Chapter Four

F enella and Mr. Townsend set off from the inn not long afterward, and despite her qualms about the delay, she felt better for the short break and the meal. Even with the added entertainment.

That encounter between Mr. Townsend and the drunken stripling had been telling. It confirmed her suspicion that his earlier behavior wasn't typical. More than her safety—after all, she could have screamed for help if necessary—she'd been afraid her escort might start a brawl which would lead to unbearable delays. But Mr. Townsend had handled the boy with aplomb, and saved both Fenella and their quest. Those huge fists could have made his point, but he'd used his brain instead.

He became more interesting by the hour.

She tucked her chin into the rug to escape the strengthening wind. One gloved hand clutched the side of the rig against the swaying.

“Why don't you try and sleep?” he murmured as they sped past the high walls of some sleeping estate. Since leaving the inn, they'd spoken only a word or two, but the antagonism had vanished.

“I can't.”Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Brand coming to grief. Hurt and lying in a ditch. Lost in a wood. Worst of all, struggling to escape some faceless villain's clutches.

“Worrying won't find the lads any quicker.”

“I know," she said regretfully. “If it did, they'd be home right now.”

“We're still a couple of hours from the Beeches.”

She tugged the rug up higher, although cuddled up against Mr. Townsend, she wasn't cold. “I'm perfectly fine.”

“You're as taut as a sail in a high wind,” he said.

She blushed to realize that their physical nearness left her few secrets. But what did that matter when her son was lost? Her hand clenched on the side of the carriage, and she stared out across the moonlit landscape. All she could hear was the horses' hooves, the creak of the curricle, and the whistling wind. They combined into an ominous chant.

You're too late. You're too late.

“Stop expecting the worst,” Mr. Townsend said, without taking his attention from the road.

“I can't help it,” she muttered. “Perhaps…perhaps if you talk to me, it will help.”

“Talk?” He sounded like she'd asked him to turn somersaults in midair.

“Yes. Please. Something to take my mind off the boys.”

“I live to serve.”

“I doubt it.”

“What shall we discuss, my lady? The latest fashion in bonnets? Prinny's plans for the coronation? The best recipe for syllabub?”

“No,”she said, appreciating his efforts to ease her distress. She'd misjudged Mr. Townsend on their first meeting. He was far from a boor and a bully. “I'd like to know about you.”

“Me.” The flat tone conveyed no enthusiasm.

“Yes. Tell me about your life.”

“There isn't much to say.”

“I don't believe that.”

“Well, not much to interest a lady like you.”

“You needn't give me all the grisly details.” She was positive there had been grisly details. He was too capable not to have encountered and overcome trouble in his life. “I don't know… For example, were you born with money?”

“No. Can't you tell from the way I speak?”

“I…I like the way you speak. It's real.”

Many men dragged themselves up in the world. Most aped the aristocracy, usually not very well. She admired the way Mr. Townsend didn't try to hide where he came from. Despite his humble origins, he was a proud man—and given his success, he had every right to his pride.

A grunt of sardonic amusement. “It is, at that.”

“Well?”

He sighed. “Wouldn't you rather tell me about yourself?”

“No. That means talking about Brand. And right now—”

He spoke before she finished. That was something else she liked about Mr. Townsend. He was quick on the uptake. “My father was a mine manager in South Yorkshire. An honest, hardworking man. My mother was a foreigner.”

“A foreigner?” she asked, intrigued.

His firm mouth relaxed a fraction. “Aye, from Lancashire.”

She gave a short laugh. “How exotic.”

“There were four of us children. William was ten years older than me. I have two sisters, both married with half a dozen bairns between them. I'm the youngest.”

“Spoiled, no doubt?”

Then she was sorry she asked because it might remind him of their quarrel. But he continued in that easy bass baritone. “Aye. A right little terror. Local opinion had it that I'd end up hanged at the crossroads before I was done. But I turned into a solid enough citizen in the end. Once I finished my schooling at sixteen, I joined William in the shipping line he'd set up in Liverpool, mainly trading to America. That's when William Townsend Shipping became Townsend and Co.”

“And you worked your magic from the start?” The rumbling voice with its northern burr settled her jumping nerves in a most miraculous way. She was still afraid for Brand, but at least Mr. Townsend's life story helped her concentrate on something other than possible calamities.

“No. The vile tyrant made me work my way up through the business.” Affection deepened his voice when he spoke of his brother. “I started as a clerk. At a clerk's wages.”

“Oh, foul injustice. I'm sure you didn't like that.”

