by Norma Darcy
He relented. “May I offer to escort you home, ma’am? As a peace offering?”
“No thank you. I had rather walk,” she replied, pulling on her gloves.
“Oh Lord, you are giving me that martyr look that all females employ when they are put out. I apologize then, if you must look at me that way.”
She struggled with the urge to smile and conquered it. “You are mistaken. I am not at all put out, I assure you.”
“Indeed? And is that why you are looking at me as if you wish to push me into that open grave over there and fill in the soil around me?” he demanded.
This time she did smile. “You have not angered me.”
“Good. And now you must apologize to me for insinuating that I am shallow, Miss Blakelow.”
Her lip quivered. “I did not say that you were shallow, my lord.”
“You did. You said that I was incapable of seeing the worth of any woman who was not blessed with superior beauty.”
“You are no different than any other man, my lord,” she offered.
“And is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I say only that you cannot help it. It is nature after all.”
“It gets better and better,” he cried, flinging up his hands in mock horror. “She now says that I have no control over my lustful feelings and that my brain is disengaged when in the company of a beautiful woman.”
Miss Blakelow met his gaze and smiled sweetly but made no answer.
He laughed shortly. “Very well, ma’am, that’s how it’s to be, is it? You will allow me to tell you that you are extremely impertinent.”
She dimpled. “And you will allow me to tell you that you goad me into incivility and then look outraged when you make me do it.”
He stared at her for a moment and then surprised her by laughing. “And you goad me into losing my temper, Miss Blakelow, and I promise you that I did not wish to do it on such a fine day. Come,” he said, extending his arm, “let us be friends. I will drive you home, and you may tell me all about the sermon, which I must confess I heard hardly ten words of.”
He smiled that smile of his, and Miss Blakelow felt her heart skip a beat. When he looked at her like that, with the impish smile dancing in his eyes, she felt a connection between them, a connection that was as disturbing as it was dangerous, and she wished him at Jericho, or a million miles away from her at any rate. She had once again to remind herself of who he was, of what he was. She had to remind herself of all that had befallen her, of everything she had done to achieve her current state of contentment. She would not give it all up for the smile of a handsome man, a smile that she knew very well had been practiced upon the weaker sex and perfected for ultimate effect.
“Now tell me honestly, Miss Blakelow,” said his lordship, “how long into Mr. Norman’s sermon was it before you fell asleep?”
“I did not fall asleep, my lord,” she answered with a faint smile. “I heard every word.”
“I turned around at one point, and I thought I detected a distinct nodding of your head during one key passage concerning the fate of the Israelites.”
“And why were you watching me when you should have been paying attention to Mr. Norman?”
“Because you are far prettier and not nearly so dull.”
She gave him a sideways look. “Flirting with me, my lord?”
He smiled. “A little.”
“And have you practiced that speech all morning?”
He shook his head in mock censure. “For shame, Miss Blakelow. Has no one ever taught you how to accept a compliment?”
“A compliment from your lips does not sit well, my lord. It has rather a too studied air to be convincing.”
“My word, you speak your mind to me as you wish, do you not, ma’am?” he marveled. “You might wish to know a man before you condemn him merely on the say-so of others.”
“I rather think that you forged your reputation with your own hands, my lord. No one forced you into the life that you have led, and you cannot blame anyone but yourself if people judge you by your actions.”
“And whatever happened to ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone’? I would have thought that a fine Christian woman like you would have a little compassion for a man who has lost his way?”
“You have not lost your way, my lord. You chose the route that you have taken. You came into your inheritance far too early, and you had no one to check you. That behavior is allowable in a boy of eighteen but not in a man of six and thirty.”
“Please, Miss Blakelow, do not, I beg of you, hold back,” he replied, a distinct hint of annoyance in his voice. “Why not say what is really on your mind?”
“Because if I did, you would not help us with Thorncote,” she said bluntly.
He stared at her for a long moment, and just when she thought he was about to lose his temper, he burst out laughing. “Frank and to the point, Miss Blakelow. I swear that I have never before met your like.”
“I will take that as a compliment, for I believe you meant it,” she replied.
He shook his head, regarding her with wonder. “I did mean it! You are a truly remarkable woman, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
“You have a way of making me feel five years old again,” he said with amusement. “I am sure my father was the most fearsome man on this planet, but I think that even he could have learned much from you.”
She winced. That touched a nerve. She knew that she deserved it for goading him but it hurt nonetheless. “I have offended you, my lord.”
“Not at all, ma’am,” he said touching his gloved fingers to his hat, “but I will take my leave of you. I have spied a beautiful woman, and my uncontrollable baser urges force me to her side. Good day.”
He strode away without another word toward a petite woman with a riot of golden curls framing her face. Jane Bridlington, daughter of a retired admiral, who lived in Loughton with her parents. She was seventeen, beautiful, and dressed in a fashionable pelisse of blue, complete with military-style trimmings.
