Rake's Reform

“Oh, you are quite impossible!” In spite of herself, in spite of everything, she found her mouth tugging up at the corners.

“You can smile, then?” he said lightly. “I was beginning to wonder if you considered it a sin.”

“No.” She sobered, feeling guilty that for a second or two she had almost forgotten Jem. “But I cannot say that I much in the mood for merriment at present.”

“No.” The hint of mockery, of invitation, left his face and voice as he glanced at the cottage. “That is understandable enough in the circumstances. You have not told me where I might send word. The Rectory?”

“No, Pettridges Hall,” she said with inexplicable satisfaction, having overheard his comments about the likely owner of the trap through the open cottage window. “I have no connection with the Rectory and no fondness for reforming tracts.”

“I am delighted to hear it,” he said without the slightest trace of embarrassment. “Especially since it seems we are to be neighbours. I have just become the new owner of Southbrook, which I understand borders the Pettridges estate.”

“You have bought Southbrook?” Janey’s face lit as she looked at him with unhidden delight. “That is wonderful!”

The dark brows lifted, mocking her faintly. “I am flattered by your enthusiasm to have me for a neighbour.”

“It is not for you in particular, sir, I meant merely that it is wonderful that Southbrook has been bought at last,” Janey said, and knew as she caught the flicker of amusement in the pale blue eyes that she had spoken just a little too quickly to be completely convincing either to him or herself. “The land has lain idle so long and there are so many men in the village who desperately need work.”

“I stand corrected,” he said drily. “Though I feel honour bound to confess that I did not buy the estate from any sense of philanthropic duty. I accepted it in lieu of a card debt after the owner assured me it was no longer his family home. We are on our way to inspect the property now.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, her voice flat again suddenly. “You are not familiar with the estate, then?” she asked, thinking that he and his companion would undoubtedly take one look and return to town forthwith, as had all the other potential purchasers.

“Not yet. Why?” he asked sharply. For a moment she considered warning him about the leaking roof, the broken windows, the last five years of complete neglect that had followed upon twenty of inadequate maintenance, but then she decided against it. There was always a chance that he might see beyond Southbrook’s failings to its original beauty and decide to restore the estate.

“Oh—no reason,” she replied, carefully giving her attention to the child in her arms who was beginning to grizzle and wriggle. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked whom I should ask for?”

“Janey.” Stupidly, for no reason she could think of, she answered with the name with which she had been known to family and friends for the first sixteen years of her life. “Miss Hilton, Miss Jane Hilton, I mean,” she stammered slightly as the straight black brows lifted again.

“Jane,” he repeated it with a half-laugh. “Plain Jane.”

“Yes,” she said defensively. It was a jest she had endured more times than she could count from her guardian’s son and daughter. “What of it?”

“Nothing.” Again his narrow lips curved. “Somehow I did not think you would be an Araminta or Arabella, Miss Hilton.”

“Jono! Are you coming through or not?” Lord Derwent called impatiently.

“I must go. I think your trap would be better there by the gate, but if you wish—”

“No, your friend was right, it was a stupid place to leave it,” she admitted ruefully. “I was thinking only of how to break the news to Jem’s mother. I am sorry for the inconvenience.”

“It is of no consequence.” He smiled at her as he gathered up the reins. “Good day, Miss Hilton, I shall send word as soon as I can.”

“Thank you, Mr—” she began to say and then realised she did not even know his name.

“Lindsay,” he called over his shoulder as he sent the bays forward, “Jonathan Lindsay.”

She stood staring after him in disbelief. That was the Honourable Jonathan Lindsay? That laconic mocking dandy had made the passionate speech, demanding better conditions for the labouring poor that she had read in the paper? Surely not! And yet he had offered to help Jem, a boy he had never met.

For a moment, as she watched the phaeton disappear down the long winding lane, she felt like chasing after it and begging him to take on Southbrook. If she were honest, it was not only because a humane landlord would make such a difference to so many in the village, but because he had made her feel truly alive for the first time since she had arrived in England.

