Surrender to the Marquess Page 7

  She was changed, hat on head, boots on her feet when Maude twitched the curtain to look down on the street and reported, ‘There’s a gentleman outside with your mare, my lady.’

  Sara jammed an unnecessary pin into her hat, pulled down the veil and ran downstairs, amused to see that her staff were all peeking from various places to see her gentleman caller. Besides Maude she employed a footman and a cook and a maid of all work who came in daily—a size of household that partly soothed her father’s worries about her living alone and which filled the small house to its limits.

  ‘My lady.’ Walter the footman opened the door with a flourish and handed her a riding crop. He, at least, had good reason to be in the hall.

  ‘Come and assist me so that Mr Dunton does not need to dismount, Walter.’ The footman beamed and she guessed he would now go back and give the other staff a detailed description of the gentleman, right down to the toes of those glossy boots.

  ‘That’s a pretty animal,’ Lucian remarked as she settled into the saddle and twitched her skirt into place.

  ‘She is indeed.’ Sara gave the arched dark grey neck an affectionate pat as she turned the mare’s head uphill. ‘My brother bred her—Twilight by Moondancer out of New Dawn. I thought to go along the clifftops to the west. That way is perfect for the good gallop you wanted.’ And she would give him exactly what he asked for, she thought with an inward smile.

  The livery stables had done Lucian proud with a raking chestnut hunter that was a good match for Twilight, its long legs eating up the ground with ease while the gallant mare had to work hard to keep abreast. But like Sara she was not willing to be bested by a male and she was still in contention when they reached the spur in the track leading to Merlin’s Bay.

  ‘Down here,’ Sara called as she reined in and the chestnut thundered past. It gave her an opportunity to admire Lucian on horseback without seeming to stare as he rode back to her. Being in the saddle was his natural habitat, she guessed, and it suited him, brought animation to a face that sometimes seemed severe in repose and showed off a fine physique.

  ‘Where does it go to?’ he asked when he reached her.

  ‘Merlin’s Bay, which is a recent renaming. I think it was originally something prosaic like Murdle Bay or Mumbles Cove, but it is a local beauty spot and it was given a more glamorous title to attract the visitors when Sandbay began to be more popular.’

  There was just room to ride side by side as the track descended into the little valley, woodland crowding in on either side. ‘It seems very isolated and intimate,’ Lucian observed.

  ‘I’m afraid that is an illusion.’ As she spoke a second, wider, carriage road joined them from the right and the track levelled out into a wide space where two carriages were already drawn up in the shade and grooms were walking three horses up and down. ‘It is a popular tea rooms and gardens now. I thought that we could take refreshments here.’

  ‘I would very much like to make the better acquaintance of your mama,’ Lucian remarked as he swung down from the saddle and came to help her to dismount.

  ‘You would?’ Sara kicked her foot out of the stirrup and allowed herself to slide down into his perfectly proper and impersonal grasp.

  Lucian lowered her to the ground and gestured to one of the grooms who came forward to take their mounts. ‘She has sent you out into the world perfectly equipped to deal with importunate males, hasn’t she?’

  ‘I cannot imagine what you mean, Mr Dunton,’ Sara said demurely. ‘You tease a little—that is all.’ At least, I hope it is teasing. I think he will behave as a gentleman should. ‘There are some pleasant places to sit amongst the trees along the shoreline and we can order food and talk with no danger of being overheard.’

  There were about a dozen people visible in the little pleasure grounds and they had no difficulty finding a table with benches under an arbour. A waiter came to take their order and Lucian sent him away to fetch cold meats, salads, bread and butter, ale, lemonade and a selection of cakes. ‘You missed your luncheon,’ he pointed out when Sara protested that Twilight would buckle at the knees if she ate all that.

  ‘Marguerite looked happier than I have seen her since before this whole miserable business began,’ he said abruptly when the food had been delivered. ‘And I had almost forgotten what she looks like with roses in her cheeks. You have worked a miracle.’

