The Wicked Marquis

by Mary Lancaster

  Serena would have denied it, except the girls suddenly flew across from the Pump Room, calling, “Lord Tamar!”

  Serena’s stomach gave an unpleasant jolt, for the familiar tall, rumpled figure of the marquis was loping up the steps from the beach below. It was too late to stop her sisters from talking to him, so she had to be content with not looking. She turned her accusing gaze upon Miss Grey instead.

  “Is this part of your conspiracy, too?”

  “No,” Miss Grey replied with a hint of nervousness. “But since the subject has come up, I did want to say… I hope you have not dwelled too much on the suspicions I once shared with you? Concerning his lordship’s involvement with the smugglers who turned out to be spies. Because subsequent events obviously proved me utterly wrong.”

  “Of course not,” Serena said.

  The girls were walking with Tamar, chattering away to him as they always did. He had to come this way to return to the center of the town and as he drew closer, Serena saw that he looked as he always did. Except, perhaps for a little pallor, no doubt caused by the loss of blood from his wound. He wore his disreputable satchel over his other shoulder, the uninjured one. Serena swallowed. She could not afford to worry about his health. He was clearly well enough.

  His banter with the girls might have been a little distracted, but that was normal for him, too. The ache of loss intensified. But no one could ever know.

  “Look, Serena, we have found Lord Tamar,” Helen cried.

  “So I see. What a happy chance for him,” she said wryly, and the girls laughed.

  Lord Tamar bowed in his casual manner. “Lady Serena. Miss Grey.”

  “Good afternoon,” Serena said distantly.

  “Come and have tea with us at the hotel,” Maria invited.

  Appalled, Serena could do more than frown at her.

  But Tamar was shaking his head. “Another time, I would love to. Sadly, I need to be elsewhere. Good afternoon, ladies.” And he walked on.

  He hadn’t even looked at her, apart from that one brushing glance as he’d bowed. She should have been grateful. It made the encounter bearable.

  So why did her heart ache and ache?

  *

  Several days later, just over a week after the capture of the French spies and the retrieval of his paintings, he saw her again.

  As he strode down the high street, she sat in the ice parlor with her sisters, Miss Grey, and Catherine Winslow. In spite of everything, his heart gave a huge leap. He missed her and the warmth of her family which somehow seemed part of her. And it was such a bright, laughing group he couldn’t help but pause, his eyes devouring her face.

  The last time he’d seen her, outside the Pump Room, he’d barely looked at her, aware it was bad luck the girls had seen him. Her whole manner had been repelling and cold, which was just what he’d wanted. And yet the awkwardness, the freezing civility between them had seemed somehow tragic after what had passed between them before. Seeing her again, even in that one glance, had churned him up. But he hadn’t wavered. He knew he was doing the right thing. And, clearly, so did she.

  But in secret, a man could look, just to remember and to assure himself she was well.

  She was smiling at Miss Winslow, talking with, surely, just a little less animation than he remembered. She seemed pale to him, brittle, as though she might break. And her eyes…surely there was something dull about them? It didn’t make her less beautiful, but it did make her look unspeakably sad.

  Christ, did I do that to her?

  And then the moment passed. She laughed at something Helen said, and he walked on hastily before she saw him.

  But that look troubled him. He itched to paint it, but he longed, too, to wipe that sadness from her eyes and make her laugh with him as she’d done before. He walked faster in an effort to untwist his stomach, to diffuse the pain.

  When he next paid attention to his surroundings, he found himself at the church and frowned in confusion. Surely he’d been heading homeward?

  On impulse, he walked through the gate and up the path to the church. Since it seemed to be quiet within, he opened the door.

  From the front pew, Tristram Grant turned his head and blinked. “Tamar?”

  “In the flesh,” Tamar replied flippantly, strolling up the aisle. “And at risk of being struck down.”

  Grant rose to meet him “Trust me, there have been wickeder men than you in here over the years, and none of them were struck down.”

