by Sophia James
‘Goodness. Are we here already? The roads south get quicker and quicker. Perhaps we should persuade your father to acquire a property here rather than in Hertfordshire, Lillian, for it is so much more convenient for London.’ She looked out of the window at the sky. ‘Have you ever seen such a clear horizon, none of the yellow smog on show?’
A group of servants milled around the coach, waiting for the party to alight, the younger boys already hauling the luggage off and listening for instructions as to where it should be taken.
The Davenport family seat of Fairley Manor came to Lillian’s mind as she saw the precision and order that accompanied their arrival. The housekeeper bowed and presented herself and the head butler was most attentive to any needs that the small group might have.
Wilcox-Rice in particular was rather grumpy, barely acknowledging the efforts of the St Auburn servants to please. He did not even want to be here, he mumbled under his breath, and Lilly wondered why she had not seen this rather irritating trait in his nature before.
But with the sun in her face and the promise of a whole weekend before her, she felt buoyed up with hope. She had pressed one of her orange flowers in a book in her travel bag to be able to show Lucas Clairmont, for she knew flowers in this season would have cost him a fortune that he did not possess and she wanted him to know, at least, that she had appreciated the gesture.
‘Lillian!’ Her name was called and she turned to see who summoned her. Cassandra St Auburn walked towards her, her bright red hair aflame and the sweetness in her face all that Lillian remembered.
‘You came! I thought perhaps that you would not.’
‘Indeed, it is such a lovely spot I should be loathe to miss out. Lady St Auburn, this is Lord Wilcox-Rice. It was noted on my invitation that I could bring a partner.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Cassie shook the outstretched hand and Lillian detected disquiet. ‘But I thought your aunt was coming…’
‘Here I am, my dear, a little late to alight, but the bones are not quite as they used to be.’ Jean thanked the servant who had helped her and turned to the house. ‘I was here when I was about your age with Leonard St Auburn.’
‘My husband’s grandfather. He is still here, though he spends much of his day now in the library.’
‘A well-read man, if I remember rightly. Very interested in the world of plants.’
Cassandra laughed and Lillian liked the sound. A happy and uncomplicated girl! Sometimes she wished she could have been more like that.
‘Most of the party are in the conservatory,’ she continued on. ‘Would you join us there after you refresh yourselves?’
‘That would be lovely,’ Lillian answered as they were ushered inside, the quickened beat of her heart steadying a little as they mounted the staircase.
Twenty minutes later they walked towards the group of guests standing around a table well stocked with food and drink.
Lucas Clairmont was nowhere in sight and part of her was annoyed that she could not have met him here informally. The Earl of St Auburn, Nathaniel, came over to join his wife. He had once rather liked her, Lillian recalled, when she had first come out, though it was such a long time ago she doubted he would remember it.
‘Miss Davenport!’ His smile was welcoming. ‘And Lord Wilcox-Rice.’ Her Aunt Jean had elected not to come downstairs, but have a rest so that she would be refreshed for dinner. ‘We are very pleased that you could both make the journey.’
He placed a strange emphasis on ‘both’ and Lillian saw a quick frown pass between the St Auburns, an unspoken warning from Cassandra, she thought were she to interpret it further. Did they already perceive her and John as a couple? She swallowed back worry.
‘You have a large number of people here. Do you expect any more?’ Her mind raced. If Lucas Clairmont did not come after sending her the invitation she would never forgive him!
‘A few of the neighbours will come tonight for dinner and Mr Clairmont will bring Lady Shelby down from London.’
‘Caroline Shelby?’ John’s voice had the same ring of masculine appreciation that she had heard in the tone of each man who had discussed the newest beauty on the London scene.
‘She couldn’t leave town any earlier so Nat asked his friend to wait and escort her.’
Lillian felt the muscles in her cheeks shake, so tight did she try to hold her smile. If Clairmont had invited her here to flirt in front of someone else…Lord, the whole weekend would be untenable and she wondered how she might return to London without causing conjecture.
