Elizabeth Mansfield by Matched Pairs Read Free Book Online Page B

beautiful at this moment, and she evidently wanted him to remain, while on the other hand, Julie’s summons was vague. Couldn’t he at least wait for tomorrow? He was torn, like a classic hero, between love and duty. But, like a hero, he chose the harder road. He turned away from temptation and threw open the door. “I shall go,” he declared as firmly as his choked throat permitted, “but I’ll be back. I’ll be back, will you or nill you!” With that, he stalked out to the corridor, ran past the astonished butler and flung himself out of the house.
    When Lord Smallwood returned home an hour later, he found his daughter lying prone on the sofa in complete disregard of the condition of her new gown, sobbing as if her heart would break. “Cleo!” he cried in alarm, kneeling down beside her. “What on earth has happened here?”
    “Oh, Papa!” She raised herself up and flung herself into his arms. “He doesn’t l-love me! He doesn’t care for m-me one whit!”
    “Who? The bumpkin?”
    Cleo could only nod.
    “There, there,” her astonished father murmured, patting her back helplessly. “You mustn’t let yourself become upset over him. The fellow is a fool. A country bumpkin. What can he know of quality?”
    But even as he said those words, Lord Smallwood’s respect for Tristram Enders grew by leaps and bounds. Not one other suitor for his daughter’s hand, not even the most sophisticated of city dwellers, had ever shown himself remotely capable of reducing his remarkable daughter to such bitter tears. He shook his head in grudging admiration. That deuced bumpkin must have depths of character... depths that he, Smallwood, had never suspected.
     
     

 
     
    8
     
     
    All through the long night’s ride home, Tris relived the scene in the Smallwood drawing room. Over and over he questioned his own sanity. Had he made a foolish choice? Had he ruined his chances with the magnificent Cleo Smallwood? Had he sacrificed the one great love of his life (for he would surely never again find a woman as lovely, as charming, as perfect as Cleo) for what she’d called a whim? What onearth had made him feel so obligated to answer Julie’s summons? Why had he taken her note so seriously? And why had she written to him in the first place? If it turned out that it was a whim, he would wring Julie’s neck!
    It was almost dawn when he arrived at Larchwood. He stopped his carriage at the foot of the Branscombes’ drive, tethered the horses and stole on foot up the drive and round to the south side of the house. A gray light was beginning to pierce the darkness of the sky in the east. Placing himself in the shadow of a clump of shrubs, he threw a handful of dirt up to a curtained window on the second story. It took three more careful tosses before he saw the curtain being drawn. The window opened and Julie leaned out. “Is it you, Tris?” she called in a hissing whisper.
    He stepped out into the faint predawn light. “Who did you think it was? Hurry and let me in before the whole household wakes.”
    “Yes. Go round to the veranda. I’ll come down and open the door.”
    She came to the door wrapped in an old wool robe and worn slippers, her hair in two plaits, like a child. It was strange, he couldn’t help thinking, how careless she was about her appearance. Cleo would never permit herself to be seen looking so pathetically dowdy.
    Julie, not at all conscious of how she looked, led him up the stairs to an unused room that had once been her schoolroom, and carefully closed the door. “There!” she sighed in relief. “No one will discover us here.”
    He perched on the child-sized table that still occupied the center of the room, while she blew out the candle she carried. They could talk in the darkness; she didn’t want any servants discovering candlelight seeping out through the crevices of the door frame. Besides, it would soon be light.
    “Well, what’s amiss?” Tris demanded, his arms crossed over his