by Darcy, Norma
“You are being overly dramatic, my lord. I have never given you cause to believe that there was any agreement between us. I made it perfectly clear at the outset that I was not interested in matrimony.”
“No,” he agreed, “although it seems that matrimony with Peabody suits you just fine.”
“Whom I choose to marry is none of your business,” she said frigidly. “Now I must ask you to leave. It is highly improper for you to be in here―”
“I thought you had sworn not to marry any man,” interrupted his lordship rudely. “If that is the case then why is Peabody accepted when the rest of mankind is kicked aside?”
She lifted her chin mutinously. “Mr. Peabody is…familiar with my circumstances.”
Hr frowned at her. “What circumstances?”
“I am unable to…I must ask you to leave. Immediately.”
“What circumstances?” he repeated. “Tell me.”
She shook her head. “I cannot tell you…it is…I cannot.”
“Is it so very bad then?”
She made no answer and stared at the floor in silence.
“Oh, I see,” he said, making an impatient gesture with his hands. ”I am not good enough for your confidence, is that it? I am not to be trusted with it. And yet you choose to confide in Mr. Peabody,” he continued accusingly.
“He has been a friend of the family for years,” she said coldly. “And who I choose to confide in, my lord, is―”
“And have I shown myself to be unworthy of your confidence?” the earl demanded.
“You don’t understand.”
“Damn right I don’t,” he replied, balling his fists against the mantelpiece.
She flinched at the anger in his voice. “Shouting at me is hardly likely to induce me to confide in you, my lord.”
He suddenly came towards her and so caught her by surprise that she did not have time to move. She was trapped against the wall. He reached out a finger and lifted her chin so that he could look into her eyes.
“Am I so very bad, Georgie?” he asked in quite another tone, a tone which tugged at Miss Blakelow’s heartstrings. She could not look at him. She stared at the folds of his cravat, judging her gaze to be safe there.
“No, my lord,” she whispered.
“Am I not handsome enough for you? Is that it? Too old, perhaps? Or are my manners completely beyond the pale?” he asked softly.
She shook her head, confused by his sudden change of tack. His anger she could cope with, but these gentle reproaches against himself slipped under her guard and tore at her resolve.
“Perhaps you would rather see me in that hideous cherry striped waistcoat he wears? Or lavender coloured pantaloons? I am obviously far too dull a creature for a woman like you.”
“Oh, don’t…you don’t understand…,” she cried, her voice choked by emotion, “I need to provide for my family.”
“Then let me provide for them,” he said. “If you think that Joshua Peabody is going to become a father figure for those young brothers of yours, then think again, my girl. The man is far too selfish to be bothered with any of them.”
“He is a good man…who…who I am grateful to.”
“Grateful?” he ejaculated.
“Yes.”
“Well I can remedy that,” he said promptly. “Take Thorncote. Take the whole damn lot and be grateful to me instead and we’ll be married just as soon as I can arrange it.”
She shook her head, smiling faintly.
“Georgie…am I so repulsive to you? Can you not stomach me as your husband?” he whispered.
“It’s not that,” she said in a tremulous voice, looking down at her hands as if they held the answer. “But I…I cannot bear to have my heart broken again. It…it took me many years to find some sort of peace…here, at Thorncote. And I know that I am not enough for a man like you. You think you want me now but that is because a woman who refuses you amuses and fascinates you―for a while anyway. But the novelty will wear off soon enough and I don’t want to be cast aside when you tire of me.”
“What nonsense is this?”
“It is true, my lord. You are used to…to taking your pleasures wherever you find them. But I am a selfish creature and if you were my husband, I would not want to share you with anyone else.” She turned away and walked to the fireplace. “And now I think you should leave.”
There was a silence.
“So that is it?” he asked, staring at her. “You have already made up your mind about me. You have already found me guilty of adultery when I have not even placed my ring upon your finger.”
She returned no answer. In truth, she could not.
