Her tears were arrested, but she was biting her lip. Jocasta’s words hung in the air between them. Justin did what he might to deflect them.
“You’ve had a trying morning, my poor girl.”
A faint grimace crossed her face. “You could say so.”
“What happened with Grace?”
She shrugged and sighed. “Just what I might have expected.”
“But you didn’t expect it from her, did you? You were afraid of what the tabbies would say.”
A hollow laugh escaped her. “I think she’s turned into a tabby herself.”
He was obliged to smile. “She’s certainly behaving like one. What in the world made her so devilish cross? It’s not as if you were flirting with every man in the place.”
Her eyes reflected a trace of the distress he’d seen earlier.
“I don’t honestly know, Justin. She was beside herself when she came into my chamber last night. She said I’d made a figure of myself, a fool of her.” Her eye kindled. “And that I’d forgotten my place. That hurt the most, I think.”
A burn of fury swept through Justin. “I should think it might! How dared she say such a thing?”
Marianne’s lip quivered. “Well, in a way she’s right. I am, if truth be told, but an adjunct to the family, with no real right to be in it.”
“The truth, Marianne, is that you are the mainstay of the household. And Grace has selfishly allowed you to shoulder her responsibilities. Forgotten your place indeed! I’ve a good mind to give her a trimming.”
Foreboding came into her face. “Pray don’t! She’s upset enough as it is.”
“So are you upset and that is of far more importance.”
Marianne’s cheeks flew colour and she could not meet his eyes. Impelled, Justin grasped her hands.
“Don’t let her browbeat you, my dearest girl. You are worth ten of Grace, you must know that.”
She looked at him then, her eyes luminous, her mouth trembling. “I don’t know it, Justin. But I’m grateful to my dear friend for saying as much.”
The words were like a douche of cold water. Friend? He released her hands and took a step back, acutely conscious. Yes, that was how she saw him, had always done so.
Her brows drew together. “What have I said?”
He forced a smile. “Nothing. Oh, I was remembering my wretched aunt, I think.”
The frown did not abate. “No, you weren’t. You recoiled from me.”
“I didn’t recoil. Don’t be ridiculous.”
She eyed him in a way that made it hard to sustain his façade. But she did not pursue it, to his relief. “What do you mean to do?”
He was thrown for a moment. “About what?”
“Your future. I hate to own it, but there is much in what your aunt said. About me, I mean.”
Now what was she at? “Why should it trouble you?”
“Well, you admitted that I have all but usurped Grace’s position.”
“I didn’t say usurped.”
“You know what I mean. If — no, when you marry, Justin, it’s perfectly true that I cannot continue to do what I do.”
“I don’t see why not?”
“Don’t you? Then you must be all about in your head!”
The asperity in her tone was so much more like her normal manner with him that Justin relaxed. “Marianne, it’s not a matter of urgency, I assure you.”
“It is for me.”
The intensity of this remark shocked him. “Why do you say that? You never mentioned the matter when I was betrothed to Selina.”
“Because I never thought about it.”
“Until Aunt Pippa put it into your head.”
She sighed. “Well, yes. She’s right, much as I hate to admit it.”
“She’s an interfering busybody. She always has been. In fact, it’s my belief it was her doing in the first place that —”
He broke off, aghast at what he’d been about to reveal. That was the trouble with talking to Marianne. So used was he to speak his mind without reserve, it was all too easy to trip. But then he’d never had to discuss this ticklish matter with the subject of it.
She was eyeing him with question in her face, though she refrained from asking. Was the trouble back in her eyes? He hastened to change tack.
“Never mind my aunt. She has the devil’s own impertinence, trying to tell either of us how to run our lives.”
A flicker of Marianne’s characteristic tease showed in her eyes. “Well, if you will allow her to express her opinions without restraint, what do you expect?”
He had to laugh. “Yes, I ought to have squashed the woman at the first word. That’s the trouble with females who have known you from the cradle. They can’t easily be set down.”
“Justin, you know perfectly well you are far too well brought up to be rude to your aunt.”
A sliver of old resentment cut into him. “Yes, my father was thorough. He held himself on too high a form.”
“Except when he fell in love with Grace and married her.”
Justin was struck by the truth of this. He had never questioned his father’s action in taking a second wife. And Grace was young enough and pretty enough to have been a dazzling stepmother to an impressionable youth. Before he’d come to recognise her die-away airs and tendency to make mountains out of molehills. He’d been too young at the time to see it, but that his father had married some distance beneath him had formed one of the arguments Justin used years ago when he’d done his utmost to justify the choice his father had forbidden him to contemplate.
“But you are my heir, my boy,” had said Lord Purford, “and your mother was of excellent blood.”
Justin had found it unanswerable. At the time. Later he’d felt it spurious, for what if he’d died? Any male offspring from the union with Grace must have taken his place. In the event, only Jocasta had survived infancy, so the question did not arise. But it could have. What price his father’s placing himself on that high form then?
Marianne moved away from him and sank down onto the sofa, setting her elbows on her knees and dropping her face between her hands.
