A Season for Love (8 page)

“
If my blood is too precious to be shed
for my country,” Tony countered blandly, “why would father expect
me to shed it for my sister’s honor? I assure you the question is
moot. Longville has returned. I am certain he will do the right
thing.”

The right
thing
. After her brother’s departure, Lady Eugenia
retreated to her room, greatly relieved that neither of her parents
was at home. A lump clogged her throat. Tears she had learned to
ruthlessly repress during her years on the Peninsula suddenly
threatened to spill down her cheeks. If Longville came now, she
would not be able to manage a word.

In spite of Tony’s protests, she now
had a good idea of what the men in her family were thinking. A
duel. At the very least, a suit for breach of promise. The latter
had been spitting from her mother’s tongue before the dust had
settled on the duke’s departure from London. And it was not
her
honor Tony would be expected to
defend. It was the honor of the family. The one thing for which
Lord Worley might be willing to risk the life of his son and
heir.

Not that they didn’t care about her.
Particularly Tony. But in the dire limbo into which she had fallen,
love of family did not count. As far as the Duke of Longville was
concerned, she was unwanted. Unloved. So unimportant in his life
that he had not bothered to tell her where he was going. Or the
specifics of why.

Family emergency, indeed!

For eight long days she had wavered
between pride and practicality.
Oh, foolish
heart!
More truthfully, she had wavered between total
humiliation and abject, unreasoning love. In her starry-eyed youth
she had married Gordon Wharton for love, and she had watched him
die, two horrible lingering weeks after Badajoz. She had vowed
never to lay herself open to such pain again. She would marry
solely to have her own household, to ensure her daughter’s place in
society. That her opportunity for a second marriage should come
from a duke was mere gilding on the lily.

She would make him a good wife, she had been
so certain.

As certain as she was that she was making a
classic marriage of convenience. That she would not, could not,
love a man who was so careless of her feelings.

So much for her foolish fantasies. The heart
was a fickle organ, capricious, willful. Unkind. Cruel.

She would let him go, of course. No matter
what papa, mama, and Tony might say, she would never hold Longville
to his promise.

Never hold
Marcus
to his promise. Marcus. Jenny savored the
name. Would she ever speak it aloud? It seemed highly doubtful. How
could she have so little pride that she loved a man who had not
even granted her the privilege of using his Christian name? A man
who treated her like chattel? Surely she had mistaken her emotions.
She loved the thought of having her own establishment again, a
secure place in society for her daughter, the heady feeling of
being a duchess. But as for the man who was laying all this in her
lap, surely she had confused gratitude with love. Her anguish was
for her potential loss of position, not for loss of the
man.

Fool!
And liar.
She was a Norville and she would bear up, but for some quite
ridiculous reason, Marcus, Duke of Longville, continued to hold a
special place in her heart.

Jenny twisted her hands in her lap. And
waited. It was less than an hour—but seemed forever—when Sayers,
the Worley’s faithful butler, scratched on her door. “Lady Eugenia,
the Duke of Longville is here.”

~ * ~

The arctic expression on the face of the
butler at Worley House provided the Duke of Longville with the
first inkling of the reception he might expect from his betrothed.
There had been a moment or two, as his cavalcade approached London,
when he had belatedly realized his precipitate departure might have
offended his almost-bride. The duke’s customary confidence had
quickly reasserted itself, however, as he recalled his note
assuring her he would return in time for the wedding. After all, he
had chosen Lady Eugenia Wharton for her good sense. Surely she
would not fly up into the boughs because he had not taken the time
to explain what he himself was having difficulty comprehending.

But as Marcus followed Sayers to a small
anteroom where he and Lady Eugenia might be private—after a
suitable gratuity that had not lessened the butler’s disapproving
stare one whit—it occurred to him that even though dukes never
apologized, this might be the moment for him to develop this
long-neglected art.