  ‘I fear not. The fresh air and some gentle exercise put those roses there and the opportunity to talk to someone who is completely unconnected with the emotions behind all this helped, I think.’ Sara ate some cold chicken while she pondered how to talk to him and then decided to simply say what she thought. ‘She loves Gregory, she believes in him and it is tearing her apart not knowing what has happened to him. But she fears you looking for him because she believes you will kill him when you find him.’

  ‘I will call him out,’ Lucian said grimly. ‘Then it is in the lap of the gods.’

  ‘No, it is not,’ Sara snapped back. ‘It is in your hands. Do not try and tell me that a young man from a vicarage can match you with either rapier or pistols. If he is dead already in some accident, or the victim of footpads, then she will mourn him, but eventually she will recover. If you kill him, she will never forgive you.’

  ‘He is a predatory seducer.’

  ‘I very much doubt that. Marguerite might be young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, but she is not foolish, nor is she a bad judge of character, I think. You need to ask her what happened the first time they…were together.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It is not my story to tell.’

  He stared at her, frowning for a long moment, then gave a bark of laughter. ‘The little minx seduced him?’

  ‘I imagine that there are some circumstances when a man, especially an inexperienced young one, might find things are well out of his control before he knows what is happening,’ Sara suggested carefully.

  ‘They should have come to me.’

  ‘Really?’ She stopped, her glass halfway to her lips. ‘I should imagine they were terrified of you!’

  ‘Nonsense. He is a man—it is up to him to do the right thing even if he is terrified, not go dragging my sister all over the Continent. The only mercy is that she appears to have had the sense not to go about in Brussels and Paris and be recognised.’

  ‘Marguerite thought that if she stayed then you would send her away into hiding and then take her child from her.’ When he stared at her, speechless with what she hoped was outrage at the suggestion and not guilt that she had guessed rightly, she pressed on. ‘If you can only find it in you to promise Marguerite that you will not call Gregory out if you find him alive it would make all the difference to her. She would tell you everything she knows about what he was doing in Lyons and you might well be able to find him.’

  ‘And you know what he was doing, where he told her he was going?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sara admitted, reluctantly.

  ‘Then tell me.’

  Oh, yes, those two young people would have had every reason to be scared of Lucian, she thought as the hazel eyes focused sharply on her face and she read the barely leashed anger and intent there.

  ‘No. Marguerite told me in confidence. If I have to, then I will employ my own investigator to locate him for her, whether it is his person or his grave. At least then she will be able to find some peace.’

  Lucian put down his glass of ale with a deliberation than was more frightening than if he had slammed it on to the board. ‘It is not your affair to interfere in.’

  Chapter Seven

  The mouthful of bread and butter Sara had so unwisely taken turned to sawdust in her mouth. She swallowed and took a sip of lemonade. ‘You made it my affair.’ She let that sink in, then added, ‘And I like your sister, I would like to be her friend.’

  Lucian’s mouth hardened into a thin line. ‘I am beginning to wonder if that is a good thing. All I wanted was for her to be encouraged to develop a few interest
s, to get out and about and not be moping inside.’

  ‘Moping inside? She is mourning a lost baby, frantic with worry about the man she loves and racked with guilt because she has disappointed her brother and you call it moping?’

  ‘I want her to forget him,’ Lucian said stubbornly.

  There was more than anger in his expression now. There was pain and frustration and something very like despair. He had always been able to make the world right for his little sister, Sara realised, and now he had come up against something that was outside his experience, something that money and power and intelligence could not knock into submission. She had seen it in the faces of her brother and father when Michael died and they could do nothing to put it right for her except kill his killer, as if that would help—and Francis had fled out of their reach.

  She trampled on the surge of sympathy. ‘She will never forget and there is nothing you can do about it except promise her you will not call Gregory out, will not hurt him—and then go to Lyons and find what happened to him.’

