“I insist, Miss Blanchard. You helped save me from utter disaster, and I must show you proper gratitude.”
“Your thanks is gratitude enough,” Madeline began, trying to return the draft to him. But Freddie stepped back, holding up his hands with a grin.
“Rayne warned me you would likely refuse, but he agrees that you earned it. I am to hound you until you accept it, and to summon him if I need reinforcements.”
Realizing that she was outnumbered, Madeline graciously acknowledged her defeat with a laugh. “Very well, then, thank you. I will send this to my brother since he could use the funds just now.”
“So could you, I’ll warrant,” Freddie stated in his usual tactless fashion, his gaze raking her nondescript gray morning gown and black spencer. “You should buy yourself a nice dress or two, Miss Ellis.”
Madeline felt her face flush at his evident condemnation of her wardrobe, but rather than argue, she slipped the draft into her skirt pocket and changed the subject.
“So, has Mrs. Sauville’s attempt at blackmail completely ended?”
Freddie grimaced. “Lord, I hope so … or at least I trust it will all be over in a few days. I mean to write her this morning, telling her I won’t pay her extortionist demands and that she ought to reread those letters of mine.” He grinned again. “She will be in for a rude shock when she discovers that her leverage over me has mysteriously disappeared.”
“I expect so,” Madeline agreed, smiling back.
“And now, I will take my leave of you, Miss Ellis. There is an enormous breakfast awaiting me back at Riverwood, and Rayne would not permit me to eat until I had called on you. I vow, I am famished. I have scarcely been able to swallow a bite this entire week past—Oh, would you care to join us, Miss Ellis?” Freddie asked, interrupting his own soliloquy.
Wanting urgently to avoid facing Rayne at the moment, Madeline hastened to decline. “Thank you, but I have already breakfasted.”
“Very well, then…. But if I may ever repay the favor you did for me, you have only to ask.”
“I will, Mr. Lunsford,” she assured him, although she couldn’t imagine ever needing to be rescued from a blackmailer.
With a gallant bow, Freddie doffed his hat to her, then spun jauntily and took himself off. He was whistling loudly when he disappeared from her view.
Still smiling to herself, Madeline returned to her gardening. Yet she was surprised when a short while later, Simpkin appeared to inform her that she had another caller, this time a Lord Ackerby, and was she “at home” to him?
Madeline felt her stomach clench at the mention of her noble nemesis and former neighbor.
Before she could reply that she most certainly was not at home, she saw the auburn-haired baron himself striding down the garden path. Even from a distance she recognized Ackerby’s tall, well-dressed form by his imperious bearing. Evidently he hadn’t trusted that she would receive him and so decided to give her no choice by following the butler to her location in the garden.
The elderly Simpkin frowned at this deliberate violation of proper etiquette, but Madeline hid her own grimace of distaste. “Thank you, Simpkin. I will speak to his lordship alone.”
“As you wish, Miss Ellis.”
Wondering what had brought her unwanted visitor here, Madeline waited until the butler had gone before asking Ackerby that very question.
“Why you, of course, my dear,” he responded in an easy tone. “Imagine my surprise to discover that you had landed here. You are like a cat with nine lives.”
She regarded him with an arch look. “Did you drive all the way from Chelmsford to discuss cats, my lord?”
“No, I came from London, where I have been staying these past several days.” Ackerby glanced around at the luxurious terraced gardens. “Haviland has set you up in fine style, I see.”
Madeline stiffened at the offensive insinuation that she’d become Rayne’s mistress. “You are greatly mistaken, sir—and you insult Lord Haviland by impugning him with your own lecherous motives. He is merely a friend of my late father and so did me a kindness by helping me find employment here in Chiswick at a young ladies’ academy owned by Lady Danvers.”
Ackerby raised a dubious eyebrow. “Indeed? That relieves my mind then,” he drawled as if disbelieving her.
She longed to wipe that smirk off his dissipated face. “The state of your mind matters little to me, Lord Ackerby.”
He held up a hand as if to ward off another tart retort. “I don’t wish to quarrel with you, my dear.”
Madeline pressed her lips together, striving to keep her temper. “Then what do you want?”
“Restitution, merely that.”
“Restitution?” she echoed. “Whatever do you mean?