A Marriage of Inconvenience (8 page)

“English tyranny?” Her eyebrows lifted.

“Indeed.” James sprang to his feet, struck a martial pose and recited the second half of the poem.

Warming to his subject, he lofted an imaginary sword and pictured himself on the windswept, rocky peaks above Dunmalcolm Castle, far from the gentle green peace of an English summer.

He glanced at his audience and found her rapt, leaning forward, her eyes brightly shining.

James concluded with a bow, and Miss Jones applauded. “You sounded as Scottish as your uncle just now.”

He laughed ruefully as he resumed his seat. “I find it difficult to recite Burns without a Scottish accent.”

“That poem would indeed shock Lady Marpool.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Your uncle
is
loyal to the crown, is he not?”

“A most thorough loyal Tory with two sons in the army and a third clamoring for a commission in the Greys. He’s fond of boasting of our illustrious naval cousin, too, though before he became famous, my aunt and uncle considered him a distant connection.”

“Captain Sir William Gordon is your
cousin?
”

“Yes. My second cousin, to be specific, though I’m not closely acquainted with him, since he’s generally at sea. My family wanted little to do with him before he became a hero and married the Duke of Hardingstone’s sister.” He let his contempt for both his family’s original attitude and their change of heart show in a faint sneer.

“Why, if I may ask?”

“One, because his grandfather was my grandfather’s older brother, who would’ve been the earl in due course had he not died at Culloden. We do have our Jacobite skeletons in the closet, and in the immediate aftermath it was hardly prudent to flaunt them. Now it begins to be a romantic tale, and most excellent for shocking the Lady Marpools of the world.”

“But if Captain Gordon is the grandson of an earl’s oldest son, would he not be the earl?”

“You’ve hit upon the other reason my family rarely acknowledged him before Trafalgar. His father was my great-uncle’s
natural
son by a village girl.”

Miss Jones blushed deepest crimson. “Oh, of course. How foolish of me not to see it instantly.”

“They saw to it that the lad was decently brought up and given an education and a profession—he became a barrister—but at a suitable distance. A skeleton in the Gordon closet all around, until recently.”

“I suppose all families have them.”

Her voice was bitter, and James knew she spoke of herself. “It’s hardly the same,” he said. “Your parents were married, after all.”

“My mother defied her family to elope with an unsuitable man. It’s hardly
respectable.
”

“Perhaps not, but there’s no use in refining upon it. Their actions do not make
you
less than respectable.”

She looked dubious.

“Truly, they do not,” he said. “I don’t think anyone cares who Captain Sir William Gordon’s grandmother was.”

“They don’t now, because he is a hero. Before, it mattered. You said so yourself.”

He spread his hands in acknowledgement, a bit embarrassed at the direction the conversation had taken. It was easy for him, born to wealth and power, to talk of egalitarian ideals. But Miss Jones must live in a world that looked down on her for her birth, and no high-minded principle could take the sting out of that. “You’ve caught me. But still, it isn’t worth worrying over. You cannot change the past, after all. You can only live your own life as well as you can.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes.” They sat in silence for a moment. Then Miss Jones turned to him with the bright, social smile and determined air of one who meant to change the subject. “Are all of Robert Burns’s poems so very martial?” she asked.

He accepted the new topic with a smile. “Not at all. In fact, poems like the one I quoted are the exception. He wrote on all sorts of topics, including a great many love songs.”

“Did he?”

James was sure Miss Jones was perfectly unconscious of the flirtatious sparkle in her eyes, of how lovely she looked in the bright morning sunshine, her cheeks as rosy as the dawn—now
that
was a clichéd description, but an apt one nonetheless.

He thought of an appropriate verse and began to quote.

She was so very beautiful. James leaned a little closer, feeling as though he could drown in her great brown eyes—another cliché, but equally fitting—and continued the poem.

As if the words compelled him, he closed the small gap between them and kissed her. He hadn’t intended any such thing, but at that moment she was irresistible.

