Any Groom Will Do Read online

  Willow jerked away from the window, taking Tessa with her. “Tessa,” she whispered, “that man has come about the advertisement.” She looked at her friend. “It could be nothing less.”

  “The advertisement?” whispered Tessa.

  “The dowries. The Gentleman Sailors.”

  They hadn’t discussed the advertisement in ten days at least. Letters had come by post, just as Willow had promised, but the majority of the applicants were unsuitable. If they did not invite caveats or stipulations, they proposed unsuitable ventures, everything from impractical to improbable to illegal. Illiteracy was rife and illegibility the rule. Willow had elected not to mention these to her friends. Where was the value in discussing the wrong applicants until the correct applicants came along?

  And now this.

  “But have you arranged an interview already?” asked Tessa.

  Willow shook her head. “There have been no suitable applicants to speak of. If this man has come about the advertisement, he is here . . . unprovoked.” Willow stared at the open workshop door. The butler would reach them any moment.

  “But I don’t understand,” said Tessa. “I thought . . . ”

  Just then, Abbott stepped into the open door, blocking the sunlight and scattering kittens.

  “Begging your pardon, my lady,” intoned the butler, glancing with distaste around the workshop, “a gentleman from London has called.”

  “A gentleman?” repeated Willow.

  The butler grunted. “Regretfully, I did not ascertain the man’s name, but Mr. Fisk may know it.” Abbott cleared his throat. “I did learn that he requests an appointment with an individual he refers to as ‘W. J. Hunnicut’ . . . ”

  Here he paused and stared pointedly. Willow blinked, one innocuously gentle bat of her lashes. Shock and wild fear exploded in her chest.

  She continued to say nothing, and the butler was forced to go on. “Of his own accord, Mr. Fisk informed us both that ‘W. J. Hunnicut’ was in the falconry at present.” Abbott sneered at the confines of the workshop. “And then he suggested that the man wait in the blue room while ‘W. J. Hunnicut’ was summoned. I take it to mean that the illustrious ‘W. J.’ is you?” He added, “My lady.”

  Willow smiled briskly. “Thank you, Abbott. You’ll forgive my oversight. As you may or may not know, W. J. Hunnicut is, in fact, a form of my name, Willow Joy Hunnicut. Mr. Fisk is correct.”

  To this, Abbott had no response. It was now his turn to wait.

  “Might I ask,” Willow went on, casually folding her scarf, “after the location of my mother?”

  “Lady Lytton is on her afternoon ride, I believe.”

  “Of course.” Willow’s mother and her grooms exercised chosen horses every afternoon. On a fine day, they had been known to ride the North Downs all the way to Dorking and back.

  Willow checked the window. Three hours until the sun set, at least. By some miracle, time was on her side. Not a lot of time. Not enough to conduct any real business. But certainly it was enough time to ascertain whether or not this uninvited man was remotely suitable.

  It would have to be enough.

  She looked back to Abbott. “If Mr. Fisk has not already done so, please install the gentleman in my father’s library. I will attend them shortly.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Abbott said carefully.

  Willow turned her back to him to close the window. “The library, if you please, Mr. Abbott.” Her voice was firmer now. She glanced back and Abbott stared. His very posture projected, I will not.

  “You may send Perry to attend to us,” Willow added, grasping at straws. Her lady’s maid rarely lent propriety to any given situation, but she would be another female in the room, and Willow was desperate. She added, “Mr. Fisk will linger as well.” In her head, she thought, But you will not.

  Abbott did not voice his objection so much as allow his silence to speak.

  Willow did the same, dismissing him by ignoring him. When he was gone, she drew her first breath in what felt like five minutes. She glanced at her friend.

  “What are you doing?” Tessa whispered. Her voice was somewhere between fear and awe.

  I’ve no idea, Willow thought, but she said, “I’m getting married, and moving to London, and making all of my dreams come true. Just as I’ve said.”

  ***

  Something, Cassin thought, is not quite right.

