by Lisa Kleypas
On the periphery of his vision, Marcus saw the Bowman sisters exchange a puzzled glance, clearly wondering at the cause of the hostility that filled the air.
“How nice that our former stable boy has begotten a namesake from my elder daughter,” the countess remarked acidly. “This will be the first of many brats, I am sure. Regrettably there is still no heir to the earldom… which is your responsibility, I believe. Come to me with news of your impending marriage to a bride of good blood, Westcliff, and I will evince some satisfaction. Until then, I see little reason for congratulations.”
Though he displayed no emotion at his mother’s hard-hearted response to the news of Aline’s child, not to mention her infuriating preoccupation with the begetting of an heir, Marcus was hard-pressed to hold back a savage reply. In the midst of his darkening mood, he became aware of Lillian’s intent gaze.
Lillian stared at him astutely, a peculiar smile touching her lips. Marcus arched one brow and asked sardonically, “Does something amuse you, Miss Bowman?”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I was just thinking that it’s a wonder you haven’t rushed out to marry the first peasant girl you could find.”
“Impertinent twit!” the countess exclaimed.
Marcus grinned at the girl’s insolence, while the tightness in his chest eased. “Do you think I should?” he asked soberly, as if the question was worth considering.
“Oh yes,” Lillian assured him with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. “The Marsdens could use some new blood. In my opinion, the family is in grave danger of becoming overbred.”
“Overbred?” Marcus repeated, wanting nothing more than to pounce on her and carry her off somewhere. “What has given you that impression, Miss Bowman?”
“Oh, I don’t know…” she said idly. “Perhaps the earth-shattering importance you attach to whether one should use a fork or spoon to eat one’s pudding.”
“Good manners are not the sole province of the aristocracy, Miss Bowman.” Even to himself, Marcus sounded a bit pompous.
“In my opinion, my lord, an excessive preoccupation with manners and rituals is a strong indication that someone has too much time on his hands.”
Marcus smiled at her impertinence. “Subversive, yet sensible,” he mused. “I’m not certain I disagree.”
“Do not encourage her effrontery, Westcliff,” the countess warned.
“Very well—I shall leave you to your Sisyphean task.”
“What does that mean?” he heard Daisy ask.
Lillian replied while her smiling gaze remained locked with Marcus’s. “It seems you avoided one too many Greek mythology lessons, dear. Sisyphus was a soul in Hades who was damned to perform an eternal task… rolling a huge boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down again just before he reached the top.”
“Then if the countess is Sisyphus,” Daisy concluded, “I suppose we’re…”
“The boulder,” Lady Westcliff said succinctly, causing both girls to laugh.
“Do continue with our instruction, my lady,” Lillian said, giving her full attention to the elderly woman as Marcus bowed and left the room. “We’ll try not to flatten you on the way down.”
Lillian was troubled by a feeling of melancholy for the rest of the afternoon. As Daisy had pointed out, being lectured to by the countess was hardly a tonic for the soul, but Lillian’s depression of the spirits seemed to stem from a deeper source than simply having spent too much time in the company of a bilious old woman. It had something to do with what had been said after Lord Westcliff had entered the Marsden parlor with the tidings of his newborn nephew. Westcliff had seemed pleased by the news, and yet not at all surprised by his mother’s bitter reception. The rancorous exchange that had followed had impressed upon Lillian the importance—no, the necessity—that Westcliff marry a “bride of good blood,” as the countess had phrased it.
A bride of good blood…one who knew how to eat a rissole and would never think of thanking the footman who had served it to her. One who would never make the mistake of crossing the room to speak to a gentleman, but stand docilely and wait for him to approach her. Westcliff’s bride would be a dainty English flower, with ash-blond hair and a rosebud mouth, and a serene temperament. Overbred, Lillian thought with a touch of animosity toward the unknown girl. Why should it bother her so that Westcliff was destined to marry a girl who would blend flawlessly into his upper-class existence?
