She did not need to think of that intoxicating young fellow, so full of dreams and full of life. The one who saw the sixteen-year-old her when nobody else did and listened when nobody else cared. Or at least gave the appearance of it. ‘I was ridiculously naive then—fresh from the schoolroom! And you always did have a silver tongue! It’s a pity I didn’t discover it was forked much sooner.’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘Are you determined to hate me for all eternity, Lydia? Because I don’t hate you…although Lord only knows I probably should.’ And there it was again. That flash of humanity in his eyes which wormed its way past her defences and made her want to believe it. Idiot! She loathed herself for that weakness. Loathed him more for taking advantage of it. ‘It’s been ten years.’
Ten years, two months and one day to be precise, when one dreadful moment in time changed everything. One second she had been blithely hurrying down the path to her future when the path disintegrated beneath her feet and there suddenly was no future. Or at least not the one she had wanted. Her heart still didn’t want to believe it. Her head still struggled to comprehend how one moment, one ominous tick of the clock, could possibly change everything.
‘Hate assumes I care enough to be bothered when I am indifferent, Mr Wolfe.’ A complete pack of lies. Everything about him set her emotions off-kilter. Always had. Always would. Nobody else had ever quite measured up and now she was about to be punished for her fickle heart’s foolish desire because of the sorry truth of it. An arranged marriage. To a very wealthy man who might well be the dreadful Marquess of Kelvedon—because he certainly met all the criteria, exactly as Owen said.
Another dreadful moment in time. Another path crumbling beneath her feet. Another future, albeit a lesser one, gone, too, in the blink of an eye.
The walls began to close in, but she looked down her nose defiantly.
‘Go back to your shadows, Mr Wolfe—they suit you so much better than the chandeliers.’
Lydia did not wait to see his expression. She slammed through the door and into the frigid garden, then tore across the lawn. The Aveley stables were housed on the same mews as her own. In two minutes she would be home and she could think. Perhaps miraculously come up with a plan to save her family and the estate and all the workers who depended on it which did not involve marrying a lecher. Not that marrying a stranger at such short notice was any better. A loveless marriage had never been what she had envisioned. The same foolish and romantic heart which had once loved Owen Wolfe so completely before he broke it, still yearned to love unreservedly once again and be loved in return. It still craved passion and excitement and laughter and joy.
But needs must and beggars could not be choosers. It was her turn to replenish the Barton coffers after taking from them so freely for years. Her father was adamant she must do her duty and her brother was doomed if she didn’t. Damned if she did. Damned even more if she did not.
With hindsight, Lydia cursed herself for being too picky. In the seven Seasons she had been out, there had been no end of suitors and several advantageous proposals, meaning she could be safely married by now and not burdened with this unpalatable chore. Yet she had turned them all down politely because none of them had ever made her heart soar the way she knew it could. She had been waiting patiently for the one—only to realise too late she had compared every titled gentleman to the hollow, calculating stable boy who had ruthlessly used her, then betrayed her when he had shown his true colours. Colours she should have seen if she hadn’t been so besotted with him to look.
The truth of it made her blood boil.
Her heart would never soar again. There would be no other one. No happily ever after. Just a marriage of convenience to a man she would probably never love. And if it was indeed Kelvedon, she wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of either!
Heaven help her.
The Aveley grooms stood to attention as she marched past. She didn’t pause to greet them as she normally would. The tears were too close to the surface and she couldn’t trust them not to fall. The mews was crammed with carriages, coachmen and stable hands played cards around overturned barrels as they waited for the ball to end. She wove around them, pushed past, her sights set on the blessedly silent Barton mews just a few yards away.
‘Lydia…’ She felt the unexpected touch of his hand on her arm all the way down to her toes and froze. She frowned at it before directing the full force of that frown at him. For a big man, he moved with impressive stealth. A predator. Like his namesake the wolf. Except he was every disarming inch a wolf in sheep’s clothing, preying on the weak and the stupid. And she had been both. A veritable lamb to the slaughter! And of course, he had to have stopped her here to witness her unshed tears and her patently obvious utter defeat—in the place where it all started—to rub salt into the reopened wound. An ironically fitting end to the second-worst day of her life.