“Miss, miss…” The child who had been swinging on the gate came and tugged at her skirt. “Have you brought us something, miss? I’m hungry—”

“Yes, Sam. Some broth, some bread and some preserves,” she answered, still staring after the phaeton, “and some gingerbread, if you promise to be a good boy for your mother.”

She broke off, frowning as she watched the little boy who was already running for the door, his too thin arms and legs flying in all directions. Even with what she could persuade cook to let her have from the kitchen, they were not getting enough to eat, nor were at least half a dozen other families in the village.

As farm after farm took to the new threshing machines, there would be more men out of work this autumn—and she could do nothing, since she had no control of her estate, nor access to the fortune left her by her grandfather until she was twenty-one. And five months was far too long for Sam and the other families, who would starve and freeze this winter. There was nothing she could do, nothing—heiress she might be, but she was almost as powerless as poor Jem in his prison cell.

Biting her lip, she adjusted the child on her hip again as she limped slowly up the little herringbone brick path to the cottage door. As ever when she was tired, the leg she had broken a year ago had begun to ache. But there was no time to think of that now, not when Mrs Avery stood in the doorway, her face grey and desperate.

“He’ll be so scared, miss, so frightened,” the older woman blurted out. “I’d rather it was me than him.”

“I know,” she said helplessly.

“I’ve got to go to him, miss.” Mrs Avery caught her arm. “I’ve got to!”

“I will take you tomorrow, I am sure they will let you visit,” Janey said huskily as she guided the other woman back into the little dark room, where the other four Avery children were huddled upon the box bed, pale and silent. As she looked from one thin, pinched miserable face to another, the rage in her bubbled up afresh. If Jonathan Lindsay failed them, she would not let them hang Jem! She would not! Not even if she had to break him out of gaol herself.

Chapter Two

“Great God, Jono!” Lord Derwent broke the lengthy silence which had ensued after the phaeton drew up before the edifice of Southbrook House. “You took this in lieu of ten thousand? I should not give five hundred for the whole place! The park is nothing but weeds, the woods looked as if they had not been managed in half a century and as for this—” he gestured to the ivy-masked façade of the house “—look at it! There is not a whole pane of glass in the place, and what the roof is like I hate to think…”

“Perfect proportions, though,” Jonathan Lindsay said thoughtfully as he, too, surveyed the house. “See how the width of the steps exactly balances the height of the columns on the portico. Come on, Perry, let’s look inside now we’re here.”

Knotting the ribbons loosely, he leapt lithely down from the box.

“Do we have to?” Derwent groaned.

There was no answer. Jonathan Lindsay was already striding across the weed-choked gravel of the drive.

“You are not serious about intending to live here?” Lord Derwent pleaded an hour later, after they had inspected the house from attic to cellar. “It’s damp, dusty and—” he paused, shivering in his blue frock coat “—colder than an ice house in December.”

“Nothing that someone else’s industry will not put right,” his friend said absently, as he stared up at the painted ceiling of the salon adjacent to the ballroom. “This ceiling is very fine, don’t you think?”

“It might be,” Lord Derwent said unenthusiastically, “if you could see it for dust and cobwebs. I’m sorry, Jono, but I simply can’t understand why you would wish to reside here when Ravensfield is at your disposal.”

“I never shared my late uncle’s taste for Gothic fakery, you know that, Perry.”

“Yes, but it has every convenience, it’s in damned good hunting country and the agent runs the estate tighter than a ship of the line: you wouldn’t need to lift a finger from one year end to the next. Local society’s not up to much, I’ll grant you that, but it won’t be any different here.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Jonathan smiled. “I thought the neighbourhood showed some promise of providing entertainment.”

“You mean that extraordinary young woman?”

“Ah, so you thought she was extraordinary, too,” he said, as he began to walk slowly back towards the entrance hall.

“Extraordinarily rude,” Lord Derwent replied huffily. “It is scarcely my fault some idiot boy is going to get himself turned off, but she looked at me as if she’d have preferred to see me in a tumbril on the way to Madame Guillotine.”