Love for Lady Winter (Secrets of Gissing Hall Book 1) Read online

  She shouldn’t care. Whatever he studied mattered not a whit to her. Her overactive curiosity had got her into all manner of trouble as a child, and she felt the same frisson of excitement now as she had then. Every impulse told her to go. But there was a strange, unaccountable magnetism about the man. He gave off a compelling energy, one she most definitely needed to ignore.

  Wrapping her arms around her body, she stifled a shiver. Her dress had grown heavy, damp with sea mist, and the cold rushed through to chill her skin.

  Still, she had to know.

  “Why?” she asked on a puff of breath. “Why did you build the tower?”

  “I seek to determine the weather.”

  Win tipped her head, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “Isn’t that what weather vanes are for?”

  He moved closer, until he was a few footsteps away. His shoulders were so broad, he sheltered her from the wind. His scent—bergamot and leather—wafted toward her. “I’m not concerned with the direction of the wind. What I seek are storms.”

  “Oh, yes?” Win took a step closer. She loved stormy weather. Rain left the air clean and fresh, and the sound of thunder soothed her as she fell asleep.

  The gentleman grinned down at her, and there was a moment of understanding between them. A palpable wave of mutual sympathy. On the topic of storms, at least, she’d finally found someone who agreed.

  Green, she noticed pointlessly. His eyes were a vivid hunter green. Win’s face felt odd, twitchy and warm. The urge to let go and smile battled with her vow to avoid handsome gentleman entirely.

  Never again would she allow herself to be that silly, eager debutante she’d once been.

  But this wasn’t a ballroom and she would likely never see this man again. The beginnings of a grin pulled at her lips. Then faltered.

  A fog rose around the stranger. Not the mist clinging to the ground. A blue haze that slowly took on a masculine shape.

  A ghost.

  Instinctively, she raised her arm and pointed as the haze expanded, looming at his back. She’d never seen a specter cling so tenaciously to a person.

  “What is it?” He glanced down at his clothing, then over his shoulder.

  Win already knew what he’d see. Nothing at all.

  He looked back at her and pinned her with a worried stare. His hand came up as if he might touch her. With his pinched brow and tight mouth, he wore a look very like the one Aunt Elinor often cast her way. Then he seemed to read something in her expression and his face fell. His eyes lost their spark of interest, and his grin fizzled into a frown.

  “Ah, I understand,” he said softly. “What is it you think you see, miss? A phantasm?” He crossed his arms and arched one dark brow. “You’re not from Bocka Morrow, are you? A young miss from London come to see our make-believe monsters, I’d wager.” Tapping one long finger against his lower lip, he assessed her. “Let me guess. You’re a devotee of Mrs. Radcliffe’s and consume nonsensical Gothic romances as often as you take your tea.”

  How dare he impugn her reading habits? The fact that he was right about her love for Gothic novels only stoked her ire.

  “Rude. Insulting. Insufferable man.” Win twisted on her heel and stomped away. She was more than happy to leave the churlish creature to his weather and his tower and his clinging ghost.

  He called to her, but she let his words fade on the wind. Ignoring him, she kept on toward Penwithyn. Its lamp-lit windows beckoned, promising warmth and far more pleasant company than the man at her back.

  Win vowed to forget the strange weather watcher. Immediately.

  Harder to forget was the hazy figure that had hovered around him.

  Apparently, she wasn’t finished seeing ghosts after all.

  2

  Deuced woman.

  Septimus Locke, Earl of Carwarren, clenched his fists and stared, transfixed, as the young lady retreated.

  Who was she? And how dare she come crashing into his evening? He loathed distractions from his work.

  Never mind that he’d been rude and too bird witted to introduce himself properly or ask her name.

  What did it matter? He wasn’t here to charm anyone. He had work to do, none of which included collecting acquaintances who stumbled upon his experiments. Yet he couldn’t stomach foolishness either, particularly when he’d been the one behaving like a fool.

