The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla A Pink Carnation Novel (43 page)

“What do you think it means?” she asked, her hem getting all tangled underfoot because her eyes were on his face rather than her feet.

“I think,” said Lucien, his eyes very bright in his powder-grimed face, “that it means that you are magnificent.”

Someone let out a loud harrumph behind them.

“Don’t let us interrupt you,” said Miss Gwen loudly. She slapped her purple parasol impatiently against her palm. “Just because we have the villain in custody.”

“You mean, Sally has the villain in custody,” said Lucien. Sally tried to tug her hand away, but Lucien held it fast. “She was the one who figured it all out.”

That reminded Sally. . . . “Spies?” said Sally, looking pointedly at Miss Gwen.

“You were the ones who came along prattling about spies,” said Miss Gwen loftily. “I only drew the obvious conclusions. How was I to know it was all a petty matter of inheritance?”

“Petty?” Sally sputtered. Her eyes flew to Lucien, magnificent and bedraggled, his face scarred, his doublet charred. But alive. Wonderfully, gloriously alive. “Petty?”

“Ah, well,” said Miss Gwen, with magnificent condescension. “At least we need waste no more time on this matter.”

“What about the puddings?” inquired Turnip, browsing among the comestibles. “What? Nothing like a rescue to raise the appetite, and all that.”

“Fourteen lobster patties weren’t enough?” said Miss Gwen. She poked her parasol in Sally’s general direction. “Go on. Say your good-byes.” She consulted the watch pinned to her bodice. “If you cry off, we can go home and I can finish another chapter before Tuesday.”

What if she didn’t want to cry off? But that wasn’t her decision to make. Sally looked at her duke, and knew that wherever he went and whatever he did, he would always be her duke. Even if he didn’t know it.

“Well, then,” Sally said, playing for time.

“Don’t,” Lucien said. His voice was hoarse with smoke; the words came out in a croak. It still sounded like music to Sally. “Don’t cry off.”

Sally cocked her head, trying not to let the hope show in her eyes. “Tonight?”

“Ever.” The word seemed to echo in the air between them. Lucien took a deep breath, taking his heart in his hands. “Stay here. With me.”

“Was that a proposal?” whispered Agnes.

“It did seem to be missing certain key words,” commented Lizzy. “Like ‘will you’ and ‘marry me.’”

Lucien wished all of them to perdition. He held out his hands to Sally, twining his fingers through hers.

“Don’t go. I meant what I said before. I don’t have much to offer—”

Miss Gwen emitted a loud snort.

Lucien ignored her. “—but what I do have is yours.” He used their joined hands to draw her closer, trying to keep his voice light as he wheedled, “You know you’ll make a brilliant duchess.”

Sally looked up at him, her blond brows drawing together. “Is that the only reason you want me to stay? Because you need a duchess? To go with all this?”

It would be easy to pretend that that was all it was. A dynastic alliance. An attempt to prevent scandal or save her reputation. But that would be a lie.

“I don’t need a duchess. I need
you
. I need you hectoring and meddling—”

“Really!” Sally tried to pull her hands away, but Lucien held them fast.

“—and bedeviling my relatives and bewitching my servants and making the room brighter simply by being in it.” Once started, Lucien couldn’t stop. “That night you blundered into my garden was the luckiest night of my life.”

“Oh,” sighed Agnes, hugging her sheep.

“If I were you,” commented Lizzy, “I would say yes.”

“He hasn’t asked me anything yet,” said Sally.

Lucien couldn’t stop the smile that tugged on one corner of his mouth. “Oh, is that what you were waiting for?” He dropped down on one knee, trying not to wince as his knee struck the flagstones. “Miss Sally Fitz—”

“Her real name is Sarah,” provided Turnip helpfully. “Sarah Claribelle Dulcinea Fitzhugh. Shouldn’t want to plight the troth in a shoddy way.”

Sally rolled her eyes to the ceiling in an extremity of annoyance.

“Claribelle?” repeated Lucien.

“Have you met my family?” said Sally, through gritted teeth. “I count myself fortunate it wasn’t Aubergine.”

