“Miss March,” Lord Lynden said.
“My lord,” she replied.
He gave her a long, penetrating look. “You’re from Surrey, I understand.” It was not a question.
Valentine felt for a moment as if the shabby drawing room carpet had been pulled out from under her slippered feet. She met the Earl of Lynden’s eyes. They were dark and unreadable. And yet, she hadn’t even the smallest doubt.
He knew.
“Yes, my lord,” she answered him. Her mouth had gone dry as cotton wool. She steeled herself for more questions, but the earl merely gave a thoughtful-sounding harrumph.
She prayed that he’d lost interest in her and, indeed, he seemed to do so. The remainder of his time in the drawing room was spent listening to Felicity and Lady Brightwell reminiscing about their last season in London. He didn’t pay Valentine any attention at all.
But any hope she had that the Earl of Lynden had forgotten her was swiftly dispelled at the moment Lady Fairford announced dinner.
“No need to bother with precedence,” she said with a shrill laugh. “We are quite informal here.”
“Miss March.” Lord Lynden offered her his arm. “I shall escort you into the dining room.”
Valentine’s palms grew damp beneath her gloves. She wished she were the sort of lady who swooned. If she were, she could have fainted dead away and been excused to her room for the evening. Instead, she put her hand lightly on Lord Lynden’s arm and allowed him to lead her in to the dining room.
Once there, he waited as she settled in her place.
And then, to her alarm, he took the seat beside her.
No gentleman who had just been cut off by his father should be obliged to endure a meal seated next to Felicity Brightwell. She talked and flirted and made thinly veiled remarks about what she might do when she was the Viscountess St. Ashton. Tristan responded with the dry, subtly mocking banter he employed with all the women who pursued him, all the while looking down the length of the table to where his father sat with Valentine March.
He’d expected to see her at dinner. What he hadn’t expected was to see her dressed in something besides that shapeless, bombazine nightmare Lady Brightwell insisted she wear. Not that Miss March was in the first stare of fashion. Not by any means. Her gown was abysmally plain and the style outdated by several years. Nevertheless, the gray silk neatly skimmed her figure, the scooped neckline showing a hint of flawless porcelain bosom, and the fitted bodice clinging to a narrow waist that, he suspected, he could easily span with both hands.
And then there was her hair.
She wore it in a loose chignon, accented with a cut glass pin. It was nothing like the padded rolls, false plaits, and jeweled combs adorning the other ladies’ elaborate coiffures. And yet, Valentine March’s pale golden tresses seemed to glitter in the candlelight, framing that lovely heart-shaped face that had so disconcerted him in the folly with a halo of radiant light.
An angel, Tristan thought grimly. He took a large swallow of wine, half listening to Felicity Brightwell as she chattered in his ear. For the first time, he acknowledged what had been troubling him since the moment he laid eyes on Miss March. That peculiar feeling—as if he’d just been flattened by a runaway train or struck by a bolt of lightning. That feeling with a blasted phrase attached to it. A phrase which, until earlier this afternoon, had seemed to him so damnably laughable. So utterly impossible.
Love at first sight.
The devil! He was two and thirty, not some green lad. He’d learned long ago not to mistake physical desire for something more. If only he hadn’t crossed paths with Miss March today. If only it had been a month ago. Even a week ago. His heart would have remained untouched, he was sure of it.
But today he’d been blue-deviled. He’d been… Curse and confound it! He’d been vulnerable. And then he’d seen her. And she seemed to be everything he most needed in the world. Innocence. Truth. Beauty. All wrapped up in one angelic little package.
He took another swallow of his wine.
“Both of the cousins were sent straight back to the country in disgrace!” Miss Brightwell exclaimed with a burst of gleeful laughter. “What do you think of that, St. Ashton?”
“A very diverting tale.” Tristan motioned for a footman to refill his wine.
“I should say so. It was the scandal of the season.”
He glanced down the table again at his father and Miss March. They appeared to be engaged in grave conversation. If it could be called a conversation. Miss March’s face was stark white and she’d hardly eaten a thing since they sat down. Every so often, he saw her nod or utter a monosyllabic reply.
What could his father be saying to her? Was he warning her to stay away from his dissolute son? Informing her that her innocence—her very status as a gentlewoman—was no protection against such an unconscionable rake?
Tristan’s fingers tightened around the stem of his wineglass in a reflexive spasm of anger.
Years ago, his father and brother had accused him of ruining a young virgin on the marriage mart. He’d denied it, of course. He’d even given his word that he’d never, nor would he ever compromise a young lady of gentle birth.
Neither had believed him.
Tristan could still remember the scathing letter John had written him. It had been filled with words like “honor” and “duty.” By the time John and his father realized that the young lady was no different from any of the other adventuresses and fortune hunters who’d been pursuing Tristan since he came of age, it was too late. Tristan had broken with them, parting on the very worst of terms, and leaving London to commence a several-year stint of drunken debauchery that would have shamed the devil.
The three of them were civil now, largely as a result of Elizabeth’s well-intentioned interference, but Tristan didn’t think he could ever forgive John and his father for their lack of faith in him.
