Chapter One #2
ON ARRIVAL AT ALVERLEIGH House in Mayfair, Marcus dropped his luggage and valet off, and checked that everything was all right there. He kept the town house perpetually open, running with a skeleton staff, in case any of his brothers or Aunt Maude wished to stay there.
His cook had already taken charge of the kitchen, but for his first evening in town he decided to eat at his club. He was bound to find one or two acquaintances and possibly even a friend there, though he didn’t have many close friends.
The trouble was, by eating at his club, the word would go out that he was in town, and that would, he knew, result in invitations.
He was, after all, a single earl in possession of a large fortune, as it said in that wretched novel from which his aunt incessantly quoted.
But he wasn’t in want of a wife, and invitations could be refused.
As expected, before he even got to the pudding course—plum duff with custard—he’d been invited to a party that very night, and two more acquaintances had promised him invitations to upcoming events.
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BY THE END OF THE FIRST week, despite his intention of avoiding the marriage mart, he’d attended several social events. He’d met many perfectly pleasant eligible young ladies, and their mothers had delicately hinted—and others much less delicately—that his attentions would be most welcome.
He deflected the hints as gracefully as he could. Though he wasn’t the kind of man that grace came naturally to. Blunt was more his style.
Almost any one of them would make him a suitable wife—on the surface, at least. But they were all so very young. His aunt’s words came back to him. If you wait much longer the new crop of gels will be young enough to be your daughters.
They already felt like it.
They all showed him the pretty society manners he had learned to distrust, fluttering fans and eyelashes at him, and trying to entice him with sweet smiles.
Hanging on his every word and laughing at the mildest pleasantry, treating him as if he were the wittiest man in London. Which was ridiculous. And irritating.
Choosing a wife that way was like entering a lottery. Courtship was all for show. You never knew who you might end up with.
He’d met a number of widows, too, who’d also subtly indicated they were open to an offer of marriage—and several who, much less subtly, indicated they were open to less respectable offers.
He had nothing against widows, and most of them seemed quite pleasant, but he had no plans to take a mistress, not from members of the ton, anyway.
He wasn’t a talkative man, and he didn’t find it easy to make light conversation. The young ingenues were either dreadfully shy and it was hard to pry a word out of them, or they prattled happily of people and events he knew nothing about and cared even less.
And the widows tried to flirt with him. Marcus was hopeless at flirting. He was a dull dog, and he knew it.
He stood sipping wine, his bored gaze running over the crowd crammed into somebody’s ballroom and listening with half an ear to Barney Wimple, a friend from his schooldays, relating some tale about the triumphs of the recent hunting season.
Marcus had no interest in hunting. It was the one thing he and his father had disagreed on. That and marriage.
The amount of attention Marcus had been getting since he arrived in London was already verging on the unbearable.
And Aunt Maude had written to say she had recovered from the journey from Bath to Alverleigh and was now following him to London.
Her presence would only make it worse. He didn’t want a wife, and he wasn’t looking for love—most emphatically not.
His aunt was correct in her assumption that his parents’ tempestuous marriage had given him a distaste for a love match. Not to mention the disastrous experience of Lady Anthea, which thankfully—and miraculously—his aunt knew nothing about.
His brothers might have managed happy marriages, but Gabe and Harry had been raised initially by Great-aunt Gert and later Aunt Maude.
They’d never had to live with his parents’ constant drama, and Nash, who had, was blessed with the kind of personality that enabled him to vanish whenever things got ugly.
Marcus, being the heir, had had to stand there and endure it.
And if those memories weren’t enough, there was the lesson he had learned from Lady Anthea Quenborough.
Both Marcus and his estranged half-brother Harry had—unbeknownst to either of them—fallen madly in love with the beautiful Lady Anthea, the dazzling toast of that year’s season. Charming, modest, sweet-natured, she’d been courted by dozens of high-born young gentlemen.
Harry, young and impulsive and seemingly her favorite, had asked her father for permission to court her.
And had received a thorough, vicious horse-whipping in answer.
Her father and brother had dumped the bleeding, barely conscious Harry on Lord Alverleigh’s London doorstep, proving they knew Harry’s true parentage.