‘What could you possibly want now?’ Her words were clipped, as hostile as she could make them, the urge to slap his handsome face simply because it existed causing her to clench her fists until her nails bit into her palms.
‘If I am right about Kelvedon… If you need…anything…’ those clever blues eyes were uncharacteristically stormy now, drawing her in, luring her to trust him as his grip loosened and she felt his thumb caress the bare skin of her forearm as if he cared ‘…you know where to find me.’
‘I won’t.’ She tugged her arm away, remembering exactly how foolish she had been all those years ago each time he touched her, when she had believed he cared and how shamelessly he had used her on the back of it. ‘I wouldn’t come to you if you were the last man on earth and my entire world had fallen apart!’
Which it was likely to do at any given moment.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Are you sure there is nobody else in the running?’
This wasn’t the news Owen had wanted to hear because it certainly would not put his racing mind at ease. Not after he had seen the horror in Lydia’s eyes first-hand when he had been the one to inform her of her fate.
He wasn’t proud of himself for doing that either. It had been churlish, bordering on the vindictive, borne out of some petty desire to put her in her place after she had tried to put him in his. He had learned to ignore those who looked down their nose at him, enjoying the challenge of winning them over and then happily taking their money when they lost it at his gaming tables. Unfortunately, all bets were apparently off when it came to her. With her he was constantly all at sea and nearly always without a paddle. Never quite in control when he diligently controlled everything else. Lydia vexed him—far more than a ghost from his past should.
‘Not unless they are keeping their cards very close to their chest and are still negotiating.’ Randolph shrugged his shoulders. ‘Which I am reliably informed there is no evidence of. He’s dined at the house twice this week already and has been the family’s only guest. It’s definitely Kelvedon.’ His best friend and business partner paused and watched him closely for his reaction. ‘Why else would he have made an appointment to meet with the Bishop of London yesterday? He’s procured a special licence.’
Owen nodded curtly and pretended to focus on tying his cravat in the mirror in case the sudden burst of rage at this news gave him away.
This was all happening so blasted fast he could barely keep up with it all, and worse, he had no earthly idea why he was compelled to keep up with it all in the first place. It wasn’t as if he wanted the vixen. Not in that way any more at least. Lydia was dangerous to his liberty and his sanity. Why should he care who she married? She wasn’t his problem, thank the Lord.
Even so—poor Lydia.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he felt for her beyond a combination of anger, hurt, nostalgia and fascination—but nobody deserved that fate, no matter what they had done. The Marquess of Kelvedon was a leering, sweating pig of a man more than double her age, renowned for
his wandering hands. Owen had had to warn him twice in as many months to keep his filthy paws off the hostesses in his club. Once more and the lecher would be barred from Libertas for life no matter how much he spent at the tables. The thought of those hands mauling her…
Irritated at his unhealthy preoccupation with a woman who did not deserve his concern, his sudden inability to control his swirling emotions and his own ineptitude at tying a neckcloth, he tossed the third ruined strip of linen on the bed and snatched up another one.
‘I hate these things!’ His continued obsession with the minx was unhealthy. It was one thing when he’d been a green eighteen-year-old lad who’d worn his heart on his sleeve and only saw what he wanted to see, another entirely for a grown man of almost thirty who knew exactly what she was! He had been sport. Nothing more. A dirty secret. Someone to flatter her ego and practice her wiles on, then someone to discard and deny all knowledge of simply to save her own precious reputation!
He wound the fabric clumsily around his neck and tried again, not holding out much hope for success and conscious he was at risk of arriving late to the opera—a social faux pas in a society that put too much stock in ridiculous rules which put appearances over people.
