Читать книгу Historical Romance March 2017 Book 1-4 - Louise Allen - Страница 29

Chapter Nineteen

‘Chaises and postilions are fast compared to carriages with a driver, but they have one major disadvantage.’ Lucian observed as they rolled away from Eldonstone three days later.

‘The springing? It is very bouncy, but neither of us gets travelsick, it seems.’ Sara stretched out her toes and wriggled back into the soft upholstery. Much as she loved her family it was a relief to be away from the house party and the guests’ constant curiosity and probing.

‘There is too much glass,’ Lucian said darkly, gesturing towards the window at the front that allowed them to look out over the horses and postilions. ‘How can I make love to you? It would be like being in a conservatory.’

Sara stamped firmly on erotic thoughts about making love in a moving carriage and tried to be practical. ‘We can make it in the day, can’t we? The weather is dry, the roads are turnpiked almost all the way. If we pick up food to eat as we go and stop only for changes it would take us twelve or thirteen hours.’

‘You will be exhausted when we get to Sandbay.’

‘Not if we sleep along the way.’ Sara rested her head on his shoulder. ‘We can take it in turns being the pillow.’

‘I do not sleep when I am travelling and certainly not with a lady. What if we were held up?’

‘And what if we were in a closed carriage making love and a highwayman held us up?’ she teased. ‘What would you do then? Wave your weapon at him?’

‘You shock me, Lady Sarisa. My weapon, indeed.’

She felt his suppressed laugh shake his body and smiled. ‘I suppose the answer is not to make love while going across Hounslow Heath and similar locations. Road books could have special symbols on them to designate dangerous areas.’

‘A cupid in red, perhaps to indicate stretches of road where lovemaking might be inadvisable? We could expand on that—the guide could have inns with dreadful food marked with a red leg of beef and ones with damp beds with a rain cloud. If we lose all our money we could go into the publishing business.’

‘Idiot,’ she said and kissed him, regardless of the fact that they were bowling along the main street of Bricket Wood and the local inhabitants were going about their early morning business.

I fell in love with him without even being certain whether he had a sense of humour or not. Thank goodness he has.

It occurred to her as they rattled through the countryside that Michael had not had much of a sense of humour, or at least, not much of a sense of fun or the ridiculous. He hadn’t been dour or humourless, but she could not imagine him entering into her silly little fantasy about road books marked up with warnings to lovers. He had been a good companion, but, she supposed, a serious one.

Not that Lucian could not be serious, she thought, shifting so she was in the corner and could look at him as he sat relaxed, watching the road ahead. He was serious about family, about honour, about Marguerite’s feelings, even when he had been exasperated with his sister. He had been serious about her own feelings, too, about her memories of Michael, even though he had not understood her opposition to duelling.

He still doesn’t understand why I do not feel glad that Michael cared so much about honour as to fight for it, she thought. It shocks him that I see it as a weakness that Michael did not find some other way to deal with Francis’s drunken ramblings.

A cold shiver went down her spine as she wondered, yet again, what exactly Francis had said. Had Michael gone to his death believing that she had betrayed him with his best friend? And many people would say that she had, she supposed, even though nothing had gone beyond a light, fleeting kiss.

* * *

Somewhere after Basingstoke, when they were, all being well, halfway back to Sandbay, Sara slept. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and they had just finished half a roast chicken, some soft bread rolls with fresh butter and a jug of ale.

It was the ale that had put her to sleep, Lucian thought, smiling at the crumbs on her skirts and the greasy smudge on one cheek from the chicken leg. Not one for standing on her dignity, his future Marchioness. He put an arm around her shoulders and tugged gently until she was cradled against his side and was amused to find that his other hand rested on the butt of one of the horse pistols he had pushed into the side pocket next to the seat.

She made him feel very protective, he realised, even more than was normal for him. Was this love? He supposed it was, although there were none of the symptoms he had expected. Or feared, to be honest. Her brother had said something about love matches—not that she had reacted to that in any way—so what had Clere seen? Lucian did not feel himself to be in a daze, or to have lost his judgement. He was not attempting to compose sonnets to Sara’s eyebrows, fine though they were, and he had no desire whatsoever to put her on a pedestal.

Far from it. His desires towards her were decidedly earthy and the only pedestals that appealed were ones of a suitable height to perch her on, or bend her over, while he had his wicked way with her.

He had felt desire like that for other women, so why did the mere thought of this one vanishing from his life leave a hollowness inside that he suspected might be fear? Now that he had definitely never felt about any other woman.

But why? Yes, she was desirable and very lovely, intelligent, loyal, courageous, honest. Passionate. All of those things and yet...he suspected that it was none of them that made him feel like this when he was with her, but some indefinable quality that combined them all in a way that spoke to his heart and his soul. Was this love?

Honest, outspoken—and she had said nothing about loving him. He had not said he loved her, Lucian acknowledged, but it was a difficult thing for a man to admit to, even to himself. Surely Sara would have told him if she loved him? He began to wonder why she had agreed to marry him at all. They had moved from an expedient to distract attention from Marguerite and Gregory’s indiscretion to discussing compromise in marriage, he realised, and then she had accepted him and he had not thought to ask the obvious question—why?

Perhaps it was because she had become his lover and then realised that she had made a mistake in having a sexual relationship outside marriage. Yet she had stood up to her father and brother’s disapproval with no sign of either repentance or of changing her mind and expecting marriage. Unless she was too honest to want to trap him and it was not until he proposed that she allowed herself to agree.

That line of reasoning was making the hollow feeling considerably worse. Lucian closed his eyes. Hell, but this falling in love business is a miserable thing, not at all what it is puffed up to be.

