Family Scandals (29 page)

She nodded, feeling her cheeks turn red. “I wanted to give you something just from me.” He had stared down at her for a long time before pulling her into his arms and kissing her thoroughly.

“Thank you,” he murmured when he raised his head. “I don’t know when I have received a more wondrous gift.

She hid her face against the material covering his chest.“You’re welcome,” she replied, then stepped back to look up at him again.

As she did so, her foot bumped into something and, looking down, remembered the box she had pulled from the wardrobe. Picking it up, she said, “What do you suppose is in here? And why was it hidden in the wardrobe?”

“The only way to find out is to open it.” Marcus pressed the catch he found and lifted the lid. An expression she couldn’t put a name to crossed his face as he glanced inside. “Ah, now I understand. These now belong to you.” He handed her the box.

It contained a small fortune in jewelry, including the topaz-and-ruby set Marcus’s grandmother had been wearing in the family portrait.

“Marcus told me,” she related to Felicia now, “that his grandmother’s letter said she had taken nothing back to France with her. He wondered what she meant, but gave it little thought. It had not occurred to him to wonder if there had been any family jewels.”

Felicia laughed. “This has been quite the summer of discovery for both of you, hasn’t it?”

“Very much so,” Corinna agreed, stifling a yawn.

Felicia rose. “You must be a little tired after all the traveling. I will show you to your suite.”

“I don’t think I will ever understand how sitting in a traveling coach makes one tired,” she commented as they left the room. “One would think all that inactivity would make you restless, not tired.”

“I agree, but I am always tired after a long trip too.”

They climbed the staircase and headed down the hall in the opposite direction, Corinna noted, from the room she had been given before. At the end of the hall, Felicia stopped before set of carved oak double doors with gold handles. Opening the doors, she let Corinna precede her into the room.

Corinna looked around the room in awe. Walls covered in rich lavender–and-white-striped silk, an ornately carved white marble fireplace with gold accents, a thick Turkish carpet in brilliant hues of red, blue and purple, heavy mahogany furniture covered in lavender and violet damask, and large windows with plush, royal purple velvet drapes created an opulent sitting room.

“This is the Royal Suite. I had it restored a few years ago because the draperies and carpet were a bit worn, but it’s exactly as Brand’s mother created it for the Prince Regent years ago.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Felicia motioned to a door in the wall on her right.

“The bedroom is through that door.”

Venturing into the bedroom, Corinna found a massive mahogany bed with a rich, purple velvet canopy and matching bed curtains. Her feet sank into a thick carpet matching the one in the sitting room.

“Marcus probably knows more about this suite than Brand or I do.”

“All I know,” Marcus’s voice interrupted Corinna’s perusal of the room, “is that Eliza and I were never allowed into it.” He chuckled as he entered the room behind them. “That didn’t stop us, though. We were just careful never to get caught.”

“I should have guessed,” was all Felicia said. Then she left the suite, closing the doors behind her.

Marcus crossed the bedroom to another door and motioned her to follow. “This is the best feature of this suite.” She entered a large bathing chamber tiled completely in a purple-and-white checkerboard pattern. The large, sunken, Roman-style bath was more than large enough to accommodate two people and Corinna blushed. “Unless Brand and Felicia have added to the ducal apartments, this is the only chamber like it in the house.”

She turned away when he looked at her, hoping his too perceptive glance hadn’t realized the direction of her thoughts.

Re-entering the sitting room, she wandered over to the double glass doors and discovered a small balcony with steps leading down into the garden. Opening the doors, she was greeted by a fragrant, late-summer breeze. Below her, the garden was ablaze with color.

“It’s lovely,” she said softly as Marcus walked up behind her.

“The gardens are quite extensive,” he told her. “They run all the way to the river that you cannot see because of the trees along the bank. Unfortunately, when the breeze is coming from the wrong direction, you can smell it.”

She giggled at the droll tone in which the last was said. Leaning back, she allowed herself to relax against him as his arms slipped around her waist. Her skin prickled as his lips brushed her ear.

“It seems strange to be back,” he said seriously. “I was here earlier this summer, but I stayed in my old room and Brand and Felicia weren’t here, so it didn’t feel as if anything had changed.”

“But now it does?”

He sighed. “Now it does.” Silence enveloped them for a few moments, then he said, “Not that I’m complaining. Things could not have worked out better as far as I’m concerned.”

She turned then, and looked up into his face. “You truly don’t mind being married?” she asked. She disliked the insecurity in her voice, but there were times when she continued to feel as if she’d trapped him into something he hadn’t planned on.

“No,” he answered. “Should I?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “It always seems as if men marry reluctantly. Only doing so when they have no other choice.”

He chuckled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I suppose you might be right in some instances, but not all. And certainly not in our case.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Why not in our case?”

“When I decided to leave the army I was uncertain. I didn’t know at that time that I’d inherited a title, so I was only concerned with St. Ayers and whether I would leave it to a child of my own or a niece or nephew. Marriage was difficult to think of at the time because I thought you were dead. I remember walking back to the house at St. Ayers right after I’d handed you that bit of information and looking up at it and wishing that you could have been there.”

Corinna didn’t know what to say to this revelation. She had never considered Marcus’s feelings about her one way or another, except to register that he had felt her loss when he thought her dead. Perhaps there was hope that someday he might come to love her.

For now, she would be content. She was looking forward to her introduction to society, and meeting her new extended family.

The drawing room of Barrington House was decorated in burgundy and cream. Corinna considered herself fortunate she could tell that much over the sea of people currently occupying it. She was thankful she already knew a few of them, but still doubtful she would remember all their names.

