying to follow the older man’s thought processes. “No, no. Certainly not. It was Louisa.”

Lord Oliver stopped with his hand on the door handle. “Louisa?” He looked confused. “Why should Louisa want to play bilbo catch with you?”

James took a deep breath. All right, so this was going to be even more difficult than he had expected.

“No one was playing bilbo catch with anyone else, and no one wanted to,” he explained with what he hoped was a respectful amount of patience in his voice. Good Lord, even as a child, he’d never enjoyed the cursed game of trying to catch a ball in a wooden cup. Why was the baron going on about it now?

“No,” he continued, “I spoke with Louisa about our marriage.”

“Ah.” Enlightenment warmed Lord Oliver’s expression into a beam of delight. “Now I understand. Very appropriate, that. But if you’ve come to ask my permission again, you really didn’t need to. I’ve already consented to the match.”

He clapped James on the shoulder and turned toward the door of his study again.

“I’ve been indoors for too long this morning. Would you care to walk with me? I’m just going to check on a few of the animals.”

Unable to get another word in before his host left the study, James found himself trotting after Lord Oliver to the stables, trying valiantly to interject some comment — anything at all — about Louisa.

“We’ve decided to postpone the marriage until after Julia begins her season,” he gasped as he followed at a near run behind Lord Oliver’s rapid pace.

“Hmm?” The baron was distracted now that they were almost to the stables. “Julia’s getting married during her season? Yes, excellent idea.”

This was the closest James was able to come to any of the calm discussion he had planned, in which he and his future father-in-law would sit across a desk from one another, set the date of the wedding, and perhaps even discuss the marriage settlement. The specific amount of Louisa’s dowry wasn’t really a concern for James, since the Matheson viscountcy wasn’t at all short of funds; still, it felt like something he and his future father-in-law ought to work out.

Instead, he found himself trotting after Lord Oliver through a whirlwind tour of the stables. He was willing to profess admiration for the horses, but James split from his host when the latter professed a desire to check on a newborn calf and its mother. Saying he would meet Lord Oliver back at the house later, he trudged back across the muddy ground, looking dolefully at his mud-caked boots and remembering their mirror-bright gloss of the morning.

It wasn’t as if he had never been in the country before, but getting into the stables of a manor house was an experience entirely new to him. He was used to grooms bringing horses out for him to ride, already saddled and bridled. Had he even been in a stable since he was an inquisitive young boy? Surely not since his father had tanned his backside and told him sons of the house didn’t associate with servants.

He paused in his walk for a moment, regarding a clump of — yes, he was very much afraid that wasn’t dirt on his boot, but something far more. . organic. And suddenly, he felt his natural good humor returning. Cleaning his boots would be just the job for his valet, who tended to be supercilious at the best of times, and whose best personality traits were definitely not brought out by country life.

James’s pace quickened as he imagined the man’s face upon seeing his soiled boots, and he had to laugh to himself. He even veered toward a fresh-looking deposit and tramped through it with both feet.

He felt more cheerful at once. It would do Delaney some good to clean a bit of excrement off his master’s boots every once in awhile. And the Olivers were odd, true, but they were kind people — and at any rate, he was certainly gaining plenty of new experiences. He would hardly have wanted to marry into a dull family, would he?

The succeeding weeks of James’s visit drifted by pleasantly, with few notable events to mar the placid country life he expected to constitute most of his days following his marriage.

But when, one day in mid-September, he received word over the dinner table of the impending arrival from London of the family’s doughty relative, Lady Irving, he decided that this might well be a good opportunity to leave for a while. Only to oversee restorations, of course; not to avoid his future wife’s relatives. Not even to escape from the aunt who could have taught lessons in sharp-tongued repartee to Attila the Hun. If Huns practiced repartee, rather than just whacking at their enemies with swords.

Actually, it wasn’t all that difficult to imagine Lady Irving with a sword in her hand.