‘Why the blazes is the measure of a gentleman determined by the knot in his cravat? And in this time of industry and brilliance, why the hell hasn’t some enterprising fellow invented one which is pre-tied and prettified and only needs one tiny, invisible hook to secure it around the collar?’ The fourth tie joined the third on the floor as he grabbed the last one from the dresser and shook it at Randolph. ‘I will never understand it!’
His diminutive friend rolled his eyes and dragged a chair over, making short work of climbing onto it, then slapping Owen’s fingers away from the task to take over himself. ‘That’s because you have no patience. Temper won’t get it tied…’ He shot him a pointed look before busying himself with the knot, his stubby fingers performing miracles Owen’s enormous digits were incapable of. ‘Although I suspect your hot head tonight is less to do with your cravat and more to do with a certain lady…’ He ignored Owen’s instinctive scowl. ‘Who I must say you seem uncharacteristically obsessed with of late. Well…more so than usual…’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’
‘That despite your several thousand and convincingly emphatic assertions to the contrary over the many, many years I have known you, I am starting to think you are not quite as over Lady Lydia Barton as you might want us all to believe.’
‘That is utter nonsense!’ And a little too close to the truth for comfort. She still had some inexplicable and irrational power over him, which was exactly the crux of the problem when the only person Owen ever wanted to have power over him until hell froze over was himself. ‘I loathe the wench! And with good reason!’
Which went no way at all to explaining why he had made her business entirely his business all week so that Randolph was already smirking in that smug way he did when he was convinced he knew something Owen didn’t. ‘However…’ he did his best to look matter-of-fact ‘…she is well connected and well thought off among the ton, so it makes sound business sense to keep up with the gossip. You, more than anyone, know the importance of keeping an ear to the ground. It is always useful to know the state of our clientele’s finances. Especially as Kelvedon is such a good customer.’
Randolph’s fingers paused and he blinked in obvious disbelief. ‘A pathetic excuse which might work well with the masses, Owen—Kelvedon is a hedonist who will never give up his vices, even for a bonny wife like the lovely Lady Lydia, so his continued patronage at Libertas is assured. Your interest in her is entirely personal. Do not deny it.’ His nimble fingers returned to the task in hand. ‘Her impending nuptials have made you jealous.’
‘Have you been on the brandy?’ Was he jealous? Frustrated? Curious? A week since he’d heard the first rumours and Owen still wasn’t entirely sure how he felt beyond unsettled. Or perhaps it was panicked? He’d certainly awakened in a cold sweat last night after a particularly bad dream featuring both Kelvedon and Lydia behind a locked church door while the desperate dream version of himself failed to ram the thing open with only his shoulder.
‘Gertie thinks you still love her.’
Owen rolled his eyes, appalled at the suggestion. As if he were that stupid! That masochistic! That pathetic. He didn’t beg for crumbs from his supposed betters any longer or allow matters of the heart to overrule the sound judgement of his own pragmatic head. Loving Lydia had lost him his liberty… Maybe. ‘Gertie is mistaken.’
‘Is she?’ Randolph stepped back to admire his work and grinned. ‘In my experience, there is a fine and precarious line between loving and loathing. It would certainly explain your current obsession. And your recent foul mood.’
‘Trust me, the line between myself and that woman is wider than the Blue Mountains and just as impassable! She fed me to the lions, if you recall. Watched me arrested and dragged off to gaol and never uttered a word in my defence!’ When she could have vouched for his character and probably given him an alibi. He remembered that fateful moment as if it was yesterday. Her shock. Her disgust. And then her silence. ‘You get over all foolish notions of love pretty quick after that happens, I can assure you.’ Nor did you get over the sense of powerlessness that came from being a nothing and a nobody. Or the lack of control over your own life.
Randolph ignored both his denial and his murderous expression to carry on prodding the surprisingly open wound regardless. ‘Gertie reckons once a heart has been pierced by Cupid’s arrow, there can be no going back. The deal is done. The die is cast.’ His friend used far too many gambling metaphors. ‘The heart always wants what the heart needs.’