  Many considered him odd. Some thought him mad. But Sep prided himself on at least attempting to behave like a gentleman. Unfortunately, when ladies were near, especially pretty ones, he tended to blurt whatever came into his head. No, that wasn’t true. Blurting was his general conversational style. But with fetching young women, he invariably spouted nonsense.

  Which was bloody irritating, since he loathed nonsense and spent every spare hour filling his head with facts and formulas and testing galvanic hypotheses. Not that any young lady would wish to hear about those.

  The only woman he’d ever met with real scientific knowledge, Miss Felicity Fields at the nearby Tetbery estate, had abandoned all good sense and turned her efforts to alchemy. Since no one else in Bocka Morrow seemed to care for chemistry, he’d become a bit of recluse. Solitude suited him, leaving his hours free for study and experimentation.

  But isolation made for dreadful conversational skills.

  Had he actually told the chit about building an observatory himself? Boasted of his mathematical prowess? No wonder she’d scurried off as if one of Bocka Morrow’s famed ghosts was hard on her heels.

  Sep stalked back to the tower, retrieved his lantern, and examined his copper conductor in the light. The fall had caused no visible damage to the thin rod. Only a bit of salt solution had been smudged away. By the mystery lady’s gloved fingertip? She possessed slim, dainty fingers, he’d noted. In truth, everything about her had been striking and notable—silver blonde hair, Arctic blue eyes, and her visible excitement at his mention of storms.

  What breed of lady favored clouds and rain? Most women he knew shied from precipitation as assiduously as they avoided gentleman of a scientific bent.

  All but one.

  An image came of Junia Simmons standing before him, dark curls fluttering in the sea breeze. Mercy, she’d played the part well. Feigning interest in galvanism. Recounting the theories of Alessandro Volta. Praising the research of Luigi Galvani. Miss Simmons had even memorized lines from his own articles printed in the London Scientific Society’s journal. Oh yes, she’d played his ego as beautifully as she plucked harp strings. Then, at a dinner party, he’d overheard her describing his work as “a strange kind of devilry.” Only his title mattered, she’d confessed to her friend.

  What irony. In the eyes of most, Sep’s worth lay in an earldom he did not want and never expected to inherit.

  Thank God he’d discovered the truth before offering for Miss Simmons. He couldn’t bear the prospect of falsehood in a wife.

  A gust of wind rushed toward him as he started toward Penwithyn, pushing him back, as if the gale knew he’d left much unfinished this evening.

  She had distracted him from his task. The silver-haired sprite. What a strange, sharp-tongued creature, and he didn’t even know her name.

  Not that it mattered.

  When it came to young ladies, his godmother had taken the business of finding him a countess well in hand. After the debacle with Miss Simmons, Cornelia insisted on matchmaking, and he was content to let her find him a bride. As long as he could forestall the inevitable for a while. So far, he’d withstood a handful of awkwardly arranged introductions, but the more ladies Cornelia nudged his way, the less appealing the prospect of marriage became.

  Wouldn’t bachelorhood be much less trouble? And leave much more time for experimentation?

  If only he didn’t feel the weight of duty’s steady stare.

  Damn you, Carwarren.

  The previous earl had gone boots up without a single heir in sight. Sep had never even met the man, but on a sparse family tree he’d been the next in line to the
earldom. The Carwarren’s tenacious London solicitor had hunted him this remote edge of Cornwall, dashing all his plans for the future. Eventually, he’d have to move inland and claim the ducal estate. For now, he’d left the pile to the dowager countess to manage. Based on her letters, the old lady seemed content to continue residing in her longtime home.

  Sep frowned as he ascended the rise toward Penwithyn. Frugality was his godmother’s watchword, yet tonight every window of her cottage blazed. Including the upper story bedchambers.

  “Are you trying to set the place aflame?” he called teasingly as he pushed through the front door. “Or did you decide our store of winter wood needed pruning?”

  “Thank goodness you’ve returned.” Cornelia rushed into the tidy vestibule, her color high, eyes aglow.

  “Are you unwell?” Perhaps she’d lit every hearth in the cottage to fight off a chill. Sep’s gut clenched with dread and a cold shiver swept down his neck. That was how his mother’s illness had begun.

