by Louise Allen
One o’clock struck as he dismissed his valet from his bedchamber. ‘I will undress myself, thank you, Bain. And if you see Lady Anne as you leave, tell her I have already retired.’
‘Very well, Your Grace.’ The valet, used to Marcus’s ways, bowed himself out, leaving his master staring rather grimly at the big bed.
Marcus shrugged out of his swallow-tailed coat and waistcoat, removed his cravat and pulled on a light silk banyan. He had no doubt that his solitude would soon be interrupted by Claudia, lured by the promise of his kiss in the conservatory. He could not have given her a much clearer signal that the weeks of denial were over and that tonight he wanted her in his bedchamber.
Restless, he tugged aside the heavy curtain and looked out over the pleasure grounds, then his focus changed and he found himself regarding his own reflection as though in a looking glass. ‘You damn fool,’ he told his image. ‘Now get yourself out of this mess.’
He was still at the window when the door opened quietly and Claudia slipped in. He watched her reflection without turning as she tiptoed across the carpet, her negligée of yellow silk gauze moulding her voluptuous body. She pressed her palms flat against his shoulder blades, then ran them insinuatingly down the planes of his back until she reached his waist.
Marcus turned then, catching her wrists in his hard grasp, arresting their knowing progress.
‘Darling.’ She pouted. ‘You are so masterful.’ She shivered and looked into his face, her tongue-tip running lasciviously round the full curve of her lips. ‘It has been so long, Marcus. Come to bed now.’
She started to back towards the four-poster, only to be pulled up short and none too gently by Marcus’s immobility. ‘Mmm.’ She smiled wickedly at him. ‘So you want to do it here?’
‘No, Claudia, I do not. And I do not want to take you to my bed, now or in the future. It is over.’
Ever a fighter, she was unwilling to concede defeat. ‘I do not believe you. The way you kissed me tonight tells me you do not mean it.’
‘I had to make sure you would come to me here. There is nowhere else in the house we can be certain of being alone.’
Ready tears started in the lovely blue eyes. ‘Marcus, how can you be so cruel? You know you love me, and I have been faithful to you, only to you.’
‘Faithful to my fortune, my dear Claudia. I have never had any doubt that you would remain faithful to that while you had any hopes of presents. Or until a bigger, richer, fish swam by.’
The tears slid decoratively over her rouged cheeks, but a hardening anger was forming in the depths of her eyes. ‘How could you be so cruel? Inviting me down here only to spurn me when I have done nothing to incur your displeasure. Come, darling, come to bed. You are tired and cross, let Claudia make it better…’ She wriggled seductively, sending the gauzy fabric sliding from her shoulders. Only the fact that he was still holding her wrists prevented the entire garment slipping to the floor.
‘Yes, Claudia, I could go to bed with you. You are a very beautiful woman. But that beauty is only skin deep. It took me just a few weeks to realise that. You knew it was over, you knew I did not want you here, yet somehow you cozened my sister into inviting you down. Since you arrived, I have done nothing to encourage you, yet you persist.’
‘But I love you, Marcus,’ she wheedled.
‘You love only yourself. You are vain, self-absorbed, cruel and dismissive of others’ feelings. You are redeemed only by your beauty – for so long as that lasts, my lovely. Do not frown so, Claudia, frown lines are so very ageing.’
‘That did not concern you when you were in my bed taking your pleasure of me,’ she hissed, two hot spots of colour mottling her cheek bones.
Marcus dropped her wrists and stared down at the spiteful little face that tonight, despite the artful maquillage, had lost every iota of its freshness and appeal. ‘But then you managed to hide those characteristics from me so well, did you not?’
Claudia reached up one long-nailed finger and ran it down his chest, exposed by the open shirt neck. ‘I hid nothing from you, remember?’
Marcus did, vividly. Then he had been consumed by passion for the sophisticated, available – oh, so very available – Lady Reed. The burning desire had been short-lived, now he felt only distaste that he had surrendered so easily to her lures. A reflection of his thoughts must have shown on his face.