  ‘I cannot promise that.’

  ‘Then you risk losing your sister,’ Sara stated bluntly and saw the involuntary grimace at her harsh words. ‘She wants to understand why you acted as you did, why you are still so obdurate, and she wants to forgive you for it, but I have no idea how long that will last.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘No, you stubborn man! I am warning you.’ Her temper snapped like a dry stick. One moment she was sitting there with a glass of lemonade in her hand trying to reason it out, the next she found herself striding across the lawn between the scattered tea tables under the curious gaze of the other visitors. Behind her she heard raised voices, presumably the waiter demanding payment from Lucian.

  ‘Your help to mount, if you please,’ she said as she approached the grooms watching over the horses. ‘The gentleman will pay you in a moment.’

  One of them tossed her up into the saddle and Twilight began to sidle, catching her mood. ‘Thank you. Come on, my lovely.’ She gave the mare her head towards the track up to the clifftop, riding on a loose rein. They both knew the way and the ground was sound.

  If she thought that unfamiliarity with the track and a natural caution would hold Lucian back, she was mistaken, she realised, as she heard the hooves pounding behind her. Of course, no gentleman would allow a lady to ride unaccompanied, she fumed. Goodness knows what dangers might await her. Rabid rabbits, Sara muttered as they emerged from the woods and on to flat ground. Sex-crazed smugglers, unhinged hedge-layers…

  The hoofbeats behind her were getting closer, much closer. She risked a backwards glance and realised that the only danger to her just at that moment was the Marquess himself. He looked as though he wanted to throttle her.

  Sara twisted back round, wishing she was riding astride and not wearing this so-fashionable habit with its trailing skirts and broadcloth that slid on the saddle. As she thought about sliding a buzzard flapped up out of the long grass, a rabbit in its talons. The mare jinked, stiff-legged, swerved back and Sara lost her stirrup, lost her balance and went over Twilight’s shoulder down to meet the turf with a thud.

  Instinctively she rolled, tucking herself up into a ball as her great-uncle the Rajah’s syce had taught her. The clifftop was almost as hard as the sun-baked Indian plain, she thought as she tumbled, arms around her head, braced for the hooves of Lucian’s horse.

  There was the sound of furious, inventive, swearing, then she came to a stop, untrampled, and lifted her head warily in time to see Lucian dismount from a rearing horse in a muscular, controlled slide.

  ‘Sara!’

  He was by her side and she closed her eyes strategically to postpone his anger and in sheer self-preservation. He had looked like a god just then and she could put no reliance on her own self-control. ‘Mmm?’ she managed.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  Yes, was the honest answer. Her left shoulder hurt, her right wrist stung and her pride as a horsewoman was severely dented. ‘No,’ she said and opened her eyes.

  ‘Excellent,’ Lucian growled. ‘Because I fully intend wringing your neck.’

  ‘Why?’ Indignant, Sara moved too quickly, found several other things that hurt and was hauled into an upright sitting position. ‘Ow! What are you doing?’

  ‘Checking.’ His hands worked along her collarbone, wriggled her fingers and prodded her ribs. ‘Move your feet. Let me see your eyes, your ears. What day of the week is it?’

  ‘Thursday.’

  ‘Correct.’ Then he kissed her.

  It was probably less life-threatening than having her neck wrung, but as she found herself flat on her back on the turf again Sara was hazily aware that it was probably more dangerous. Lucian was angry with her and she was not very pleased with him, but that only seemed to touch a flame to the tinder of feelings that had been simmering inside her ever since that kiss on her balcony.

  They were both wearing far too many clothes, she thought as her hands slid into his hair to hold his head so she could kiss him back with as much fervour as he was kissing her. His mouth moved from her lips to her cheek to her ear and she arched her neck to give him better access, shifting so he was lying fully on her, his pelvis cradled against hers, the heat of his erection like a brand.