And if his father intended to blacken his name to Valentine March…
But that was absurd. His father would never hold up a Sinclair to public scorn. Any Sinclair. Even one as disappointing as his eldest son.
“I daresay I won’t have another season next year,” Miss Brightwell said. “There’s no need for it. Mama thinks I’ll be married by the spring. What do you say to that, St. Ashton?”
“What can I say, Miss Brightwell?”
“Do you have particular plans for the spring?” She gave him a secret smile. “I’ll wager you do.”
“And you’d be right.” Tristan drank deeply from his glass. “I’ll be in Northumberland.”
Her brow creased. “Northumberland?”
“I have an estate there. Blackburn Priory. I’m to live there.”
“Ah, a country home. But you’ll be back to London for the season, won’t you? You wouldn’t want to be away from certain of your friends for too long.”
“My dear girl, I won’t be able to afford London next season, nor the season after that. I’m meant for the wilds of Northumberland, to molder away in a drafty house out in the middle of nowhere.”
Miss Brightwell froze in the act of raising her water goblet to her mouth. “You’re to live in Northumberland?”
“If one can call it living.”
“And what do you mean you can’t afford to reside in London? What nonsense. Everyone knows you’re as rich as Croesus.”
“Do they? How charming.”
“To live in Northumberland all the year long? Ha!” She laughed. “Who would do so? Not you, my lord. You would die of boredom.”
“Then perhaps I shall die, Miss Brightwell.” Tristan finished the last of his wine and beckoned to the footman for more.
By the time Valentine escaped from the other ladies in the drawing room, she felt as if she’d lived a hundred lives. Her palms were clammy. Her heart was fluttering. And her stomach was quivering like a leaf in the wind. Thank goodness for Lady Brightwell! One could always count on her to forget a glove, a handkerchief, or some other little item that would
necessitate Valentine haring off all over the house in pursuit of it.
This time it was her shawl, which she was certain she’d left in the conservatory. Valentine intended to fetch it and deliver it directly to a maid. Let the maid take it back to Lady Brightwell—along with the message that her companion had retired for the evening with a blinding headache. Lady Brightwell wouldn’t mind. Indeed, she’d be pleased to have so easily disposed of her companion before the gentlemen finished their port and rejoined the ladies. The Earl of Lynden’s attentions hadn’t gone unremarked.
“It was really not the thing to impose yourself on his lordship as you did during dinner, Miss March,” she’d said to her upon entering the drawing room. “He’s too much the gentleman to say so himself, but as your employer, I was quite embarrassed. I must warn you not to be so forward in future.”
Under any other circumstance Valentine would have protested. She’d hardly said a word to the Earl of Lynden. This time, however, she held her tongue. There was no point in arguing with Lady Brightwell. She was too convinced of her own superiority to heed reason. And with Felicity’s betrothal to St. Ashton hanging in the balance, she was poised to eliminate anyone and anything that stood in the way of her daughter becoming a viscountess.
Though how Valentine stood in the way, she had no notion. Did Lady Brightwell fear she might reveal something to Lord Lynden? But what could she reveal? That Felicity was a spoiled young miss prone to temper tantrums as severe as those of a small child?
Not that any of that had seemed to be of concern to St. Ashton. He’d laughed and flirted with Felicity all through dinner, listening with rapt attention to everything she said.
Well, let them marry. They were well suited. Both shallow and unscrupulous. Careless of the feelings of others. What did she care? She had far more important things with which to concern herself.
The most immediate of which was to find Lady Brightwell’s shawl.
The Fairfords’ conservatory was situated at the very back of the house. Surrounded on three sides by wide glass windows, it contained an untidy array of plants, both dead and living, and a scattering of iron benches, tables, and chairs, which had long rusted with age and neglect. Valentine entered to find the entire glass-enclosed room bathed in the soft light of a full moon. It quite took her breath away.
She stood and gazed at it for a long while as the flickering flame from the taper in her hand cast shadows over the room. A sense of peace gradually settled over her. A feeling of how very small and insignificant she was in comparison to the universe and how very trivial her problems must seem in the eyes of God.
It never failed to give her peace, staring up at the heavens. Even in her darkest moments, when all hope had seemed to be gone, she’d gazed upward and known that she hadn’t been completely abandoned.
Would the moonlight look the same in India? In China? And when she stood there in a year’s time, living in an exotic land surrounded by strangers, would she feel the same when she cast her eyes up to the night sky? She dearly hoped she would.
But that was many months in the future—and many months’ wages yet to be saved. There was no point thinking about it now.
Recollecting herself to her task, she moved to set the candleholder down on a table, not far from a fern that had long gone brown.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” St. Ashton said.
She gasped, her hand flying instinctively to her heart as she spun around.
He was standing in the doorway, looking tall, dark, and breathtakingly handsome. Indeed, his mere presence seemed to steal all of the oxygen from the room. “Unless you wish to burn Fairford House to the ground,” he said. “Which, now I come to think of it, wouldn’t be such a bad idea.” He reached her in a few strides and lifted the taper from her hand.
And then he blew it out.
“Oh, now look what you’ve done!” she cried. “I’m meant to find Lady Brightwell’s shawl!”
