Surrender To The Marquess
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She gave herself a little mental shake. The fact that she was attracted to a man was an encouraging sign that she was returning to normal after her mourning—that was all. The really important person in all this was Marguerite and she could do nothing about the girl until tomorrow. Now she was going to go out into the ballroom to dance and enjoy herself and if Mr Dunton was making himself agreeable to all the ladies, then that would be excellent.
* * *
Lucian climbed the hill to Aphrodite’s Seashell next morning, prey to more uncertainty regarding a woman than he had experienced since he was eighteen. Lady Sara... Mrs Harcourt rather, as this was daylight and she seemed to change at nightfall like some magical creature, Sara was not indiscreet or mischievous or uncaring. However she felt about him after that kiss she would do nothing to harm his sister. But what had that been about? She was sexually experienced and yet she had treated it as no more than a moment’s diversion, not the invitation to a full-blown affaire that he had taken it for.
Was she actually that sensual, that beautiful, that free and yet that innocent? He reached the door, which had the blind drawn down and a sign reading Closed, and knocked.
When the door opened it was the redoubtable Mrs Farwell who stood there. She came right out into the street before ushering him in and Lucian realised she was demonstrating to anyone who happened to have seen him that Mrs Harcourt was very adequately chaperoned.
Lucian knew himself to be experienced, sophisticated even, in the relationships between men and women. It was strange and more than a little disconcerting to feel a faint apprehension about this meeting. Sara had kept him wrong-footed from the beginning, although if he was honest with himself, she had done nothing and he had fallen into one misapprehension after another about her identity, her likely morals, her availability. And he did not feel very comfortable about any of that, he realised as he waited inside the shop for Mrs Farwell to relock the door.
‘Lady Sara’s out on the balcony,’ Mrs Farwell announced with a wave of her hand towards a door in the back wall. ‘I’ll brew some tea. Expect you’d like some cake, most men do.’ Having reduced a marquess to the level of a small boy greedy for sweets, she stomped off through the curtained opening.
Lucian knocked on the door she had indicated and opened it to find himself apparently in mid-air over the sea. He covered the instinctive grab at the wall by closing the door and remembered that the hill that the street climbed was in fact a cliff, so the houses on this side of the road were built virtually to the edge. On either side the owners had cultivated tiny strips of clifftop garden but Sara’s shop, and a few other buildings, had balconies stretching along the width of their properties.
‘Good morning. You have no fear of heights, I see.’
Lady Sara was leaning on the elegant but terrifyingly spindly balcony railings facing out to sea. Lucian hitched one hip on the rail, leaned against an upright, and ignored the same unpleasant sensation low in his belly that he had experienced crossing Alpine passes on his Grand Tour. He itched to reach out and pull her back against the wall, away from danger.
‘Nor have you.’ She smiled as she turned her head and the heavy plait of hair slid over her shoulder to swing over the waves crashing below.
His stomach swooped in sympathy even as he admired the unconventional simplicity of her hairstyle. ‘Loathe them,’ Lucian confessed. ‘But it doesn’t do to give in to things.’
‘Does that work, or do you simply become good at dealing with the fear? I am afraid of snakes, which is a ridiculous thing in this country. In India there are a whole variety of lethal ones and it was quite rational to be wary of them. But here, my brother assures me, I would have to find an adder and then prod it with my finger to encourage it to bite me.’ He laughed at the image of Sara experimentally prodding an adder, but her smile faded. ‘I have never before come across a man who is actually prepared to admit that he is frightened of something.’
‘You see that as a sign of weakness?’
‘No, certainly not.’ She straightened up, very earnest now. ‘I think it admirably honest, though surprising.’
‘It depends what it is and to whom one is confessing. I wouldn’t admit a weakness, any weakness, to another man or to anyone who I suspect might want to do me harm: that would be a foolish thing to do, like showing a housebreaker where you keep your front door key. Besides, if it was something I was afraid of, but didn’t have the guts to confront, then I doubt very much that I’d own up to that, to you or anyone else.’ The fleeting look that she gave him expressed considerable doubt that he was keeping that kind of secret. Which was flattering.
