Читать книгу Historical Romance March 2017 Book 1-4 - Louise Allen - Страница 23

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.’

‘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 simpered 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.’

Had that parting shot been meant for him? Lucian wondered if Sara had found time to tell her mother more about Marguerite than her letter could convey and whether Lady Eldonstone guessed at his own feelings of guilt. Probably she had—he was half-convinced the woman was a mind-reader.

Lucian stopped by Sara’s table and she smiled up at him, a perfectly friendly smile that she might have given any of the male guests. Yet deep in those grey eyes there was another secret smile just for him. Was he mad to think of marriage and this woman? He had been raised to regard a wife as a responsibility to be guarded, protected, shielded from the slightest puff of cold air, yet Sara wanted none of that, seemed to regard his protective instincts as some kind of patronising patriarchal domination. Did she share her mother’s view that those unmarried girls were simply birds in gilded cages? Did she regard marriage as yet another cage?

Her husband’s death had been a tragedy, but he could not but see it as an inevitable risk. As a gentleman, Harcourt had had no choice when his wife was insulted. He himself had no choice but to forbid the match when Marguerite had fallen for an unsuitable man when she was far too young. He could accept that he had handled the situation badly, but that did not negate the principle. Nor could he blame Eldonstone and Clere for their hostility to himself, even as he resented it.

Sara would expect him to let her fight her own battles and she would be constantly fearful that he would meet his death on a field at dawn for some slight. For himself, he would be always on edge, convinced that she was hiding things from him that might trigger that imperative to protect.

‘Impossible,’ he said and only realised he had spoken out loud when both Sara and Farnsworth stared at him.

‘My lord?’ Farnsworth got to his feet. ‘I apologise, I have lingered here far too long. I should be working.’

‘Nonsense. I mean, you have not lingered too long. All I meant was that it is impossible to relax and enjoy myself when there is such a press of work. If you have finished and Lady Sara will excuse us, we can discuss priorities in the garden.’

The last thing he wanted was company, but he could hardly justify bringing his secretary to a house party unless he showed some evidence of needing him to work.

‘I will fetch my notebook, my lord, and will be back directly.’ Farnsworth excused himself and went out.

‘Sit with me while you wait for him,’ Sara said.

Reluctantly Lucian took Farnsworth’s chair. He did not want to be with Sara, not until he could work out what he wanted to be to her—lover or husband. Somehow there did not seem to be any other options.

Around them the room was emptying. Some guests were drifting out to the terrace to enjoy the afternoon warmth, others were talking of resting, letter-writing, a visit to the gunroom with their host.

Lucian leaned back, distancing himself from her to prevent any impression of intimacy. ‘A delightful meal. Your mother has the knack of entertaining, I think.’

‘Oh, yes. And wait until she has one of her picnics,’ Sara said.

Lucian repressed a start as her foot nudged his and then rose to slide up his leg until her extended toes just brushed the inside of his thigh.

‘It really is not fair to tease me with delightful possibilities, Lady Sara.’

Icicles, cold porridge, Latin verbs...

Sara’s teeth closed on her lower lip as she hid her smile. ‘Oh, a picnic is not merely a possibility, the weather is set to remain fair, I believe. Or was there some other activity you were thinking of? Something delightful...’

‘I might think all I wish, but I am under your parents’ roof,’ he said, low-voiced. ‘And you agreed with me that discretion was necessary.’

‘I know.’ That provoking toe-tip continued its exploration. ‘But they do not own the sky and, as I said, the weather is set fair.’

‘I am their guest,’ he said firmly as he reached under the table, seized her foot and set about establishing whether Sara was ticklish. ‘Misbehaving in the grounds is not acceptable either.’

‘We could explore the gardens together without committing the slightest improper—oh, stop it!’ she gasped as he slid one finger into her kid shoe and caressed her instep. ‘That is so unfair. Let me go!’

‘If you promise to behave.’ When she nodded, lips compressed on her giggles, he released the foot and Sara sat up very straight.

‘Gardens? Surely you can give Gregory some work to be getting on with and then be free for me to show you the lily pond and the rose garden and the herbery.’

‘You want to torture me, in other words.’

‘A medieval knight would regard it as a test of his devotion to his lady to put himself constantly in her way and yet resist the temptation to steal so much as a touch.’

‘More fool him.’ It sounded like a recipe for a permanent state of frustrated arousal to Lucian.

‘It was romantic.’ She regarded him, head on one side. ‘You are not at all romantic, are you, Lucian?’

‘Not in the slightest.’ Romance got a man into foolish entanglements and led to imprudent marriages. To his relief, because he could not tell whether he was being teased or had gravely disappointed Sara, Farnsworth came back into the dining room, deserted now except for the two of them at the table and the servants clearing the buffet.

‘I am ready, my lord. Lady Marguerite is playing battledore with the other young ladies and some of the gentlemen on the front lawn.’

‘Thank you. We will stroll to the lily pond, I think, if Lady Sara would be good enough to direct us. I do not expect it will take long, unless you have some knotty problems in the correspondence folder.’

‘Just the one about boundaries on the shooting-lodge lands, my lord.’

‘Walk straight across the terrace, down the steps, turn left and follow the slope of the lawn down,’ Sara directed them. ‘Do enjoy the dragonflies.’

* * *

So, her lover was not at all romantic. Sara sighed as she stood in the window, watching the two men strolling down the grassy slope to the hidden valley. Out of sight of the house the stream had been dammed to make a lily pond before making its way out over an artificial waterfall to join the main lake.

Michael had been romantic, given to quoting Shakespearean sonnets in the moonlight, or laying single roses on her pillow. He would come home, apparently preoccupied with his current problem in a Greek translation and surprise her with one perfect peach or a pretty silk handkerchief that he had seen in a shop window and thought she would like.

And in turn she would like to surprise him with little gifts tucked into his papers or by greeting him wearing nothing but a scandalous negligee when he got home and luring him upstairs.

Lucian was passionate and tender and exciting in bed, but he probably thought that romance was for foolish youngsters like Marguerite and Gregory and had nothing to do with the real world.

He was quite right to resist her teasing about making love out of doors. She would not misbehave here, inside or out, but a little flirtation, a few stolen kisses, were hardly outrageous and a week of frustration could only give their eventual lovemaking a passionate urgency.

How long to give the two men for their discussion? Surely the trickiest of boundary problems would not take more than half an hour. She would wander round to see how the battledore match was progressing and then go and admire the dragonflies herself.