Dangerous Weakness (7 page)

Too pleased,
he thought.

Lily Thornton’s face continued to plague him. He couldn’t dismiss the thought that she looked pale when he saw her at Pembrook’s—too pale.
If she isn’t increasing, something else is wrong. Perhaps simply worry. She
should
be relieved.

He hopped up into his carriage.
So should I.

A footman took hold of the door to close it. “Where to, my lord?” he asked
. I should direct him to Grosvenor Square, to the Duke of Lisle’s townhouse.

“Gilbert Street, Bloomsbury,” Richard said instead.

“Just off Russell Square?”

Richard nodded. The man called the directions to the coachman. The door closed. The carriage lurched forward. In moments Richard sped toward Gilbert Street, home to intellectuals and the professional class—home to Lily Thornton.

Chapter 11

Teacakes made Lily queasy. So did biscuits, toast, Aunt Marianne’s pug, and the nosegays of lilacs and lily of the valley beautifully arranged on a marble-topped table near the window of Aunt Marianne’s first floor withdrawing room.

She sat erect, attempted to sip tea, and smiled wanly at her visitors. Both Walter Stewart and Roger Heaton sent posies and gratifying greetings the day after the ball. When they came to call, their stay lengthened perilously close to the limit of good manners for a morning call.

Utter nonsense naming afternoon visits a ‘morning’ call.

For a moment, that absurd thought symbolized all the weary idiocy of the so-called marriage mart. Another wave of nausea taunted Lily; the entire tedious effort might come to nothing.

One other visitor cheerfully munched cook’s lemon cakes and gave the appearance of contentment. She had met James Heyworth, newly elevated to Baron Ross, at Pembrook’s ball. He had arrived, danced one dance with her, and disappeared into the card room. Now, here he sat in her drawing room. He brought no posies. He puzzled her.

The man looked whip thin. Either he exercised heavily or ate irregularly. His uniform, nicely brushed but well worn, appeared almost shabby.
He wore a suit at the ball. Does he even own another?
A narrow black armband tied haphazardly to one arm paid tribute to the recent death of his father; he did not have the look of a grieving man. The only time his cheerful countenance faltered came when Walter Stewart congratulated him on coming into his title. That soured him; the barony did not appear to be flush with funds.

“Are you in London for long, Baron Ross?”

He looked momentarily perplexed. “I hope to be,” he said at last.

How does one respond to that?

Stewart and Heaton eyed each other. Each, she suspected, hoped the other would leave first. Lily felt too weary to find that amusing.

“Was it difficult for you gentlemen to break free from your many duties?” she asked sweetly. She knew full well the Foreign Office did not necessarily keep business hours. She also knew young gentlemen who wished to get ahead worked long and hard.

Stewart looked uncomfortable, but Heaton smiled back. “For your company, Miss Thornton, one makes every sacrifice.”

Outrageous. Get back to work you fool man!

“Lily, look. Another admirer,” Aunt Marianne chirped from her chair in the corner.

Aunt Marianne’s old butler bowed into the room. “The Most Honorable the Marquess of Glenaire,” he intoned and bowed out.

Glenaire stood erect in the doorway, his blinding white neckcloth a marvel of engineering, the fine silk of his suit a remarkable expression of tailors’ art. Cool blue eyes under perfectly groomed white blond hair surveyed the room.

Lily didn’t rise; fear that a display of dizziness would make her look foolish pinned her to the chair. She fixated on the folds of carefully crafted French lace that draped from the marquess’s cuffs over long-fingered hands.

His brilliant, beautiful hands.

He reached out one hand to greet Aunt Marianne with perfect ease, bowing over her fingers, and turned to Lily. She clasped her own hands tightly together to prevent any similar greeting. Glenaire’s eyebrow rose slightly.

“Miss Thornton,” he said with a nod. He did not say she looked well.

“My lord.” She did not say, “Welcome.”

His gaze held hers for but a moment before he turned to Heaton and Stewart.

“I see you gentlemen did not receive the message I left for you at the office,” he said.

The two gentlemen shifted in their seat, murmured excuses, and rose. Both bowed over Lily’s hand.

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Stewart said with an uneasy glance at Glenaire. Lily felt grateful she didn’t have to endure lengthy good-byes, but resented the marquess’s high-handedness all the same.

“You’ve scattered my admirers again, my lord,” she chastised when they were gone.