“I am not leaving this room until you convince me that you don’t love me,” he said, squaring his shoulders.
Of all the conceited, arrogant―! She gasped. “You are unbelievable!”
“Well?” he demanded.
“No, my lord, shocking as I know it must be to you, but I am not in love with you.”
“Really.”
She glared at him. “I don’t mean to give you pain, much though you deserve it, but although I esteem you―”
“You what?”
“If you will allow me to finish, my lord, I was about to say that I esteem you and have a little affection for you, it is true, and we have become friends―good friends, but that does not mean that I―”
“Friends be damned,” he muttered, coming across the room with several long strides and before she knew what he was about, had jerked her into his arms. He took her chin in one hand and turned her face up to his. “Do you mean to tell me that you have not imagined us like this?” he whispered.
“Let me go,” she said her eyes searching his face, her breathing fast and shallow.
He did not heed her request but instead pulled her rather tighter against him. “Do you mean to convince me that you have not lain awake wondering what it would be like to let me make love to you?”
She braced a hand against his chest, her heart beating wildly as she stared up into his eyes. “You should not speak to me of such things, my lord. It is highly improper.”
“What nonsense. You are no milk and water miss to be shocked by a little plain speaking. I want you and I think that you want me too.”
“You flatter yourself.”
“Do I? Then why are you trembling?” he asked.
“I’m not.”
“You are. Georgie…” he whispered with the ghost of a laugh. ”Don’t you think that as an inveterate gambler, I can tell when my opponent is bluffing?”
Her eyes fell away from his. “You describe your own imaginings, my lord, not mine. I have never thought of us in that way.”
“I do not believe you. I think you have imagined yourself in my arms as I have imagined myself in yours,” he whispered. “Deny it if you dare.”
His mouth swooped down to lock with hers in a kiss that shook her almost to her knees. His arm was an iron bar around her waist, holding her tightly to him as if he would never let her go. His other hand lay tenderly against the angle of her jaw, caressing the skin of her throat and the hollow above her collar bone. She felt as if she ought to breathe, but it was beyond her; he had robbed her of the ability to function in a normal manner. Her arms were trapped between their chests; her hands laid flat against the lapels of his coat and of their own volition, crept up around his neck. He showed no sign of relinquishing his hold upon her, nor of breaking the kiss, rather he took it deeper, tilting his head so that he could have greater access to all of her mouth.
As he felt her arms return his embrace, his tongue found and entwined with hers and the kiss went into another stratosphere. He groaned at the pure pleasure of it. God, this was wonderful! She was kissing him back with a passion and intensity that staggered him. The rake in him wanted to carry her over to the bed and make her his. But he wouldn’t. She deserved better than that. She deserved the best of him and he would not dishonour her by relieving a need that had become in the last mon
th, almost unbearable.
He kissed her and went on kissing her even as someone entered the room behind them and gasped at the sight of Miss Blakelow locked in his lordship’s arms.
It was Miss Blakelow who came back to reality first and started to pull away.
“You cannot deny it, Georgie,” his lordship said, staring down at her with eyes the colour of a stormy sky, his breathing slightly laboured. “Marry your Joshua Peabody if you wish, but don’t expect me to watch you do it.”
He turned without another word, pausing only to retrieve his gloves from the bed.
Aunt Blakelow stared in shock from her niece to the earl and back again as he strode from the room. Their eyes met. Miss Blakelow saw the condemnation in her aunt’s face and turned away.
“Oh, Georgie…” said her aunt.
Miss Blakelow held out a hand as if to keep the disapproving words at bay, tears starting in her eyes. “Don’t,” she whispered.
“My dear girl, what can you have been thinking of?” she demanded.
Her niece shook her head, momentarily unable to speak for the choking sensation in her throat.
