by Norma Darcy
Emma pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “She’s just snubbed him. The poor man asked her to go out for a drive with him and she bit his nose off and told him that she never wanted to see him again.”
“Now see what you have done,” said Lady Crowborough, glaring at her husband.
“Don’t blame me. If your daughter is spoiled there is only one person to blame for it,” he responded, hacking through a lump of cake with his knife.
“Me, I suppose?” demanded the Countess, her bosom heaving. “And if Louisa ends up eloping with Nicholas Ashworth, I will know very well who is to blame!”
She flung down her magazine and stalked from the room.
The Earl watched her go, slightly chastened by the temper of his wife. “Devil take it, I’m in trouble again, Emmy.”
“Go and make up with her.”
“Which one?”
Emma laughed softly. “Mama, of course. I will speak to Louisa.”
He sighed and stood up, squaring his shoulders. “I only want what’s best for her. Do you really think she would marry young Ashworth just to flout me?”
“I hope not Papa. I don’t think she’s really in love with him.”
He digested this with foreboding. “God only knows what lurks inside the female mind. I saw Robert Marcham in London a couple of weeks ago. Handsome fellow, just came into another property, won it in a game of cards, so they say. Do you think Louisa would like him better than Malvern? I know an Earl is not as high as a Duke, and he is a hardened gamester, but he’s a capital fellow.”
“And makes Mr Nicholas Ashworth look like a choirboy,” said Emma uncharitably. “No, I do not think Louisa would prefer the Earl of Marcham. Papa, please do not mention it to Louisa. Or Mama for that matter. Unless of course you wish to spend the night sleeping in the stables.”
* * *
“Didn’t you hear me?” cried Louisa, snatching her elbow out of the Duke’s hand. “I said I never want to see you again!”
She flung away from him and opened the glass panelled door into the orangery. The scent of citrus assaulted her nostrils at once and the heat was stifling; very much like the rage within her.
“What have I done?” Malvern demanded following her, a frown between his brows.
The greenhouse was hot and humid even with one of the windows open, and the sun beat down upon them and the sky burned bright blue through the glass roof. Beds were arranged down each side filled with orange and lemon trees and a huge grape vine covered one wall. A white painted seat was set in the middle, but it was too hot to sit there today.
“What have you done?” she repeated, laughing wildly. “You have come here, that’s what you have done!”
He stiffened, the lines of his handsome mouth compressed, and seemed momentarily incapable of a reply.
“Papa thinks you have come here specifically to make me an offer.”
“Your papa thinks it or you think it?” he asked.
“All you have done by following me here is reawaken expectations in my father’s breast,” she replied. “If you had not come, he might have eventually given up the idea and I would not now be harangued from all sides.”
“How very distressing for you.”
“You announced to Nicholas that we were engaged,” she replied, ignoring this. “And because of you and your assumption that I would be so overcome by your wealth and position that I would jump at the chance to wed you, he felt he had to offer for me and now I am engaged to him…and…and I don’t wish to be! I don’t wish to be engaged to anyone,” she said, slicing at the fronds of a palm tree with the edge of her hand. “Papa says that I have to marry you. And I won’t. He cannot make me.”
The Duke stood stock still.
“Oh why did you come here?” she complained; sweat glistening across her brow, her chin, and the hollows of her collar bone. “You’ve ruined everything."
“I came because Marcus invited me,” he replied stiffly.
“And I just happened to be here?”
He looked surprised. “Yes, you happened to be here. You flatter yourself if you think I came here merely to see you.”
She stiffened. “Didn’t you?”
He shook his head in laughing disbelief. “Dear God, the attention you have excited at a few parties has gone to your head,” he said scathingly. “Just because you have all the fortune hunters and fops of London at your feet, don’t think to put me there also. You are not the only pretty girl of my acquaintance.”
She turned away to hide her face. “No indeed, you have hoards of pretty girls swooning at your feet, don’t you?” she retorted. “And you cannot stand it that I am not one of them.”
“This is laughable. What is the matter with you? What has happened to make you rip up at me like this?”
“You come here, following me from pillar to post around the country like some…some lap-dog, hoping that I will take pity on you and accept you,” she continued, swiping angrily at an overhanging orange blossom.
“Lap-dog?” he repeated furiously.
“Or are you hoping that I will finally give in to my father’s demands and that he will bludgeon me into accepting you? Well I can tell you now, I will not!”
The muscles in his jaw clenched tight with anger. “I do not need your father to fight my battles for me.”
“Then why else are you here? Nicholas says you are always sniffing round me.”
“I might have known he would have something to say on the matter,” the Duke snapped. “Do you have a thought in your head that was not put there by him?”
“How dare you? At least he doesn’t treat me as if it is his right to have me!” she flashed, her eyes sparkling with anger.
“Indeed? Have I not been brought up to expect that it is my right, that your family and mine would be allied by our marriage?” he asked, his voice icy with disdain.
“Yes, but that was my sister and she married Mr Trent. I am not my sister and not bound by those promises. You have no right to me.”
