The Earl She Should Never Desire, page 7
‘Children.’ Wrexham spat the word out.
‘Yes. Even without the promise my mother wrung from me I would probably marry. Unlike you I was raised in a big noisy house and I miss that. And for that I need a wife. Besides, I’m tired of mistresses.’
‘Good lord, Marcus. You’re making me feel three score years at least.’
Marcus smiled.
‘You shall have to adjust. Especially if you want to be invited to Sherbourne. I won’t have you upsetting Anne.’
‘I wouldn’t say any of this to her.’
‘You were rather free with your comments to Lily...to her sister.’
‘Well, that sweetheart can give as good as she gets.’
Marcus held back a comment on Wrexham’s endearment.
‘How the devil do you know that? You only just met her.’
‘The devil always knows his own, doesn’t he? Are you certain you won’t let me indulge in a little flirtation? It will keep me out of trouble.’
‘Your definition of keeping out of trouble leaves a lot to be desired. The answer is no. Besides, she might already be involved with someone in Birmingham.’
‘Did you just invent that to keep me off the scent?’
Marcus shook his head. Rising to Wrexham’s bait would only encourage him. Better to change the subject.
‘And don’t forget you agreed to come to Sefton’s ball with me, so don’t make plans.’
‘Oh, hell, must I?’
‘Yes. I’ve managed to avoid most balls thus far in my courtship, but Sefton himself insisted I attend now that I’ve started showing my face at society events and he and Lady Sefton are too pleasant to turn down. But I’m damned if I’m going without someone at my back. Consider this your penance for being such an idiot.’
‘Damn cruel choice of penance. Very well. But remember, all good things come at a price. I’ll expect you to have my back at some society do when next I need it.’
He stalked off and after a moment Marcus ascended the stairs. Juan was waiting in the hallway and took his hat and cane. Ombra poked his shaggy head out of the open door of the study and trotted over with a panting grin. Marcus scratched the dog’s head.
‘We shall be having guests the day after tomorrow, Juan. Afternoon.’
Juan’s round face turned even rounder. ‘Did you say afternoon, señor?’
‘I’m afraid so. The future Lady Sherbourne and her family and a few others. Cousin Godfrey and his wife, I think. And cousins Anthea and Matilda. Lord Bartleby and his wife, too.’
Juan made a croaking sound and Marcus sighed.
‘I know. But I need some unobjectionable people for the occasion. Devenishes meet Endicotts. Damnable, but there it is.’
‘Food?’
‘Yes, light. None of your delicacies.’
It was Juan’s turn to sigh and Marcus relented.
‘Actually, you could serve some tapas along with the sandwiches and cakes. One of our guests spent some years in Spain.’
‘One of your soldier friends?’ Juan asked suspiciously. ‘They do not always appreciate my cooking. In Spain they dream of steak and beer, the philistines.’
‘Well, she was married to a soldier, but I think she might be a willing audience for your cooking. If not, you and I and Ombra will do it justice once we clear the decks.’
When he was alone he went to his desk and unsealed the documents sent for his review. Ombra settled in his usual position beneath the desk, curving his lanky body around Marcus’s boots and after some settling he gave a contented huff and closed his eyes. Marcus leaned down to stroke his dog’s head for a moment.
‘You have the right of it, boy. A quiet life. What is wrong with that? I’ve earned it.’
Ombra gave another satisfied huff, leaning his head into the scratching. Marcus kept at it, his gaze moving about the familiar room. His favourite place in Sherbourne House. He probably spent more time here than in his bedroom.
He would have to make it clear, in the gentlest possible way, that Anne was to regard this room as taboo. He could always use his work with the Foreign Office as an excuse. As for the rest of the house... He would soon have to resign himself to changes. In less than two months some rooms in this house would begin to fill with sewing tables and embroidered screens and fashion magazines and young women visiting his... He drew a long breath and forced the words into his mind. His wife.