No. Her resolve firmed-she would not turn tail and disappear. For five days now she had been walking on eggshells at every single social occasion just in case she should see him, her words rehearsed so as to deliver the nonchalant greeting she wanted.
She needed to thank him for the flowers and move on to the next part of her life, and if memory served her well she knew him to be off to America in merely a few weeks’ time.
Luc waited as the girl gathered her shawl and minced to the carriage. Her chaperon, a woman in her mid-forties, followed behind her. Lord, would they ever be ready to go? He looked at his watch and determined that Lillian Davenport should have already arrived in Kent.
Would Nathaniel have told her of the reason for his lateness?
Caroline Shelby placed her hand in his as she gained the carriage steps and kept it there long after the need lapsed. Extracting his fingers, he put his hands firmly by his side, sitting on the seat opposite from the two women and looking out of the window.
‘It should take an hour,’ he said with as little emotion as he could muster.
Caroline giggled, the sound filling the carriage. ‘They say the St Auburns have a beautiful house?’
‘Indeed they do.’
‘They say if you rode from one end of the estate to the other it may take all of a day.’
‘It may.’
The echo of Virginia loomed large. To go from one end of his property to the other would take a week and he missed it with an ache that surprised him.
‘I should love to see it on horseback. Do you ride?’
He nodded, hoping she did not see this affirmation as an invitation.
‘Then we must find some horses and venture out,’ she replied and his heart sank at the sentence.
‘I have some business with the Earl-’ he began but she interrupted him.
‘But you could find an hour or so for a lady who has asked you?’ Her hand closed over his and the chaperon looked away.
‘Certainly.’ Luc resolved to make a large party of this sojourn even as he removed his fingers yet again from hers.
Forty-eight long minutes later the St Auburns’ country seat came into view and the woman who sat next to Lady Shelby finally seemed to deem it time to haul the antics of her young charge in.
‘Your hat is a little crooked, dear,’ she said, deft fingers straightening the bonnet that had come askew when she had fallen forwards against him on one of the more rutted sections of the road. ‘And you really ought to replace your gloves.’
The sight of the house as they swept on to the circular drive was welcome and it seemed as if many of the houseguests still languished in the glassed-in conservatory, enjoying the last rays of the sun. He easily picked out Lillian, her pale hair entwined today into one single bunch, simple and elegant and the white gown complimenting her figure. She had not seen him, but was talking to Cassandra and next to her stood…John Wilcox-Rice.
‘Damn.’ He swore beneath his breath, glad for the chance to vacate the carriage and escape the company of the irritating Lady Shelby and her dour chaperon.
Nathaniel met him first. ‘Wilcox-Rice is here.’ A warning flinted strong.
‘I saw him.’
‘Should I stand between you?’
‘To keep the peace, you mean?’
‘He is rumoured to have offered for her hand. If you mean to pursue that gleam I can see in your eyes…’
‘Have patience, Nat. Any pro
tection that you feel the need to give me will be relinquished in a few weeks.’
‘You think that you’ll be on that boat?’ A strange smile filled the eyes of his friend.
‘Of course I will be. My passage is booked and paid for. There is nothing to hold me here.’
‘Or no one?’
Luc laughed suddenly, seeing where it was Nathaniel was going with this line of question. ‘I tried marriage once.’ His words were bleak and he hated the tightness in them.
‘Elizabeth was a woman who would drive anyone to the bottle. God knows why you still wear her damn ring.’
Luc felt a singular shot of fury consume him. ‘I wear it because it reminds me.’
‘Reminds you of what?’
‘Never to make the same mistake twice.’ He grabbed a drink of fruit punch from the table as he moved away.
Lillian turned as Lucas Clairmont downed a large glass of punch, the lot hardly touching his throat before he helped himself to another.
