by Norma Darcy
She turned away to hide her face, acutely embarrassed. “You—oh, go away!”
He laughed and folded his arms. “Come here.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “No.”
His lips twitched. “Miss Blakelow, you really should try to improve your manners, you know. They really are not at all the thing. I regret that I find it necessary to hint, but you should be aware when going about in company, it is not at all the done thing to be quite so blunt. A few words in the manner of beating around the bush would, I am persuaded, serve you better. An approved response might have been, ‘No, thank you, my lord.’ Now why don’t you try it? These manners may seem strange to you at first but it will get easier in time.”
She listened to this in long-suffering silence. “My lord, if you do not wish me to deal you the same treatment I gave to Mr. Peabody, then I suggest you desist baiting me.”
“A truly terrifying prospect to be sure, but as you have now put away your stitchery, I feel tolerably safe. Well, if you won’t come to me, then I will have to come to you.”
She balked a little as he drew near, but she stood her ground, her heart pounding a little strangely as he came to stand directly before her, his body no more than a foot away from hers. She glanced up at him warily as he reached out his hands and, before she knew what he was about, gently pulled the spectacles from her nose. So convinced was she that he had been going to kiss her that this outcome took her completely by surprise, and she felt excessively foolish, like a green young girl, and wondered if her thoughts had played out across her face.
He watched her with a funny little smile as he took his handkerchief from his pocket and began to clean her spectacles. “Mr. Peabottom’s attentions have smudged your glasses,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, turning her face away in confusion. She felt naked without her spectacles and hardly knew where to look as she felt his eyes on her.
“Why do you hide your face from me?” he asked.
She forced a laugh. “I . . . I don’t.”
“You always turn away. Do you feel so vulnerable without your glasses?”
“Please, may I have them back?”
“What did that fellow mean ‘our little secret’?” inquired the earl.
She blinked at him, giving her best impression of an innocent wide-eyed look.
Lord Marcham frowned. “He said that ‘our little secret’ would prevent you from finding happiness with another man. What did he mean?”
She colored and looked away. “Nothing. Mr. Peabody pretends an intimacy with this family that is entirely false. He was a confidant of my father’s, and as such he makes it his business to know all our business, whether we wish him to or not.”
“I see . . . but you did not answer the question, Miss Blakelow,” he said gently.
“May I have my glasses back now?” she asked, disturbed by the watchful expression in his eyes.
“Where do I know you from?” he mused.
“I . . . I beg your pardon, my lord?”
“The first time you came to Holme I was left with the distinct impression that we had met before.”
Miss Blakelow’s heart began to pound sickeningly. “Certainly we have,” she managed as coolly as she was able. “We are neighbors, after all, my lord.”
He shook his head. “I remember you from somewhere else . . . and I cannot quite place it.”
“Perhaps I look like another lady of your acquaintance?” she suggested.
“Perhaps,” he agreed.
“I am sure you have been acquainted with so many bookish females over the years that we all look the same to you; it must be all that time you spend in church praying for forgiveness.”
“Perhaps you are right,” he agreed, a smile in his eyes. “Because my behavior is such that I need a lot of forgiving, isn’t that right?”
“Quite so.”
“Here, Miss Blakelow, are your glasses.”
“Thank you,” she replied, lifting her hands to take the spectacles from him. Her fingers brushed against his for the briefest of moments, and she felt a tug of attraction so strong that it robbed her of the ability to think or to even breathe.
“How old are you?” he demanded suddenly, frowning, his mind still evidently puzzling over where they had met before.
She looked up at him. “That is an impertinent question, sir.”
“You cannot be more than five and thirty, surely. To be sure you are not in the first bloom, but you are not yet in your dotage.”
“Thank you,” she muttered. Miss Blakelow, who was in fact nine and twenty, took this comment in bad part. Then, sensing his amusement, she looked at him and saw the mischievous gleam in his eyes and knew that he said it deliberately for revenge.