He stripped her bare with his eyes. “You speak as if you are something quite out of the common way, as if you are a great prize and I should count myself fortunate to be allowed to pay you my addresses! I am only a Duke after all! You value your own worth too highly, madam.”
She blushed, shamefaced. “And you value your worth too high. You speak of a marriage as if you can just pick a woman off a shelf. Two a penny are they, to a great man like you? You care not whom they are, as long as they are fit for breeding.”
He laughed scornfully. “You talk very freely of breeding, ma’am. I would have thought a twenty-year-old chit from the schoolroom would have shown a little more modesty.”
She flung up her hands. “Oh yes, modesty. Why not preach to me of duty as well? And respectability and virtue. You sound like my father. I might have known that you would preach something as dull as that. We cannot have a young lady who shows any emotion, can we? We cannot talk of love or feelings or passion. You are so stiff and starched I wonder if you have ever let yourself go. I’ll wager you even make love with your coat buttoned up.”
“What do you know about making love?” he asked, his eyes raking her up and down. “A schoolroom miss who’s barely been kissed? Don’t make me laugh.”
“I know more than you!”
“Indeed?” he replied frigidly. “I am sure your father would be very interested to hear it. I think the Earl of Crowborough would be mortified to learn that his daughter has already parted company with her virtue.”
She stared at him in confusion. “You mistake me. I was talking about feelings of the heart and love―things that you apparently think unimportant.”
“I am relieved to hear it!” he said. “There is a good deal of difference between feeling love and making love I assure you. You do yourself no favours in speaking about things which you do not understand.”
“I do understand. I am not a child.”
He laughed scornfully. “No, you’re not a chil
d…not much…if I made love to you right now you’d run a mile.”
“Would I? How do you know I would?”
He appeared momentarily lost for words.
“Do I shock you?” she taunted. “Are your aristocratic sensibilities offended?”
“Hardly,” he replied. “It would take a good deal more than that I assure you.”
“So speaks the man of experience. For you have a hundred years more experience than I, don’t you? You are a man of the world who has loved many women and I am just a child; you had better confine me to the nursery where I belong. Which makes a match between us more than ridiculous, it makes it sordid. Everyone thinks you are old enough to be my father.”
“Thank you for that!” he replied caustically.
“Well, you are! And you treat me as if you are my father,” she cried. “You ask me to take a ride on your horse and go out for a drive with you as if it’s a high treat. I wonder that you don’t buy me dolls and hoops and offer to show me my sums too. You look upon me as your niece or your daughter when all I want from you―”
She broke off in confusion, blushing profusely.
“All you want from me is what?” he demanded, scowling.
“Nothing,” she said in a small voice, playing with the ribbons on her gown.
“Tell me.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Well you did, so come on, tell me. All you want from me is what?”
“Is…is…oh hang it all…is to be kissed!” she said, her voice shaking with passion. She moved away to the other door which had been opened to let some of the heat out and marched through it. She found herself in the kitchen garden, her feet striking against the red brick path that led her through beds of carrots and beetroot and long curly beans, their pods swollen with beans like beads on a string. She got as far as the hothouses before he caught her arm.
“Louisa, if I have not touched you it is because I was afraid of frightening you, not because I don’t wish to,” he said, staring at her.
“Show me.”
“What?”
“Show me, or are you incapable of it? Are you afraid you might get a hair out of place?” she retorted. “You owe me three forfeits, remember? But I only need one. I claim it now. Kiss me.”
The Duke seized her by the shoulders. She stared up into his eyes at once fearful and excited. She had goaded him, pushed him into losing his temper. His eyes were dark and sultry like melted chocolate. Louisa felt herself melting into him.
“Why are you doing this?” he demanded, shaking her, his lips a hands-breadth away from hers.
She was desperate for him to close the distance between them, to feel his mouth on hers, to feel the hard muscles of his arms around her. She parted her lips in open, wanton invitation and she saw his eyes slide to her mouth. He was going to kiss her, he was, she could feel it. Her heart pounded hard and heavy inside her chest.
“Your grace, my lady,” said a voice from behind them, coughing discreetly. “Can I move past you to the hothouses? The path is a bit narrow here and I need to pick a melon for cook and there’ll be a might deal of trouble if she don’t get it.”
They sprang apart, the Duke every bit as red-faced as the sun-burned gardener before him. Fullerton tipped his flea bitten hat and shuffled away, his footsteps punctuated by the handle of his hoe touching the path like a walking cane.
The gardener’s sudden interruption was like the release of a pressure valve and Louisa felt the tension ebbing out of her. She watched Fullerton go with his uneven gait, embarrassed and disappointed and slightly ashamed of her behaviour now that the heat of her frustration had died.
“You are leaving tomorrow,” she said at last, her voice expressionless.
“You know I am.”
“And you have said that you won’t be back.”
“It is unlikely, I think. I have much business to attend to in London, which will keep me there indefinitely―”
“Go then! I want you to go. I wish you had never come here,” she sobbed.
He glared at her, his eyes searching her face. “Do you?”