While waiting for his betrothed, the duke
paced the fine Oriental carpet, ignoring its beautifully blended
shades of burnt umber, burgundy, gold, and cream. He also failed to
note the fine view of the Norville’s spring garden, easily visible
through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the finely carved
overmantel of the creamy marble fireplace. He was, in fact,
beginning to fear that his ducal heedlessness, his inborn
arrogance, had created far more of a problem that he had
anticipated.

When Lady Eugenia entered the room, he was
certain of it.

His Juno, his Diana, might carry herself with
pride, but her countenance was wan. He had planned to stride
forward, take her hands in his, pour out the best apology he could,
given that he had so little practice. Her look, her first words,
stopped him where he stood.

“
Longville. How kind of you to call.”
Head high, Lady Eugenia swept across the room, the modest train of
her mint green gown trailing gracefully behind her. After seating
herself on a cream-and gold-striped satin settee, she waved him
into a barrel-curved klismos chair nearby. Then she folded her
hands in her lap, lifted her chin, and looked him straight in the
eye. She waited.

Stunned by Lady Eugenia’s icy formality, the
duke was, for the moment, silenced. Good God, he had not done
anything that terrible. When she heard why—

A moment of clarity surfaced through
the maelstrom of his thoughts. It was, he was forced to concede,
quite possible his betrothed would have preferred a detailed
explanation
before
his abrupt
journey out of town.

“
Lady Eugenia . . .” For the first time
Marcus realized how stiff and formal was this term of address for a
woman he was only days from marrying. “Eugenia,” he
corrected.

“
My family calls me Jen or
Jenny.”

Yes, of course they did. He had heard Tony
call her so a countless number of times. Again, he had been remiss.
The duke nodded. “You will call me Marcus, of course.”

“
I am not at all certain I can do
that.”

Almost—still not quite believing the depth of
the rift between them—he chided her for not instantly acquiescing
to his desire. But was that not why he liked her? Lady Eugenia was
no simpering miss, but a mature woman with a mind of her own. She
was not going to forgive his excess of formality as easily as he
had hoped. Why should she, when he was still treating her little
better than a chance acquaintance?

“
Eugen—Jenny,” you are quite right to
be annoyed with me. I can only plead that when I heard the tale my
daughter came to tell, my head was at sixes and sevens. I had
little more sense than a mewling infant. I should have come to you
and explained, but I was so anxious to be off to the Lake District,
that I let all else slide from my head.” While searching for the
right words, the duke fingered a gold button on his elaborately
embroidered waistcoat. A peek from under his glowering dark brows
gave him hope, for his betrothed’s face was less set into a marble
mask than it had been a moment earlier. He had caught her
interest.

“
This is not easy to say . . . Jen,” he
told her. “I realize my news may be cause for dismay. I can only
hope, however, that you will rejoice with me.” His lady’s
flickering spark of animation turned to wide-eyed speculation, her
cold fury apparently swallowed up by curiosity. “Caroline came to
tell me that after leaving London eight years ago, my wife bore a
son. An heir. He is seven years old now . . . and called Laurence.”
Anxiously, Marcus examined the face of his betrothed. “I swear it
is true,” he added. “He is my image at that same age. And his birth
is attested by the doctor and the local vicar.”

Years earlier, Jenny had been thrown from her
horse onto the hard-packed Spanish plain, the air rushing out of
her in a great whoosh that left her stunned and bleeding. The
duke’s news was no less of a shock.

Longville wished to marry her to get an
heir.

He now had an heir.

Ipso facto
, he
no longer had any need of Jenny Wharton.

“
Jen!” The duke’s urgent voice was much
too close for comfort. She discovered him beside her on the settee.
Incredibly, his arms seemed to be about her shoulders. “Ah,
Sayers,” the duke declared, as the butler answered his ring. “Some
brandy for Lady Eugenia. She has suffered a shock.” The butler
hastened off, but not before shooting the Duke of Longville a
killing glance.

“
I am quite all right,” Jen said,
straightening her shoulders. Dratted man, he didn’t let go. His
proximity was keeping her insides in turmoil, preventing her from
displaying that her pride could be as stiff and arrogant as
his.

