Chapter Three

C assie set her package on the demi-lune table in the entrance hall and began to strip off her damp bonnet and muddied cloak. Her foot throbbed, but on the way home in the gig, she'd been thinking what a fine world it was with the spectacle of fleeing clouds overhead and the pleasing sensations that arose from the stranger's kindness. There were such people in the world after all, gentlemen even, who, seeing a fellow creature's distress, responded with kindness. The muffled sound of voices in the red drawing room caught her ear, and William appeared to take her cloak and bonnet.

"Who's here?" she asked.

"Two gentlemen, my lady. Arrived not ten minutes ago. Miss Honoria is with them."

Cassie glanced at the hall clock. The agent was early then, and not alone. She would have no chance to change, to arm herself a little, to shift her thinking to a more businesslike mode. The old blue dress she'd worn for her ramble to the village would have to do. If it made her look like a village waif rather than a duke's daughter, so be it. Honoria needed her.

"And Her Grace?" Cassie tried not to betray any alarm at the prospect of an untimely visit from her grandmother. The lease arrangements were best concluded without her grandmother's interference.

"Still with her horses, my lady."

Cassie counted her blessings. Her Grace had agreed to the plan to lease Verwood, but maintained the view that doing so was an act of extraordinary benevolence for which any tenant must be excessively grateful. "Have refreshments been offered?"

William nodded. She thanked and dismissed him and paused only to square her shoulders before opening the old oak door.

"Cassie," her aunt sighed. "Thank heavens. You've come."

Cassie barely registered her aunt's agitated countenance. Two gentlemen rose and turned her way. It was the kind stranger and his companion. The man must be his agent.

"You? You wish to lease Verwood?" Cassie stepped forward with a warm smile even as a stern, unbending expression took over the face of the man whose kindness she'd been considering as an unexpected blessing.

"Oh no, Cassie dear," her aunt said. "I'm afraid there's been a terrible misunderstanding. Sir Adrian wants to buy Verwood."

The words stopped Cassie cold. Her smile died. Her bad foot sent a sharp twinge up her leg. "But we haven't offered to sell."

"You're C. J. Lavenham?" he asked.

"Lady Cassandra Jane Lavenham," Aunt Honoria confirmed.

Sir Adrian's frown deepened. Cassie could see he had some objection to her role in the matter. "Your father was the previous duke?"

"He was. I'm sorry that you've come all this way to be disappointed, and no doubt, inconvenienced, but really"—she cast a reproachful glance at the agent—"we made it quite clear in our notice that we were offering to lease not sell the property."

The agent cleared his throat. "Jacob Trimley, my lady, at your service. I believe we might yet reach an agreement, as Sir Adrian is keen to take up a residence in the neighborhood appropriate to his station."

Cassie regarded the gentleman apparently eager to take over her house. She felt foolish. In the gig on the way home, she'd been dwelling on the kindness and solicitude he'd shown to Dick Crockett and herself in the inn yard. Now she could see only the determined set of his jaw and something implacable in his gaze. Here was quite a different adversary from Hugh. His presence altered the room, made its little flourishes of gilt and brocade seem overdone and outmoded. She sensed that his sharp eye had already spotted how faded and threadbare the chairs were.

She offered her guests a thin smile and moved to take a seat. The little business of settling in a chair next to Aunt Honoria and allowing the gentlemen to be seated in turn created a pause for Cassie to gather her thoughts. Verwood Hall needed a tenant, and of one thing, she was sure, Sir Adrian had the funds to meet her grandmother's notion of a proper rent for the place.

She smoothed her skirts over her knees, considering how to proceed. "Thank you, Mr. Trimley," she said, looking at the agent, not his client. "Verwood cannot be sold while my grandmother, Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess, lives. But we remain pleased to consider an application to lease on behalf of Sir Adrian, and hope that the established usages between landlord and tenant may yet offer some way to an agreement as you suggest."

"Very good of you, miss… that is, my lady," said Trimley. "To Sir Adrian, establishing himself with credit in the neighborhood is of pressing importance, so perhaps you would agree to his immediate occupancy and a lease, of say, three years at the rate previously mentioned."

Beside Cassie, Honoria gasped. Sir Adrian appeared unmoved.

"Immediate occupancy?" Cassie asked, seeing ledger books that had been against her for months turn and go her way.

"Within a fortnight, say." Trimley glanced at the closed face of his employer.

"A fortnight! How could we, Cassie?" Honoria exclaimed. "The dower house could hardly be readied in such a span, and the duchess…" Her aunt was beginning to babble. There was no other word for it. Her poor shawl would soon be in knots. Cassie put a hand on Honoria's to calm her.

