Surrender to the Marquess Page 19

  He glanced back over his shoulder as Lucian gave a snort of laughter that ended in a sharp intake of breath. Sara drew in her breath sharply. A love match? But Lucian had not seemed to notice the implications of what Ashe had just said. ‘Everyone’s down now and Father is about to make the announcement. You had both better make your way to his side and look suitably bashful.’

  Surprisingly, given that she had been married before and was both older and more experienced than the last time this had happened, Sara found that she did, indeed, feel bashful. It was probably the fact that she and Lucian had anticipated their vows.

  Her father did a very good imitation of a proud parent. Perhaps now he knew Lucian did intend to marry her he was genuinely content with the match. His speech was short, warm, and had several of the ladies sniffing into their lace handkerchiefs.

  Lucian responded with a few dignified words about how fortunate he was to have secured such a beautiful and intelligent bride and kissed his future mother-in-law and then Sara—both chastely on the cheek. Everyone applauded warmly and then clustered round to congratulate Lucian and kiss Sara.

  The hubbub had almost died down when Marguerite appeared at Lucian’s side, her hand on Gregory’s arm. ‘Lucian, we must speak to you.’

  ‘You must?’ He gave her a quizzical look.

  ‘I must, my lord.’ Farnsworth’s scarred face was pink with embarrassment, but he kept his head up and looked Lucian squarely in the eye.

  Lucian looked from one to the other, then turned to Sara. ‘If you’ll excuse me for a moment, my dear.’

  She watched him lead the two lovers out of the drawing room and was immediately in the midst of a buzz of speculation as all the ladies began to wonder out loud just what was going on.

  ‘I suspect we have another romance here tonight,’ she said with a smile. ‘Lady Marguerite has been spending much time assisting Mr Farnsworth. I did think that I detected a growing attachment and I believe they have just realised that they have fallen in love. He is such a worthy, intelligent and diligent young man, the son of a clergyman, I understand. Lord Cannock believes he will go far.’

  ‘She is very young, is she not?’ Lady Fitzhugh queried. ‘And it is a somewhat unequal match.’

  ‘One such as I made and I was very happy indeed, for the short while it lasted.’

  That gave all the ladies pause. Sara could see their minds working—she was a marquess’s daughter, she had married a commoner and a scholar, but she had remained a lady. Perhaps it was not so shocking after all…

  Lucian came back, spoke with her father and then raised his voice for attention. ‘My friends, this is an evening for good news. I am delighted to say that my sister Marguerite is now betrothed to Mr Gregory Farnsworth.’

  Gregory was white with nerves, Marguerite was pink with happiness and Lucian was smiling with what looked like genuine pleasure, but was probably simply relief that they had pulled off the deception. Sara found she was dabbing sentimental tears from her eyes with her handkerchief without even realising that she had taken it out of her reticule.

  When Lucian returned to her side he took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Thank you, Sara. If it had not been for you this would never have ended well.’

  ‘Anyone would have wanted to help them, despite their errors and adventures, and I am very fond of Marguerite. Lucian, we are going to have to plan wedding dates.’

  ‘I know.’ He looked faintly harassed, which Sara found rather endearing. Lucian was not a man given to being harassed, she suspected. He would make up his mind about something and then ensure it happened. ‘You and I must marry first and as soon as possible, then we can establish ourselves in the London house and Marguerite can be married from there.’ He looked down at her. ‘Is that rushing you? I do not want you to feel our marriage is simply a convenience for establishing Marguerite and I confess I have no idea how long you would want to plan everything.’

  ‘I need to go down to Sandbay to close down Aphrodite’s Seashell.’ Lucian managed to cover his relief about that really quite well, she thought. ‘There is a lady in the town who comes to our group and who I think might well like to buy me out, but I must speak to her and of course pay Dot and make certain that she does not suffer for this. If you came with me we could make our plans at the same time.’ She watched him think that through. ‘Marguerite could stay here with Mama as chaperon, I am sure she would love to have her stay on.’

