The Notorious Mr. Hurst Read online

  ‘I thought…you always seemed so much in love,’ Maude ventured. Poor Mama! How would I feel if I was dragged away from Eden, just when we thought we were safe? How had she heard the news of his death, so far away from her?

  ‘I believe we were, although I never fooled myself that I was the great love of her life,’ her father said, smiling ruefully. ‘We were very happy, and when you arrived, even happier. Anyway, your mother kept in touch with Sarah, but after the near scandal they were very discreet, even after our marriage. Unlike many actresses Sarah was careful with her money, retired at the peak of her modest success and bought property. The Unicorn was one of her purchases.’

  ‘It wasn’t the theatre where the young actor was killed?’ Maude asked, suddenly chilled. If I have been standing on the very stage where Mama’s love died…

  ‘No.’ Her father shook his head. ‘No, I do not think I would be comfortable there either, if that were the case. He was on tour—Norwich, I think. But he acted at the Unicorn, often. That was where your mama first saw him.’ He gave himself a little shake and seemed to come back entirely into the present. ‘You see why I was not entirely surprised at your interest in the theatre and why I was not inclined to forbid it to you?’

  ‘Many other parents would have seen it as exactly the reason to forbid me,’ Maude observed, thinking how very fortunate she was in her father.

  ‘I do not expect you to fall in love with an actor,’ Lord Pangbourne said with a smile. ‘You are far less sheltered than your mama, you have met many more gentlemen and you are old enough not to have fairytale dreams, I am sure.’

  Oh, indeed, this was not a fairytale! Maude glanced at the clock. There was an hour before she could reasonably set out to the Unicorn, time to think.

  ‘You will sell to Hurst,’ her father observed. ‘He’ll be delighted. But talk to Benson, make certain the price is right. This is business, not friendship.’

  ‘Yes, Papa. Perhaps I will. Although the rent would be useful.’ Oddly, one part of her could discuss this rationally while the other was confused and uncertain.

  Her instinctive reaction was against the idea of selling the Unicorn. She loved it, partly because it was Eden’s passion, partly for some atmosphere of its own. And now it was hers. If she married Eden, it would become his, along with all her property, of course, that was the way the law worked. A stab of anxiety warned her that it was a powerful incentive for him to marry her. Part of her did not want to believe that it might influence him, part knew that she was dealing with a man who had grown up rejecting love, focused only on his ambitions. She must not tell him until she had spoken to him today about her feelings.

  But then she would be deceiving him by keeping the knowledge of something so important to him secret. Or she could to sell it to him first and then speak of her love…

  But she did not want to sell it. Somehow that theatre had dug itself under her skin and into her affections. And it would have had such emotional resonance for Mama: that was why Sarah had left it to Marietta’s daughter. Mama would not have wanted her to sell it, to lose that link to her first love. Yet, she would have wanted Maude to be happy with the man she loved.

  But Eden was more important. More important than anything, surely? And he wanted the Unicorn with a passion. And she loved him—so shouldn’t she give him what he wanted, unconditionally? Confused, Maude opened the copy of the will and stared at it again as thought the black letters would somehow tell her what to do, what was right. They were absolutely no help whatsoever. One thing she knew: she could not see him today, not with the shock of this so fresh in her mind.

  ‘I want to go down to Knight’s Fee, Papa,’ she said, suddenly certain that she must get away. ‘I’ve been overdoing it, I feel tired. I’ll go down this afternoon, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course, my dear.’ He smiled his understanding, leaning across to pat her hand. ‘I expect this story about your mother has upset you a little. How long will you stay?’

  ‘Just a few days—until Tuesday, perhaps.’ That would give her time, surely, to decide what to do. She could not take any more, not with the Musicale looming in only eight days’ time. ‘I’ll go and write to the committee, let them know where I am.’ And, somehow, manage a note to Eden to account for her absence when it had been obvious that he had wanted to speak to her seriously about something. The excuse of her health would convince him, however reluctant she was to deceive him.