He looked angry and she could not quite reconcile this man with the one who had sent her flowers and kept silent about a scandal that could easily ruin her. The bruising around his eye was largely gone and the velvet of his dangerous glance made her wary and uncertain. Caroline Shelby seemed bent on following him and Lillian could well see why she had been often named as the most beautiful girl of her Season. Wilcox-Rice beside her laid his hand beneath Lillian’s elbow in a singular message of claim and she saw Clairmont take in the movement.
Caught between convention and other people’s expectations, she could do nothing save for smile, her practised speech of thanks buried under the weight of a careful control.
‘Miss Davenport.’ When she gave him her hand he held it briefly. The warmth of his skin made her start with the recognition of his touch.
‘Mr Clairmont. It is nice to see you once again.’
He dropped contact almost immediately.
‘You two know each other?’ Cassandra was astonished.
‘A little.’ Her words.
‘Not well.’ His.
Cassie’s giggles drew the attention of Caroline Shelby as she gained their small circle.
‘What a lovely party! I knew I should have left London earlier. If it had not been for you, Mr Clairmont, I should not even be here by now. I hope that I have not missed too much, for you all seem very festive.’
‘I am certain you are quite in time, Lady Shelby,’ Lillian returned.
‘Miss Davenport. How wonderful that you should be here. I have long admired your sense of style and bearing and your dress-’ she gestured to the white moiré silk ‘-why, it is just so beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’
‘My friend Eloise says you have your clothes made in England, but I think that cannot be true as the cut and cloth is just too wonderful and I said to my mother the other day that we should ask you about your seamstress and use her ourselves because…’
Was she nervous, Lillian thought, switching out of the constant barrage of never-ending chatter, or just frivolous? She made the mistake of glancing at Lucas Clairmont and almost laughed at the comical disbelief on his face. Lord, and he had had a whole hour of it coming down from London. No wonder he had almost leapt from the coach as soon as it had stopped.
‘Do you enjoy flowers, Miss Davenport?’ Caroline’s shrill and final question pierced her ruminations.
‘I do indeed.’
‘Is not the garden here just beautiful? All in shades of white, too. I suppose with your penchant for the paler hues you would prefer your flowers in the same sort of palette?’
Lillian smiled. Now here was an opening she could take, and easily. ‘Lately I find that I have a growing preference for orange.’
She caught the expression of puzzlement on Lucas Clairmont’s face, but with John at her side could make no further comment.
‘Orange?’ The girl opposite almost shouted the word. ‘Oh, no, Miss Davenport, surely you jest with me?’
When Cassandra St Auburn suggested that the party now retire to dress for dinner Lillian could do nothing but lift her skirts and follow, noticing with chagrin that Lucas Clairmont did not join them.
Chapter Eight
Luc took a sixteen-hand gelding from the stables of St Auburn and rode for Maygate, a village a good ten miles away. He was tired and using the last light of dusk and the first slice of moon to guide him he journeyed west.
Dinner would still be a few hours away and he felt the need to stretch his body and feel the wind on his face and freedom.
Lord, how the English enjoyed their long and complicated afternoon teas, something which in Virginia would have been thought of as ludicrous.
Virginia and a green tract of land that reached from the James to the Potomac. His land! Hewed from the blood, sweat and tears of hard labour, the timber within his first hundred acres bringing the riches to buy the rest.
A piecemeal acquisition!
He ran his thumb across the scar on his thigh, feeling the ridges of flesh badly healed. An accident when the Bank of Washington was about to foreclose on him and he had no other means of paying to get the wood out. He had dragged it alone along the James by horse, unseated as a log rose across another and his mount bolted, pushing him into the jagged end of newly hewn timber. The cut had festered badly, but still he had made it to Hopewell and the mill that would buy the load, staving off the greed of the bank for a few more months.
Hard days. Lonely days.
Not as lonely as when Elizabeth had come, though, with her needs and wants and sadness.
