The Outrageous Belle Marchmain

The sun passed behind a cloud; the moorland grasses shivered. ‘You’ve clearly not lost your pride, ma’am,’ Adam said at last. ‘May I escort you on your way?’

‘I know my way very well, I assure you!’

He clenched his teeth and said with icy politeness, ‘Then will you—condescend to let me help you mount your horse? Or are we going to stand here till the sun goes down?’

She hesitated. ‘My thanks.’

His mouth pressed in a thin line, he put his big hands round her waist and lifted her easily into her saddle. Then he went to check her mare’s bridle—and give himself time to cool down.

She was feather-light. She was icy with damned arrogance. She’d set his pulse racing with rage—and a flicker of something else even more dangerous.

He looked up at her and patted her dappled mare’s neck. ‘All set,’ he said flatly. ‘You’d best be off.’

She nodded her head in curt thanks, then without a backward glance she rode swiftly and competently down the path.

Adam Davenant shrugged on his coat and watched her go, his gaze narrowed.

How her pretty green eyes had glittered with contempt when she spoke his name. Mr Davenant has no more right to this land than those black crows circling above the trees.

She hadn’t recognised him. But one thing was very clear—she hated Adam Davenant like poison. He’d already guessed who she was. If his guess was correct, she had a brother who was heading for big, big trouble. With him.

Chapter Two

London—two months later

Belle Marchmain rather distractedly picked up a length of pink ribbon from the display on the counter, then put it down again in the wrong place. Apprehension shadowed her dark-lashed green eyes as she said at last, ‘I’m sincerely hoping this is some foolish jest of yours, Edward.’

Outside in the Strand the May dusk was starting to fall and lamplighters with clanking ladders were hurrying about their business. Normally Belle relished this time of quiet after a busy day. Once her shop’s doors were locked she would wander possessively amongst the bright lengths of silk and taffeta, herself resplendent in one of the boldly extravagant costumes that were fast making her one of the most talked-about modistes in London.

But just now, her current attire—a striped jacket of black and green over a matching taffeta skirt, with green satin ribbons adorning her luxuriant black curls—seemed ridiculously flippant. Futile, in fact, in the face of approaching disaster.

Belle was twenty-seven years old and had learnt to cope with much in her life. The humiliation in slow, steady steps of her once-proud family. The death of her husband five years ago. But now sheer, blind panic threatened to close in.

It had been no surprise to see her brother, of course, at her glass-paned door, ringing the bell impatiently. She’d known he was in London for two weeks, staying at Grillon’s Hotel in Albemarle Street—’catching up on business and old friends,’ Edward had told her blithely when he called on her a few days ago.

He’d certainly been spending money. Grillon’s was expensive and so were the new clothes he was sporting: new boots, a new silk waistcoat, a new coat of blue superfine and smart yellow pantaloons. And now he perched on the end of her counter, full of casual confidence in his older sister’s ability to sort out his latest mess.

‘You can help me, can’t you, Belle?’ he cajoled. ‘This little shop of yours is doing mighty well, I hear!’

Just then a young woman with curly brown hair burst in from the back room. ‘Madame, should I tell the girls—excuse me, I had no idea you had company!’

Gabby—Belle’s French assistant—bobbed a curtsy to Edward, whose eyes, Belle noted with exasperation, lit up at the sight of her. Belle replied, more curtly than she meant to, ‘I’ll be with you shortly, Gabby. Yes, send Jenny and Susan home by all means, and thank them for all their hard work today, will you?’

‘Of course, madame! But there is something else—’

Belle interrupted, ‘Tell me later, would you?’

Edward watched Gabby go, then started talking again. ‘I just need a little more money, Belle.’

‘To pay your hotel bill? To pay for yet more new clothes? Edward, I am not doing well enough to repay your debts as well as my own.’ Belle had sat rather suddenly in one of the dainty gilt chairs her customers used.

‘But your business is thriving. You must be plump in the pocket!’ Edward, who was two years younger than she was, eagerly pulled up a chair to sit opposite her—admiring, she noticed, his own reflection in a nearby mirror. He was slenderly built and with the same shade of green eyes as she, the same raven black hair. But there was a hint of wilfulness, of weakness about his mouth. ‘You have clients galore,’ he went on, ‘you have servants! And dash it, Belle, you’re being as ratty as when you came back from Sawle Down that day in March, all of a stew about something.’

If Edward had been in any way perceptive, he’d have seen how his sister’s cheeks became a little paler. ‘I was saying goodbye to the land that was once ours,’ she said quietly. ‘As for my servants, Edward, as you call them, I have Gabby, two assistants and a manservant—Matt—who works for me a few hours a week. That’s all.’