  She opened her eyes on a sigh as his hand slid between the buttons of her jacket, seeking her breast, blinked against the sun dazzle and gave a yelp of alarm. ‘Lucian!’

  ‘What?’ He came up on his elbows, which felt alarmingly wonderful as his hips pressed down tight into hers. ‘What’s wrong?’ He looked distracted, but then she felt more than distracted herself.

  ‘Wrong? We are in the open, on the clifftop. There is no cover. This is a public bridleway. You are undoing my clothes. We agreed we were not going to do this! Is that enough wrong for the moment?’

  ‘Hell.’ He rolled off her, sat up and looked around. ‘I am sorry. We do appear to be alone, if that is any consolation.’

  ‘There is no need to apologise, I kissed you back. It seemed preferable to having my neck wrung.’ Which was untrue. She had just wanted to kiss Lucian, have his hands on her, put hers on him, and she hadn’t been thinking at all.

  ‘I’ll get the horses.’ He rose to his feet and walked towards them. Twilight was well trained enough to stay when her rider fell off and the hired chestnut was standing nose to nose with her. They allowed themselves to be caught with no trouble and Lucian led them back as Sara fumbled her jacket closed and tried to make some order out of her tangled hair.

  ‘Your hat.’ He held it out as he jammed his own back on his head, then held out his hand to pull her to her feet.

  Sara hissed with pain and Lucian moved close to take her arm. ‘You said you were not hurt.’

  ‘I am bruised. I fell off a horse. Naturally it hurts.’

  ‘Can you ride?’

  ‘Of course. If you will just give me a boost.’ She settled into the saddle and managed not to wince, or to look at Lucian as he swung up on to his own mount.

  ‘Why did you run off like that?’ he demanded as they set off again at a walk.

  ‘I lost my temper with you and rather than ring a peal over you in a public place I decided to leave.’

  ‘I was perfectly in the right—’

  ‘You were perfectly within your rights as an autocratic male head of household. But you are certainly not right about how to deal with your sister.’

  ‘She has to accept that Farnsworth abandoned her. I refuse to believe that an able-bodied, educated young man could meet with some fate so severe that he could not get a message back to a woman he cared for, one that he had left totally vulnerable.’

  ‘You might feel quite secure wandering around a French city, my lord. You have wealth and power and experience. Gregory was near-penniless and, however good his French, I would wager it was his first time in that country. How could he have coped if he had ended up under arrest for some innocent misunderstanding? Or in the charity wa
rd of a hospital after being set upon by footpads?’

  *

  Lucian could hardly throw up his hands in exasperation, not with both of them holding the reins, but he could feel his shoulders twitch with the desire to do just that. Somehow he managed to get the desire that was burning through him like a wild fire under control, but his body held the memory of hers under him, of her softness and heat where his erection had burned and throbbed. Focus. ‘You will not encourage my sister to hold on to these hopeless dreams.’

  The frustration and guilt were beginning to undermine his control, he thought grimly as they rode in frigid silence. He had failed Marguerite by not protecting her against the wiles of an unsuitable man, which meant he had failed in his basic duty to his family, to protect them. Now, somehow, he had to restore her lost honour—and his—and Sara’s inability to understand that, let alone sympathise with it as she should as a well-brought-up lady, was wreaking havoc with his temper. He must be mad to think of taking her as his mistress, of allowing her any deeper into his head, destroying his single-minded concentration on his sister.

  It must have been her unconventional upbringing in India, he supposed. Her father and brother had seemed normal enough in their attitudes, from what little he had seen of them and from what Sara had said, but her mother was a different matter. She was a stunningly beautiful woman with an imperious manner who struck him as more than likely to take the defence of her own, and her daughter’s, honour into her own hands. And those pretty hands, he rather suspected, would be holding something as sharp as the knife Sara had drawn on him the other evening.

  But that definition of honour must be very different from his if Lady Eldonstone had calmly allowed the newly widowed Sara to take herself off and set up as shopkeeper like this.