Loving Lady Marcia (3 page)

She was in the midst of packing for the journey to Ballybrook—as if she cared anymore about the new wing Daddy had designed!—when she received a note from Finn.

Finn.

Finn, Finn,
Finn
.

She wanted to hug the servant who’d brought the stiff envelope. She sniffed it. It smelled of him. Suddenly, her world was sunshiny again.

She pressed the paper over her heart and seated herself at her dressing table, luxuriating in the knowledge that she was Finn’s and that a message had come from her beloved.

It would be a love note to tide her over until she got back to her school in Surrey, a missive she’d keep under her pillow. And perhaps in the letter he’d write about when they could next … be together. Perhaps he had a plan for that. Gretna couldn’t come soon enough. She could hardly breathe, thinking of the risks they were taking.

Being in love, she decided, was not for the fainthearted.

When she finished the note, she stared at her reflection in the looking glass. The woman that she’d become overnight looked back at her. But whereas moments ago, that woman had been flush with love, her heart brimming over with it, in fact, the person looking back at her now was an empty shell.

Finn had written that he was shocked to hear he’d be sailing not back to England from Ireland but to America—in accordance with his brother’s wishes.

“He’s sending me to a property of ours in Virginia for an apprenticeship in land management,” Finn wrote, “but I know the real reason I’m going. He wants to keep us apart.”

There was a blob of ink, as if he’d forgotten to sign it—as if his hectoring sibling were standing at his bedchamber door with an open trunk demanding that Finn throw his breeches and cravats into it then and there.

It was the last note Marcia would ever receive from him.

Chapter Two

1819

Duncan stopped abruptly on the London pavement. There she was. Across the street in the window of the modiste’s shop. His own girl-on-the-prow.

Lady Marcia Sherwood.

He was surprised how visceral his reaction to her was. One minute he’d been discussing the merits of the latest corn laws with his cousin and the next, he couldn’t think quite straight. “Excuse me, Richard.”

Richard, after Finn the next in line for the earldom, stopped alongside him. “What is it?”

Duncan was astounded at how the young girl, who’d been sweetly pretty, had blossomed into an extraordinarily beautiful woman. What a lovely surprise.

“I know her,” he said, taking in the limited view he had of the female who, during his most memorable moment in her company, had unleashed a torrent of words at him. More than words, really—she’d been a veritable hurricane on the high seas, all at the tender age of fifteen.

“Lady Marcia Sherwood?” Richard craned his neck to get a better view. “Daughter of the Irish peer—and an elusive beauty?”

“Yes.” And Duncan had a sudden desire to see her. Girl become woman. Beloved become … unbeloved.

Oh, but that was long ago. Surely her schoolgirl’s heart had recovered from Finn’s decision to leave for America from Ireland a whole year before Duncan had planned to send him. It had turned out to be nothing more than a calculated escape, Duncan knew now. Lady Marcia and all the young women of England with hearts to lose were better off without his charming, golden-haired brother, whether they knew it or not.

No doubt she’d been romantically involved again since, many times over. She was beautiful, highly ranked, wealthy, and passionate. Perhaps one of the bucks about Town had already convinced her to marry him. He wouldn’t know. He’d avoided London until recently, choosing instead to wrestle the mess that had been his father’s earldom back into shape from their floundering country estate in Kent.

“Helen says she’s a schoolteacher now. Someplace in Surrey.” Richard pulled on his ear. “I could be wrong.
Helen
could be wrong. Her nose for gossip isn’t as reliable as it once was.”

“It’s what happens when you’re distracted by the impending arrival of a newborn.” Duncan grinned. “Joe and I shall visit her soon, shall we? With a bouquet and her favorite chocolates. He thinks that if he bribes her with those, she’ll have a boy for certain.”

“Wouldn’t that be splendid for him,” Richard said with a grin. “And for me, too.”

It was good to have family who supported you no matter what, Duncan thought, when he sprang into action and entered the street, risking life and limb between two fast-moving hackneys to reach the other side. What Richard had given him with his unceasing loyalty, Duncan had vowed to pass on to his own brother from afar. He couldn’t say it had been terribly easy to do. Finn rarely corresponded with him, and when he did, it was to ask for extra money, never to ask how things were going for his brother on this side of the Atlantic.

