Chapter 13
Evils of the Clearances.
Radical Parliamentary reform.
Abuses enabled by a corrupt aristocracy.
Novels?
Oh, hang this list!
—from Lydia’s private journal, page titled PROPOSED TOPICS FOR CONVERSATION AT KILbrIDE HOUSE
The following morning, Lydia found herself tucked under the comforting arm of Lady de Younge as she was led inexorably to the breakfast table.
Or, as she privately referred to it, hell.
Public dining was something Lydia did not enjoy, particularly when the table was arrayed with strangers and she was expected to speak to them. Strathrannoch Castle had not been so bad—she certainly had not needed to talk, what with the macaws and the degu and the constant patter between Rupert and the various adults. By the time they had left, she’d felt surprisingly comfortable.
But this was worse—this was the worst possible. She did not know Lady de Younge, or the breakfast room, or any of the other people around the table. She was going to faint or cry or forget how to speak English. She was going to choke on a pastry and then drown in her teacup.
Arthur, her damned pretend husband, was not even there. She had not seen him since they had been ushered into separate bedchambers the night before—a sleeping arrangement which had caused a truly disconcerting wave of disappointment to wash through her.
No, Arthur was not at the breakfast table—there was only Lord de Younge, two other couples in their forties and fifties, and a blindingly handsome younger man in—
Lydia came to a dead stop, so abruptly that the much-taller Lady de Younge nearly knocked her over.
“Lady Strathrannoch?” she asked. “Is everything quite all right?”
Lydia did not know up from down. Everything had gone mad. She was Lady Strathrannoch, and the ludicrously attractive gentleman at the breakfast table was Arthur .
He had shaved. She would not have imagined a simple change in grooming habits could effect such a powerful transformation, but there it was, in the insultingly beautiful and virile flesh. His jaw, which had been camouflaged by his whiskers, was sharp and strong. His lips were beautifully, elegantly molded, and his cheekbones seemed higher and sharper now that the hollows of his cheeks were clear.
He looked like a statue. He looked like an angel .
Dear God, this was not going to work. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. This man was a stranger, and she was going to make a hash of things, and she could not hear anything over the roaring of her pulse.
She was going to humiliate herself, and even worse— far worse—she was going to humiliate him. Damn it, she wanted to be worthy of him. She wanted, curse her foolish heart, to be a proper Lady Strathrannoch. Despite herself, she wanted him to see her that way, and yet she could not possibly pull it off.
She knew herself. She knew what she was and was not.
Arthur looked up and saw her. He came to his feet and then was at her side, and Lydia almost could not find it in herself to be embarrassed that he’d seen her encroaching panic, because he’d come to rescue her.
“Good morn to you, Lady de Younge,” he said, and then he caught Lydia about the waist and drew her up to him. “And a good morn to you, my bonny wife.”
Her head was spinning—or else the room had begun to revolve.
He leaned low and murmured into her ear, his voice a deep rumble that she felt all the way through her body. “Do you like kippers?”
She turned her head toward him, which brought her face into sudden, shocking proximity with his sharp, clean-shaven jaw. And his lips. She was in very close proximity to those. “I—what?”
“Kippers,” he murmured again. “Come with me and let me show you how we make them here in the Lowlands.”
She let him lead her like a doll over to the sideboard, whereupon there were, indeed, two large platters filled with breakfast meats and fishes.
“I have no opinion on kippers,” she managed to get out.
“Forget the kippers.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He nudged her around so that she faced the sideboard, and then he arranged himself behind her. One of his hands came to rest on her shoulder; the other went to the handle of the serving fork, neatly bracketing her between his long, thickly muscled arms.
He was, she realized, almost hugging her.
He lowered his head to whisper into her ear. “What can I do? I know that you’d prefer to avoid this sort of thing. Shall we say you’re ill? Or would that only make it worse later on?”
Oh. He had—oh. He had not wanted to speak of kippers.
