‘Jojo!’ he greeted the girl with a huge smile and a bear hug, then he swung her round as if she was light as a feather.
Marianne could not help but be impressed all over again by his strength, but why was he back in Broadley so soon when the ton must be on their way back to London to be brilliant and sophisticated and far more entertaining than they had time to be during the serious business of the spring Season and marrying off their daughters? Was he about to spirit Juno off to some elegant house party with his elegant friends and leave her here to wonder what to do next and mourn all the might-have-beens she could have had with him? She would miss the girl sorely and her new life as Juno’s companion now she had come to know her so much better and value her as she deserved, but most of all she would miss him.
‘Good day, my lord,’ she said quietly as she stepped down from the post-chaise in her turn and tried not to feel breathless and elated at seeing him again. Her heart was beating so loudly in her ears she was surprised he could not hear it from where he was standing.
‘Mrs Turner,’ he said warily. She wished she could run into his arms, as sure of her welcome there as Juno had been, but there was no chance of that and she was seven and twenty and she did have her dignity to think about even if there had been. ‘I trust you had a good journey,’ he added as if he was very uncertain of his welcome as far as she was concerned and that hint of nervousness made her heart threaten to turn over with love for the annoying man right here on the cobbles of this busy inn yard.
‘Very good, I thank you. The weather was most helpful for once,’ she said stiffly instead of embarrassing him with a warmer greeting.
‘Aye, the rain let up at exactly the right moment for the roads to dry up and be easily passable. Have you got everything you need out of the coach, Jojo? It seems best to keep moving so you two do not catch cold in this sharp wind, although the sun is being kind to us today. The luggage will be brought around to Miss Donne’s house as soon as the horses are safely stabled.’
‘Indeed, and you can trust the grooms to take even more care than usual with His Lordship’s wrath to look forward to if they drop anything,’ Marianne said.
‘I can carry this bag myself,’ Juno insisted.
Marianne was glad to see the stubborn set of her chin even if Lord Stratford eyed the small portmanteau as if he thought it looked too heavy for a lady to carry.
‘If it means so much to have it with you, I will take it,’ he insisted.
Marianne tried not to stare at the idea of a lord spoiling the effect of his expensively elegant clothes, beautifully cut greatcoat and fine beaver hat by carrying a rather feminine-looking bag in the hand that was not holding a gold-tipped cane she hoped he was now only carrying for show. She frowned as she looked back at him walking behind her and Juno as a gentleman should. She tried to see if he was still limping. If he was, then he must have overstretched his ankle too soon. She clicked her tongue in exasperation at his headlong determination to push his body to the limits, but he did seem to be moving freely, if you discounted the bag Juno could have had sent round later if she was not so eager to bring presents back from her travels for Miss Donne and even brusque and capable Bet.
‘I cannot tell you how much I have missed your glower of censure, Mrs Turner,’ Alaric told her with soft-voiced mockery, but did he think Juno had gone deaf in the last couple of weeks to tease her in front of his precious niece?
‘Well, I have not missed yours,’ she parried sharply, but what a thumping great lie that was.
She was surprised when he looked almost hurt for a brief moment before he covered it with a cynical smile. Surely she imagined that instant of vulnerability in his blue eyes before he raised his eyebrows and nodded at something in front of her to remind her she needed to look where she was going instead of gazing back at him.
She had managed to forget how clear and compelling a blue his gaze was while they were apart, she realised as she marched ahead of him with her nose in the air and she did not need to look at him to know what he was like. His eyes were the same colour as the lapis lazuli used to paint the Virgin’s gown in an Italian master’s painting she saw years ago in a local magnate’s house and had never forgotten. There was a depth of colour and such skill and love in that painting and she could have stared at it all day if only the housekeeper who showed Reverend Yelverton and his family around her master’s splendid house and wondrous possessions allowed more than a snatched five minutes in each room.
Now she wanted to gaze into Alaric’s deeply blue eyes even more than she had longed to stand and stare at that reverend, breathtaking painting all those years ago. He was so alive and subtly masculine and beautiful in his own unique way. Even with that bag in his hand a part of her wanted to stand and gape at him admiringly. Shock, she decided, as she tried hard to bring the rest of the world back into focus and think about that instead. Soon they would have covered the short distance between the posting inn and Miss Donne’s little town house and she would have to have her wits about her when she met that lady’s shrewd gaze again.
‘Oh, my dears, how lovely to see you all again,’ Miss Donne greeted them on her own doorstep. At least the door was open before Alaric could knock on it this time to save Marianne the sharp memory of how she had first met those blue, blue eyes of his with all the impatience in the world looking back at her and a pinch of desperation to give away the truth under his exhaustion and bluster. ‘Now come on inside and stop letting all the heat out. There is a cold wind blowing today, for all the sun is shining to welcome you back to Broadley.’
‘I will leave you to settle in,’ Alaric said as soon as he had handed her precious bag over to his niece and he turned to go back to the inn where he must be staying. Marianne wanted to argue and tell him of course he must stay and she had missed the sight and sound of him for far too long for him to disappear as soon as they got here, but it was not her house and certainly not her place to bid him stay or go.
