The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla A Pink Carnation Novel (26 page)

Not anymore. Leaning through the window, Sally gave an enthusiastic wave, and saw Lucien’s lips lift in response.

He held out a hand to help her down. “Welcome to Hullingden.” He looked at her sideways. “I would have assembled the servants to greet you, but I thought, under the circumstances—”

“No,” said Sally quickly, feeling suddenly shy. “That’s quite all right. After all—well—”

After all, she wasn’t here to stay. Grimacing, she lifted her eyes to the duke’s. “Forgive me. I’ve never been mock-betrothed before. I’m not quite sure how one goes about it.”

“Neither have I,” agreed her mock-betrothed, lifting her fingers to his lips in greeting. Sally could feel the brush of his lips through the fine leather of her glove. “We’ll just have to muddle along, won’t we?”

“Yes. Muddle. Of course.”

Sally appeared to be doing brilliantly at it. She was muddled already.

“It was a very long drive,” she said defensively.

“You’re here now,” said Lucien, looking at her with those fine, dark eyes.

“Yes, and we have
much
to discuss.”

“Would you like to freshen up first?” Lucien relieved her of Lady Florence’s traveling case.

Sally glanced back over her shoulder at her chaperone.

“Go on,” said Miss Gwen imperiously. “I shall see to the disposition of our baggage.” To the duke, she added, “You may inform your aunt that I shall not be joining you for dinner. I will require a cold collation to be delivered to my room along with a pot of tea, steeped for precisely five minutes. Not six minutes shall you steep, nor four, but five.”

“I shall be sure to relay that,” replied Lucien, with remarkable forbearance. “I should hate to think that your tea might be steeped for only three—or,” he added, in a tone of great seriousness, “as much as seven.”

“China tea,
not
India.” That having been settled, Miss Gwen pointed her parasol at one of the footmen who had hurried forward. “You! Not so fast. Careful with that!”

There were a number of oddly shaped parcels that Sally suspected contained something other than Miss Gwen’s wardrobe. Sally also wasn’t sure exactly why they had needed to travel with a large trunk full of nothing but billiard balls—which seemed rather pointless without a billiard table—but since questioning Miss Gwen was an exercise in futility at best and parasol-poking at worst, Sally decided it was wiser not to ask.

Leaving Miss Gwen to it, Sally took Lucien’s arm and let him lead her up the enormous stone staircase, into a hall that seemed to stretch all the way up to the heavens. Or, at least, to the center of the vast dome several stories above.

Sally tilted her head back to stare at the nymphs dancing in baroque splendor miles above. Above the nymphs, panels of stained glass created a complex interplay of light and color. The effect ought to have been daunting, but instead it felt welcoming, almost playful.

“Goodness,” Sally said. The word was entirely inadequate to express her sentiments. “I expected wooden beams and moldering banners.”

“We have those too.” There was no mistaking the pride in Lucien’s voice. “In the old part of the castle. This is the new wing. My great-grandfather had it put up around the Tudor core of the house.”

“Is there nothing older than that?” said Sally, doing her best to sound blasé, although it was hard when the light danced with colored flecks from the stained glass far above and the floor was an intricate mosaic of colored marble and semiprecious stones that seemed to dance and shimmer beneath her feet.

“We do have a rather fine Norman chapel. Other than that, no. The stones of the old castle are shoring up pigsties between here and Leicester.”

“Fortunate for the pigs,” said Sally, trying not to stare.

Of course, she knew that to be a duke meant something more than a grand title, but she had never seen it so forcibly expressed as in the hall of Belliston Castle. There were none of the impressive battle murals or Roman statuary that she had seen elsewhere, all designed to remind the viewer of the owner’s ancient lineage. The dukes of Belliston didn’t go in for that sort of obvious display. They didn’t need to.

It was incredibly impressive and more than a little bit daunting.

The Fitzhughs were quite an old family, but their accomplishments were limited to getting off a boat from France in the Conqueror’s train, spotting a pleasant plot of land, and staying there. They were, as Turnip liked to point out, awfully good at staying.