It was a small kindness—this shielding her from view, allowing her a moment to catch her breath—but it was a small kindness that meant a great deal. He had not tried to do whatever he imagined best, or swept her out of the room, or attempted to solve her difficulties for her. He had asked .
“Give me a moment,” she said. Her voice was shaking, but she knew he would not mind, and that mattered more to her than she wanted to admit. “Talk to me about—about kippers. Or whatever you like. And when we go back and sit down, try not to act as though there’s something dreadfully wrong with me.”
“’Twill be no hardship,” he said. And then he did as he was bade.
By the time they returned to the table, Lydia had her wits about her enough to prepare herself for the introductions. She nodded, smiled, murmured a “How do you do?” while Arthur sat by her side, occasionally brushing his pinky finger against her own.
Once he nudged her slippered foot with his beneath the table, sending a frisson through her that was not quite the comforting sensation she’d imagined he’d intended.
No, the sensation that moved like a tendril of smoke through her body was something altogether more heated than comfort.
She tried not to think about fingers and limbs and the way his hand had gripped her thigh in the stairwell at Haddon Grange. Instead, she listened to the talk around the table, made her face smile pleasantly, and did not, in the end, need to speak after all.
Lord and Lady de Younge, who appeared to be in their sixties, were a decade or two older than their guests, all of whom were French émigrés who had come to England at the end of the eighteenth century.
Mr. and Mrs. Thibodeaux were the younger pair, both warm and smiling. Didier—as he’d introduced himself with a wink and grin—was a portly fellow of perhaps forty-five, whose bald head and thick spectacles did not mask the twinkle in his eye. Claudine, his buxom wife, was the less talkative of the pair—her English seemed not quite sufficient to keep up with the flow of conversation around the table. But she made lighthearted remarks to her husband in French, and generally appeared quite merry, if somewhat at sea.
The Marquis and Marquise de Valiquette—Lydia wondered if the marquisat in France was still intact after the nation’s decades of strife—were a good ten years older. The marquise had a pinched expression, as though she’d smelled something unpleasant, and her remarks grew rather more acidulous whenever her glance fell on the cheerful Thibodeaux. Her husband—no first names were offered with this couple—looked upon his wife with a rather dour expression.
Lydia wondered how on earth the warm and welcoming de Younges had ended up hosting the Valiquettes. Perhaps the marquis and marquise had simply invited themselves prior to the Revolution, and the de Younges had not yet been able to work out how to make them go back.
Before they’d finished dining, Arthur turned the conversation to his brother.
“Ah, young Davis!” Lady de Younge took on an expression of indulgent concern. “That lad”—she shook her head—“always running up and down the country, visiting one estate or another. What I wouldn’t give for a nice wife to settle him down.”
The heat that went up Lydia’s face and neck at this remark was palpable. She could actually feel it radiating from her skin. She could probably fry the kippers on her cheek.
“The young man who spent so much time with us last month—that was your brother, eh?” said Didier expansively. “But of course, I can see the resemblance quite plainly now!” He turned to his wife. “Monsieur Baird—the brother of the earl.” He tilted his head in Arthur’s direction.
Claudine perked up at this news, an impressive feat since she’d already been rather perked. “His brother! Ah, Monsieur Baird, so handsome!” She clasped her hands to her ample bosom. “To be ten years younger, zut alors!”
The Marquise de Valiquette gave Claudine a sour look. “Perhaps twenty.”
Didier chuckled and ignored Madame de Valiquette. “We had many wonderful evenings with your brother, my lord Earl. You must have been quite bereft to have him leave your home and return to us.”
“Indeed,” said Arthur drily.
“But he did not even mention your marriage,” remarked Lady de Younge. “I imagine you told him to keep your secret. What a lark you have had, hiding your wife from all and sundry. It will not do, Arthur—the countess must be introduced all over!”
Arthur, fortunately, saved Lydia from what must surely be Lady de Younge’s next suggestion: an immediate tour of the countryside with Lydia in an open carriage. Also known as a fate worse than death.
“Davis was acting upon my request. My wife and I wanted to spend our first weeks of marriage together. Alone.”
