Once an Innocent (14 page)

“Jordan singles you out,” Clara said softly. Naomi looked sharply at the other woman, who waved a reassuring hand. “I mean nothing by it, only that I believe I was correct in asking for your assistance. It was good of you to play last night. Did he ask you to do so?”

Naomi nodded.

“Just as I thought,” Clara continued. “He seemed more himself afterward. Thank you.”

“Clara,” Naomi said, steering the conversation away from the person who had her emotions in a jumble, “I wondered if there would be any opportunity to do some charity work during my visit.”

Clara tilted her head. “I don’t see why not. The vicar at the village church would know where the need is in this area.”

“If it’s all right with you, then, I shall go speak to him, and perhaps organize a project for the ladies.”

Kate had made her way up and down the nave and now returned to her mother and Naomi. Her cheeks bore roses dotted with her freckles. “Twenty-two columns in all,” she reported. “Eleven on each side.”

“What a feat it must have been to erect even one,” Clara said, smiling at her daughter. Glancing back to Naomi, she nodded. “It’s not my place to say what you may or may not do here, Naomi. I’m merely hostess, not mistress. If you want to organize some work, you’re more than welcome to do so — but please don’t become so busy helping others that you forget to enjoy yourself. This
is
a party, after all.”

Kate tugged her mother’s arm and led her into the tower. Naomi lingered behind, enjoying the solitude for a few minutes.

Strolling out of the church, she made her way toward the river, thinking to examine the infirmary. Before she got there, she was startled by the sound of a voice.

“’Ave you seen zis? I found it some months back.
La port
was weeds all over — not seen for many years, I think. What do you call zis …
petite cave?”

Curious, Naomi peeked around a wall and spotted Jordan’s uncle, Sir Randell, in the company of a boy. At a glance, she guessed him to be about fifteen. His dark hair fell in waves to his shoulders, and he wore finely tailored clothes.

“‘Cellar’ is the word you want,” Sir Randell said.

“Une cave à vin
, per’aps?” the boy suggested. His French was enunciated with clean tones, the universal mark of a good education.

“Perhaps wine, perhaps just a root cellar.” Sir Randell crouched and grasped a heavy, iron ring on a dark wood door, flush with the ground. He tugged ineffectually at it. “Between the rust and the damp, I don’t think we’ll be getting in there. It’s probably flooded. But good find, nevertheless, lad. I’ve lived here my whole life and never noticed that door.”

The French boy turned around and spotted Naomi. His dark eyes flew open wide, and he tugged on his companion’s sleeve.

Sir Randell looked up sharply at the lad, then turned to see what had him so alarmed. “Lady Naomi!” Wiping his palms down the front of his striped waistcoat, he glanced at the boy and pinched his lips together crossly.

Naomi stepped forward to greet the gentlemen. “Good morning, Sir Randell.”

The older man cleared his throat and wiped his hands on his waistcoat again. He seemed agitated, Naomi thought. “Lady Naomi,” he said, gesturing to his companion, “allow me to present Enrique Soto Vega.”

The slender youth gave a crisp bow.

Naomi nodded in return. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Master Soto Vega.” The presence of a French boy with a Spanish name puzzled her immensely. “Are you also a visitor to Lintern Abbey?”

The youth opened his mouth, then slammed it shut again. His large, dark eyes went to Sir Randell, as though asking permission.

“Permit me,” Sir Randell said. “Enrique does not yet have command of the English language. You see, Lady Naomi, he is my nephew’s ward.” He gave a firm nod, as though closing the subject with that terse explanation.

Naomi shook her head, incredulous. “I’m all amazement, sir. Lord Freese has not mentioned a ward.”

An alarming thought rattled her. Naomi peered closely at Enrique’s face, searching for an Atherton family resemblance. It wasn’t unheard of for the by-blows of the nobility to be passed off as wards or fosterlings. Could this child have been sired by Lord Whithorn, or even Jordan himself? He had dark hair, but so did a great many people. He’d not yet come into his full height, but he would not be as tall as the Atherton men. Not only were his eyes dark, they were a bit rounder than Jordan’s and Sir Randell’s, lacking the heavy lid. He was a beautiful boy, even frightened and bewildered as he appeared to be. Enrique was angelic, while Jordan’s attractiveness was fiercer, more potent.
Perhaps not an illegitimate Atherton,
she thought.