She studied Sir Adrian's stern countenance. His desire to have Verwood without poking into any of its rooms or considering its limitations, and there was one very large limitation her grandmother would impose, could only mean that he had some personal motive or design in mind.

"Are there no other properties in the district that would suit?"

Sir Adrian turned to her, cool and unyielding. "None. I can arrange assistance for you to move household if you like."

Facing that unshakable determination, Cassie had a sudden flash of sympathy for Hugh. Sir Adrian Cole was a man who would impose his will on the world. She was saved from the intemperate reply that sprang to her lips by the opening of the drawing room door.

*

Raven rose, and half a beat behind him, Trimley popped to his feet. There was no mistaking the woman who entered the room as anyone other than a duchess. In a riding habit of midnight blue, silver hair framing a face pared down to its elegant bone structure, startling blue eyes above an aquiline nose and a mouth drawn into a tight bow of disapproval, she appeared an icy shard of pure will. From the tips of her York tan-gloved fingers, she dangled a brown paper package. The young footman who'd opened the door, stood to attention behind her.

"What is the meaning of this rubbish?" she asked, fixing a contemptuous gaze on her granddaughter. "Murray's publishing house?"

Raven heard a soft moan from the dithering aunt before Cassandra Lavenham stepped forward to take the package from her grandmother's hand. "Oh, Grandmama, it's just a novel I ordered from London. I beg your pardon for leaving it in the hall, but you see, Sir Adrian and Mr. Trimley are here to discuss the lease arrangements."

The duchess turned to Raven, and he met her fierce scrutiny. There was little she could see in him but the careful work of an excellent tailor. She could hardly read his past history as Raven, one of the Duke of Wenlocke's lost boys, or his more recent history as his grandfather Jedediah Cole's heir. The brand-new sir of his knighthood would hardly impress her either. He met her stare, and let her size him up however she meant to rate him.

"Who are you? Who are your people? Cole, that's your name is it?" she demanded.

"It is, your grace."

"Not a name of distinction, is it?"

"We Coles have had our share of the world's notice, your grace." Adrian found himself revising his estimate of Cassandra Lavenham's courage. The woman who had faced down Hugh had apparently learned from dealing with the dowager duchess, who looked capable of staring down giants.

"What is your family's trade, young man?"

"Iron and glass, your grace. Cannons for Wellington. Fire engines for London."

"And, no doubt, glass for shop windows! You expect to enjoy the rights and privileges of Verwood?"

"I expect to pay for them, your grace."

"To be sure. I may have been induced to let my house, but as to compromising its dignity by permitting any trumped-up nonentity to—"

"Grandmama, remember our purpose," Lady Cassandra interjected, drawing the duchess's gaze. "You may trust me to make all the terms and conditions regarding your stables clear to Sir Adrian."

Lady Cassandra held her grandmother's gaze for a long moment before the older woman turned back to Raven. "That's your chaise in the drive?"

"It is."

"A neat turnout. And your man, he knows how to handle his cattle?"

"He does, your grace."

"Best to have him see my man Snell about your horses then. There's a sharp wind blowing."

"Thank you, your grace."

The duchess's gaze swung to Honoria, still twisting the ends of her shawl. "Honoria, whatever are you in a quake about?"

Honoria's gaze darted from Lady Cassandra back to the duchess. "There's been a terrible mistake, Lottie. Sir Adrian wishes to buy Verwood."

The unblinking icy-blue gaze turned from Honoria back to Raven. Cassandra Lavenham's shoulders slumped.

"Then he'd best be on his way," the dowager announced. "All the iron and glass in England can't buy Verwood. It is not for sale. This house has belonged to the Lavenhams since 1485. Honoria, Cassie, bid the man good day." The duchess turned. The young footman sprang forward to open the door, and the dowager swept out. Honoria rose and scuttled after her.

The door closed behind her, leaving Adrian, Trimley, and Lady Cassandra in the room with its crimson silk walls and gilt furnishings. Lady Cassandra had not hurried after her relations. Adrian took that as a favorable sign.

Somewhere beyond the red room another door banged shut, and Lady Cassandra Lavenham came to her feet. Raven took in her appearance again. The long-sleeved pale-blue gown was several years out-of-date to his London-trained eye, and well-worn. Its only claim to fashion a strip of gold velvet trim at the waist. An incongruous pair of sturdy boots, still showing bits of mud, peeked from under the hem. It was plain that she was in dire need of funds.

"I'm sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused you, Sir Adrian," she said. "I thank you again for your intervention on behalf of Dick Crockett earlier. It was most kindly done. Good day to you." With a nod she turned away.

"Wait," he said. "I am still very interested in the lease of Verwood."

She stopped and glanced back at him. Her dark straight brows went up. "Did you miss how highly offended my grandmother is?"