Duncan negotiated his way about a crowd of boys surrounding a spotted brown-and-white dog doing tricks, then pulled open the door to Madame Perot’s modiste shop.

Lady Marcia glanced up from a bolt of fabric and saw him, her face instantly turning scarlet.

An ache ran through him when their eyes met. Nostalgia. Surely that’s what it was. She reminded him of those painful early days of his earldom, when the world had seemed so heavy on his shoulders.

She’d been a bright spot, hadn’t she? He hadn’t realized it until now. Beneath a sunshine-yellow sweep of hair, her eyes were a vivid blue, like a glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea.

She embodied the perfect afternoon.

Her plain dress, so unusual for a young lady of such high rank in the
haute ton,
took nothing away from her beauty, although he noted the modest attire was a new development. The younger girl had been fashionably dressed, so elegant and striking at the Dublin wedding that other girls her age had hovered around her as if she were the fairy queen and they were her attendants.

Now her silk bonnet was well made but had no frills or flowers. Her gown was cut beautifully but of a nondescript straw hue that did nothing for her English-rose complexion. She wore a matching spencer buttoned to her throat, which he’d wager was the same one she probably slung on a hook near the back door for quick retrieval were she to take a stroll in her kitchen garden.

“Good afternoon—” he began, removing his hat.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, and backed away before he could complete his sentence, right into a dressmaker’s dummy.

It tilted crazily, and she set it aright with fluttering hands.

He could swear she swore under her breath. But she quickly recovered, lifted her skirts, and made a beeline for the shop door. She stole one glance back at him.

He kept his face expressionless, but the truth was, she’d never failed to amuse him. Not her little misstep but her general manner. She couldn’t be false if she tried, and he liked that about her.

Her eyes gleamed with something like annoyance when she flung the door open and hurried out.

He put his hat back on and went after her, not caring that three other fashionably dressed women in the shop were watching, enthralled.

“Lady Marcia!” he called down the street, quite as if he were ten years old and calling her to play.

She was with her maid, who hung back when Lady Marcia stopped—reluctantly, it seemed—and turned around. “Yes?”

“Perhaps you don’t recognize me,” he said. “I’m Lord Chadwick. We traveled to a wedding in Dublin together.”
Which included a memorable voyage across the Irish Sea
. “My brother”—dare he say it?—“is Finnian Lattimore.”

Several laborers carrying buckets and brooms brushed by him and blocked his view of her for a moment.

When he saw her again, her face was like stone. “I remember,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m going somewhere”—she hitched a shoulder northward—“I need to be.”

And she continued on her way as if she were a very serious-minded explorer with an extremely sensitive compass that must be followed so she would reach shelter by nightfall—or die.

He hated to admit it: He felt a deep disappointment at her dismissive reception of him. Yes, she’d had a short-lived, whirlwind romance with his brother, but who hadn’t experienced young love and its subsequent dashed affections?

He’d have thought that his going through the exact same several weeks of travel with her as Finn, travel which had included a horrible day with a broken carriage wheel and his—dare he say it?—semiheroic efforts to extricate them from that uncomfortable situation, stood for something when it came to
civil
versus
friendly
greetings.

Of course, it had all been years ago. Water under the proverbial bridge. So he wouldn’t bother worrying either way. There was
now,
and she was pretty. Intriguing.

And he was bored. He hadn’t realized it until this moment.

With renewed optimism, he caught up with her. She flicked him a brief glance but kept walking toward that unnamed point.

“I haven’t seen you in Town,” he said easily. “I’m not here as often as I’d like, so I miss out on a great deal of news. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that you never joined the social scene and left many gentlemen bereft at your absence. Are you finally here to take your place as a diamond of the first water?”

“No, not at all. But thank you for the compliment.” She was as unreachable as a star, her face smooth and inscrutable, her words polite—but nothing more.

His mild curiosity about her increased to outright fascination. “It’s been years since we last spoke.”

“Yes, it has been.”