Miss Blakelow watched him tip his hat and smile at the girl. So proves my point, she thought with an inward smile, as she watched them converse and the young lady blushed prettily.
Miss Blakelow’s own heart was still pounding at her audacity for goading him as she had done. She would not have dared speak to anyone as she had to Lord Marcham. But hopefully he had learned his lesson. Rake though he was, he would learn that he needed more than a handsome face and an engaging smile to capture her heart. Miss Blakelow of Thorncote was no fool.
With a satisfied smile she turned to the path that took her back through the fields and home.
CHAPTER 6
LORD MARCHAM WAS ON the verge of walking out.
If he had to endure one more felicitation from the father of a simpering Miss On-the-catch-for-a-rich-husband, he would scream.
What in God’s name was he doing here? He never went to these affairs. And he hadn’t been to Mrs. Silverwood’s ball in years. It was hot. It was a crush. It was every bit as tedious as he’d remembered. And on entering the room, he was very soon furnished with the knowledge that Miss Blakelow had been correct, and news of his supposed engagement to Lady Emily Holt was spread far and wide. He had been congratulated by two persons whom he had no recollection of ever having met before in his life and clapped on the back by several of his friends demanding to know if they might have his mistress now that he was about to be leg-shackled.
When the woman in question, Lady Emily Holt, arrived half an hour later, she started visibly at the sight of him, stared miserably at the floor, and would hardly meet his eye. He made it his mission to inform as many people as he could during the course of the evening that no such engagement existed and told himself that he did not care if her reputation was ruined in the process. He moved purposefully toward his supposed fiancée, determined once and for all that he would make her publicly deny all knowledge of an engagement between them, but she sa
w him approach and made good her escape before he could work his way through the crowd to her side.
The suspicion that news of the engagement had been spread abroad by Lady Holt was confirmed when he overheard that lady discussing bridal clothes with a group of her friends, declaring that the Countess of Marcham would have no cause to fear that any daughter of hers would turn up to her wedding dressed like a pauper. Marcham, goaded into incivility, muttered that she might dress up like a queen if she chose, but he would not be there to see it.
He reached for a glass of champagne.
Damn and blast Thomas Edridge. His information was sadly mistaken. Thomas had told him that the Blakelows would be in attendance that evening. And for something to do, he’d come along, telling himself that an evening out was what he needed to dispel his gloomy thoughts, and that dancing with pretty girls was much preferable to an evening spent alone in his library with nothing for company other than a book.
He saw Lady Emily stand up with a young man in a wasp-waisted coat, and she moved across the floor as gracefully as a butterfly. The smile she gave the gentleman was truly something to behold. The lucky man glowed.
The earl frowned. She never looked at me that way, thought his lordship, watching her with sudden blinding insight. Was the chit in love with Richard Barford?
Damn. How had he missed that? Was he losing his touch?
“March!” cried a voice at his elbow as a hand slapped him on the back.
“Don’t you dare,” his lordship said through gritted teeth.
Mr. Thomas Edridge, one of Marcham’s oldest friends, spread his hands innocently and laughed. “Don’t what?”
“Offer me your congratulations.”
“Well, I was going to ask you if it were true,” he confessed. “Is it?”
“No,” snapped the earl.
Mr. Edridge grinned. “I thought as much. Couldn’t ever see you willingly going up the aisle . . . thought it was all a hum. Told my friend Jim as much when he tackled me on the subject last week. So how have you managed to get yourself engaged when you don’t wish to be?”
“Mothers. Two of them. Hers and mine.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Quite,” agreed Marcham gloomily.
“So dance. Dance the night away with as many pretty girls as you can find.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
The earl turned. “Because I’d rather hack my arm off with a razor than endure another peal of false congratulations over my impending nuptials.”
“March, don’t be a fool. Flirt outrageously with every other girl here. Make her cry off.”
“I need to go home.”
“Home? How can you talk so? Do you know, Rob, I swear you have become middle-aged. Shocking as I know that must sound, I feel it my duty to drop the hint to you.”
“I am middle-aged,” said his lordship, somewhat dismally contemplating this admission.
“Well, I never thought to hear you say that! What has happened to the man I grew up with? What happened to London’s most infamous rake?”
“He grew up.”
“Oh, tosh! You, my friend, are bored. You need a new flirt.”
His lordship groaned.
“A pretty face, a kiss or two, the promise of a little dalliance would put the ink back in your quill . . . There! The blonde chit in the white gown by the door. Isn’t she the most heavenly creature? Even you cannot be unmoved by such beauty.”
Lord Marcham turned to inspect the vision his friend had described to him. “She is, I will own, a pretty girl.”
“A pretty girl?” repeated Mr. Edridge. “What is wrong with you, man? She’s ravishing.”
“But,” drawled his lordship, bored with the whole subject, “distinctly un-ravishable. One requires a ring for the fourth finger of her left hand to indulge in any of the activities currently occupying your mind, Tom.”
His friend grinned. “No harm in trying, is there?”
