Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
“ O ut with it, then,” said Lucius, folding his arms across his chest to hide the way his fists were clenched tight with pent up anxiety. “What do you know?”
Sunlight filtered down through the cracks in the roof of the barn, glinting off tiny floating specks of hay in the air. Cassie glared back at him through the golden flecks, arms crossed just as his were, her eyes interrogating him. He was almost sure – almost – that she knew the secrets that had been rotting away in Lucius’s heart. He’d suspected it ever since she panicked over the cost of her ruined dress in the woods.
But he was not nearly certain enough to risk speaking the truth unless she did first.
Cassie let out a noisy exhalation and dropped down into a pile of straw, legs crossed in gentleman fashion. “I know that you and Isobel have been cooking up some foolish scheme between you. I know that I have never seen any newly betrothed man look so miserable as you do today. And I know that you had better not marry her, Lucius. Mark my words.”
“Why not?” Because of the money? Or because Cassie wanted to protect her friend?
It was unnatural to speak with his sister this way, making feints at the truth, avoiding the things he really wished to say. The strain of it ached in Lucius’s jaw and brow. But even Cassie, with her wild ways and her carelessness – perhaps especially Cassie, with her lack of feminine wiles to lure in a suitor – would suffer so greatly to hear of their father’s wrongdoing that Lucius could not bear to mention until he was certain beyond all doubt that she already knew.
“Because I do not know if you love her,” said Cassie, speaking simply, softly, and devastating him in ways he could not explain. “And if you do not love her, you do not deserve her. Isobel is not one of the silly frippery types of girl you like to play around with.”
“You know very little about the sort of girl I like to play around with , as you term it,” said Lucius stiffly. “You were only eighteen when I left for Europe. Do you imagine that I was irresponsible enough to allow my eighteen-year-old sister, only just out, to hear all the details of my youthful misadventures?”
Cassie was not deterred. “The very fact that you had misadventures at all is simply another example of why Isobel Balfour is so far above you, my dear brother, that you barely deserve a space on her dance card – let alone her hand in marriage. Isobel is good and sweet and kind and clever. I will not let you abuse her.”
That was too much to bear. Lucius paced from one end of the barn to the other, swinging the anger out through his arms. The barn was as warm and cosy a hideout as it had ever been when they were children. He was sorely tempted to stay in there for ever and never come out again into the cruel world of money and fathers and sisters.
But he would have to set Cassie straight before enlisting her help in building a hay fort to call his home. “I am sorry to hear that you have such a low opinion of me, Cass,” he said, surprising himself with the wrench of hurt in his voice. “I have been trying all this time to protect Isobel.”
“You would have done better to protect her from your own bad influence,” said Cassie, but her accusatory tone had softened. As his restless pacing brought him past her, she caught his coat sleeve and gave his arm a little shake. “I am sorry. I’ve upset you – that wasn’t what I meant to do. It’s only that I’m… surprised. I knew that there was something strange going on between you and Isobel, and all your silly simpering and arm-taking and eyelash-fluttering may be enough for our parents, but it never looked to me as though you were serious. Until now. You cannot convince me that an actual engagement is a silly summer’s prank. Lucius, please tell me you have a reasonable explanation.”
“I only wish I did,” Lucius groaned. He flung himself backwards into Cassie’s pile of hay, folding his arms behind his head and filling his ears with the crackle of sweet-smelling plant matter. “I met Isobel alone today, in the garden, and that was foolish enough. I made it worse by kissing her. I’ve no excuse, Cassie. When we were alone together – the things she said – no, the way she said them – ah! How can I explain?”
He couldn’t look his sister in the eye. There was one very simple explanation for the way he’d behaved that afternoon, and it wasn’t the sort of thing one discussed with family.
She’d been so gentle, even in her anger. She’d forgiven him. Trusted him. And yes, she was lovely to look at, and yes, heat flashed through his body at the mere memory of her touch, but all that was only physical. It could be withstood.
The gentleness had unravelled him.
“I did not expect her to tell Mother that we were engaged.” His voice was a hoarse croak.
Cassie frowned, hands thrust into the pockets of the old greatcoat she was wearing – a hand-me-down of their father’s. “You’re telling me that you and Isobel have been meeting in secret and kissing and scheming and yet never discussed a betrothal?”
“Oh, we’ve discussed it!” Lucius closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, hoping that the pastoral goodness of the stable would revive him. “It’s complicated, Cass. That’s all I can tell you.”