It seemed that Lord Quenborough had no interest in acquiring a relatively penniless Earl’s by-blow for a son-in-law.
He made it clear, however, that he would smile on the legitimate son and heir of an Earl—Marcus.
Later Marcus later learned that not only had Lady Anthea repeatedly seduced Harry—which had prompted that honorable young fool to seek permission to marry her—but that she’d actually watched her father horse-whipping him with every sign of enjoyment.
That had shocked Marcus deeply. Any faint remaining shreds of tenderness he’d felt for the girl turned to disgust and revulsion.
Harry’s beating had resulted in a lucky escape for Marcus. And marked a change in his attitude towards his formerly despised half-brother.
Lady Anthea had married some other rich, titled unfortunate, but rumor had it that she slept with everyone, from her husband’s friends to his servants and even the stable-lads.
The whole distasteful affair had been an object lesson for Marcus. Before his eyes had been so shockingly opened, he’d thought Lady Anthea a sweet, charming, innocent girl.
And ever since, he’d observed dozens of sweet, charming, innocent-seeming girls, and wondered what they were really like behind their delightful, deceptive facades.
No, if Marcus ever took a wife it would be someone who stirred his senses not at all—that way madness lay.
If he did choose a woman to wed, it would be as a pleasant companion, someone well-born, of course, who wouldn’t lead him a merry dance, and who would be happy to spend most of the year at Alverleigh.
And—he thought of his mother—someone who wouldn’t be constantly demanding his attention and requiring him to prove his love for her over and over. He shuddered.
In recent years, seeing his brothers so content in their marriages, he’d occasionally wondered if perhaps he might risk it.
Find some young woman who would be a companion, and who wouldn’t stir his senses.
But how could he be sure that any woman he considered would be suitable?
Society courtships worked to ensure there was no way to really get to know a young woman, not until after the wedding. And by then it was too late.
His friend, Barney, droned on, something about an exceptionally cunning fox. There was a slight stir at the entrance, and the crowd’s attention shifted toward it. There was a perceptible hush and then a buzz of conversation rose. Marcus glanced across the room, faintly intrigued.
Three people had entered the ballroom, a man and two women.
The man was Marcus’s own age or a little older, thin, elegantly dressed and with an air of sophisticated dissipation.
The older of the women trailed behind, bearing all the hallmarks of a duenna or companion, rather than a wife.
But it was the young woman on the man’s arm who caught his eye.
She was perhaps twenty-three or four. Of medium height and very slender—perhaps too slender—she was exquisite looking, with pale, almost luminous skin, and silver-gilt hair pulled back in a smooth, sleek chignon, not a hair out of place.
Her face was a perfect oval, a little on the thin side, or was that the effect of her high cheekbones?
Her nose was small and straight, her eyebrows delicate arches.
He couldn’t see the color of her eyes from where he stood, but they were large and striking.
Her mouth, full-lipped and deep rose red, was the only color about her.
The very sight of her stole his breath. He’d never seen such a beautiful woman, her expression serene, almost blank, looking as remote as the moon.
Her dress showed just the palest hint of lilac, silk from the sheen of it, and cut low across her small breasts.
It was very plain, without a frill or flounce or contrasting trim.
But even a man such as he, unversed in female fashions, could tell it was superbly cut, for as she moved it floated with her, emphasizing her slender curves.
She wore no jewelry at all, which again was most unusual. She should have looked plain, but instead she made all the other ladies present look overdressed and fussy. He knew he’d never seen her before—he would never forget a woman like her—and yet something about her tugged at his memory.
He turned to Barney, who was the sort of fellow who knew everyone.
“And then the blasted fox dived right into a bramble thicket, and m’horse—”
Marcus cut off his friend in mid-chase. “Barney, who is that?”
“Eh? What? Who d’you mean?” Barney blinked and looked around.
“Over there, just come in. The blonde in the lilac dress.”
Barney looked. “Hah. Out of her weeds again, I see. She’s oddly punctilious in observing her mourning. Her year must be up.”
All Marcus understood from that was that the woman was a widow — the rest made little sense to him. “But who is she?” She seemed somehow familiar, and yet he was certain he’d never seen her before.