A Lady Awakened (43 page)

“And even without a child in the case, she couldn’t think of remarrying so soon.” Sir Frederick adopted a milder tone, as though to work in tandem with his wife’s gentle concern. “The pair of you would be received nowhere in polite society.”

“Linfield and I would receive you.” Sophia threw one bold glance to his side of the room, needle working smoothly away. “I’m sure all your married sisters would.”

His heart pooled with warm gratitude and for a moment he couldn’t speak. “I hope to require your hospitality eventually.” He bowed to his sister. “But I expect she won’t entertain any talk of marriage for at least a year.” One more look at his father. “Perhaps that will give you time to reconcile yourself to the idea, sir.”

“Reconcile myself?” Again the baronet addressed his desktop. “To a grandchild begot in iniquity and then credited to another man? To a marriage brewed in six kinds of scandal?” He shook his head. “For all your years of folly, I never supposed you capable of bringing such profound disgrace upon this family. I can only say I’m sorry Edwin was not the elder, and you the younger.”

As though
that
hadn’t been plain since about the age of twelve. Theo took up his hat, and settled it on his head. “I regret that my actions have caused you distress. And I know I haven’t, in my life thus far, given you much to be proud of.”

“Of which to be proud.”

“Yes. Quite.” He got to his feet. “But I’m afraid my mind is made up. I’m a better man for having known Mrs. Russell. That you cannot perceive this doesn’t make it any less true. I shall welcome your good opinion on the day you decide to bestow it, but I shall not lose any sleep in waiting for that day. With respect.” He bowed.

Mother’s face and Sophia’s both shone with mute sympathy as he made his good-byes. He would have people in his corner. Devil take it. Sir Frederick himself would be won over once he met her. There was the silliest bit of the whole business: if he’d gone looking for a bride with the express intention of finding a temperament and sensibility agreeable to his father, he could not have done better than stern, single-minded Martha Russell.

Now all that remained was to persuade her as well. And if it took him a year—if it took him ten years, or twenty, or every year remaining in his natural life—he would find a way to do just that.

P
ENCARRAGH, CONFOUND
its paltry acreage, looked like home when he pulled into the drive. He jumped down from his carriage without even waiting for the steps, and started through the house to see what might have changed in the week of his absence. Not much, and yet he saw the walls and windows and parquet floors through different eyes. Here was the place from which he would launch his campaign of unrelenting persuasion, and here he would celebrate when she finally agreed to join her life, and the child’s life, to his.

In the library Granville was working at his desk. Theo picked up a few cards and letters that had been left for him, and sorted through them as he gave the agent a vague account of his time in London.

“We’ve had some sad news while you were gone,” Granville said by the by. “Mrs. Russell was disappointed of her expectations and must leave Seton Park. I believe she goes to stay with a brother or sister.”

His correspondence fell forgotten to the floor. He blinked, but saw only shifting colors where the agent ought to be. “She lost her baby?”

“I only heard of it yesterday, from Keene. The estate goes to the present Russell after all. I don’t mind saying I’ll be damned sorry to lose her. But I suppose everyone will.”

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
,
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A Gentleman Undone

The next breathtaking novel from
Cecilia Grant

Coming Summer 2012

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at this unforgettable story.…

March, 1816

T
HREE 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.