Alexandra (3 page)

Her fingers itched to touch it, to sweep the stray lock from his forehead.

“It will take me a while to complete the portrait,” she told him as she walked back to where he sat beside the glass, “but I’ll have it ready for you before you leave.”

“Keep it for me.”

She blew out the candle, leaning close enough to catch a whiff of his scent, smelling soap and starch and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. “Don’t you want it?”

He rose from the chair, smiling down at her from his greater height. “I’ll probably lose it if I take it with me.”

“Very well, then.” She’d been hoping he’d say she should keep it to remember him by. “I wish you a safe journey, Mr. Nesbitt.”

She’d called him Tristan—or Tris—for years now, but suddenly that seemed too informal.

His gray gaze remained steady. “Thank you, Lady Alexandra. I wish you a happy life.”

A happy life.
She could be married by the time he returned, she realized with a shock. In fact, if he were gone two whole years, she very likely would be.

Her heart sank at the thought.

But at least she’d have his profile. When it was finished, she’d have a perfect likeness of his face, black-on-white in an elegant oval frame. And she’d been alone with him while making it.

As he walked from the room, she peeled the paper off the glass and hugged it to her chest.

RATAFIA PUFFS

Take halfe a pound of Ground Almonds and a little more than that of Sugar. Make it up in a stiff paste with Whites of five Eggs and a little Essence of Almond whipt to a Froth. Beat it all well in a Mortar, and make it up in little Loaves, then bake them in a very cool oven on Paper and Tin-Plates.

I call these my magical sweets…my husband proposed directly after eating only one!
—Eleanor, Marchioness of Cainewood, 1728

Cainewood Castle, three years later
June 1815

“NOT ALL OF IT!”
Alexandra Chase made a mad grab for her youngest sister’s arm. “We’re instructed to add a
little
more sugar than almonds.”

Corinna stopped grating and frowned. “I
like
sugar.”

“You won’t like the ratafia puffs if they’re
all
sugar,” their middle sister, Juliana, said as she took the cone-shaped sugar loaf and set it on the scarred wooden table in the center of Cainewood Castle’s cavernous kitchen.

“Here, my arm is tired.” Alexandra handed Corinna the bowl of egg whites she’d been beating, then scooped a proper amount of the sugar and poured it into another bowl that held the ground almonds. Stirring them together, she shook her head at Corinna. “You really are quite hopeless with recipes. If you didn’t look so much like Mama, I’d wonder if you’re truly her child.”

A sudden sheen of tears brightened Corinna’s brilliant blue eyes. She quickly blinked them away. “She always made good sweets, didn’t she?”

“Excellent sweets,” Juliana said in a sympathetic tone, shooting a look at her older sister.

Alexandra felt abashed and maybe a little teary herself. She looked away, her gaze wandering the whitewashed stone walls of the kitchen. She’d meant only to tease her sister, not remind her of their mother. Mama had been gone less than two years, and memories could still be painful.

But the time for sadness was over…after years of loss and mourning, Alexandra and her sisters were finally wearing cheerful colors and ready to face the world again. In Alexandra’s case, she was
more
than ready to put the sorrow behind her and get on with her life.

During her first London season, she’d received many excellent offers of marriage. But at her father’s sudden death, all thoughts of a wedding had been abandoned, and she’d missed the rest of the season while mourning him. Shortly thereafter her dear mother had passed, followed by her oldest brother, and she’d missed this year’s season in yet another anguished period of mourning.

All of the marriage-minded gentlemen who’d courted her had long since found other brides. But Alexandra wasn’t sure she could endure another season, with all the attending frivolity, competition, and intrigue. She just wanted to be someone’s wife. She wanted to forget past hardships and start over, to feel settled and secure in a new place and a new situation.

As for her younger sisters, they’d yet to be presented at court and were beside themselves at the thought of finally having a season. It seemed all Juliana and Corinna could talk of were parties, balls, breakfasts, dances, and soirees.

“I can hardly wait for next spring,” Corinna said, echoing Alexandra’s musings.

Juliana added a few drops of almond extract to the egg whites. “If Griffin has his way, we’ll all be married long before spring. We’ll
never
have a season.”

“He cannot get you both matched up so quickly.” Alexandra idly stirred the almonds and sugar. “You two will have your seasons. He’ll have to be content with my marriage for now.”

“If the 'magical’ ratafia puffs do their job.” Corinna handed the bowl of eggs back to Alexandra. “Here, now
my
arm is tired. This is hard work.” Mopping her forehead with a towel, she looked pointedly through an archway to where a scullery maid stood drying a towering stack of dishes. “I cannot understand why you won’t ask
her
—”

“If the magic is to work,” Juliana interrupted patiently, “we must make the ratafia puffs ourselves, not relegate the task to a servant.”

“Ladies aren’t supposed to work in the kitchen.” Corinna tossed her mane of long, wavy brown hair. “Holy Hannah, it’s blazing hot in here with the coal burning all the day long! “

“Chase ladies work in the kitchen,” Alexandra said with a pointed glance at the ancient, stained journal that lay open on the long table. The heirloom volume was filled with recipes penned by Chase women going all the way back to the seventeenth century. Their foremothers and been renowned for their skill with sweets. ”It’s a tradition,” she added, still beating the eggs. “Will you be the first to break it?”

“I might. Unlike you, I don’t put much stock in tradition.”

