When the Marquess Met His Match (22 page)

“Ah, but I’m not asking you for anything,” he pointed out softly. “I haven’t asked you for a single thing since I was twenty years old, and that just sticks in your craw, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“When I was eight, I asked you not to sack Nana. I begged you,” he added, as Landsdowne made a dismissive sound between his teeth. “And I remember quite well how that turned out. I asked you to allow me to attend Cambridge. I asked you for your blessing when I wanted to marry Kathleen. So many times I’ve asked and been denied for no reason other than what I wanted interfered with your plans for me. After Kathleen, I vowed never to ask again. You enjoy dangling people in uncertainty, waiting for them to ask you for help, naming your price when they do, or taking pleasure in refusing them. I won’t play that game with you. I won’t ask. Not ever again.”

The duke didn’t respond with anger. In fact, his expression softened to a patronizing sort of fatherliness. “Yes, you will, my son.” The tip of the duke’s cane hit the floor, and he rose slowly to his feet. “One day, you will.”

Nicholas stood up, and as he watched his father walk out of his study, he felt the old resentment still there, still lurking inside him. He might never be rid of it. All very well to want to turn over a new leaf, and an easy thing to talk about, but he was beginning to appreciate how hard a thing it was to do.

Chapter 18

B
elinda read through Nicholas’s latest letter for the fifth time, and though she was familiar with every word of it by now, it still made her smile. He had a talent for letters, for he wrote as he spoke, dashing off sentences with an ease and naturalness that made even the most ordinary things amusing.

He told her of the hops fields and the barley, of the servants and the house. He reiterated his opinion that the place was a monstrosity—or, as he put it in his letter, “the love child of the baroque and the bazaar.” She wondered if he’d misspelled the latter word, until he described the copper ornaments and carved-stone figures from Persia that adorned the drawing room, along with gilt-framed pastoral landscapes and brocade pillows, and she knew he’d meant just what he said. Still, despite his derision, she perceived behind the glib words a deep affection for the place, one that even he was perhaps unaware of.

He never asked if she was coming down to Kent, and she was grateful for that, for she honestly wouldn’t have known what to answer.

She was procrastinating, telling herself over and over that she simply couldn’t leave London at the height of the season. It was a valid enough reason, but she couldn’t seem to convince herself, for another equally persistent part of her kept thinking of ways to rearrange her schedule.

Her heart and her body wanted to go to him. Ever since he’d issued the invitation that afternoon at the brewery in Chelsea, she’d yearned to take him up on it. Fear was what stopped her.

Belinda had never thought of herself as a coward, but an illicit affair did make her afraid. She believed in the rightness of her profession, and she wasn’t sure she dared risk losing it to a love affair. Nicholas had professed no deeper attachment than desire, and if he did, what would she do? If he asked her to marry him, what would she say? She couldn’t imagine being married again, for if it proved a mistake, there was no way out. Would it be a mistake?

She thought of him, of his dark gold hair and warm hazel eyes, of the way he made her laugh and the way she felt in his arms, and of the longing of her body when he touched her, and her heart said no, it wouldn’t be a mistake. But her head said otherwise, and that was why she stayed in London, procrastinating.

She understood him better now than she had when he’d first walked through her drawing-room door nearly three months ago, she liked him better, and she wanted him more than she’d ever have dreamed possible, but was that worth risking the life she had made for herself?

She had the flesh-and-blood desires of any woman. Was it wrong to act on them, just once in her life? Was it wrong to make love with a man, sleep with him, and wake up in his arms without the blessings and security of matrimony?

Belinda tossed aside his latest letter and leaned back in her chair. She’d gone over these considerations again and again during the past few weeks, her thoughts spinning in pointless circles, with no satisfactory answer.

What did she want? For perhaps the hundredth time since he left, those heated moments in Chelsea came back to her, when the mere touch of his hand had brought her to climax, and like every other time she recalled the incident, her body burned to feel those sensations again. It had been so long ago and so rare to occur, she’d forgotten how that sort of satisfaction felt. Now, after that small taste of what she’d been missing, she couldn’t seem to think about anything else for more than two minutes at a time.

