by Joan Vincent
“I doubt smugglers will bother her,” Lucian said, his lips curving into a grin.
“Smugglers?”
“Never mind,” he said and offered his arm. “If I recall correctly there are some outcrops ahead where we might sit and be protected from the breeze.”
Her pulse hammering in her throat Ruth placed her hand upon Lucian’s arm. It leapt even higher at the ripple of muscle beneath her hand. Not daring to look at him, she took a step and was almost surprised she still could walk.
Lucian could hardly breathe for the effort it took not to pull Ruth into his arms. He was vastly relieved when they reached the outcrops.
“Please sit,” he told Ruth directing her to one where two might sit. When she did so, he sat but on the edge and withdrew his father’s letter and handed it to her.
Ruth read the inscription. “Gilchrist?” she said looking at him.
“Another of my sins,” Lucian said wryly. “I shall explain later.”
With shaking fingers Ruth turned it over and absently fingered the aristocratic seal. She looked up. Was he aware of how much his willingness to share his pain meant?
“I want you to read it to me,” Lucian said. “It is from my father.” He rose and walked a few steps away and then turned back.
“You asked me to face my past. I am neither as good nor as strong as you.” Lucian held up a hand to stay her response. “I will do this, Ruth. Alone if I must.” He walked to her and gazed down at her.
“But it would be so much easier to do it with someone—someone I love—someone I dare to hope loves me.”
Blinking back tears, Ruth reached blindly for his hand.
Their fingers met, twined.
Ruth started to rise but Lucian pressed her to remain seated. “First we must read this,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Then you must know I am not the man who was thrust onto that stage in London.”
Releasing her hand Lucian sat while Ruth broke the seal.
When she offered her hand again he closed his fingers about it with gratitude. Immediately their connection hummed in his soul. She made him whole. He would cling to her for life if she would permit it.
“‘Gilchrist,’” Ruth began and Lucian’s fingers tightened imperceptibly. She glanced at him and he smiled grimly.
“‘I ask your pardon,’” Ruth began again. As she read her heart near broke for the pain of the man beside her and his father.
“‘If you cannot find it in your heart to forgive me I shall not trouble you again. Lucian, seek peace of mind and turn from the destructive path I have led you down by my perverse and wholly unsuitable response to the situation. My choices do not have to be yours nor my failures.
“As a wise man we both respect once wrote—” Ruth halted and looked at Lucian. “It is written in another language. ”
Taking the paper, Lucian murmured, “Greek.” He scanned the text. After a few moments he translated it.
“Small pieces of good fortune or its opposite do not weigh down the scales of life one way or the other, but many great events if they turn out well will make life happier for they add beauty to life, and the way a man deals with them may be noble and good. If they turn out ill they crush and maim happiness; for they bring pain with them and hinder action. Yet even in these nobility may shine through when a man bears great misfortune not with resignation or insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul.”
Ruth tightened her grip on his hand.
“Nobility and greatness of soul,” murmured Lucian. He stroked her palm with his thumb. “You have shown me—taught me—the truth of that. I am the one who needs to ask for forgiveness from you both,” Lucian murmured. “Can you forgive me?”
Ruth put her hand over his heart. “For what?”
“For being who I was—”
“Never,” Ruth said severely. “God has many ways of answering prayers and seldom do we see the sense of it. The past brought us to the present.”
Lucian dropped the letter and drew Ruth tightly against him. “Will you marry me?” he whispered in her ear, “because,” he drew back and, with a hand that trembled, brushed an errant curl from her cheek. “Because I love you more than life.”
The shackles Ruth had tried to put about her heart shattered like gossamer threads in a gale. “I love you, Lucian Merristorm.”
“But will you take me for your husband?” he said, his words edged with sudden dread.
“My Lucifer, my redeemed archangel,” Ruth murmured and surrendered. “Could I do aught else.”
Lucian gazed at Ruth in disbelief and then swept her up and twirled her with a shout of joy that ended in the meeting of their lips, their bodies pressed close.
Ruth soared as she breathed the woodsy herbal tinted with his masculine musk. She drank the taste of him and marvelled at the incomprehensible delight the movement of his lips spread throughout her body. Fire roared through her veins, melted her mind, drove her mad for more.
At the first touch of her lips, Lucian thought his heart must stop. He pressed his fingers through that halo of fire hair. Its silken texture combined with Ruth’s light floral scent and feminine perfume near drove him mad. Lucian fought to control the fervour of his kiss but found that her response loosed an abandon, a freedom he had never before experienced.
In the twine of love and lust, his mind nearly blank with need Lucian heard Sampson ask, Do you love her enough?
I could not love her more, he thought glorying in Ruth’s complete and utter surrender to him. His fingers, working on the buttons on her gown, stilled. Despite the conflagration of passion that consumed him Lucian willed a control he would not have believed possible. With infinite care he slowed the pace. Freeing her lips he braced against the hurt question in Ruth’s eyes.
“Love, my love,” Lucian whispered in ragged breaths cradling her face in his hands. “We shall do this aright. Banns. Wedding. Bed.”