“He was in your bedchamber…I cannot…you must see the impropriety of such behaviour. My dear Georgie, you of all people should understand the very great danger of―”
“Please, Aunt. Don’t,” begged Miss Blakelow, steadying herself with hands upon the dressing table. She touched her fingers to her lips. Her mouth still tingled from his lordship’s kiss; her body yearned for the comforting warmth and strength of his embrace. Georgiana Blakelow hadn’t been kissed like that in a very, very long time.
Tears swam before her eyes. He was right. How could she deny it? She had responded to his caresses willingly enough, indeed she had returned them most ardently. She was in very great danger of losing her heart to him, if she hadn’t already. All her determination not to succumb to his charm had failed. She was as vulnerable now as she ever had been in the past, to the joy of having a love and keeping it for her very own. She had learned nothing. The brutal, painful lessons of her youth had not rid her character of its passionate will. And she had realised it in the earl’s arms. He had awoken feelings in her that she had convinced herself no longer existed. She had put them out to pasture, buried them deep. But one kiss was enough to rouse her longings. She looked around her, seeing the familiar drapes, the wall hangings, the portraits on the wall, as if for the first time.
“You were kissing him,” said Aunt Blakelow in a low voice, coming further into the room. “Tell me at once what has happened in this room.”
Miss Blakelow made no answer. She closed her eyes in pain.
“Georgie?”
“Nothing!” cried Miss Blakelow. “Nothing save a kiss.”
“You are certain?”
“Yes, I am certain!”
Aunt Blakelow looked relieved. “He is a…a libertine. You cannot honestly expect that a man like that will come to care for you―?”
“I don’t expect anything,” replied Miss Blakelow.
“Indeed? And is that why you have been encouraging his advances?”
Miss Blakelow swung around. “Encouraging him?” she repeated blankly. “How can you talk so? Have you not heard me refuse him repeatedly? Have I not told you on several occasions that I have no interest in wedding him?”
“You have,” Aunt Blakelow agreed, folding her hands primly before her, “most emphatically. But I am not a fool. I have seen the way that you look at him. And so it seems has his lordship. I feared how it would be. He seemed determined to set you up as his latest flirt from the start of your acquaintance. And doe-eyed looks to a man of his kidney―”
“I did not give him doe-eyed looks,” flashed Miss Blakelow, annoyed and embarrassed.
“Georgie, have you learned nothing?” asked her aunt, coming towards her. “Are you still so easily lured by a handsome face?”
“You pain me, Aunt, by speaking so.”
“I thought you had more sense.”
“You encouraged me to go out driving with him! You seemed very keen on his company,” retorted Miss Blakelow.
“Yes,” said her aunt, “but only because it was a means to an end. I thought our primary motive was saving Thorncote. Had I any inkling of your feelings… Had I known you were foolish enough to fall in love with the man, like the very greenest schoolroom miss―”
Miss Blakelow could stand no more. She swiped her cloak from the chair and ran from the room.
Chapter 23
“Caroline?” asked Lord Marcham, two days later, as he walked to the window of her drawing room and looked out across the narrow London street. “When will you let me take you out of this house?”
“I like this house,” his sister replied as she set a stitch in a shirt she was mending. She looked fondly at the garment in her hands, her son’s shirt, her lad who was fast growing up before her eyes.
“It’s small,” said his lordship crushingly. “And wouldn’t James like to live at Holme with all the animals and miles of parkland to call his own?”
“I am sure he would. But I am no sponge, Robbie. We are happy here and it’s perfect for my needs. We don’t all need a palatial mansion you know.”
“You are living like a pauper when you don’t need to.”
“Hardly,” she said, smiling and setting aside her stitchery.
Lord Marcham nodded at the pile of young James’s books on the table. “Does Julius give you anything to help with the upkeep?”
She turned her eyes upon him. “Julius? What, pray, has he to say to this?”
“He is the father, isn’t he?”
Mrs. Weir coloured faintly. “George is the father.”