  Tamar glanced at the books and papers the vicar had dropped on the front pew. “Don’t you work at home?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes I get inspiration here, especially if Kate is out. She and Lady Serena are on a mission to make Catherine Winslow happy after Valère turned out to be what he was. Apparently, he had raised hopes.”

  There wasn’t much Tamar could say to that. He was pretty sure he’d raised some of his own with as little right. Her last look at the hotel haunted him. And her pallor today.

  “What can I do for you?” Grant asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” Tamar said awkwardly. “I was just passing. How is Lampton?”

  “In pieces, though he’ll never show it.”

  “Poor bastard,” Tamar said, then glanced at the cross above the altar. “Sorry.”

  “It’s a lesson to us all,” Grant said, and it took Tamar a moment to realize he wasn’t referring to bad language in church. “We have to seize the happiness of the day, and savor it, because we don’t know when it might be taken from us.”

  Tamar searched his face. “If you mean Lady Serena, say so.”

  “I mean Lady Serena.”

  “Then you shouldn’t. You know what I am, what I have—and don’t have.”

  “Kate married me though I’m poor.”

  “You might be poor, but you have a respectable profession and prospects of promotion,” Tamar retorted. “An ancient title is all that keeps me out of debtors’ prison. And worse.”

  Grant frowned and sat down again. “What is this worse business? Did you mean what you said to her about murder?”

  Tamar tugged one hand through his hair. “Of course, I meant it. It’s true.”

  “Who did you kill?” Grant asked steadily.

  Tamar’s lips twisted. “A bailiff,” he said, seating himself on the steps up the altar.

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Oh, I think so.”

  Tamar shrugged. “Perhaps, but that isn’t my story to tell.”

  “Then why did you tell her anything at all?”

  Tamar rubbed absently at his healing shoulder, which had begun to ache again. “Because I wanted her to know the worst of me.”

  “To drive her away?”

  “To make her understand,” Tamar got out. “Why I cannot have her.”

  “She doesn’t see that. She just saw you driving her away.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Then tell me the worst of you and let me judge from knowledge.”

  “I can’t.” Restlessly, Tamar began to rise again, but Grant grasped him by the good shoulder, pushing him back down.

  “Tamar. You have to tell someone. It’s eating you up.”

  “It isn’t,” Tamar denied. “Of course, it isn’t,”

  “Whatever you say. How old were you when you did it?”

  Tamar shrugged. “Sixteen. I think. It doesn’t really matter. Certainly, it was in the early years after my father died, and we had to leave school. We were all pretty much running wild about Tamar Abbey, while the house decayed around us. The servants had all left, or I’d sent them away because we couldn’t pay them. But it was fun in an odd way, because I was too young or too stupid to think of the future. I thought I was looking after them if I scavenged some food for them. Hunting was fun and we cooked it together…”

  He rubbed his forehead, trying to dismiss the memories. “And then we grew up. The day that Peter Rivers the bailiff came. They couldn’t touch me for my father
’s debts, but they’d started to dun us about my late uncle’s, claiming some of the few valuables still left in the house belonged to him. I sent them all away, but then Rivers came when I wasn’t there. He tried to make my sisters hand over a Greek vase—I had a buyer lined up for that vase which would have fed us and clothed us all year. The girls refused, of course, but he was a bully. He really thought he could get away with it. They might have been a marquis’s daughters, but they were poor and without protection and he no doubt thought he could make them too afraid to speak…”

  He dropped his head into his hands. He didn’t want to remember this. He didn’t ever want to think of this. He swallowed. “He told them he would take payment in kind. You know what he meant. They didn’t. They were fourteen years old. I can’t talk about this.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Grant whispered.

  “When I got home, and rushed into the room, he had Anna by the throat, her dress ripped to shreds, and Christianne had just broken the Greek vase over his head. He was slightly dazed and still laughing when I flew at him. He had a dagger in his free hand—a Tamar dagger with our crest on it. I killed him with that as we fought…”

  He raised his eyes to Grant’s. “His brother saw us from the window. He saw the dagger go in. I swear to God I would have killed him, too, and buried him in the same unmarked grave as his brother, except that he ran.”

