Surrender to the Marquess Page 13

  Sara gave him a fleeting smile. ‘Lord Cannock is my lover, although he is too discreet to say so in as many words. It was a mutual decision, naturally, as he is a gentleman of honour,’ she said, before he could add anything. ‘And no seduction was necessary on either side.’ She turned to look at her brother. ‘And don’t grind your teeth, Ashe. You know perfectly well that if one of your friends was having an affaire with a widow of his own class you would not turn a hair. In fact, if you hadn’t met Phyllida when you did, I expect you would have been dallying with widows yourself.’

  ‘That is irrelevant.’

  ‘Then you are a hypocrite,’ she flung back.

  ‘Damn it, you are only twenty-four, Sara. What some older woman about town does is completely irrelevant. You have no experience of rakes and you know it.’

  ‘Lucian is not a rake.’

  ‘How do you know?’ That silenced her. As she sought for an answer Ashe spun round to face Lucian. ‘You marry my sister or you will meet me.’

  This was getting out of hand. Sara had gone white and he suddenly realised why. It was not simply the hostility and her distress at arguing with her father and brother, although that must be affecting her. But she had already lost her husband to a duel and now her brother was not only raking that memory up but making her fear that she could lose her lover, or, far worse, her brother, the same way.

  ‘Actually, I have the priority for a challenge,’ he drawled. ‘You struck me.’

  ‘Damn it, then challenge me!’

  ‘Lucian.’ Sara’s voice shook and he felt as though he had hit her.

  He glanced down and shook his head in reassurance before meeting her brother’s furious gaze. ‘Whether I call you out, Clere, or you call me out, I will delope. I will not risk killing Sara’s brother. If you do not delope, then you will be meeting me with the intent to kill me. Is that clear enough? And what your sister does when she is not under her parents’ roof is her affair, not yours.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Sara had the tremor almost under control now. ‘Now, are we welcome, all of us, or do we leave? Because if Lucian goes, I go.’

  ‘You are always welcome, Sara,’ her father said. ‘And Lady Marguerite needs our help, from what your mother hinted. So, no, my darling, you do not leave.’ He rose and held out his hand to Lucian. ‘I am sorry for your reception, but when you have a daughter of your own you will understand. I happen to trust mine and to trust her judgement. You are welcome here for as long as Sara is happy.’ For the first time he smiled and Lucian felt he knew what meeting a tiger face to face would be like. ‘On the other hand, if you make my daughter unhappy I will not trouble myself with the formality of a challenge.’

  ‘Understood.’ Lucian returned the firm pressure of the big hand with its calluses from years of handling reins and weapons. He did not make the mistake of offering his own to Clere, nor would he forget that blow outside just now. There would be a reckoning for that.

  The room the footman showed him to was large, luxurious and decorated in an eclectic mix of fine furniture of the previous century and rich, dark, Indian fabrics and embroideries. It felt a little like being inside an exceedingly masculine jewel casket.

  ‘Lady Marguerite’s chamber is opposite, my lord,’ the footman volunteered when he had checked that hot water had been delivered to the dressing room. ‘Lady Eldonstone thought you would prefer her ladyship to be nearby. Mr Farnsworth is just around the corner to the left. An informal luncheon will be served in the Green Dining Room in half an hour.’

  Lucian tidied himself up, grimaced in the mirror at the bruise on his chin and went in search of his sister. A maid opened the door to his knock and he found Marguerite happily exploring a room that was swagged in pale silk embroidered with flowers and animals.

  ‘This is lovely, Lucian! It is like being in a garden. Lady Eldonstone is so kind and understanding—Lucian, your chin?’

  ‘I walked into something.’ No more than the truth. ‘Ready for luncheon?’

  ‘Of course. I am starving.’ She dimpled at his grin. ‘I know, how unladylike of me. But I am. We must collect Gregory.’

  ‘Mr Farnsworth will make his own way down.’ He trusted them—up to a point. Showing the little minx the location of her lover’s bedchamber was positively begging for trouble. ‘Concentrate, Marguerite. This is the first act of a play, remember. Your reputation hangs on its success.’

