The Beguilement of Lady Eustacia Cavanagh: The Cavanaughs Volume 3

by Stephanie Laurens

  By then, he was growing curious. She hadn’t reiterated her refusal to even consider marriage. Presumably, that meant she was considering it—or at least, considering what he’d said. If so, the last thing he should do was prod her.

  They reached the cobbles outside her front door, and still, she’d said not a word. He dismounted, handed his reins to her groom, and went to lift her down. He closed his hands about her waist and, for once, sensed no real reaction to his touch; admittedly, over the course of the past week, she’d grown much more accustomed to it. Searching her face as he lifted her to the pavement, he saw that, if anything, her pensiveness had deepened, and so had her frown; the latter now knitted her fine brows.

  With her feet on the ground, she finally looked up at him.

  He held himself unmoving as, her lips tight, she studied his face and his eyes. Finally, unable to hold back the words, he arched a brow at her. “What do you think of my suggestion?” In effect, his proposal.

  Her lips compressed even more, then eased. “I feel that I should be telling you—again—that marriage is not for me.” She held his gaze. “Not even marriage to you.” She paused, then drew breath and said, “As it is…” Her frown deepened still further, then she reached out and lightly squeezed his arm. “I don’t know what to say to you other than I’ll think about it.”

  He couldn’t whoop in triumph—and that was hardly an acceptance. With his features schooled to utter impassivity, he inclined his head, then waved her to her door.

  He followed her up the steps and, when the door opened, bowed over her hand, straightened, then leaned close and touched his lips to her cheek before releasing her and, with a final salute, walking down the steps to where her groom held the horses.

  Chapter 12

  That evening, Stacie and Frederick attended a dinner that had the potential to prove significant in garnering support for local musicians via a connection to the respective music schools of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

  Stacie had learned that, while Frederick was a graduate of Christchurch College in Oxford, that university’s premier school for musicians and musical historians, Lord Brougham, after leaving Eton at the same time as Frederick, had taken his degree at Kings College, Cambridge. She’d been given to understand, from others as well as from the men themselves, that no greater rivalry existed in the annals of music than that between those two university colleges.

  Yet in the matter of the quality of the three young musicians who had performed at her musical evening, Frederick had made an effort to elicit Brougham’s opinion, and for his part, Brougham had been genuinely supportive, albeit in his rather stiff way.

  Although in ton terms, the dinner was restrained and relatively quiet, intellectually, the conversation was stimulating, intense, and demanding. Quite exhausting, in its way.

  By the time Stacie climbed the stairs and opened her bedroom door, she was flagging—and immeasurably glad that Frederick hadn’t pressed her to discuss his suggestion of the morning further, either on the way to Grosvenor Square or during the return journey.

  Kitty, Stacie’s maid, was waiting to help her out of her gown and brush out her hair. “So was the dinner worthwhile, my lady?”

  While dressing for the evening, she’d explained to Kitty what she and Frederick had hoped to achieve at the dinner. Stacie stretched her neck by tipping her head from side to side. “I think so. At the very least, there’s now considerably more awareness of the potential quality of our locally trained musicians, and that’s all to the good.”

  Kitty chattered on, filling Stacie in on how Ernestine had spent her evening and how things were going below stairs; Kitty had long acted as Stacie’s eyes and ears within her household.

  Reassured that no domestic issue required her attention, Stacie allowed Kitty to drop her nightgown over her head, then shooed the maid away to her rest and headed for her own.

  Kitty grinned and bobbed a curtsy. “Goodnight, my lady.” She slipped out of the door and pulled it shut behind her.

  Stacie climbed between the cool sheets, laid her head on the pillow, and sighed. After a moment, she reached out and turned down the lamp on her nightstand.

  Darkness enveloped her. She closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep.

  Only to find, as she’d feared would be the case, that her mind, finally free of all other distractions, promptly returned to Frederick’s suggestion.

  It would undoubtedly be easier to pretend he’d never made it, that she’d never heard the words, but her mind wasn’t having that. She had heard, and entirely contrary to her expectations, the greater part of her conscious self wanted to—as she’d informed him—think about it.

  On the one hand, that seemed absurd; she knew perfectly well why she didn’t dare accept any man’s proposal. It was safer for everyone that way.

  On the other hand…there was equally no question as to the genuine value of the benefits Frederick had described; indeed, many of those had been on show throughout the evening. Being the partner of Lord Frederick Brampton, Marquess of Albury, musical scholar and renowned pianist, had elevated her to a position where everything she’d said that had touched on music had been listened to carefully and treated with respect.

  As Lady Eustacia Cavanaugh, she was accorded the respect due her rank, but as Frederick’s partner, she was instantly transformed into someone whose opinions on music mattered to the musical world and, indeed, to the world at large.

  The same opinions, just advanced from a different stage.

  She might have thought he’d planned it—making his suggestion in the morning, knowing the advantages would be amply demonstrated that evening. “Except I was the one who insisted we attend the dinner.” He’d been reluctant, but had allowed himself to be talked around.

  Sleep, clearly, wasn’t going to be hers anytime soon. She opened her eyes and stared at the underside of her tester bed’s canopy.