Claudia, her wheedling smile vanishing in a second, struck like an adder, the flat of her hand cracking across his cheek so hard his head snapped back. Beyond touching the stinging weal with his fingertips, Marcus did nothing, but his eyes must have held something that stopped Claudia’s breath. With a sob which was half-petulance, half-apprehension, she ran from the room, her negligée swirling in disorder around her.
Marcus stalked across the room and shut the heavy panelled door behind her, then slumped down into a wing chair before the empty grate. He stuck his legs out, easing the tension from his long frame, then ran his hands through his hair.
That had been unpleasant. He blamed himself for having become entangled with Claudia in the first place. At first he had admired her spirits and beauty, the courage with which she coped with an empty life married to a corrupt man old enough to be her father.
Society was full of grass widows, game for a fling with any gentleman who was willing. As long as everyone concerned was discreet, no-one turned a hair, even when there were some aristocratic households where all a man could be certain of was that his first-born son and heir was his own.
But that sort of life had palled, Marcus realised. It was no longer enough to have passion without attachment. Not since he had met Antonia.
A great weariness suddenly overcame him. Marcus shrugged out of his clothes and climbed into the great four poster. His last thought before he fell asleep was that he must ride over and see Antonia in the morning. He knew how much he must have hurt her in the conservatory, but he would explain how he had needed to shield her from Claudia’s venom, and her vicious, gossiping tongue.
Chapter Twenty One
Marcus’s next conscious act was to blink in the full glare of the morning sunlight as Bain pulled back the drapes at the long casements with their view east over the park. ‘Another fine morning, Your Grace. I trust you slept well. Shall I direct them to send up your bathwater immediately?’
Bain, an immaculately-trained valet, was well used to carrying on a one-sided conversation with his master, who was never talkative much before eleven in the morning. Encouraged by a grunt, he ushered in footmen carrying hot-water cans and began gathering up discarded clothing from the day before.
So well-schooled was he and so discreet that Bain had been known to retrieve intimate articles of feminine apparel and return them to the wearer’s lady’s maid perfectly laundered and without even a quirk of an eyebrow.
Later, when he must have noticed the faint bruise on employer’s cheek, he did not comment, beyond wielding the cutthroat razor with extra care.
Marcus met Anne sweeping downstairs an hour later, clearly with every intention of bearding her brother. She encountered him in the hall, dressed for riding and pulling on his gloves as he gave orders to Saye, his groom.
‘And tell Welling to come with us, you can both ride over to Sir George Dover’s and collect that bay gelding I bought off him last week. It is unbroken and will need both of you to bring it home.’ He broke off to kiss her cheek. ‘Good morning, Anne. I trust you slept well?’
‘Marcus, must you go out now? I particularly wished to speak to you.’ It was a demand rather than a request.
‘I shall be back later.’ He had no doubt she intended to lecture him on the subject of Antonia. Well, by the time he returned, her lecture would be redundant, and she would be too pleased with his news to scold him.
Marcus made his escape and gave the horse its head on the fine cropped down land grass as he cut across the parkland to the Dower House, the grooms behind him. The sound of the church clock striking ten reached him fain
tly over the pounding of three sets of hooves. The sun, though warm, was still tempered by the fresh early morning air and the prospect of bringing the smile back to Antonia’s face lent urgency to the ride.
The old, twisted chimneys of the Dower House came into view behind a stand of trees. At the gate he turned in the saddle. ‘Wait here, Saye.’ What instinct prompted him to keep the two grooms he could not say, something perhaps about the unwonted stillness of the normally bustling house.
Surely they are not still abed, he thought, as the heavy knocker dropped from his hand onto the old oak door. Jane appeared and dropped him a curtsy, her cheeks even pinker than normal.
‘Good morning, Your Grace.’
‘Good morning, Jane. Is Miss Dane at home?’
Jane’s pretty country complexion grew more rosy. ‘No, Your Grace.’
‘Well, may I speak to Miss Donaldson?’ So Antonia was angry with him still. That was not to be wondered at.
‘Miss Donaldson is not at home, Your Grace,’ Jane recited with the air of a child repeating a lesson.