Lucien looked entirely at home in the grand hall. He shouldn’t have. The soaring marble seemed to demand the red heels and elaborately brocaded frock coats of the previous century, and Lucien was dressed in buckskins and top boots. But on him, the casual costume looked just right. The nymphs simpering on their pedestals certainly didn’t seem to mind.

“I take it you don’t have the same prejudice against pigs that you do against poultry?” said Lucien. Amusement glinted in his dark eyes like sunlight through stained glass.

Sally gathered her wits about her. “I am positively persecuted by poultry.”

“Frequently frowned upon by fowl?” offered Lucien.

Sally swept into the hall, her skirt making a satisfying swish. “Horribly harassed by hens,” she said triumphantly.

“How immeasurably fowl for you,” murmured her betrothed.

Sally plucked Lady Florence’s case from Lucien’s grasp. “That was dreadful,” she said sternly.

“I know,” said Lucien. He smiled at her, with his eyes as well as his lips. “Welcome to Hullingden.”

It seemed a little silly to say “thank you,” so Sally made a show of regarding her surroundings and said, “It’s not what I’m accustomed to, but I shall contrive to make do.”

“My humble hall is honored,” said Lucien solemnly, but she could see the amusement in his eyes.

He looked as though he was about to say something else, but a series of heavy footfalls broke through the sun-dappled silence of the hall, and a harsh voice shrilled, “Lucien! You didn’t tell me Miss Fitzhugh had arrived.”

The acoustics hadn’t been designed for such brassy tones; the words hung discordantly in the air, like notes played by the wrong sort of instrument.

All the light faded from Lucien’s eyes. It was as though a cloud had come over the sun. Very politely, very correctly, he said, “Aunt Winifred, I believe you know my betrothed, Miss Fitzhugh?”

At Miss Climpson’s deportment classes, the girls had been taught a range of curtsies, from the obeisance due to royalty to a bob so slight as to be a snub.

Sally dipped her knees in the very slightest of curtsies, her back very straight. “Lady Henry,” she said.

Lady Florence poked her head out of her box and regarded her hostess critically. Sally didn’t blame her. That shade of mauve was exceedingly unbecoming to a mature complexion.

Lady Henry ignored Sally. She fixed a basilisk stare on Lady Florence and declared in tones of extreme outrage, “You don’t mean that creature to stay in the house!” Then she turned to the butler and ordered, “Dabney, take that weasel to the stables.”

Sally deftly shifted the carrying case to her other hand. “Lady Florence won’t be the least bit of trouble, I promise you.” In illustration, she scratched Lady Florence’s head with one gloved finger. She couldn’t resist adding, “This will be her home, after all.”

The butler, Dabney, cleared his throat. “If I may say, Miss, that is a very fine stoat.”

The sentiment earned him a hard look from Lady Henry and Sally’s wholehearted appreciation. Sally sensed an ally in the butler, and not just because he had the good taste to admire her stoat.

“Yes, she is, isn’t she?” Sally relinquished Lady Florence’s case to the butler, who accepted it with gratifying reverence. “Will you see her safely stowed in my room? I wouldn’t think of entrusting her to anyone else.” She turned to her betrothed. “Now. I am simply aching to see your castle.”

Lady Henry stepped forward, her heels cracking against the marble floor. “You will find, Miss Fitzhugh,” she said, with an entirely unconvincing smile, “that we have your room prepared for you. I am sure you will wish to rest—and wash—before seeing the castle.”

Sally did rather want both of those things, or, at least, the washing bit, but if Lady Henry had told her the sky was blue, she would have strongly inveighed for its being rather a fine shade of pink. “Not at all,” she said airily. “After being cooped in that carriage for two days, I couldn’t endure the thought of a moment more spent within four walls, even such fine walls as these.”

Lady Henry’s eyes hardened, but her fixed smile never wavered. “I am afraid I cannot spare myself to show you the grounds at present. When one gets up a party at such short notice, there are a myriad of details to be seen to—but you wouldn’t know about that.” Having relegated Sally to the ranks of those without great estates to be seen to, she added, in the air of one making a great concession, “Perhaps tomorrow, if the weather is fine . . .”

