‘No.’ Millie looked away quickly. ‘I think that Lady Falconmore isn’t so pleased by the news of our engagement, after all.’
‘She’ll get used to the idea.’
‘Are you sure? She seems to think—’
‘Sylvia can think what she likes,’ he interrupted her firmly, gesturing towards another door opposite. ‘Now for that tour.’
Millie opened her mouth to say something else and then thought better of it, walking ahead of him into yet another drawing room. It was just as big as the other, but substantially less cluttered and painted in calmer tones of cream and pale yellow. It felt positively tranquil by comparison.
‘Much better.’ She sighed with relief.
‘You mean you don’t admire my cousin-in-law’s taste in decorating?’ Cassius lifted an eyebrow.
‘Oh.’ She bit her lip guiltily. ‘I didn’t mean...’
‘Because if that were the case then I would agree with you. Wholeheartedly. That room makes my head ache.’
‘It was certainly colourful.’ She gave him a sidelong glance. He still looked stern, but he seemed slightly—very slightly—less tense now that they were out of company. ‘But it’s a beautiful house.’
He inclined his head, accepting the compliment before leading her on through four more reception rooms, an almost preposterously large dining room, a smaller but still slightly preposterous breakfast room, a music room and even an orangery. There was no need to ask which of the rooms Sylvia had decorated, though thankfully nowhere else was quite as vibrant as the first.
Millie fixed a smile on her face, trying to convey some sense of pleasure in their surroundings, though it was difficult to concentrate when she felt so horribly self-conscious and out of place. The more she saw of the house, the more miserable she became. The presence of her fiancé was no great comfort either. Cassius treated her with polite, but distant formality. He didn’t offer his hand or his arm again, but she was painfully aware of his every movement. Each time he came within an arm’s length of her, she felt as if all her nerve endings were standing on edge. It didn’t help that he looked quite so handsome, in a fashionable grey suit and pale-blue waistcoat that only emphasised the vivid shade of his eyes and made her feel even more dowdy by comparison. Frankly it was downright unfair how attractive he looked—he and Sylvia—how much he seemed to belong there, too, whereas she...
Well, there was no point in denying the obvious. She didn’t belong there. Which was probably a good thing because nor did she want a fiancé who behaved so coldly towards her. No matter what she’d promised, if this was what marriage to him would be like then she didn’t want anything to do with it. At that precise moment, she wanted nothing more than to go back to London and never see either this house or its master again!
At last they stopped in a long, wood-panelled corridor that appeared to be some kind of portrait gallery.
‘Is that your mother?’ Millie pointed towards a round painting of a woman with chestnut hair and kind-looking brown eyes. The woman was smiling, but there was a familiar pensive quality to her face, too.
‘Yes.’ He looked surprised. ‘How did you know? Everyone says I take after my father’s side of the family.’
‘You do, only her expression reminds me of you. And she has a matching dimple in her left cheek. It’s small, but it’s definitely there.’
‘Really?’ He looked at the portrait as if he were seeing it anew. ‘No one’s ever told me that before.’
‘Sometimes it takes someone new to notice such things.’ She moved on a few steps to another, bigger painting of the same chestnut-haired woman, only this time she was seated next to a man in a soldier’s uniform. ‘Is that your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was in the army, too?’
‘He was a colonel. Of course the army was fighting Napoleon in those days.’
‘Did your mother follow the drum?’
He nodded. ‘She was the daughter of a brigadier so she understood what a military life entailed. I was born in an army camp in Spain. Ten miles from Cadiz.’
‘So you’re Spanish?’ She smiled and then drew her brows together. ‘But I thought you said you grew up with your cousin? Did they send you back here to be educated?’