"But you," he said, "are of a more practical turn of mind. If I can convince her to reconsider, may I have your support?"

"You think you can appease my grandmother? You can't simply wave Bank of England notes at her."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

She regarded him with frank puzzlement. "Why, may I ask, are you so interested in Verwood?"

He did not intend to tell her that, at least not just yet. It would all come out when he'd succeeded in his purpose, when his triumph was complete. "It is exactly the sort of property I've been looking for since I came into my… inheritance. It will suit me perfectly to establish myself in a neighborhood among country families. You said earlier that in the country one knows one's neighbors."

*

From the top of Verwood's south steps Raven looked down the long, straight, chestnut-lined avenue. The trees were newly in leaf, sparkling in the rain's aftermath. The tall spikes of bloom that would produce chestnuts in the fall, swayed in the last of the breeze. In the distance, the avenue passed a smallish lake on its way to the lodge with its Lion Gates. He could not fault the taste of the dead dukes of Verwood, nor did he wonder at the dowager for clinging to her horses when she could no longer afford them. Verwood was not a place to relinquish easily.

In the end, Raven believed Lady Cassandra would come to terms. Plainly, she was the practical one of the three. While her aunt dithered and wrung her hands over the difficulties of moving household, and her grandmother waved away what was beneath her notice, Lady Cassandra would accept the inevitable. Raven would have his lease, and an option to purchase the entire estate should the duchess pass away. In time, he knew, Verwood would be his. He could sense it as he had always sensed opportunity.

He never doubted his luck. Even when the Reverend Clumber had pronounced Raven unworthy of a place at college, Raven had known that he would move freely in a world far beyond the banks of the Thames or the Cam. And Clumber, for all his self-appointed role as guardian at the gates of rank, had indirectly shown Raven the way.

It had been Clumber's practice to take his pupils on walking tours of ancient Britain, to the ruins of Roman and Saxon settlements. The one summer that Raven had been admitted to the group, he and the others had scrambled over the shale rocks of the coast west of Poole and come upon bronze Roman arm bands and the substantial remains of an ambitious seventeenth century glassworks. Raven had seen at once what held no interest for the others. The old glassworks might be a ruin, but the man of vision who built it had risen in the world and set his heirs on a path to become sirs and lords , men of influence and consideration in the world.

When Raven left college, he talked his grandfather into buying a bankrupt glassworks in Shoreditch. Making the old glassworks profitable, he told his grandfather, would be his education, not Cambridge.

Reluctantly, his grandfather had agreed. Raven bought the existing inventory and machinery at auction, tracked down and hired the out-of-work artisans, and established the new works on seven acres of vacant land on the river. At first the business supplied mirrors to cabinet makers, but in an age of vanity and fashion, Raven's mirrors had drawn the king's notice and a royal patent. Raven had expanded the business, shipping glass ingots around the world to places starved for English goods, and experimenting with mechanical presses. In time, he was sure, London shopkeepers would fuel a demand for plate glass in ever larger smooth panes through which passing patrons could view the goods for sale. Cole's Cast Plate and Glass Manufacturers was ready. Soon his glassworks would produce a million square feet of plate glass a year.

That was before the fire. Since the burning of the Houses of Parliament, with the role of a Cole fire engine in the saving of Westminster Hall and his own knighthood, both the original Cole iron works and the new glass manufactory had been flooded with orders.

The carriage rumbled through the iron gates from the stable complex. Trimley, when pressed, had admitted that the stables were a separate piece of the estate, the use of any part of them to be negotiated separately. Trimley had been eloquent about the grandeur of the facilities. Raven had seen for himself the duchess in finery and her granddaughter in near rags. What Raven meant to determine was why the Verwood stables were draining money from the estate, not paying their way. He knew just the man to get to the bottom of that little mystery.

He would send Trimley back to London with his instructions, but Raven would put up at the Crown.

His carriage pulled to a stop at the foot of the stairs. Raven was getting ahead of himself, and he knew better. Once the ladies removed to the dower house, he would bring in an army of carpenters, plasterers, and painters until he had Verwood the way he wanted it. He knew there had been neglect and suspected there would be surprises—leaks, wood rot, crumbling mortar—but he had the blunt for anything the old house had to offer, and he knew how to manage men to get things done. For the first time since he had begun his search for a property, he allowed himself to think of what it all meant.

By midsummer he could step out of these doors, stroll to the stables, mount a horse, and be at Lord Ramsbury's door within an hour. What had been beyond his reach from those London rooftops he had roamed as a boy with Jay and Lark, Rook, Finch, Swallow, and Robin was no more than a short ride away, Ramsbury's daughter, Lady Amabel Haydon.