“George had been dead six months when you conceived James. Either yours was the longest pregnancy in history or your arithmetic is sadly awry.”
“Why are you here, Robbie?” she demanded.
He held up his hands. “Alright, alright, I’ve said my piece. I just think you could do with a little financial help now and again, that’s all. You won’t take anything from me.”
“George left me amply provided for.”
“He left you with a small competence,” the earl corrected gently.
“Robbie, are you here for a reason other than to criticise my housekeeping arrangements?”
“Do I need a reason?” he asked, turning and leaning his hips against the window sill.
“No,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. “But you have one all the same and I don’t imagine that you were just, well…passing. So? What brings you here?”
“Damned if I know,” he muttered, running a hand over his jaw.
Mrs. Weir looked at him quietly, her head on one side like a watchful bird, observing the tired look about his eyes and the pensive look on his face.
“Are you in trouble?” she asked, watching him.
He looked surprised and for a moment the frown on his brow lifted. “Me? God no…well not the sort of trouble you mean.”
“I see.”
He fell once more into brooding silence.
Mrs. Weir folded her stitchery and placed it in the work basket at her feet. She smiled. “Who is she?”
He moved away from the window and came to sit beside her. “Is it that obvious?”
“A little,” she replied, patting his knee. “Tell me all.”
“You said you wanted to see me make a fool of myself over a woman?” he said bitterly, “well now you have your wish.”
“I don’t wish to see you unhappy, Robbie. Never that.”
He put his head in his hands. “She won’t have me.”
Mrs. Weir blinked in surprise. “Oh.”
“I’ve never felt like this…I mean…oh damn it all, she’s different. This time it’s different.”
“I see. And is she beautiful?”
He shrugged. “She is beautiful…to me anyway. She is not what you’d call…obvious. But her figure is good.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“Do I know her?” asked Mrs. Weir, wisely changing tack at that moment, “what is her name?”
“Georgiana Blakelow. Daughter of Sir William Blakelow of Thorncote.”
His sister raised a brow in surprise. “Blakelow? That’s one of your neighbours, isn’t it?” At his nod, she frowned. “Georgiana…I cannot place the name.”
“No,” he said gloomily, “and neither can anyone else.”
“A mystery, Robbie?”
“A mystery indeed.”
“Describe her to me. Is she blonde like the other Blakelows?”
“Not in the least,” he said getting up again to pace around the room. “She has brown hair and green eyes.”
Mrs. Weir blinked at this very un-lover-like appraisal of the woman’s attributes. “Is she tall? Short? Round? Elegant? Really Robbie, you are hardly painting a portrait for my imagination. How do you expect me to remember her on such a description as she has brown hair and green eyes? You have just described a good percentage of the women of Worcestershire.”
He sighed and rubbed his fingers across his brow. “She is tall and very slim…perhaps too slim if you listen to Sarah. She is intelligent and pretends that she is bookish for reasons that I have yet to discover. In fact, she plays the bluestocking very well and most of society is fooled by her little act. She would have the world paint her as a recluse, a moralising bore and wears those infernal spectacles to keep the world at a distance and I might add, to aggravate me…” he said, pausing as his eye kindled with annoyance. “But I have seen the laughter in her eyes and I know that she is not as strait-laced as she would have us all believe. It’s an act, a ruse. She dresses continually as if she is in deep mourning, wears a hideous cap upon her head so that no one can catch a glimpse of her hair and plays the part of the governess and guardian to her younger brothers and sisters when I suspect that she would like nothing better than to waltz the night away in a man’s arms. She is hiding something from me…from the world…and I do not know what it is. She won’t tell me what troubles her when she knows that she might confide in me and I will do my best to help her if I can. I have asked her to marry me countless times and she has refused me on every occasion. I suspect that she would like children of her own and I want nothing better than to give them to her, but she pushes me away. She has built a thirty-foot thick wall around her heart and as fast as I tear it down, she rebuilds it again.”