‘Not by choice.’ He cleared his throat, though his gaze never left the painting. ‘Unfortunately conditions in camp weren’t always sanitary. My mother died of blood poisoning when I was four.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Afterwards my father decided it would be safer for me to be raised here in his brother’s household. He was probably right, but I cried for days after he left me behind. I was afraid that I’d never see him again.’ His voice sounded distant. ‘As it happens, I was almost right. I only saw him once more when he came home on leave.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘A bayonet wound, so my uncle told me. It’s a strange memory. He’d always been such a stern and remote figure, but when he summoned me to his library that day there were tears in his eyes. He told me all about a battle at Waterloo and how proud I ought to be of my father.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She reached a hand out, but he jerked away, hunching his shoulders as if they were stiff.
‘I had this idea that if I’d been there I would have saved him. Absurd, of course.’
‘Is that why you joined the army? To follow in his footsteps?’
‘That and because it’s what second sons do. The first inherits the title and fortune and the second gets a commission in the army. I was raised like a second son so it seemed fitting.’
‘And then you lost your cousin, too... I’m so sorry.’
‘Miss Fairclough.’ Cassius twisted sharply, turning his back on the painting. ‘Contrary to our conversation in the gatehouse the other evening, it is not my usual custom to discuss my feelings. I have absolutely no intention of doing so again.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’ She almost took a step backwards at the forbidding note in his voice. It sounded even more glacial than before. ‘Of course, if that’s what you want.’
‘Good. Then we understand one another.’ He strode on down the corridor, pausing with his hand on yet another door handle. ‘What do you think of Falconmore Hall then, Miss Fairclough? Do you approve?’
Millie stopped mid-step, stiffening indignantly. The question seemed to imply that she ought to approve, as if she were there to carry out some kind of inspection. As if she ought to be revelling in her good fortune! As if she weren’t thoroughly miserable with him and his house!
‘Should I approve?’ She glared at the back of his head. ‘I’m afraid that I don’t have much experience of halls and I’ve only seen Buckingham Palace from the outside. You’ll have to tell me how it compares.’
He let go of the door handle again, turning around with both eyebrows raised. ‘Sarcasm, Miss Fairclough?’
‘And that’s another thing!’ She burst out angrily. ‘I thought I was Millie!’
‘You are.’
‘Then stop calling me Miss Fairclough! If you do it one more time, then I promise I’ll walk out of that obscenely large front door and go back to the Foundation where I belong!’
‘Indeed?’ His voice sounded infuriatingly calm. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t know!’ She folded her arms. ‘Maybe. It depends.’
‘On?’ He folded his arms, too.
‘On whether I’m Millie or Miss Fairclough, for a start.’
‘I’ve just agreed that you’re Millie.’
‘All right then.’ She gave a curt nod. ‘Now I think we need to talk, especially if you’re having second thoughts...’
‘About?’
‘What do you think, what about?’ She stared at him incredulously. ‘About our engagement!’
‘I’m not.’ His tone sugges
ted the very idea was ridiculous.
‘Then why are you being so...different?’
‘I’m afraid you’ll need to be more specific. As far as I can tell I’m simply being myself.’
She sucked in a breath, trying to control her temper, but his behaviour was maddening, as if he thought she was the one behaving differently! There was a door further down the corridor that led outside and she stormed towards it, wrenching at the handle and slamming it open.
‘Millie?’ She heard him call after her as she strode out on to a terrace. ‘Come back inside. You’ll catch a cold.’
‘I might catch one in your company!’ She hurled the words back over her shoulder, bracing her hands against a low wall where some residual snow was still gathered.
‘We haven’t finished our tour yet.’
‘Yes, we have!’ She spun around to find him standing in the doorway, frowning. ‘I’ve seen everything I need to see and we are definitely finished! Now I’d like to leave.’
‘All I asked was whether you approved of the house.’
‘And all I’ve done is answer! But in case I haven’t made myself clear, no, I do not approve of the house and I’ve no desire for this engagement to continue a moment longer.’
‘Whatever the matter is, we should discuss it inside.’