  ‘And I could send Farnsworth to open up the London house and you and I—’

  ‘—would be alone again.’

  ‘A pre-emptive honeymoon?’ Lucian suggested, his voice suddenly husky.

  ‘Is that very wicked of me?’

  ‘Oh, I hope so, my Aphrodite. I do hope so.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Chaises and postilions are fast compared to carriages with a driver, but they have one major disadvantage.’ Lucian observed as they rolled away from Eldonstone three days later.

  ‘The springing? It is very bouncy, but neither of us gets travelsick, it seems.’ Sara stretched out her toes and wriggled back into the soft upholstery. Much as she loved her family it was a relief to be away from the house party and the guests’ constant curiosity and probing.

  ‘There is too much glass,’ Lucian said darkly, gesturing towards the window at the front that allowed them to look out over the horses and postilions. ‘How can I make love to you? It would be like being in a conservatory.’

  Sara stamped firmly on erotic thoughts about making love in a moving carriage and tried to be practical. ‘We can make it in the day, can’t we? The weather is dry, the roads are turnpiked almost all the way. If we pick up food to eat as we go and stop only for changes it would take us twelve or thirteen hours.’

  ‘You will be exhausted when we get to Sandbay.’

  ‘Not if we sleep along the way.’ Sara rested her head on his shoulder. ‘We can take it in turns being the pillow.’

  ‘I do not sleep when I am travelling and certainly not with a lady. What if we were held up?’

  ‘And what if we were in a closed carriage making love and a highwayman held us up?’ she teased. ‘What would you do then? Wave your weapon at him?’

  ‘You shock me, Lady Sarisa. My weapon, indeed.’

  She felt his suppressed laugh shake his body and smiled. ‘I suppose the answer is not to make love while going across Hounslow Heath and similar locations. Road books could have special symbols on them to designate dangerous areas.’

  ‘A cupid in red, perhaps to indicate stretches of road where lovemaking might be inadvisable? We could expand on that—the guide could have inns with dreadful food marked with a red leg of beef and ones with damp beds with a rain cloud. If we lose all our money we could go into the publishing business.’

  ‘Idiot,’ she said and kissed him, regardless of the fact that they were bowling along the main street of Bricket Wood and the local inhabitants were going about their early morning business.

  I fell in love with him without even being certain whether he had a sense of humour or not. Thank goodness he has.

  It occurred to her as they rattled through the countryside that Michael had not had much of a sense of humour, or at least, not much of a sense of fun or the ridiculous. He hadn’t been dour or humourless, but she could not imagine him entering into her silly little fantasy about road books marked up with warnings to lovers. He had been a good companion, but, she supposed, a serious one.

  Not that Lucian could not be serious, she thought, shifting so she was in the corner and could look at him as he sat relaxed, watching the road ahead. He was serious about family, about honour, about Marguerite’s feelings, even when he had been exasperated with his sister. He had been serious about her own feelings, too, about her memories of Michael, even though he had not understood her opposition to duelling.

  He still doesn’t understand why I do not feel glad that Michael cared so much about honour as to fight for it, she thought. It shocks him that I
see it as a weakness that Michael did not find some other way to deal with Francis’s drunken ramblings.

  A cold shiver went down her spine as she wondered, yet again, what exactly Francis had said. Had Michael gone to his death believing that she had betrayed him with his best friend? And many people would say that she had, she supposed, even though nothing had gone beyond a light, fleeting kiss.

  *

  Somewhere after Basingstoke, when they were, all being well, halfway back to Sandbay, Sara slept. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and they had just finished half a roast chicken, some soft bread rolls with fresh butter and a jug of ale.

  It was the ale that had put her to sleep, Lucian thought, smiling at the crumbs on her skirts and the greasy smudge on one cheek from the chicken leg. Not one for standing on her dignity, his future Marchioness. He put an arm around her shoulders and tugged gently until she was cradled against his side and was amused to find that his other hand rested on the butt of one of the horse pistols he had pushed into the side pocket next to the seat.