“But—”
“Who is Lucifer now,” he said huskily. He put a small space between them though he could not bear to release her. Closing his eyes he pressed his forehead against hers and breathed in the cold fresh air. “Help me do this.”
Her body cried no but Ruth’s heart heard his need. This was not rejection, she realized, but a great gift of his love. It was a way for him to prove to himself far more than to her that his bitter past no longer ruled.
Desire still ran hot in her veins but love ruled. Ruth put her hands on Lucian’s chest, savoured the tumult of his heart and willed him to hear hers. She eased her head from his hands and smiled shyly at him.
Lucian drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. He picked up his father’s letter and put it in his jacket and then offered his arm to Ruth. When she placed her hand on it he covered it with his.
As they began to trace their steps back to the vicarage, Lucian cleared his throat. “There is the matter of the marquisate,” he said tentatively.
“Among others,” Ruth countered with a gentle laugh.
Lucian halted and looked at her with sudden concern. “I have done without any connection to it for years.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Surprised, Lucian cocked his head, then grimaced. “I denounced any right to it. I had thought to never—”
Ruth swallowed her fears. “Let the future take its course. You shall speak with your father?”
“Of course.” His brow furrowed with thought.
The Light Dragoon about to spring into action, thought Ruth and then smiled that she could read him so well.
Lucian halted and took her hands. “If I call on the rector of St. Mary’s immediately and set the banns to be read here,” he began, “and then send a rider to Purse Caundle.” He hurriedly calculated the distance almost completely across England. “There’s just time to reach it and have them begun there Sunday next. We can wed in the month.” Lucian beamed at her.
“Purse Caundle?”
“The estate my grandmother le
ft me in Dorset. Not large but comfortable and the area is quite beautiful.” Lucian prayed his steward had proved reliable and that was still true. He had not visited the estate since his grandmother’s death four years past. “I mean to remove all of us there as quickly as can be arranged. “Your father will like it there. He can wed us in the family chapel.”
Beaming at his kindness in thinking so even if it could not come to pass Ruth kissed his hand. “And your father?”
Lucian frowned. “Yes, I suppose there is nothing for it,” he murmured. “What we need,” he proposed, “is a plan of battle. First and most important, have the banns read. Second, remove everyone to Purse Caundle.”
Ruth’s head whirled as Lucian began to enumerate exactly how that was to be done. She smiled bemusedly at him. Lucian glowed with happiness; he looked ages younger, and impossibly even more handsome. He made her believe they could conquer whatever difficulties lay in the future.
“Third, I must visit my father in London. Fourth,” Lucian raised her hand and brushed a light kiss over the pulse in her wrist. “Wed. ”
Chapter Twenty-seven
London Cavendish Square November 8th
Lucian reined his gelding to a halt where Henrietta Street met Harley Street late in the afternoon. Before him lay the central garden of the square with its iron railing and gilded statue of the Duke of Cumberland so reviled because of the modern dress employed. Diagonally across the square just past Chandos Street he could see part of Halstrom House, second on the east.
The square had changed little in the past eight years. Lucian vaguely wondered if old Hoyle still lived in the square. He had learned whist from the old man and had a signed copy of Hoyle’s game book somewhere in Purse Caundle.
Lucian’s heart fluttered with pride and not a little lust. It had taken longer to get the Claytons there than he wished. Another debt to de la Croix, Lucian thought, for the speed with which the baron’s uncle, the Earl of Tretain’s coaches had come and the chaperone André had seemingly pulled from thin air.
Home. A swell of contentment rose. Wonder filled Lucian at the miracle of it all. He had left Ruth in the midst of setting the house to order and preparing the master’s suite for their wedding night.
Pascual had assured Lucian that Halstrom was at home but even with all Lucian had learned, had accepted, this was difficult. The unreasonableness of his reaction did nothing to sooth the acid that roiled in his gut at the thought of the coming encounter.
A cold blast of air whipped his greatcoat’s capes about his ears. Lucian shivered though not from the icy day. “Best to have it over and done,” he said and prodded his horse forward.
When he reined to a halt and dismounted before the house a lad in the Merristorm livery dashed from the door and took the reins. “I shall send word if I wish him taken to the mews. Keep him walking for now,” Lucian said tossing the lad a coin.
Divested of his greatcoat and hat by Smithers, the ancient town house butler, Lucian asked how the old man fared.
“Well, my lord Gilchrist. Welcome home,” the staid butler said, his voice quavering.
Lucian froze, then forced himself to relax. “Thank you, Smithers,” he managed evenly. “Is my father at home?”
“In the library, my lord. If you will—”
“I know the way,” Lucian told the butler.
“Of course, my lord,” Smithers bowed and stepped aside.
His Hessians rang loud on the marble floor to Lucian’s ears. He took in everything he passed and marvelled that not an item appeared different from his last visit those many years ago. A place frozen in the past. But gleaming surfaces, beeswax and lemon in the air reminded Lucian of Ruth at Purse Caundle; of the future.
As he approached the grand staircase a memory halted Lucian in his tracks. He blinked, certain he was mad as he watched his mother, beautiful and happy, saunter down the stairs on his father’s arm, their laughter mingling. And then there was only the polished cherry and white painted rail.