Closing her eyes, she traced her fingertips against her skin above her collar, caressing her own throat and imagining it was his touch instead of her own. Just that tiny moment of fantasy, and her body responded. Her pulses quickened with excitement, and warmth began flooding through her body.

“My lady?”

Belinda jerked upright in her chair at the sound of her butler’s voice, but she could not compose herself enough to turn around. “Yes, Jervis?” she asked, reaching for another letter on her pile of correspondence. “What is it?”

“Mrs. Buchanan and her daughter have come to call. Are you at home?”

Belinda breathed a sigh of relief at the timely distraction. “Yes, of course. I asked them to call today. Send them up.”

By the time Mrs. Matthew Buchanan and her daughter reached the drawing room, Belinda was in sufficient command of herself to receive them.

Mrs. Buchanan, though rather stout now, her auburn hair streaked with gray, had once been a great beauty, beautiful enough to capture the heart of Britain’s richest coal supplier though she herself had been born a farmer’s daughter. A widow now, and still extremely rich, with a home in Berkeley Square and a fine house in Newcastle, she had become socially ambitious, ambitious enough to want the acceptance of higher society for herself and for her daughter. It was Belinda’s job to make that happen.

On the surface, it hadn’t seemed a difficult business, for May was every bit as beautiful as her mother had been, with the same striking coloring, and her dowry was enormous. But it was proving far harder to find a husband for May than it had seemed at first. Though charming in most aspects, when it came to a consideration of the various gentlemen of London, May seemed impossible to satisfy. Belinda had requested this visit to find out why.

“Ladies, would you care for tea?” she asked after greetings had been exchanged.

“Tea would be a grand idea,” Mrs. Buchanan said as she sat down on Belinda’s settee, and in her voice was a hint of acidity that told Belinda this was not going to be an easy visit. “It might give you enough time, Lady Featherstone, to talk some sense into this hardheaded, rebellious daughter of mine.”

May gave a heavy, exasperated sigh and crossed to the opposite end of the room from her mother, turned her back, and pretended vast interest in the view below. She said nothing.

Belinda studied them both for a moment, then turned to the door. “Tea, Jervis, if you please. Strong and hot. And send up sandwiches and cakes as well.”

“Yes, my lady.” The butler bowed and departed, and Belinda returned her attention to her guests.

“I don’t want any tea,” May said. “Or cakes. I just want to go home.”

“Home? Nonsense.” Mrs. Buchanan gave a sniff. “What would we do in Newcastle, I ask you? It’s the season. Everyone who matters is here.”

May returned her attention to the window. “Not everyone,” she muttered.

“Mrs. Buchanan,” Belinda said, turning to the stout lady opposite, “it’s perfectly understandable that May wants to go home. Homesickness is very natural. Having felt it myself when I was her age, I think I am in a better position to assist her in overcoming it if I might talk with her alone?”

“Alone?” Mrs. Buchanan’s voice was filled with surprise, and beneath it, a hint of resentment. “I can’t imagine anything you might say to May that I cannot hear.”

“Nonetheless,” Belinda said pleasantly, “I think it’s for the best.”

She used the tone a nanny might use to reason with a petulant child, and after a moment, the other woman gave in with a huff. “Very well. I shall have to take the carriage. My knees, you know.”

“I shall see that May is delivered safely back to Berkeley Square.”

She stood up, waving a hand toward the girl at the window. “If you can do anything with her, Lady Featherstone, I shall be eternally grateful. She doesn’t seem to appreciate any of the trouble and expense I’ve taken for her future, but perhaps you can remind her.”

With that, she flounced out, leaving the other two women alone.

Belinda didn’t speak, she merely waited, knowing that girls were usually so impatient that her silence would provoke May to speech more effectively than any questions.

The younger woman held out until tea had been brought and the maid had departed. “I won’t do it,” she said at last and turned from the window. “I won’t marry someone I don’t want.”

“Of course not.” Belinda poured tea. “I don’t think anyone expects you to do so.”

“My mother does.”

Belinda smiled. “I doubt that.”

“You don’t understand!” May cried, and in her voice was a passion that seemed all out of proportion. “I don’t want to marry any of these men. I know the man I want, and he’s not here. He is in Newcastle.”

“Ah.” That explained a lot. “And he is not suitable for you, is that it?”