  She nodded with all the confidence of youth and Lucian gave mental thanks once again for Sara’s help. ‘It will be all right, do not fuss, Lucian.’

  ‘We haven’t met the other guests yet,’ Lucian said grimly. All they needed were a couple of those eagle-eyed dowagers, able to spot a scandal at twenty paces, and the acting would have to be of a very high order indeed.

  When they located the Green Dining Room the first sight of the assembled company was promising, he thought. Everyone there was known to him, at least by sight, although for Marguerite, not yet out, they were all strangers. Lady Eldonstone had organised a casual buffet with several tables scattered through the room and out on the terrace which was accessible through the open full-length windows and the guests were standing about chatting while servants brought in various dishes to set out on the sideboard.

  Two young bachelor acquaintances from his clubs came over at once. ‘Cannock, this is a surprise. Ma’am,’ Toby Peterson said, beaming at Marguerite.

  ‘Marguerite, this is Sir Toby Peterson and Lord Hitchin. Gentlemen, my sister, Lady Marguerite.’

  ‘Delighted, Lady Marguerite.’ Sir Toby moderated the smile to something more respectful. Marguerite, Lucian was amused to see, blushed and smiled back. He only hoped that her devotion to Gregory held firm in the face of close encounters with other personable young men or they really were in the soup.

  ‘What’s wrong with your face, Cannock?’ Hitchin enquired, loudly enough for several heads to turn. ‘Nasty bruise coming up on your chin.’

  ‘An unfortunate collision,’ Lucian replied. ‘I should have been more careful. Is that Fitzhugh I see over there?’ He abandoned the inquisitive Hitchin and moved to greet an acquaintance from White’s. His wife expressed interest in meeting Marguerite and made her way over to detach her from the baronet.

  ‘She misses her own young sister,’ Fitzhugh confided. ‘We fired Annabelle off in fine style this Season, but now Marie is like a hen without a chick. She’ll keep an eye on your sister with these young bucks around. Her first time out, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I thought it sensible to let her try her wings before her Season. It always seems cruel pitching the girls straight from the schoolroom into society and the bear pit of Almack’s.’ Time, he thought, to change the subject away from Marguerite. ‘That racehorse of yours did well at Wincanton.’

  Sara came in and began to circulate, her expression when they met decidedly cool and collected. Was she play-acting for her family’s benefit or had he upset her in the study? he wondered, schooling his own face. Hell, this could be a long week.

  Something white fluttered to his feet as she passed. ‘Your handkerchief, Lady Sara.’ He stooped to pick it up and, as she took it from him, her fingers curled into his palm for a moment, the nails gently raking the sensitive flesh. ‘Stop it, you tease,’ he murmured and she chuckled, a low, wicked sound, as she moved on.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lucian conjured up thoughts of cold porridge, icicles and Latin verbs. A very long week. He looked around for his sister and saw Marguerite was talking to the Dowager Countess of Thale, a notoriously outspoken old besom, and her companion, the bluestocking Miss Croft. He moved across the room so he was within earshot of the conversation.

  ‘Oh, good, poor Mr Farnsworth has come down,’ Marguerite said. ‘He is my brother’s confidential secretary, you know, and he has been in the most horrible accident and it is so brave of him to come back to help Lucian even though he is still recovering. I tell my brother he must not work him too hard, but you know what men are like.’r />
  ‘Indeed I do,’ Miss Croft said darkly. ‘He looks a scholarly type, though.’

  ‘My brother?’ Marguerite asked innocently. Lucian’s lips twitched. He must warn her not to overdo the sweet naivety.

  ‘The secretary.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I believe he is. Rather serious, you know, even though the eyepatch makes him look most piratical.’ She laughed and Lucian relaxed. Marguerite would do.

  ‘Lord Cannock.’