Why that memory? Why one so at odds with his damnable hedonistic ways after mother’s death. Why now? Lucian asked as he slowly ascended the stairs. Did he once love as I love now?
Shaken by the thought Lucian stalked down the corridor and rapped on the closed library door.
“Enter.”
Lucian thrust open the door and strode halfway to the desk before he recalled he came to make peace and halted. He watched Halstrom’s gaze rise from the parchment upon which he was writing. His father froze for the tiniest moment, his features marked with poignant hope quickly washed away by stern caution and then a mask removed all emotion as clearly as if he had drawn on a domino.
Watching his father’s face closely Lucian was startled by this staggering display of emotion instead of the usual arrogant challenge. For the first time he wondered if that challenge that had gnawed at him had been his father’s or simply his own creation.
Last seen in the smoke and dim light of a gaming hell with two women in hand, this man had been Hellfire. Now he was simply Halstrom, the same but changed. Burdened, Lucian thought as he realized his father’s thick raven hair was streaked with grey, his face lined with age, and gaunter than he remembered.
Lucian realized how closely he had held the image of his father as “Hellfire” Stranton the easier to hate and deride. Lucian rejected the reflection and sought to see his father as Ruth would at this moment. A distinguished older gentleman dressed in the first stare of fashion. Older but with a fine figure and finer manners. A man of charisma and charm.
The inadequacy watching his father had always prompted stirred. How would Ruth compare them?
Halstrom rose as the silence stretched between them. “It is a cold day, Gilchrist. Would you care for a brandy?”
She wouldn’t compare us, Lucian thought.
“No thank you, my lord.” He saw one of his father’s brows rise imperceptibly as if in approval and found it strangely not unpleasant.
“You shall pardon me if I have one,” Halstrom said walking to a side table behind his desk. “Warm yourself before the fire.”
The sight of the desk’s littered top sparked Lucian’s curiosity. Several volumes lay open scattered across the desk. A parchment that looked to be a copy of a text was crossed and re-crossed with scribbled notes in Greek. Something else he would never have guessed about his father.
Shrugging aside the distraction, Lucian turned to the fireplace. Above it hung the portrait Romney painted when Lucian had been a young lad. It had not been there the last time he had been in the chamber. He walked to the fireplace and turned his back on it.
“I received your letter,” Lucian said abruptly.
“I was told it had been delivered,” Halstrom said easily as he sat on the sofa with his usual casual elegance.
Lucian studied his father’s features for a sign of what else he had learned but saw only tense curiosity and in the depths of his eyes a little fear. How little I know this man. Is any part of him who I thought?
“I have come—,” Lucian began but now the moment was upon him, his tongue thickened. A tremor ran through him. Lucian linked his fingers behind his back.
“You have come,” Halstrom offered in a strained voice. “That is enough.”
“No,” said Lucian roughly and blinked back sudden tears. “I have greatly wronged you.”
“As I you,” the marquess said rising.
Lucian put out a hand to stay his approach.
“I strove to live up to what you believed of me. I have grown tired of the mask I took up for these many years,” Halstrom said with a savage edge to his words. “It became my prison and forced you deeper into yours.
“I for one would be done with it,” Halstrom said tightly. “We both erred. Let us make a new beginning.”
His father’s wretchedness touched Lucian’s soul. Until this moment he had not fully accepted how deeply his father had suffered.
His demon writhed, stirred rebellion.
Is t
hat how simple it was to be? Surely not, Lucian thought. Should not the years of unendurable pain, violent agitation end in some cataclysm. Are they to slip away in such a prosaic manner?
Would you hold them close? Keep them near? Lucian heard Ruth ask as she had in one of their intimate conversations about his father. Or would you wish them to the devil?
“To the devil,” Lucian murmured. He met his father’s tightly controlled gaze and almost chuckled. Ruth had tweaked him about just such an expression.
“The devil you say?” Halstrom said striving for lightness and failing.
“Miss Ruth Clayton, a vicar’s daughter, advised me to consign the past to the nether regions,” Lucian returned and shoved the past behind him. His spirit soared; he thought he must float away.
“A wise woman,” Halstrom watching him closely.
“Very,” Lucian said soberly. “She taught me about redemption and the power of forgiveness.” He saw gratefulness light his father’s eyes and thought for a moment there was a sheen of tears in them. Never had he thought to be so moved. Swallowing the lump that rose to his throat Lucian unclasped his hands and cleared his throat.
“Some would say she is not wise at all,” he managed.
Halstrom’s lips curved into a slight smile at his son’s tone. “Why?”
Pride straightened Lucian’s shoulders, love softened his angular features. “She has agreed to become my wife.” The flicker in his father’s eyes instantly raised hackles.
“We do not ask your permission,” he added softly tamping down what he realized was a habitual reaction and no longer necessary.
“You are of age,” Halstrom said and sipped his brandy. “When is this to take place?”
“Monday next,” Lucian said unable to hide his joy and suddenly wishing to share it with this man.
“Where?”
“Purse Caundle.”
Halstrom lowered his head as if to study the high polish on his shoes.
Lucian tensed again. Had insult been taken where none was intended?