When the brandy had been duly administered
and the duke had come to the belated realization that he should
return to the curved leather of the klismos chair, Lady Eugenia
managed to don a semblance of her customary calm and collected
façade. “You are entirely correct, Your Grace,” she informed her
betrothed. “This is indeed joyous news. My felicitations. I assure
you I understand perfectly. I will have papa send a notice to the
newspapers immediately. To anyone who dares to ask, I shall simply
say I decided we would not suit.”

“
But you can’t!” Marcus roared.
“Besides, I’m sure Worley will never stand for it,” he added
righteously. “Is this all our marriage means to you, then? Are you
so shallow that if you cannot provide the heir, you wish to cry
off? Truly, Eugenia, I had thought better of you.”

Jenny stared. “You do not wish to cry
off?”

“
Are you mad? I’ve just become the
father of two, why in the devil would I wish to cry off? If ever a
man needed a wife . . .” The duke trailed off, glaring.

“
Oh.” They stared, each close to the
teeth-baring stance of two cats about to engage in a territorial
dispute. “Forgive me,” Jen suddenly gasped, ducking her head. “I am
usually more articulate.”

“
As am I,” the duke groaned. “If you
could but picture four days on the road with a seven-year-old with
a tendency toward travel sickness . . .”

A giggle bubbled in Jenny’s throat, only to
be ruthlessly repressed. Obviously, the Duke of Longville was not
in a humorous mood. That he still wished to marry her was
astonishing, even if his reasons were still all the wrong ones.

He needed a wife. And Jenny Norville Wharton
did not need the scandal of a broken engagement or the friction of
living forever in her mother’s establishment, which was all her
current financial means would provide. Therefore, she was still in
want of a husband.

Yet, had there been a niggling sense of
relief somewhere inside her when she had been so sure he wished to
cry off? Relief that she would not be trapped in a hopelessly
one-sided marriage—loving a man who had never shared himself with
another, not even, she suspected, with his first wife?

Perhaps. But the overwhelming surge of
emotion she had experienced when she thought he wished to escape
their betrothal was despair. The thought of losing him had yawned
like the proverbial black pit before her. If he had not wanted her,
she would have let him go. But since
did
want her—for whatever reasons—she would not
let pride stand in the way.

For Susan’s sake. For her little girl.

Fool!
For Jen’s
sake. For Jen’s heart. For Jen’s eternal hope.

“
Very well, Marcus,” she said to the
man whose eyes had never wavered from her face. “I will marry
you.”

In spite of the fact that the bride was
a thirty-year-old widow with a child and the only dewy-eyed virgin
in the wedding party was the daughter of the groom, the marriage of
the Duke of Longville and Lady Eugenia Norville Wharton was
expected to be one of the great events of the Season of 1815. Not
even Napoleon’s escape from Elba or the massing of his former
armies in France could compete for the
ton
’s attention. But no one had expected the
wedding to be a riot, with what appeared to be half of London’s
masses, as well as the elite not fortunate enough to be on Lady
Worley’s invitation list, attempting to crowd into Hanover Square
for a glimpse of the bridal party, and, most particularly, of the
young Marquess of Huntley. Not that the few who were tall enough,
or aggressive enough, to actually see something didn’t appreciate
the arrogant set of the duke’s shoulders, the sheer beauty of his
eldest child, the sturdy handsomeness of the Norville family, or
the pale but statuesquely regal presence of the bride. But the lad
. . . ah, the little lad caught everyone’s eye. Whether they
thought him a miracle or an imposter, the remainder of the bridal
party did not rate a second glance.
How
like his father! A bastard, that’s what he is. Duke’s a rare fool,
if y’ask me! Not a bit of it—boy’s the very spit of ’im. Duchess
played ’im false, I tell ye . . . got to be all a hum, it is. Ah,
but what a handsome lad. Duke’s fair bustin’ with pride, can’t
y’see?