Good heavens. She felt the sensation of his words somewhere inside her lower belly. Had he meant to make the words sound so suggestive ?
Lydia found that she was very suggestible indeed. She was brought back instantly to the stairwell, her leg wrapped around his hip. The sensation of his mouth on her skin, her hips pressed against his. Her thighs slackened beneath the table.
“Goodness, Arthur,” observed Lady de Younge, “you’ve mortified your poor wife. Her cheeks have gone quite pink.”
Lydia gulped and tried to pretend that the flush on her face was due to embarrassment and not the fact that Arthur’s innocent words had set off a highly vivid erotic memory.
The man’s voice was like a bloody aphrodisiac. It was absurd.
“Och,” Arthur said, “I’m sorry, my love. ’Twas badly done of me.” And then he set his hand to her shoulder again, his fingers warm and solid on the bare skin just above her puffed sleeve.
She licked her lips. “Not at all, my—my dear.”
Mercifully, Lord de Younge turned the conversation from Lydia’s face and the activities of newly married couples to an inquiry into how the young Strathrannochs had met. Arthur related the story they’d concocted about a mutual friend in Edinburgh and made absolutely no mention of London or the Hope-Wallace name. Lydia listened closely as the conversation meandered onward, trying to catch hints of people and places that Davis had mentioned in his letters. She had practically indexed them all in her mind by now, and it should not have been hard to listen for the names.
It would not ordinarily have been so. Only Arthur did not remove his hand from her shoulder but instead left it there, absently sliding a finger back and forth. She felt every delicate movement, each slow graze of his rough fingertip across her skin.
And that made it quite difficult to think clearly after all.
In the afternoon, Lydia was drawn into the ladies’ activities while the men went shooting.
She found herself wondering what Arthur would do—she knew he did not enjoy hunting. Like as not, he would bluntly refuse to take a weapon and go on his way, unaffected by the judgment of the others. She envied that about him—his indifference to their opinions, his confidence in his own beliefs.
I don’t give a fig for what they think. I’ve no need for their approval of me or my wife.
She could not imagine what that must feel like. She felt as though her entire life had been spent trying to force herself into the shape that would be most pleasing to others. And failing.
She listened intently as Lady de Younge, Claudine Thibodeaux, and the Marquise de Valiquette chattered over embroidery and correspondence. Mrs. Thibodeaux spoke in a French so rapid that Lydia’s drawing room lessons could not quite keep up, but she was certain she understood references to Arthur and Davis both. Lady de Younge was the consummate hostess, ordering tea and small sandwiches, smoothing over the French ladies’ apparent dislike of each other with ease and pretending as though Lydia were a participant in the conversation and not an awkward bystander.
And when Arthur returned from the outing with the gentlemen, Lydia made her excuses and followed him up the stairs.
Their bedchambers were across the hall from each other, and he was on the point of opening his door when she caught up to him.
“Wait,” she said. She was a trifle breathless from following his long-legged stride up the staircase.
Her state of physical agitation did not resolve when Arthur took one look at her, cupped her elbow, and drew her into his chamber after him.
“Have you found something out?” he asked without preamble once the door was shut.
Goodness, he looked so different without his beard. Her fingers itched to stroke the line of his jaw.
She stifled the desire. “Not precisely. But I think it would be best if we searched some of the rooms today.”
“Searched the rooms?”
“Yes. The de Younges’ office, for one.”
“Do you think they’re involved in Davis’s flight?”
“Perhaps.” She brushed her lips with her fingers, thinking. “Lady de Younge does seem attached to Davis. And she mentioned in casual conversation eleven different people and places straight from his letters. There’s a significant connection here—I’m certain of it.”
“All right. Can you distract her for a time?” Arthur’s serious face was set as he looked at her, as though the request were difficult for him to make. “I can search the office, perhaps even try her bedchamber, if you can keep her busy.”
Could she do it?
She looked up at Arthur, hesitant, wishing. His eyes were a swirl of color, vibrant as the landscape, vivid as the sharp rush of desire that had unwound inside her body when he’d put his mouth on her skin in the stairwell.
