A Lady Awakened

by Cecilia Grant

  He stood, unmoving and bereft of words. He’d thought he knew what the bottom of a well felt like. He hadn’t known a thing. “Have you seen her?” Yes. These were the words he needed. “Is she recovered enough for callers?” Granville made some reply, but it may as well have been birdsong. If she were laid up in a sickbed he would force his way in to see her. He bent to pick up his dropped letters and then left them after all. No time for trifles.

  He said something to Granville—God only knew what, let the agent make what he would of his haste—and was gone from the room. Stable. Horse. Down the drive and onto the road where they’d walked, the day she’d enumerated the reasons she could not enjoy him in bed. A fact presented itself, through his haze of grief, like a distant shore sighted through fog: Her reason for refusing marriage is gone. But his only response to the prospect was a stab of shame that his thoughts should turn there at all, in such a time.

  Someone must have taken his horse, at Seton Park’s front door, and someone must have shown him inside. But all was blur and desperation, and he only knew he was pushing past some servant into a drawing room even as he was announced. And there was Mrs. Russell.

  She sat on the sofa, face turned toward him in astonishment. Other people were in the room with her. They didn’t matter. Four strides took him to the sofa, where he hauled her to her feet and into his arms. “I heard of what happened,” he said for her ears alone. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. So sorry you had to bear it alone.”

  “Who in blazes is this?” said someone behind him, but at the same moment Mrs. Russell was speaking, and so he did not turn.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She twisted in a half-hearted attempt to get free of his arms. No chance, no chance in Hell or Heaven, of that. “What did you hear, and from whom?”

  How could she not know immediately to what he referred? He found a grip on her upper arms and drew back to meet her eyes. “Granville told me you lost the child.” He sank his voice as low as he could.

  “Damn your impudent eyes, unhand her at once!” Vaguely he saw someone get to his feet.

  “A moment, please.” He held up a palm in that direction. “Martha?” Hope was suddenly pounding, uninvited, at his consciousness like an importunate caller on the front step. She hadn’t known what he meant. And she didn’t look, sound, or feel devastated as she ought.

  With a quick sidelong glance at the room’s other occupants, she shook her head. “It’s not true.” She took the same nearly unintelligible tone. “The child is with me, still.”

  Sheer relief bore him down and he sagged to a seat on the sofa, then dropped his face into his hands. He felt a slight weight depress the sofa beside him as she sat too.

  “Martha, what’s the meaning of this?” Through his fingers he spied the owner of that voice: a gentleman of about his own age, with honey-colored hair and coffee-colored eyes, half risen from his armchair. A lady with darker hair but identical eyes sat in the next armchair, holding a cup of tea.

  Yes, that was what he’d like to know, too. “Why the devil did Granville tell me otherwise?” He lifted his face from his hands. “He said you were leaving Sussex.” Suspicion knifed through him. “What are these people doing here?”

  “How do you dare to ask?” The young man was clearly spoiling for a fight. “Blood gives us a claim on her welfare. Damn you if you will assert any such claim.”

  “Please.” He held up a weary hand. “Let me stay for just five minutes to speak to her. Then you may take me outside and thrash me for my damned impudence if you like.”

  “Nick.” The lady spoke over her tea, her eyes bright with interest. “Let’s give him the five minutes. I suspect they will be most illuminating.”

  “You’re going away to live with one of them, aren’t you?” He bent near her for privacy. “But why, if you haven’t …”

  “I’ve given up the estate to Mrs. James Russell and her sons.” Her words reached him as barely more than a whisper. “I could only manage that if I told everyone …” She pursed her lips and waited for him to comprehend.

  And comprehend he did. He sat bolt upright. “I agreed to this with the understanding that a son would inherit the estate, and a daughter would have a portion.” A confidential tone was beyond his power now. “To say nothing of an acknowledged father. Don’t dare tell me you mean to make an impoverished bastard of a baronet’s grandchild.”

  “Oh, Martha.” The woman looked from Mrs. Russell, to him, to Mrs. Russell’s belly. “What have you done?”

