Читать книгу Historical Romance March 2017 Book 1-4 - Louise Allen - Страница 24

Chapter Fourteen

Marguerite was sitting on a rug watching when Sara arrived. ‘Running around after a shuttlecock is rather tiring,’ she explained. ‘I thought I had best stop when I became breathless, because it will be no good for our plan if I am laid up in bed again.’

‘Very sensible. But no doubt the young men will want to take you for a stroll through the grounds soon. It might be best not to venture out of sight—the maze and the shrubbery are best explored in a group.’

‘Oh, quite.’ Marguerite laughed. ‘It is very flattering that they want to talk and flirt, but the young ones are so very young and the older ones are not a patch on my Gregory, so you need not worry that I might do anything imprudent.’

‘Of course not. Still, a little very mild flirtation will help divert suspicion when you and Gregory suddenly fall in love.’

‘It is lovely, isn’t it?’ Marguerite gave a happy little shiver and wrapped her arms around her knees. ‘Being in love. And I am so happy about you and Lucian.’

‘About...? Marguerite, I am not in love with your brother. I did explain about not getting married.’ What a disaster that would be! The moment they got out of bed they would be disagreeing about something and when those shutters came down behind his eyes she felt as though she was on the other side of a pane of glass, a moth fluttering helplessly against a barrier she could not see and did not understand.

‘Oh.’ The younger woman rested her cheek on her crossed arms and looked at Sara. ‘I am sorry. I know what you said, but every time I see you together I think that you and he are falling in love.’

‘There is desire,’ Sara said cautiously. ‘But not love.’

‘So you really aren’t going to marry him, then?’

‘No. I am sorry if that shocks you.’

‘Not shocks.’ Marguerite lifted her head and watched the flight of the shuttlecock, pursued by two laughing young women. ‘I am disappointed. I had hoped for a sister.’

‘That would have been lovely. We could have formed an alliance against older brothers,’ Sara said, trying for a lightness she did not feel. She was very fond of Marguerite and the thought of her as a sister made her eyes swim with sudden, unexpected tears. ‘But I have been married once, very happily, and I do not think that Lucian and I would suit.’

‘He watches you, you know. All the time when he thinks you aren’t noticing. You watch him, too.’

‘Goodness.’ I watch him? I suppose I do. But he watches me, too? She should be worried, but the thought was dangerously welcome. ‘I do hope we are not as obvious as that.’

‘It is only noticeable to someone who loves you both. Oh, they have finished the game. It looks as though they are going down to the lake, so I will join them. I feel quite rested now.’

Sara remained on the rug as the group of young people wandered away. There were several of the married ladies down by the lakeside sketching, quite adequate for chaperonage, so she felt no compulsion to stir and certainly none to join Lucian with his sister’s words still reverberating in her head. Thought you were falling in love...he watches you, you know...

It was desire, surely? That was why she looked at him, because he was very easy to look at, very desirable to daydream about. That was all. That was not love. Love was wanting to spend your life with someone.

She looked up to see Gregory Farnsworth walking back to the house, his head bent over his notebook. He was no doubt laden with notes and instructions to write memoranda or draft letters. Poor man, stuck inside when his love was down by the lake, laughing in the sunshine.

Lucian had not followed him. She got to her feet and shook the wrinkles out of her muslin skirts, then made her way down the lawn towards the secret dell with its circle of still water.

Sara found him sitting on a rustic bench, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his clasped hands. He smiled when he saw her, but did not move his position and she felt strangely warmed by the fact that he was so easy with her that he neglected the gesture of immediately getting to his feet.

‘The boundaries are all sorted out?’ she asked as she sat beside him and leaned in so their shoulders touched companionably.

‘I need more information on that. I have given Farnsworth just enough work to make Marguerite’s complaints that I am a slave driver convincing.’

‘She is very happy, you know. It means a lot to her that you are finally reconciled to this.’

‘It isn’t what I wanted for her, this match, but I must settle for her being safe and happy.’ Lucian spoke briskly, setting the subject firmly aside, she assumed. ‘Look, there’s a dragonfly, a monster.’