His confidence was seeping away, he felt sick and he very much feared it was fear itself that caused it. He was out of his depth here. No wonder men went mad for love, shot themselves in despair. Where was all the sunshine and roses that were supposed to go with love? The songbirds tweeting, the bloody cupids flying...

‘Lucian! Wake up, you are having a nightmare.’ Someone was shaking him.

He blinked, opened his eyes and found himself nose to nose with Sara who was, predictably, laughing at him. ‘What?’ he asked, disorientated, his hand clenched around the pistol which was half out of its holster.

‘You were muttering about Cupid doing something that I suspect is anatomically impossible, especially for someone with wings. You were quite correct when you said that you are not a romantic, weren’t you?’

He jammed the pistol back, hoping Sara had not noticed that reflexive movement. ‘I could try,’ he suggested, imbuing as much confidence as possible into his voice. What did being romantic involve, anyway? Courtship seemed to be fairly straightforward—squire the lady about, bring her flowers, pay attention to what she wore, pay her compliments—he had felt no qualms about the prospect of doing all that once he had identified his potential bride next Season.

His previous lovers hadn’t expected romance, only the best lovemaking he could give them, and he had certainly done his level best to please Sara in that way, with, from her reaction, excellent results. But she had mentioned romance twice, which made him think it was important to her.

‘Men!’ She laughed and rolled up her eyes, making a joke of it that he suspected was not a joke at all. ‘If you have to try, then it is not romantic, you see. Do not worry about it, we have agreed to a perfectly rational marriage, haven’t we?’

But why have we? Lucian asked himself. Or, rather, why have you? And realised that he did not want to ask that question because not only might she think hard about it and decide she did not want to marry him after all or, just as bad, she might think he was trying to hint that he hoped she would decide just that. No gentleman could jilt a lady, it was up to her to end an engagement if she changed her mind, and the thought that she might lose faith in the sincerity of his proposal appalled him.

‘Of course we have,’ he said and that time it sounded as though he meant it. He would not say the word love to her, admit what he felt, because then she would feel he was pressuring her to admit the same and she obviously did not feel it or she would have said so when she accepted him. She wanted a perfectly rational marriage so, as he loved her, that was what he would give her. It was what he had always thought he wanted, after all.

* * *

‘We have arrived.’

Sara surfaced from jumbled, bumpy dreams as the chaise began the descent towards the centre of Sandbay. It was dark and the lights from the Assembly Rooms made a constellation of stars on the surface of the sea.

Home. And yet it would not be for much longer. Home would be somewhere unknown, somewhere with Lucian. Lucian’s homes would be the shells around an entirely new life, the kind of life she had run from when she had married Michael.

‘Sara?’

‘Sorry... I must have been wool-gathering. Oh, the men have stopped for directions.’ She let down the window and called instructions to the postilions, then sat back in the gloom of the chaise’s interior and stared blankly out at the dark, familiar streets.

Run from... Is that what I was doing? Running away from an alien, difficult world, not running to the man I loved? But I did love him. I did. He was my friend and he was so safe and he gave me the entrée to a whole intellectual world that fascinated me.

He was my friend... She had loved Michael, she realised, but not as she loved Lucian. She had loved him as friend who was also a lover and that, she realised, was a very different thing from what she felt now for Lucian. For Lucian she was prepared to take risks, take a step into a frightening unknown. With Michael she had taken what she wanted and needed. If she had felt this for him then she would never have—No, she would not think about Francis, about that foolishness that had had such a terrible result. Foolishness on her part, on Francis’s part—and, fatally, on Michael’s.

It had not been her fault, she had told herself over and over again. But it had. Michael had loved her in a way that she had never been able to return and that was why he had challenged Francis. That was why he was dead.

‘Sara? Are you well? We have arrived at your house and you seem to be in a dream.’

Lucian, here and now. ‘Yes, I am well, just not properly awake, that is all.’

‘There is light down in the area. Wait here and I will go and knock.’

He did so and the door opened after perhaps half a minute, sending light spilling out down the steps and across the façade of the house as Walter held up a lantern. On the very edge of the light a shadow moved, a swift movement back into the darkness. A footpad waiting for an unwary passer-by or a beggar, perhaps, looking for an unlocked gate to slip inside and find warm shelter for the night. And yet there had been something familiar and unsettling about the way the figure moved.

Sara gave herself a shake. She was imagining things, seeing ghosts. It was because she was tired and had let herself dwell on the past, on Cambridge.

Lucian helped her down while Walter and one of the postilions sorted out her baggage from his. They made a very decorous goodnight, out in the open on the street. She did not ask him in, he lifted her hand and kissed her fingers lightly. The shadows stayed shadows, unmoving.

‘I will call in the morning.’

‘I must go to the shop. Could you meet me there?’

‘For Mrs Farwell’s cake? Certainly.’ A bow and he was back inside the chaise and driving off.

‘Is all well?’ she asked as she followed Walter inside. He locked and bolted the door as Maude came running down and moved the valises to the foot of the stair.

‘Yes, my lady,’ Maude said. ‘Mrs Farwell came round and left some money and I locked it away with your jewel case as the safest place. She said to tell you that everything was quite as it should be. Your post is on your desk and I opened the ones that looked like invitations and sent messages that you were away this week.’

‘No callers?’

My imagination or a footpad, that was all it was. Who would be waiting for me out there in the dark?

‘No, my lady, very quiet it has been.’

‘Excellent, although I hope you were not too bored. I think I will go up and wash and change into my nightgown and just have a cup of tea before I go to sleep. It was a long journey from near St Albans in Hertfordshire.’

* * *

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.