Surrender to the Marquess Read online

  *

  She waited until Maude was brushing out her hair to tell her the news.

  ‘Oh, my lady! You will be a marchioness, just like your mama. Oh, how grand.’

  ‘And I hope you will stay on with me, Maude. It will mean moving to London for much of the time and wherever Lord Cannock’s various country houses are.’

  How little I know about him. I must check the Peerage.

  ‘Oh, yes, please, my lady. Oh, just think—London for weeks at a time and grand balls and dinners. The gowns—’

  ‘You will be busy indeed, Maude. You will be my dresser and have a maid of your own and be the highest-ranking female member of staff in the household after the housekeeper.’

  At least someone had stars in their eyes about the future and no worries or doubts, Sara thought as she settled down in bed with a cup of tea and the hope that sleep would come soon.

  *

  In some distant corner of her mind she knew she was dreaming, knew that she should make an effort to drag her eyes open and wake up and yet she was powerless. Michael’s voice was speaking the words that she had only ever seen written on the letter he had left that morning when he had gone out to meet Francis in the dewy early light. Michael’s face showed vague and misty as though seen through a shifting fog bank, his mouth speaking the words.

  Francis said things that I could not let go unchallenged—implied that when I was at the college in the evenings, at night, he would not be keeping you company having dinner, as I believed he would, but making love to you. He would not deny it, would not confirm it.

  Of course I know it is all lies, that you would not so much as flirt with my friend, but he said such things… My friend no longer.

  Duels have always seemed to me to be archaic, violent. Now I see that sometimes there are slurs too great, betrayals too vile, to leave unpunished. I will defend your honour and mine and if I do not come back then remember that I love you and do not believe his lies for one moment.

  Your husband

  Michael

  And the fog swirled around her, choking her, muddling the words in her ears as she sank, drowning into the whiteness.

  It was only flirtation, she tried to say to him. I was bored. I was lonely. All those long evenings you were in college at those interminable meetings and dinners. Francis was there—he was fun, amusing, a friend. I never loved him, Michael, only you. Only you.

  Then there were three voices in that fog, like some devilish part-song. Michael’s, hers, and one she had not heard for two years. Francis Walton’s.

  ‘Just a kiss goodnight, Sara dearest. Where’s the harm? Just a kiss for an old friend…’

  Sara woke sweating and crying, the sheets tangled around her legs, her hair in her face, clinging like the tendrils of the dream fog.

  ‘But I can’t have loved you, Michael,’ she said out loud. ‘Not enough, not as I should, or I would never have flirted with fire like that.’

  Now Michael was dead and Francis an exile and she had been rewarded with a man she loved and desired and did not deserve.

  Chapter Twenty

  The tendrils of fear and shame still seemed to wrap her round next morning. As Sara made her way down the hill towards Aphrodite’s Seashell the air itself was misty with tendrils of sea fret swirling in, chill from the ocean. It was as if her dream had moved with her into the real world, even though her rational mind told her it was only to be expected at this time of year and was the first warning that autumn was on its way.

  Dot was already in the shop, dusting, when Sara slid her key into the lock. ‘There you are, home safe and sound.’ She cocked her head to one side as though knowing full well there was a tale to tell.

  ‘Safe and sound,’ Sara agreed. ‘And Lady Marguerite is safe, too, and will be married to her Mr Farnsworth without a breath of scandal or gossip.’

  ‘Now that’s good news, bless her. A sweet girl from all I could see, even if she’s still got a lot of growing up to do.’

  ‘And I am selling this shop and I will be marrying the Marquess of Cannock,’ Sara said, delivering all her news in a rush. She saw Dot’s jaw drop. ‘It is all right, Dot, I will make sure you do not lose by it.’

  But it was apparently not the sale of the shop that astounded the other woman. ‘The Marquess of Cannock?’

  ‘Yes?’ drawled a deep voice as the shop door closed on a tinkle of bells. ‘You wanted me?’

  ‘Mr Dunton? You are the Marquess of Cannock?’