Frowning, she recalled the way the earl had touched her face last evening. A subtle caress, but wholly inappropriate, coming from a man who had absolutely no designs on her. And yet he hadn’t seemed to be able to help himself. It was the effect of the perfume, she thought darkly. She had anticipated such fun in torturing Westcliff with his own unwilling attraction to her. Instead it was rebounding on her in a most unpleasant way. She was the one being tortured. Every time Westcliff glanced at her, touched her, smiled at her, it provoked a feeling that she had never known before. A painful feeling of yearning that made her want impossible things.
Anyone would say that it was a ridiculous pairing, Westcliff and Lillian…especially in light of his responsibility to produce a purebred heir. There were other titled men who could not afford to be as selective as Westcliff, men whose inherited resources had dwindled, and therefore had need of her fortune. With the countess’s sponsorship, Lillian would find some acceptable candidate, marry him, and be done with this eternal process of husband hunting. But—a new thought struck her—the world of the British aristocracy was quite small, and she would almost certainly be confronted with Westcliff and his English bride, again and again… The prospect was more than disconcerting. It was awful.
The yearning sharpened into jealousy. Lillian knew that Westcliff would never truly be happy with the woman he was destined to marry. He would tire of a wife whom he could bully. And a steady diet of tranquillity would bore him abysmally. Westcliff needed someone who would challenge and interest him. Someone who could reach through to the warm, human man who was buried beneath the layers of aristocratic self-possession. Someone who angered him, teased him, and made him laugh.
“Someone like me,” Lillian whispered miserably.
Chapter 12
A formal dress ball was held in the evening. It was a fine night, dry and cool, with the rows of tall windows opened to admit the outside air. The chandeliers scattered light over the intricately parqueted floor like glittering raindrops. Orchestra music filled the air in buoyant drifts, providing a perfect framework for the gossip and laughter of the guests.
Lillian did not dare accept a cup of punch, fearing that it would drip on her cream satin ball gown. The unadorned skirts fell in gleaming folds to the floor, while the narrow waist was cinched with a stiffened band of matching satin. The only ornamentation on the gown was an artful sprinkling of beads on the edge of her scoop-necked bodice. As she tugged a finger of her white glove more firmly over her little fingertip, she caught a glimpse of Lord Westcliff from across the room. He was dark and striking in his evening clothes, his white cravat pressed to the sharpness of a knife blade.
As usual, a group of men and women had gathered around him. One of the women, a beautiful blond with a voluptuous figure, leaned closer to him, murmuring something that brought a faint smile to his lips. He coolly observed the scene, appraising the gently milling assembly …until he saw Lillian. His gaze flicked over her in swift assessment. Lillian felt his presence so palpably that the fifteen yards or so between them might not have existed. Troubled by her own gauzy sensual awareness of the man standing across the room, she gave him a brief nod and turned away.
“What is it?” Daisy murmured, coming up beside her. “You look rather distracted.”
Lillian responded with a wry smile. “I’m trying to remember everything the countess told us,” she lied, “and keep it all straight in my head. Especially the bowing rules. If someone bows to me, I’m going to shriek and run in the opposite direction.”
“I’m terrified of making a mista
ke,” Daisy confided. “It was so much easier before I realized how many things I have been doing wrong. I’ll be quite happy to be a wall-flower and sit safely at the side of the room this evening.” Together they glanced at the row of semicircular niches running along one wall, each sided by slender pilasters and fitted with tiny velvet-covered benches. Evie sat alone in the farthest niche in the corner. Her pink dress clashed with her red hair, and she kept her head down as she sipped furtively from a cup of punch, every line of her posture proclaiming a disinclination to talk with anyone. “Oh, that won’t do,” Daisy said. “Come, let’s pry the poor girl out of that niche and make her stroll with us.”
Lillian smiled in agreement and made to accompany her sister. However, she froze with a sudden breath as she heard a deep voice near her ear. “Good evening, Miss Bowman.”