Anne Devenish would be living here, with him—the woman he had selected to be the mother of the children he wanted.
At least there was that. There would be sons and daughters. He wondered if they would have his colouring or Anne’s or something in between. He picked up one of the sharpened pencils from the silver tray and tried to imagine them, idly sketching on the paper that always lay ready on his blotter.
A little girl with a pert nose dusted with freckles...
He let his mind empty as he drew, his imagination filling in the shape and colours of her world. She was seated at the little desks he and his nephews and nieces had used in the nursery at Sherbourne Hall, all the way at the edge, her face shining with curiosity, her wavy hair tumbling down her back. Then she turned and smiled up at him with dark grey eyes.
He dropped the pencil. Beneath the desk Ombra gave a startled woof.
‘Did I kick you? Sorry, old boy.’ Marcus reached down and stroked the dog. His hand was shaking.
He set the pencil aside, dropped the sketch into the cane basket by the desk and pulled a sealed case of documents towards him.
Five minutes later he set aside the page he’d been trying to read and took the discarded sketch from the basket, shoving it instead into the bottom drawer of his desk with a curse.
He was not superstitious, but somehow...
‘Dom is right, Ombra. I’m getting old. Hallucinations and sentimentality. What next?’
Chapter Ten
‘I hate balls.’
Annie fluttered her fan before her face to shield her giggle.
‘They aren’t that bad, Lily. It is merely that you don’t know anyone yet.’
‘I don’t wish to know anyone. I only came to London because you asked. If I had known it included being trussed up in your refurbished gowns and forced to discuss fashion and the weather with a brigade of Mama’s friends while drinking sickly-sweet ratafia, I would have fled for the hills.’
‘Hush. And I’m sorry we hadn’t time to order you new gowns, but Ailish has done wonders with mine. It looks far better on you than it did on me.’
Lily gave up. Anne actually believed this patent untruth. She smiled at her sister.
‘Well, I’m glad I am with you anyway. I’ve missed you these past couple of years, Annie.’
Annie plied her fan faster. ‘So have I. Couldn’t you come work in London instead? You said they had another institution here in town. I would love to have you close. Especially...’
She trailed off.
Annie was doing that more and more often, Lily noted, opening doors to glimpses of the future, only to shut them again. Before Lily could respond Annie shook her head.
‘I truly do love that shade of rose pink on you, Lily, and I think my pale primrose evening gown with the square bodice shall also suit you to perfection.’ She smiled that soft smile of hers at nothing in particular, her perfect skin softened by the light of chandeliers and her creamy dress accentuating her slim height.
Lily looked down at her own gown. Annie was right that the dusky rose colour was pretty. She particularly loved the silvery stars embroidered along the low-cut bodice and along the single flounce. For the first time in years she was wearing a colour distinguishable from that of a dank winter evening.
Ailish was just as talented with a brush and pins and had set Lily’s thick hair in a fashionable arrangement that perched on the crown of her head like an animal, secured with pearl-encrusted pins and trailing wavy tendrils that tickled her cheeks as she fanned herself. It felt strange and she kept expecting the pins to fly in every direction and the precarious creation to topple over her shoulders or transform into snakes and start waving about like Medusa.
How did that not happen more often?
But altogether she had to admit she did look...rather fine. As they’d passed a gilt-framed mirror by the receiving line she’d caught a glimpse of her and Annie side by side and had to look again. Annie was stunning as always, a true princess in looks and carriage. But Lily thought she herself looked...different. More like young Lily who had once dared to live grandly and dream even more grandly.
It was unsettling.
‘Oh, look, Lily. Marcus has arrived. Goodness, Lord Wrexham is with him.’
Lily turned as Annie raised her fan a little and smiled. Lord Sherbourne had just entered the ballroom with his friend and the two of them were drawing a great deal of attention from both sexes.