  “I’m exceedingly well,” she promised, as she helped him remove his overcoat. “Did I not tell you my sister and niece were due today from London?”

  “Did you?” Sep could recite chemical formulas in his sleep, but the finer details of schedules and visits and social events often escaped his notice.

  “I most certainly did. I’ve been looking forward to their arrival for weeks. Come and play the congenial host, won’t you?” She offered him a smile that both cajoled and insisted in a single lilt of her lips.

  “Of course.” No one had done more for him than Cornelia Shaw. He owed her a debt he could never repay. Playing gentleman for her family was the least he could do.

  Sep ran a hand through his damp hair, straightened his waistcoat, and was two footfalls from the main room when she called him back.

  “Septimus,” she whispered, “take care with my niece. My sister’s youngest is…an unusual young woman. She’s endured a great deal, having recently lost both her parents. Yet I believe she is gifted in extraordinary ways.”

  “How so?” Sep squinted one eye at his godmother. Cornelia believed in fanciful nonsense he could not abide. Omens and portents and powers that had far more to do with superstition than fact.

  “Come and see for yourself.” She waved a hand as if dismissing her own comments. “Just be kind to her.”

  “Am I usually unkind?”

  “Not at all.” She fussed with the tassel on her shawl. “But you do have a very direct, blunt way of speaking at times.”

  “I tell the truth.”

  “Bluntly.”

  “Is there any other way?”

  With a smile, she pleaded, “Do consider softening the edges of your pronouncements, at least for her sake.”

  Sep met his godmother’s smile with a grin. If she considered him sharp-tongued, what would she think of the young lady he’d met outside his observatory?

  Striding ahead, Cornelia turned back on the threshold and began introductions. “Septimus, may I introduce my sister, Miss Elinor Renshawe, and my niece, Lady Winifred Gissing.”

  A wall of heat hit Sep as he stepped into the room, but the warmth from the roaring fire was nothing to the bolt of electricity sizzling through his veins.

  Here she stood. Inches away. The lady who liked storms and who’d upbraided him, as he’d richly deserved. The lady he thought he’d never see again. She stared at him, her cool blue eyes rounded with surprise.

  “…and this is my godson, Septimus, Earl of Carwarren.” Cornelia’s voice broke through Sep’s stunned haze, and he stepped forward to greet each lady and play the host.

  “Miss Renshawe.” He bowed before Cornelia’s sister. Despite her age, the lady sported a youthful glint in her eye and executed a spry curtsy.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Lord Carwarren.” His godmother’s sister took him in from forehead to boot in a single, sweeping glance. “Perhaps your father knew Winifred’s father. He was the Earl of Prestwick.”

  “My father wasn’t an earl.” As a penniless physician, Sixtus Locke had barely been respectable.

  “Septimus inherited the Carwarren title quite recently.” Cornelia cast him a sympathetic look. “And quite unexpectedly.”

  Sep moved on to the young woman he hadn’t stopped thinking about since she’d given him a proper set down. The buzz of energy she provoked sparked inside him again. “Pleasure to meet you, Lady Winifred.“

  “And you, Lord Carwarren.” After the merest dip into a curtsy, Lady Winifred turned away from him and stepped toward the room’s single window. “Forgive me,” she said quietly as she peered through the glass. “I need a moment away from the heat.”

  “The room is too warm,” Cornelia agreed, despite being the culprit who’d overfed the fires. They had few servants at Penwithyn, and the housekeeper had gone to Truro to visit her family for the holiday season. “Septimus, open the window and let us have some fresh air.”

  Lady Winifred stiffened as he approached. “You lied to me,” she whispered when he reached past her to turn the window latch and let in a bit of the north wind.

  “I never lie.”

  She turned and narrowed one eye at him, revealing a thicket of pale blonde lashes. “I asked if you were Mrs. Shaw’s ward.”

  “Exactly,” Sep said quietly. “I’ve never been her ward. She is my godmother.”

  “Do you always prevaricate, Lord Carwarren?”