  There was silence in the church. Tamar wrapped it around himself like armor. He was sure somehow that he’d need it, as if the world would end now that he’d finally spoken these words.

  Grant said, “If I were God, I would forgive you. I doubt I would forgive the man you killed.”

  Tamar’s lips curved without permission. “But you’re not God. You’re my friend.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “And you’ll agree it’s not the kind of story Serena should hear.”

  Grant’s brow twitched. “She’s a woman, Tamar, made of flesh and blood and understanding. Not a piece of precious porcelain. She won’t break.”

  “She looks as if she might,” Tamar blurted. “I saw her through the window of the ice parlor. I don’t know if I’m a coxcomb or merely delusional to wonder if I did that to her.”

  “Yes, I think you did,” Grant said brutally. “But cheer up. No one truly dies of a broken heart.”

  Tamar groaned. He felt as if he would. “Stop it, Grant. Apart from the insurmountable poverty, you don’t know the end of Rivers’ story. He waited two days, until I was calm, until I realized the magnitude of what I’d done. I couldn’t give myself up. There was no one but Julian to take my place, to look after my family and what was left of my people. John Rivers knew that. And he watched me bury the body—or said he did.”

  “And he’s been extorting payment for his silence ever since,” Grant said quietly.

  Tamar dragged a tired hand over his face. “I felt I still had to look after them. But our innocence was over. The boys ran wilder, went their own ways. In time, Anna grew a shell hard enough to break teeth on. At least Christianne retained her sweetness and married a good man. She and Anna will always look out for each other. Julian and Sylvester are grown up and making trouble of their own. So, I won’t pay Rivers again. I’ll stand trial.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Grant said. “It’s past, Tamar. If you love Serena—and I think you truly do—offer her the man you are now, with all that you have now.”

  “A crumbling ruin and a debt the size of a Scottish island?”

  Grant shrugged. “I could tell you you’re a good man, a kind man with a rare artistic talent, and an even rarer gift of making people happy. The wealth difference is immaterial. Do you know she told Kate that Braithwaite’s disapproval wouldn’t matter? That she would simply wait until she was twenty-one and no longer needed his consent?”

  Tamar dropped his hands, raising his gaze to Grant. “She said that?”

  “Don’t imagine you’re doing her a favor, immolating yourself. You owe her happiness, not wealth.”

  “I’ve always believed they go together.”

  “No, you haven’t. You’re one of the happiest people I know, despite all the dross that’s been flung at you over the years. None of it has broken you or your love of life. And you’ve never had a penny.”

  Tamar regarded him, trying in vain to prevent the hope leaping in his emotion-battered heart. “I think you see the world very differently from most people.”

  “No. I just help some people see it from a different perspective.”

  “I don’t think most people would agree with the perspective that I would be granting Serena Conway a favor by offering her marriage!”

  “Well,” Grant said, leaning back and gathering his papers. “You have to decide if they’re right. Or if you are.”

  Tamar threw his head back, lying right down on the steps. “I hurt her, I know I did, I thought it was for the best. I was trying to be good. And I don’t know if she’ll forgive me.”

  “She probably won’t,” Grant said flatly and grinned at Tamar’s appalled look. “At first. You’ll need all your charm. And a little time.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kate Grant kept a box at the theatre. “It’s the one extravagance I’ve maintained,” she told Serena. “Well, apart from the carriage. And the horses.”

  The theatre party consisted of Kate and Serena, escorted by Bernard Muir, Mr. and Miss Winslow, and the Penhalligan—they of the following week’s rout. So, it was a lively party, and Serena, who loved the theatre, was determined to enjoy it, to pull herself out of this slough of longing.