  He turned a slow circle in the center of a parlor that was so blue, it appeared to be submerged underwater. Blue walls, blue furnishings, blue rugs. Every known shade. He’d been held in the underwater room for more than a half an hour. His coat and gloves and hat had not been taken. Tea had not been offered. Unless he was mistaken, he’d been shown inside by a gardener.

  Up and down the main corridor, doors opened and closed, but no one looked in. A scrum of four or five small dogs, little more than scuttling puffs of fur, roamed in and out en masse, alternately sniffing at his boots or barking.

  I should have brought my sword, he thought, leaning against the indigo wall. Another dog admitted himself into the room and tapped over to him on sharp, tiny claws. Man and dog studied one another.

  “By definition,” Cassin recited to the dog, “golden opportunities feel rare and different.” The dog barked once.

  His own Barbadoes venture was nothing if not rare and different. He could allow for some strangeness in order to be granted the same.

  “And the villagers didn’t blanch when I asked for W. J. Hunnicut,” Cassin continued to the dog. “Perfectly happy to give directions. No one batted an eye.”

  This wasn’t entirely true. The villagers in nearby Pixham had known the surname Hunnicut, but they seemed oddly clueless about the illustrious “W. J.” It had been the first of a growing list of inconsistencies. But the house to which he’d been directed was grand and the grounds expansive. Inside, the art on the walls was valuable, the furnishings fine. The gardener had shown appropriate deference when Cassin presented his card and introduced himself as earl. All of it amounted to precisely what the advertisement had claimed: Here lived an investor with so much money he was looking for new and diverse ways to spend it. If Cassin’s reception had been odd, he had turned up unannounced. With no letter of introduction. He’d caught the old man off guard.

  Then again, I am a bloody earl, Cassin thought. And an earl called with no forewarning.

  “Begging your pardon, my lord,” said a cheerful voice from the doorway. Cassin turned.

  It was the gardener, extending his hand to the corridor. “Sorry to keep you waiting, my lord. Right this way, if you please. And allow me to take your coat and hat.”

  Cassin hesitated two beats, exchanged glances with the dog, and followed the man out of the room.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The surprise arrival of the unidentified man allowed Willow precious little time to prepare. What would she say? In what tone? Would she sit behind the desk while he sat across, like an applicant? Should they both sit in front of the desk? Should she take down notes? These were left unconsidered as she sprinted from her workshop to the kitchen door. She bolted up the servants’ stairs and around the corner into the library, scrambling behind the desk and running her fingers through her loose hair. She was still winded when she heard Mr. Fisk’s voice in the corridor.

  There was a mumbled thank-you, scuffling, a small trio of barks, and then, time stopped.

  The next moments played out in Willow’s mind with a strange mix of sharp clarity and prolonged slowness, almost as if the earth had stopped spinning, and for a time, life unfolded with a glacial, almost backward, progress. Only her heartbeat raced.

  The man was tall—taller than Mr. Fisk, taller even than Willow’s brother, Phillip, a rarity indeed. His hair was light brown, streaked with blond by the sun. He wasn’t smiling, but his mouth was broad. His nose was substantial—a man’s nose, not terrible. Not terrible at all.

  She blinked, struggling to keep her face neutral. How silly it had been to w
orry about where everyone would sit. The struggle now was simply not to stare.

  His expression was calm, cautious but not self-conscious. He scanned the library, taking in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the windows that overlooked the garden, the giant book of animal husbandry opened on a stand. His profile was strong, with a hard jaw, eyelashes thick enough to be seen from across the room, hair that just touched his cravat. His coat was a fine, claret-colored wool that stretched over broad shoulders. On his lapel, he wore a small ivory ribboned pin, arranged like the whorl of flower petals. Willow stared at it, her designer’s eye captivated by any flourish that introduced dimension or personality.

  When finally he looked to the desk and then to her, he froze. Willow felt her breath catch. His eyes were a strange pale green, the color of worn copper, weathered with age. Tingles prickled down the back of her neck.