Such
control
. It hadn’t been part of her repertoire as a young girl. He suddenly missed that girl. Very much.

“Long ago you made a forecast at the bow of a sailing packet,” he said. “I must know if your prediction has come to pass, if you’ve found your perfect—”

“You’ll be happy to hear,” she interrupted him, her chin tilted up, “that like you, I’ve learned to be more contained in my emotions. There is no perfect love. No perfect life. I’m fine with that. In fact, I’m quite content. Good-bye, sir.”

Her invisible compass directed her to make an immediate right into oncoming traffic, which she evaded handily, although her maid let out a shrill squeak and grabbed hold of her mistress’s spencer for guidance. Once they reached the other side, Lady Marcia continued up the street, her now pale-faced maid trembling behind her.

Duncan didn’t know why he did it. But he went after her again, pausing to allow a milkmaid carrying a yoke with two brimming buckets to cross in front of him.

“I’d like to call on you tomorrow, if I may,” he told Lady Marcia when he caught up with her.

She wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t live in London. But thank you.”

He put a hand on her elbow. “Please give me a moment more.”

She stopped abruptly and looked at him, her eyes giving nothing away. Nothing at all.

When had she learned to do that? And why? The only sense he had that all was not well with her was the flush in her cheeks.

“I remember you on that sailing packet,” he said, hoping to peek over the invisible wall between them. “You were like Joan of Arc. Or Athena the warrior goddess.”

“I’ve grown up.” She took off again, her stride long and sure. “I’m only in Town because Lady Ennis wants the girls in green silk choir robes. I’m gathering swatches.”

“Lady Ennis? Girls? Choir?”

“You’re asking far too many questions.”

Duncan exhaled a frustrated breath. “I see you’re determined to continue about your business.”

“Yes, I am. I’ve not much time.”

“Tell me the essentials. Please.”

She sighed and kept walking. “I finished my studies at my boarding school in Surrey and rather than come to London for a Season, I stayed on as a teacher. And now I am headmistress.”

“Headmistress? At your tender age? Although I can’t say I’m surprised. You’d have been a leader on the social scene in London. Instead, you’re leading a school. That’s marvelous.”

She cast him a sideways glance. “I’m glad you think so. Overnight, I went from debutante to bluestocking. The Polite World, mad as it is, did
not
approve. Now I really must be going.”

“All right, then. But know that I wish you well. If you’re ever in Town again, I should like very much to call on you.”

“Please don’t bother,” she said in a breezy fashion. “When we were thrown together years ago, you were barely aware of my existence. And I’m perfectly fine with that state of affairs. Really.”

She tossed him a polite smile.

Good Lord. He
had
ignored her, but she’d been so young, and he’d been so very tense, wrapped up in his new responsibilities as earl, one of which was to contain his hell-raising brother. He supposed she considered his lack of interest in her then a slight. Perhaps she had a bit of vanity about her, after all, which would be too bad. He was tired of conversing with women whose goal in life seemed to be to collect male admirers much the same way they indiscriminately accrued ribbons and bonnets.

“I see,” he said. They’d come to a corner. “Your servant, ma’am.”

She nodded briefly, then followed by her scurrying maid, crossed yet another street. She looked noble, serene, and quite beautiful in her plain gown, a serviceable reticule dangling from her arm.

He stared after her. She maddened him. Just as she had on that sailing packet.

Good riddance,
he thought, and placed his hat on his head, determined to forget the encounter had ever happened, determined to forget
her
.

But he knew he wouldn’t. After all, he still thought of her as his girl-on-the-prow.

Damn her for being so memorable.

Chapter Three

Insufferable. Smug.
Deluded
.

That was what Lord Chadwick was.

How could he think for one moment that she’d want to stand and chat with him when he’d sent Finn to America early so he could keep them apart?

Ten minutes after her unsettling encounter with the self-appointed arbiter of her romantic destiny, Marcia stood in the vast entryway at the Brady house on Grosvenor Square, her legs still shaky, her heart racing. She wasn’t used to being thrown off kilter by anyone, especially by a man who didn’t deserve her attention.