  She should have told him no. Categorically no. She still didn’t understand why she hadn’t.

  Instead, she’d told him she would think about his suggestion, implying an evaluation of sorts. To her mind, it was, therefore, incumbent on her to undertake at least a review. “At the bare minimum, I’m going to have to come up with understandable, explainable, and preferably irrefutable reasons for refusing him.”

  She’d learned enough of him to be certain that, this time, he wouldn’t accept a single-word dismissal.

  “So, to the pros and cons. The pros are obvious—he listed most of them. The ones he didn’t mention”—such as that marriage to him might enable her to have children of her own, satisfying a yearning that had only grown stronger over the past year of seeing Rand and Kit marry and set up their nurseries—“I’m already aware of, and I don’t need to add any further weight to his list.”

  For instance, by enumerating his personal attributes—his temperament, his relative unflappability and natural decisiveness, his intelligence, his musical talent, that he danced like a dream and was handsome enough to turn her head and set her pulse racing. On top of that, he’d shown an unexpected ability to understand her, and he’d never expected her to be anyone other than herself. More, he seemed to actually see her, clearly and without the veneer of his own expectations, and was confident enough in himself to deal with her openly and directly…

  She frowned at the canopy, then, in a whisper, admitted, “The pros are substantial.”

  Indeed, with no other gentleman had she even bothered considering advantages, let alone felt…as if she should allow herself to be tempted.

  “Dangerous,” she murmured. Lord Frederick Brampton, Marquess of Albury, had proved to be more so than she’d imagined he could be.

  “That brings me to the cons.” To the tangle of her fears that she hadn’t truly examined for years.

  She paused, vacillating, then accepted that she wouldn’t be able to look Frederick in the eye and refuse him if she didn’t take the lid off what, for her, loomed as Pandora’s box and
examine what lay inside, before setting the lid firmly back in place.

  Because nothing would have changed; the basis of her fear of marriage was immutable, and time had no power to erode it.

  She forced herself to do it—to lift the tangled skein of her memories from the mental box in which she’d locked it, tease out the strands, and critically study each one. She hadn’t ever done that, but in light of the challenge of Frederick’s suggestion, it was, she supposed, time she did. Not that she held out any hope that the total weight of her cons would have miraculously lightened enough for the pros to tip the scales Frederick’s way, but she had to at least keep faith with him and properly assess both sides.

  So she let herself remember—vividly remember—her father and his love, the true and utterly unconditional love he had borne for her mother. How her mother had exploited that love, the existence of it, as the chink in her father’s self-armor and inflicted cruelty upon cruelty, devastating attacks that would simply not have been possible if her father hadn’t possessed such a weakness—if he hadn’t carried the vulnerability caused by his love for her mother. If it hadn’t been for his abiding, forgiving, enduring love.

  None of her three brothers, not even Godfrey, had seen the truth; sent away to school, they’d seen and known very little of the worst incidents, but Stacie had been there, always there, and she’d heard, seen, and understood.

  Her heart had bled for her father, while his had been broken again and again, until, at the last, he’d closed his eyes and died.

  If anyone had ever died of a broken heart, it was he.

  Since that time, she’d held to one overriding, unflinching, unshakeable purpose—to the silent vow she’d made on her father’s grave: that she would never, ever, become like her mother.

  The surest way to guard against that had been—and arguably still was—never to marry.

  In the nearly fourteen years since she’d first made that vow, nothing had occurred to make her reassess her chosen way of fulfilling it.

  But now, there was Frederick and the unexpected situation in which they found themselves—all through no fault of their own.

  She paused as, on one level, her mind cleared.

  Here she was, against all expectations, actually considering the pros and cons of marrying him…because he and all his pros had made her want enough, desire enough, to hope there might be some way…

  “Really?”

  Yes, really—why else am I putting myself through this?

  She blew out a breath. “Yes, all right.” Now she was talking to herself, but perhaps speaking the words aloud might help.

  Honesty would help, too. She closed her eyes and said, “Becoming Frederick’s marchioness…is tempting.”

  More than tempting—the position fits me so remarkably well that it lures me with the intensity of a siren’s song.

  Eyes still closed, she grimaced. “That’s why I didn’t—couldn’t bring myself to—immediately say no.”

  She’d actually wanted to force herself to reassess—to see if there was some way she might claim what he was offering.

  And if she was going to deal honestly, then one point she’d omitted on the pro side was a corollary of having children—that being Frederick’s wife would give her the chance to explore and enjoy the delights of the marriage bed, legitimately and with a partner whose touch set her nerves leaping and her senses slavering without him even meaning to. She, after all, had been the one to initiate that reckless kiss in Lady Waltham’s folly—all because she hadn’t been able to resist the compulsion to learn if his kiss would be different from her previous experiences, and it had been.

  Startlingly so. Passionately so.

  She couldn’t pretend, even to herself, that she didn’t desire him.