Still, it was prodigiously odd Sir Randell claimed the boy could not speak English, when Naomi had heard him do so only a moment ago.

“Uncle!” Kate called. She and Clara crossed the green to join the others.

When Sir Randell introduced Enrique to the other ladies, Clara greeted him warmly. “So this is Enrique! At last. So nice to finally meet you, my dear.”

The boy nodded, but bit his lips and said nothing.

Kate smiled shyly at him. Enrique’s eyes slid to her, then jerked away at once.

“We must take our leave,” Sir Randell announced. “Come, Enrique; time for your lessons.”

The gentlemen left the abbey ruins at a good pace. Naomi could think of no reason for it, but it seemed Sir Randell was eager to be away from them.

“You know of Enrique?” she asked Clara. At the older woman’s affirming nod, she asked, “How long has he lived here? Lord Freese has never mentioned him in my hearing.”

“Four or five years,” Clara replied, “though Jordan only told us about Enrique a year ago. He was a war orphan Jordan found in Spain. He acted as Jordan’s page, and soon after Jordan returned home, he sent for Enrique to join him here.”

“What was a French orphan doing in Spain, I wonder?” Naomi mused.

Clara tilted her head. “Oh, no, my dear, Enrique is Spanish.”

Naomi stopped and frowned, perplexed. “I heard him speak French.”

“Perhaps he is tutored in French as well as English,” Clara suggested. “Jordan is providing the boy a gentleman’s education.” She wrapped her arm around Kate’s shoulders and smiled warmly. “To tell you the truth, Naomi, I didn’t know Jordan was capable of such a generous act. I’m very proud of him for taking the boy in. I daresay he’s kept it quiet because bringing a Spanish orphan home like a stray puppy is not precisely good
ton.”

“True,” Naomi allowed. Still, what she had stumbled upon compelled her to seek out Jordan at the earliest opportunity. She knew what she had heard. Enrique spoke French with the fluidity of a mother tongue, and his English carried a French accent. If that child was Spanish, Naomi would eat her bonnet.

• • •

Drawn by the allure of new discovery, Janine went to the library again half an hour before supper. She had no purpose in mind beyond furthering her acquaintance with the splendid collection. What a joy it had been to discover such a marvelous bibliotheca tucked away in this rural corner of Yorkshire.

A wood fire crackled happily in the fireplace, providing light and warmth. Both were appreciated, as her eyes no longer cooperated as they used to, and her fingers grew stiff and ached in the cold. Breathing in the smell of gently warmed leather bindings and old paper, she made her way to a shelf.

“Aristotle, Locke, Plato, Spinoza … You’re all here, my friends.” As she perused the contents of the philosophy section, followed by religious texts and mythologies, her heart was soon as warm as the rest of her. There was nothing quite like being surrounded by so much knowledge to give one a feeling of gladness and security.

Janine had long felt she would like to devise a way to be interred in a library when her time came. She quite liked the idea of cremation as practiced by Hindus and other civilizations throughout time. In their heyday, the northern barbarians kept the ashes of their dead in clay urns.

“I shouldn’t mind that,” she mused aloud while she continued down the shelves. “I would look very dignified on a stand or mantel.”

Like so many of her thoughts, however, that one was probably best kept to herself. Her nephew, Marshall, tolerated her eccentricities well enough, and Naomi rather doted on her. Grant, the middle child of the younger Lockwood generation, on the other hand, did not approve of her bookishness. And Caro, that odious beast, had scarcely had a word to say to her since the previous Duke of Monthwaite, Janine’s brother, had died. Caro had kept the peace with Janine solely for the sake of appearances but, propriety notwithstanding, would no doubt have an apoplectic fit if she caught wind of this notion.

“Ah, here we are,” Janine said upon finding the natural-sciences section near the front corner of the room. “Astronomy, physics … Oh, dear,” she tut-tutted, “alchemy should be with the mythologies.” Pulling the offending volume from the shelf, Janine turned and was startled by the sight of Sir Randell sitting in one of the two wingback chairs facing the fireplace. She let out a gasp and clutched the book to her chest. “Upon my word, sir, you gave me a fright! You should have made yourself known.”

The gentleman’s heavy brows crawled up his wide expanse of forehead. “And interrupt the conversation you were carrying on with yourself? That would have been frightfully rude, I daresay.”

Janine’s lips pinched together. “I do not talk to myself.”