‘A man challenging another to a duel, or accepting a challenge—he would be afraid, wouldn’t he?’ Sara asked, abruptly.
‘He’d be a fool not to be, just as a soldier going into battle must feel fear. The knack is not to show it, to harness it so that it sharpens you, not blunts you. Why do you ask about duels?’
‘Oh, no reason.’
She is lying, he thought, and waited.
‘Did you challenge the father of Marguerite’s child?’
Ah, so that was what this is about. ‘No, not yet,’ he admitted.
‘Not yet? You mean he refused your challenge?’
‘No, it means that I have not been able to lay hands on the bas—on the swine yet.’
‘Will she not tell you where he is? Or who he is?’
‘Oh, I know who he is all right. I trusted him, employed him, in fact.’ He hadn’t even managed to keep danger out of the house, but had invited it in to share the place with his innocent sister. ‘He abandoned her. She denies it, says something must have happened to him, but he walked out on her because of the baby and because the money had run out, I would wager anything on that.’
‘Oh, poor girl, she must be heartbroken, to lose both him and the baby.’
‘She is well rid of him. This is not some damned romance,’ Lucian snapped as the door opened and Mrs Farwell brought out the tea tray.
‘Language,’ she said, giving him what he categorised as A Look.
‘Thank you, Dot, that is delightful.’ Sara gave him the twin of the look and reached for the teapot. ‘Tea, my lord? Do take a scone.’
Lucian gritted his teeth into a smile at Mrs Farwell who looked less than impressed as she marched out, leaving them alone again.
‘Tell me about it if you can. I am exceedingly discreet.’ Sara handed him a cup and settled down on a rattan chair. He took its twin, glared at the scones, decided it would hurt no one but himself to ignore them and heaped on strawberry jam and cream.
‘I employed Gregory Farnsworth as my secretary eighteen months ago. He was just down from university, the third son of our rector. He proved intelligent, hard-working, personable. I began to include him in dinner parties and so on when I needed an extra man and before long he was part of the household. I trusted him implicitly.’ He took a bite of scone, savoured the delicious combination of cream and jam and made himself go on with the story.
Whatever your doubts, whatever errors you make, you keep to yourself, his father had told him. Remember who you are, what you are. And here he was, spilling out every detail of his failure to a woman he hardly knew.
‘Marguerite was just turned seventeen. Not yet out, but free of her governess and in the hands of my cousin Mary to acquire some polish before she made her come-out next Season. Mary apparently noticed nothing between them and I certainly didn’t, fool that I was. Not until, that is, the young puppy comes in one morning and announces that he is in love with Marguerite, that his affections are returned and that he wants my permission for them to be formally betrothed with the intention of marrying when she was eighteen.’
‘How old was he?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘Not such an age gap and not at all unusual, if he waited until she was eighteen.’
‘But he didn’t, did he? He lured the girl into believing herself in love with him instead of doing the honourable thing and waiting, keeping his distance, until she was out. I should add that he is probably the most beautiful young man I have ever seen—blond hair, blue eyes, Classical profile and so on and so forth. Even Mary admitted it gave her palpitations just to look at him. When I get my hands on him he is not going to look so pretty, believe me.’
‘You refused him permission, I assume.’
‘Of course I did. She was far too young, he had no prospects and no money beyond the salary I paid him. How did he think he was going to support the daughter of a marquess in the manner she was accustomed to? By sponging off me, I suppose.’
‘Perhaps she would have been happy to live more modestly?’ Sara ventured. ‘And if he is a good private secretary he might have hoped for a career in a government office or the Bank of England.’
‘That is academic. I refused him and warned him that if I ever discovered him alone with my sister, or writing to her, I would break his neck. I should have booted him out there and then, but his father the Rector was an old friend of my father’s, a decent man, and I hoped to keep this from him. Then I had to deal with Marguerite. I was an unfeeling brute, I had ruined her life, cast dishonourable aspersions on the motives of the man she loved, et cetera, et cetera... She threw an inkwell at my head and refused to talk to me.’
‘Go on.’ Sara poured more tea and Lucian realised he had drained his cup.