Blinking with astonishment, she turned to face Lord Westcliff, who had crossed the room to her with surprising speed. “My lord.”
Westcliff bowed over Lillian’s hand and then greeted Daisy. His gaze returned to Lillian’s. As he spoke, the light from the chandeliers played over the rich dark layers of his hair and the bold angles of his features. “You survived the encounter with my mother, I see.”
Lillian smiled. “A better way to put it, my lord, is that she survived the encounter with us.”
“It was obvious that the countess was enjoying herself immensely. She seldom encounters young women who don’t wither in her presence.”
“If I haven’t withered in your presence, my lord, then I’m hardly going to wither in hers.”
Westcliff grinned at that and then looked away from her, a pair of small creases appearing between his brows, as if he was contemplating some weighty matter. After a pause that seemed interminably long, his attention returned to Lillian. “Miss Bowman…”
“Yes?”
“Will you do me the honor of dancing with me?”
Lillian stopped breathing, moving, and thinking. Westcliff had never asked her to dance before, despite the multitude of occasions on which he should have asked out of gentlemanly politeness. It had been one of the many reasons that she had hated him, knowing that he considered himself far too superior, and her attractions too insignificant, for it to be worth the bother. And in her more spiteful fantasies, she had imagined a moment like this when he would have asked for a dance, and she would respond with a crushing refusal. Instead, she was astonished and tongue-tied.
“Do excuse me,” she heard Daisy say brightly, “I must go to Evie…” And she sped away with all possible haste.
Lillian drew in an unsteady breath. “Is this a test that the countess has devised?” she asked. “To see if I remember my lessons?”
Westcliff chuckled. Gathering her wits, Lillian couldn’t help but notice that people were staring at them, obviously wondering what she had said to amuse him. “No,” he murmured, “I believe it’s a self-imposed test to see if I…” He seemed to forget what he was saying as he stared into her eyes. “One waltz,” he said gently.
Distrusting her own response to him, the magnitude of her desire to step into his arms, Lillian shook her head. “I think …I think that would be a mistake. Thank you, but—”
“Coward.”
Lillian remembered the moment she had leveled the same charge at him…and she was no more able to resist the challenge than he. “I can’t see why you should want to dance with me now, when you never have before.”
The statement was more revealing than she had intended it to be. She cursed her own wayward tongue, while his speculative gaze wandered over her face.
“I wanted to,” he surprised her by murmuring. “However, there always seemed to be good reasons not to.”
“Why—”
“Besides,” Westcliff interrupted, reaching out to take her gloved hand, “there was hardly a point in asking when your refusal was a foregone conclusion.” Deftly he pressed her hand to his arm and led her toward the mass of couples in the center of the room.
“It was not a foregone conclusion.”
Westcliff glanced at her skeptically. “You’re saying that you would have accepted me?”
“I might have.”
“I doubt it.”
“I did just now, didn’t I?”
“You had to. It was a debt of honor.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “For what, my lord?”
“The calf’s head,” he reminded her succinctly.
“Well, if you hadn’t served such a nasty object in the first place, I wouldn’t have needed to be rescued!”
“You wouldn’t have needed to be rescued if you didn’t have such a weak stomach.”
“You’re not supposed to mention body parts in front of a lady,” she said virtuously. “Your mother said so.”
Westcliff grinned. “I stand corrected.”
Enjoying their bickering, Lillian grinned back at him. Her smile died, however, as a slow waltz began and Westcliff turned her to face him. Her heart began to thump with unrestrained force. As she looked down at the gloved hand that he extended to her, she could not make herself take it. She could not let him hold her in public…she was afraid of what her face might reveal.
After a moment she heard his low voice. “Take my hand.”
Dazed, she found herself obeying, her trembling fingers reaching for his.
Another silence passed, and then, softly, “Put your other one on my shoulder.”
She watched her white glove settle slowly on his shoulder, the surface hard and solid beneath her palm.