“You may tell my father that all is at an end between us.”
“I am not your servant madam, you may tell him yourself,” replied the Duke icily.
“There are any number of eligible ladies in the country who would be more than happy to become your Duchess. Unhappily for you, I am not one of them.”
He bowed. “I count myself fortunate to have escaped from an alliance which can only have made us both profoundly unhappy. I bid you good day and wish you every future happiness.”
With that he bowed and strode away.
* * *
“Louisa, there you are,” exclaimed Emma. “Malvern has had to go away on important business. I tried to detain him for half an hour so that you might have the chance to wish him goodbye but he would not wait any longer than the time it took to bring his curricle round.”
“He has gone?” Louisa asked, tears gathering in her eyes. “I thought he wasn’t leaving until tomorrow?”
“He said he had spent too long here already. Are you alright, my love? You look a trifle out of sorts.”
“I have a headache.”
“Oh. Strange that he left in such a hurry. Well, I am sorry that he has gone for he is such good company and I am sure that Uncle Ned will miss him too. Now that I think of it, it is strange that he left in such a hurry for there was no letter or express to call him away.” Emma paused, observing her sister’s white countenance with a suspicious eye. “You did not argue with him did you?”
“No I did not argue with him. Why does everyone automatically think it is my fault?” she asked hotly.
“I was only asking, love. You did tell him that you never wanted to see him again, and there’s no use denying it for I heard you say it.”
“And I meant it. We are at an end, he and I.”
“Oh no, Lou, what happened?”
“I do not wish to talk about it. He―he is far too old and serious for me and I am far too passionate a creature for him. We are decided we should not suit. Now pray do not pain me by ever speaking of him again.”
Emma regarded her sister with a good deal of surprised concern. “But my love, I thought you and he were fast becoming the best of friends?”
“If I were five again, I am sure that a friendship of that kind would suit me. But I am a woman and I need more from a husband than day trips to the seaside. I don’t know why I ever thought our relationship could be any different. I have said a thousand times that I will not marry Malvern and I say it again now―oh, Papa…”
The Earl came into the room his hands clasped behind his back. “You needn’t look so forlorn, Louisa, I am quite well aware of the situation. Malvern has just told me in no uncertain terms that he has changed his mind and is no longer prepared to wait for you―you will listen, Louisa! His actual words were something like hell will freeze over before he willingly sees you again. I congratulate you! You have managed to insult one of the greatest men in the country and I will add, one of the most decent men of my acquaintance. Oh clever girl! I hope you are proud of yourself.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I am! I told you I would not marry him and you would not believe me. I will marry Nicholas Ashworth.”
“Over my dead body,” muttered the Earl. “I’d rather you married Deverill than that young fool! You will marry Robert, Earl of Marcham.”
Her mouth fell open. “But he is older than Malvern!”
“Eight and thirty, I believe.”
“Twenty years older than me!”
“Seventeen actually.”
“And a―a hardened gamester! They say he bet his whole estate on the turn of one card!”
“That he did. Lost it too and then won it back. And he’s a womaniser to boot. You’ll have your hands full with him and it will serve you right. But he is handsome as any man I have ever seen so that should be enough to satisfy your maidenly desire
for a pretty face.”
“I will not! They say he has orgies!”
“He may well do. But he’s richer than Malvern.”
“Papa, please, you do not mean it…”
“Undoubtedly, I mean it. I have been kind and have let you take this fence at your own pace and look at the way you thank me! You have made it virtually impossible for your mama and me to ever invite Malvern to Haymarsh ever again. He is a good man, Louisa, and he worships you. Why do you think he’s been staying here for a fortnight when he has that giant estate of his to run and business to attend to? For you Louisa, you ninnyhammer! Well it doesn’t make hide nor hair of difference now because it is all too late. I will leave on Monday and travel up to see Marcham. I’m sure he’ll be more than happy with the alliance. His reputation is such that no eligible female of rank or birth will have him.”
“Papa…no!”
“You have made your bed, miss and now you will lie on it!”
Chapter 10
“Marcham!” cried Nicholas, later that evening, thoroughly outraged by his love’s news.
“Yes,” replied Louisa.
“But he’s nearly forty.”
Louisa bit her lip. “I know.”
They were sitting by the small ornamental lake and the clouds flew across the sky. The sun had disappeared a few moments ago behind a bank of grey clouds and it did not seem that it was to return that day. Louisa shivered involuntarily.
Nicholas picked up a piece of gravel from the path and hurled it into the pond, scattering the goldfish from where it plopped through the surface. “God…it’s…it’s indecent, that’s what it is,” he said. “Marcham’s a gambler and a womaniser and a…a scoundrel. They say he all but killed a man in a duel when he was seventeen. And he’s a drunk to boot.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s won whatever fortune he possesses at the gaming table.”
“I won’t do it, Nicky,” she declared. “I swear I won’t.”
“No, by Jove, you won’t. I’ll make damn sure of it.”
“But what am I to do? Papa is threatening to ride over to see Marcham next week.”