Dangerous Weakness (11 page)

She made it clear she doesn’t want you. What are you waiting for?

“May I call on you next week?” he asked at last.

“Another damned week? You aren’t exactly impassioned.”

“I thought you sought a well-titled connection, not a damned besotted lover,” Richard spat.

The old man chuckled. “Just so,” he said. “Just so. You can have a week, Glenaire. No longer or Osborn will have stolen the match on you.”

I doubt it. Your Sarah won’t settle for an earl’s heir if she can have a duke’s.
He made his leave, determined to sort his disordered thoughts.

One week. Perhaps if I lay out the advantages and disadvantages on paper, my decision will become clearer.
His steps slowed as he passed through Saint James Park on his way to Horse Guards.
Perhaps in a week I will have dealt with Lily Thornton once and for all.

He approached the end of the park and stopped, so lost in thought he dropped onto one of the benches lining the walk.

Lily. I owe her protection. I promised it. I promised her father home safe.
The image in his mind shifted from Lily, frightened yet determined, with Volkov, to Lily, soft and warm from loving, in the dim shade of a sheep barn.
Sheep barn.
He smiled at that.
What I owe her is marriage. Why won’t the damned woman see that?

Chapter 17

Subterfuge can exhaust a woman. Aunt Marianne didn’t raise an eyebrow when Lily told her that the trunk she had packed the morning after her meeting with Sahin Pasha would be shipped to the country for storage. Their ancient butler looked merely puzzled when she handed the same trunk to a coal merchant at the tradesmen’s entrance. He most likely attributed the man’s dark skin to his business. Her maid, however, questioned the need to keep a carpetbag filled with necessities for overnight.

“Mrs. Mallet’s time is uncertain. I want to be prepared to accompany her should it begin,” Lily told the girl. She wished that were the truth. The girl didn’t question; she didn’t look convinced either.

If Richard’s men question the servants, this one will give him an earful. With luck I’ll be gone by then and out of reach.

“When does Mr. Stewart arrive, ma’am?” the girl asked. “Shall I do up your hair?”

Walter Stewart. Damn. That one is a tad sharper than Heaton.
She had forgotten the schedule.
Nothing for it but to endure the afternoon call, plead headache, and slip out with Sahin’s pseudo-tradesman at dusk.

“No, I think not. A simple knot will do.” The maid frowned over Lily’s choice of unbecoming gray, but she let the girl dress her before she dismissed her.
Time enough tomorrow to learn to do for myself.

Lily sat at her vanity and pulled her hair back, whipping it into a casual knot. She loosened it for effect.
Best look the part.
A little powder enhanced her pallor. She made a pained look into the mirror. Loss of weight, underlying pallor, and the powder made her look genuinely ill.
It will do.

Deep clouds blanketed London that afternoon when Lily stood at the window looking out at Gilbert Street.
All nature conspires to match my mood
, she thought.
And Stewart is late.

She looked around for something to occupy her wait, picked up Aunt Marianne’s needlework, and tossed it aside. The dear, sweet woman had taken to her bed with “the vapors,” to Lily’s relief.
Deceiving my aunt depresses me most, I think. She deserves better, but what she does not know, she cannot tell.

The papers, ironed and correctly presented, lay on a table by Lily’s favorite chair. Most households for women did not receive newspapers. Lily insisted on it. She sat and began to read, quickly scanning the little international news that made it into London’s rags. An item in the gossip columns caught her eye.

Lady SW attended the performance of Cymbeline last night on the arm of Lord RH the M of G. Their box included LC and two dukes. Can the long anticipated announcement be forthcoming this morning?

Has Richard offered at last? The Marble Marquess and the Ice Queen. Perfect.
She tossed the paper aside and leaned her head back.
Will this day never end?

Footsteps in the foyer broke into her thoughts.
Stewart at last; let’s get this over with.
She sat a little straighter, thought better of it, and relaxed her posture. She pondered how best to put a wan expression on her face when a voice broke it.

“You look ill.”
Not Walter Stewart
. Blue eyes bore into her.
Richard. Damn.

“I am not ‘at home’ today.” Servants, she saw, had left the door open.

“Yet here you are. I left orders my men were to be admitted at all times.”

“I left orders to admit only Walter Stewart today.”

“Yet here I am.” He stood in front of her, hands behind his back, glowering down.

“I have a headache,” she told him. “I planned to tell Walter I would stay in today.” She forced herself to keep her eyes on his, willing him to leave.