  She made him feel very protective, he realised, even more than was normal for him. Was this love? He supposed it was, although there were none of the symptoms he had expected. Or feared, to be honest. Her brother had said something about love matches—not that she had reacted to that in any way—so what had Clere seen? Lucian did not feel himself to be in a daze, or to have lost his judgement. He was not attempting to compose sonnets to Sara’s eyebrows, fine though they were, and he had no desire whatsoever to put her on a pedestal.

  Far from it. His desires towards her were decidedly earthy and the only pedestals that appealed were ones of a suitable height to perch her on, or bend her over, while he had his wicked way with her.

  He had felt desire like that for other women, so why did the mere thought of this one vanishing from his life leave a hollowness inside that he suspected might be fear? Now that he had definitely never felt about any other woman.

  But why? Yes, she was desirable and very lovely, intelligent, loyal, courageous, honest. Passionate. All of those things and yet…he suspected that it was none of them that made him feel like this when he was with her, but some indefinable quality that combined them all in a way that spoke to his heart and his soul. Was this love?

  Honest, outspoken—and she had said nothing about loving him. He had not said he loved her, Lucian acknowledged, but it was a difficult thing for a man to admit to, even to himself. Surely Sara would have told him if she loved him? He began to wonder why she had agreed to marry him at all. They had moved from an expedient to distract attention from Marguerite and Gregory’s indiscretion to discussing compromise in marriage, he realised, and then she had accepted him and he had not thought to ask the obvious question—why?

  Perhaps it was because she had become his lover and then realised that she had made a mistake in having a sexual relationship outside marriage. Yet she had stood up to her father and brother’s disapproval with no sign of either repentance or of changing her mind and expecting marriage. Unless she was too honest to want to trap him and it was not until he proposed that she allowed herself to agree.

  That line of reasoning was making the hollow feeling considerably worse. Lucian closed his eyes. Hell, but this falling in love business is a miserable thing, not at all what it is puffed up to be.

  His confidence was seeping away, he felt sick and he very much feared it was fear itself that caused it. He was out of his depth here. No wonder men went mad for love, shot themselves in despair. Where was all the sunshine and roses that were supposed to go with love? The songbirds tweeting, the bloody cupids flying…

  ‘Lucian! Wake up, you are having a nightmare.’ Someone was shaking him.

  He blinked, opened his eyes and found himself nose to nose with Sara who was, predictably, laughing at him. ‘What?’ he asked, disorientated, his hand clenched around the pistol which was half out of its holster.

  ‘You were muttering about Cupid doing something that I suspect is anatomically impossible, especially for someone with wings. You were quite correct when you said that you are not a romantic, weren’t you?’

  He jammed the pistol back, hoping Sara had not noticed that reflexive movement. ‘I could try,’ he suggested, imbuing as much confidence as possible into his voice. What did being romantic involve, anyway? Courtship seemed to be fairly straightforward—squire the lady about, bring her flowers, pay attention to what she wore, pay her compliments—he had felt no qualms about the prospect of doing all that once he had identified his potential bride next Season.

  His previous lovers hadn’t expected romance, only the best lovemaking he could give them, and he had certainly done his level best to please Sara in that way, with, from her reaction, excellent results. But she had mentioned romance twice, which made him think it was important to her.

  ‘Men!’ She laughed and rolled up her eyes, making a joke of it that he suspected was not a joke at all. ‘If you have to try, then it is not romantic, you see. Do not worry about it, we have agreed to a perfectly rational marriage, haven’t we?’

  But why have we? Lucian asked himself. Or, rather, why have you? And realised that he did not want to ask that question because not only might she think hard about it and decide she did not want to marry him after all or, just as bad, she might think he was trying to hint that he hoped she would decide just that. No gentleman could jilt a lady, it was up to her to end an engagement if she changed her mind, and the thought that she might lose faith in the sincerity of his proposal appalled him.