Sara followed his pointing finger and exclaimed over the insect, but she could feel the tension in him, just from that small point of contact where her shoulder touched his. Marguerite was never going to be the wife of a high-ranking man of fashion, never be as rich as her brother’s ambitions for her. She might be happy, but he was going to have to learn to forgive himself for allowing the relationship in the first place and then for driving the young couple to near-tragedy. She sighed a little and let her head rest on his shoulder, relaxing at the contact, even with his body so tense. She knew all about guilt, about the difficulty of self-forgiveness.

‘Tell me about your husband,’ Lucian said abruptly.

‘I did tell you.’ This was too close to her thoughts, as though he had divined her anxieties that she had not been a good wife.

‘Tell me about how you met, how you fell in love, what it was about Harcourt.’

‘I did not enjoy my first Season very much,’ she confessed, feeling that this was almost a Once Upon a Time story. ‘That makes me sound shy, or perhaps bored or difficult to please, I suppose. Oh, the gowns were lovely and I went to so many truly wonderful balls and receptions and theatrical performances. It was all new and strange and interesting, such a change from India. And yet, somehow I never felt I was really a part of that world.’

Lucian made a sound, an encouraging one, so she pressed on, wondering if he could possibly understand. The London ton was his world, the one he was born and bred to, and she was an outsider. ‘We caused rather a sensation—Papa having been out of the country for so long and Mama, of course, so beautiful and so exotic. Some high-sticklers were cold because of Mama’s parentage, but she simply dealt with them without turning a hair. And Ashe is very good looking and he had led a very adventurous life in India, at my uncle’s court, so he was accepted by all the gentlemen, and the ladies all flirted, and he met Phyllida and settled right in.’

‘And you are not good looking? Not beautiful?’ Lucian’s tone was teasing.

‘I am...different. I was a young lady and young ladies, just out, are expected to conform. My skin is never going to be milk white with roses in my cheeks, nor have I the dark hair and eyes that might make me look glamorously Italian or Spanish. I just looked wrong in white muslin and pastels.’

‘I can see that. Jewel colours suit you best.’ He shifted against the bench until he was sitting in the angle made by the back and the arm, with one foot on the seat. ‘Come here.’ He pulled her gently back until she was sitting with her shoulders against his chest, his arm steadying her.

Sara let her head fall back against his shoulder and wriggled until she was comfortable. ‘And I had been brought up to be as well educated as my brother, to have my opinion listened to, to take part in discussions, to read what I liked.’

‘And to do a man damage with a sharp knife.’

‘Yes, that, too.’ She felt his chuckle and smiled. ‘And suddenly I must have no opinions, I must pretend to be ignorant and sweet and demure. I must pretend to know nothing about the relations between the sexes. I had to learn to be a ninny.’

‘Surely your parents did not want that?’

‘No, but they also wanted me to fit in. My father was the Marquess and we had no choice but to live here, to live within this society. They wanted me to be happy, but it was obvious that somewhere compromises would have to be made, either by me or in society’s expectations of me.’

‘You had no beaux? Surely you were courted.’

‘Oh, yes. But you see because I was exotic many of the men thought I was also...loose. And I was a virgin and I did not want to behave in the way they expected. So I spent a lot of time snubbing gentlemen or sticking hatpins in them. It was all very tiring.’

‘And your father and brother did not do anything?’ Lucian sounded outraged.

‘I made very sure they did not know. Can you imagine the trail of challenges and duels if those two had guessed?’

‘It would only have taken one for the point to be taken.’

‘At what risk? Anyway, I soon became good at repelling advances, but I did not see anyone I could feel the slightest tendre for. They all seemed so alien.’

‘Do I seem alien?’

‘Of course.’ She dropped her hand to his thigh and squeezed it in apology for her words. ‘And then, one night at Lady Lanchester’s ball, I slipped into an alcove shielded by palms to sit out a dance in peace and found there was someone already there. He was reading a book.’

‘Michael Harcourt.’

‘Dr Michael Harcourt, if you please. Spectacles on the end of his nose, totally engrossed. So I sat down and pretended to ignore him and he must have reached the end of a chapter because he looked up and saw me and shot to his feet, sending the book flying. By the time we had rescued it from under a chair and found three scattered bookmarks and flattened the bumped corners we were firm friends.’