“Now look at me,” he whispered.
Her lashes lifted. Her heart gave a jolt as she stared into his coffee-colored eyes, which were filled with dark warmth. Holding her gaze, Westcliff drew her into the waltz, using the momentum of the first turn to bring her closer to him. Soon they were lost in the midst of the dancers, circling with the lazy grace of a swallow’s flight. As Lillian might have expected, Westcliff established a strong lead, allowing no chance of a misstep. His hand was firm at the small of her back, the other providing explicit guidance.
It was all too easy. It was perfect as nothing else in her life had ever been, their bodies moving in harmony as if they had waltzed together a thousand times before. Good Lord, he could dance. He led her into steps that she had never tried, reverse turns and cross steps, and it was all so natural and effortless that she gave a breathless laugh at the completion of a turn. She felt weightless in his arms, gliding smoothly within the parameters of his taut and graceful movements. Her skirts brushed his legs, wrapping and falling away in rhythmic repetition.
The crowded ballroom seemed to disappear, and she felt as if they were dancing alone, far away in some private place. Intensely aware of his body, the occasional touch of his warm breath on her cheek, Lillian drifted into a curious waking dream …a fantasy in which Marcus, Lord Westcliff, would take her upstairs after the waltz, and undress her, and lay her gently across his bed. He would kiss her everywhere, as he had once whispered…he would make love to her, and hold her while she slept. She had never wanted that kind of intimacy with a man before.
“Marcus…” she said absently, testing his name on her tongue. He glanced at her alertly. The use of someone’s first name was profoundly personal, far too intimate unless they were married or closely related. Smiling mischievously, Lillian turned the conversation into a more appropriate channel. “I like that name. It’s not common nowadays. Were you named after your father?”
“No, after an uncle. The only one on my mother’s side.”
“Were you pleased to be his namesake?”
“Any name would have been acceptable, so long as it wasn’t my father’s.”
“Did you hate him?”
Westcliff shook his head. “Something worse than that.”
“What could be worse than hatred?”
“Indifference.”
She stared at him with open curiosity. “And the countess?” she dared to ask. “Are you also indifferent to her?”
One corner of his mouth curled upward in a half smile. “I regard my mother as an aging tigress—one whose teeth and claws are blunted, but who is still capable of inflicting harm. Therefore I try to conduct all interactions with her at a safe distance.”
Lillian gave him a mock-indignant scowl. “And yet you tossed me right into the cage with her this morning!”
“I knew you had your own set of teeth and claws.” Westcliff grinned at her expression. “That was a compliment.”
“I’m glad you told me so,” she said dryly. “Otherwise I might not have known.”
To Lillian’s dismay, the waltz ended with one last sweet drawn-out note of a single violin. Amid the ensuing currents of dancers moving off the main floor, with others coming to replace them, Westcliff stopped abruptly. He was still holding her, she realized with a touch of confusion, and she took a hesitant step backward. Reflexively his arm hardened around her waist, and his fingers tightened in an instinctive attempt to keep her with him. Astonished by the action, and what it betrayed, Lillian felt her breath stop.
Checking his impulsiveness, Westcliff forced himself to release her. Still, she felt the force of desire radiating from him, as penetrating as the heat drafts of an entire forest on fire. And it was a mortifying thought that whereas her feelings for him were genuine, his might very well be the whimsical result of a perfume’s aroma. She would have given anything not to be so attracted to him, when disappointment or even heartbreak was a foregone conclusion.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked huskily, unable to look at him. “It was a mistake for us to dance.”
Westcliff waited so long to reply that she thought he might not. “Yes,” he finally said, the single syllable roughened with some unidentifiable emotion.
Because he could not afford to want her. Because he knew as well as she that a pairing between them would be a disaster.
Suddenly it hurt to be near him. “Then I suppose this waltz will be our first and our last,” she said lightly. “Good evening, my lord, and thank you for—”