A Chance Gone By (Brides By Chance Regency Adventures Book 2)

by Elizabeth Bailey

  He threw up his hands. “Marianne, this is nonsense and you know it. How could a closer relationship drive a wedge through our friendship? The reverse rather.”

  “Yes, if we loved one another.”

  There. It was out. Now he would say they were bound to grow fonder if they were married, and break her heart at last.

  Yet Justin said nothing of the kind. His jaw was set tight and he was eyeing her with an expression both frustrated and questioning.

  “You don’t wish to marry me, do you? This is mere quibbling, but you fear to hurt me with an outright rejection.”

  Heavens, what now was she to say? The dearest wish of her heart! But on these terms? Now her tongue clogged her mouth while her mind sought and cast out as worthless such words as came into it.

  “Justin…”

  He flung up a hand. “You need say no more. I see how it is. I was a fool to suggest it.”

  He was turning, clearly intending to leave the room. Marianne was up, moving swiftly to intercept him. She could not let him go like this. She grasped his arm and he halted. Dismayed, she searched his gaze. “I have hurt you! Oh, Justin, you don’t understand.”

  “I understand only too well.”

  His features were rigid, the green dulled in his eyes. A shaft went through her. Fatal words hovered in her mouth. She had no chance to utter them.

  With deliberation, he removed her fingers from his arm. His voice was ice.

  “Don’t fret, Marianne. Curse my aunt and sister instead.”

  The door shut behind him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Embarking on his third glass, Justin sagged back into the comfort of the club’s padded leather chair and let his breath go in a long sigh. The brandy fumes wreathing his brain afforded, as he’d intended, a measure of relief from the raging thunder in his head. In minutes he discovered the indulgence had not clouded a corroding sense of disillusionment. He felt both a fraud and a fool, but his deepest dissatisfaction lay with the knowledge forced upon him that he had wilfully mistaken Marianne’s sentiments.

  Never once had it occurred to him, under all the agonies of indecision in which he’d laboured, both now and years ago, that he could meet with a rebuff. Had he misread her so badly? No, it was worse than that. Too wrapped up in his own feelings, he’d not taken time or effort to read her, to consider what might be her reaction. And thereby exposed himself to the most bitter humiliation.

  Smarting and choked with conflicting emotions, he’d left the house within the minutes it took to reach his chamber and set the bell pealing for his valet to bring him his coat, hat and cane. He’d spent the intervening time striding restlessly about the room, his head full of fury and his heart heavy with loss.

  The latter had not manifested as strongly as it did now, when the white heat of his first reaction had consumed him as he strode through the streets, determined only to gain the safety of Brooks’s and commandeer a quiet spot where he might brood in peace.

  Though Jocasta’s unruly tongue had propelled him into that insane declaration, he was more inclined to blame his aunt. Without her prompting, his sister would not have said it.

  He caught himself up on the thought. She had said it. Confronted with his betrothal to Selina, Jocasta had not scrupled to speak her mind. At the time, it had failed to pierce his armour. Months of steeling himself to the inevitable had eroded any vestige of regret lurking deep inside for what might have been. But within days of Selina’s flight, it had sprung almost full-blown from the secret cache in which he’d long since buried it. He’d wrestled against the tug of need, beset by his father’s voice in his head, drumming in the duty.

  “Persons of our order, my dear Justin, do not marry to please themselves. There is too much at stake. By birth, you hold this heritage in trust for your heirs, and you owe it to them to maintain the purity of the bloodline.”

  He had protested, with all the vigour at his disposal, to no avail.

  “You must not think I do not value Marianne, my boy. She is a good, sensible girl who has shown herself worthy of your stepmother’s charity, but she will not do for you.”

  He balked at the remembered words, hearing instead Marianne’s voice repeating the self-same litany. She would not do for him. Spurious, such words in her mouth. A convenient excuse, because she cared for him enough to wish to spare his feelings. Yet not enough to endure a more intimate relationship.