  ...and so I think the sensible thing is to go down to the country for a few days and rest and get some fresh air. I will be back on Tuesday next week, so do not think I have abandoned you and the Musicale entirely! Maude.

  Eden looked down at the note, fighting the irrational disappointment. He had wanted to see Maude because he was going to do the sensible, honourable, thing and tell her that he was becoming too fond of her for prudence and that after the Musicale, they should keep a greater distance. And here she was, distancing herself. Excellent. That was what he told himself. But it was not true, of course. He should do what was right for Maude, yet he simply wanted to be with her, and to hell with the risks of that proximity.

  And yet this note did not ring true. Yes, he could believe that she was tired, perhaps even unwell. Yesterday he had wanted to hold her in his arms, he had wanted the right to carry her to her bed, tuck her up, pamper and coddle her until the roses were back in her cheeks and she was answering him back with her usual spirit. But if she was unwell, it was not because she had been overdoing things. Maude Templeton was perfectly capable of dancing ’til dawn every night of the week. There was something wrong and he knew, in his heart, that it was to do with him.

  Eden studied the abrupt signature. There were tiny marks on the paper as though she had made several false starts at ending the note. What had she almost said? Had she been on the point of sending him her love? His hand clenched around the note, crumpling it as he sneered at himself for such a foolish dream. More likely Maude had wrestled with endings that would show her desire to set a proper distance between them, had failed to find something suitable and had simply put her name.

  She liked him and he did not subscribe to the convenient fiction that unmarried young ladies were not possessed of any feelings of passion or desire separate from those of chaste love, so why should she not want him as a lover? But love? Did she share that overwhelming feeling he had only just discovered for himself?

  Maude knew him too well, had seen into the space inside him that he had never realised was there and which he now knew was an inability to care for another person as she should be cared for. With so much love herself, she must not put herself into the power of someone who could only take from her, never give as she deserved.

  He looked down at his big, scarred hands holding the scrap of paper, the hands of a man who worked for his living. She was a lady. And he was not a gentleman. Somehow, knowing that he was a Ravenhurst, and yet being outside that charmed circle, made it worse, not better, and even their cautious friendship would be withdrawn if they realised that a black sheep from the wrong side of the blanket was compromising Maude.

  Of course she could not love him. Carefully he smoothed out the note and laid his blotter on top of it, then got up to go and make someone else’s life hell. And tonight he would go and seek some undemanding, uncomplicated professional female company and put Maude Templeton out of his mind and his heart and his soul.

  ‘Aah.’ Maude let out a long sigh and felt her shoulders drop as she relaxed. Coming home to Knight’s Fee always did that. The remains of the ruined tower of the long-abandoned castle poked up from the wood that clothed the hill slope and the old house sprawled beneath it, dreaming above its water meadows in the countryside.

  Her father joked that each succeeding generation of Templetons had studied architectural developments carefully, then had built a wing, or made some alteration, in the least distinguished style of their time. Yet for all its rambling layout and lack of coherence or sophistication, the whole was
a simply charming, unpretentious home.

  Here the smoke and fogs that beset London gave way to clear skies and the air had a freshness that had Maude itching to find her boots and go for a long walk.

  Would Eden like it here? She had no idea what he thought of the English countryside, so very different to the land he had grown up in. Would she ever be able to show him Knight’s Fee, walk with him through the woods where soon the primroses would cluster under the beeches, and bluebells fill sunlit glades heady with their scent and the drone of the nectar-drunk bees?

  ‘Mrs Williams, good afternoon.’ The housekeeper came bustling into the hall, her face wreathed in smiles. ‘An impromptu visit, I’m sorry I didn’t send warning. Now, tell me, how does everyone go on?’

  The housekeeper’s news kept Maude distracted for a good hour while they sat and drank tea and Mrs Williams made efforts to tempt her to buttered scones and jam.