“Yes, Miss Blakelow, I am that outrageous, and if you come to know me any better, you will realize that trying to shame me does not work, because I don’t have any scruples. Now, you may leave your shawl here. You cannot play cricket with that thing around your shoulders.”
CHAPTER 14
THE EARL OF MARCHAM, dressed in a rich brocade dressing gown at nine the following morning, looked up from his newspaper as the sound of an almighty crash came from the hallway beyond the breakfast parlor, where he was seated. He winced and looked at his butler, who was clearing the table of the breakfast things. “Davenham, what was that racket?” he asked in pained accents.
“I believe it is your lordship’s sisters, sir. Lady St Michael and Miss Holkham—they have come to stay,” said that faithful servant in a quaking voice.
“Both of them?” he demanded.
“Yes, my lord.”
“The devil they have,” the earl said, pushing back his chair by its armrests and striding across the room. He yanked open the door and stepped out into the Great Hall.
A succession of trunks and valises and bandboxes littered the stone floor in every direction. Servants—his servants—were running to do the bidding of the tall, imperious woman standing at the foot of the staircase. “You, Brook, is it? Please see to it that my trunk is taken up straight away. I wish to change out of this traveling dress immediately. Davenham? Davenham? Where are you—? Ah, there you are! Please ask the cook to prepare us something to eat immediately. I’m famished and I’m sure Harriet is too. Where is my brother?”
Lord Marcham immediately shrank back into the shadows cast by the staircase. He heard his butler clear his throat. “He went out riding, my lady. He is not expected back for some time.”
His lordship, who had in fact already been for his early morning ride, smiled. Good old Davenham. The man always did cover for him in times of need.
“Gone out riding before nine?” repeated Lady St. Michael. “Robbie? What, were there worms in his bed?”
“I believe his lordship rises much earlier these days than when you lived with us, my lady.”
“I see. No doubt the influence of his fiancée. Perhaps she is not so bad after all.”
Footsteps ran lightly up the front steps and then a girl, no older than eighteen, burst into the hall. “Is Robbie here?” Lady Harriet asked breathlessly, the voluminous plume on her bonnet wafting in the breeze. “I have so much to tell him!”
“He’s out riding,” said her ladyship bluntly. “Can we get this bandbox out of the way? Someone is going to trip over it in a minute.”
Lady Harriet looked around her in wonder. “What a lot of baggage we have! I knew we should not have gone shopping in Oxford. Oh, Robbie, there you are! Why are you hiding in the dark? Come here where I can see you.”
Lady St. Michael spun around and narrowed her eyes on her brother’s rather irritated-looking face. She gave him a knowing look. “Hiding from me, Robert?” she asked sweetly.
He came forward, smiling. “Always, dear Sister. I find it preserves my sanity.”
She pecked him upon the cheek. “Coward,” she said softly.
“Termagant,” he retorted in kind.
“Oh, Robbie,” cried Harriet, hurling her
self at his chest. “I’m so glad to see you.”
He kissed the top of her bonnet, the only part of her available to him, and nearly had his eye taken out by her feather in the process. “Hello minx,” he said affectionately.
“Is it true that you are to be married?” she demanded, her big gray eyes searching his face.
He was a little taken aback. How the devil did she find out about Georgie so quickly? Mama has been busy, he thought grimly. “I hope to be,” he replied.
“What is she like? Is she pretty? Is she as tall as me? Does she sing and play? Does she dance?”
“If you would ask one question at a time, I might stand a chance of answering you. Yes, she is pretty. Yes, she is as tall as you . . . rather taller in fact. And I have absolutely no idea as to her accomplishments.”
Lady Harriet looked perplexed. “You have no idea of her accomplishments?” she repeated. “How can you fall in love with someone and not know their interests?”
He carelessly flicked a forefinger against her cheek. “You do it all the time, love.”
“Be serious, Robbie. I heard that her family are horrid fortune hunters. Are you certain that she feels for you just as she ought?”
