by Mary Balogh
“Lady Anna Marlowe seems a well-bred young lady,” the dowager said to her son. He noticed now, as he had noticed before since his return, that she rarely looked directly at him. “And she is the daughter of the Earl of Royce. She is of suitable rank, Lucas.”
“Suitable for what, madam, pray?” he asked, his eyebrows still raised.
“The succession has been uncertain for too long,” she said. “And ’tis time Bowden Abbey had an undisputed mistress again—someone who is the wife of the present duke. ’Tis time you set duty before pleasure, Lucas.”
“To please you, madam,” he said, “I will marry the lady. How will three days from today suit you?”
She looked at him then—suspiciously and somewhat tight-lipped.
“I have come directly from Lady Sterne’s,” he said, “where I made my offer and was accepted. I am to marry Lady Anna in three days’ time.”
Doris shrieked and hurtled across the room quite inelegantly to throw herself into his arms and kiss his cheek.
“Luke,” she cried, “I knew ’twould happen. I knew you would fall in love with her and marry her and come back home to live. And now everything will be as it used to be. I am so happy I could scream.”
“Pray do not, my dear,” Luke said faintly.
“Doris!” his mother said sternly.
But Doris was not to be cowed. She linked her hands behind Luke’s neck and leaned back the length of her arms. “He is my brother, Mama,” she said, “and he is coming home. For all your fine clothes and elegant ways and pretense of ennui, you are still the person you used to be, Luke. I know it and I am glad of it. Oh, la, I am going to like this sister-in-law, I declare.”
The emphasis she put on the one word suggested that perhaps she did not like her other sister-in-law. Had Henrietta been difficult to get along with? Had she passed her own unhappiness on to other people?
“’Tis to be hoped that you will, Doris,” he said, feeling a little uncomfortable with such an open display of affection. And yet Doris had been thus as a child. She had liked to hug and be hugged. She had liked to hold his hand when they walked. She had liked to ride up on his shoulders, clinging to his hair, when she was very young. His last encounter with her had been that desperate hug on the driveway.
Doris, he thought, was going to be disappointed with him. He was not the brother she remembered. That man no longer existed.
His mother appeared pleased. But Luke wondered if she really wished him to stay in England and return to Bowden or if she merely wished to see Henrietta supplanted and hoped that perhaps Anna would be more easily ruled.
Ashley was not at home. Luke wondered if he would be pleased with the news or if he would wish his brother in Hades, or back in Paris at the very least.
Luke took his leave and went to White’s to eat and to relax for a while after the tensions of the morning. At White’s he met his uncle and told him his news. Lord Quinn, as might have been expected, greeted the announcement with such hearty good humor, pumping Luke’s hand as if to shake his arm from its socket, that the attention of other gentlemen was attracted. Soon half of those present knew of his betrothal. All of polite society would doubtless know of it by the start of the Castle ball, Luke thought ruefully.
And having thought so, he took himself off to have the announcement of the betrothal and the impending marriage placed in tomorrow morning’s papers. Then he went on his way to procure a license.
• • •
It was late in the afternoon when Luke arrived at the hotel at which the Marquise d’Étienne had taken a suite of rooms. She had just recently returned from a walk with some newly made acquaintances though she had already changed into a loose negligée. She greeted Luke with outstretched hands and her rather haughty smile.
“Ah, cheri,” she said, turning her cheek for his kiss, “I am furious with you, non? Last night you took an English lady to the theater, I hear, because your maman was to be there, too, and you were ashamed to take a French marquise. And today I wait an hour for you to come and then I say non, I will wait for that faithless lover no longer. I will perhaps return to Paris and grant my favors to some other eager lover, non? There are many begging for them most pitifully.”
“I know, Angélique,” he said. “The honor of having been your lover is more coveted and more boasted about in France than that of receiving some favor from the king.”
“Ah, shameless flatterer,” she said. “Luc of the golden tongue. I will forgive you immediately, cheri, though I should punish you with my anger for at least an hour. It would be an hour wasted, non? I will take you to my bed, and you will boast about it to the oh so slow Englishmen that inhabit London. Come, you must be the lion for me today—you do it so well. I am ready to submit to the attack, mon amour.” Her eyes had half closed; her voice had become husky.
He had half intended to have her before telling her his news. Angélique was so very thorough and so very skilled at what she did. But it would be unfair to her to keep her in ignorance of a fact that might well change her attitude toward him. She was not, after all, a woman he paid for her favors, a woman who would have no right to any feelings about his marital state.
“Angélique,” he said, “perhaps you should not have left Paris. There you shine, my dear. Here you are wasted. Perhaps you should return.”
She made a kissing gesture with her mouth. “We will return together,” she said. “Now we will not talk. Now we will do. You will touch me and caress me and make me beg for mercy and cry out with ecstasy. Touch me, my lion!”
“The lady I escorted to the theater last evening,” he said, “Lady Anna Marlowe, this morning consented to be my wife, Angélique. We are to be married in three days’ time.”
She stared at him blankly for several silent seconds before her hand whipped unexpectedly and painfully across his face.