“I can try,” she said.
That evening, Arthur made his way carefully down the hallway past the sitting room in which the ladies had assembled after dinner. Gentlemen were meant to partake of port and cigars in one of the drawing rooms, but Arthur had excused himself with a vague reference to his wife.
Didier Thibodeaux had given him a rather ribald wink at that, but Arthur had ignored him.
Lydia had positioned herself facing the sitting room’s door, and when he passed by, she looked up and gave him a brief, cautious nod.
God, he admired her. He could see from the pallor of her face and the tense set of her shoulders that she would rather be anywhere but there, exposed to the view of a roomful of strangers. And yet she did it anyway, because she believed it was the right thing to do.
He did not know if he’d ever been that brave—that willing to be vulnerable—in his life.
He made his way to the end of the hall, where Lord de Younge’s office was situated. The room was neat and organized, and it was not especially difficult to suss out where de Younge kept his important papers. Arthur flipped through stacks of estate bills—the de Younges were looking a bit thin this year—and piles of correspondence, but found nothing that related to Davis.
He was on the point of sorting through the quills in the uppermost drawer when the door to the study came open, and he froze.
It was Lydia. She entered the room in a quiet whirl of white skirts and red hair, her face still turned back the way she’d come as though someone might be on her heels.
“What’s happened?” Without waiting for a response, he began to stuff papers back into drawers, trying to replicate where they had been before his assault upon the desk.
“I could not hold her off!” She crossed the room and came to his side, her hands fluttering nervously. “Lady de Younge, I mean. She said something about going to seek out her husband—she wants to play a parlor game, for heaven’s sake! I fear she will look for Lord de Younge in here if she does not find him promptly.”
“Hell,” he said succinctly. “Can you listen at the door while I put everything back?”
“Yes, of course.” She hurried back to the door, which she’d shut behind her when she’d entered, then promptly whirled back to him. Her eyes were blue and enormous and terrified. “I hear someone!”
“Lock it,” he ordered in a whisper. He flicked through papers, ensuring that he had not disarranged the chronological order.
“Wh-what?”
“Better they think we’re trysting in here than that I’m searching through their things. If they toss us out of the house, we’ll lose our best chance at finding Davis.”
She threw the latch. “Can I help you somehow?”
“No, I’m almost—” There. He’d done it. Everything was back in the drawer.
He crossed the room in a handful of strides, coming up behind her to listen at the door as well. His palm went unthinkingly to the bolt that Lydia had thrown home.
Her hand, he realized, was still there. Where he had expected to encounter metal, he found her fingers instead. Those long fingers—capable as she grasped a quill, endlessly delicate as she held a crystal glass—
Beneath his own hand now.
He could not help himself. He meant to pull away from her and he did , he did pull away, only—
Slowly. He slid his fingers across the back of her hand, tracing the lines between her fingers, catching on her knuckles, then up, his thumb stroking the inside of her wrist.
The gasp she made was loud in the quiet room. He let go of her hand and placed his own on the solid wood of the door, trying to ground himself. Trying to remember who he was, and who she was, and what they were here to do.
And then she turned to face him. Her back was up against the door, and his hand was braced beside her head, and her eyes—those damned midnight eyes—were fixed upon him.
He did not move. He did not have to. She lifted her hand and placed it on his cheek. Her fingers coasted over his cheekbone, then trailed down the line of his jaw. Her touch was no more than a breath across his skin, and it was madness how that delicate caress caught hold inside him and pulled his body taut with wanting.
He eased himself closer, her body a hair’s breadth from his.
“You shaved,” she whispered.
“Aye.”
“I had been wondering how it would feel under my fingers.”
Jesus Christ, it should not have been possible for the graze of her hand and the low murmur of her voice to make him so painfully hard. “The beard?” he rasped.
Her fingers went back to his cheek, dipping into the hollow beneath his cheekbone. “That,” she murmured. “And now, too.”