Lucien felt a bubble of laughter swell in his chest, and with it, a sense of well-being so powerful that it seemed to bathe the whole room in sunshine.

When he thought of this place in the future, it wouldn’t be with sorrow or fear, but with the memory of this moment, the moment when he asked the most important question of his life.

“Miss Sarah Aubergine Fitzhugh, will you do me the honor of not breaking our betrothal? If it helps,” he added, as an aside, “I’ll even pretend to admire your weasel.”

“Stoat,” Sally corrected him, looking down her nose. “She’s a stoat. And Dabney will be very cross with you if you’re unkind to Lady Florence.”

“It’s not Dabney I’m worried about,” said Lucien, whose knees were beginning to feel just a little uncomfortable. “Besides, I owe a debt to Lady Florence. And her owner.”

Sally looked down at him, and a shadow passed across the clear blue of her eyes. “I don’t want you to marry me to cancel a debt.”

This whole kneeling thing didn’t seem to be working very well. He would prefer to speak to Sally as they did best: eye to eye. As equals.

Lucien hauled himself to his feet. “I want to marry you because I love you,” he said bluntly.

“Oh,” said Sally, and, for a moment, there wasn’t anything imperious about her at all. Her hands tightened on his. She made an attempt to reclaim her dignity. “Well, if
that’s
the way you feel . . .”

Miss Gwen murmured something that sounded like “Ha! I knew it.”

“I love a love match,” said Turnip happily.

From the floor, Uncle Henry emitted a loud groan. That was followed by a
thunk
, into which Lucien decided not to inquire too closely, although he suspected that it might have had something to do with Lizzy’s scepter.

Lucien turned so that his back blocked the lot of them. “Well?” he asked, settling Sally’s dangling diadem straight on her head. “Will you have me?”

Sally lifted her head proudly. For the benefit of their audience, she said, loudly, “Only because Lizzy tells me that crying off will do terrible things to your reputation.”

Lucien raised a brow. “Oh?” he said gently.

Biting her lip, Sally lifted her eyes to his. Lucien could see the laughter in them, and the resignation. And the love. “And because I can’t imagine living without you,” she said ruefully. “It’s very vex—”

Lucien couldn’t help it. He had to kiss her. It didn’t matter if she was in the middle of a word. A kiss was absolutely imperative.

From the way Sally’s arms twisted around his neck, she seemed to agree.

It was some time before they pulled apart to arm’s length, Sally’s cheeks rosy, her hair tousled, and her eyes glowing.

“—very vexing,” she finished triumphantly, if somewhat breathlessly. “I didn’t mean to go falling in love with you, you know.”

“I know,” Lucien agreed. “I know.”

He rested the tip of his nose against hers, thinking of the strange and tortuous paths by which they had arrived at this moment. He lifted his head, looking into the bright blue eyes that were all the seas he needed to sail and all the sky he needed to see.

From now on, his future was here, with Sally.

There was just one thing. Lucien rested his hands on his betrothed’s shoulders. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said solemnly.

Sally drew a deep breath that did further damage to her ruined tunic. “Anything,” she said recklessly.

“My dearest love . . .” Lucien cradled her face tenderly in his hands. “Just what do you have against chickens?”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Cambridge, 2004

The plastic pumpkin rocked on its dented base. I hastily steadied it before it could spill candy out across the floor.

“Did you say you’re leaving Selwick Hall?”

Colin spoke through a mouthful of candy pumpkin. “Leasing.” He swallowed the orange goop and tried again. “I’m leasing Selwick Hall.”

I stared at him. “I thought you were breaking up with me,” I said numbly.

“Would I be here if I were breaking up with you?” Colin grimaced, wiping his sticky lips with the back of his hand. “This stuff is vile.”

“Here.” I thrust the plastic pumpkin at him. “Have a Snickers to clear your palate. Leasing Selwick Hall. Why are you leasing Selwick Hall?”

Colin had moved heaven and earth to hold on to Selwick Hall. Since his father died, it had been his home, his project, his world.