She froze at his touch, her only response a faint intake of breath, a slight quiver of the soft lips beneath his own. Emboldened, his hands stole to her waist, drawing her nearer, and he continued the kiss, slanting his mouth over hers, teasing gently at her lips with his tongue.

She sighed, a wonderfully pleased sound, and lifted her hands to his shoulders. He kissed her cheek, the line of her jaw, stopping to inhale the sweet, clean aroma of her hair before returning to her lips.

Abruptly she tore free and sprang to her feet. She was breathless, flushed, beautiful. But the expression on her face was one of ever-mounting horror.

“Oh, no.” One hand stole to a loose curl that dangled against her graceful neck. “Oh,
no!
”

Before James could speak, she gathered her skirts and fled at a run.

Ghost lifted her head from her grazing at Miss Jones’s abrupt passage and gave a startled snort.

“Yes, precisely. My sentiments exactly,” he said. Good God, what had he been thinking? He didn’t make a practice of mauling and terrifying innocents.

And yet he didn’t think she’d been frightened at first. Her response had been untutored, certainly, but he hadn’t imagined her sigh, the soft flutter of her lips against his, nor the gentle pressure of her hands against his shoulders. She had enjoyed the kiss until she’d realized what they were doing. He shook his head. It wasn’t like him to make such a muddle of things.

A light breeze stirred the air, and a white fluttering atop the stone wall caught his eye. Miss Jones had left her sketchbook. James bent to pick it up. It had fallen open to a neat, precise drawing of the Almont gardens, with a gardener absorbed in trimming a hedge, and he paused to admire the grace of the composition before paging back to laugh aloud at a sketch of his uncle with Lady Marpool.

The drawing just before it had been torn out—he could see its tattered remnants. Had Miss Jones been dissatisfied with her work, or had she perhaps drawn something too private to risk public display?

He snapped the book shut. Just because she had shown him her sketches before did not mean he had
carte blanche
to view this particular window to her soul without her knowledge or consent. Especially not now, when she had just fled from him in terror.

A letter, that was it. He would send the sketchbook back to her with a reassuring letter, and with any luck they could remain on friendly terms.

When Lucy got back to Almont Castle, she ran straight up the back stairs to her room. She could not face the breakfast parlor. What if Sebastian were there? What if she wore her guilt on her face? She flew to the mirror and examined her reflection—flushed and disheveled, her hair coming down, but that must be from her headlong flight. Her lips couldn’t possibly look different, but they certainly felt it—fuller, heavier, more sensitive. Her entire body felt that way.

Her stomach rumbled, and Lucy almost laughed. How could she be hungry now? But she wasn’t going down to breakfast. She
wasn’t.
She swallowed hard, fighting for a modicum of calm and control, smoothed her dress, tucked the stray strands of hair up as best she could and rang for the maid.

Within a few minutes Polly stood in the doorway and bobbed respectfully. “Yes, miss?”

“I’d like to take breakfast in my room this morning,” she said, striving to make it sound like a simple whim. “Could you have a tray sent up with toast and chocolate?”

Polly’s brows knit together. It wasn’t unusual for a lady to breakfast in her room if she were the sort who liked to lie about in her dressing gown half the day, but women who arose early, dressed and took long walks generally favored the breakfast parlor. But she was a good servant and did not question. “Of course, miss. I’ll see that it’s done right away.”

“Thank you, Polly.”

As soon as the door had closed behind the maid, Lucy collapsed into the chair at her writing-table and buried her face in her hands. She’d never pretended an indisposition before, but she supposed this was a morning for first things.

At that she lifted her head. It wasn’t her first kiss, not truly. Sebastian had kissed her on the morning he offered for her. But it hadn’t felt the same, not at all. It had been…unfamiliar, mostly. Strange and awkward, and therefore a trifle embarrassing. She remembered noticing how much softer lips were than hands, and that Sebastian’s mustache had both scratched and tickled. It had been pleasant enough, but nothing like Lord Selsley’s kiss.

The way he’d looked at her when he’d recited that poem had rendered her breathless, her heart pounding. When he’d leaned closer and she’d realized what he meant to do…she’d wanted that kiss so much. She’d never wanted anything more.