Sir Randell grasped the arms of the chair with long fingers that did not look as though they complained in the cold. Upon standing, he ran his hands down his waistcoat and looked about the room. “No? Where is your companion, madam? I should like to greet him.”

He leveled a challenging look on her, and Janine felt heat rising in her face. Mercy, was she
blushing?
She had not done anything of the sort in … Well, she could not remember ever blushing. It must have only been a physiological response to the profound annoyance evoked by this ornery male. “If I were to talk to myself — which I do not! — I should be with a pleasanter conversationalist than present company provides.” Her nostrils flared and she raised her chin.

“It is not my intention to force my unwelcome company upon you, dear lady.” His tone was all politeness, but she could not help but feel he was laughing at her. “I must, however,” he said, raising one enviably long, healthy index finger, “point out that ’twas not I who foisted myself upon you but the other way ’round.” Gesturing toward a shelf on the far wall, he adopted the air of a concierge. “The novels are in this direction, if you are seeking a volume.”

He plucked the alchemy book from her hands and returned it to its place on the shelf.

Janine’s cheeks flamed with ire. Repellent man! “I have no desire for a novel,” she snapped. “Rather, I’d hoped to find a geological survey of the country surrounding Lintern Abbey.”

Sir Randell stalked to her. He was very tall with no hint of a stoop in his back, despite matching every one of her own fifty-three years and then some. His vivid blue eyes — almost identical to his nephew’s — compounded the unsettling quality of his person. He smirked down at her with undisguised dislike. “There is no such volume in the collection,” he said. “But if there was, I would not do you the disservice of turning it over to you.”

Janine’s eyes flashed defiance. “What I choose to read is no concern of yours.”

He shook his head once. She noticed a streak of dark hair above his left ear; the rest was a dignified silver. “Not so,” he stated. “The welfare of the weaker sex must concern all true gentlemen. It would not be a kindness to knowingly bewilder you with topics beyond your comprehension.”

Janine’s mouth dropped open, appalled at the affront. Her fingers clenched into fists at her side. The resulting dull pain throbbing up her arms only fueled her ire. “Sir, you did
not
just utter those foul words! Repent of them at once!”

“I cannot repent of that which I did not say,” he rejoined. “You will have to decide whether I spoke foul words or not.”

She fumed silently, shaking with the force of her vexation. Never had a human being gotten under her skin as quickly as this buffoon.

He, however, remained perfectly composed. His lips twitched, seeming to enjoy her reaction. “I remember you, Jeannie Lockwood, as you looked as a girl.”

Janine blinked and stepped back. No one had called her Jeannie in decades.

“Quite the antidote. Dowdy and overeducated by half.” Sir Randell reached past her to pull a book from a shelf. His arm passed close enough to her head that she felt the warmth of him on her temple skin. “Still, as the daughter of a duke, you must have had suitors. I wonder that you never married,” he mused, while examining the spine of his selection.

Dowdy? Unexpected self-consciousness crept over her and she glanced down at the loose bodice of her dress. Maybe she could have stood still a little longer for the seamstress, but it seemed such a waste of time. Clothes said nothing about the person she was where it mattered — in her mind.
There
resided her character and worth, not in the cut of her garments. “I never wished to marry,” she said stiffly.

At that, he chuckled. “Which is what females say when there aren’t any offers.”

His jibe struck a little too close to the truth. There had been a few offers from old widowers, but none from the dashing, young gentlemen making their first trips to the altar. Janine pursed her lips and stared at a portrait of a pair of hounds, hanging on the opposite wall, while she drew a few breaths and struggled to regain her composure. One of the advantages of growing older, she’d found, was no longer suffering embarrassment during lapses in conversation. Her agile mind generally had a reply at the ready as soon as she required one, but she felt no compulsion to speak before she was prepared to do so.

At last, she looked back at the irksome creature standing before her. “I assure you, Sir Randell, I did not marry because I
chose
not to marry. The word ‘spinster’ is inscribed on my very soul. Old maid. On the shelf.” She advanced toward him, propelled by a lifetime of witnessing injustice and prejudice against her sex. “I prefer any of those titles to ‘wife,’” she sneered. “Every man of my generation is just like you — odious, overbearing — wishing only to dominate and dictate to women, keeping us ignorant to facilitate control over half the world’s population. Well, I wouldn’t have it, sir!” she proclaimed, gesturing sharply. “Thank you for reminding me why I preferred the company of books to men, and for confirming that still to be the case.”