Madame the French dressmaker was at her elbow, urging her to come back into the room so she could continue with her work. Catching sight of a gentleman she gave a French squeak of alarm. Jenny spun about to shield her mistress from prying eyes, but when Emily saw who it was, she forgot Madame’s pins and threw herself at Alec’s inanimate form.
“You’re home at last! You’ve no idea how much we’ve missed you. Grandmamma said not a word. Did you two conspire to surprise me? How like you! Oh, it’s so good to see you.” She grabbed Alec’s hand and dragged him into the bedchamber, oblivious to the fact his mood did not match her own. “Careful where you step. It’s fitting day today. Jenny? Jenny! Forget the tea. Bring champagne. Yes. Champagne. We’re going to celebrate Alec’s return.” She shooed Madame and her assistants away. “I’ll get out of this wretched thing and then I can give you a proper welcome home. So, what do you think of this gown? Do you approve?”
“The bodice is indecent.”
“So Grandmamma says. But it’s the fashion.” She disappeared behind an ornate screen set in one corner of the sunny room and Madame followed, clucking over her in broken English. “You’ll be pleased with me. I’ve kept Phoenix well exercised,” Emily called out from behind the screen. “To the detriment of my horses. I was out on him this morning. Remember that problem he was having with his left hock? Well, it’s all better, so you needn’t worry. I suppose you’ll be taking him back to St. James’s Place? There!”
When she reappeared, Alec was by the window looking out on the long sweep of east lawn and not seeing any of it. He wished himself anywhere but here. He felt suddenly weary. When she came over to him and playfully tugged his sleeve, he could not bring himself to look at her.
“I’m decently dressed,” she said, sitting on the window seat beside where he stood. “All up to the neck and shoes on my feet, too!” When he made no response to her playful banter she added conversationally, “How was Paris? Did you bring me something wonderful? Something to wear? Or something for this room perhaps? And I must thank you for the fan you sent at Christmastime. It’s beautiful. Grandmamma was quite envious.”
Alec turned and looked about the untidy room, at the deep carpets covered in dressmaking patterns and fabrics, at the familiar pictures on the patterned-papered walls, but not at her. Everything was as he remembered it. He had often come up here. To have tea at the little table by the window. To hear the latest news of town and to tell her in return the happenings at the Continental Courts. The look on Tam’s face! The boy had no idea, had he? He wondered if Jenny was at this moment giving him a good tongue-lashing.
Jenny came back into the room then, followed by Tam carrying a tray. He put it down on the small table by the arrangement of sofa, chaise longue and chairs, and glanced at Alec to find him staring at him in a vacant sort of way. Jenny saw it too, and with a quick word, Tam left them alone.
“I brought you a brandy, sir,” Jenny said gently.
“No, Jenny. We are going to drink champagne. Aren’t we, Alec?”
Alec took the brandy glass and drank without tasting.
Emily sipped her champagne thoughtfully. “Will they give you a post here now? You—You aren’t going away again so soon, are you?”
“What’s his name?”
Emily blinked at his bluntness. “I beg your pardon?”
“The name of your betrothed,” he enunciated coldly. “What—is—his—name?”
There was a scratch on the outer door and Jenny was glad to go in answer to it, leaving Emily all alone and feeling for the first time in her life uneasy with her grandmother’s godson. She did not understand his coldness. She thought her own happiness would be sufficient for him to be happy for her. How many times had he lectured her in the manner of an elder brother, on the importance of being guided by her elders, but not to be forced into a marriage she disliked. And she had done precisely that. Perhaps he needed reassurance? Fortified with a gulp of champagne, she bravely stared up at him and said,
“I want to marry Edward. When he sought my hand in marriage, Grandmamma let it be known that the decision was mine, that I did not have to accept him if I did not want to. But,” she said in a clearer voice, her happiness giving her strength, “I do want to marry him. I want to marry him very much.”
“Edward? Edward…” Alec repeated quietly. “That isn’t much to go on. Who is this fellow?”