“I think there is every chance that she feels precisely nothing at all for me,” he said, guiding her into the library.
“Then why are you wishing to marry her?” asked Lady Harriet as her sister came in and closed the door.
His lordship looked from one sister to the other and sighed. “Don’t you wish to change your clothes after such a long journey?”
“In a minute,” replied Sarah, Lady St. Michael, folding her arms. “Answer the question.”
His eyes settled on one of the paintings without really seeing it. “Because she intrigues me . . . and I haven’t felt like that in a long time.”
“Then, Robbie,” blurted Harriet, “what I have to say will shock you exceedingly. I was at the Grants’ ball last week, and I wore my celestial blue crepe with the rosebud trim—and you needn’t roll your eyes at me, it is of all your habits the most annoying—and Anne Ellis said that Sir William Blakelow’s pockets are to let. She said that he does not have a penny to pay his London debts let alone save Thorncote. He was planning to throw one of his sisters under your nose so that you might marry her. Miss Marianne Blakelow is a trap set for you. I had it from my friend, who had it from her brother, who is a friend of William’s.”
“Er . . . and why are you telling me this?” asked Lord Marcham, utterly uninterested in anything William Blakelow did or said.
“Why are we . . . ? Because you are going to marry Marianne Blakelow. Don’t you see? He is on the hunt for a fortune for his sister.”
He stood up and moved behind his desk. “Oh, I am well aware of that. But you seem to be misinformed—which, given that you have just spent several hours in a carriage with Sarah, is surprising. Miss Marianne Blakelow and I are not now, nor have ever been, engaged.”
His youngest sister looked from him to Lady St. Michael and back at her brother again. “Not engaged? But you just said that you were!” cried Lady Harriet, much confused.
“I said that I hoped to be . . . but the lady I spoke of was not Miss Marianne.”
His youngest sister clapped her hands together with glee. “Didn’t I tell you, Sarah? Didn’t I tell you that Robbie wouldn’t marry such a horrid, scheming creature as Marianne Blakelow? Oh, why did you not tell me, Sarah? How infamous of you to keep me in the dark all this time! Who does Robbie wish to marry? Who is she?”
“Keep your voice down—the servants will hear you. She is a worse match for him than ever Lady Emily Holt was,” said Lady St. Michael coolly, “which is why I was not going to give credence to the rumor in the carriage with our maids listening in.”
“Thank you, Sarah,” said the earl, “but I will marry whom I choose, I believe.”
“Refreshments are served in the breakfast parlor, my lord,” announced Davenham with exquisite timing.
“Davenham?”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Remind me to increase your wage,” said a very grateful Lord Marcham.
The earl’s discomfort was markedly increased when an hour later his mother arrived, complaining about the damp, and immediately set about stoking up the temperature in the drawing room to such a degree that he could not bear to be inside it with a coat on for longer than five minutes.
“Robbie!” she said, waving him down to kiss her cheek, bestowing upon him a smile so sickly sweet that he immediately became suspicious.
“Mama,” he replied, by this time dressed in a beautiful wine-colored coat and pantaloons the color of oatmeal. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“We were worried about you.”
“Really?” he asked doubtfully. “Should I be flattered?”
“You know, you wretched boy, that I am worried sick about this proposed match of yours.”
His lordship cast his eyes heavenward in a bid for divine assistance. “Please, Mama, let us not discuss it again. I have no wish to argue with you.”
“Darling Robert, you were always my favorite, you know,” she said.
Lord Marcham struggled to hide his irritation. His mother’s tricks had ceased to work on any of her children many years ago once they had realized how adept she was at playing one off against the other.
“Are you warm enough?” asked his lordship rather sharply.
“Yes . . . but—”
“Good, then you won’t mind me opening one of the windows, will you?”
The countess spluttered, looking for an answer that wouldn’t further set her son’s back up, and decided that that particular battle would be better saved for another day.
“Has Sarah told you?” the countess asked.
“Has Sarah told me what?” he asked with a feeling of distinct foreboding.