  ‘Dunton is a family name,’ Lucian said smoothly.

  ‘Good,’ Dot stated. ‘So long as you do right by her.’ She stomped off to the back room. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  They stood there alone and Sara watched Lucian’s gaze wander over the shop and its contents. Was he already wondering whether she could put this behind her, become the sort of Marchioness he thought he needed?

  ‘We’ll have tea, shall we? Then I must talk to Dot and then go and see if I can find Mrs Ingram, who might be interested in taking over the shop. I can always lease it if she doesn’t want to buy.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ Dot said, coming through the curtains with a vast tea tray borne in front of her. ‘Have to rent it, mind, don’t have the sort of money to put down to buy it.’

  ‘You, Dot? But you’ve never taken any interest in the money side, or the orders.’ In fact, Sara was not certain just how literate the ex-dipper was beyond basic reading and writing.

  ‘Oh, not the bookkeeping and ordering. And not the things you do out the front, but I can carry on looking after the teas and keeping the place in order. But I’ve got a niece, well, the daughter of a cousin really. Nice lass, well brought up, her father’s a farmer and could afford an education for her. Went as a governess and was doing all right, by all accounts. Then the grown-up son of the house made a nuisance of himself, the slimy little…worm, she slapped his face—and she got the boot, with no references neither. She’d make a good job of this, I reckon, and all she’s doing at the moment is moping at home in Dorchester helping her ma.’

  The temptation to simply hand the keys over was considerable. Sara owed Dot a great deal and she trusted her judgement—if she said this young woman would do well, then she probably would. But Dot’s pride would never allow her to take a gift of that size, not for herself or for her young relative. Sara would have to be more subtle.

  ‘We’ll form a partnership,’ she said. ‘I will be a sleeping partner and you and your niece will be the active partners. I will get my man of business to draw up an agreement and if your niece can come down from Dorchester in the next few days I can show her everything she will need to do.’

  Dot dumped the tea tray down on the table and took off her apron. ‘Oh, bless you! She’s been that much of a worry to me, I can’t tell you. I’ll go down to the receiving office and get a message sent up to her by the next post. I’ll miss you, Sara love, but it’ll be a joy to be able to do something for our Laura, bless her.’

  ‘Why not make her a present of it?’ Lucian asked when they were alone.

  ‘Because Dot would not accept it, it would hurt her pride. This way I can gradually ease back and let them take over, but they will feel they are working for it.’ She shrugged. ‘Which they will be. But that is a weight off my mind. The shop is popular with residents as well as visitors and I would not have liked taking that away from them.’ She poured tea and nudged the cake plate towards Lucian. Despite having picked at her breakfast she was not at all hungry.

  ‘What is wrong, Sara?’ Lucian’s voice was gentle as he pushed the cakes aside and lifted his hand to lay the back of it against her cheek. The gesture was so tender that she closed her eyes against the sudden urge to weep. ‘You are pale, there are dark shadows beneath your eyes and you do not look as though you slept. Surely you were tired enough?’

  ‘It is just a reaction, I suppose,’ she said with a smile and let her cheek press against his fingers. ‘I did sleep, but I had bad dreams, very confusing and
full of fog.’

  ‘You are not having second thoughts?’ It seemed the question was dragged out of him and, just for a moment, she wondered if he wanted her to say yes and call this off and free him.

  Have faith, Sara told herself. Trust Lucian, trust yourself. We can make this marriage work. ‘Absolutely not,’ she said and twisted to catch his caressing hand in her own and kiss it.

  ‘Sara, how long will it take Dot to get to the receiving office and back here?’

  ‘Half an hour, I would guess, because she will need to write the message and that will not be quick for her. Then there will be any amount of discussion about how long it will take and how reliable the post boy is, to say nothing of talking to anyone she encounters along the way.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Lucian got to his feet, turned the key in the front door, flipped over the Open, Please Enter sign to Closed and went to the door to the balcony. ‘Come along.’