“We had only met on a few occasions, and those at public gatherings, but I knew straight away that if he did ask me I would accept him,” Emily continued, because Alec looked wholly unconvinced. “Grandmamma is very happy for me, especially so because I am to marry an earl.” She looked down at the bubbles of champagne, adding nervously, “Not that that circumstance means much to you—”
“It doesn’t. I don’t care for title,” he stated. “Edward, earl of what?”
“—but it matters to Grandmamma,” Emily said firmly, finishing the sentence despite being close to tears. She wished Jenny would return. She didn’t know for how much longer she could sit here with Alec looking for all the world as if her engagement were the worse news he had ever heard in his life. “Edward warned me you’d take it badly,” she confessed naively. “But I assured him you would only want for my happiness. And you do want me to be happy, don’t you, Alec?” she asked in a small voice. “Regardless of the ill feeling between the two of you, I hope you’ll see that he wants to make me happy. He is very solicitous and caring and, oh—everything a girl could ask for in a husband. I know you’ve been estranged since small boys. You could very well be strangers, not brothers at all…”
He stopped listening the moment he realized she was engaged to his elder brother. If he was shocked into senselessness to discover she was engaged to be married, he was now beyond rational thought knowing that the man who had robbed him of her was his own brother; this not the first time his brother had interfered in Alec’s life.
Six years ago, Delvin had put a stop to Alec’s engagement to Selina Vesey. A second son with a thousand a year wasn’t entitled to marry an heiress, whatever his brilliant prospects in the Foreign Department. When his elder brother, who was also head of the family, publicly voiced his opposition to such an unequal match, Alec’s fate was sealed. Alec not only endured the humiliation of having his suit rejected by Selina’s father, but was forced to stand by while the love of his life was married off to George Jamison-Lewis, who had ten thousand a year, was grandson of a duke and one of his brother’s cronies.
Alec never expected to fully recover from his disappointment, but time helped close the wound. And just when he had convinced himself that in asking Emily to marry him he would finally be moving his life forward, his brother’s timely interference had robbed him once more of personal happiness. What was he to do?
Before he knew what he was about, he found himself halfway down the curved staircase, full of purpose—to do what, he had no idea. He just knew he had to get out of St. Neots House, to escape from a thousand memories locked within its walls, and to get away from Emily. He had to find a place where he could think calmly and rationally. Failing that, he would find a place where he need not think at all…
A LADY IN BLACK mourning crepe had just ascended the staircase, and it was inevitable that they would collide; such was the width of her hooped petticoats and Alec’s blind determination to quit St. Neots House. The lady’s quick thinking saved her from taking a tumble. She grabbed the banister rail with a gloved hand, while the other clung to the gentleman’s sleeve; a small party taking leave in the foyer below breathed a collective sigh of relief.
It was not until the woman’s body fell hard against him and he instinctively caught her that Alec realized he had run full force into someone coming up the staircase. He held her hard against his chest, their hearts thudding as one as he waited for them both to be steady on their feet. In the brief moment she was in his arms he breathed in the pleasing flowery scent of her hair, and inexplicably felt a stab of nostalgia. He knew her i
dentity at once. Instantly he released her with a curt apology for crushing the silk of her petticoats and would have passed her then, but she unintentionally moved in the same direction, and again they blocked each other’s path. The woman’s quiet apology finally lifted Alec’s gaze to her face.
She was one step below him and had gathered up her billowing petticoats, positioning herself with her straight back up against the mahogany balustrade to let him pass. Yet, Alec remained as if fixed to the marble step. He stared at her as if at an apparition, for he had not been within ten feet of her in six years. He never dreamed of seeing her in mourning, though in the darkest days of his despair he had wished it upon her time and again. But not here, not now, not on this of all days. Large dark eyes full of sorrow stared up at him and he turned his head away, color flooding his close-shaven cheeks.