It was a pose he’d seen her adopt many a time: when she was deep in thought or wrestling with a knotty problem. He’d never before realised how touchingly vulnerable it made her, so used was he to her air of strong capability. She looked unusually youthful in the plain round gown of white muslin, modestly trimmed with cambric rather than lace.
“You’ve been under strain, too, haven’t you?”
She looked up, and he could see it lurking at the back of her eyes.
“Damn Selina! She’s plunged the lot of us into hell.”
Marianne’s hands dropped. He saw them clench, and her expression changed as she met his gaze with the bold courage he so much admired.
“Justin, I have a confession.”
He braced. Now what? “Go on.”
“I ought to have warned you. I debated within myself for days.”
Bewilderment wreathed his brain. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“Lady Selina.”
Foreboding gripped him. “Selina?”
Marianne’s knuckles were white. “I saw her with that fellow. Gregory O’Donovan. In Hookham’s.”
Marianne had his full attention now.
“She — she presented him as an old friend. Before she noticed me, they were talking in a way that looked peculiarly intimate.”
A rush of feeling enveloped him. The sense of betrayal revived, this time directed at Marianne. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She drew an obvious breath, but she held his gaze. “I could not make up my mind if I’d been mistaken. It was all suspicion and no real substance. If I was wrong, it would have cast a spoke in your wheel for nothing.”
Hot words rose to his lips but he checked them. Marianne had not known how much he’d have given to be armed with such a spoke.
“I took care to watch their demeanour in public,” she went
on, “but I could see no hint of intimacy. Indeed, if I am to be wholly truthful with you, I was the more suspicious for the way they took care not to give attention to one another.”
“Even though he formed one of her court,” Justin returned, recalling an evening when he’d teased Marianne about the fellow.
“Yes. I never saw anything else, I promise you. I wish I had spoken. With hindsight and subsequent events, it seems criminal not to have done.”
“That I cannot allow.” His revived anger was dying. “Even had you spoken, on reflection I can’t think it would have made any difference. Selina would have denied it. I believe she’d made her plans and meant to carry them out regardless.”
“But she did mean to marry you before O’Donovan appeared on the scene, did she not?”
“It seemed so, but who can tell? She may have been waiting for him, for all I know. She refused to acknowledge the existence of a prior attachment.”
“Yes, you said as much.”
Marianne was fidgeting with her fingers still. Justin crossed to the sofa and dropped down before her, setting his hand on her restless ones and holding them fast.
“Don’t refine too much upon it, Marianne. It’s done.”
“But it might have given you a chance to avoid the scandal had I said something.”
“I hardly think so. Even if she’d admitted the thing and cried off our engagement, there would have been a deal of talk.”
He rose, looking down at her bent head. They had strayed far from the point of his dragging her into the room. As well perhaps. At least the embarrassment of the moment had been glossed over.
He was distracted by the opening of the door. His sister’s dark head peeped round.
“Have you settled everything? Can I come in?”
Marianne viewed the entrance of Jocasta with mixed feelings. She was calmer, but dead inside. The flicker of hope she’d cherished when Justin dragged her in here had been crushed. She did not know whether the interruption was a blessing or a curse.
“I don’t know how you dare show your face,” Justin chided.
Jocasta was not noticeably dashed. A giggle escaped her. “Oh, I know I should not have said it, my dearest brother, but it escaped before I could think.”
“Yes, that’s just your trouble, my girl. You never do think before you open your mouth. You embarrassed Marianne and you put me in an awkward situation.”
Jocasta pouted. “I’ve already endured a scold, I thank you.”
“You deserve one.”
“Yes, but not three!”
“Three? Oh, you mean Grace and my aunt have already had their say.”
“And the Dragon. But if you and Marianne insist on ringing another peal over me, I dare say I shall manage to endure it.”
Amusement lightened Marianne’s gloom. “Since no words of censure are likely to have the slightest effect, there seems little point.”
Justin laughed. “Very true. You may consider yourself suitably chastised, Jocasta.”
Uttering a delighted squeal, she flew to Justin and subjected him to a ruthless hug.
“Best of brothers!”
Extricating himself, Justin held her off. “That’s all very well, but I’m not pleased with you, so don’t think it.”
Ignoring this, Jocasta came over to the sofa, flounced down beside Marianne, careless of crushing her muslin petticoats, and seized her hand, squeezing it tight.
“I should not have said it, I know, Marianne, but if you want the truth, I should like it of all things if you and Justin were to marry.”
“Jocasta, for heaven’s sake!”
Marianne felt her cheeks grow warm and was glad Justin’s attention was on his sister.
“Well, why shouldn’t I say it? I told you before I always thought the two of you would make a match of it, didn’t I?”
Marianne saw Justin’s jaw tighten and her heart sank. She could only be glad she had never given in to the temptation to touch on the matter herself. It was obvious the notion was anathema to him.
“Marianne, I can only apologise for my sister’s lack of tact.”
“Don’t heed it,” she managed, squeezing the hand still holding hers. With an effort, she summoned all her resources and smiled at Jocasta. “You are forgetting we are friends, my dear. Friends do not commonly marry each other. Besides, Justin has a duty to his name and I simply wouldn’t do.”