  “I had good reasons.” Unrepentance stiffened her spine. “It was a sound plan. Only circumstances changed in ways I did not anticipate.”

  “Hang your five minutes. Hang your thrashing.” The young man was up out of his chair again. “Find me a pair of pistols and we’ll settle this now.”

  “Nicholas, sit down.” In an instant he glimpsed the way she must have ruled her elders even from a young age, her cool aplomb unwavering in the face of temper or other outsized, combustible emotions. “Or if you insist on dueling someone, you shall have to duel me. Mr. Mirkwood is guilty of nothing more than agreeing to the business proposition I put forward. And your hotheaded, uncivil behavior must make this family appear to him a most unpromising prospect, just at the time when I was hoping he would entertain thoughts of joining it.”

  “Good Lord.” Theo threw himself back, into the sofa’s corner, to study her. “Was that a proposal?”

  “It was the poorest one I’ve ever heard.” The sister made this pronouncement, putting down her tea as the brother sank into his chair.

  “I should say. I’ll make you a better one if your siblings will grant us a minute of privacy. Eight minutes, rather.” His heart was bounding all about his chest like a rabbit freed from a snare. She wanted to marry him. His child was well, and would be known to the world as his.

  “You’ll do no such thing, sir.” She had a redoubtable streak of her own, this sister. Katharine. They might call each other by given name, in time. “She’s barely been widowed two months. No clergyman who values his post would consent to marry you.”

  “I know a clergyman who will.” She leveled all her resolute attention on brother and sister, but when he lifted a hand hers came immediately to grasp it. “Only we must do it by license, as soon as possible for the sake of the child.”

  “Think of the scandal. You could not expect any respectable person to know you.”

  Ah, but he’d been through this before. “My family comprises several more-than-respectable houses, and they will all be glad to admit us. I’ve just been in London preparing them.” Her hand tightened deliciously on his at these words. “That will be enough to begin on, and I shall make it my mission to win your approval as well.”

  “Everyone in this neighborhood will accept us too.” She edged forward, earnestly, still clutching his hand. “I’ve thought it all through.” Of course she had. “Everybody has heard of my disappointment, and the change in my circumstances. Everybody thinks well of Mr. Mirkwood. They’ll all believe he married me to save me from a pitiable dependent existence. They’ll think better than ever of him.” He could hear her tenacity grow with each syllable. “And even if they didn’t, I would marry him.”

  “Duty demands it now.” He flexed his fingers over hers. Together they could face down all the skeptical brothers and sisters in the world.

  “Yes. Duty.” Her whole body tensed with sweet, self-conscious effort, as though she must find the way to deliver her next words through a mouthful of rocks. “My heart as well. I love him.” Her cheeks went scarlet. Any observer might conclude she’d just confessed to some mortifying mishap.

  He wouldn’t laugh, for all that he was grinning like a fool with a bucket of treacle. He pressed her hand once more. The sentiment was of consequence. That she voiced it gracefully, or voiced it at all, was not. All he could do was give her reason to tell him often, in the years to come, and discover whether her delivery improved with practice.

  And
late that night, when he crept up the servants’ staircase and through three corridors into the room where she’d left a candle burning because she’d known, without telling, that he would come—then, she practiced and practiced some more. I love you, she said, in words and in ways that satisfied a man to his soul. And from his soul he answered, thoroughly and tirelessly. Because duty demanded nothing less.

  For Shirley

  the alpha and omega of beta readers

  If you loved A Lady Awakened,

  you won’t be able to resist

  A Gentleman Undone

  The next breathtaking novel from

  Cecilia Grant

  Coming Summer 2012

  Read on for a sneak peek

  at this unforgettable story.…

  March, 1816

  THREE OF the courtesans were beautiful. His eye lingered, naturally, on the fourth. Old habit would persist in spite of anything life could devise.