“You’ve been a fool.” Hay stalks prickled through his shirt as Cassie squatted on her haunches to get a closer look at him. “But so have I, apparently. You do love her.”
Lucius considered denying it, but the relief of admitting a small piece of truth at long last was too great. He let the tension release, as though his heart were the River Isobel and Cassie’s words had broken through the dam. “I admire her,” he admitted. “I’m… captivated by her. I’m sick with yearning. But I’m trying not to be, because I know that no good will come of it.”
Cassie sounded half exasperated and half amused. “I could see that you were playing pretend, but I didn’t realise you were pretending to yourself as well. Have you not told her?”
“No, I –” Lucius stopped himself. That last kiss… In one blinding instant, it had brought all his inmost desires to the surface. Could Isobel really have kissed him like that without knowing what it meant? “I think she has some idea of my feelings,” he amended. “She doesn’t know that they are serious.”
He risked a sideways glance to find Cassie openly smirking. “Only serious enough to lead to an engagement,” she said.
“I have to speak to her. I need to find out what she was thinking. I made it clear to her that this was out of the question –”
Again, that shuttered suspicion fell over Cassie’s eyes. She hugged her knees close to her chest. “And why should it be?” she asked pointedly. “We all adore Isobel. Do you know of any reason why you two should not marry, if that is what both of you truly want?”
Lucius pushed himself up on his elbows. “What do you know?”
Cassie jerked up a little straighter. “Why – what do you know?”
But before he could answer her, something miraculous happened to Lucius.
While his physical body remained there in the hay, his soul was transported back to one perfect Spanish evening. To the sweet contentment that came at the end of a warm day in good company, to the embers of a fine bottle of wine glowing in his belly, to the sharp-sweet taste of the tangerine he’d been trying ever since to recreate, and to the sound of a harp playing so mournfully yet so sweetly that he wanted to cry.
It took him a moment to understand what was happening. But when he did, he leapt to his feet.
“That music,” he said hoarsely. Cassie was staring at him with her mouth half-open, and no wonder. He knew he was acting like a madman. “Where is it coming from? How – how did she know?”
It was there. It was really there, filling the air with its invisible beauty, whispering to him in a language he barely realised he understood.
It hadn’t been the oranges, or the wine, or the Spanish village, or the company… It was the music of the harp which had filled that distant evening with magic.
The same music that Isobel was playing now.
Of course it was her. He knew it was her. Even if his sisters possessed a trace of her talent at the harp, he would have known that this music was Isobel’s.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it,” said Cassie, eyeing him uncertainly. “The harp is in the yellow sitting room, where it has always been. Lucius, what –”
He didn’t hear the rest of what she had to say. He was already running back to the house.
Isobel was lost in a different world. A world in which love flowed freely and jealousy did not exist. A world of which she was the mistress, immune to humiliation, immune to disappointment.
A world in which her heart could roam where it pleased. No need for the walls she had built around it.
This piece for the harp was one of her favourite compositions. She’d written it during one of the darkest times of her life – the cold, dark loneliness of the months after her parents had died. At first, she kept it inside her head, the music too personal to play aloud.
But as the years went by and her grief eased to loving remembrance, she’d found the strength to bring the music out into the world – first by playing it to herself, then by recording it on paper. And at last, she knew that she had truly recovered from her loss the day she sent the music out across Europe, published under the name Mr Isidore Babbage .
The melody was a familiar friend. Mournful, yes, but hopeful, too. She liked to think of it bringing comfort to other lonely girls in other lonely rooms. They would never know the truth that inspired it, but that did not matter. What mattered was that her music was played, heard, appreciated. What mattered was that she was able to do what she loved. And what was her parents’ legacy, if not a life filled with love?
Oh, and the charming letters of appreciation sent to Mr Babbage were quite pleasant, too.
Gentlemen might well be a mystery to Isobel forever, but music – music, she understood.
So when Lucius burst in upon her solitude, slamming open the door of the little sitting room, the storm on his face so dark that it dimmed the cheerful yellow wallpaper, she felt more than a little exposed. Her hands hovered beside the harp strings, unwilling to continue.
“Please go on,” said Lucius hoarsely. “Please. Keep playing.”
“Is something wrong?” Isobel could not imagine what he meant by making such an entrance if it was not supposed to interrupt her.
Lucius did not answer. He staggered to the chair opposite the harp, his breathing heavy and his face flushed with exertion. He slumped into it, his head dropping into his hands and his eyes falling closed.