  ‘Of course we have,’ he said and that time it sounded as though he meant it. He would not say the word love to her, admit what he felt, because then she would feel he was pressuring her to admit the same and she obviously did not feel it or she would have said so when she accepted him. She wanted a perfectly rational marriage so, as he loved her, that was what he would give her. It was what he had always thought he wanted, after all.

  *

  ‘We have arrived.’

  Sara surfaced from jumbled, bumpy dreams as the chaise began the descent towards the centre of Sandbay. It was dark and the lights from the Assembly Rooms made a constellation of stars on the surface of the sea.

  Home. And yet it would not be for much longer. Home would be somewhere unknown, somewhere with Lucian. Lucian’s homes would be the shells around an entirely new life, the kind of life she had run from when she had married Michael.

  ‘Sara?’

  ‘Sorry… I must have been wool-gathering. Oh, the men have stopped for directions.’ She let down the window and called instructions to the postilions, then sat back in the gloom of the chaise’s interior and stared blankly out at the dark, familiar streets.

  Run from… Is that what I was doing? Running away from an alien, difficult world, not running to the man I loved? But I did love him. I did. He was my friend and he was so safe and he gave me the entrée to a whole intellectual world that fascinated me.

  He was my friend… She had loved Michael, she realised, but not as she loved Lucian. She had loved him as friend who was also a lover and that, she realised, was a very different thing from what she felt now for Lucian. For Lucian she was prepared to take risks, take a step into a frightening unknown. With Michael she had taken what she wanted and needed. If she had felt this for him then she would never have—No, she would not think about Francis, about that foolishness that had had such a terrible result. Foolishness on her part, on Francis’s part—and, fatally, on Michael’s.

  It had not been her fault, she had told herself over and over again. But it had. Michael had loved her in a way that she had never been able to return and that was why he had challenged Francis. That was why he was dead.

  ‘Sara? Are you well? We have arrived at your house and you seem to be in a dream.’

  Lucian, here and now. ‘Yes, I am well, just not properly awake, that is all.’

  ‘There is light down in the area. Wait here and I will go and knock.’

  He did s
o and the door opened after perhaps half a minute, sending light spilling out down the steps and across the façade of the house as Walter held up a lantern. On the very edge of the light a shadow moved, a swift movement back into the darkness. A footpad waiting for an unwary passer-by or a beggar, perhaps, looking for an unlocked gate to slip inside and find warm shelter for the night. And yet there had been something familiar and unsettling about the way the figure moved.

  Sara gave herself a shake. She was imagining things, seeing ghosts. It was because she was tired and had let herself dwell on the past, on Cambridge.

  Lucian helped her down while Walter and one of the postilions sorted out her baggage from his. They made a very decorous goodnight, out in the open on the street. She did not ask him in, he lifted her hand and kissed her fingers lightly. The shadows stayed shadows, unmoving.

  ‘I will call in the morning.’

  ‘I must go to the shop. Could you meet me there?’

  ‘For Mrs Farwell’s cake? Certainly.’ A bow and he was back inside the chaise and driving off.

  ‘Is all well?’ she asked as she followed Walter inside. He locked and bolted the door as Maude came running down and moved the valises to the foot of the stair.

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ Maude said. ‘Mrs Farwell came round and left some money and I locked it away with your jewel case as the safest place. She said to tell you that everything was quite as it should be. Your post is on your desk and I opened the ones that looked like invitations and sent messages that you were away this week.’

  ‘No callers?’

  My imagination or a footpad, that was all it was. Who would be waiting for me out there in the dark?

  ‘No, my lady, very quiet it has been.’

  ‘Excellent, although I hope you were not too bored. I think I will go up and wash and change into my nightgown and just have a cup of tea before I go to sleep. It was a long journey from near St Albans in Hertfordshire.’