“If you have a mind to be leg-shackled before the week is out, by all means try. I won’t stand in your way.” His lordship smiled. “I retired from my rakish ways quite some time ago. Didn’t you know?”
“That’s what they say to be sure. But no one believes it.”
“It’s true,” the earl protested.
“Have you tired of women? The thrill of the chase? The chance of a kiss behind a husband’s back? Don’t you miss the excitement?”
“Not in the least,” replied his lordship, “and I don’t miss being thrown naked out of a lady’s bedchamber when her philandering husband returns unexpectedly to town either. That I can quite happily live without.”
Mr. Edridge grinned. “I heard about that.”
Lord Marcham sighed as if in pain. “Everyone heard about it. I climbed out of a bedroom window in nothing but my breeches. I don’t think there was a soul in London who did not hear about it.”
“Were you foxed?”
“Extremely.”
Thomas laughed. “Poor March. And was she worth it?”
His lordship shrugged. “It was enjoyable enough while it lasted.”
“Then why have you announced your retirement?”
“Because it’s no longer enough . . . not anymore. Not for me anyway.” Marcham looked away. Why had he given it up? Because he was bored. Because a pretty face, despite what Miss Blakelow might think, was agreeable enough, but when a woman could not hold a conversation with him, or give as good as she got, or make him laugh, his ardor rapidly cooled. He had begun to question his life: his days filled with the business of running his estates and his evenings with no more taxing a subject on his mind than which coat to wear to dinner. Something was missing. He was lonely. The party at which Miss Blakelow had burst in upon them, the one that Harry Larwood had forced upon him, turning up uninvited with his friends in tow, had served to reinforce his decision to change his way of life. In the midst of all those gentlemen, all he’d wanted to do was send his friends home and go to bed.
“But you cannot expect me to believe that you have vowed to a life of celibacy?” said Mr. Edridge.
The earl looked at his friend as if he had developed a second head. “Now, Tom, you are stretching the realms of possibility too far.”
His friend grinned. “Then how?”
“Marriage, dear boy. I am of a mind to get myself a biddable wife who will see to my every whim.”
Mr. Edridge looked taken aback. “Marriage? But I thought you just said you didn’t want to be engaged?”
“Tom, you numbskull, I said I don’t wish to be engaged to Lady Emily. It is not the fact that I am engaged, but the woman to whom I am affianced and the manner in which it came about, that irks me.” Lord Marcham sipped his champagne. “One must provide an heir, Tom, and I only know one way of doing that.”
“You’ll be bored—I’ll lay you odds that you tire of matrimony within a month.”
“Possibly, but I plan to take exceptional care in my choice.”
“Lord,” breathed Mr. Edridge.
The earl looked amused. “I was thinking of Jane Bridlington. What say you to her?”
Mr. Edridge blinked at him, and his eyes sought the trim form of Miss Bridlington. “Well, she’s pretty enough, I suppose, and if you like her, March . . . but don’t you find her a trifle . . . dull? How you could prefer her to Lady Emily, I don’t know.”
Lord Marcham’s amusement grew at his friend’s studied air of indifference. “I thought you were fond of her.”
Mr. Edridge shrugged nonchalantly as his eyes settled on the young lady in question. “I am fond of her. We enjoyed a little flirtation . . . of a sort. She grew clingy, though. Stuck to me like a leech. Be careful there, March—the parents will have you up the aisle if you even look in her direction. The Lord and Lady Holt are nothing to it, mark my words.”
“I don’t doubt it. And on the subject of the Holts, you did some damage there, Tom, with Lady Emily, I mean, if you but knew it. I think you raised expectatio
n in that lady’s breast, if not her parents’.”
“I consider myself fortunate to have escaped from such an alliance. Look at her with Barford, staring up at him with those doe eyes of hers. It makes me sick to watch them.”
“Did you never think it was an act?” asked the earl.
“An act? To what end?”
“To make you jealous as hell, Tom.”
“Me? Jealous?”
“She’s punishing you.”
“No, no . . . you’re way off there, March. Only look at the way she stares up at him. She’s quite obviously in love with him.”
His lordship shrugged and set down his champagne glass. “Well then. If you’re not interested, perhaps I should make Lady Emily an offer?”
“If you wish it,” replied his friend stiffly, downing the rest of his own champagne in two gulps.
Lord Marcham turned away to hide a smile. Thomas was looking a trifle bosky; his eyes were glazing over and his countenance was flushed. His lordship had no doubt that Lady Emily’s determined flirtation with Mr. Barford was the cause.
“Marianne Blakelow is what one might call ‘in your style,’” offered Mr. Edridge.
Lord Marcham’s eyes strayed from the demure features of a voluptuous dark-haired beauty he had been admiring on the other side of the room and focused on his friend. “Blakelow? Related to Miss Georgiana Blakelow?”
“The sister, I believe.”
“Indeed? And is Marianne here this evening?”
“Mumps.”
“Mumps?” repeated his lordship blankly.