  Far too late, Willow remembered her own appearance. She wore a simple blue day dress, one of many she favored on days spent in her workshop. Her hands were bare. She’d managed to smooth back her thick, unruly mass of auburn hair, but without the scarf, it hung unbound down her back. She looked to Mr. Fisk, hoping for some signal. Too wild? Inappropriate? Ridiculous? The seasoned servant stared benignly down the corridor.

  Willow looked back to the man. It occurred to her suddenly, uselessly, that he looked almost exactly like every daydream she had never allowed herself to spin, the hero of fairy tales that happened to other girls. To girls who would grow up and marry and have children and become the loving matriarch of large families of their own. Girls who were not her. The pinpricks on her neck dulled and began to slide, one by one, into a burning pile in the pit of her stomach.

  Willow pulled her gaze away. Blank parchment was stacked on the edge of the desk, and she slid a piece before her and took up the pen.

  “Good afternoon,” she managed. A rhetorical greeting. Perhaps he would not answer. She was not prepared to hear the sound of his voice.

  Mr. Fisk stepped forward then, whistling to shoo her mother’s dogs into the corridor. “May I present Lady Wilhelmina Hunnicut,” he said.

  Willow looked at the servant, looked at his extended arm, looked at his tweed gardening jacket. Of course they had not rehearsed this moment; they had not even discussed the possibility of a moment remotely resembling this.

  Willow bit her lip and struggled to compose the next reasonable thing to say. He had not replied to her good afternoon. He had done little more than stare.

  She was just about to say “How do you do?” when Perry, her lady’s maid, bolted into the room. Four dogs returned in a wave at her feet.

  “Begging your pardon, my lady,” the maid said. Perry had nervous habit of tugging at her cap, her apron, and the frazzled curls at the base of her neck. “Mr. Abbott said I was wanted in the library.” She waved her hands in front of her face as if the room was filled with smoke. “I was just in the middle of washing your stockings, and I said—”

  “Thank you, Perry,” said Willow. “You may take a seat near the door, behind Mr. Fisk.”

  Perry made a surprised little gasp. Rarely, if ever, was Perry invited to take a seat.

  The maid bobbed a curtsy. “Yes, my lady. Begging your pardon, my lady. I never reckoned that you would truly wish me to—”

  “Silently,” cut in Willow, “you may take a seat.”

  “But should I—?”

  “The chair, Perry,” Willow said.

  Perry took stock of the gentleman, blinking at him as if looking into the face of the sun. Willow cleared her throat, and the maid drew an audible breath, bunched her apron in a fist, and dropped into the appointed chair. A dog hopped into her lap.

  Willow returned her attention to the man. “I beg your pardon, Mr. . . . ” Of course she had no notion of his name.

  Mr. Fisk stepped forward again. “Forgive me, my lady. May I introduce his lordship, the Earl of Cassin.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Fisk,” Willow said, looking back to the man.

  An earl? Willow felt her heart stop. I’ve elicited an earl?

  “How do you do,” she managed, “Lord Cassin.”

  He did not reply.

  Cassin . . . Cassin . . . Her mind spun but she could not place the title. All this situation needed was some acquaintance of her late father’s or, God forbid, a relative. The plan hinged on Willow’s marrying a man no one knew, a man who, for her mother’s sake, would feign affection for her long enough for them to become man and wife.

  “Won’t you sit down?” she heard herself ask.

  “Forgive me,” said the earl, “but there must be some mistake. I was hoping to be received by a Mr. W. J. Hunnicut . . . ?”

  “I am W. J. Hunnicut.” It felt suddenly appropriate to stand, and she shoved to her feet. “Lady Willow Joy Hunnicut.”

  “You?”

  “Indeed. Me. The very one.”

  “I beg your pardon,” the earl said carefully, “but I’ve called in search of W. J. Hunnicut, the investor.” He spoke slowly, succinctly, as if he wanted to say enough correct things to cause the joke to end. He produced a folded parchment from his jacket pocket. “This advertisement was posted in his name in London. Redmond Street.”

  She watched him unfold it, knowing, of course, what it was. She held her breath as if it revealed a drawing of her face.