Edward shrugged. ‘Yes, but you live the high life, sister mine—you’re always being invited to routs and parties. And when you stayed with me and Charlotte you said you were even thinking of setting up another shop in Bath!’

‘It came to naught,’ she answered rather tightly.

‘Hmm.’ Bored already, Edward was picking up a little silk fan. ‘Nice trinket, this.’

Belle snatched at it and put it down with something of a snap. ‘Edward—’ she was gazing directly at her younger brother ‘—Edward, I think you’d better tell me everything.’

So he did. And Belle’s heart sank almost as low as she’d known it, while Edward recounted the entire sorry tale. In which everyone in the world was at fault, except, of course, himself.

At twenty-one Edward had inherited the Hathersleigh family’s estate near Bath—or what remained of it—and within the year he’d married his sweetheart, Charlotte. By the time of their wedding Belle was living in London. And whenever she saw Edward he was forever telling her how the estate was thriving, and, of course, how clever he was.

Just over a year ago he’d announced to her that he’d sold a large portion of the estate’s land to a neighbour—Adam Davenant. Belle had felt apprehension and more. She’d never met the man. He owned, she was aware, estates all over the country and wasn’t often in Somerset. But she knew her father had loathed Davenant—called him a money-grubbing upstart.

‘Did you have to sell to him, Edward?’ Belle had asked at the time.

‘Yes,’ Edward said flatly, ‘and Davenant was desperate to buy. You know what all these new-money families are like, Belle. They want as many acres as possible in hopes of making themselves respectable.’

Belle had grieved the loss of the land at Sawle Down, but had hoped that Edward would concentrate on making a success of what remained of their ancestral estate near Bath. Hoped that marriage and family responsibilities might perhaps be the making of him.

Some hope. The amount Davenant offered for the land had, in fact, turned out to be derisory—though he was now set to make a fortune from his purchase, because the sudden surge in price of Bath stone had made the old quarry there workable once more.

He must have known. Must have deliberately set out to swindle them. And now, with the London dusk closing in around her and Edward staring at her with that half-defiant, half-scared look that she knew of old, Belle rubbed her temples with her fingertips as her brother told her anew—rather resentfully, as if it were her fault—that last summer’s harvest had been a poor one, thanks to the rain that had ruined his wheat. ‘And the taxes, Belle! Last year this blasted government brought in new taxes on barley, on farm horses—anything that grew or moved, basically!’

Then Edward proceeded to remind her that the roof of Hathersleigh Manor had needed replacing entirely. ‘Uncle Philip neglected the place so badly,’ Edward complained. ‘The roof had to be fixed, or the thing would have caved in.’

Their father’s brother, the dour Philip Hathersleigh, had overseen the estate from their father’s death fourteen years ago until Edward reached his majority. Belle didn’t feel particularly close to Uncle Philip—even less to his shrewish wife Mildred—but she’d formed the opinion that Philip was a sound, careful man whose advice Edward had rashly spurned, with the result that Uncle Philip and his wife had retreated back to their estate in the north with little love lost.

‘Look after the paperwork, young man,’ Uncle Philip had said grimly to Edward. ‘And get yourself sound legal advice, if you want to stand any chance of holding your inheritance together.’

Edward had blithely ignored Uncle Philip’s warnings; her brother’s desk, Belle couldn’t help but notice on her March visit, was overflowing with neglected files and unread correspondence. And, of course, with bills.

‘So the new roof and taxes got you into debt,’ she now said steadily. From the back of the shop she could hear the merry voices of her assistants making their departure. Could hear Gabby’s laughter and Matt’s deep voice as he began to lock up. ‘Surely though, Edward,’ went on Belle, trying to keep calm, ‘the income from the estate could have kept your debts at bay?’

‘I did get on top of my debts, Belle. Or at least, I thought I had. You see, back in February—it was just before you came to stay with us, actually—I sold some of the sheep from that land Davenant purchased from me last year.’

‘You did—what?’ breathed Belle. She felt suddenly cold.

Edward shrugged, but his cheeks were pink. ‘I sold some of Davenant’s stock. He’s so rich I thought he wouldn’t even notice.’

Belle said, ‘You stole from him. Oh, Edward. You stole from that man.’

Edward jumped to his feet and walked around the candlelit shop with his hands thrust defiantly in the pockets of his new coat. ‘Stealing? Hardly—his sheep had strayed because he’d not bothered maintaining his fences. And dash it all, Belle, you could say that Davenant was stealing from me, you know? He paid me a pitiful amount for that land I sold him and if that isn’t stealing, I don’t know what is! Belle—Belle, are you all right?’