  ‘Lucian, you can’t mean—not out here?’ But she was already feeling pleasantly flustered and warm in all the right places and when he banged the door closed behind her and turned that key, she did not protest beyond murmuring, ‘Outside in the open?’

  ‘No one can see us unless they are out to sea directly in front of us and even then they would need a telescope to see anything untoward.’ He unfastened his falls and sat down in a rattan chair with no arms. ‘And all they would see is you sitting on my lap, after all.’ His eyes were alive with wicked intent and unfastening his breeches had released the evidence of considerable desire.

  She was wet for him already, and hot, and so, so ready. Sara lifted her skirts primly, settled astride his knees and then, with a bold rummage amidst the petticoats, took hold of him in a manner that was most definitely not prim. She gasped with the pleasure of touching him, so strong, so male, so aroused by her, for her, and he growled, deep in his chest, and strained up, pushing within her circling grasp. Sara wriggled, the leather of his breeches rubbing, coarse and exciting, against the bare skin of her legs above her gartered stocking. The space was tight and her hands tangled with skirts and the flap of the falls and the tails of his shirt and she growled in her turn with desire and frustration and need until she had placed the hot, smooth head just where she wanted him.

  They both went still, looking deep into each other’s eyes, holding their breath, holding the moment until, unable to bear it any longer, Sara sank down, taking him, enveloping him, hard and almost, perfectly, too much.

  ‘Ahh.’

  Almost too much, almost too big, too male, too… Lucian. And perfectly so. She held still, letting her body adjust, soften around him, embrace him, while she leaned forward and lay against his chest and let him hold her safely on the perilous brink of bliss.

  Then she began to move, slowly upwards, rapidly down, making him gasp and throw back his head, his face a mask of intensely controlled pleasure on the brink of pain. Riding astride had given her thigh muscles that let her rise and fall to pleasure them both, forcing the urgent rhythm. Lucian let her lead until suddenly he caught her around the waist with both hands and held her still as he surged up, taking control, wringing gasping cries from between her lips as her vison began to blur.

  ‘We don’t have to be careful now,’ Lucian ground out.

  ‘No.’ She clung on as the pleasure mounted, twisted and broke over her like a breaker on the rocks below as he pulled her to him and shouted his release against her lips.

  *

  Lucian came to himself to find Sara limp on his chest, her head nestled against his shoulder, her lips tracing teasing patterns on his neck. Faintly the sound of voices and laughter drifted down to them.

  ‘Lucian, it is people on the library balcony we can hear—do you think they could have heard us?’ She sounded almost too sleepy to care.

  ‘Seagulls,’ he murmured, kissing her ear, which was all he could reach. ‘They will think it was seagulls.’

  ‘I’m glad the gulls are having such a nice time,’ she said, making him laugh. ‘Oh, listen, Dot is back and banging around, rather. We had better unlock the door.’

  Sara simply had to shake out her skirts, Lucian had to wrestle with shirt tails and breeches and Sara’s attack of the giggles. ‘You look as disarrayed as Gregory did when I found them in the library.’

  ‘Your Mrs Farwell is about as terrifying as an enraged brother on the warpath,’ he grumbled, giving up on his neckcloth. He tied a rapid, plain knot and jammed the loose ends into his waistcoat.

  ‘Nonsense. She approves of you, she did right from the beginning. Mind you, it is probably the perfection of your profile and the width of your shoulders that she admires rather than your moral character.’ Lucian pretended to preen and they were both laughing when they opened the door and found Dot clearing the table.

  ‘You let your tea get cold,’ she said, fixing Lucian with a severe stare. He returned it with his best Marquess-on-his-dignity look and was rewarded with a twitch of the woman’s lips. Dot Farwell would have done well as the retainer who rode behind Caesar in his triumphal chariot, whispering, ‘Remember you are mortal…’ in his ear.

  ‘The word is spreading already,’ she reported. ‘It was all over the receiving office by the time I left. Hope you don’t mind, but that silly noggin Makepeace overheard me dictating the message and I put him in his place by telling him about his lordship here. And Lady Wharton is having vapours because her daughter danced with you, my lord, all unknowing that you were a marquess and if only she had worn her primrose silk you would have been so smitten you would have fallen for her and not Mrs Harcourt.’