Marcus’s lips tightened. ‘Do you mean,’ he enquired with dangerous civility, ‘that the ladies are not here, or that they are not at home to me?’
This threw the maid servant into even more confusion than he might have expected. ‘Yes. Er, no. That is…’ She took a deep breath and said desperately, ‘Miss Donaldson said as I was to say, that they aren’t at home, Your Grace.’
He fought the impulse to shoulder past the girl into the house, nodded curtly, turned on his heel, vaulted into the saddle and urged his horse into a gallop.
After the first quarter of a mile Marcus reined back to a more temperate pace, smiling grimly at his own mood. He was not used to being thwarted but he was uneasily aware of how hurt Antonia must be feeling, and storming around the Hertfordshire countryside was no remedy. He would go back and write her a note.
He pulled up where the lane crossed the Berkhamsted road and watched the approaching grooms. If he sent the note with Josh Saye, who was courting young Jane, there was a good chance it would reach Antonia, more so than if he took it himself.
The men had just reached him when a gig driven by young Jem came bowling round the bend from the direction of the town. The lad’s cheerful expression changed into a look of alarm tinged with shiftiness the moment he saw who was at the crossroads.
A sudden suspicion made Marcus snap, ‘Stop that gig,’ and the two grooms moved their mounts into the road.
Jem tugged his forelock and shifted uneasily on the bench seat. Marcus, still unsure why he had stopped him, urged his horse alongside the gig, then saw a beribboned hat box on the floor.
‘Where have you been, boy?’
‘Nowhere, Your Grace,’ Jem said sullenly.
'You speak proper.’ Saye lifted a hand. ‘Or I’ll thicken your ear.’
‘Do not bully the lad,’ Marcus intervened. ‘What is your name, boy?’
‘Jem… Your Grace.’ Still he would not look up.
‘Jem, ah, yes. You work for Miss Dane, do you not?’
'’Yessir.’
‘And have you been driving Miss Dane this morning?’
‘Couldn’t say, sir. Your Grace.’ Jem’s face was almost crimson.
‘That is all right, Jem, you do not have to tell us anything you do not wish to. What a pity Miss Dane forgot her hat box,’ Marcus said sympathetically.
‘No, she didn’t forget it, she said there weren’t no room in the ch – ‘ He broke off, one hand clapping itself to his mouth.
‘No room in the chaise?’ Marcus finished gently. ‘So your mistress has hired a chaise, has she? And where is she bound?’
Saye advanced to the side of the gig. ‘You speak up when His Grace asks you a question, boy, or I’ll have your ears off.’
‘You can boil me in oil and I won’t tell you nuffin about Miss Dane,’ Jem stammered.
‘Stop bullying the lad. He is only being loyal to his mistress and no doubt following her instructions. Here, lad.’ Marcus fished in his waistcoat pocket and sent a half sovereign spinning through the air to the startled boy. ‘Do not worry, Jem, you have kept your silence well, now be off back to the Dower House.’
The lad needed no urging and was off down the road as fast as the elderly horse could go.
Marcus used his spurs and sent his mount cantering off towards Berkhamsted.
The King’s Arms was the only hostelry in the town that hired out carriages, but enquiries there were met with little information. Yes, Miss Dane had hired a chaise and four with two postilions, but no, neither the landlord nor the ostlers could say which direction she had taken.
‘We’ve been very busy, Your Grace,’ the landlord explained apologetically, wiping his hands on his apron. ‘Market day, you see.’
Marcus was standing in the inn yard, fists on hips, sizing up the possibilities: east for London or west for Aylesbury, when Mr Todd the curate walked through the arch. ‘Oh, good morning, Your Grace. Why, all local Society seems to be abroad in Berkhamsted today. I was gratified to see Miss Dane earlier. Such a charming young lady, such an ornament to our little town.’
‘Mr Todd, good morning to you, I trust I find you well.’ Marcus regarded his curate with a speculative eye. ‘Splendid sermon last Sunday, I hope you intend to stimulate us again this week.’ Marcus had, in fact, dozed through most of Mr Todd’s interminable prosing on the subject of the Ephesians, but he did not want to cause gossip by pouncing too readily on the subject of Miss Dane.