  There lay the rub. Of all things, he could not shake the humiliation of discovering Marianne’s aversion to physical closeness with him. It was of no use to tell himself it was because she thought of him as a brother. He had never felt that. She had been to him, almost from the first, all woman. Only the impropriety of it had kept him from giving rein to his partiality. That, and his inability ever to predict Marianne’s likely response, if he was honest.

  From the moment he had found her in distress that far-off day, and teased her out of the dismals, she had laughed with him, teased him back, listened with unstinted interest and sympathy to such troubles as he entrusted to her ears, and proffered such advice as she might think of in her matter of fact fashion. But neither by word nor look had she ever invited his gallantry.

  She’d accepted his touch without question, her hands ever ready to clasp his. Unlike Jocasta, who flew to his arms in childlike delight, Marianne had always kept a proper distance. Except when he tickled her.

  There had been one or two occasions when her giggles, squeals and wriggling protests had brought him very near disgracing them both. But he could not recall Marianne succumbing to any such impulse. She invariably succeeded in throwing him off and escaping, several times becoming quite cross with him.

  “Stop it now, Justin! That’s enough! It’s horrid of you to take advantage of my ticklish state.”

  In his arrogance, he had never supposed Marianne would not welcome his caresses. How should he think so when her eyes lit up at sight of him? When he had only to meet her gaze across a room to find warmth in her smile, affection in her manner? He had been grossly deceived!

  The rush of resentment was swiftly succeeded by an equally fierce rush of guilt. He had deceived himself. It was clear enough now that Marianne’s friendship had never included that tenderness he felt towards her. What had she said? If we loved one another. Which was as much as to say she did not love him. Or not in the way of marriage.

  He could only thank his stars he had not put his heart on the line to be trampled as his pride had been. Let her think he had proposed the match as a matter of convenience. Better for him, and better for Marianne too.

  Whatever her feelings, she could only be insulted by the truth. He had denied his own heart because he’d taken his father’s dictum and deemed her unworthy. Never dreaming, of course, that she might refuse him.

  “Starting early, ain’t you, coz? What’s to do?”

  The well-known voice cut into his reverie. Justin looked up to find Lord Dymond standing over him, a disapproving frown on his face. Annoyance gripped him.

  “What do you want, Alex? If my aunt has sent you after me, let me tell you —”

  “Devil a bit, old fellow! Ain’t seen the old lady this morning.”

  “Oh. Well, I wish I had not either.”

  “Bad as that? She been sticking her oar in again?”

  The thought of his aunt sent Justin’s hand reaching for the bottle, but his cousin grabbed it away.

  “No, you don’t, coz. Looks to me as if you’ve had more than enough already. Carry on like that and you’ll be half-cut before dinner.”

  “Damn you, Alex, give that to me!”

  But his cousin, sitting in the chair opposite, set the bottle down on a table beyond his reach. He then bent a glare upon Justin and wagged a finger.

  “Not going to let you go down that road, my boy, so don’t think it.”

  Justin hunched a shoulder. “What the deuce has it to do with you if I choose to go to perdition?”

  “Of course it’s to do with me. F
ond of you, Justin. Besides, my cousin, you know. You’d do the same for me.”

  Undeniable. Justin fetched a heavy sigh and sank back again. Alex nodded, a grim smile creasing his mouth.

  “That’s better. Now cut line, dear boy. What’s shoved you into the dismals? After last night, I thought you were set to brighten up.”

  “Don’t talk to me about last night. I’ve heard enough of it to last me to the end of the season — if I don’t turn tail and head back to the Park, as I can tell you I’ve a good mind to do.”

  “My mother been plaguing your life out?”

  Recognising that his cousin would not leave it alone, Justin gave him a curt account of the morning’s events, not omitting a bitter animadversion on his sister’s idiotic behaviour.

  “Always was a tactless little piece, Jocasta.” Alex eyed him. “What did you say to Marianne?”