  ‘You need fattening up, my lady, you’re too pale. I’ll get you the creamiest milk from the dairy for your breakfasts and tell Cook to make some sustaining dishes. That London life isn’t good for a young lady like yourself—you need the fresh air and proper wholesome food to put roses in your cheeks.’ She cocked her head to one side like an inquisitive blackbird. ‘But I expect all the young gentlemen will be pining if you are away for long.’ Maude felt herself blush, and the housekeeper, who had known her all her life, chuckled richly. ‘Or just one young gentleman, perhaps?’

  ‘It’s all right, darling. It happens to the best of gentlemen, you just lie back, sweetheart, and we’ll soon have your sugar stick sitting up and taking interest.’ Mrs Cornwallis’s latest acquisition, a tall, buxom blonde with big blue eyes and absolutely no resemblance to a certain hazel-eyed brunette, reached out and trailed a hand expertly up Eden’s thigh as he sat on the edge of the bed and grimly contemplated an apparently celibate future.

  He had chosen this girl—Sally—quite deliberately, as a complete contrast to the woman who was haunting his mind and obsessing his body. Far from being incapable, his state of arousal had been uncomfortably insistent, right up to the moment he started taking his clothes off and was faced with the reality of the woman on the wide bed.

  It now appeared that something that felt uncomfortably like his non-existent conscience was preventing him from making love to anyone else but Maude. If nothing else, it was convincing proof that he was in love, Eden thought with grim humour. No one had told him about these inconvenient aspects of the condition.

  He took hold of Sally’s skilfully exploring hand and placed it firmly on the coverlet. ‘Don’t trouble yourself, I’ve just concluded that what I need is a brunette,’ he said with a wry smile for his own predicament. ‘You’ll be paid, never fear.’ He felt the bed shift as she came up on her knees behind him, pressing the whole curvaceous length of her torso against his naked back and whispering tantalising suggestions in his ear. ‘No, I don’t think your brown-haired friend Jeanie joining us would help, either.’

  He could only hope, he thought as he found his shirt and pulled it on, that once he had spoken to Maude, had finally put an end to their strange relationship, that he could accept her loss and get back to something approaching normal. He was not cut out for self-denial, that was certain, he decided, tossing money on to the side table and finding a reassuring smile for the pouting Sally. He wasn’t cut out either for having his mind fogged with daydreams of unobtainable women, not since he had mooned after Guilia, the cook’s seventeen-year-old daughter when he was thirteen.

  ‘Damn it, Maude,’ he muttered, jogging down the staircase into the brothel’s reception hall, ‘why don’t you come home?’

  Maude woke to sunshine and a soft breeze. A perfect day for a walk to her favourite place for thinking, she realised with relief, cajoling a small picnic basket out of Cook, who grumbled that she’d wanted to make sure her ladyship had three good, solid meals, not mimsy cold stuff, even if it did include her special chicken pie and a big slice of fruit cake.

  She then had to fight off Mrs Williams’ attempts to send her out with a footman at her heels to carry the basket and protect her from nameless dangers in her own woods. Finally, sturdy boots laced up, an ash stick in one hand and the basket in the other, Maude was able to escape out through the kitchen garden and up the steeply sloping path to the castle ruins.

  Panting slightly, she scrambled up the last few feet of rough path and on to one of the slabs of stone that lay scattered around what had once been the little castle the first Templeton had built to lay claim to this land. It was a favourite spot, flat enough to sit, south facing to catch the sun and with a view out over the wide acres down to the river. The sight of it brought a pleasure that was almost painful in its intensity.

  Could she give this up for Eden? If he loved her, she would have to, for her own world would shun her and she could not expect him to visit Knight’s Fee in a hole-and-corner way, as though she was ashamed of him. Her first euphoria on discovering that he was a Ravenhurst had given way to the realisation that this only made things worse. Their very prominence, her close relationship to them, emphasised all too clearly Eden’s circumstances. She had wanted to rush to her friends, tell them all about their charismatic new cousin—now she found herself desperate to keep it secret from them.