“Not at first. But I quickly learned that numbers are key in business. Luckily all that schooling had made me a wizard with arithmetic.”

She sighed in mock disappointment. “I'd imagined wild foreign adventures. Pirates. Mutinies. Treasure hunts. Lovely dusky maidens. Exploring unknown lands.”

“You're a romantic, lass.”

He'd called her lass a couple of times. Something silly and feminine in her melted into syrup every time he did. “Perhaps. Or perhaps your heroics at the inn turned my head.”

“Aye. I'm a right knight in shining armor.”

“So you did the books, and honed your financial genius, and eventually took over the company?”

“No. After a year or so, William took pity on me and put me to work on the ships as a common sailor.”

“At a common sailor's wages?”

“You're a right sharp lass,” he said. “Aye. But I didn't mind. I was out of England and discovering life. It was an exciting time for a lad of eighteen. By that stage, I'd convinced him to venture further afield than Massachusetts.”

“I knew you'd had adventures,” she said, pleased. “How I envy your travels. I've never been anywhere, when you've seen the whole world.”

“Most of it. China and Brazil and New South Wales and India and Russia, at the very least.”

“Will you tell me about them?” she asked.

So he did. And the carriage ate up the miles without her noticing, as he entertained her with tales of incredible deeds in far-flung places like Siam and the Indies and the South Pacific.

* * *

Fenella stirred from vividly colored dreams of foreign lands. All featuring a larger-than-life, dark-haired man who took every danger in his stride. It was easy to dream of danger when she felt so deliciously warm and safe.

Then she remembered Brandon, and she made a sound of distress.

“Hush, lass,” an impossibly deep voice purred just beneath her ear.

Oh, dear. She was curled up against Mr. Townsend, her head resting on his shoulder. He'd wrapped his greatcoat around both of them so she felt marvelously cocooned and cherished.

And she realized with an unpleasant shock quite how far she'd come from the woman who'd set out in his company, convinced he was an unmannerly brute.

Flustered she began to fight against the restricting coat. “Let me up.”

“Give me a second,” he said gently and swiftly unwound her.

Clumsily she lurched to sit up. Her eyes were scratchy with tiredness, and she rolled her head to ease stiff neck muscles. Bare, wintry farmland stretched around them. The moon sat low on the horizon.

“I went to sleep.” The words emerged as an accusation.

“Only for half an hour. I warned you that my life was a dull topic.”

She'd been anything but bored with his adventures in all those fairytale places. But that hypnotic voice, the long journey, and the quiet night had caught up with her.

“I'm sorry. I was lying all over you. How very…embarrassing. And how on earth could I sleep with Brandon in danger?” Self-disgust weighted her voice. Her ease with Mr. Townsend betrayed not only Brand, but Henry as well.

“You'd fretted yourself into exhaustion. It's a cold night, and I'm large and warm.”

“Still, it's not…”

He saved her from struggling for words to express her confused feelings. “We're nearly at the Beeches,” he said calmly.

She tugged the rug up around her hot cheeks, and told herself she was just tired and worried and overemotional. “Surely if the boys came this way, we'd have caught sight of them by now.”

“Who knows how long they were gone before the school discovered they were missing?” He turned the carriage between an impressive pair of gateposts crowned with stone lions. “If they found transport, they could beat us by hours.”

“Or they could have met with harm.”

His glance was reproving. “Don't lose your nerve now. You've been a pillar of strength so far. If they're not at the house, all isn't lost. We'll retrace our journey and track them down.”

As they bowled along a beech-lined drive, Fenella fought the urge to clutch at Mr. Townsend's brawny arm like a child seeking reassurance. “You sound very certain.”

“Carey is a clever lad. I don't know much about him, but I know that. And his friend is blessed with courage and resourcefulness.”

Startled, she stared at him. “How can you know that?”

For the first time, Mr. Townsend smiled fully. And despite fretting over Brandon, Fenella felt her world shift on its axis.

When she'd first seen Anthony Townsend, she'd considered him striking rather than attractive. Stern. Commanding. Monumental. But his smile made him look younger and more approachable. She realized with a shock that he couldn't be much older than her own thirty. No more than thirty-five, certainly. The lopsided curve of his lips over his large white teeth, and the humor lighting those dark brown eyes turned him into a man of more than ordinary appeal.

Smiling, he was breathtakingly charming. And dazzlingly attractive.

Dear heaven, she was in trouble.

“Because his mother is an exceptional woman.”

Since her recent emergence from mourning, she'd laughed away a thousand extravagant compliments. None made her blush like Mr. Townsend's unexpected praise. She wasn't sure what to say, but luckily a huge stone pile of a building came into view and saved her.