‘No!’ She could feel her anger spiralling. It was so unlike her—Amelia, anyway—that she didn’t know how to control it. The words seemed to be coming all by themselves. ‘The matter is you and we’ll discuss it now! You’re behaving like...’ she looked around as if she might pluck a word from the air ‘...like you’re made of ice! No, I take it back, ice would show more emotion!’
‘Is this because I said I don’t want to talk about my feelings?’
‘It’s because of everything! You’re not the man I agreed to marry. I don’t know who you are now, but I’ve changed my mind.’
His glacial expression seemed to waver. ‘Whoever I am doesn’t change our situation. This marriage is a matter of honour and I told you I have enough on my conscience already. I will not add you!’
‘You will not?’ She clenched her fists at his imperative tone. ‘It’s my choice whether or not to marry you!’
‘You’re being childish! Come inside and—’
He didn’t get any further as she bent down, scooped up a handful of snow and threw it as hard as she could towards his head. It missed, erupting on to his shoulder instead and scattering white flakes all over his suit, but the look of shock on his face was almost comical.
‘That’s childish!’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘And now I’ve given you a reason not to marry me. Consider your conscience appeased.’
‘Do you think it’s that easy?’ He lifted a hand and brushed the snow from his arm, his eyes flashing now, too, though oddly enough not with anger. She didn’t know what the emotion in them was, only for some reason it made her pulse quicken.
‘Yes, I do think it’s that easy.’ She tried to ignore the feeling, stomping back towards him, irritated that he still managed to look handsome when her own nose and cheeks were doubtless in the process of turning a luminous shade of pink. ‘I should never have agreed in the first place. I belong in London at the Foundation, not in a place like this, and I can’t be a marchioness either. It’s hopeless and we shouldn’t marry just because—’
This time he was the one to interrupt, his mouth fastening on hers with a speed that took her completely by surprise. If it hadn’t been for the hands that wrapped simultaneously around her head and waist she thought her knees might actually have buckled beneath her, but they held her upright, strong fingers caressing her neck and the small of her back as his lips moved fiercely over hers.
She opened her mouth to gasp and then gasped again as his tongue slid inside, startling her even more. She was vaguely aware that she was angry, in the midst of some kind of protest, too, but it was difficult to remember what about. Her mind seemed to be spinning, making it almost impossible to remember anything at all. Anything, that was, except the warm pressure of his lips against hers and the unusual but distinctly exciting sensation of his tongue as it stroked against hers. Not to mention the pressure of his arm as it coiled around her waist, drawing her close enough that she could feel the muscular contours of his chest through his shirt and against her breasts. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to remember what she’d been protesting about anyway. All she wanted at that moment was to keep on being kissed, to kiss him back, too, to press against him and move her lips in a matching rhythm as her hands found their way around his shoulders and...
‘There.’ He pulled his lips away suddenly though his face remained close to hers, close enough that she could still feel and hear the quickened pace of his breathing. ‘I believe that makes me honour-bound again.’
‘Not necessarily.’ She sank down off her tiptoes and pulled her hands away from his shoulders, willing her mind to clear, her memory to come back and her heartbeat to stabilise again. ‘Nobody else saw.’
For the first time that day he actually smiled. ‘If there’s one thing we’re not short of at Falconmore Hall, it’s windows. Believe me, Millie, somebody saw. Now shall we continue? There’s one last room I want you to see.’
* * *
‘It’s stunning!’ Millie’s jaw dropped the moment he opened the door. ‘I’ve never seen anywhere like it!’
Cassius followed her appreciative gaze around the ballroom. There were floor-length windows on three of its sides and the walls between were covered in mirrors, making the space appear even bigger and brighter, especially with the last of the day’s sunshine streaming in from the west. Three crystal chandeliers sparkled overhead and the floor was polished to within an inch, possibly a finger’s breadth, of its life. He had to admit, as rooms went, stunning was probably the right word. Although he’d been feeling somewhat stunned before he’d entered.