‘I had no idea that he had gone behind my back, but Farnsworth must have set out to seduce her almost immediately, if he hadn’t already. I worked it out when I eventually found her and talked to the doctor who told me how far along the pregnancy was. Two months after I forbade the match Mary came to me in strong hysterics, waving a note from Marguerite. I had forced her to take desperate measures, she said, so they had eloped and would be halfway to Scotland before I read the note.’
Chapter Five
Sara’s gaze was fixed on his face. ‘Did they make it to Scotland?’
‘It was a bluff.’ Lucian blanked out that nightmare journey to the Border and back from his mind with the same concentration that he had applied to stay sane, to keep thinking and find their trail. ‘He took her to Belgium, to Brussels, thinking that they would find an English cleric there to marry them. They did find one. When I finally got on their track and found him he told me he had refused point blank, guessing that she was so much underage. It seems they then decided to try in Paris. Since Waterloo the Continent is full of English visitors and it was a reasonable assumption that they’d find someone, if not at one of the Anglican churches in the cities, then a private chaplain or tutor accompanying tourists.
‘They finally located a cleric, in Lyons. Their money was running out and Marguerite was six months pregnant. Farnsworth left her in a lodging house, telling her that he was going to interview the clergyman. He never came back. You may imagine the state she was in when I found her three days later.’
‘I can guess at it.’ He was so lost in the black misery of that time that he almost jumped when Sara put her hand over his. ‘And you must have been beside yourself with worry and exhaustion if you’d been chasing them the length of England and back and then across Belgium and France.’
‘Me? What I felt did not matter. I found my sister, my little sister, having a miscarriage in a run-down French lodging house with a landlady threatening to throw her out if she didn’t get paid. There was no hope of saving the child and for days I thought we would lose Marguerite as well. Even when the doctor said she was out of danger she simply turned her face to the wall. All she would say was, “He must be dead. They are both dead. I want to die, too.”’
Marguerite was all the family he had and he loved her and he had failed her.
‘And you have been looking after her ever since. How long?’
‘Three months.’
‘Is your mother alive? Are there no female relatives to help? Your cousin Mary?’ Sara’s warm hand was still over his, her fingers firm and comforting.
I do not need comforting. I am a man, I should be able to cope with this. It was surely a sign of weakness that he couldn’t bring himself to draw his hand away.
‘My mother is dead and I do not trust our aunts to know how to help her—they would be shocked and disapproving. Mary was in hysterics, it was all I could do to get her to be silent about it. Of course, I should have married as soon as I inherited. If I had found the right wife then she would have seen what I did not, but I had put that off, believing I had ample time.’ Another failure on his part, the selfish reluctance to plunge into the Marriage Mart, try and sift through the seemingly identical mass of pastel-clad, simpering misses to find the perfect Marchioness.
‘I thought it best to take Marguerite where no one would know her and gossip about her looks and her low spirits. Then, when she’s stronger, she can come out next Season, find a husband. If there is someone she takes to, then I will make certain her dowry will be large enough to ensure he doesn’t think about her past.’
‘But she will still be mourning Gregory,’ Sara protested. ‘She will not be ready to think about another man by then.’
‘He seduced, deceived and deserted her. Once she recovers from the miscarriage she will realise what a fortunate escape she has had.’
‘Idiot!’ Sara pushed away his hand abruptly and got to her feet. ‘I hardly know your sister, but I can tell she is no fool. And she is loyal. She has had to keep her feelings entirely to herself with no one to talk things through with, so how do you expect her to realise if she was mistaken? Or how could she convince you, for that matter, if she was not wrong about him? If she truly does love him, then you will have to find out what happened to him so she can begin to heal.’
‘If I thought he was still alive I’d be on his heels with a pistol, believe me.’ Lucian found he was on his feet, too, toe to toe with the maddening woman on the narrow balcony.
‘Oh, that would be very helpful!’ Sara prodded him painfully in the sternum with one long finger. ‘How do you expect her to cope if her brother kills the man she loves?’ She jabbed him again. ‘And it is not for her, is it? All this sound and fury is because of your honour. You believe you did not protect her. You failed as a self-appointed watchdog, so now you have to restore your own self-esteem, whatever the cost.’