Her fingers found his mouth, and then stopped, as if uncertain. He caught her by the waist, and his lips parted on a sound—a harsh breath, a moan—at the heady sensation of her lush body under his hand.
His mouth had moved beneath her fingers, her hand slipping down. He wanted to grab her by the wrist and keep her there. He wanted to draw her fingers into his mouth and see if her eyes went black with pleasure. He wanted to put his fingers in her mouth, and he wanted her to suck hard.
But he didn’t do any of those things, because she moved her hand from his lips to the back of his head. She gripped his hair and pulled him down toward her, and then he was kissing her.
Oh her mouth —God, how he had dreamed of her mouth. She tasted of tea; she tasted of heaven. He could feel the shape of her lips under his and the whisper of her breath, and by God, it wasn’t enough.
A bit more , he told himself. Just a bit more.
He stroked up the curve of her ribs, his thumb grazing the underside of her breast, and she gasped against him, her lips parting.
His slide from reason to madness was slow. He licked her parted lips— Gentle , he said in his mind, easy —and she whimpered and tightened her grasp on his hair. Oh fuck it felt good, she felt so good, her body soft against his.
He pressed her back against the door, not too hard, and groaned a little at the feel of her. She made a sound too, a needy sound, and he wanted to please her. He wanted to give her what she needed.
He sucked at her lips, at her tongue—she liked that. He could tell by the way her breathing changed, erratic and wild, her full breasts pressing up into him. She made a tiny, almost whimpering sound, and then she came up on her toes, suddenly demanding.
He broke away, putting his mouth to her ear. “Whatever you need,” he murmured. “Whatever you want. Ah God, Lydia.”
He kissed her neck. He licked her collarbone and bit her there, and she made more of those little mewling sounds, her head falling back, her fingers tightening almost to pain in his hair.
“Christ,” he growled, “Christ, I want to touch you. Can I—”
“Yes,” she gasped. “Please.”
He found the line of her bodice with his fingers and then with his mouth. He stroked the delicate skin there, then slid his hand around to the fabric-covered weight of her breast and dragged his thumb across one tightened nipple.
She gave a cry, bright and loud, and pleasure spiraled through his body. God, she was so responsive, it made his head spin. He needed her out of this dress. He needed her breasts bare in his hands. He needed her above him, riding him, while he pinched and rolled those nipples. He needed to find out if he could make her come just like that.
And then the door handle rattled.
He froze. They both froze, for a long moment, before he lifted his head.
Oh Jesus, she was so lovely like this, flushed and vivid. He’d somehow managed to tug down her bodice enough that her spectacular breasts were near to spilling free, and the sight was enough to inspire a bloody year’s worth of erotic fantasies.
And oh God , this was a mistake. He could not touch her. He had to stay away from her.
He could not take advantage of her. Bleeding hell, if he compromised her—if he had her in truth the way he’d had her in his mind—they would be honor-bound to marry.
No one who knew her true identity was aware of their marital pretense; her reputation was not at stake. But if he lay with her—
She would think he had done it on purpose, for her fortune. She would think he had used her, far worse and far more ruthlessly than Davis had.
And he would never know if he could have done things the right way. He would never know if he could have won her properly, captured her heart and her affection for himself and not because he was her only choice. Her consolation prize.
“What on earth,” came Lord de Younge’s voice from outside the door. The knob rattled again.
“Och,” Arthur said, pitching his voice loud enough for Lord de Younge to hear, “sorry, man. Needed a moment with my bride.”
The words felt strange on his lips—sweet and astringent at the same time, desire and reality at war with each other.
Lord de Younge laughed. “The hysteria of young love! For God’s sake, don’t tell Didier, or you’ll never hear the end of it. I’m only wanting my cigar case.”
Lydia was frantically tugging at her bodice and patting her hair. “Do I look all right?” she said in an undervoice.
He took her in and, despite himself, memorized the sight. “You look as though you’ve been well ravished, but I suppose that’s how you ought to look.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” she mumbled. Then she turned back toward the door and—with no concern whatsoever for his still-exuberant erection—opened it.