  He turned and saw a tall brunette by his side, regarding him with wide brown eyes full of curiosity. He recognised her, but had never met her. ‘Lady Clere.’ An attractive lady and expecting a child, if he was not mistaken. Sara’s brother had good taste, he would give him that. The child, he remembered Sara saying, would be their first.

  ‘I suspect I know where that bruise came from,’ she murmured. ‘Ashe can be exceedingly protective, which is very commendable, but sometimes…infuriating. I must congratulate you on not retaliating. But by the look of her I think you are making Sara happy, so I approve. But if I find you have hurt her I will disembowel you myself, Lord Cannock.’ She smiled brightly as if she had just made a joke. He suspected it was not. ‘Luncheon is ready, do make yourself at home.’

  She passed on to the next group of guests with a warm smile, leaving Lucian wondering just what sort of bloodthirsty family Sara belonged to. She was skilled with a knife, as was, apparently, her mother. Her brother hit first and asked questions afterwards, her father positively exuded controlled menace and her sister-in-law uttered unladylike threats with relish.

  He filled a plate with cold meats and salads and went to an unoccupied table on the terrace in the hope of finding some peace to think. He had no sooner settled and sent a footman off for ale than he had to rise as his hostess approached.

  ‘Please, do not stand, Lord Cannock.’ Lady Eldonstone settled beside him in a flurry of elegant green skirts and he thought what a truly beautiful woman she was, with her glossy dark brown hair and her gilded skin and those wide, expressive green eyes. She and Eldonstone had created handsome children between them, he thought, eyeing her warily. What threats would she utter? he wondered, knowing he could not bring himself to speak to his hostess as he had to her husband and son if she attacked him.

  ‘You may relax, Lord Cannock, I trust my daughter’s judgement,’ she said without further preliminaries as she tore a bread roll apart with one quick twist.

  ‘Thank you.’ It was a novel experience, to be talking to the mother of a lover, and it went against all his instincts as a gentleman. The ladies with whom he normally formed liaisons were as old as he was, sophisticated widows living independent lives far detached from the bonds of family. Sara was sophisticated enough in her own way, but he had not counted on this close proximity to the rest of the Herriards, her unconventional, exceedingly frank, family.

  ‘And I like your sister, a charming girl. All will be well,’ Lady Eldonstone added serenely.

  ‘I sincerely hope so.’ Lucian had the distinct impression that if anything was not well, she would give it a severe talking-to.

  ‘Now, tell me your impressions of Sandbay,’ she said as two more guests, a middle-aged couple, approached their table. ‘Dr Galway, Mrs Galway, do join us.’ She made the introductions when she discovered they knew each other only by sight and, when they had settled, told them that Lord Cannock and his sister had been staying at the resort where they had met Sara.

  ‘It sounds a charming place,’ Mrs Galway remarked eagerly. ‘I keep telling my husband we should go and stay. What is your impression of it, Lord Cannock? One would hope for rational entertainment without the sort of thing one hears about at Brighton.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Immorality and vice. Shocking. One shudders to think what the tone of society will be once That Man becomes king.’

  ‘I certainly did not observe any immorality,’ Lucian said. Which was true enough. The only immorality he was aware of had been perpetuated by him and he had hardly observed it. His body stirred at the memory of it though and he focused resolutely on Mrs Galway’s earnest face. ‘It is a small town still, but exceedingly pleasant. It was just what my sister, who has been unwell, needed. Good air, relaxation, some unexceptional diversions.’

  He continued to talk platitudes and eat cold ham under the amused gaze of his hostess. Lucian gritted his teeth. If this polite boredom was the price of making all secure for Marguerite, then he would pay it.

  Sara, meanwhile, was deep in conversation with Gregory who was doing an excellent job of not looking at Marguerite who had escaped Lady Fitzhugh and had been rejoined by Peterson and Hitchin. Lucian knew he should probably show some disapproval of his sister sitting with two lively young gentlemen. They had found her a table and were plying her with refreshments, squabbling in the most flattering manner over which of them would fetch her lemonade. But if they were guests here they would be trustworthy and it seemed to him they were too young to be any danger to her affections for Farnsworth. Besides, a little flirtation with them would divert attention from any attention she paid to her brother’s secretary.