‘I did fail to protect her and it was my duty to do so. And stop prodding me.’ He caught her hand in his just before the nail made contact for the third time.
‘Why? You deserve to be hit over the head with the tea tray, you and every other muddle-headed, bloodthirsty, honour-obsessed man.’
And then he realised that she was not simply angry, she was on the verge of tears. They gathered shimmering in her eyes, making them look like two great moonstones. With an impatient gesture she dragged the back of her free hand across them and Lucian pulled her towards him, against his chest, and wrapped both arms around her. ‘Don’t cry, I’m sorry, don’t cry, Sara.’ He was not sure what he was apologising for, but he felt sick, as though he had struck her.
She stamped on his foot, pushed against him. ‘Let me go! I am not crying, I never cry. I am angry.’
He released her warily and reached into a pocket for a handkerchief, aware it would probably be thrust back into his face. And, finally, his brain started working, started piecing clues together. ‘How did your husband die?’
‘In a duel. A pointless, stupid duel with his best friend who is somewhere out there—’ she waved a hand vaguely in the direction of France ‘—with his life ruined and Michael’s death on his conscience.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they got drunk and Francis, who, it seems, had a perfectly harmless tendre for me, was teasing my husband, the man who I thought was above all this stupid, patriarchal nonsense about women’s honour and duelling. And Francis, in his cups, went too far and... I don’t know what was said. Michael wrote in the letter he left that he never believed for a moment that I had been unfaithful to him and yet I cannot understand how he couldn’t see that Francis was drunk and a bit jealous, perhaps, and didn’t mean it. They told me that Francis had intended to fire wide, but he always was a hopeless shot...’
‘My God.’ He thrust the handkerchief into her hand, she stared at it as though she had no idea what it was for, then swiped at her eyes with it, blew her nose with inelegant force and threw the crumpled linen to the floor.
‘I suppose you think he did the right thing? Even my father and brother, who were appalled at his death, obviously understood why he had made the challenge.’
‘What else was he to do if his wife was insulted?’
‘Oh, let me see.’ Her voice dripped sarcasm. ‘Wait until they were both sober? Ask Francis to explain himself? Blacken his eye? Act like the reasonable, reasoning, intelligent human being that he was?’ Sara turned from him and stood looking out over the sea. ‘Can you imagine what it is like for someone you love to get themselves killed and to leave a letter telling you that they did it for you? The guilt is hideous. Can you imagine how Marguerite will feel if her brother kills the man she loves for her?’
‘Gregory Farnsworth should be punished.’
‘If he is alive, if he really is a heartless seducer, then, yes, he deserves punishment. But you are not judge, jury and executioner, Lucian.’ When he didn’t reply she looked round at him and all the anger drained from her face, leaving only a small, bitter smile. ‘I haven’t convinced you at all, have I?’
‘I am appalled at what happened to you, but the circumstances are not the same.’ He stooped and refilled the cups. ‘Come and sit down and have some tea.’
‘Of course. We are English, are we not? Anything can be made more bearable by tea.’ Sara sat, seemingly quite calm now, and took the cup he passed her with a murmur of thanks. ‘But the question of Gregory is neither here nor there while you have no idea of where he is, or even if he lives. When I was grieving it was talking to my close friends that helped more than anything. Let me see if Marguerite will talk to me.’
Lucian looked at her as she sat, poised, beautiful, controlled again. And yet so much anger and grief and guilt boiled under that exquisite exterior. He wanted her, he realised, wanted to taste her again, to hold her, to strip every scrap of clothing from her body and possess her, wanted all that with an urgency that shook him. What did that make him, when he should be thinking about nothing but his sister’s welfare, when the woman he desired was still shattered by her husband’s tragic death? It simply made him male, he supposed, capable of thinking about carnal matters even in the midst of situations of great seriousness.
In the end all he could find to say was, ‘Thank you. I know I can trust you with her.’