Isobel did not know what was troubling him, but she had one sure way to ease his pain.
She resumed her playing. And Lucius listened with such intensity that she felt he was drawing the music out of her. His eyes did not open. He barely moved at all. But she felt the yearning from him all the same, an empty space which her music could fill.
She played to the end.
Lucius’s eyes slowly opened. His gaze roved the ceiling, unfocused, still lost in the echoes of the harp strings.
“That was one of yours, wasn’t it.”
“You’ve heard it before.”
Neither of them was asking a question. Lucius’s eyes at last met hers, dark with impending rain.
“What chord does this correspond to, Isobel?”
She could hear the music within her before he asked. It would be a minor fifth – D minor, the key of her song on the harp. A sad chord, but hopeful. A chord that prayed for better days to come.
“You don’t look to be in the mood for musical theory.”
He hung his head, brushing his fingers up through his dark curls. “I have always been a poor student of anything that is not purely scientific. And I cannot have been paying attention now, for I do not know why you told my mother that we were engaged.”
“I was sorry to do it without consulting you.” He looked broken, and she did not know why, so she ploughed on with an explanation that sounded more and more foolish as she spoke. “It was for Georgiana’s sake. She – she made a puzzle purse – a silly little thing really, but you know how she can run away with an idea. Some of the sentiments it contained were… not the sort of thing young ladies are necessarily supposed to think about. And then, naturally, it went astray.” Isobel stopped, waited for him to respond, but he said nothing. She plucked a few strings to fill the silence. C, then G sharp – the devil’s interval. “So when I realised Lord Bell had it, I thought it better to let him think it was mine. And I must say that if Georgiana even considers entertaining his suit after this sly trick, I shall – I shall –”
Lucius offered her a grim smile. “Bash him over the head with your harp? That seems to be the sort of thing the blighter deserves.”
“I shall give Georgiana my honest opinion of him,” said Isobel. “Believe me, he may well find that just as painful.”
Lucius did not laugh. His lips twisted as though he might, but his eyes were bitter. “I wish you had given me a little warning. I might have reacted differently.”
“I know it was terribly wrong of me.” The words rushed out of Isobel’s mouth almost faster than she could form them. “I know you are offended – anybody would be in your position – and I must assure you that I had no intention…” She shrugged helplessly. “It does not mean anything, Lucius. I do not intend to hold you to any sort of promise. After all, you have not made one.”
To her amazement, he laughed then. His shoulders convulsed and he let out a bitter, sharp lemon squeeze of mirth. The sound of it was frightening.
“I wish you had warned me,” he said, snapping back into severity, “because I am certain that you did not intend to put yourself at risk by protecting Georgiana. Georgiana, in fact, has always been a mischievous minx, and is a touch too pretty for her own good. It’s a bad combination, but she has such a sweet nature that I know it will all come right for her in the end. No, I am not overly concerned for Georgiana. It is you – your inheritance, I should say – which is vulnerable now.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Isobel sagged with relief, putting a hand on the harp to steady herself. “Aunt Ursula will really be unbearable when she hears that she was right. Let me set you straight on the subject of my inheritance. There is nothing there out of the usual way. The money that comes with the dukedom is all Alex’s, of course. My sisters’ dowries have been talked about enough this past year that you must have some idea of what they are worth. And there’s a little left to us from my mother, and that is all.”
Lucius was staring at her. He spoke very slowly. “Do you mean to tell me that your aunt does not intend to leave her money to you?”
“I’m sure she would if she had any. There is a rather wealthy old admirer of hers in India who sends her extravagant presents every now and again – fine jewels and the like. And she quite enjoys cultivating a little mystique. That’s the truth. No great fortune at all.”
She had been expecting him to laugh. It certainly seemed ridiculous to her. But Lucius’s eyes were wild.
“There’s no money?”
She stiffened. “There is more than adequate money for the sort of life I wish to lead, and plenty to give to the less fortunate besides.”
He pushed up from the chair as though propelled by one of the fireworks his mother wanted to set off in celebration of their upcoming marriage. “We must keep this between ourselves, Isobel. It would not do anybody any good to spread it about.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Isobel left the harp, moving in front of him as he began to pace across the room. She wanted a better look at his face, but he would not stand still long enough for her to have it. “Why should it matter one bit whether I have a vast inheritance or not? Particularly since you have now made it extremely clear that I was wrong to give anybody the impression that you – that you would ever –” She heard her own voice trail away until it was a shameful whisper. Tremulous, wounded, heartbroken. But she had started saying it, and she refused to let herself back out, even as the tears quivered in her voice. “That you would ever want to marry me.”