‘Thank you, Your Grace, you are too kind. I was, in fact, intending to enlarge upon the theme of the dangers of heathen imagery...’
Marcus allowed him to prate on until he drew breath at last. ‘I am glad to hear Miss Dane succeeded in finding a suitable chaise. Now, where was it she was going? London, I think?’
‘Oh no,’ Mr Todd corrected him. ‘She took the Chesham road.’
Chesham, Marcus ruminated. Why would she go south to Chesham? Unless she had some intention of disguising her destination. Once along that road she could turn off for either London or Aylesbury. Mr Todd was prattling again, but he excused himself brusquely and strode back to his horse.
‘Saye, you and Welling take the Chesham road until you find which way Miss Dane’s chaise has gone. When you are sure, send Welling back to me and you follow until Miss Dane reaches her destination, then send me word. Here,’ he tossed a leather purse to the head groom. ‘This should cover your expenses.’
Not waiting to see the two men follow his instructions, Marcus turned back towards Brightshill, thinking hard. He had come to expect spirited behaviour from Antonia, but even by her standards, setting off alone in a hired chaise was extraordinarily daring. When he discovered where she had gone – and London or Bath seemed the most obvious destinations – he would follow. It was chastening for once in his life to discover that events were not following his desires.
This impression was reinforced when, no sooner had he set foot over his own threshold, his sister pounced on him and marched him with scant ceremony into his study.
‘Well?’ Anne demanded. ‘Have you been over to speak to Miss Dane?’
Marcus sank into a deep chair and crossed his booted legs negligently. ‘Yes.’
‘And? What did she say? Marcus, I do wish you would not sprawl like that.’
‘She said nothing.’ Marcus continued to sprawl.
‘Nothing? What can you mean? Marcus, you are going about this very badly. Did she refuse to speak to you? Although it is not to be wondered at, with that minx Claudia Reed all over you at table last night.’
‘Antonia has gone,’ Marcus stated baldly, cutting his sister off in mid flow.
‘Gone? Gone where?’ Anne sat down abruptly in the chair opposite.
‘I have no idea, although I would hazard either Bath or London.’
His sister’s colour was rising to match her temper. ‘So you have thrown away the one chance you have of marrying someone who would suit you to
perfection and hurt a sweet girl into the bargain.’
‘I offered for her before our first dinner party here, and she turned me down.’ This was compressing events somewhat, and made no mention of Claudia’s role in it all.
Anne was not to be deflected. ‘l suppose you thought she would fall into your arms for the asking?’ she demanded. ‘After all, everything else does, does it not, Marcus?’
Startled by this attack, he pulled himself up in the chair and stared at her. ‘What can you mean?’
‘Ever since you were a boy, you have been admired and fêted, for your rank and your fortune and your looks. You have never had to be accountable to anyone for anything, which is no doubt why that sweet girl has refused your suit. No, hear me out,’ she held up a hand as he opened his mouth to protest.
‘You are a good brother and uncle and an excellent employer, but you are aloof, sometimes haughty. I am assuming you love Antonia? Have you told her so, or have you just presumed that the honour of being courted by the great Marcus Renshaw, Duke of Allington is sufficient?’
Before he could respond there was a discreet tap at the door and Mead entered. ‘Your Grace, I regret the intrusion, but Welling is here, saying you required immediate speech with him.’
Marcus stood. ‘Tell him to wait, Mead, I will be with him directly. Direct Bain to pack a valise for me. He turned to Anne and kissed her cheek. ‘This will be news of Antonia and I intend to follow her. Do not fret, my dear. What you say may be true, but I intend to rescue the situation.’
In the hall he waited only for three words from Welling, ‘London, Your Grace,’ before ordering the man to bring round his high-perch phaeton within the half-hour.
Anne hurried out on to the steps as Bain was stowing the valise under the seat of the carriage and preparing to climb up beside him. ‘Marcus!’