‘And he was at Cambridge? A don?’

‘Yes. Classical languages and philology. I knew enough Latin and a little Greek to understand what he was talking about and I speak several Indic languages, which interested him. And he listened to me and he would argue things out with me. It was so refreshing. Before long we were firm friends and then, gradually, more. He had come to London to keep his mother from fretting at him about finding a wife and settling down, but he wasn’t enjoying the Season much either.’

‘Was he good looking?’

Was that a slight overtone of masculine rivalry there? Sara smiled and closed her eyes, strangely comfortable with this intimate confession as she half-lay against Lucian’s broad chest. ‘No. He was not ugly, you understand, or even plain. He was almost as tall as you, but of a more slender build. His hair was mousy and his eyes grey and his nose not particularly distinguished, but his chin was firm. His face was a little too long for good looks and his ears stuck out, just a little, but perhaps that was because he was always jamming pens behind them. It was a kind face and an intelligent face and... Michael’s face.’ She found that tears were running down her cheeks. Tears of recollection and regret, but not desperate tears. She let them flow, strangely comforted by them.

‘And one day,’ she said, clearing her throat because it was a little husky, ‘we were in Hatchard’s bookshop. We both stretched up for the same book and bumped elbows and the next thing I knew I was in his arms and he was kissing me in the corner of the Greek and Latin translation section. Fortunately, it is not a popular area.’

Lucian’s grunt of amusement made her smile, too, and suddenly Sara realised that she was smiling over a memory of Michael for the first time since his death. Smiling out of amusement and affection, not the sad smile of memories and regret.

How strange that it was this man, her lover, who had given her that humour back.

‘So what happened next?’ Lucian prompted when she had fallen silent for several minutes.

‘Michael dropped three different translations of Homer that he was carrying and the shop assistant came and he had to end up buying two of them because the corners were bent.’

‘Not with the books, with your romance,’ Lucian said in her ear. ‘Women! Never can tell a story.’

Laughing—how did that happen when she was crying, too?—she nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘So Michael took himself off to see Papa, all very proper and formal, and Papa was really very good about it. I don’t think he had ever come across someone like Michael because he had not gone to university himself, but straight into the East India Company army, so intellectuals were a strange breed to him.’

‘And I should imagine he was a terrifying prospect for a quiet scholar.’ Lucian shifted a little and managed to link his arms around her.

‘Oh, no. Michael could stand up for himself. He was quiet, certainly, but exceedingly intelligent, so he could play Papa like a fisherman with a trout, long before Papa realised he was being manipulated. And he had courage. He loved me and he wanted me, so he was going to stand up and ask for me. He was not a poor man. Not rich, but he could keep us in very respectable comfort. And Papa, bless him, did listen and talk to both of us and then it was agreed. Before the Season was over I had married and moved to Cambridge and I was learning an entirely new culture.’

‘You liked life in a university town?’

‘Yes. I made a lot of friends amongst intellectual women—bluestockings, I suppose you would say—and I began to learn Greek in earnest and I taught Michael the languages I knew and we were friends as well as lovers. We were so happy.’ I was safe.

‘Are you weeping?’ Lucian murmured, close to her ear.

‘Just a little, and smiling, too,’ she admitted and he kissed her in the soft hollow behind her ear. ‘I could not cry much, before. I was too angry.’

‘With his friend, the one he challenged?’

‘No, with Michael. I have to learn to forgive him for wanting to protect me that way.’ And with myself. If I had been a better wife this would never have happened.

‘Perhaps the need to protect our womenfolk is as deep in a man as the need to protect a child is in a woman,’ Lucian suggested. ‘I had never thought of it like that before, but it does not seem to me to be something one learns, or has impressed upon you. For me, certainly, it feels like instinct.’

‘Perhaps,’ she agreed, reluctantly impressed by the comparison. ‘But the man should talk it over with the woman first. I don’t mean if there is a physical attack, it would be foolish to stand about debating when someone is brandishing a cudgel. But if it is a case of an insult, then definitely.’