“Like geese, again,” he agreed.

Their eyes caught in shared memory of their first encounter at Chadbourn Park—and what came next.

He did not, she noted, scatter Baron Ross, although he had skewered the baron with a pointed look.

“Hello, Richard,” the baron said, still at ease. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” He snatched up another teacake.

Richard? Who dared call the Marble Marquess by his Christian name? Not another of Glenaire’s spies, then. Does the man actually have normal friends?

“Jamie,” the marquess nodded in greeting. “Enjoying the Misses Thornton’s hospitality, I see.”

The baron grinned back. “Their cook makes fine cakes.” His grin rearranged itself into something like that of a naughty boy. “But I think it’s time I take my leave,” he said.

“Please stay seated, Miss Thornton. I will escort the baron out,” Glenaire ordered.

Lily saw that Aunt Marianne had nodded off in her comfortable chair in the far corner. She rose carefully, took hold of the back of her chair, blinked to banish dizziness, and watched the backs of the two departing men through the open door of the drawing room.

The marquess tipped his head to listen to Baron Ross, who spoke softly. Once, she saw, the baron looked back toward the drawing room, his face set in compassionate lines, and turned to say something to the marquess. At the outside door, Lily watched as Glenaire laid a hand on the baron’s back, a gesture of support to a friend unlike anything she expected of him.

Odd that. Perhaps Glenaire wished his friend sympathy in his grief.
Except the baron had shown no signs of overwhelming grief.

When the baron turned his face to smile up at Glenaire, it held no sadness.

His smile looks genuine, and not some cheeky grin,
she thought.
And, unless I misunderstand, the man looks grateful.

As Lily watched, something passed between hands. Glenaire passed banknotes to the man discreetly.

I’m right. The baron does not eat regularly. He isn’t the first member of fashionable society to rely on invitations just to eat.

The idea of Glenaire as a generous friend altered her image of the man. She would have to digest that new information later. The marquess himself watched her from the drawing room door.

“Do sit, Miss Thornton. You look as if you need to.”

Lily slid back into her chair and closed her eyes. She opened them to a pair of blue ones studying her.

“My friend’s assessment is correct. You are not well.”

“It’s nothing. A slight discomfort,” she said.
I pray it is something I ate.
“Did you send him to spy on me?”

The firm line of his mouth bent subtly upward. “‘Spy’ is an ugly word. Jamie possesses too much sympathy and too little discretion,” Glenaire said. “I give him little—,” he spread his hands in an expansive gesture, “—errands, for want of a better word.”

“So you can pay him,” Lily finished. “Well done of you, my lord.”

Glenaire’s cool façade didn’t alter; he didn’t respond.

“I own I am fatigued, however, and I must ask you to—”

Both aristocratic brows rose. “Dismissing me, Miss Thornton?”

Lily held herself perfectly still and thrust out her chin.
I need to get rid of this man before I fall over.

“Are you perfectly certain ‘The business we discussed at Chadbourn Park had a positive outcome’?” he asked.

She stifled a groan. “A woman is always certain about these things, my lord.”

He leaned forward abruptly. “Men, however, are never certain. Lily, tell me the truth.”

So, I’m Lily again?

“Are you calling me a liar?”

He reached for her hand; she pulled away. He leaned back into his seat. “So I am to understand that ‘No further action is needed’?”

“As I wrote, my lord,” she said. “Was it not clear?”

“Will there be other repercussions? When you marry, that is?”

At least the damned man didn’t say “if.”

“My marriage prospects are my concern. I need nothing from you. I expect nothing from you. I want nothing from you.”

Glenaire—oh hell, Richard—glowers like no other man I ever met. It is enough to strip the bark off a tree.
She refused to wilt under it or look away in the long minutes that followed in silence.

“In the matter of your father, Miss Thornton, you do have concerns,” he began. Her heart began to race. He went on before she could ask. “In matters of that sort, no news is often literally the best news, and we have heard nothing. I’ve sent men to watch every port between here and Copenhagen. If he is delayed again, or if Volkov’s agents appear, I will hear. When I do, you will know.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Has Volkov tried to contact you?”

“What do your spies tell you?”

“That he hasn’t. He had someone watching, but we put a stop to it.”

The dratted man doesn’t even try to deny that he spies on me. Volkov too—good God!