‘We will see you for dinner then, Lord Stratford,’ Miss Donne said as if they had arranged a timetable between them that Marianne and Juno had no idea about, but might as well go along with.
Marianne decided the lady was even more formidable than she had thought she could be when she chose and had obviously chosen to discuss arrangements for their visit in general and tonight in particular before Marianne and Juno got here.
‘Dinner?’ Juno mused after she bade a hasty farewell to her uncle and shut the door behind him after one last hug to say both of them were delighted to be together again, even if they were not staying under the same roof.
‘A meal I take at a more fashionable hour than most of my neighbours since I got used to dining late with the great and the good during my years of employment as a governess, Juno, my dear. So I suggest we have tea and some of Bet’s excellent scones to stave off the hunger pangs after your journey as soon as you and Mrs Turner have taken off your outer clothing and washed your hands.’
‘Marianne, not Mrs Turner,’ Juno corrected and Miss Donne seemed to weigh that familiarity up and decide that, as Juno was not a schoolgirl now, it would do between a young lady and her companion, but not for her.
‘You must allow an older and more old-fashioned soul like me to keep one or two formalities alive, Juno. I suspect I am several years older than Mrs Turner’s mother and doubt that lady would approve of such informality between us.’
‘I dare say not, but she seemed very stuffy to me and what she does not know about cannot hurt her,’ Juno said and followed Marianne upstairs to the neat and sunny bedchamber she had inherited from Fliss.
* * *
Marianne hoped dinner would be more formal than usual and that Miss Donne had invited her friends to eat with such a grand gentleman. That way she would be able to fade into the background and he would hardly notice she was there among so much flutter and curiosity. So she told herself she was disappointed when she c
ame downstairs to find only four covers set out on the dining-room table and they were obviously going to have a quiet evening together where conversation would be unavoidable. There was a feel of cosy intimacy about the room with the fire lit and several branches of fine wax candles waiting to lend a glow to highly polished furniture and immaculate tableware. So there would be no avoiding Alaric’s perceptive gaze with so few people to hide behind.
She was not sure if she was glad or sorry that she had put on the silk-velvet gown Fliss and Miss Donne made for her in the summer now. The beauty of the fine stuff and the way her friends had made it drape elegantly over her slender figure meant it was a delight to wear and it was warmer and more fashionable than any of her muslin or cambric gowns. But it clung to her a little too lovingly whenever she moved. Tonight was going to be difficult enough without adding sensual awareness of her every move to the mixture, but it was too late to change her mind now.
‘Ah, there you are, my dear,’ Miss Donne said as she bustled in to inspect the table and twitch a few items of cutlery this way and that. ‘That is much better,’ she said as if a quarter of an inch here and there had made any difference. ‘Flowers are the final touch we need to make it perfect, I think. Could you see to that while I help Bet with the roast duck, Mrs Turner?’ she requested with a vague gesture at the two fine vases on the pier table before she went out again.
Not relishing handling the beautiful little porcelain vessels or risking making a mark on the highly polished mahogany, Marianne lifted the finely made things very carefully. She dared not trust herself with them in the busy kitchen, but made her way out of the French doors Miss Donne had put in to get to her garden without going through the rest of the house. There was a welcome feeling of peace in the twilit garden, although she was very glad of the fine cashmere shawl Darius and Fliss had presented her with when she left Owlet Manor for her present position. She carefully put the vases down on the one bare deal table in Miss Donne’s neat greenhouse and found the scissors the lady used for flowers easily enough. At least it had not rained for several days now, so her most delicate evening slippers would not get wet and be ruined.
Peering around the garden and trying to recall what was where from earlier in the year, she frowned and wondered how she was going to fill even those delicately exquisite little vases with flowers in early October. Luckily there were a few late blooms on Miss Donne’s precious Bourbon and China roses and a spray or two of Michaelmas daisies. Finding some fine leaves just beginning to colour for autumn and a few sprays of rich red and orange berries Marianne began to relax and even hummed a tune to herself while she snipped stems to the right length and stripped off leaves and matched this against that until she was happy with the result. Yes, that would do nicely, she decided as she stood back to admire her handiwork. Just as well that she had neither flowers nor a vase in her hand when she finally realised Lord Stratford was watching her from the deepening shadows of the autumn garden, though.
‘How you made me jump,’ she accused him as he came to the doorway of the glasshouse as if he might as well admit he was here now and had been so for some time until she finally noticed him.
‘At least an inch by my estimation,’ he told her unrepentantly. ‘You were so absorbed in your creations that half the peers in the House of Lords could have been parading through the flower beds and you would not have noticed them.’
‘I think I might have,’ she answered him with a smile and a chuckle for the picture he had put in her head of a troop of peers dressed in velvet and ermine and wearing their coronets as if for a state occasion as they filed through Miss Donne’s precious garden in solemn but puzzled lines.
‘I wish you would do that more often,’ he said and because he had smiled back and come a lot closer she was not quite sure what they had been talking about any more.
‘Arrange flowers?’
‘No, laugh and hum under your breath and forget to be grave and responsible for a while.’
‘I have to be, it is my job to be serious and take care of your niece.’
