Puck swallowed. She loved the man but he could be brutal. There was no doubt that Byon would rip apart whatever Willa had written. Puck thought fast. “Then it wouldn’t be for Clive alone.”
“You’re right,” Willa said. “It wouldn’t mean as much if I shared it with the world.”
Puck let out her breath. “I think I heard someone.”
With a backward step, Willa looked about in fear. “You haven’t told them about Clive and me, have you?”
Puck thought, Told them you’re making a fool of yourself over a man they don’t like? Then watch Byon and Nicky feast on jokes so venomous they would put a cobra to shame? “No, I wouldn’t do that.”
Willa smiled. “You’re a good friend. Thank you.” Turning, she disappeared through the decaying hedge.
Puck put the pretty envelope with the legal document inside the waistband of her trousers.
Clive’s office wasn’t far from the house. It was a long, low, brick building that had always been for the estate manager. It was quite pretty, but Clive complained that it was drafty and the windows were rotting—which was true.
She didn’t bother to knock but opened the door and walked in. She knew from experience that if Clive knew it was her, he wouldn’t let her in. One time when she knocked, she heard him turn the key to lock the door.
But then, she understood. If anyone sent Puck to him, it was always with bad news.
He was sitting behind his huge, gaudily ornate desk. For over a hundred years there’d been a plain wooden desk in there, but Clive had demanded that a Victorian monstrosity be removed from the house and put in his office. “After all,” he said, “I am a relative.” He liked to remind people that he was Nicky’s cousin. “May as well be the chimney sweep,” Byon said. “Too far away to inherit.” It would have sounded sympathetic except that Byon couldn’t stand Clive and often made him the punch line of his jokes.
Clive didn’t look up when Puck entered. He was tall, thin, and starting to go bald. He had a large, sharp nose, and thin lips. “What is it now?”
Puck didn’t speak, just pulled the papers out and put them on the desk in front of him.
He picked up the document, leaned back in his big leather chair, and scanned the pages.
To Puck’s horror, she saw that Willa’s letter had stuck to the back. Maybe he wouldn’t see it.
But of course he did. “What is this?” He broke the old-fashioned wax seal, pulled out the single page, read it, then looked at Puck. “Where does she get this drivel? My heart sings true? Disgusting. And the worst of it is that I’ve been told by his lordship that I’m expected to marry her. All to keep this bloody job.” He dropped the heavy vellum page in the waste bin, then looked back at the legal pages.
That Bertie wanted Clive to marry Willa was news to Puck. They all knew Nicky was to marry Diana. But it looked like Bertie couldn’t bear to part with Willa’s trust fund.
“Ah ha!” Clive stood up, document in hand. “I knew it! Diana did this. She tries to write like Nicky but she can’t.” He punched the pages with his finger. “I’ll tell the earl about this. He’ll be interested to hear what his son doesn’t do.”
Puck was trying not to look at Willa’s heartfelt letter in the trash. How could she get it out without Clive seeing? “Bertie probably won’t like hearing anything bad about Diana.”
Clive’s eyes shot fire at her. He was jealous that this scrawny girl was allowed to call the earl Bertie. And he was sickened that the earl genuinely loved Diana. But most of all, Clive didn’t like being instructed in diplomacy by someone he considered a kitchen maid.
He quickly signed the document. “I will keep the knowledge to myself. For now.” He thrust the papers out to her. “Put this on the earl’s desk. And this!” He held up a single piece of paper that had a lot of numbers on it.
Puck took the paper but didn’t look at it.
“Go on. Read it. I know you will. You read it all, listen to it all. I know what you do.”
Puck didn’t have to look at the paper to know it was the monthly budget. He always printed the totals—always a deficit—at the bottom in red.
“He’s buying another horse,” Clive said.
Puck wanted to defend a man who had always been good to her. “Diana said it’s—”
“Not the one that’s already here.” Clive’s voice was getting louder. “It’s another one. He thinks he’s a brilliant judge of horseflesh. He thinks breeders admire and respect him. But they laugh at him. They tell each other to buy nothing that Bertram Renlow likes as the animal is sure to lose any race. They say—”
Abruptly, he dropped down into the chair. “Maybe I should marry that dumpy little woman. I’d get her idiot father to buy us a country house and I’d do nothing for the rest of my life. Could I stand her enough to do that?”
Puck had no reply to what he was saying, but then she’d heard his self-pity many times before. While Clive was in his usual I-feel-sooo-sorry-for-myself collapse, she dropped the papers she was holding. When she knelt to pick them up, she slipped Willa’s letter out of the bin. Without another word, she fled the office.
Outside, Willa was just a few feet away, her face begging for news.
“He quoted parts of your poem,” Puck said. She knew how to pull truth from lies. “I think he was impressed.”
“Really?” Willa’s eyes were wide. Actually, they were kind of bugging out of her head. Not attractive.
“He spoke of you and marriage,” Puck said. “And where you’ll live on a country estate.” She couldn’t bear to break the woman’s heart with the truth. “I have to go.” She ran.
All Puck could think about was how much she wanted to see Sean. Whereas the others at Oxley Manor had rules about what she could and could not tell, there were no rules with Sean. He was apart from them. Separate. And he saw them all clearly. How they related to each other, how they needed one another.
She went to several places on the estate where he could usually be found, but he wasn’t anywhere. His truck was parked by the stables so he hadn’t gone into town.
Was he with someone? she thought. Some fat, stupid village girl?
Puck laughed at herself. She was getting as jealous as Clive. She was on her way back to the house when she saw him. He was on Lady Chance, one of the horses Bertie said would win races but never had. Sean was riding hard down the gravel road that went through the acreage. Puck didn’t think she’d ever seen him ride so fast.
Her first thought was that someone was hurt. Nicky? Byon? Nadine?