Wedding the Marquess (Lords of Desire #4)

Chapter 1

Savi

With her chin lifted high, Savi glared at the looming sanatorium as if it were an adversary to be conquered.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected a sanatorium to look like. Would it be like Bedlam, with the grandeur of the exterior hiding the madness within? Perhaps, as with smaller lunatic asylums, the madness would be on display—as a warning or a spectacle.

Instead, it was more akin to a prison.

Twenty-five-foot stone walls stamped out the site’s wide perimeter, leaving only the roof of the building within visible. A gatehouse sat at the end of the road on which her cab trundled along, its wide black gates shadowed beneath the weathered archway.

It was the perfect place to be forgotten.

As they approached the black gates, Savi shoved her father’s letter back into her handbag.

There was nothing in there that Raj hadn’t said before; nonsense about it being time to leave her job and settle down as a married woman, along with a carefully selected list of marriageable men with whom she might procreate.

Titled, of course.

To her father Raj, there was nothing as important as a fucking title.

Hence why some random marquess was his top choice.

Savi detested the idea. Raj positively flooded the house with titled guests, even back before she’d left for university.

Once or twice, he had suggested that Savi marry one of them, but Ma put her foot down, insisting that she be allowed to complete university instead of being shackled into a loveless marriage.

Although both of them had been doctors, Ma and Raj’s marriage had been arranged by Savi’s grandparents back in Calcutta.

As a result, Ma always wanted Savi to follow her dreams—to go to Oxford, to paint where her heart led her, to learn who she really was outside of the bounds of their family home in London.

And Savi had, becoming one of the first women to graduate from Oxford. Only Ma hadn’t been alive to attend her graduation ceremony.

Thinking of her mother caused grief to echo through her bones, fresh pain piling on top of its aged predecessors—quickly followed by a familiar disgust at how rapidly her father had moved on and married again.

To a woman with a title, of course.

Savi hadn’t attended the wedding, mere months after Ma’s funeral.

Her death had changed Savi and Raj’s relationship forever.

Savi had been in the Mediterranean when Ma died, unable to get home to attend the funeral—despite her desperate attempts.

The cremation had occurred the day after Ma’s death, as was typical in Hindu customs, but Savi had been furious when she learnt that Raj hadn’t been the one to prepare Ma’s body. He’d given the task to a funeral home.

Days later, Savi had arrived home expecting her father to be mad with grief.

But he wasn’t. He was so…normal. At the time, she thought he’d been bottling it all up. It had been strange, but then Ma’s death itself had been strange. A fatal heart attack out of the blue. Raj passing her body off to strangers. Savi had been too grief-stricken to focus on any one of them.

Raj’s engagement announcement had been the final crack in the chasm that shattered their relationship.

Savi and her father had never been close, but she developed an underlying contempt for him afterwards. If he threw her mother away so quickly, why should Savi bother to foster a relationship with him?

Instead, she accepted the first job offer she received—scientific illustrator for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford—and drowned herself in her artwork.

Five years on, her opinion of her father hadn’t improved.

His second wife, Katherine, Baroness de Vere, had given him his heart’s desire: sons.

Two of them, to be precise, although Savi only really visited for Christmas.

The celebration was a novel experience for her, but the boys seemed to enjoy it.

Dipali was a different story. The only family she visited then was her mother, setting a diya lamp and a plate of pistachio-topped sandesh on her memorial stone. The sandesh would never be as good as her mother used to make it, but Savi did her best.

The wound had healed as much as it was ever going to—until she found the sanatorium’s invoice.

The cab driver stopped a few feet from the sanatorium’s gates and dashed around the car to open the door for her.

“Thank you,” Savi murmured, taking his proffered hand as she rose to her full height—nearly a head taller than him.

The sanatorium’s walls, however, towered over them both until she could almost feel herself shrinking beneath it.

She handed over the fare, her hard-earned cash tinkling as it left her palm. “Wait for me here.”

The cab driver took off his peaked cap and bowed his head to reveal a bald spot on his crown, nestled amongst the dark hair. “Of course, miss.”

Automatically, she went to ensure her pallu—the end of her sari—was still draped over her shoulder, before remembering that she’d worn one of her work outfits.

She didn’t want her father to know about this, and if word got back to him that a woman matching her description had visited, in a sari to boot, it wouldn’t take long for him to put two and two together.

In Oxford, she could mesh the English and Indian parts of her wardrobe as she wished, but here she would stick out like a sore thumb.

Savi approached the unwelcoming black gates with graceful strides. She eyed the thick iron ring hoisted onto the gate closest to her, every bit as black as Newgate’s knocker.

Straightening her spine, Savi knocked thrice, the deep tolling ringing in her ears.

The seconds ticked on long after the echo of the knocks faded away.

She strained to hear any sign of movement on the other side of the door, but there was only silence.

Was this the main entrance? It had to be, surely.

The village nearby was tiny, merely a speck at the mouth of the River Blackwater, and judging by the fields whizzing past the cab’s windows, sheep outnumbered people ten-to-one in these parts.

Paved roads were few and far between, and this one ended at the sanatorium’s door.

Crossing her arms, Savi cast her eyes around, hoping for some indication that she was in the right place—and immediately landed upon a stone plaque set into the inner wall of the apparently-empty guardhouse.