  ‘Am I in everyone’s black books for not announcing who I really was?’ Lucian enquired. For himself he couldn’t care less, but he did not want to make Sara the target for jealousy on top of the gossip.

  ‘Only with Lady Wharton and no one takes any notice of her, what with all her airs and graces despite her husband being knighted for all the money he made in boot blacking,’ Dot announced with snobbery equal to any dowager duchess. ‘And that Mr Winstanley at the hotel is wringing his hands because he put you in the second-best suite and now he doesn’t know whether to move all your things before you get back or wait and grovel all over you and see what you think of the best rooms.’

  ‘It is a perfectly adequate suite that I am in. I suppose I had better go down and reassure him before he is too distracted to pay any attention to all his other guests.’ This was the last time he went anywhere incognito. Marguerite was always reading romances with dukes in masks and princelings of improbable European principalities roaming around in disguise and winning the hearts of poor but virtuous maidens before revealing their true selves. He had tried it and Sara had him spotted as a marquess within hours and everyone else was in far more of a taking about it than if they had known from the start.

  He looked at her and saw to his relief that the colour was back in her cheeks and her eyes were bright. His conscience was troubling him over dragging her about the country on one long journey after another, but that glorious bout of lovemaking had restored her. As for him, he was fully prepared to do it all over again now. Perhaps the hire of one of the hotel’s bathing machines and a chilly swim was in order.

  The door opened and three ladies came in, all hardly able to disguise their excitement.

  ‘Mrs Harcourt, I will leave you now, I am sure you must have much to do. Perhaps you would give me the pleasure of dining with me tonight at the hotel?’ He kept his tone formal.

  ‘Certainly, thank you.’ She was just as proper as he in her response. ‘It is ball night at the Rooms and I would appreciate your escort, Lord Cannock.’

  ‘Delighted.’ He bowed, the ladies sighed gustily and Lucian took himself off down the hill, amused despite himself. At least this was likely to do wonders for the profits at Aphrodite’s Seashell because all of the curious ladies would have to buy something to justify their snooping.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Conscious of Sara’s reputation, Lucian or
dered dinner to be served in the hotel’s dining room, not in his suite. Mr Winstanley assured him that the chef was giving it his most personal attention, sent up four different menus for approval and a request to decide between the best table in the room in the bay window or the discretion of the screened corner. As Lucian had no intention of appearing to have anything to hide, that was an easy choice, but he nearly lost all patience when offered the choice between roses and a mixed floral arrangement for the table. Could his lordship tell him the colour of Lady Sara’s evening gown so they could co-ordinate the flowers, perhaps? No, his lordship had no idea.

  His lordship, if truth be known, would rather like to dine with Lady Sara wearing no clothes at all and with a menu consisting of oysters and strawberries and cream. An afternoon swim, which apparently was quite outside the normal hours for such activity, although he was assured that the tide was perfect, had done little to cool his physical need for her. In fact, he suspected that the exercise had merely sharpened it.

  Sara arrived, was ushered into the dining room with huge ceremony, which from the unusually serious expression on her face was making her want to laugh. She did chuckle quietly when they were finally left alone at their window table to drink their soup.

  ‘Was it very bad?’ she asked sympathetically.

  ‘I was about to ask you the same thing. Remind me, when I am complaining about the work involved when we hold our first ball, that it cannot be as bad as this. I escaped eventually and went for a swim.’

  ‘This afternoon? My goodness, you must have thrown the entire town into a tizzy. I am amazed no one came to tell me. No one, but no one, swims in the afternoon.’

  ‘I will start a fashion in that case. It certainly cost me a pretty penny—double the usual rate and I had to pay for a dipper whose services I entirely dispensed with.’

  Sara was wide-eyed. ‘You mean you really did swim? You didn’t just lurk under the awning of the bathing machine and duck yourself? Oh, my, every telescope in the town must have been trained on you.’