Just Another Lady (Xcite Romance)

Just Another Lady

by Penelope Friday

ISBN 9781908917348

This story was first published in One Long Hot Summer 

by Xcite Books Ltd – 2012

Copyright © Penelope Friday 2012

The rights of Penelope Friday to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

The stories contained within this book are works of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the authors’ imaginations and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Xcite Books, Suite 11769, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY

Chapter One

ELINOR EVERTON COULD DATE almost to the day when it was that she had begun to fall in love with Lucius Crozier. It was a hot summer, and Lucius had come home from Harrow, suddenly grown up and unexpectedly handsome, no longer the schoolboy with whom the tomboy Elinor had loved to squabble. The Croziers had come, en famille, to see the Evertons; and Elinor had tumbled into the room to greet Lucius with her usual informality, only to be shocked into shyness and embarrassment at this new version of her old companion. Suddenly her limbs all seemed too long; her red hair shamefully in need of brushing; her dress grubby and unflattering.

‘Good morning, Elinor,’ said Lucius, his voice a deep drawl.

Elinor felt something flutter inside her. Lucius had never made her feel this way before. ‘H … hello,’ she stammered, standing on one leg and then the other, shifting her weight uncomfortably.

There was an expression on Lucius’s face which made Elinor feel as if he were laughing at her, which only increased her discomfort.

Her father said, ‘The girl doesn’t recognise you, Lucius,’ in a cheerful teasing manner, and Elinor felt herself blush.

‘How are you?’ she asked, her voice small.

Lucius leaned back in his chair and flicked an imaginary piece of fluff from his impeccable waistcoat. ‘All the better for seeing you, Elinor, of course.’

Elinor bit her lip, sure she was being teased, not quite certain whether she liked or loathed it. Certainly it gave her a funny feeling that she could not quite process. That feeling had grown as she and Lucius had been thrown into each other’s company over the next few weeks. Sometimes he seemed to treat her like a little girl; at other moments, he would look at her in a strange way, or make a comment which seemed to hint at something more than the mild affection of a young gentleman for a tearaway girl barely out of her childhood. Every day she fell further and further in love; a feeling which she resented and was frightened of – for why would Lucius Crozier ever take an interest in her, a girl with unladylike manners, unruly auburn hair and no expectations to speak of?

She attempted to make up for this by baiting Lucius as much as she could: if he said the day was fine, she would say it was “too hot”. If he had told her black was black, she would have said it was white. Their squabbles became regular and more and more venomous, until one day Lucius grabbed her wrist and pulled her to face him.

‘What is the matter with you, Elinor Everton?’ he demanded.

She’d have had to look up to meet his gaze, so she stared firmly at his shoulder. The place where his fingers touched her wrist felt hot and strange; she was aware of her senses prickling.

‘Surely I am allowed to disagree with you sometimes?’ she demanded, aware she sounded petulant. ‘Just because The Great Lucius Crozier says something is true, that does not make it infallible.’

‘Elinor … Damn it! Look at me, won’t you?’

‘No.’

He put his other hand under her chin and forced it up so that their eyes locked. Elinor found it hard to breathe properly; she was not sure whether she wanted to run away or fling herself into his arms.

‘What is the matter with both of us?’ he murmured quietly.

She felt his gaze rest on her mouth, and her lips tingled in response. He was going to kiss her – was he? Did she want him to? Before either of them could move further, Elinor’s mother came into view. Elinor wrenched herself out of Lucius’s grip.

‘Get off me, you wretch,’ she said fiercely. ‘I hate you.’

She had taken a few steps away before she heard Lucius’s response. ‘The feeling,’ he called after her, ‘is most certainly mutual.’

After that, it was war to the knife between the pair.

Nevertheless, those days seemed a long time ago now.

They dated before Lucius gained his reputation as a womaniser and gambler. Before the death of Elinor’s father Augustus; before the terms attached to the family entail had pushed Elinor and her mother in one fell swoop from riches to barely surviving in genteel poverty. Before their situation had deteriorated further with the serious illness which now racked her mother. Elinor and Lucius moved in very different circles now; very different indeed.

Which was why the announcement by their maid (their one and only maid) that Mr Crozier was requesting to speak to Elinor came as rather a shock.