She became a wild thing, fighting him, coming at him with fists and fingernails and teeth, kicking him, and cursing him with language straight from the gutters of Paris. He would not hit back, but it took all his strength and a not inconsiderable amount of time to overpower her. He did it eventually by forcing her back against the bed and down onto it so that he could immobilize her body and legs with his own and trap her wrists above her head with his hands.
She fell silent finally, her body heaving beneath his own.
“Luc,” she said, the hatred dying out of her eyes as they gazed into his own, only inches away. “Luc, I ’ave made a shameful fool of myself over you. I ’ave followed you ’ere when you did not invite me to come. I forgave you this afternoon when I should ’ave ’ad my servants slam the door in your face. I showed anger instead of disdain when you told me you are to be married. All this I ’ave never done before. I am the Marquise d’Étienne. I am the one who breaks ’earts, non?”
“Yes,” he said. “Paris is strewn with them, Angélique. The whole of France is strewn with them.”
“But finally I make a fool of myself,” she said. “Finally I allow my ’eart to be broken. I would ’ave been your wife, Luc. Did you think I would not leave France to live here the rest of my life? With you I would ’ave lived anywhere on earth. I would ’ave been your duchess.”
He had no answer for her. He continued to look down into her eyes.
“Make love to me,” she whispered. “Make love, mon amour, as only you know how.”
But he rolled off her, got to his feet, and straightened his clothes. The room seemed suddenly a great deal smaller than it had seemed at first or on any of his other visits, and quite airless. He could think only of getting away, out into fresh air and space.
“I cannot, Angélique,” he said. “It would be unfair to you. I am sorry, my dear. I thought it was for mutual pleasure we came together.”
“Ah, Luc.” She lay on the bed as he had left her, her arms still stretched above her head. “It was, cheri, it was. Alwa
ys for pleasure more pleasurable than any other I ’ave known.”
He picked up his tricorne and his cane and made for the door. He had to get out of there. But her voice stopped him as he opened the door.
“It is true what they say of you in Paris,” she said. “I should ’ave listened, but I thought it did not matter. I thought I was the same as you. They say you are a man without a heart, cheri.”
He forced himself to walk unhurriedly down the stairs of the hotel and out onto the street. That was the second time in one day that someone had said that to him—first Ashley and now Angélique. And of course they were both right.
How foolish people were to allow themselves to love, he thought, quickening his pace and filling his lungs with cool spring air. Love only ever brought heartache and humiliation and wild, impotent fury. Love deprived a person of rationality and control of his own destiny.
He turned his thoughts determinedly to the coming evening and the two sets he would dance with Lady Anna Marlowe. She was something like a breath of fresh air in his life. He hoped she would smile at him again tonight and flirt with him again even when he was not dancing with her. He knew he would spend the whole evening in the ballroom even if he danced only the two sets, merely for the pleasure of looking at her and observing her uncomplicated exuberance for life.
• • •
The three days prior to her wedding passed so quickly for Anna that there seemed no time to catch her breath. She kept promising herself that she would think things through, find some way out of the dilemma that temptation and impetuosity had got her into. But she never seemed to find the time.
The Duke of Harndon danced with her twice at Lord and Lady Castle’s ball, as promised, and watched her all evening long with his deceptively lazy eyes, his absurd fan alternately clasped, closed, in his hand and waving, opened, languidly before his face. He was wearing cosmetics again, powder and rouge, and a black patch high on one cheek. He looked very different from that first night, dressed all in pale ice blue and gleaming white with a quantity of diamonds sparkling in the folds of his cravat and on his fingers and on the hilt of his dress sword.
Anna watched him all evening too, though she danced every set, and she flirted with him over the shoulders of her partners, over the top of her fan, and with open smiles across the room. She did not believe she once stopped smiling.
But it was different tonight. It seemed that the fact of their betrothal was general knowledge. This time they watched each other and flirted with each other in public, under the interested and indulgent scrutiny of fashionable society. It was exhilarating and wonderful. And the very fact that he gazed at her, surely knowing himself observed, felt wonderful. He wanted her, he had told her. And she could feel that it was true. He wanted her.
The next day he drove her in the afternoon to take tea with his mother and his sister. The announcement of their betrothal and imminent marriage had been in the morning newspapers so that now it was all very official—as if it had not been so before.
The Dowager Duchess of Harndon greeted her graciously, and Lady Doris Kendrick actually hugged her and kissed her cheek. It seemed she had been approved. She was, of course, she reminded herself, both the daughter and the sister of an Earl of Royce, a bride of suitable rank for a duke even if she was without fortune.
While the duke sat in near silence and his sister smiled warmly, the dowager proceeded to tell her about Bowden Abbey and the busy round of duties that awaited any Duchess of Harndon there.
“You will, of course, supersede all others who share your title once you marry Harndon,” the dowager explained. “That will be my daughter-in-law and myself. You will be Lucas’s duchess, Lady Anna, and mistress of Bowden.”