  “Quite so,” she said. “That is my advertisement. I am W. J. Hunnicut, as I’ve said, and I have £60,000 to invest with a man of international commerce or travel. My partners and I had hoped for a letter of introduction—”

  “You have . . . partners?” the earl said hopefully.

  “I should be happy to explain my offer in full, if you would be so kind as to take a seat and—”

  “Who?” he interrupted. “Who are your partners?”

  She felt a flash of irritation. “I prefer not to discuss the specifics of the partnership until I learn a bit more about who you may be, sir. And about the venture for which you seek financing.” Was it too much to request that he sit?

  The earl looked from her to the advertisement and then back to her again. “May I assume that all of these partners are . . . female?” He had an expression of dying hope, as if helplessly watching a capsizing boat slowly roll and sink.

  Willow nodded. Words came more quickly now. “Yes, my lord, we are all young women, in fact. Three in total. Together, we offer one investment of £60,000 and two of £30,000.”

  This declaration was met with silence. The earl blinked at her. “You are . . . unmarried, Miss Hunnicut?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your father is . . . ”

  Now Perry let out an airy, high-pitched sigh from the rear of the room. Perry mourned indefinitely for everyone who ever died, whether she knew the person or not.

  Willow spoke over her. “Deceased.”

  “What of a brother?” asked the earl. “An uncle? Some man must oversee your living and approve of investments of tens of thousands of pounds to . . . to . . . ”—he looked again at the advertisement in his hand—“gentleman sailors.”

  It was an accusation, but his voice was more defeated than hard. He was confused, likely not a familiar state. Willow was on uncertain footing herself. It had never been her intention to dole out the terms of their arrangement in vague, one-word answers.

  She cleared her throat. “If the arrangement sounds unorthodox, it is. However, you might have lessened your surprise by following the directive on the advertisement. Apply by letter first?” She gestured to the parchment in his hand. “It was never my intention to waste anyone’s time.”

  “A little late for that.”

  “But it would not have been, if you would have written from the start. The advertisement is very clear.”

  “The advertisement is as vague as Parliament’s Speech from the Throne.” He tossed it on the desk. “And now I see why.”

  “No, you do not see,” she said. “But this is by design. It was my intention to evaluate the potential of any ca
ndidate before he traveled to Surrey. Much can be discerned from a simple letter or two. You needed only to explain yourself, and I could have done the same, assuming our interests remotely aligned.”

  “Forgive me if I cannot rely on the discernment of a young woman I’ve never met, when thousands of pounds and an ocean are at stake.” The earl’s voice rose. “And here’s a thought—neither should you. Facts. Figures. Who and why. These are the bare minimum required to engage in serious business with serious men embarking on a serious endeavor. I’ve called in person because I haven’t the time to trade correspondence back and forth like a girl in school.”

  “Indeed,” said Willow. “Very well. If facts and figures are what you want, I have them and am happy to discuss them. I should be happy to reveal everything when you are equally forthcoming. My God, can I not impose on you to sit?” She was breathing hard, feeling the exertion of a defensive position. She had expected some shock and perhaps confusion to her offer, but she had not expected to have to defend it, point by point. Not to a carefully selected applicant who had been screened by letter first. Irritation crackled. He was being considered here, not she.

  “I cannot imagine what you have to say,” he said, refusing to sit.

  “You’ve made this very clear, and look where it has gotten us.”

  The maid hissed again, and Willow snapped, “Perry, please.” To the earl, she said, “Fine. I will sit. You may stand if you prefer it, and I shall strain my neck looking up at you.”

  Primly, she lowered herself into the chair. “I speak only for myself; please be aware. However, the scenario I describe may be repeated twice over by my partners if, individually, we deem any other applicant to be . . . er, appropriate.”

  The earl said nothing, although he did, at long last, drop into the leather wingback behind him.

  “Before my father, Earl Lytton, died, he settled on me a dowry of £60,000.” She paused. It was an extraordinary sum. She would not have embarked upon the scheme with anything less. Her parents may not have been particularly affectionate or even present in her childhood, but they had not been miserly.