“Goodness me,” she gasped in awe.

He laughed softly. “If I'm playing the country gentleman, I'm going to do it right.”

“No half measures?”

“None at all.”

“Aren't we going to see Carey's old nurse?” After the troubling revelation that somewhere between London and the Beeches, she'd developed an unwelcome penchant for this complex man, she was grateful to retreat to prosaic matters.

Following her one true love's death, she'd sworn to devote herself to her duty as a mother. It hadn't felt like a sacrifice. She'd loved once. She never wanted to love again. Anyway, the prospect of ever finding another man attractive had been so remote as to seem impossible.

For nearly five years, she'd locked herself away with memories of her young husband and their life together. Even re-entering society this year hadn't pierced her essential isolation.

But now, she wondered if she was over life after all. Tonight long-buried feelings stirred, and she resented it. She had no wish to brave the hurly-burly of attraction. Losing love had nearly destroyed her. She couldn't risk going through that again.

“Nanny Penn lives in the east wing.” He drew the horses to a stop on the circular drive before the sprawling stone house with its rows of tall windows and imposing columned portico.

“Lucky Nanny Penn,” she said faintly.

“I bought it after I came to a house party. I haven't decided what I'll do with it. I still haven't been over the whole house—or the grounds.”

“You bought it. Without seeing all of it?”

“Aye,” he said, as if that was nothing extraordinary.

Fenella had never known want, and she moved in the highest social circles. But the thought of having the cash to pick up an entire estate on a whim made her finally accept the gossip about Mr. Townsend's wealth.

He leaped down with a vigor that belied his night of driving, and moved to offer his hand. She shivered as she accepted his help, not entirely because he'd taken his big, warm body away. “It might have had a leaky roof or dry rot. The fields might be prone to flooding.”

“I sent a team of surveyors and farming experts down before I signed anything. I'm not one of your careless aristocrats, my lady. I work hard for my brass, and my brass works hard for me.”

“So the building is sound?”

“It's rundown. That's how I persuaded old Grantley to sell. He didn't have the cash for repairs. Now I plan to turn this into a place Carey will be proud to come home to.”

She couldn't fault his concern for his nephew. And knowing how he cared, she found the courage to catch his arm as he turned away to check the horses. At her touch, he went stock still. Whereas her words faded to nothing under the heat sizzling through her at the contact.

She snatched her hand away and stared bewildered at him. She was acting like a silly schoolgirl. And it wasn't as if they'd never touched before. In her opinion, there had been far too much touching since Mr. Townsend had blown into her drawing room like a tropical hurricane.

She swallowed to ease the inexplicable tightness in her throat. “You'll think I'm presumptuous.”

His mouth quirked. “I'm a plain man who appreciates plain speaking. Surely you've worked that out, Lady Deerham.”

“In that case, I hope you'll listen to a little well-meant advice.”

“Go ahead,” he said neutrally as a groom ran out from the side of the house to take charge of the horses.

She lowered her voice. “I know you're angry with Carey, and you think he ought to be punished.”

Mr. Townsend folded his arms and regarded her with an unreadable expression. How she wished the light was better so she could interpret his reaction to her interference. “He's caused needless inconvenience and upset. I'm hoping that's all he's caused, and there are no other unfortunate consequences from this prank.”

“Yes, he has. But you love the boy and want to build his trust.”

“You're asking me to tiptoe around what he's done?”

“I'm asking you not to go in with all guns blazing.”

“The way I did with you?”

What was the point of lying? “Yes.”

“So I just pat him on the head and say no harm done?”

She sighed. “If they're both safe—and I pray they are—no harm has been done.” When he didn't answer, she plowed on. “Just give him a chance to explain before you start tearing strips off him.”

“What a poor opinion you have of me.”

“Not at all. Not…now.” She stopped before she said too much. Anyway, this was about Carey, not her mixed-up responses to Mr. Townsend. “Because your emotions are engaged, it would be so easy to make a fatal misstep and create a gulf between you. I want what's best for Carey. And…for you.”

During a tense interval, he stared into her face as though he probed her soul. Then he nodded briefly. “I promise I'll listen to him. Beyond that, we'll see.”

That was the best she'd achieve, she could see. She must be satisfied with his promise and pray that his temper didn't win out.

In most things, he was a reasonable man. But there was such guilt and anger, sorrow and love wrapped up in his feelings for his nephew that she wasn't sure which way he'd jump when he saw Carey.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, and let him take her arm as they mounted the wide steps to the imposing front door.