‘You would let an insult pass?’

‘There are more ways of getting even than getting up before dawn and shivering in a damp field with the chance of getting killed at the end of it. A woman would apply her mind to finding a poetic form of revenge. Itching powder in a rake’s silk breeches at a Court presentation, a mouse in a spiteful gossip’s reticule...’

‘Itching powder? Remind me never to upset you.’

His breath was warm on the side of her throat. Was he going to kiss her there? She arched her neck in invitation and was rewarded by the pressure of his lips, the slight friction of stubble. Lucian was going to have to shave before dinner.

All too quickly the caress stopped. ‘What do you miss most about being married?’ he asked.

Sara thought about it for a while and he did not press her, simply held her while she lay back in his arms, watching the wildlife around the pond come out, reassured by their stillness. A dabchick bobbed across the surface, fish rose and dived, the dragonflies buzzed.

Strange that her lover should be so interested in her marriage. Most men would have wanted to ignore the subject, pretend her husband had not existed. Some would have jealously probed for a flattering comparison—was he more handsome, taller, better endowed, a better lover? But Lucian’s questions did not seem like that, more as though he was genuinely interested in her past, wanted to understand and sympathise with her loss.

‘Miss?’ she said at last. ‘I miss him, of course, as a person, because he was my friend. And I miss the companionship of marriage and being able to say what I was thinking without having to censor it in any way. I miss discussing things. I miss...missed, the lovemaking. I miss the intellectual stimulation of trying to keep up with him mentally and the community of friends we had.’

‘You were not tempted to stay there, in Cambridge?’

‘No. That would have felt like second best, somehow. Michael was why I was there and without him... No, I wanted to do something different, something for myself.’ Somewhere new to run away to while you tried to find the real you, the niggling little voice of her conscience murmured.

‘Someone is coming.’ Lucian had heard the voices raised in laughter before she had. He pushed her gently upright so she could slide along the seat and let him get both feet on the ground. ‘Heading this way, by the sound of it. Shall we make a bolt for it or be found earnestly studying pond life?’

‘Bolt. This way.’ She took him by the hand and ran round the head of the pond and into the stand of willows fringing it. ‘Now, if we make our way along the path I think we will come out by the lake, which is where they have come from.’

‘You think? Don’t you know?’

‘I did not grow up here, so I have not discovered all the secret ways that a child would have found. Yes, here we are, just behind the boathouse. Can you punt?’

‘Yes,’ Lucian said immediately, and then, with a shrug, ‘badly. I am usually well co-ordinated, but I am a shambles with a punt pole. But this is too deep, surely?’

‘There is a sunken causeway going to the island in the middle with deep water either side. It used to be a track before the lake was made larger. If we punt halfway, then I can finish my tale and no one will disturb us and yet we will be sitting out in full view in perfect respectability.’

‘You will risk us going round and round in circles?’ Lucian eyed the punt tied up to the side of the boathouse dubiously.

‘No, I will punt, you recline and look decorative.’

‘That is my line.’ But to her surprise he got in without protest and sat down, not even insisting on handing her in or untying the rope.

Sara lifted the long pole, got her balance and pushed off. The punt glided out in a straight line, much to her satisfaction, and she took them to halfway between shore and island before she jammed the pole upright in the mud and tied the rope around it.

‘You looked very elegant doing that.’ Lucian was lying back on the cushions, his hands behind his head, and she was reminded of her great-uncle’s court and how the Rajah would have himself rowed out into the great lake with its pleasure pavilion in the centre. Lucian would not look out of place here if there was a marble summer house on the island, filled with beautiful women all ready to pleasure him. She kept the thought to herself as she settled down on the cushions at her end of the punt.

‘There is no middle way, I find, with punting. Either it goes well and you look elegant or it doesn’t and then you most definitely do not! I fell in four times when Michael was teaching me.’

She could see his face now and studied it for any reaction to her husband’s name, but could see none. A part of her, one she should be ashamed of, was a little piqued. Shouldn’t her lover be just a little touchy about any men who had been before him? Probably he did not care enough.