She did not sound sorry about the fact that she would be superseded, Anna thought. But then of course that had happened to her when her husband died and her eldest son had become duke. Anna had learned that the duke—her duke—had had an elder brother, married, who had held the title for three years after the death of his father. But the elder brother had had no children, no sons.
She would be expected to bear the present Duke of Harndon a son without delay, she thought, and her stomach did a somersault.
Lord Ashley Kendrick came striding into the room before they had finished tea. He had just come in and had been told that she was taking tea with his mother, he explained to Anna, smiling his boyishly handsome smile and making her a courtly bow before taking her hand and kissing it.
“I could not be more delighted,” he said. “If I had had the choosing of my own sister-in-law. Lady Anna, I could not have chosen better.”
She laughed with him and with Lady Doris while their mother looked on graciously and the duke watched her with those sleepy eyes that were not sleepy at all and she felt excitement curl inside her.
Lord Ashley turned to shake his brother by the hand and wish him well and assure him that he was a lucky devil, though his mother reproved him sharply for his language before ladies.
He was a very handsome and eager young man, Anna decided, and her thoughts moved to Agnes and the annoyance she, Anna, had felt at the theater when Lord Severidge had prevented Lord Ashley from resuming his place beside her. They would be perfect together and were surely not far apart in age. Lord Ashley was considerably younger than the duke, she guessed. Surely he was not much older than Victor. Perhaps she would be able to encourage a match between her sister and her husband’s brother.
Her husband. Her stomach lurched and she felt panic grab at her. But she put it ruthlessly aside. It was not for public moments.
The next day Victor arrived, alone. He had left Constance at home with her parents, he explained, since there had not been enough time to arrange to bring her with proper chaperonage and to find suitable friends with whom she might stay. He was delighted for Anna, he said, hugging her tightly and kissing her on both cheeks. He had been very afraid that in the course of nursing their mother and caring for their father she might have lost her chance for an advantageous and happy marriage.
“Of course,” he said, “there was the expectation for a while that Blaydon would offer for you and that you would accept, but I was never much in favor of it. He was a pleasant enough fellow but too old for you, Anna. Almost as old as Papa, I warrant you.”
She had made no comment but had asked about his own wedding plans, set for later in the autumn. Constance’s parents wished her to celebrate her eighteenth birthday before she wed.
The Duke of Harndon came during the afternoon to meet Anna’s brother and to take tea. The two men withdrew later to talk privately together. There was no dowry to discuss, of course, and there was no question of consent since she was of age, but it seemed that the two men still deemed it necessary to go apart to discuss some business aspects of the marriage. It seemed absurd that Victor should be discussing her marriage with her betrothed. He looked so very boyish still despite his bag wig and his fashionable clothes.
And tomorrow, Anna thought, left alone with her godmother and Agnes, was her wedding day. Tomorrow at this time she would be Anna Kendrick, the Duchess of Harndon. Panic rushed at her again and had to be quelled as she smiled and agreed that yes, Victor had grown into a very handsome young man and that he was carrying his new title with sense and dignity.
Sometimes, she thought, concentrating her mind on those facts, everything that had happened seemed worthwhile. Victor, of course, would have succeeded to the title anyway on the passing of Papa, but there might have been nothing else. There was precious little now beyond the property itself, but at least there was that to build upon. And Victor had intelligence and sense and the ability to work hard. Oh yes, she must remember that she had done some good. She must remember that.
The three days rushed by and dragged by. When she was with other people she could keep the panic at bay. When she was alone, it assaulted her from all sides like very real demons from
hell. She could not go through with the marriage. She could not. She must tell him. The very next time she saw him she would tell him.
She had been mad, utterly mad to have given in to the temptation. But it seemed that the madness gripped her every time she saw him, and clad her in the mask of smiles and flirtatious ways so that she felt sometimes that she clawed at it from the inside, desperate to get out so that he could see her—see her as she really was before it was too late. But she could not tear away the mask.
It had to be madness, she told herself. In reality there were no demons and there was no mask. All she had to do was tell him. It was not too late and would not be too late until they had been through the marriage ceremony. Ghastly as it would be to break the betrothal now when everything had been made so public, when the license had been procured, when Victor had come, it could still be done. It was not too late.
But every moment that passed brought her one moment closer to too late.
She could not marry him. She could not. And yet tomorrow she was to do just that. Tomorrow morning. The clothes she was to wear had already been chosen and laid out. Her godmother had already had a talk with her, explaining what she could expect to happen tomorrow night in her marriage bed and how she was to respond. But she must not be afraid, she had been told. The Duke of Harndon was a man of thirty years and had doubtless had a great deal of experience. He would know how to calm her fears and cause her the minimum of pain as he broke through the barrier of her virginity. And Anna was fond of him and he of her. Lady Stern had smiled. Anna would come to enjoy it after the shock of the first night or two.
During that last night—the night before her wedding day and the night before her wedding night—Anna knew that she was going to do what could not be done. She was going to marry him. She closed her eyes after lying for hours staring up at the canopy of her bed and pictured him, only a little taller than she, graceful and handsome and gorgeously fashionable almost to the point of effeminacy, except that there was nothing remotely effeminate about the man himself.