“Did Emily tell you her news, Mr. Halsey?” Selina Jamison-Lewis asked quietly, the blood drumming so loudly in her ears at this unexpected encounter that she couldn’t keep the tremble out of her voice. “Her engagement, it—it came as a surprise to all of us.”
Alec’s blue eyes stared pointedly at her mourning gown before again meeting her eyes. “No doubt an ill-timed and disappointing announcement for you, Madam…?”
Selina’s lips parted, but she did not trust herself to speak and so stood mute as he made her a short bow and went on his way, her blush as red as the hair of the young footman who rudely bumped her shoulder in his pursuit of Alec Halsey.
Alec ignored the knot of persons leave-taking by the door and pushed through the ministering footmen without a word or a look. When the butler stepped forward with his greatcoat, he demanded his sword and put out a hand for his gloves. Neave said something to him, but he wasn’t listening. A bejeweled hand touched his arm. It was his godmother. But Alec angrily shrugged off the Duchess of Romney-St. Neots as he snatched his sash and sword from a footman, oversetting the Duchess, who stumbled backwards, to be caught at the elbow by her butler. Five footmen rushed to her aid. An old man with gray-grizzled hair stepped forward, but it was the Earl of Delvin who took matters into his own hands.
The Earl poked his brother in the kidney with the end of his Malacca cane.
“You’re in a hurry, Second,” Delvin drawled. “Can’t go bargin’ about other people’s houses knocking ’em willy-nilly. It’s not done. Not done at all. Dear Mrs. Jamison-Lewis could’ve broken her neck on the stairs just now, and you of all people certainly wouldn’t want to see the beautiful young widow join her dearly departed so soon, would you? For a diplomatist, you certainly show a marked lack of man—”
It needed only that. Alec snatched at the cane and threw it away from him before pushing his brother up against the nearest wall, a hand about the layers of lace at his throat, long fingers pushing the Earl’s chin up until he was forced to look Alec directly in the eye. No match for his younger brother’s strength born of rage, Delvin offered little resistance.
“You cold-hearted blood sucker,” Alec spat in his face. “I wish to God you were no brother of mine!”
The Earl attempted a moment of bravado. “You’re a fool, Second,” he hissed viciously. “Time you learned your place: No female wants second best.”
“If they want you then they’re not worth the having,” Alec sneered, fingers convulsing about his brother’s throat until the Earl spluttered for breath and clawed at his strong hand.
A cluster of open-mouthed footmen stared at the two gentlemen struggling by the open front door. As mesmerized as his fellows, the butler stood rooted to the spot until the Duchess demanded that someone do something to break up the fight. With an imperious snap of his fingers, Neave scattered the footmen. It was left to the grizzled-haired old man to step in and put a stop to the one-sided fight between his nephews.
“Alec! Stop!” growled Plantagenet Halsey. “Let him be!”
Delvin was released at once and fell to his silken knees, gasping great gulps of air into his deprived lungs. He quickly picked himself up and attempted to regain his arrogant bravado by brushing the sleeves of his velvet frock coat and straightening the lace at his wrists as if he had been touched by something unclean. Alec stared at him with contempt, hands balled into fists of frustrated rage. He saw the butler with eyes suitably lowered, and standing beside him the freckled-faced footman who had introduced himself as Tam. And when he glanced at his uncle, he saw so much unspoken sadness in the old blue eyes that Alec turned away from him with impatience. A glance up at the staircase and there was Selina still on the step where he had left her. God, what had he done to deserve her silent witness? His humiliation complete, Alec made the Duchess a curt bow and strode from the house.
Deadly Engagement at lucindabrant.com
ABOUT LUCINDA BRANT
WHEN NOT BUMPING about 18th century London in my sedan chair or exchanging gossip with perfumed and patched courtiers in the gilded drawing rooms of Versailles, I write award-winning Georgian historical romances and mysteries (with lashings of romance). My books are set in 1700s Georgian England, with occasional crossings to continental Europe. I pull up the reins at the French Revolution where I lost a previous life at the guillotine for my unpardonably hedonistic lifestyle as a layabout aristo!
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