A dark suspicion entered my mind. “Has Jeremy—”

“No.” Colin held up his hands. “Jeremy hasn’t done anything. He’s been quite helpful, really.”

“Then—why?” I looked helplessly at Colin. “I don’t get it. You love Selwick Hall.”

Or, at least, I’d always assumed he did. But maybe love didn’t translate to wanting to stay there.

I’d always said I loved grad school, and look at me.

“You here. Me there,” Colin said patiently. “If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain . . . Unless you don’t want me to, that is.”

“I’m not sure I like being compared to a mountain,” I said numbly. This was so beyond anything I had expected. Colin leave Selwick Hall?

“You’re not the mountain; I’m the mountain.” Colin tugged at his tie. “Nothing is definite yet. It’s all still in the planning stages, but there are some Americans who are interested.” When I didn’t say anything, he added, “They’re friends of Jeremy’s.”

Of course. They would be. Colin’s stepfather/cousin lived a very transatlantic life.

Colin squirmed himself out of the dent in the center of the cushion where the springs had long since expired. “Look, I realize it’s a bit of cheek inviting myself into your life. If you don’t like the idea—”

He was, I realized, nervous. Palm-sweating, tie-tugging nervous.

And I? Was beyond words. “
Like
the idea? I
love
the idea. I— Wow!”

The idea of Colin without Selwick Hall was mind-boggling. Colin giving up Selwick Hall for me—I didn’t even know how to react to that. A proposal would have been easy. This—this meant so much more.

It meant so much more and it made the stakes so much higher. “Are you sure you want to do that?” I said awkwardly. “For me?”

“For us,” Colin pointed out. “There’s a difference.”

I took a deep breath. “True, O King. I just—I don’t want you to wake up six months from now hating me because I’ve made you give your home away.”

Colin took my hands in his. “Three things,” he said gravely. “One, I’m not giving it away. I’m only leasing it. I’ll get it back.”

“Yes, but—” I knew how batty it would drive Colin to have strangers at the Hall, wrinkling the pages of his father’s paperbacks and ruining the perfect dent in his favorite chair in the library.

Colin squeezed my hands. “Two, I wouldn’t have offered if I weren’t prepared to go through with it.”

I shifted uncomfortably on my perch on the arm of the couch. Prepared wasn’t the same thing as ready. I didn’t want my boyfriend to martyr himself for me. “I know that, but—”

“And, three”—Colin gave a little tug, and I plopped down inelegantly onto his lap—“it’s just a house.”

“It’s your house,” I pointed out, struggling to sit upright, much hampered by my flowing skirts. I managed to claw my way up his chest into something resembling a sitting position, shaking my tousled hair out of my face. “You love it there.”

“I love you,” said Colin, sliding his fingers under my chin. A hint of a smile touched his lips. “The house never comes to the pub with me. It rarely makes me burned toasted cheese—”

“Hey!” I protested. “Those sandwiches were hardly singed.”

“—and if it tried to sit on my lap, that would be the end of it for me.” More seriously, he said, “I’ve had a lot of time to think since you’ve gone. More time than I would have liked. I don’t want to live for a house, no matter how fine a house it is.”

“What about your old life in London?” Before I had known him, Colin had been an I-banker with a trendy flat in one of the gentrifying areas of London. He had thrown it all in when his father died and his mother remarried.

I had always wondered, in the back of my head, if the Colin I knew wasn’t still in a prolonged phase of grief, his Selwick Hall life just a stage.

His relationship with me just a stage.

Colin shook his head. “What is it you say? Been there, done that. Besides,” he added, more practically, “when I left, I cut all ties. I couldn’t go back if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”

“What do you want?” I asked, my eyes searching his familiar face.

He cupped my face in his hands. “You,” he said. A hint of a smile touched his lips. “And, eventually, some singed toasted cheese.”

I knew I ought to protest, to argue, to try to make him see reason for his own good, but my heart was too full. “Was this my birthday surprise?”

“No,” said Colin frankly. “Your birthday surprise is a desk chair. It was supposed to arrive today, but it appears to have gone astray. Which is just as well. I’m not sure there’s room for it in here.”