It had been delightful while it lasted. Lord Selsley’s lips, his hands pulling her closer, had compelled her to lean in, to lift her hands to his shoulders, to kiss him back.

Then somewhere in her fevered mind an alarm had sounded, reminding her that she was an engaged woman, and not to
this
man, and so she’d pushed free and ran away as if her life depended upon it. But her whole body still pulsed with the memory of the kiss, and it terrified her. She felt so strange, so unlike herself, so out of control. She shook her head. From her first weeks at Swallowfield, she had striven with all her might for self-control—to always think before speaking, to hide her every emotion behind a veil of meek calm. Such behavior had deflected the worst of Portia’s bullying, pleased Sebastian and her governess, and made her aunt and uncle, when they spoke of her at all, call her a good, biddable girl who never gave them trouble.

But in the company of Lord Selsley she spoke without thinking first—and therefore said what she truly thought—and now this. What was wrong with her? Why did he have such an effect on her?

Polly returned bearing the tray and set it on the table before Lucy with a slight frown of concern. “Are you sure you’re quite well, miss? Cook knows any number of potions and tisanes if you’re not feeling quite the thing.”

Lucy made herself smile reassuringly. “Thank you, Polly, but I’m not at all ill.”

“If you need anything, just you ask me, miss. If you’ve the headache, or the summer catarrh…”

She shook her head. “No, no. I only wanted a quiet breakfast this morning.”

Polly colored faintly and stepped back with a slight bob. “Oh! I do beg your pardon, miss.”

“Not at all. You were very kind to mention it, and if I do find myself with the headache while I’m here, I’ll be very glad for one of Cook’s tisanes.”

“Thank you, miss.” With another bob, Polly left the room.

The little interplay had served to calm and distract Lucy, and she sighed gratefully as she sipped her chocolate and addressed herself to her toast. To keep herself distracted, she unfolded a letter she had received the day before from her brother Owen and read it again. He and Rhys had finished their school term and returned to their usual holiday home with the vicar who had taken them in as boarders from the beginning. Rhys was enjoying a carefree summer roaming the countryside with his boon companions, the vicar’s son and a boy from the nearest farm, but since Owen was to begin at Oxford at Michaelmas term, he was spending his holiday being tutored in Latin by the vicar. He begged Lucy to entertain him with tales of the high society she now found herself among.

When she had finished her breakfast, she set the tray aside, got out pen, paper and ink and did her best. She described Almont Castle, its strange twistings and turnings and how easy it was to become lost. She wrote of the keep, built in Edward I’s time when the lord of the castle had been a mere Baron Almont. She said that they were to have a ball by torchlight there and wondered if she would see ghosts of the knights and ladies who must have danced in the keep five hundred years before.

She set her quill down, remembering that she had promised two dances to Lord Selsley and wondering if he would claim them. An involuntary thrill ran through her at the thought of touching him again, even in the brief, prescribed patterns of the dance, and she shook her head fiercely. She was to marry Sebastian; she had no business wanting to touch anyone else. Surely Lord Selsley would understand if she asked not to dance with him after all, under the circumstances.

Resolutely she returned to her letter, describing Lord Almont without quite saying how inappropriate she thought he was as a match for Portia and telling Owen of each evening’s entertainment. She mentioned Lord Selsley and his sister, but only in passing, saying that the viscount was Lord Almont’s neighbor who bred splendid horses and that Miss Wright-Gordon was beautiful, someone whom Owen would doubtless find vastly charming.

A knock sounded softly on the door.

“Come in,” Lucy said.

The maid Polly entered, carrying a little bundle wrapped in paper. “A groom from Orchard Park just brought this for you, miss,” she said, her expression correctly bland but her gray eyes alight with curiosity.

Lucy tried not to blush but didn’t quite succeed. “Thank you, Polly.”

Polly gave her the package and left her again. As soon as Lucy had it in her hands, she recognized her sketchbook’s familiar shape and weight. Of course! She must have left it at the stone wall when she ran away, and she could hardly believe she hadn’t yet noticed its absence. How kind of Lord Selsley to return it so promptly. She smiled, but then made herself stop. She had no business enjoying thoughts of him as her friend, not now.