  Papa would never cast her off, she was sure of that, but he was a man with a position to maintain, prominent friends and associates—he would have to show his disapproval of the match in public.

  If Eden loved her: that was the key. She would tell him, she was decided upon that. Tell him, straight out, how she had loved him since she had first seen him, how she had come to the Unicorn to be with him, beg him to tell her the truth about his feelings. If he did not love her, then she would sell him the Unicorn, keeping her identity a secret and…And what?

  Maude sat down on the bare stone, drew up her knees and rested her chin on them. Retreat here to Knight’s Fee and become a country spinster? A society marriage with both partners frank about the absence of love between them was one thing—to marry one man while nursing a broken heart for another, was something else.

  Maude stayed all day, high on the hillside, occasionally stretching her legs to walk through the woods, always coming back to her eyrie. She ate her lunch, more hungry than she could remember being for weeks, then amused herself luring a robin close with crumbs. He proved a willing confidante, cocking his head to listen as she talked to him, flying down with a whirr of wings to hunt through the grass before coming back for another fragment of cheese.

  ‘I can’t tell Eden about the Unicorn until I know how he feels,’ she explained when the robin flew up to perch on the basket handle, watching with black beady eyes. ‘Otherwise how will I ever be certain that it did not influence what he says? He is passionate about that theatre. And ruthless.’ It was hard to have to believe that about the man she loved, but this was no time to delude herself about the darkness in him that she so much wanted to overcome. ‘Passionate and ruthless enough, perhaps, to marry me to get it.’

  The bird was a good listener, but not much use for helpful advice. ‘I should wait until after the Musicale, don’t you think? Or before?’ The trill of song from a perch in the hawthorn bush gave no guidance. ‘After,’ Maude decided. ‘If he says no, I don’t think I’ll have the courage to stay in London. Oh, robin, if Eden doesn’t want me, do you think I’d ever find someone as kind as Papa instead, like Mama did?’

  Why the tears should come then, Maude did not know, but it seemed she could not stop them, letting them flow unchecked down her cheeks, blurring the view of the valley. ‘Eden.’ She hugged her knees tighter, bent her face to them, letting the moisture soak into the fine wool. ‘Oh, Eden, I love you so much.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘You look so much better!’ Jessica enfolded Maude in a huge hug. ‘It must be all that country air.’

  ‘All that country cooking, to be truthful,’ Maude smiled. ‘It is a miracle I can get into any of
my gowns. How is everything and everyone?’

  ‘Everything is fine, if you mean the Musicale. As for everyone, we are all well, thank you. The only person who is not very well is Mr Hurst.’

  ‘Is he sick? An accident?’ Maude could make no attempt to hide her anxiety.

  ‘Far from it. So far as one can tell, he’s as strong as a horse. No, it’s his temper. I swear the man has not smiled since you left and the slightest error or omission amongst his company, or the men, is dealt with in a manner which brings the Grand Turk vividly to mind. As for the ladies, he endures our shortcomings with a courtesy that will probably induce frostbite before much longer—I cannot begin to tell you how glad we all are that you have returned to tame the beast.’

  ‘Oh.’ Maude could not help the smile that spread across her face. ‘Do you think he missed me?’ Then her fragile confidence dipped again. ‘Or, perhaps he is annoyed that I left him with all the work.’

  ‘I rather suspect the former.’ Jessica grinned. ‘The man thrives on work. No, I think he has been pining, although Eden Hurst’s version of that condition ensures that all around share in the misery.’ She pulled Maude down to sit beside her. ‘Has he said anything to you?’

  ‘Nothing definite,’ Maude said with a sigh. ‘But he is so gentle with me, so tender—and he seems happy, and able to show that happiness, when he is with me. And then, something happens to remind him of who we are and it all vanishes. Or perhaps it is true, what he says, and he simply does not know how to love and that can never be cured.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘I am resolved to tell him, Jessica, tell him exactly how I feel about him. But not until after the Musicale. May I tell Papa that I will stay on for a while with you that evening?’