“I wouldn’t think of putting you out,” said Sally. She batted her eyelashes at her betrothed. “I’m sure Lucien wouldn’t mind showing me his grounds, would you, dearest? I wouldn’t
think
of seeing Hullingden for the first time with anyone else.”

Lady Henry gave her a look that promised reprisals. “Dinner is served at five,” she said frostily. “We do not keep town hours at Hullingden.”

And with that, she swept out, undoubtedly to strew Sally’s bed with tacks.

“‘We do not keep town hours at Hullingden,’” Sally mimicked. “Goodness, is she always so warm and friendly?”

Lucien appeared resigned to her frankness. “Just to me. And my . . .”

“Associates?” suggested Sally. It was a much less charged term than any others that came to mind. It felt appropriately impersonal. Not that she was feeling particularly impersonal at the moment. All of her fighting instincts had been aroused on Lucien’s behalf. “Did your aunt ask your permission before she appointed herself chatelaine of Hullingden, or did she simply move in?”

“The latter.” Offering her his arm, Lucien led her to the side of the hall, through one of the many arches below the great dome. “Do you really want to see the grounds?”

“Why not?” Her blood was boiling and a walk in the crisp autumn air would be refreshing. Not to mention that she could speak more frankly once out from under the duke’s roof. “She treats your house as though it were her own.”

The archway led into a long gallery studded with statuary, glittering with mirrors. “I was away for a very long time.”

“You’re making excuses for her,” protested Sally.

Lucien looked down at her wryly. “One tends to be more just to those one doesn’t like. And, to be fair,” he added, “Aunt Winifred has kept Hullingden very well.”

Sally couldn’t fault the woman’s housekeeping. Each bezel on each chandelier was polished to a sheen, every mirror dazzling in its clarity. Sally could see herself and her duke reflected again and again, into infinity, walking arm in arm, like a pair in a painting.

Lucien, with his long hair and tightly tailored jacket, had a slightly foreign air that seemed to suit the baroque opulence of the gallery. He would, thought Sally, have made a rather good cavalier, all curly hair and plumed hat, ready to gallop off to defend his king.

“Where were you all that time?” Sally asked curiously.

The gallery gave way to a pair of glass doors, leading out onto a carefully sculpted terrace. Fountains stretched in front of them, dry now, the statues carefully covered in burlap sacking. In summer, Sally could see, the view would be brilliant, a visual echo of the room they had just left, with all the water glinting and glittering like glass.

Lucien helped Sally down a short flight of stairs. “At school, at first. Later, here and there.”

Gravel crunched beneath their feet as they made their way between expertly trimmed shrubs. There were empty spaces where pots that had been meant to hold orange trees had already been taken inside for winter.

“Here and there.” Sally widened her eyes. “Oh, my. How terribly descriptive. If we’re going to be betrothed, I’m going to need to know something more than that.”

It wasn’t just curiosity, she told herself virtuously. As his betrothed, wouldn’t she be expected to know more? When one adopted a role, one shouldn’t do it by halves.

Besides, she wanted to know where he had really been all those years.

She half expected him to fob her off with a wry comment, but instead he said, “If you must know, I ran away.”

“In the dead of night with a packet on your back?”

“It was midafternoon, actually. And the packet was by my side.” Sally flapped a hand at the duke, and he relented, saying, “Other than that, yes. I stole away from school and stowed away on a ship to the West Indies.”

“That sounds very daring,” said Sally, thinking that in fact it sounded rather sad. She had slipped away from Miss Climpson’s any number of times, but never farther than the Sydney Gardens. The truth was, she had liked her life too much to want to leave it.

Lucien’s lips quirked. “More daring than romantic. I was seasick for the first month.”

It was at moments like these that it was impossible not to like Lucien. So many of the masculine members of the
ton
tended to take their own dignity far too seriously. At the same time, Sally recognized the self-mocking humor for the dodge it was.