St. Ashton placed the candlestick on an empty iron table. “And so you can. Quite easily, I imagine.” He nodded in the direction of the moon.
She followed his gaze. “It is very bright.”
“Were I not a trifle disguised, I’d tell you it’s not half as bright as your eyes or some such drivel.”
“Disguised? Do you mean…you’ve had too much to drink?”
“Not too much. Just enough, I think.”
Valentine felt him come to stand beside her, his arm touching hers. He was big and warm and disconcertingly masculine. She swallowed. “Just enough for what?”
“To follow you here to the conservatory.”
She turned to find him watching her, his expression dark and brooding. “To give me back my things?” she asked faintly.
“Do you want them back?”
“Yes, of course. Do you have them with you?”
His eyes never leaving her face, he reached into his coat and pulled out the carefully folded piece of paper. He extended it to her in his hand, but as she reached out to take it, his fingers closed around the paper. “Perhaps I should keep it.”
“Whatever for?”
“Because it means more to you than anything in the world,” he said.
Valentine’s heart commenced a heavy, almost painful thumping. “That makes no sense at all.”
“It makes perfect sense to me.”
“Only because you’re foxed, my lord.”
“Not foxed, Miss March. A trifle disguised. There’s a world of difference, I assure you.”
She held out her hand, palm up. “It’s mine, sir. Please give it back.”
“And what will you do if Miss Brightwell falls into another tantrum and throws it onto the fire? Then you’ll have nothing left of your precious book of verses. Let me keep it for you, Miss March. I won’t let anything happen to it, I promise you.”
Valentine had the sense that something was wrong with him. Was he drunk? Was he mad? She thrust her hand closer. “I insist you give it back to me, my lord. You know I hold it very dear.”
“Which is precisely why I wish to keep it.”
The heavy thumping in her chest was a positive ache now. Good heavens, but he was serious! There was no hint of silky flattery or subtle seduction in his words. They were stark and raw. Brutally honest. But that couldn’t be, could it? He was a practiced rake, after all. A man skilled at this sort of thing. Hadn’t he confessed to following her to the conservatory? It was as if he knew of her particular weakness. Like a predator. A predator with an injured lamb.
The very idea filled her with indignation.
“I won’t allow you to make a joke of me, sir. Nor will I allow you to make sport of my feelings. Just because you—”
She broke off with a sharp intake of breath as St. Ashton caught her hand in his.
He moved his thumb over the curve of her palm and then, before she could jerk away from him, he raised her hand to his lips and brushed it with a kiss.
A quiver went through her. “My lord, you go too far,” she protested. But she didn’t attempt to liberate her hand. Instead she watched, wide-eyed as he kissed it once more.
“My lord,” he repeated. “Miss March didn’t I warn you to stop my lording me? My name is St. Ashton. Call me that if you must. Though, I would far prefer it if you called me Tristan.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort.” She extricated her hand from his grasp with one sharp tug. She was mortified to see that it was trembling. “Give me my paper and my spectacles and—”
“Ah, your spectacles. That may be a bit difficult.”
“What?” She took a step away from him. “Why? You said you had them.”
“And so I did. But I confess at some point this afternoon I may have succumbed to the unholy temptation to grind them under my boot heel.”
Her mouth fell open.
“Your eyes are as bright as the moonlight, Miss March. I couldn’t bear to see them hidden by those abominable spectacles for even one more moment.”
�
�How dared you? You… You…” Tears sprang to her eyes. “You unfeeling bully!” She turned her back on him, moving to stand at the edge of the wide glass window. She was trembling with anger. But not only with anger. He’d flustered her with that kiss. He’d confused her. And he’d made her wish… made her hope…that his advances might be real. That he might actually care something for her.
Which he very obviously didn’t.
Nor how could he? They’d only met for the first time that afternoon. And by his own admission he was the worst rake and reprobate of this entire wretched house party. Hadn’t Mrs. Gaunt said he brought women to his bed two and three at a time?
She heard him close the distance between them. Felt his imposing presence as he once again came to stand at her side. He was silent for a long moment, as if he couldn’t find the words. “Forgive me,” he said at last. “I’m a damnable brute.”
“Yes,” she said. “You are.”
His hand found hers. He pressed the folded paper into it. “Your psalm, Miss March. With my compliments.”
Her fingers curled around it. “Why must you be this way?”
St. Ashton made no pretense of misunderstanding her question. “A fatal flaw in my character.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Don’t you? After I’ve tormented you and bullied you and made you cry?”
She flashed him a reproving glance. “You have not succeeded in making me cry, sir.”
His mouth lifted briefly in a solemn smile. “I’m glad of it.”
Valentine looked at him again. “What is wrong with you? Is it… Is it something to do with your father?”
After another long pause, during which it seemed he wouldn’t answer her, he motioned to an ornate iron bench near the window. She hesitated a moment before moving to sit down. St. Ashton followed, seating himself very close beside her.
“I’ve been cut off,” he told her. “Cut off and exiled to Northumberland. I have a property there. It’s isolated. Remote. I’m to live there. I daresay my father hopes I might die there.”
“That can’t be true.”
The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter Page 5