She glanced at Justin as she spoke and found him frowning. She could not read the expression in his eyes, but Jocasta did not wait for his response.
“Pooh, that’s fustian! Justin, you can’t be so stiff-rumped as to hold your nose up at Marianne.”
“That will do!” Justin strode across to the door and opened it, looking back at his sister. “Out!”
The command was stern enough to cause Jocasta to release Marianne and eye him with uncertainty. Marianne would have preferred to leave herself, but she could not undermine Justin’s authority.
“Jocasta, I mean it.”
She looked from him to Marianne and back again. Her shoulders drooped. She got up and went to the door, where she paused, looking up at him. “I never thought you could be so horrid, Justin. After all Marianne has done for us all.”
He flushed, but he did not speak, merely jerking his head to indicate she should go.
Jocasta left with a flounce and a toss of the head and Justin shut the door behind her with a decided snap. Then he turned to face Marianne and grimaced.
“Sisters!”
“Be glad you have only the one.”
“She’s as bad as my aunt, if you want the truth.”
Marianne said nothing, consciousness returning in a bang. How in the world were they to get over this? Jocasta, in her innocence, had tipped them both into crisis. For her part, Marianne could not think their friendship would survive.
Justin crossed to the mantel and leaned his elbow on it, regarding the clock on the shelf with studied attention. Marianne doubted he saw it. The minutes lengthened. In vain she sought for something to say to ease the moment. Her mind refused to supply anything commonplace enough to serve. Instead it dwelled on the way his pantaloons outlined the muscled legs, on how the dark green coat set off his fair hair and the intricacy of his neck-cloth.
At last Justin’s gaze rose from contemplation of the clock. Marianne met his gaze and the intensity there enhanced the green so strongly her breath caught.
“The devil of it is, Marianne, that she’s right. I have been too stiff-rumped to take the plunge.”
Marianne’s heart began to thrum, threatening to rise up and choke her. She could not utter a word, all her faculties suspended.
The silence stretched until her nerves became unendurable and she had to speak.
“Justin, are you saying —?”
“That you should marry me, yes.”
“Should?”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, will you?”
“Why?”
She was riding on instinct. The words, so longed for, were not the right ones.
Justin shut his eyes tight, as if the sight of her could not be endured, and then opened them again. “Because — because Jocasta said what we all know to be true. You are the perfect chatelaine already. Purford Park depends on your offices. And we are friends. We have — affection — for one another.”
“Affection, yes.” This was worse than wanting it and knowing it could not be. “Is that enough, Justin?”
He uttered a mirthless laugh. “It’s a deal more than I had with Selina.”
Oh, this was unbearable. This was not how it should be. Not how she had imagined it. She’d feared his being snapped up by another and now she had her wish. He was actually offering for her. But for all the wrong reasons! How could she stop it?
“Justin, you must not let your aunt’s jobations influence you. There is no need for such a sacrifice.”
At that his eyes lit with wrath.
“Sacrifice? That’s how you see it?”
“For you, I mean. You’ve no need to settle for me. You might have anyone.”
“Supposing I don’t want just anyone?”
Her heart thudded. Was he about to say what she yearned to hear?
He left the mantel and paced across the room and back again.
“Marianne, you know the circumstances. You are the last person to demand from me what it is not in my power to give.”
Had she not known it? His affection had not the depth of hers. Did he imagine she could marry him and be content with that? She’d thought she could when she toyed with the notion of offering herself as substitute for Selina. But when it came to the point, could she bear to be intimate —?
The thought stopped dead. No! Impossible. To accept Justin’s caresses, to endure the marriage bed, merely for the sake of his bloodline? Even as the prospect caused a rush of heat to flood her, she could not stop the refutation from leaving her lips.
“But you are asking more from me than I can give, Justin. It is not merely a matter of my continuing to fill Grace’s shoes. You need an heir.”
He was pacing again, but stopped in his tracks, staring at her, colour rising in his face.
“Is that … are you…?” He cleared his throat. “I would never force myself upon you, Marianne, surely you know that?”
Force himself! When all she’d ever dreamed of was to have his arms about her, his lips on hers? But in passion, not duty. Grace’s voice sounded in her head. How soulless.
The words came fast and furious, though her tongue felt dry, stiff and unnatural.
“You are thinking of your aunt’s speaking of a creature without missish scruples, but that isn’t me. I have a fund of them, Justin. Every possible scruple you might care to name. I couldn’t conduct myself like the conformable wife you are imagining.”
“Conformable?”
He sounded both hurt and baffled, but Marianne’s distress was too acute to spare him.
“Oh, one who will do as you require as and when you require it, make no demands for attention and keep her mouth shut at all other times.”
“When have you ever done so? Why would I expect you to change?”
“But you would, Justin. You would expect it. Those — those marital duties aside, the things I say to you I can say because I am your friend, your confidante at times, though I know there are matters you will not speak of, even to me.”
A Chance Gone By (Brides By Chance Regency Adventures Book 2) Page 11