  “Precision is the opposite of prevarication, Lady Winifred.” He tried for a jovial tone, but her expression remained as tempestuous as the gusts buffeting the window glass.

  “If I’d know who you were, I wouldn’t have shouted at you.” She didn’t take any pleasure in that admission. Her nose wrinkled as if the words tasted sour in her mouth.

  “I see.” Sep crossed his arms and assessed Lady Winifred. She was a conundrum, and he’d always enjoyed solving puzzles. Judging by her slight frame and delicate features, one might guess her fragile. Even her scent was light, a floral blend that reminded him of Penwithyn’s flower garden in early spring. Yet her shoulders were unerringly square, her posture straight as a ruler. There was a hardness in the way she held herself, and a steely sharpness in her eyes.

  “You should have told me your name,” she insisted.

  “I did. I told you I was the Carwarren.”

  “As if I’d know what that was.”

  “Perhaps I was remiss. I should have acknowledged my connection to Cornelia.” Sep was prepared to take all the blame if it eased her conscience. “Though I’m not fond of the notion of anyone speaking differently to me because they know who I am.” He understood her meaning. Politeness. Etiquette. Decorum. His godmother had been schooling him in gentlemanly manners since he’d come to live with her as a child. But he was prepared to forgive every breach of etiquette if it meant someone spoke to him honestly. Bluntly.

  “Yes, but I was still wrong to shout at you.” After staring at her slippers for a full minute, Lady Winifred tipped her head to gaze at him. One brow arched high and her nose twitched as she studied him. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have—“

  “You have nothing to apologize for.” Sep shrugged. “You told me the truth.”

  The look of surprise on her face was so fetching, he began thinking of other ways to defy her expectations.

  “Truth matters to you a great deal, my lord?”

  Her question drew laughter from deep inside of Sep. A heartier sound of amusement than he’d allowed himself in months. The release felt good. A rare liberation from his usual seriousness.

  “Did I say something amusing?”

  “Perhaps not intentionally.” He did his best to stifle an encore of chuckles. “Surely, the truth matters a great deal to everyone. Doesn’t it?”

  A shadow darkened her eyes. “Spoken like a man who has never had any secrets he must keep.”

  All the joviality drained from Sep like liquid from a cracked beaker.

  It wasn’t true. There were experiences in his childhood he’d
never confided to anyone. But he refused to revisit the past. He kept busy. Filled his days with purpose. Each scientific endeavor deserved as much energy as he could muster. Whatever was left, he used to plan for the future.

  What were Lady Winifred’s secrets?

  “They can be a grave burden,” he said softly. “Those truths we cannot tell others.”

  That earned him a glance. “Then you do have secrets?”

  “Nothing that would interest you, my lady.”

  “You cannot know that.” She swung to face him. “We’ve only just met. You don’t know me at all.” There was a power in her gaze that pressed into him, as if she could sift every one of his thoughts if he allowed her to look long enough.

  “I know you like storms. For that alone, you rank quite high in my estimation.”

  She blushed and it was breathtaking to behold. Rosy warmth rushed from her cheeks down to color her neck. Heat infused Sep’s cheeks too. What madness afflicted him? The last time he’d flirted with a woman, he’d ended up broken-hearted and disillusioned.

  “It is a relief to meet someone who understands the appeal of storms,” she admitted. The sharp-tongued lady almost smiled at him. Almost.

  Sep let out a breath. The lightness in her tone eased something in him too. “Why were you wandering the heath in the dark?”

  “I wished for a glimpse of the sea.” She still did wish for that view. He could see the yearning in her gaze.

  “You should see the cove in the morning when the early light glints off the waves.” Good grief, he sounded like Keats or Shelley, one of the Romantic scribblers his godmother favored.

  “I’d like that.”

  “As much as we hoped you two would get on,” Cornelia said from her chair near the fire, “we didn’t expect you to spend the evening ignoring us and whispering in the corner.”

  “Forgive me, Aunt Cornelia.” Lady Winifred’s blush deepened and she returned to the seat near her other aunt without another glance at Sep. “You must think me terribly rude.”