  “As for having children…” If, with Frederick, she brought children into this world, it would be into the embrace of a large and supportive family, as witnessed by Mary’s event of yesterday. Her mother had refused to allow let alone encourage any such familial interaction. “She wanted to keep us dependent on her, tied to her apron strings until she consented to cut us loose—for a price.” Any children she had with Frederick would have a very different life from the isolation she and Godfrey especially, kept tight under her mother’s wing, had endured. “Our children would be safe—I don’t need to refuse him out of concern on that score.”

  Indeed, now she’d matured enough to understand the tug she felt over children, she’d realized she possessed the full gamut of maternal instincts, something her mother had never demonstrated in even the smallest degree. That had been a critical and glaring lack in her mother’s psyche, one she now felt confident she didn’t share.

  Well and good—I’ve just convinced myself that no amount of concern over children or the marriage bed should stand in the way of me accepting Frederick.

  She frowned, but couldn’t deny that conclusion or the one to which it ultimately led. “I could be happy being his wife. I would no longer be alone within the ton, I would have a household to manage and, with luck, children to love.” Those were her long-ago girlish aspirations, before she’d set aside all thought of marriage. “On top of that, I would have a husband I already respect, a gentleman who shares many of my own interests, and who is amenable to helping me achieve my chosen purpose of helping local musicians.”

  What more could I possibly want?

  She huffed, then admitted, “Nothing.” After a moment, she added, “So why am I dithering?”

  The answer to that was a lot longer in coming, but eventually, she dredged it up from the depths of her box of fears. “I don’t want to hurt him.” Like her mother had hurt her father.

  That was the lynchpin, the crux of it all.

  She firmed her lips, then opened them and confessed, “I am like her—I know I am. I manipulate people exactly as she did—sometimes without even thinking.” She paused, then went on, “Others manipulate—Mary and Ryder both often do—but they aren’t like me. They aren’t her daughter—they don’t carry her blood. I do, and I can never escape that. I might not want to hurt Frederick, not at first, but there’s no guarantee that, over time, knowing I can, knowing exactly how to do it, the temptation to strike at him in that way won’t prove irresistible. And once I start…I know how it will end.”

  That was her greatest fear—the fear that had made her vow never to marry.

  “I couldn’t bear to become like Mama and use a man’s love, his love for me, to hurt and ultimately kill him. I would rather die an old maid.”

  That was indisputable.

  Then she blinked and replayed what she’d just said—the simplest statement of her fundamental fear—and this time, paid attention to the words. In a wondering tone, she stated, “Hurting Frederick will only be possible if he loves me.”

  I don’t think he does.

  Rapidly—almost desperately—she replayed every moment she’d spent in his company. They got along, he and she, and yes, desire was undeniably there, but that was another lesson she’d learned at her mother’s knee—lust and love weren’t the same thing. One didn’t equate to the other, didn’t imply the existence of the other.

  Eyes wide, she stared up at the canopy and battled to contain a sense of rising hope enough to continue to think.

  Could she risk it?

  Would she? Did she have the courage to grasp Frederick’s proffered hand and make a bid for a happy life?

  Did she truly believe she could? That such a much-desired outcome was possible without her falling prey to the unthinkable?

  Or should she pander to her fear, retreat from taking such a risk-laden step, and continue on her path into a lonely future?

  Those and similar questions circled around and around in her head and, ultimately, followed her into her dreams.

  Stacie called at Albury House at half past ten, the earliest possible hour at which she could risk being seen treading up the steps of her fiancé’s house.

  Fortingale, Frederick’s extr
emely correct butler, opened the door to her knock and masked his surprise well. He bowed her inside. “Lady Eustacia. I fear the marchioness has yet to leave her chamber.”

  “That’s entirely all right, Fortingale.” Looking down, she tugged off her gloves. “I haven’t—”

  “Stacie?”

  She looked up and saw Frederick descending the long sweep of the grand staircase. Forgetting Fortingale even as the butler lifted her cape from her shoulders, she went forward to meet her supposed intended. “Good morning, my lord.”

  “Good morning, my lady.” He stepped down to the hall tiles.

  She stuffed her gloves into her reticule, pulled the strings tight, and halted before him.

  With his gaze, sharp and searching, locked on her face, he grasped the hand she offered and smoothly raised it to his lips. “As always, I’m delighted to see you.”

  She ignored the frisson of awareness that raced over her skin at the brush of his lips over her bare knuckles. She’d ransacked her wardrobe to find the perfect gown to strike just the right note for this encounter and had settled on a severe creation in sapphire blue, trimmed with silver ribbon. Retrieving her hand, she raised her chin and met his gaze. “Might I claim a few minutes of your time?”

  “Of course.” He stepped back and waved her down a corridor. “My study might be more comfortable than the drawing room.”

  She acquiesced with a nod and allowed him to usher her down the corridor and into an elegantly proportioned room that, courtesy of the mahogany paneling and the bookshelves lining the walls, felt surprisingly cozy. A large desk stood in pride of place with two armchairs facing it, and a pair of wing chairs sat angled before the hearth, but Frederick led her to two comfortable leather armchairs that faced each other across a shallow alcove formed by three long windows that looked out on a small terrace. Trees bordered the terrace, and a small fountain spilled its waters in the center, creating a cool, green oasis that seemed far removed from the bustle of London’s streets.