‘Thank you, Molly,’ she said quietly. ‘Please assure him I will be down presently.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

The maid withdrew. Elinor could see a glint of interest in Molly’s eyes, and could not blame her. Elinor too was wondering why Lucius should visit unexpectedly like this. Their challenging relationship, with each liking to get the last word in any discussion or dispute, had hardly hinted at surprise visits in later days. Perhaps, she thought wryly, Lucius was here to get the very last word: to rub in finally the gulf between their separate positions. Even without this morning’s final blow of a doctor’s bill Elinor knew she could not pay, their circumstances were now like chalk and cheese. He was owed, Elinor admitted privately, his victory.

She was never going to give him that satisfaction, however. Elinor Everton would keep her stubborn pride to the end. Smoothing her dress down, and hoping that the many darns were not over-evident, she took a quick look in the dusty mirror at her hair (still tightly coiled) and descended the shabbily carpeted stairs to the withdrawing room.

‘Mr Crozier.’ Her smile was rather forced, but the best she could produce. She gave a brief curtsey, and he bowed in return.

‘Miss Everton,’ he replied. ‘How formal we are today.’

Elinor thought fleetingly of the days in which they had been Elinor and Lucius to one another, and dismissed the pang of regret for what had gone.

‘What can I do for you?’ she asked.

‘It is more a case,’ said Lucius, ‘of what I can do for you.’

‘I fail to understand.’

Lucius glanced at the sofa. ‘May I ...’

‘Please, be seated,’ Elinor said coldly, placing herself on the edge of a chair as far from him as possible.

‘Thank you.’ Lucius settled himself with his usual elegance. ‘You are as beautiful as ever, Elinor.’

Elinor did not dignify this with a response; instead she kept her green eyes firmly on his face, waiting for him to come to the point.

He laughed. ‘You are also, as ever, impossible to distract with compliments.’

‘If you consider your words to be such. For my sake, I prefer to be admired rather for my abilities than my looks.’

This was not quite true: Elinor was human, was female, enough to be flattered by Lucius’s words. But that was something she was certainly not prepared to acknowledge aloud.

‘You are also,’ said Lucius, his mien unchanged by Elinor’s sharp retort, ‘regrettably short of money.’

Elinor felt her whole body tense at his words. The Evertons’ parlous financial state was no doubt evident to all, but she was grateful that most people did not feel authorised to comment aloud on it. ‘We manage,’ she said tightly.

‘Do you? I had heard otherwise.’ He shrugged. ‘Lack of funds is fortunately not a situation I am personally acquainted with, but I gather that you –’

Elinor interrupted him before he could make any further remark; insult her further. ‘I do not want your money.’ Her breast heaved with short angry breaths. Had Lucius come here to offer patronage? She stood up and began to pace back and forth, aware all the time of Lucius’s eyes on her.

‘No?’ Lucius raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you want from me, then, Elinor Everton?’

‘Nothing,’ she lied.

Once, she had thought that perhaps …

But that had been a long time ago. She looked at him and knew she still wanted him, and the thought hurt. Too many issues now lay in their way: complicated things like Pride, and Money, and Power. Lucius had all three; what Elinor lacked in the last two, she made up in spades with the first.

‘I, you see,’ explained Lucius, as if the small passage between them had not occurred, ‘am plentifully supplied with the oh-so-filthy lucre on which our world turns, but regrettably lacking a wife.’

‘I never heard that you considered that much of a misfortune,’ Elinor shot back.

‘No?’ Lucius smiled. ‘I never realised you kept yourself so acquainted with the minutiae of my life. I am flattered that you cared to do so.’ Elinor felt herself blushing; knew that Lucius could see the tell-tale colour flooding to her cheeks. He allowed the silence to linger for a moment before continuing to speak. ‘Nevertheless, there you have it. I am in need of a – shall we say – an amenable wife; you are in need of money. It seems we both have something the other requires.’

Elinor stopped pacing and stood looking down at Lucius. ‘Do you really think,’ she asked, her voice low, ‘that I would sell myself for my own betterment?’

Lucius’s answer was oblique. ‘I gather your mother’s doctor’s bills are large.’

‘I’ll manage something.’ Elinor dug her fingernails deeply into her palms. She couldn’t bring herself to say that she didn’t need money. She needed it so desperately it hurt. Mrs Everton’s chances of recovery were minimal without the continued attendance of the doctor.