Alexandra beat the eggs harder. “Well, perhaps you should—”

“Girls.” Always the peacemaker, Juliana took the bowl of stiffened eggs and dumped the almond and sugar mixture into it. “Why is there no ratafia in ratafia puffs?” she asked, adeptly changing the subject.

“Perhaps we’re supposed to serve ratafia with them,” Corinna suggested.

Alexandra laughed. “Griffin invited Lord Shelton to take tea, not spirits. I expect they’re called ratafia puffs because they taste of almonds like ratafia does.”

Corinna dipped a finger into the sweet mixture and licked it off. “Do you think Lord Shelton will propose today?”

Juliana rolled her lovely hazel eyes. “Alexandra could feed him dirt and he’d propose. Have you not seen the way he looks at her?”

“Like he’d rather eat her than the sweets?”

“Oh, do hold your tongues.” Alexandra’s cheeks felt warm. She
had
noticed the way Lord Shelton looked at her, and though she found it pleasing, she’d never confess as much to her sisters.

He really was quite perfect.

He was handsome and kind. He possessed a fortune of his own, so she knew he wasn’t after her sizable dowry. And he lived nearby, so she would see her family often. What more could she possibly require?

As a fanciful child, she had basked in the illusion of romance. Now she knew better. Love wasn’t a fairytale; it was two well-suited people choosing to make a life together.

And she was choosing to love Lord Shelton.

With any luck, the ratafia puffs would work their magic, she thought as she dropped shiny dollops of the batter onto a paper-lined tin baking sheet.

The Chase sisters were long overdue for some luck.

FOR THE FIRST
time in more than three years, Tristan rode over Cainewood Castle’s drawbridge and into its quadrangle. As a groom hurried from the stables, he swung down from his black gelding, his gaze skimming the clipped lawn and the four stories of living quarters that formed a U around it.

Cainewood didn’t look any different, although there was no reason it should. If he remembered right, the castle had been in Chase hands—save during the Commonwealth period—for close to six centuries. He shouldn’t have expected it to change in the last three years.

But
he’d
changed, so it felt odd that this place hadn’t.

Three years ago, with his new Oxford degree in hand and his comfortable future as a man of business assured, he’d been anticipating adventure. A far-flung paradise of—he’d imagined—fine weather, sandy beaches, and pretty girls awaited him.

Two years ago, he’d been unexpectedly called back from Jamaica to become the next Marquess of Hawkridge.

Things hadn’t turned out quite like he’d imagined.

The young groom tipped his cap. “Take your horse, my lord?”

“Yes, thank you.” Tristan handed over the reins. As his mount was led away, his gaze wandered Cainewood’s ancient keep—still as tumbledown as ever—and past it to the old tilting yard that lay beyond. He smiled, recalling games played there with Griffin—and often, Griffin’s little sisters—running through the untamed, ankle-high vegetation. Those summers spent here during his school years were memories he cherished. Griffin’s family had been a jolly remedy for the lack of his own.

“Tristan. Or I suppose I should call you Hawkridge. Whichever, it’s been entirely too long.”

Lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t heard Griffin approach, but now Tristan’s pleasant nostalgia was replaced by apprehension. He’d no idea what sort of greeting to expect. Steeling himself, he turned and extended his right hand.

“Oh, hang it,” Griffin said, and pulled him into a one-armed hug.

Filled with gratitude, Tristan clapped his old friend on the back. “Yes. Entirely too long,” he echoed as he drew away. “Am I supposed to call you Cainewood?”

“Strikes the ear wrong after all these years, doesn’t it?” Like the castle, Griffin’s crooked smile was familiar. “Griffin will do. I didn’t expect you until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Your note sounded urgent.” Tristan walked with him toward the entrance. “I’d no idea you’d left the army.”

“I haven’t been here long. Just these few months past.”

“I was sorry to hear about your parents. And Charles.”

Griffin waved away the condolences. He’d never been one for solemnity.

Before they reached the front steps, the double oak doors opened. Cainewood’s longtime butler stood between them. “Welcome back, my lord,” he said with a little bow.

“Why, thank you, Boniface,” Tristan returned, pleased to see him again. The man was aptly named, for he had a bonnie face—a youthful countenance that belied his forty-odd years. No matter how hard he tried to look stiff and serious, he never quite succeeded. And other than a touch of gray at his temples, the years hadn’t changed him a bit.

Tristan couldn’t say the same for Griffin. “You look older,” he said as they climbed the steps. Faint lines were beginning to form around his friend’s eyes and mouth.

Griffin nodded. “An old man at twenty-four.”

Tristan chuckled. “Hardly.”

“I’m aging quickly these days.”

Tristan was surprised. “Surely managing the estate is less stressful than fighting a war.”

“You would think so.” They stepped inside. “But management is the least of my concerns. I’ve got three sisters to marry off—”

“They cannot already be old enough to wed!”

Griffin’s rueful laugh echoed through the three-story-high entrance hall, all the way up to its stone-vaulted ceiling. “Mathematics never was your strongest subject.” He led Tristan up the carved stone staircase. “Corinna—the baby—is nearly sixteen. Which means nearly old enough to find a husband.”

Tristan frowned. “And Juliana and Alexandra?” he asked.

“Sixteen and seventeen.” They turned on the landing and went up a second level to the family’s private apartments. “Mourning has kept them from the marriage mart, but now it falls on me to see them all settled—and soon.”

He ushered Tristan into a dark wood study. Waving him into a leather wing chair, he went to open a cabinet.