* * *
Lucian was right to trust her to do her best to help Marguerite, but she would do nothing to help him bring down the errant lover, not if the girl still had deep feelings for the man. Sara sipped her tea and looked out to sea, watching Lucian from the corner of her eye. He was a brave man not to have fled when she had unleashed all that misery and anger about Michael’s death.
He was very attractive, she thought, and perhaps the fact that she noticed, that she wanted to kiss him again, wanted far more than that, was a sign that she truly had come through her mourning. She would never forget Michael, never stop loving the memory of him, or feeling anger at his death—and anger at him for challenging Francis and guilt herself for... No, she had promised herself not to dwell on her own guilt because it would drive her mad. She was a different woman now, a new Sara who had to decide what she really wanted in this moment, today. And tomorrow.
‘You are very thoughtful.’
And you, with all your demons, are an uncomfortable companion for my thoughts!
‘I was brooding on the future, what I will do when I leave here. The shop was always something for a year or so, something completely different from everything that had gone before. And it was creative, I could build the business, which was interesting. I have one grandfather who was an East India merchant and perhaps I have inherited his trading instincts.’
Restless now, she put down the cup half-emptied and went to look out over the sea again. The tide was turning and the little fishing fleet was making its way out to sea, red and buff sails vivid on the blue water as they butted through the waves. ‘Sandbay is changing, developing. There is perhaps one more year when I can live my dual life and then I will be too much of an oddity.’
Lucian came to join her at the rail, resting his hands on it as she was, their little fingers—his right, her left—just touching. A tingle like the spark from a cat’s fur in a thunderstorm shot up her arm. Did he feel it, too? His hand moved, covered hers, his thumb stroking slowly over the pulse in her wrist. Oh, yes, he feels it.
‘Sara. Last night you said you were curious. Are you still?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted and closed her eyes as the world narrowed down to the sensation of his caress on the tender skin, the awareness of his body next to hers, the brush of the breeze on her face. ‘But...’
‘Ah. The but.’
‘You should not allow your lover to associate with your young sister—and that is what we are talking about, isn’t it? Not just a kiss or two, but an affaire.’
‘That is what I desire, yes.’
Looking out to sea, with only Lucian’s voice to judge by, undistracted by his expression, she could read the layers of meaning. Yes, he wanted her. Yes, an affaire was what he meant: this was most definitely not a proposal of any other kind. And, no, he would no more bring his lover into contact with his sister at the moment than he would his mother, had she lived.
The silence hung there for the time it took a seagull’s scream to die away and then he said, ‘And you are quite correct, of course, about Marguerite. Her needs must be paramount.’
He was going to kiss her, she felt him shift against her as his breath touched warmth to her wind-chilled lips, then she was in his arms, moulding herself into his blatantly aroused body. There was no pretext now that this was curiosity or flirtation taken a little too far. This was an exchange of desire and demands that they both knew would go no further.
One of them had to stop and she supposed it had better be her. Sara rested her cheek on Lucian’s chest and listened to his heart beat and imagined it over hers as they lay in bed, then put the fantasy firmly away.
His hands dropped from her shoulders and she opened her eyes to see him outlined against the sun dazzle on the sea, already moving towards the door. ‘We will be in all day if you call. Marguerite would be pleased to see you. Thank you...for the tea.’
* * *
Marguerite was occupied with her new sketchbook at the window of the private sitting room at the hotel when Sara called. It had taken an hour to regain some composure and to think about how to best approach the younger woman. Now she perched on the table next to her and admired the drawing of the cliffs which was lively, if amateurish. ‘How is the shell mirror frame coming along?’
‘It is drying over there. I need some more small shells for the rim around the glass. Have you seen Lucian today?’
Was that a question with a hidden meaning, or simply a genuine enquiry? Sara bent over the mirror and spoke casually. ‘He dropped into the shop this morning to tell me you would be at home all day. Would you like to go out on the beach? I need to collect seaweed to make some pictures and it is lovely weather.’
‘I...yes, I would, I think, if it is safe. I can’t swim, you see, which makes the waves rather frightening. What should I wear?’ Marguerite looked dubiously at her very pretty morning dress with its frilled hem.