No, he would not think of any of that, not here, not in the mellow countryside of Kent where the boundaries of safety were a comfortable illusion.
‘Lately I find I have a growing preference for orange.’ The words drifted to him from nowhere, warming him with possibility. Was it the flowers he had given her she spoke of? He shook his head. Better for Lillian Davenport to marry Wilcox-Rice than him and have the promise of an English heritage that was easy and prudent.
He stopped in a position overlooking a stream, the shadows of night long as he ran his fingers through his hair. Such dreams were no longer for him and he had been foolish to even think they could be. He should depart again tonight for London, leaving Lilly with her enticing full lips and woman’s body to his imagination. But he could not. Already he found himself turning his horse for home.
Lillian felt like a young girl again, this dress not quite fitting and that one not quite right. She was glad for the help of her lady’s maid and glad too that her aunt Jean was still in bed, her headache having turned into a cold.
When she finally settled on a gown she liked she walked to the window and looked out. The last of the daylight was lost, the moon rising quickly in the eastern sky and the gardens of St Auburn wreathed in shadow. She was about to turn away when a lone rider caught her eye, his gait on the horse fluid. No Sunday rider this, the beat of the hooves fast and furious.
Lucas Clairmont. She knew it was him, the raw power of his thighs wrapped about the steed in easy control and the reins caught only lightly as the animal held its head and thundered on to the gravelled circle of the driveway.
Caught in the moonlight, hair streaming almost to his shoulders and without a jacket, he looked to her like the living embodiment of some ancient Grecian God. What would it be like to lie with such a man, to feel him near her, close?
Shocked, she turned away. Ladies did not ponder such fantasies and she had been warned many times of the man that he was. Yet surely a light flirtation was a harmless thing and, perhaps, if she were generous, she could place her clandestinely bought kiss into that category. But she should take it no further. To cross the line from coquetry into blowsy abandonment would be to throw away everything that she had worked hard for all her life. Stepping to the mirror, she looked at herself honestly, observed eyes full of anticipation and the smile that seemed to crouch there, waiting.
For him!
Adjusting her chemise
so that a little more flesh than usual was showing, she smiled, still proper indeed, but bordering on something that was not. This wickedness that had leaked into her refined formality was freeing somehow, a part of her personality that had until lately lain dormant and unrealised.
‘Oh God, please help me.’ Spoken into the silence of her room, she wondered just exactly what it was that she was asking. For absolution of sin or for the strength to see her virtue in the way she had always tried to view it? Shaking her head, she sought for the words to cancel such a selfish prayer and found that she couldn’t. There was some impunity received, after all, in asking for celestial help and a sense of providence. Tonight she would need both.
Proceeding in to dinner on the arm of the Earl of St Auburn, Lillian was surprised when Clairmont found his seat next to hers. Status and rank almost always determined seating after the formal promenade and she was astonished to see John consigned to a place at the other end of the table and looking most displeased. Cassandra St Auburn raised her glass and Lillian wondered at the definitive twinkle in the woman’s glance. Had she planned this? Was there some communal strategy behind the reason for her invitation? Well, she thought, the usual nerve-racking worry of seating seemed to have been done away with completely and the lack of any remorse was, if anything, refreshing.
At her own dinner parties the seating arrangements were what she always hated the most in her fear of offending some personage of higher status than the next one.
Determining to think no more of it, she took a quick peek at the American. His hair was slicked back tonight, still wet from a late bath she supposed after the exercise that he had taken.
‘I saw you return from your ride.’ She spoke because she found the growing silence between them unnerving.
‘After the carriage trip I needed to blow away the cobwebs.’ A loud trill from Caroline Shelby two places away punctuated his words. ‘Need I say more?’ He smiled as she looked shocked. ‘It must be difficult to always be so virtuous, Miss Davenport.’
‘I am hardly that, Mr Clairmont.’ The kiss they had shared quivered between them, an unspoken shout. ‘You of all people should know it.’