A doctor who would not be returning unless his last bill was paid.

If the money had been for herself, it would have been easy to refuse Lucius. But for her mother – oh, for her mother ... And in one way, it was so tempting to take up his offer. After all, it was not as if he were suggesting something she did not want to do. Elinor thought about the offers she had refused in her first season, and faced for the first time the knowledge that it had been thoughts of Lucius which had prevented her marrying before. But that had been when things were different. When she was a decent match for an eligible young man.

To drop her pride, though, to the extent that she would marry Lucius in order to let him pay her family’s debts for her? It was too much to ask. Too much. In an unusual moment of self-doubt, Elinor wondered whether the only reason Lucius had made the offer was because he knew she wouldn’t take it. He could humiliate her with no fear of reprisals – no fear of finding himself saddled with an unwanted wife. It was not as if by birth she was no match for Lucius. But since her father’s unexpected early death, Elinor and her mother had moved ever further down the social ladder. Now they owned nothing, not even a house; and Elinor’s mother was sick.

‘Of course, I would require an obedient wife,’ Lucius said.

‘Then it is fortunate that I do not aspire to the position,’ Elinor replied through gritted teeth.

Lucius smiled. ‘Three days, Elinor. Tell me your answer then.’

There must be something. There had to be something. Elinor thought she would rather die than marry Lucius for his money. She spent three days trying every possible avenue – governessing, even chamber-maid positions; but it was made clear to her that she was not considered an appropriate candidate for either. Too ill-educated for the first; too well-educated for the second.

And meantime she watched her mother dying, inch by inevitable inch.

Lucius came on the third day, and she arrayed herself in her best – or rather, in her least worn – dress to meet him. When Molly announced his arrival, Elinor forced herself to look at him, to make the expected curtsey. And then to say, her eyes lowered in shame, that she would marry him.

‘I accept your proposal. And I thank you for it.’ The second sentence caused bile to rise in her mouth, but it had to be done. He had bought and paid for her; her future now was to be the dutiful, obedient, wife which he required.

‘I am overcome by the honour.’

Elinor wanted to kill him for the mocking tone in which the words were drawled. Instead, she said, ‘When?’ Her voice was strained. ‘I mean ...’

‘You can hardly wait for the day.’

‘I need ...’

‘Of course.’ Lucius’s tone was dry. ‘You need my money. Rest assured, Miss Everton, that from the moment at which our betrothal is announced in the press – tonight, if you wish – your creditors will no longer be knocking upon your door. On the contrary, you will find yourself buried under a deluge of well-wishers and those who wish to sell you fripperies for this miraculous wedding.’

‘I feel sure I will be the envy of the débutantes,’ said Elinor, hating the fact that it was true; that she was certainly not the only lady who had looked upon Lucius and desired him. Hating that she could offer him nothing, and he had everything. Nothing? Well, only one thing. Her body. Perhaps it would be less shameful to be a whore out and out; to act a little on the stage, and then act more behind the scenes with man after faceless man. But that would have killed her mother as surely as the illness would do without treatment. Selling herself, body and soul, to this one man was the only acceptable option she had.

The honeymoon, such as it would be, was going to entail 14 nights at Redvers, Lucius’s country house, so that Elinor could assure herself of her mother’s improved health. After that ...

‘London?’ Elinor demanded, shocked.

‘It is where I live, at any rate during the season,’ Lucius explained, mock apologetically.

London. Of course, Elinor should have realised that Lucius was hardly the archetypal country gentleman. Had known it, in fact. But – it had never occurred to her that her main residence would be anywhere but her home village of Carryleigh. Certainly she had had her London season, several years back; but that had always been, in her mind, a once in a lifetime occasion, an anomaly. It was not that she had not fitted in, nor even that she had not enjoyed herself, but it was not life. Not life as Elinor had always envisaged it, anyway.

But then so much of life was not turning out as Elinor had imagined.

‘London,’ she said again, resignedly. ‘Of course. And mother?’

Lucius’s expression was unreadable, but his words were plain enough. ‘I hardly think she will be ready for the exigencies of London life,’ he said gently. ‘I thought – Rocklands?’ Rocklands was a cottage on the edge of Lucius’s estate, considerably larger than the Evertons’ current establishment, not to mention a great deal more comfortable. ‘A couple of maids; a companion, if she wished?’