She and Marcus had arrived an hour earlier. Trent’s cousin, Doyle, wanted to speak to her and get some information about her parents. The interview had been pleasant and she liked Doyle on sight. Unfortunately, she could tell him little that he hadn’t already found out.

Her brother had deliberately kept her in ignorance. She had not been invited to the reading of her father’s will and, if her mother had left one, it had, in all probability, been discarded. She had been able to describe much of her mother’s jewelry to him. She wasn’t sure which pieces might have been part of any family collection, but she knew which pieces had come from her grandmother. It would be enough if she received those.

She promised to return the diamond-and-ruby set to the Barrington collection. After finding the St. Ayers’ jewelry she needed no more.

There were no other personal effects she could think of that she might want from her former home. She already had those she had been able to carry away with her—miniatures of her and her parents, a couple of her mother’s favorite books, and a small sampler she had sewn for her mother when she was young.

As for Douglas’s effects, Marcus had those. Determining that Douglas had died after her parents, Doyle informed her she would be considered his heir as well and whatever her father might have left to Douglas would also come to her.

All in all, it had been an informative hour. She had given Doyle complete authority to deal with her brother in the matter of her inheritance and he promised to do so as expeditiously as possible.

Entering the drawing room with Trent, Doyle and Marcus, she was suddenly the focus of numerous pairs of eyes, many the same color as her own. Eliza appeared before them.

“I’m glad to see you did not make some excuse not to show,” she said to Marcus.

He grinned at her. “Don’t think I didn’t consider it.”

“I’m sure you did, but it was only the promise that Corinna would be here today that prevented Aunt Marian from arriving at St. Ayers not long after we left. Not even Brand would have been able to keep her out of Waring House had you not shown. So come along.”

Marcus chuckled as he threaded his fingers through Corinna’s. “Lead the way.”

Moments later, Eliza stopped in front of a settee on which a woman of very advanced years sat, Lady Wynton on one side of her, and another woman on the other who, Corinna noticed, resembled her late mother.

“Aunt,” Eliza said to the white-haired woman, “you remember my brother, Marcus, do you not?”

Alert dark eyes peered up at him. “I thought his name was Edward,” Aunt Marian said crisply. “How many brothers do you have, missy?”

Eliza laughed. “I only have two,” she answered, “but we used to call Marcus Edward because Mama preferred it. But you don’t really want to argue about his name,” she said. “It’s his wife we are all here to meet. Corinna, Aunt Marian. Aunt Marian, Corinna, Countess St. Ayers.”

For a moment, Corinna’s hand tightened in Marcus’s as she withstood Aunt Marian’s perusal. He squeezed her fingers gently to reassure her as Aunt Marian said to the young woman seated beside her, “She could be your sister. More so than Catherine.”

“I was right,” a voice from behind Aunt Marian said, and Corinna looked up into the laughing dark eyes of a young woman. “I told you she looked like a Cookeson,” she said to Lady Wynton.

“You did,” Lady Wynton agreed, her blue eyes twinkling, and Corinna remembered she’d met her once before. Lady Wynton’s younger sister, Cassie. “And I’m glad you were right.”

Lady Wynton rose from her seat. “You may as well sit,” she said to Corinna, “I’m sure Aunt Marian wants to talk, and you’ll be a lot more comfortable sitting instead of standing. Be prepared to divulge your entire life history.” Taking Marcus’s arm, she drew him away, but not before he brushed his mouth across Corinna’s knuckles before releasing her hand.

Corinna was heartened by the rare public show of affection from Marcus. Perhaps he truly was beginning to care for her. As she turned to her great aunt, she heard Lady Wynton ask Marcus a question about India before they strolled away.

The afternoon passed quickly enough. Although Aunt Marian monopolized her for much of the time, Eliza ensured she met most of the occupants of the room.

The dowager Lady Althorpe was the only sour note in the afternoon. After being introduced, she managed to accuse Corinna of snaring this year’s most eligible bachelor before he was available. It wasn’t until the woman moved on that Eliza enlightened her.

“I think it’s because she probably despairs of ever marrying off Sonya or Cynthia,” Eliza said, indicating two young women who were obviously sisters standing across the room. “Cynthia is now nineteen, and Sonya is already twenty-one.”

“I see,” Corinna commented for lack of anything else to say.

“I would tell her to be patient,” Eliza continued. “Amanda did not marry until she was twenty-one, but Trent’s sister and I have never gotten along. Her son, Jeremy, Lord Althorpe, is over there with his wife.” She pointed out a fashionably dressed young man with dark hair standing beside a petite blonde woman, conversing with another couple consisting of a flame-haired woman and a very tall, broad-shouldered man with reddish-blond hair.

Eliza had introduced the second couple to her earlier. Angus, Viscount McQuarrie, and his wife, Charity, were part of the family from Scotland.

Corinna left Barrington House at peace with herself. She would have never guessed that when she found her mother’s family they would welcome her so thoroughly. Her experience at the hands of her own family had not prepared her for the warmth and acceptance the Cookesons readily extended. It was a breathtaking feeling.

At one point she had found herself perilously close to tears as Aunt Marian related anecdotes about her grandmother’s childhood years. How she wished her mother could have been there—or Douglas. Both would have enjoyed today’s gathering.

“Well?” Marcus asked as the carriage made its way back to Waring House. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

“More than I thought possible,” she answered on a sigh. “I did not expect everyone to be so gracious.”

He grinned. “Even Lady Althorpe?”

She grinned back. “Well, she does have two daughters to marry off. You might have had to go into hiding if I hadn’t been there.”

He laughed out loud. “If it weren’t for you, there would have been no gathering at all, but I still might have had to go into hiding. You have saved me from a fate worse than death, my dear.”