“They are correct. I have seen and heard nothing.”

She insisted on walking him to the door.
I want to shut the door on him, shut the door on the entire episode of the Marble Marquess in my life.

“Good day, Miss Thornton. You will hear from me.”

“Do send a message if you hear anything,” she replied.
Send a message—don’t come here again.

She shut the door firmly behind him, turned, and deposited her sparse luncheon and tea into a potted palm, retching painfully for a few moments.

Ugh, but I hate that. Please, dear God, let this be something I ate.
She clung to hope but found it harder to doubt every day.

I think, Lily dear, you are about to face the consequences of what happened among the sheep.
She felt her marriage hopes die with sinking heart.
What will I do?
she wondered with rising panic.
I will have to leave London for certain.
How can I do that until my father is here? Papa, where are you?

A maid hurried to clean her mess. Lily thanked her, suggested they leave Aunt Marianne to her nap, and began to climb the stairs to her room, weary beyond speech.

Pregnant, Lily? What in God’s name will you do now?

Lily spent two days tossing about for a solution to her problem, with no results. Confiding in Aunt Marianne, her father’s ineffective spinster sister would be no help. She needed a distraction badly. Three evenings after the miserable visit from Glenaire, Lily judged herself well enough to go out.
The Mallet’s literary evening,
she believed,
would do nicely
.

Lady Georgiana Mallet hosted a literary salon, noted for the quality of its speakers, who were as interesting as they were brief, and for the delectable refreshments prepared by the best French chef in England, on the second Thursday of every month. Her brother Richard never came. Lily felt safe attending.

She walked a few short blocks to the Mallets’ townhouse, a discreet footman in tow, and skirted the British Museum. Living close to that institution gave Lily joy; it often provided hours of engrossed fascination when she could forget about her father, about Volkov, about the fear of impending motherhood.

Any approach to unmarried motherhood she considered so far required that she leave London. She felt that loss keenly.

I will miss the museum and its library,
she thought.
I will miss the squares of Bloomsbury
. She crossed into Bedford Square; the small patches of green surrounded by neat townhouses suited her.

She preferred the formal gardens of St. Petersburg or Vienna to wilder places, even the English countryside.
I will hate languishing in some obscure cottage in the wilds of Yorkshire or wherever I find refuge.

The little fountain in the center of the square gurgled cheerfully as she passed.

If I married Glenaire, I could have London.
The thought floated in unbidden, and she quickly pushed that temptation away. Duty made a poor foundation for a happy union. Marriage to a controlling and arrogant marquess, especially one who looked down his nose on her origins, meant a long life of purgatory.
There has to be another way
.

For now Lily had Bedford Square and its carefully tended flowerbeds. She would have it until her father arrived. She crossed onto Bedford Street west of the square.

Should I confide in Georgiana or in Catherine?
She quickly dismissed that idea also.
However much they may care for me, Glenaire is one of them. He commands their first loyalty
. Involvement with her problems would put them in an awkward position at best. It would empower the marquess to bully her at worst.

A few short steps and she stood under the great curved door to the Mallet townhouse. Evening closed in and the windows above lit up with candlelight. The sound of happy conversation drifted down when the footman knocked. Lily smiled in anticipation.

Georgiana’s salon never fails to distract me.

“Miss Lily Thornton,” her servant told the butler. He stepped aside. The man would wait to accompany her home.

Weariness threatened her when she followed the butler upstairs to the drawing room. She gripped the railing and hesitated before stepping into the first floor hall.

She smiled wanly at the butler when he looked ready to catch her if she slipped.

Perhaps I should not have come.

She needed the distraction of friends. The door to the expansive drawing room lay open. The butler gestured her toward it. Andrew and Georgiana Mallet stood on little ceremony and required no announcement.

Lily fixed her smile in place and paused just inside. Georgiana, on a settee by the windows and already deep in conversation with one of the curators of antiquities from the museum, glanced up at Lily with a swift grin but didn’t rush to her side.

Georgiana’s husband Andrew approached unimpeded by his slight limp; his scarred face lit in welcome. War had left his body damaged, but his brilliant mind and kind heart intact.

I envy the Mallets their marriage
, she thought. Her heart sank.
That door may be closed to me forever.

“Don’t look so sad,” her host greeted her. “Come, help Winston defend his contention that the Russians are not so backward as some in this country maintain.”