He waited until the next day, two days before Lady Irving’s expected visit, to broach to Louisa the topic of his return to his estate. He found her in the early afternoon; she was, as usual, in the library. As was now his routine, he knocked on the door before entering. When he did, Louisa was seated expectantly on her favorite red sofa, a book at her side, her hands clasped on her knee.

“Hello, my dear,” he greeted her, kissing her on the forehead in their accustomed ritual.

“Good afternoon to you,” she replied. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Do I need a reason for coming to speak to my fiancée?” he answered gallantly.

She looked at him expectantly for a moment, and his bravado deflated. “Oh, very well, if you must know — I was thinking of returning to Nicholls for a time.”

“To shoot partridge? Or to avoid shooting my aunt Estella?” she asked, quirking an intelligent eyebrow.

“Um,” he replied. He hadn’t expected to be caught out so quickly. “Well, perhaps a bit of both.”

Louisa shook her head. “It won’t do, James. You’ll have to see her eventually, you know. She’s going to stay here until we all go back to London for the season. She says she can’t stand the London fog during winter.”

“Probably she just can’t stand for people to think that no one wants to invite her to visit,” he muttered.

“Pardon?” Louisa’s voice was innocent, her expression sweet, but he knew she’d heard him.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said hurriedly, trying to end the topic of conversation. Honestly, he had dealt with enough difficult females in his life already just by growing up with his mother. He couldn’t be expected to deal with them in the country as well; it was too much to ask of any man.

“Well,” Louisa continued, looking mollified, “I think it would be lovely if you returned to Nicholls and made all ready for us to come for a visit. I am sure my aunt would love to come see your home. That is, our future home,” she corrected. “Of course, I would love to see it as well. And I know you’re mad with curiosity to see how things are shaping up in your absence.”

A smile tugged at her lips, and James allowed his own face to relax into a mirror of her expression. “Yes, I have been wondering what the old place looks like now. I know I’ll be surprised, but I don’t know if it’s because of how much or how little has been done in my absence.”

“Perhaps it’ll be best to keep your expectations low,” Louisa suggested. “Just in case, would you like to set the date for our visit following your own arrival at Nicholls? If there’s, say, a hole in the floor or some such nonsense, we’ll definitely want that repaired before my aunt comes.”

“Not necessarily,” he murmured under his breath.

Louisa shot him a wry look and continued, “She’s bringing her lady’s maid with her as well, of course, and as the maid’s French, she’s very particular. In fact, she reminds me of someone.” She paused in mock contemplation, tapping her chin. “Ah, I know; she rather reminds me of your servant.”

James was relieved by her teasing mood, and, happy to play along, he put up his hands in surrender. “You win, you win. My manservant orders me around, and I think your aunt is quite the most terrifying person I have ever met, just slightly edging out my mother.”

Louisa looked a little surprised by this chain of admissions, so James sought to placate her further. “But if it helps, I don’t truly want to drop her through a floor. Nor any of your other family members, either.”

If he hadn’t known his fiancée to be such a lady, he would have had to describe her laugh as a snort.

“That’s quite a relief, to be sure,” she replied. “We will look forward to touring your home with the utmost peace of mind, knowing that a fatal accident is the furthest thing from your wishes.”

A sharp rap sounded at the door, and Julia burst through it a moment later, panting with hurry, pale hair pulling out of its pins into untidy threads.

“Louisa, you’ll never believe it!” she cried, and then noticed her sister’s companion. “Oh, hello, James; sorry to interrupt you.” She instantly turned red, and rushed on, “That is, not that I expected I would be interrupting anything. I mean, not that you would be doing anything you minded me interrupting. I — um. .”

She wound down into a flustered silence, and James, inwardly laughing to himself, wiped a kind expression across his face. “Was there something you wanted to tell us? Or perhaps just your sister? I would be happy to leave you in private.”

She looked gratefully at him for a moment, then blanched.

“Oh, Lord, no, it concerns us all,” she blurted. “Aunt Estella is here now.”