  Until she recognized the first actress on stage. The woman who had kissed Tamar at the hotel that night. Then, of course, she had to pretend not to notice, or at least not to be upset. So, keeping the faint smile plastered on her face, she let her gaze stray from the stage. Most people spent more time watching the audience than the play in any case.

  It was a small theatre compared with those she’d attended in London, and it was easy to recognize old friends and acquaintances in the boxes opposite. They smiled and bowed to her, and she nodded back and continued her perusal down to the pit where, inevitably, a few young bucks lurked among the lower orders, ogling the ladies as well as the actresses.

  Almost casually, her gaze met Lord Tamar’s. It didn’t surprise her, not really, but still the world tilted. What did surprise her was that this time, he didn’t look away. Instead, his lips gave the funny upward quirk that had so intrigued her on first acquaintance, and he inclined his head.

  In case anyone was watching, she gave the briefest of nods in return and transferred her attention back to the stage—where his actress, thankfully, no longer held forth.

  It didn’t matter that he hadn’t come for her, that it changed nothing. His very presence was enough to sweep away the lingering dullness of the evening, churning her stomach once more into all the old turmoil of anticipation, anxiety, and yearning. She couldn’t change that. She just had to acknowledge that it meant nothing. It never had.

  And yet the walls of her certainty had already crumbled slightly. Mr. Grant had explained something of Tamar’s harrowing story. She could not but feel pity for his terrified sisters, and for the boy consumed by guilt because he felt he’d failed to defend them, and yet had taken a life. Which he’d been paying for ever since. Literally. Part of her yearned to hold him and soothe away his pain. Part of her admired that none of his losses, none of his difficulties faced so young, had broken him.

  It explained a little about his rejection of her. And yet, the fact that Grant was the one who had had to tell her added to the hurt. In the end, it changed nothing.

  At the first interval, the true purpose of the theatre for most people began—calling on friends and acquaintances in other boxes. And Kate’s box was one of the busiest. For once, Serena had no idea what had gone on in the farce. All her focus was on proving to Tamar that she wasn’t remotely interested in his presence, let alone bothered by it. So, after allowin
g the Penhalligan boy and an almost unknown man to compete for her attention for a full ten minutes, she allowed herself a surreptitious glance into the pit.

  He wasn’t there.

  Of course, he wasn’t. He was in the dressing room of that woman. Or just visiting wealthier friends in their boxes. She was so sure he would not approach Kate’s, that his arrival deprived her of breath.

  He wore his own usual clothes, Braithwaite’s having been returned laundered and brushed earlier in the week, and looked as carelessly handsome and tousled as ever. He seemed to make his way through the throng directly toward her, causing her pulse to leap with mingled outrage and pleasure. But of course, he was approaching Kate, not Serena. And once he’d civilly greeted Kate, he sat next to Catherine for a few moments.

  I don’t care. I don’t care. Damn him, how dare he come in here…?

  “Lady Serena.” Despite all her plans for aloofness, his voice made her jump. She leaned back behind the curtain to hide her suddenly hot cheeks, and as Catherine rose in response to Kate’s beckoning, he sat in the vacant chair, drawing it closer to hers. Now they were almost cut off from everyone else.

  “I came to apologize,” he said, low.

  “Apology accepted.” That at least was cold and aloof.

  “You haven’t heard what I’m apologizing for yet,” he pointed out.

  “I know what you should apologize for.”

  “I shouldn’t have spoken to you as I did in the hotel. It was unforgivable, but I hope you can forgive me in time.”

  “It is nothing,” she said remotely. “Already forgotten.”

  He blinked. “You’ve forgotten that I accused myself of murder?”

  “Oh hush, of course I haven’t forgotten that,” she said crossly, glancing beyond him to see if anyone could have overheard. Almost reluctantly, her gaze came back to his. “That is what you are apologizing for?” she asked, to be sure.

  He shrugged. “For my whole manner to you at that encounter. It was rude and hurtful, and my only excuse is my own pain in feeling it necessary to renounce you, to give you up before I’d even won you.”