‘Your wife is a hopeless romantic.’ He jabbed his finger to Randolph’s chest, immensely uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken, but with no clear or coherent reasons justifying why his interfering friend was wrong. ‘If I am obsessed with anything, it’s finally seeing that family get their comeuppance!’ He stalked away to grab his evening coat and shrugged it on. ‘It’s petty and it’s beneath me—but I fully intend to enjoy it. After everything, I deserve that at least.’ If he told himself that often enough, he might actually come to believe it.
‘You’re not the vengeful type. You pride yourself on being the bigger man. It’s your most piously nauseating trait.’
‘There is nothing nauseating about doing the right thing and I am usually the bigger man—but the bad blood between me and the Earl of Fulbrook and his lofty brood is intensely personal. I might not be the type to seek my own revenge, but I’ll be damned if I won’t enjoy it if fate dishes them their just deserts for me! Keeping abreast of the soon-to-be Marchioness of Kelvedon ensures I get to enjoy the spectacle fully from a seat at the front.’ For good measure, he waved his finger in his friend’s disbelieving face.
‘And while I will admit once upon a time I might have foolishly allowed my heart to have been pierced by Cupid’s blasted arrow, I soon got over it and then wrapped the damned organ in armour in case the blighter ever tried to point his bow in my direction again!’ Owen marched to the door. ‘Thanks to you, I’m late for the opera!’
‘What do you care? You hate the opera. And you are only late because you insisted on hearing about your lady love’s wedding preparations…’
‘She’s not my blasted lady love!’
‘And as Gertie also says, if you have to shout—you’re wrong.’
‘Go to hell!’ He fully intended to slam the heavy oak door as hard as he could.
‘It’s a great shame, though, isn’t it? I mean regardless of what happened to you… Which is obviously unforgivable…but I wouldn’t wish Kelvedon on anyone. Not even my worst enemy.’ Which was the single most niggling thing keeping Owen up at night. Kelvedon was hideous. Inside and out. ‘Word on the street is he’s a bit handy with his fists as well as his
hands.’
‘What?’ Against his better judgement, Owen turned around as his conscience pricked further. ‘Define handy.’
‘Only that he is renowned for his temper and his poor barren first wife was often seen with bruises…before she mysteriously fell down those stairs…’ Randolph shook his head, his face a picture of concern. ‘You’ve got to feel for the girl even though you despise her.’
‘I don’t completely despise her.’ That was the problem. ‘Loathing isn’t despising. And being a decent sort, I do feel some compassion for her.’ If Kelvedon ever laid a finger on her… Now he felt compelled to do the right thing. Being the bigger man really was a nauseating character trait. Blasted Randolph! Giving him another worry to add to the churning mix of emotions he couldn’t currently control and apparently couldn’t ignore.
‘I’m late!’ And it was probably best he extricate himself from the situation before his irritating friend added anything else to the seething cauldron bubbling in his gut.
‘I know you loathe her and everything, but being a decent sort who always does the right thing unlike the rest of us mere mortals…perhaps you could help her in some way?’
Owen had offered her his help the other night—Lord only knew why. She had turned him down flat. Thank goodness. ‘I sincerely doubt there is anything I could offer Lady Lydia Barton that she would take.’
‘I’ll wager she would! If it was a toss up between you and the odious Kelvedon, for example… I know which of you I’d rather marry if I was desperate.’
Owen paused mid-step and simply gaped. ‘Have you gone completely mad?’
‘It would save her from a fate worse than death. And you are partial to doing good deeds. Almost daily, in fact. You are annoying selfless. It’s one of the main reasons my Gertie adores you. She says you have a giant heart made from solid gold.’ A description which always made Owen uncomfortable, largely because he preferred to keep that unfortunate character trait a secret in case it was exploited again. But Randolph and Gertie were family, and his best friend was a master at finding things out, so they knew.
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