The moment dragged on, something hot and crackling in the air between them, until he looked away, turning to face the window.

“I came to discuss something.”

Lily did sit straight up then. “My father?”

“No, no.” He looked back. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“What then?”

He paced to the window, leaned on the sill, and looked back at her.

“You look ill.”

“I told you, I don’t feel well. Why are you here? Not that certainly.”
Get on with it and be gone
.

Richard paced back in front of her, turned and began to fidget with a Dresden shepherdess on Aunt Marianne’s mantle.
The Marquess of Glenaire does not fidget. I can’t fathom what he means to say.

“Am I to wish you happy?” she asked, glancing at the discarded papers.

He shot her a pained look. “No. Not yet, but that is part of why I’m here.” He walked closer and stretched his hands toward Lily where she sat. “What happened during our stay at Chadbourn Park—”

Lily squeezed her eyes shut.
Not that. Please not that again.

“—compels me to remind you what lies between us.”

“Nothing lies between us.”

“So you say. Nevertheless I am obliged to offer you marriage. That is the least that I owe you after what I took.”

“My lord, you took nothing I did not give freely. You owe me nothing. We settled that at the time. You offered marriage.”
You demanded.
“I refused.”

“But you are my responsibility.”

Dear God, he wants to take me on as a burden to be borne as he carries England on his back.

Richard began to pace and point out the advantages to Lily: money, position, title. He outlined marriage settlements.

“We will, of course, live in London primarily. My work demands it. If you prefer the country—you don’t by chance prefer the country do you?” he swung around to ask.

She gaped back at him, unable to answer.

“Marry me, Lily.”

Tell me that you love me. Tell me you want a partner. Tell me you want me to join my life to yours.
He did not.
Of course he doesn’t want any of that.

“No, I—Richard this is nonsense. I will not marry you.”

“Why not?”

Why not? What kind of suitor, once rejected, asks why not?

“Your family will not approve, for one thing.”

“Of course not. Your family background, while adequate, will not add to my consequence, and your fortune, to be kind, is modest. What they want is of no consequence.”

Your dragon of a mother is of very great consequence indeed. She will make us miserable.

He rushed forward, not waiting for a response, and took both her hands. “What happened between us demands—”

“Nothing. It demands nothing. I have not suffered for it. I am not shunned. I am not with child.” She almost choked on the lie. She pulled her hands away. One went instinctively to her belly where his child even now grew, where she felt it move the day before.

He offers safety and comfort, Lily. Doesn’t your baby deserve that? Marry him. Accept his offer.
Safety and comfort called out to her, but when she closed her eyes to wrap that sense around her, a vision of long years, she and a child trapped in a loveless marriage, relegated to the far corners of his life, took its place. Immense loneliness pushed all other feelings away.

When she hesitated with her answer, Richard resumed his pacing, his scowl deepening.
In that universe I would be on my own, more lonely in that marriage than I am now. If I must be alone, I can bear it better on my own than I could manage inside such a marriage.

“My answer doesn’t change. I will not marry you,” she said at last.
What he offers will not do. It will never do.

“Nevertheless, I am not free to look elsewhere with that between us,” he insisted.

She did choke then. “Are you asking my permission to offer for Lady Sarah?”

He stopped in his tracks, snapped upright. “No. Of course not.”

“Ask for her. Everyone expects it. I wish you well of each other. We are finished.” She hoped the steel in her voice and in the look she gave him would move him.

Eventually it did.

“Very well,
Miss Thornton,
I will not trouble you again. Be aware this is the last time I will offer you the protection of my name.” He waited, expectant.

“Keep it,” she answered, “Offer it elsewhere.”

He made his bow in silence, grim faced.

Lily began to shake when the door closed. Weeping seized her, and she doubled over. She wept until it threatened to make her sick; only fear for her baby gave her control.

Papa, forgive me, but I just turned down a duke’s heir. I must leave with Sahin Pasha,
she sobbed.
Pray God I get away unseen.

The Malta report failed to distract Richard; it also failed to engage his attention. He stayed at his desk late into the night after visiting Lily, picked it up repeatedly the day after, and still it lay in pieces around his office one more day after that.

This is not how I work,
he thought, pushing the report back one more time.
Women make me crazy. The sooner I offer for Sarah Wharton and get my life back to normal, the better.

He picked up a group of forms and requests requiring signatures, signed eight, and sent five more back to underlings with sharply worded notes. The clock chimed half past eleven in the morning.