“Harriet is to have a ball.”
“Jolly good. Just don’t expect me to come, and she can have as many as she chooses,” he returned crisply.
His mother coughed. “Harriet wishes to have a ball . . . here.”
“I’ll wager she does. I wish to fly to the moon, but it isn’t going to come true.”
“Now, Robbie, don’t be difficult,” said his mother. “It was her home too, remember?”
“So it was. But it is my home now, and I do not wish to host a ball,” he said, casting himself onto a sofa.
“Why? What objection can you have?” his mother demanded.
“Objections plural.”
“Such as what? What pray do men know about organizing a ball?”
“They know about paying for them, ma’am, and that is my first objection: the expense.”
“Oh, pooh and nonsense. What is there to pay for in a trifling ball?”
“Flowers. Food. Champagne. Candles. The orchestra. Not to mention the rig you will turn her out in with jewels and the like. Slippers. Stockings, et cetera, et cetera—no, Mama, let me finish. The fuss. The servants have enough work to do in this house without organizing a ball. It needs to be coordinated, and I have no inclination to waste my time in such a fashion. The noise. The night of the ball, I will not be able to sleep with all that racket going on, so I will be forced to attend or go for a prolonged stay with Uncle Angus in the Hebrides because he will be the only one of my relatives not at the ball. The crush. No doubt everyone will want to be there, and you won’t be able to get to the food for wading through feathers and waistcoats and sweaty bodies. Not to mention the heat, swooning females everywhere, and matchmaking mamas all dead set on pairing me off with their hatchet-faced daughter. The hassle. Ten to one Harriet will fall in love with some unsuitable wretch, as she always does at these things, and then it will be up to me to play the tyrannical brother and sort it all out. And finally, the infernal giggling. Guaranteed that every female within a fifty-mile radius will be prating on about the wretched ball every minute of the day: what they will wear, how many feathers they will put in their hair, and wh
o they will dance with until every gentleman, including me, is driven to distraction. No, Mama. I do not want a ball in this house.”
A short silence greeted this little speech.
“Well, if those are your only objections, I cannot see that they are insurmountable,” said the countess.
His lordship opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again.
“You may invite Lady Phoebe Halchester,” she added as a sweetener. “I heard that you were fond of her . . .”
Lord Marcham nearly threw his teacup at the wall. “I have no interest in inviting Lady Phoebe. But as you bring it up, that is another objection. I would be forced to invite her, for it would look very odd if I did not.”
“Has he agreed, Mama?” asked Harriet, popping her head around the door at that moment.
“Nearly, my love, nearly,” replied the countess.
His lordship closed his eyes.
“Oh, Robbie, wouldn’t it be famous?” cried Harriet, coming to sit on the sofa beside him. She grabbed his hand and held it tightly in her own. “I am so grateful to you for letting Holme host my ball. I think we will have a splendid time. Dearest, best of brothers, I knew that you would agree. And you may bring your mysterious lady too.”
“I have not agreed to host your ball, and I realize at this juncture that you may wish to take back the part about ‘best and dearest of brothers,’ but so be it. I do not have the time or the inclination to host your ball, and I rather think you are much better off using the house in Grosvenor Square. I will happily hand you the keys. There you may invite whom you like, when you like, and arrange it all to your own satisfaction. I will even assist you with paying for it.”
Lady Harriet’s face fell. Large glistening teardrops welled in her eyes. “Oh, Robbie, you don’t mean it.”
“I do mean it. And you can forget the waterworks. They won’t work on me. I have resisted women ten times as manipulative as you in my time.”
“But—”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“There you are! I have been looking for you everywhere!” cried Lady St. Michael, who came into the room at that moment. “Heavens, isn’t it warm in here? Well, I have just seen the Lady’s bedchamber, and I must say, Robbie, it has been very tastefully done. It used to be pink in Mama’s day, but I rather like the pale green. It brings a springlike freshness to the room that is very appealing. What decided you upon changing it after all these years?”