  Will leaned on one elbow and rested his cheek on his palm, a careless posture that suggested supreme confidence in his play while also allowing him to peer round the fellow opposite and get a better view of the ladies. Not to any purpose, of course. He’d come into this establishment on a solemn errand, and courtesans had no part in his plan.

  Still, a man could look. A bit of craning here, a timely turn by one of the ladies there, and he could assemble a fair piecemeal picture of the four. So he’d been doing all evening as they’d sat down in different combinations at their card table, some fifteen feet removed from the great tables where the gentlemen played. And while every one of them—the sleek mahogany-haired temptress, the crystalline-delicate blonde—gratified his eye, only one thus far had managed to trifle with his concentration.

  He watched her now, her eyelids lowered and her fingers precise as she fanned out her freshly dealt hand. Not beautiful, no. Pretty, perhaps. Or rather handsome: a young man could have worn that aquiline nose to advantage, and that fiercely etched brow.

  She studied her cards without moving any of them—though the game was whist and all three of her companions were rearranging their cards by suit—and glanced across at her partner. Gray-blue eyes, expressive of nothing. She could hold all trumps and you’d never know.

  “No sport to be had there, Blackshear.” The words rode in on a wash of tobacco smoke from his right, barely audible under the clamor of a dozen surrounding conversations. “Those ones are all spoken for.” Lord Cathcart switched his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other while inspecting his hand. A queen and a ten winked into view and out. Luck did like to throw itself away on the wealthy.

  “There’d be no sport even if they were at liberty. A youngest son with no fortune doesn’t get far with their kind.” Will replied at the same low pitch and lifted a corner of his own card, a seven of clubs to go with his seven of spades.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The viscount’s fine-boned profile angled itself two or three degrees his way. “A youngest son who’s just sold his commission might set his sights beyond the occasional adventurous widow.”

  “Widows suit me. No taint of commerce; no worries over whether you’ve seduced a lady into something she’ll regret.” The words felt flabby and false on his tongue, a stale utterance left over from the life that used to be his. He nodded toward the courtesans’ table. “In any case, your birds of paradise are a bit too rich for my blood.”

  “Ha. I’ll wager your blood has its own ideas. Particularly concerning the sharp-faced wench with the Grecian knot. Stick,” he added to the table at large as his turn came.

  “Split,” said Will, and turned up his sevens. His pulse leapt into a hasty rhythm that had nothing to do with any sharp-faced wench. He pushed a second bid forward, and gave all his attention to the two new cards.

  An eight brought one hand to fifteen. Good chance of going bust on a third card and not much chance of besting the banker if he stuck. The second hand was better: an ace gave him the option to stick at eighteen, and also tempted him with the possibility of a five-card trick, if he counted the card for one instead of eleven and if the next three cards fell out in his favor.

  Were the odds decent? Twenty-one less eight left thirteen. How many combinations of three cards came to thirteen or less? With one hundred and four cards in play … eight aces, eight twos, et cetera, and eleven other men at the table who must already have some of those cards in their possession … hang it, he ought to have paid better attention in mathematics classes. Fine return he’d brought his father on a Cambridge education, God rest the man’s soul.

  “I’ll buy another on both hands.” Twenty more pounds in. Best to cultivate the appearance of recklessness early in the evening, when wagers were small. Prudence could wait until several hours hence, when most of these men would be drunk—make that drunker—and inclined to put up sums they’d regret the next morning.

  The new cards dropped in and he lifted their corners. Five and three. Twenty and twenty-one. Or twenty and eleven, with two cards and ten pips between him and the double payoff of the five-card trick.

  He flicked idly with a gloved fingertip at the corner of one card. Was he really considering it? Buying another card when he might stick on a total of twenty-one? His first night in the place, not two hours yet at the table, and already he was goading Fortune to do its worst.

  Well, there’d be no novelty in that, would there? He had a fair acquaintance with the things Fortune could do. A loss of thirty pounds would barely merit mention.

  “One more here.” He pushed another note out in front of his second hand.