  “All that was designed to gloss over the business.” He hesitated, but the urge to unburden himself to the only man he trusted proved too strong. “And all that did just the opposite too.”

  His cousin’s brows shot up. “Don’t tell me you popped the question.”

  Justin winced. “She won’t have me.”

  “She refused you?”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “Not precisely. But she made it clear enough she didn’t want — she’d no thought of —” He broke off, but Alex did not speak. As if impelled, he brought it out. “She made it plain she couldn’t stomach me as a husband.”

  “I don’t believe it! What, Marianne not wish to marry you? Girl’s been head over ears for you for years!”

  Justin stared at him in uncomprehending silence. Had his cousin made the same error he had? Alex might be pardoned for thinking what he had not hesitated to believe himself.

  “You are mistaken, as was I.”

  “Balderdash!”

  Justin sighed again. “I only wish it were, Alex.”

  “What exactly did she say?”

  “I can’t tell you.” He was not going to repeat the substance of that humiliating conversation. “Besides, it makes no odds. I withdrew my offer.”

  “Well, all I can say is, old fellow, you must have made mincemeat of the business.”

  If only it were that simple. He’d made a fool of himself, he knew that much. But not even to his cousin’s ears could he confide his true state of mind. Deep down, the erosion of all hope had begun, for he knew he’d lost the solace of Marianne’s friendship as well as any chance of achieving his heart’s desire.

  Before what Marianne was fast coming to think of as The Day of Disaster, the Season had seemed interminable. Now its end hurtled towards her like a bolting horse. Bad as it was to be estranged from Justin in Town, she knew it must be a hundred times worse back at Purford Park. How much harder to avoid an accidental meeting there, when she must face him daily over the dinner table and could scarcely avoid contact when household matters demanded his attention.

  That he had taken to dining at his club or with friends spoke volumes. When she entered the breakfast parlour, he had either ridden out or left for some unknown engagement. He cried off escorting his stepmother and sister to the last ball of the season, and only once did Marianne spot him at a perfectly insipid musical evening given by Mrs Guineaford.

  She had not intended to go, but at the last moment Grace, as one might have expected, succumbed to her loathing of the hostess and developed a headache. Since Lord Tazewell, who was becoming very particular in his attentions, had offered to escort Jocasta, Marianne had no choice but to take Grace’s place.

  Her heart flipped when she saw Justin, in company with Alex and being besieged by a couple of determined matrons with marriageable daughters. Her breath caught in her throat and she lost the half of what Mrs Guineaford was saying to her.

  “…and what is one to do when everyone is exhausted and itching to go home? So I hit upon this, my dear, where all that is required is to sit and listen.”

  “Most restful,” Marianne managed, summoning a smile. She saw that more was required of her, and added, “The very thing, ma’am. A delightful notion. Lady Purford will be so disappointed to have missed it.”

  Mrs Guineaford smiled upon her with that complacent air Marianne knew infuriated Grace, and she was able to move on and catch up with Jocasta.

  She knew without looking that Justin had seen her, for she could feel his inimical gaze. Her insides fluttered with an echo of the dreadful experience she had gone through after he left her on that appalling day.

  She tried to push the memories aside, and succeeded to a degree while the company talked and partook of the delicacies on offer. Since she had not in public repeated the offence which had precipitated events, the censorious tabbies who had scolded her to Grace had condescended to forgive her. She was thus obliged to respond to enquiries about Grace’s health while she kept a watchful eye upon Jocasta and tried, without success, to ignore Justin’s presence.

  Within moments of taking her place beside her charge, however, all attempts to keep out remembrance failed. To make it worse, Lord Tazewell had found seats at one side which gave her all too clear a view of Justin, who was sitting almost opposite, his long shapely legs disposed comfortably, with one ankle crossed over the other. He looked bored, though he kept his eyes on the harpist who had opened the proceedings. The bland expression beneath the fair locks transposed, in Marianne’s mind, into the stiff effigy confronting her the last time he’d spoken to her in that alienating voice of ice cold rage.