So much for putting some distance between them! He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d kissed her, except that the urge to do so had been gradually building, becoming more and more overpowering the longer she’d argued. She’d been positively bristling with anger, apparently unaware of the temperature outside, too, and there had been only one way he could think of to warm her up. No one had challenged him so bluntly since he’d inherited his title, let alone thrown snowballs at him. Then when she’d threatened to leave he’d felt a moment of panic. Strange as it sounded, every time she tried to get out of their engagement he found himself wanting to marry her more. Simply wanting her more. And this time, it had had nothing to do with honour or conscience.
Still, his own behaviour had surprised him. He’d convinced himself that his ardent response to their first kiss had simply been due to the tense situation in which they’d found themselves in the gatehouse. He certainly hadn’t expected to feel the same way again, but if anything, his reaction this time had been even stronger, so much so that he was extremely tempted to do it again. Given that he had no idea what she was thinking, however, that probably wasn’t a good idea. She’d seemed to enjoy their embrace and her anger had certainly diminished, but perhaps he’d simply taken her by surprise. Now she seemed to be avoiding his eyes.
‘Have you danced here often?’ She half-turned her head towards him, her side profile revealing still-flushed cheeks and kiss-swollen lips.
‘A few times, although I’m afraid I’m an adequate partner at best. I never paid much attention to our dancing instructor.’
‘You had an instructor?’
‘For a while. Magnus and I were both educated at home so I was trained in everything he was.’
She darted a quick look over her shoulder, seeming on the verge of saying something before thinking better of it.
‘What is it?’ He moved a step closer. Now that he’d failed so spectacularly at re-establishing distance between them he seemed incapable of remaining more than an arm’s leng
th away.
‘Nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing. I can practically hear you thinking.’
She shook her head. ‘You said that you didn’t want to talk about your past and I’ve no wish to be accused of prying.’ She paused briefly. ‘Again.’
‘You won’t be. I promise.’
‘All right. I was just thinking that it can’t have been easy to return here after what happened to your cousin. You must miss him.’
‘I do.’ He cleared his throat as a lump started to swell there. ‘The day I set foot back in this house was one of the worst of my life. Hard though it is for some people to believe, I never coveted any of this. Not the house, the title or fortune. I could have made my own way in life.’
‘I’m not some people.’ She was looking straight at him now, her expression sympathetic. ‘And I believe you would have.’
‘I never wanted to disinherit his daughters either. This should be their home, not mine, but the property was entailed. There was nothing I could do about it except let them stay, but it’s still hard not to feel guilty. Unfortunately I had no choice in the matter.’
‘So you had no choice but to come back, no choice but to be a marquess and no choice but to propose to me. On top of everything else, no wonder you feel so trapped.’
He frowned, though he didn’t deny it. ‘Our engagement wasn’t your fault. It was the weather that threw us together.’
‘I’m still sorry if I’ve made things worse for you.’
‘You haven’t. As for the rest...’ he swallowed ‘...I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone, but it’s not easy to talk about.’
‘No.’ She sounded thoughtful. ‘Do you remember what I told you about my sister and how she would tell me about her nightmares after our father died?’
‘Yes.’ He lowered his brows. ‘You said it helped her, but that doesn’t mean...’
‘Well, that wasn’t the whole truth. That is, it did help her, but it only made things worse for me. We had so many visitors after the funeral. So many people who wanted to talk about what had happened and what he’d meant to them. They meant well, but it wasn’t always helpful. Sometimes their attempts at consolation made me feel hollow inside. Here.’ She laid a hand over her heart. ‘Only my mother understood. She never made me talk about how I felt. It’s part of the reason why she’s so beloved in the Foundation. She can always tell who needs to talk and who needs silence. She taught me that everyone should be allowed to heal in their own way. I would never ask you to speak about anything you didn’t wish to.’ Her gaze fixed on his. ‘But at the same time, if we marry, I’d be there if you needed to talk.’
Miss Amelia's Mistletoe Marquess Page 10