  Peals of laughter made him glance across the terrace to where four young ladies, barely older than Marguerite, were clustered around a table, heads together as they chattered. Their charmingly fashionable, obviously expensive, morning dresses marked them as being out, probably part of this Season’s crop of young ladies launched on to the Marriage Mart.

  Lord, but they are young, he thought as he watched them giggle and tease and cast lingering glances at the two young men who were talking to Marguerite. He had always managed to avoid the innocents, he realised. His London social life revolved around his clubs and invitations to dinner parties, balls, receptions and entertainments where he could mingle with men his own age or older, married couples, the dashing widows—anyone, in fact, rather than the pastel-clad girls so fiercely chaperoned by their anxious and ambitious mamas.

  And these were the young ladies from whom he would choose his bride. His wife. He looked at the pretty faces unmarked by life’s experiences—or even much thought, he suspected. How did you choose, how could you know which would mature into a woman of character and intelligence, a woman he would want to spend the rest of his life with, the mother of his children?

  A ripple of rich, amused laughter reached him through the chatter. He found he was smiling as he looked across at Sara, who was still talking to Farnsworth. What his somewhat solemn secretary had said to her to make her laugh he could not guess, but as Lucian watched Farnsworth said something else and she was immediately serious, listening with her chin cupped in her hand.

  Intelligent, complicated, loyal, beautiful and, as he now knew only too well, sensual and desirable. Why the devil was he even contemplating marriage to one of those unformed little chits when he could marry this woman? She was eminently suitable by birth, Marguerite liked and trusted her—

  ‘We saw very little of you in London this Season, Lord Cannock,’ Lady Eldonstone remarked, jerking Lucian back from thoughts which were fast running away from him.

  ‘No, unfortunately I had business on the Continent. Brussels, then France,’ he replied, wondering why she had raised what Sara’s letter would already have told her.

  ‘And France was where young Mr Farnsworth suffered his dreadful injury?’

  Ah, so she was setting the scene in front of two of the guests. Lucian did his bit. ‘Yes, Lyons. He had the misfortune to pass a house just as a heavy tile fell from the roof. It was a miracle he was not killed. I was not certain I should let him back to work so soon, and my sister tells me I am a cruel slave driver for doing so, but he seems to be coping.’

  It gave him an excuse to look back to the table where Sara sat. She would be perfect. The shop would have to go, of course, but once they were married surely any desire to behave unconventionally would leave her…

  He half-rose as the Galways got up to go, caught the eye of one of the four young ladies and produced his best brotherly smile when she sim
pered at him. She looked a trifle daunted.

  ‘Poor little birds in their gilded cage,’ Lady Eldonstone remarked as he sat again. It seemed she had noticed the direction of his gaze. ‘They cannot stretch their wings, all they may do is flutter from one perch to another, displaying their pretty plumage and singing their banal songs.’

  ‘You do not approve of the way young women are brought out into society?’

  ‘I was brought up in an Indian princely court. In many ways the restrictions on a young woman were as great, but no one would have dreamed of telling me to appear ignorant or feeble and helpless.’

  ‘You certainly did not raise your own daughter to be any of those things.’

  ‘No. Sara is independent and her standards are high, many would call them unconventional. She married for love to a scholar, the last man I would have expected my fierce little hawk to fall for, but perhaps she needed sanctuary in this strange new world she found herself in. And they were happy, until he let those primitive instincts you men are so prone to overwhelm him.’ She tossed her table napkin down beside her plate and made to get up. Lucian stood and held her chair for her. ‘Thank you.’ She put her hand over his as it lay on the chair back. ‘It is not easy to forgive someone you love when they kill themselves for your sake and even harder to forgive yourself for feeling that way.’ She hesitated, then turned back to him. ‘We can only do our best for those we love. Flagellating ourselves with guilt when we were wrong, or could not do the impossible, helps no one.’