The day gaped in front of him. For an odd moment, his entire life gaped in front of him.
Damn
, he thought, tossing aside his pen.
When did you become melancholy? Will would laugh at you for this.

The earl could lighten anyone’s mood, but Richard remembered he planned to leave for the country the next day.
I need to see him one more time before he escapes to his turnips and his children. The walk may do me good.

It didn’t. He arrived at Chadbourn house in a worse mood than he left Horse Guards.

“What has you so blue-deviled?” his friend asked over a heartier meal than Richard would have gotten at Sudbury House. They ate informally in the family’s sunny breakfast parlor.

“I am not blue-deviled. Not all of us are blessed with a frivolous nature,” Richard said, even though a black mood lay behind his visit.

“So you say.”

“I’ve decided to offer for Lady Sarah.”

Will grunted. “You don’t look happy about it. Trap is yawning?”

“No man goes to it willingly.”

“Some of us do.” The earl smiled beatifically. “It depends what bliss awaits.” He raised his eyes up, but whether to heaven or his bedroom, Richard couldn’t say. When he looked back at Richard, he sobered.

“What of Lily Thornton?” he asked softly.

“The Thornton woman is not my problem!”
‘We are finished,’ she said. I’ll be damned if I act like a mooncalf over that woman.
“Lady Sarah is. I have three days until Lisle’s deadline.”

Will’s eyebrows shot up. “You make it sound like an execution! Don’t do it.”

“I need to get it over with,” Richard told him, “before this marriage business interferes with my work any further.”

“Nothing interferes with your work.”

Richard ignored that salvo.
Perhaps coming here wasn’t a helpful idea.

“What’s new with you?” he asked.

“Very little. Catherine is anxious to get home; she’s too busy packing to join us. Children are more easily managed and certainly better enjoyed in the country. Have you seen Jamie lately?”

“Not for two weeks. Why? What is our newly elevated baron up to?”

“I don’t know, That’s why I asked. He’s been even more blue-deviled than you for over a week, something deep and not at all like him. He turned down a dinner invitation. He never turns down a free meal. I went over to his rooms yesterday to see about him.”

“And?”

“Gone. Scampered without paying his tab. No one could tell me where.”

Richard reached inside a pouch cunningly sewn into his waistcoat and pulled out a tiny fold of paper with notes in his most crabbed handwriting. He scribbled another note. “I’ll look into it,” he said.

“I hoped you would. Finding people, including lost majors and barons, is a bit of a specialty for you.” He raised a teacup in salute.

“My agents found you well enough that time in the Peninsula.”

“They got Andrew out of that hell of a French prison, too. You never told me how you managed that one,” Will said, looking at him under lowered lashes.

“I never will, either.” The two men grinned at each other in the pleasure of a long-shared friendship.

The conversation turned to the earl’s impending trip, to crops and livestock, Will’s dearest endeavors. Richard let it, content to lay his own baggage down for a bit.

“Pardon me, my lords,” a liveried footman broke in. “There is a gentleman here to see the Marquess of Glenaire.”

“Show him in,” the earl said.

Walter Stewart bustled in moments later.

“Thank goodness I found you, my lord,” he said without preamble. “She’s gone again.” He didn’t need to elaborate on “she.”

“Where?” Richard threw down his napkin.

“That’s just it. We don’t know. Don’t know when either.”

“Tell me,” Richard demanded through clenched teeth.
Damned foolish woman.

“When I saw her two days ago, she pled headache and declined to go out. Heaton went yesterday, and they told him the lady was ‘indisposed.’ He didn’t push it, thinking to allow the lady her privacy.”

Richard suppressed a groan. Heaton’s stunning lack of guile infuriated him. “And?”

“I got the same story this afternoon, but I didn’t like the sound. Turned out the blasted aunt hadn’t spoke to her in two days. She returned a tray night before last and told them not to bring more until she specifically requested it. The story didn’t sound right. I made the old woman go up and check.”

Richard knew what came next, but he asked, hoping he was wrong. “Go on, go on, man.”

“Room empty. Bed never slept in. Must have left that same night.”

“Servants?” Richard rose to his feet.

“Yes, sir. Questioned them all. Most are a worthless collection of elderly retainers who neither see nor hear what is under their nose. Her maid had some information to offer. She said Miss Thornton had taken to keeping a carpetbag packed with overnight things. She said her mistress had been ‘as nervous as a bug on a hot brick.’”