‘We have never been formally introduced. Lord Wrexham is the Duke of Rutherford’s eldest son and is not quite...well, he rarely attends balls,’ Annie whispered. ‘Marcus hasn’t either, until recently, at least.’
She didn’t add—since he’d become engaged. That would be vanity and Annie’s mind just didn’t work that way. It was one of her more aggravating characteristics. She was about to mention to Annie that she’d already met Lord Wrexham, but Lord Sherbourne and his companion were already heading in their direction. Lily noted a peculiar tension to Lord Sherbourne, as if the two men had been arguing. When Marcus introduced him, Lord Wrexham bowed over Annie’s hand.
‘So you’re the beauty that has turned Marcus from the path of good and right.’
Annie blinked and Marcus sighed. ‘Ignore him. He hates balls almost as much as I do.’
‘Then why come?’ Lily asked before she could think better of it. Lord Wrexham turned to her with a shrug.
‘Marcus forced me. Misery likes company.’
‘I didn’t force you, I asked you.’
‘Well, you never ask for anything, so that’s tantamount to forcing. What the devil do we do now we’re here? Must I talk to people?’
Lily unfurled her fan to hide her smile. She hadn’t been certain she’d liked him when they’d met at the lecture hall, but he was rather growing on her.
Annie was still looking a little shocked, her gaze searching Marcus’s face for clues on how to handle his irascible friend.
‘Yes, you must,’ Marcus said in his usual languid drawl. Whatever had caused that initial tension, it was tucked away now. ‘And dance, too, Dom. You promised.’
‘I did not promise to dance. I would definitely have remembered that, drunk or sober. Unless it’s a waltz. That’s the only dance worth dancing.’
‘You enjoy waltzing, Lord Wrexham?’ Annie swept into that opening, ever hopeful. His smile turned a little wolfish.
‘I enjoy anything that reminds me of more pleasurable activities.’
‘Try not to be too much of an idiot, Dom.’ Lord Sherbourne’s warning was rather weakened by his sudden grin.
‘Just for that I’m going to steal your bride-to-be for a waltz, Marc.’
‘I’m afraid this dance is promised to Lord Sherbourne—’ Annie said, but Lord Wrexham rode right over that polite distinction.
‘All the better. That will add some spice. Marcus can dance with Madame Tut-and-Sigh.’ His gaze swept over Lily and the wolfish smile deepened and something very like a warning entered his gaze and dripped from his voice. ‘You and I shall share the next waltz, Mrs Lily Walsh. How is that for a Solomonic resolution, Marc? Adieu.’
Lily and Marcus stood for a moment in silence, watching the couple move towards the dance floor. She rather hoped Lord Sherbourne would ignore his friend’s suggestion.
‘Well, Lily Walsh, it seems you have no choice. You can waltz, yes?’
‘Yes, but...’
‘Well, then. Let us go to it.’
He sounded as reluctant as she and there was no amusement in evidence either in his tone or his face. He looked tired and rather grim and once on the dance floor they moved in silence to the rhythm of the dance.
Was he upset about Lord Wrexham and Annie? About being forced to dance with Anne’s unfashionable sister? Neither seemed to account for his unusual behaviour.
She ought to have felt insulted, but she felt worried instead. She wished she had the courage to ask him what was bothering him. No, she wished he would smile and say something annoying. She needed to find her balance again.
She’d never known anyone who upset her quite as much as this man and she was beginning to hate this feeling. Just moments ago she’d felt hopeful and confident and pretty and now she felt...
She had no notion what she felt except that it was uncomfortable. Her lungs were tight and her palms tingled like they did before an episode, except she wasn’t cold and there wasn’t that horrid rushing sound in her ears. If anything, she felt a crackling heat lick against her insides and, instead of the urge to push everyone away and slink into a corner, she wished he would say something, anything, to break this tension.
She felt as though she’d done something terribly wrong though she didn’t know what.
She felt...
Everything.