She untied the string and removed the paper covering the sketchbook. Atop it lay a single sheet of paper, neatly folded and sealed with red wax and a signet ring. With shaking hands—
why
could she not stop her hands from shaking?—she broke open the seal and unfolded the page.

She read the letter twice through before folding it up again. She supposed she should burn it. She didn’t want anyone discovering it and speculating upon what Lord Selsley had meant by “precipitous and importunate behavior.” But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to toss it into the dying embers of the fire. After a moment’s consideration, she tucked it inside Owen’s letter. No one would look there.

Lord Selsley had promised that he would neither try to kiss her again nor tell anyone what had happened, which was a great relief. She could pretend the incident had never happened, and Sebastian would never find out.

All at once she wondered what a kiss ought to feel like. Certainly she had enjoyed Lord Selsley’s more, and yet it had left her shaken, out of control and terrified. Should a kiss set one’s heart to racing, or should it be simply an ordinary pleasant contact, no more earth-shattering than a handshake? She simply didn’t know. On the one hand it seemed that a kiss should be something out of the common way, but surely it shouldn’t be so very disturbing.

But how was she to find out which was right? There was no one she could ask. She had no confidante whom she could trust with the knowledge that she had been kissed by not one but two gentlemen within the past month, and that she was most anxious to learn which kiss had generated the proper feelings within her. It was unthinkable.

She sighed and forced herself to return to her letter to Owen.

“A letter for you, Lieutenant Arrington.” The liveried footman presented it to him with a bow.

Sebastian hoped that his mother, who had looked up from her embroidery at the footman’s entrance to the drawing room, did not notice him blanch. He recognized the handwriting all too well: that accursed meddling merchant, Adam Russell. Clarissa’s brother.

As his mother turned back to her work with an unconcerned shrug, Sebastian dismissed the footman with a nod. He stretched his still-sore leg as he broke open the letter’s seal.

Sebastian snorted. Respectably settled, was it? Clarissa had not behaved respectably in many a year. He had not been her first keeper, nor did he expect to be her last. She had long ago forfeited whatever rights she had as the daughter of a prosperous merchant, and she did not deserve the honor of marriage to a man of character.

“Is everything quite all right?” his mother asked.

“Yes, of course,” he hastened to assure her. “Merely some tiresome regimental business, nothing you need concern yourself over.”

“Ah, I see,” she said vaguely, bending again to her embroidery.

Sebastian folded the letter carefully, taking deep breaths to hide his rage. He stood. “I believe I shall take a turn about the rose garden, Mother. I need to stretch this leg.”

“Very well.” She fluttered a hand at him, midway between a wave and a shoo. “But where can Lucy be? I’d hoped she would help me over this difficult bit in my embroidery.”

“I haven’t seen her all morning. Perhaps she’s still out drawing.”

“Hmm. Well, if you see her, tell her I need her.”

“Of course.” He inclined his head, walked to the door and strode out into the late morning sunlight.

He paced the paths, head down, oblivious to his floral surroundings. What a damnable coil this had become! Before, Russell’s threats had been much more vague, and Sebastian had been sure the fellow would leave him alone if he made it impossible to wed Clarissa by the simple expedient of marrying someone else.

But now, couched between the polite lines, Russell’s menace was clear:
Marry my sister, or I shall block your future advancement.

Sebastian’s leg began to pain him, and he collapsed onto a bench and rubbed furtively at his thigh. The surgeon had assured him the bone had knit, and all that remained was strengthening muscles weakened by prolonged inactivity. He should be ready to sail for the Peninsula by the end of July, he hoped without having lost too many chances at glory. But with a man of Russell’s wealth ready to block him…

Damn Russell, anyway! If he’d had any decency, he would’ve disowned his sister long ago, after her first husband died and she began to play the whore. He ought to be ashamed to own such a creature as part of his family. If Portia ever did such a thing, Sebastian would recommend that Hal exile her to some isolated village where none of the family need have any dealings with her again.