The Silverburn Sanatorium

Established 1921

Founded and endowed by the Marquess of Lakenheath

To offer recovery without judgement, regardless of station or circumstance

Savi frowned as a flicker of recognition sparked in her mind. Lakenheath? She’d heard that name recently. Had one of the villages they’d driven through been named Lakenheath, perhaps?

She didn’t get a chance to ponder the question for any longer. A metallic scrape sounded behind the door, just as a small slot opened a few inches below the knocker. Dark eyes stared through it, weighed down by a pair of thick, bushy eyebrows. “Name?”

“Edwina Landseer,” she said confidently, stealing and feminising the name of her favourite painter. She didn’t think he’d mind. He’d been dead for fifty years. “I have an appointment with the medical superintendent, Doctor Franklin.”

She didn’t. In fact, she didn’t even know if the good doctor was male or female. All she knew was that her father had been paying for someone to be kept in Room EC1 at the Lakenheath Sanatorium for years—and that Doctor Franklin was the one signing all the invoices.

Those bushy eyebrows frowned at her through the slot. “Franklin, you say?”

“That’s right,” Savi nodded, putting on her best impression of an expectant smile. She’d been banking on being escorted in after a combination of the guard hearing his boss’s name and her being an innocuous, cheerful young woman.

Apparently innocuous and cheerful, anyway.

“Right.” The eyes left her just as the sound of paper rustling began, page after page being turned, until finally the guard’s focus returned to her. “I can’t see anything on the list for Edwina Landseer. When did you book the appointment?”

“I spoke to Doctor Franklin only an hour or two ago,” she lied. Goodness, holding a friendly demeanour for this long was exhausting. She didn’t think she’d smiled so much in her life. “It was all very last-minute, I do apologise.”

The sound of a notebook snapping shut made her jump. “You spoke to Franklin this morning?”

Her smile faded slightly as she felt the ground crumbling beneath her. “Yes?”

“Franklin has been away all week,” he snapped. “Lying about an appointment is a solid way of getting yourself banned from the site, even on scheduled family days. Your loved one is here to recover from their ailments, not be pestered by family—however well-meaning, do you understand?”

Savi let her smile drop, letting him assume her reason for sneaking in. “I understand.”

“Good,” he said, his eyes looked over her shoulder just as the rumble of an approaching car rolled down the road. “Now be off with you.”

The cogs in her brain whirled furiously, trying to turn the conversation around. She couldn’t have come all this way for nothing. There had to be something she could say to grant her entry—but the guard didn’t give her a chance to find it, slamming the metal slot closed.

Her shoulders slumped with defeat—albeit temporary—Savi slowly made her way back down the road towards her hired cab. The car she’d heard a moment ago passed her by as she slid onto the back seat.

“Back to the station?” the cab driver asked, his eyes finding hers in the mirror.

She couldn’t throw in the towel this early.

“Give me a moment,” she murmured, digging through her handbag to find the invoice she’d stolen from her father’s desk.

She’d only discovered it a few days ago, but already she knew it by heart.

There was no telephone number, only the sanatorium’s name and address.

It said that Room EC1 was eight pounds, 12 shillings, and 6 pence per week, but provided no information as to who was in that room.

The only other details provided were the name and job title of the medical superintendent, Doctor Franklin.

Her head turned as the heavy iron knocker sounded once more, seeing the driver of the other car standing before the same metal slot as she had been, his chauffeur’s cap propped under his arm.

“Miss?” the cab driver prompted her, but Savi held up a hand to silence him.

And not a moment too soon, because the guard’s voice was almost inaudible—almost. “Name?”

“Lord Lakenheath here to see Mr Eaves.”

Instead of the little slot slamming shut, there was a sharp metallic click.

Savi sucked in a sharp gasp when she saw the double doors begin to open.

Her view slightly obstructed by Lord Lakenheath’s car, it took her a second to realise what she was looking at.

She’d expected to see barren landscape, barbed wire, and shackled prisoners.

Instead, two rows of manicured hedges grew on either side of the driveway, bursting with delicate flowers of blue, pink, and purple.

Ducking down, she caught a brief glimpse of the sprawling stone manor house within. Ivy crawled across the western facade, carefully making its way around the mullioned windows and up to the aged stone mouldings.

Savi leant over as Lord Lakenheath’s car passed beneath the gatehouse, eyeing more immaculately-tended gardens—but then the swooping gates cut off her line of sight, leaving her with far more questions than before she’d arrived.

She slumped against the back of the seat, frowning down at the invoice, wondering where she went from here.

Right before it struck her. Lord Lakenheath.

Savi pulled her father’s letter from her handbag. She knew she’d heard the name Lakenheath recently; it had just been where she’d least expected it.

Furiously scanning down her father’s shortlist of marriageable men, her chest almost combusted with excitement when she saw his name there.

Alexander, Marquess of Lakenheath—who owned and funded the sanatorium, according to the little plaque outside.

“Back to the station,” she said to the cab driver, filled with renewed purpose. She needed to have an urgent conversation with her father. It was time to take matters into her own hands.

Because if Lakenheath could seamlessly go in and out of the sanatorium, then so could his wife.