  She’d stood as if paralysed, unable to think or feel, until her legs had almost given way beneath her and she’d been obliged to sink into the nearest chair. She’d then been beset by hideous and unstoppable tremors that shook her frame from head to foot.

  She hardly recalled those moments for both mind and feeling had frozen for the duration of what she afterwards recognised as the symptoms of shock. As well had she been told of Justin’s death! The devastation to her heart was quite as bad.

  No, not that. Marianne tugged her thoughts back to the present. Nothing could be as bad as that. Though she’d lost him as surely as if he had died. Curiously, she had not wept. Neither then, nor later in the privacy of her bed. She could only suppose herself too numbed to feel. Or perhaps the finality of her grief was too deep to be allowed to surface. She had found it surprisingly easy to assume a semblance of her normal manner. It was as if she dwelt in some other world, coiled there in a comforting ball, while her shadow walked and talked in this one, providing a substitute who could operate as needed.

  It was well she had one, for she’d run the gamut of Grace’s plaintive protests and Lady Luthrie’s astringent ones.

  “I have no wish to know what passed between you and Purford, my dear Marianne,” said the latter upon encountering her a day or so after the debacle, “but it is plain enough that his conduct must have left a deal to be desired.”

  Under normal circumstances, Marianne would have rushed to Justin’s defence. As it was, she remained tight-lipped, merely holding the woman’s gaze. Lady Luthrie’s brows rose.

  “I see that you blame me for it. Well, perhaps I was unwise to interfere too directly.”

  “Or at all,” returned Marianne, surprising herself.

  The matron’s faint smile acknowledged a hit, but she did not look conscious.

  “Where one can see something needs to be done, it is cowardice to shirk the doing of it merely for fear of upset.”

  “A maxim you have lived by, ma’am?”

  “Certainly. Is it not better to exert influence if one can than to bewail the consequences when one has done nothing to try to change them?”

  “Like Grace, you mean.”

  Lady Luthrie gave a snort. “Grace has no moral fibre. I dare say my brother was to blame for that. He was besotted. He allowed her to indulge her megrims and did not check her tendency to fancy herself too frail to endure anything she did not wish to do.”

  Since Marianne knew this to be true, she made
no attempt to refute it.

  “We all have our faults, Lady Luthrie.”

  “And mine is to be an interfering busybody, is that it?”

  Marianne had to smile, though she was far from laughter.

  Lady Luthrie put out a hand and lightly touched her arm. “I am fond of you, Marianne. I wish I had known you better years ago. Still, I do not despair of a happy outcome.”

  With these words she had moved on, leaving Marianne mystified.

  Grace, on the other hand, seemed heartily to dislike her. Her manner was cold and she openly taxed Marianne with having caused a rift within the family.

  “You need not pretend that Justin’s attitude to me is not your doing, Marianne. Heaven knows what you said to upset him so! But he was never discourteous to me before. You must have shown me in a bad light when you told him of our quarrel.”

  In vain did Marianne assure her they had not discussed it, but as she refused to divulge what had been said in the morning room, Grace obstinately insisted on believing she had been abused to her stepson, and complained of Marianne’s heartlessness and ingratitude so frequently that it must have hurt her had she been less enwrapped in her protective shell.

  Even Justin’s absence in his studious avoidance of her had made no appreciable difference. Somewhere, her real self took note of it, adding to the store of hurts that miraculously passed her by.

  But pinpricks of little agonies now plagued her, confronted as she was by Justin in person: the shift in his face when he had so completely misunderstood her hesitation. Her panic in that instant. And the stark recognition of her own wilful refusal to seize her chance.

  She brushed the thoughts out of her mind. Concentrate instead on the music. A Haydn sonata? How dull it sounded. The harpist’s execution was but competent, the piece interminable. She shifted her gaze to the Adam panels and the inset niches her hostess had caused to be bedecked with tall jardinières, flowers spraying from several orifices. It proved less distracting than the music.