His hand on her waist, from the heel of his palm to the pressure of his fingers through the silky soft fabric. She could almost swear he was...vibrating. Or she was. As if they were dancing on a tuning fork.
He was far too close, too. She wanted to look up, but was afraid to, so she stared at the pearl pin hiding among the milky folds of his cravat. It brought back the memory of the tiny pearls on his mother’s locket laying on her palm in the hackney cab, a token of a bond through time.
Sensations piled one on top of another: his fingertips on her hand through her thin gloves, her own hand resting on his shoulder, warm and safe... And then her mind took her hand and slipped it under the dark wool and soft linen of his clothes, touching the warm skin beneath...
Only an awful, dreadful, traitorous person would be so aware of the man who was to be Annie’s husband. She gritted her teeth, trying to think of anything else, but she couldn’t stop it.
Sense was doing its best to catch up with sensation, like a messenger running after an advancing army, helplessly waving an order to retreat: Don’t go there! But her troops were in full forward motion, leaving the messenger behind.
One shouldn’t want to move closer, lean her cheek against the dark fabric of his coat, soak up his warmth and heartbeat. One shouldn’t have to fight against the urge to look at him. And one definitely shouldn’t imagine stopping right here in the middle of Lady Sefton’s ballroom, standing on tiptoe and touching her mouth to his to see if her worst fears were correct and it would feel horribly right.
Oh, no.
The two words rang inside her like a bell underwater—muted but reverberating. She didn’t want this part of her to wake. It had sunk to the bottom of some muddy lake even before Tim died. It should stay there where it and she were safe.
The very last place it should choose to revive itself was in the middle of a fashionable ballroom—and the very, very last person who should revive it was Annie’s Lord Sherbourne.
She lost her step and his hand tightened on hers, his other palm moving against her waist, steadying her and bringing her a little closer. Above the cloying scent of perfumes and the acrid smell of heated bodies and souring wine she caught the same cool oak and pine forest that followed him about. As if he’d just this moment transported himself from the foothills of the Pyrenees.
She reached deep down into whatever reservoirs of strength she had left. She would stop this right here, right now. Face it and then wrench it out like a rotten tooth. She had dealt with far worse and she would deal with this, too.
Annie would never, ever know.
* * *
One of them had to say something.
Marcus hoped Lily would, because his mind was a blasted blank. At least he was trying to keep it blank. He’d been raw all day, that strange episode in his study following him about like Ombra. He’d tried to tell himself it was pure nerves, a natural resistance to his sensible decision to marry. A reaction to Dom’s words which he knew were aligned with at least one of his conflicting inner voices. He’d known these months leading up to the fait accompli of marriage would be challenging. He hadn’t figured on them being purgatorial.
And he certainly hadn’t considered...
He didn’t want to consider.
This strange curiosity about Lily Walsh was just that. She was a curious little thing. If he could put things in their right place, she could eventually become a good friend.
The fist tightened around his chest again as it had when he’d realised he had to dance with her.
A good friend.
What a liar he’d become.
One didn’t have hallucinations that one’s imaginary daughter far too closely resembled a good friend. One didn’t have one’s whole body lurch into alertness because of a good friend’s laugh. One didn’t rush into a bustling bakery to procure a loaf of bread because a good friend had a smile that always seemed to drag his to the surface. And one certainly didn’t lose his grip on his temper’s reins because a good friend wanted to leave London, possibly because said good friend had someone waiting for them in Birmingham.
A shaft of fear shot through him as sharp as any he’d felt when his life was in the balance.
Even during the war, he’d been able to plan ahead, envisage threats, prepare for them. That was why he’d survived and thrived. He’d been afraid but prepared.
Now he was afraid and damnably unprepared.
He tried to push it away, but the realisation was white-hot and burned through his defences.
He’d made a horrible mistake.
It was a terrifyingly depressing realisation and the worst possible place to realise it—in the very middle of the battlefield.