  A knave of hearts grinned up at him when he lifted the new card, and quiet relief poured through him, loosening places that had wound themselves tight. No five-card trick, but neither would he be dunned for his recklessness. Unless the banker beat him with a twenty-one of his own, he’d have at least one winning hand. Maybe two.

  “Stick,” he said, and leaned his cheek on his palm again as the play passed to his left. The ladies played two straight tricks of clubs while he watched, the sharp-faced one producing her cards with smooth efficiency from their disparate places in her hand.

  Cathcart could needle him all he liked. She gave a man’s mind places to go, did such a girl. Let beautiful women air their attractions like laundry on a line, flapping for all the world to see. The woman who kept something back—who wore her graces like silk underthings against the skin, and dared a man to find them out—would always be the one to set his imagination racing.

  Even if he couldn’t afford to let any other part of him race along. He heaved a quick sigh. “What’s a Grecian knot?” he said, sinking his voice again. “Do you mean the way she’s got her hair?”

  “Hopeless,” the viscount hissed round the stem of his pipe. “Must not be a particular lot, those widows you favor. Mind you, I don’t suppose your hawkish Aphrodite is any too discriminating herself, judging by the company she keeps.” With a jerk of his chin he indicated a fellow down the table, a square-jawed, blandly handsome type who’d assured himself the next deal by reaching twenty-one on his first two cards.

  Curiosity buzzed wasplike about Will’s temples. He brushed it away. He hadn’t come here to gossip. The lady’s choice of protector was her own concern. “Hawkish, truly?” He leaned back and stretched his arms out before him. “Try to be civil.”

  Though admittedly this wasn’t much of a place for that. Bottles at the table. More men than Cathcart smoking, despite the presence of ladies, or at least women, in the room. Granted, a true gaming hell was probably worse. Gillray, the artilleryman, had claimed you could actually smell the desperation by four or five o’clock of the morning. Rolling off the pigeons in waves, he’d said, a stinking sweat more acrid than the sweat of healthy exertion. And why not? Fear had a scent, reportedly—you’d think battle would be the place to find that out, but amid the perpetual cacophony of scents, no one had ever risen up and proclaimed itself as fear—so why not desperation as well?

  Enough pondering in th
at direction. He rotated his wrists, flexing the tendons, as a corpulent fellow went bust and the next began his turn. At the ladies’ table, the strong-featured girl took her third straight trick and calmly marked the point on a paper at her right hand.

  Hawkish. Really. He folded his arms behind his head. And yet there was something undeniably birdlike about her nose, her blank eyes, her wren-colored hair. Cold little creatures, birds, for all their soft feathers and pretty songs. Eat your brains for breakfast as soon as look at you. The odd bits of knowledge one picked up in war.

  The banker stuck on a total of nineteen, and Will was fifty pounds richer. One more small step up the mountain. He raked in his winnings and pushed his cards toward the hawkish girl’s square-jawed protector.

  Near his own age, the man looked. Five and twenty or thereabout, and bearing himself with fresh consequence now he had the deal. Making some minor adjustment to his cravat before tending to the cards. Tilting his head with an air of practiced condescension to grant an audience to his right-hand neighbor, who was, it happened, speaking on the subject of the girl herself. “I declare, Roanoke,” the neighbor said in an audible undertone, “I should never have bet on you keeping her this long. Not half so comely as the one you were squiring about last summer. Pretty winsome thing, she was.”

  A small compression of Square-jaw’s mouth was the only sign he took offense at the questioning of his choice. “That one gifted me with a bastard child.” Green-jeweled cuff links glinted in the candlelight as he reached out to gather in the cards. “This one can’t.”

  “Or so she tells you, I’m sure,” was the first gentleman’s rejoinder, his undertone abandoned to more generally air his wit.

  “She can’t.” With the patience of a crown prince accustomed to dull-witted minions he made this correction. “Something’s gone wrong with her insides. No monthly courses.”

  Charming. And quite a bit more information than any man at the table could desire to know, surely. Will threw a look to the viscount, who only lifted a shoulder in reply. Evidently this sort of discussion was usual.