“He is suitable! To my mind, he’s suitable in every way. That’s what’s so frustrating.” May came to sit on the sofa, willing now, even eager, to explain. “David is an attorney, and a good, fine man, from a good family. He’s not a rake out for my money.”

“I’m sure, but your mother is clearly concerned about his suitability for a girl of your station.”

“My station?” She gave a laugh. “My grandfather was a miner and my mother the daughter of a farmer. What is our station if it comes to it? But even if I were an earl’s daughter, it wouldn’t matter. I want David, and David wants me.”

“But your mother does not approve.”

May gave a derisive snort. “She’s got it in her head that I shall marry a lord, and have a fine country house, and throw grand balls and parties, but I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it. I just want David!”

“I’m sure you think it all very simple—”

“It is simple!” May cried with all the passionate intensity of a girl in love. “I want him. When he kisses me, my knees buckle and my heart races, and when he smiles at me . . . oh, I can’t think! I want to be with him every moment of the day and night, and he feels the same. You see? When two people are right for each other, it isn’t complicated at all! It’s the simplest, clearest, most beautiful thing in the world. It’s these silly society conventions and rules and rituals that muddy things up and make everything complicated!”

Belinda froze, her teacup halfway to her mouth, and she stared at the girl across from her, feeling as if everything in her world had just shifted into its proper place. The doubt that had dogged her for weeks lifted like dark clouds blown away, and she knew with sudden, shining clarity that May was right. This wasn’t complicated at all.

“Lady Featherstone, are you all right?”

Belinda set her teacup back in its saucer and glanced at the clock on the mantel. Quarter to two. Yes, she had time to make the afternoon train to Kent, if she hurried.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” she said and set down her tea. “I fear I’ve developed a sudden headache. Perhaps we might continue this discussion in a day or two?”

“Yes, of course.” May rose. “I hope you understand now, at least a little, how I feel?”

“Yes,” Belinda said with feeling. “I do understand. I understand perfectly.”

N
ICHOLAS STOOD WITH
Burroughs in one of the hops alleys, eyeing the dark green bines that were climbing along the twelve-foot poles. “The cones look good. At this rate, they should be full of lupulin by early September.”

“I agree. A very good crop in the making.”

“My lord?”

Nicholas turned to find one of the undergardeners racing toward them down the hops alley. The youth halted in front of him, panting from the exertion of running all the way down from the house. “James, is it?” he asked.

The young man nodded. “Yes, my lord. Mr. Forbisher had me sent down to tell you that you’ve a visitor.”

“A visitor? One of the gentlemen of the county, I presume?”

“No, sir. It’s a lady come to see Your Lordship. Lady Featherstone.”

“Lady Featherstone?” A grin spread over his face before he’d even finished saying her name. He started back toward the house at a run. “Thank you, Mr. Burroughs,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m leaving tomorrow, but I’ll be back in two weeks to see how the bines are coming along.”

“Very good, Your Lordship,” the land agent called back, but Nicholas was already out of the hops alley and making for the home farm, where he’d left his horse earlier in the day. Within five minutes, he was handing the reins of the gelding over to a stableboy and racing for the house.

Once inside, he found Forbisher waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. “Where is she?” Nicholas asked, breathing hard as he came to a skidding halt.

“If you are referring to Lady Featherstone, my lord, she is in the drawing room. She has brought luggage with her, sir,” he added, sounding disapproving. “And her maid. She seems to believe she is to stay here as your guest.”

“God, I hope so,” he replied, laughing even as he worked to catch his breath. “If she came all the way from London only to have tea, that would just be silly.”

“If you say so, my lord. I regret that I was unable to prepare for her arrival in advance.”

Nicholas feared he’d fallen several notches in the butler’s estimation, not so much because he’d brought his mistress to Honeywood but because he’d failed to inform the staff of her arrival beforehand. He grinned. “My fault, Forbisher, but I’m sure you’ll be able to make her comfortable, even on such short notice. Have Mrs. Tumblety prepare the Rose Room for her,” he added as he went up the stairs. “It’s the least hideous room in the house.”

Moments later, he was entering the drawing room, his heart pounding in his chest and his heart in his throat. She stood by the mantel, and as she turned toward him, she looked so lovely, he came to a stop just inside the door.