‘Not with Miss Donne in the house and me to take my duty to Juno seriously for once in her life. Sometimes I see the bright, fearless and courageous girl you must have been when you met your Daniel under all that grief and responsibility you have learnt since, Mrs Turner, and I envy him like the devil.’
‘He is dead,’ she said bleakly and it did still feel bleak, even with this swirl of high excitement inside her making her breath come short and her heartbeat race like a mad March hare simply because Alaric was so close once again and she had missed him so very badly.
‘I would never try to take him away from you because I am jealous he knew the young and reckless girl you must have been back then and I did not,’ he said in a low growl of a voice that told her he was being very serious indeed. ‘You are who you are because you loved him and lost him before we met and I would not change that part of you even if I could.’
‘You would not?’
‘No, why would I want to, I...l...’ His voice tailed off as if he recalled where they were and he was obviously uncertain how she felt about him. ‘I like you very well as you are,’ he substituted for the word her ears had been so eager to hear and never mind all those resolutions she had made while they were apart to treat him as her lordly employer and Juno’s uncle in future.
‘Like?’ she still said recklessly.
‘Definitely,’ he said with a warm and almost lazy smile as he bent his head to kiss her as if he was tired of words and not quite being able to say what he really meant.
‘I like you, too,’ she echoed incoherently, then nuzzled closer to his firm mouth after snatching enough breath to go on with. Ah, this was what she had been missing so dearly it felt as if she was only going through the motions every day she had had to live without him. Now she was greedy for his kisses and his nearness and his l—whatever that was.
His mouth was warm on hers and his hands felt like heaven as he explored her curves through silk velvet. Even his finely made evening gloves only made his touch seem all the more fascinating through them and the silken caress of her gown with him on the other side of it. She wriggled a little closer and pouted kisses against his mouth to ask why he would not let her right inside and do the same for her. She heard his breath speed up, felt him tremble like a finely bred racehorse under her urgent, reckless touch and hoped he was satisfied to see that sensual Marianne was alive and very present after all. He was definitely not satisfied, she realised smugly as she slid her leg between his and felt how very far he was from that state for herself.
‘Not here, Marianne, and probably not now,’ he told her raggedly and tried hard to step back from her and the danger they would be very impolite indeed in Miss Donne’s greenhouse if they did not put a little distance between them.
‘When and where, then?’ she insisted on asking wantonly as the little distance he had managed to put between them chilled her like midwinter.
‘On our wedding night and in our own bed, if I have my way,’ she thought she heard him murmur, but that had to be wrong.
Her mind was providing her with the words it wanted to hear out of her feverish need for him and his stubborn refusal to be less than noble about it, she told herself, as she stared up at him as if he had stuck a knife in her instead of maybe murmured something like a proposal of marriage. She shook her head to clear it of air dreams and nonsense. ‘Now I am hearing things as well,’ she muttered to herself as she felt him draw away and every part of her hated to let him go.
‘Did I remember to dismiss you as of yesterday when you finally got here, Marianne?’ he asked her huskily.
‘Why? What have I done wrong?’
‘Nothing yet and we did agree on a month’s trial, did we not?’
‘Yes, but...’
‘But nothing, that month was up yesterday and never have thirty days seemed to tick by so wret
chedly slow it felt as if every one of them was a month in its own right. So now you can consider yourself unemployed and free of any obligation to keep Juno company in future unless you do so out of the goodness of your heart, Mrs Turner.’
‘I did not think I was doing so very badly at looking after your niece,’ she said and now it was being taken from her she realised how much she had enjoyed getting to know the young woman she had spent so much time with lately and what on earth was she going to do with herself instead now she did not suit her noble employer?
‘That has nothing to do with it,’ he told her with a hunted look as if he was being asked to explain something very difficult indeed. ‘Harry Marbeck is a gentleman,’ he said at last and she could not hide a smile at his look of frustration as if even he knew he was being an idiot.
‘So you told me when he brought my sister to Darius and Fliss’s wedding.’
‘Precisely and I believe I also told you he would not seduce a lady in his employment simply because he is one at heart, whatever the gossips say about him,’ he said and at last she understood what he was trying so hard not to tell her and she had a struggle not to laugh. Or maybe even sing out loud, or jump up and down with glee because apparently he wanted to seduce her after all and she felt exactly the same way about him.
‘Hence your abrupt termination of my employment, I suppose?’ she said to help him out, although how on earth he thought he was going to be able to seduce her with Miss Donne as her fierce chaperone she had no idea, but her heart was still singing at the very idea.
‘It has been a very long month.’
She looked a question at him and wondered about the potential for making love in a glasshouse. She glanced about at the scrubbed-out pots and tin labels and a few sleepy plants on the edge of an autumn sleep and above all so much glass to make them visible to anyone who cared to look out of an upstairs window or out of a back door and decided not; it was a highly unlikely trysting place. They would be far too obvious from the house and probably to one or two of Miss Donne’s neighbours as well, if they realised what was going on down here and trooped up to their attics to peer down at a scandalous lord and a far-too-willing lady.
Unsuitable Bride for a Viscount Page 18