Yes, she’d been a fool once again – and deceiving herself besides. It hurt – it ached – to remember that nothing real had passed between them at all. And now, Lucius knew that she was hurt. So hurt that she could scarcely bear to speak of it.
She turned away to the window for fear of the pity she was sure she would see in his eyes. “Well, there it is.” She directed her words to the daisies bobbing in the lawn beyond the windowpane. “I don’t know what you expected. You broke our rules before I did. What did you think it would do to a silly girl like me, all those secret glances, those lingering touches? The way you looked at me in the garden this afternoon. The way you kissed me. You know by now that I have a rather romantic soul. You were not careful with me, Lucius. You have told me often enough that I did not understand the game I was playing. But if you understood it so well, then why –”
He laid his hand on her shoulder. He was so close behind her that the heat of his body crossed the space between them. She felt it in her arms, in the small of her back, down the sensitive skin of her neck. She felt without seeing it that his gaze was following hers out the window.
If she only turned her head and tilted up her chin, her lips would be within half a breath of his.
“I do not think it is silly at all,” said Lucius. His bare hand tightened on her shoulder, the warmth of it pressing through the thin fabric of her dress. “I am sorry I ever told you that you were not capable of understanding your own actions. You seem to understand these things much better than me, in fact. And you have been honest with me from the start.” He let her go. “Now I must be honest with you. As honest as I can be. I will not marry you, Isobel. There was never any question of that. I appreciate that you tried to protect my sister. In some ways I believe it was the right thing to do. Now, if you can bear it, I must ask you to carry on the pretence a little longer. It would not do to invite gossip by ending our supposed engagement on the day that it began. But we must be extremely careful to avoid any discussion of money. You must not mention anything about an inheritance – or lack of an inheritance – to anybody. Take your aunt’s example. Be coy, be mysterious, invite speculation. Only do not let anybody know the truth. Will you do that? For me?”
“You want me to tell your parents that Aunt Ursula’s fortune is real?”
He hesitated just long enough for her to start believing she had been mistaken. Then…
“Yes.”
If she concentrated, she could make out the reflection of his face faintly in the glass, superimposed over the vibrant summer green of the garden. He did not realise that she could see him, she was sure, for if he had known he would surely have hidden the torture on his face.
The way he looked down at her, his eyes tracing the curve of her collarbone and the shape of her ear and the white flash of her neck beneath her pinned-up hair. It was as though he were committing her to memory. As though the sight of her was precious, and he did not know when he would be able to enjoy it again.
“Lucius, there is something you are not telling me.”
His left hand lifted where he thought she could not see, his fist unclenching so that his fingers almost – almost – caressed her. Almost took hold of her and gently turned her around. Almost brought her face close enough to kiss. Isobel dared not move, though her whole body burned with the agony of holding still.
He moved away. He thrust his hands into his pockets and strolled over to the harp. If she hadn’t seen his face in the window, she might have thought his insouciance was real.
“There is plenty that you are not telling me, either,” he said, setting his hand on the instrument. “I could ask you why it is that one of your drawing room compositions came to be played in southern Spain two years ago. And you, in return, could ask why it suits me to pretend I have landed an heiress.” He gave one of the strings a sharp pluck, sending ripples of honey through the tension in the air. “The truth of the matter is, if I must play along with this charade of an engagement, I had better wring as much value from it as I can. It’s all well and good to land a duke’s sister, but to break off an engagement with the heiress of a great fortune?” He summoned up a grin that would have better suited the face of a devil like Lord Bell. “That will really raise my credit! When word gets around that I relinquished the impossible wealth of Lady Isobel Balfour, without a trace of regret or a word of complaint, I’ll be the talk of London next Season. And better yet, if I do find a likely heiress – a real one –she’ll never suspect that I’m thinking of her money at all.” He plucked another harp string, and another, striking a cheerful major tonic, then thrust his hands back in his pockets and turned to Isobel with that false, wicked smile. “There. I’ve told you my secrets. Are you going to confess yours to me?”
“Not a single one of them, for every word you have just spoken is utter nonsense,” she said. “You are not the sort of man you are pretending to be, Lucius.”
“No need to use my first name in here. We are alone, after all. Must we continue the act even when there is no audience?”
His words sent heat blooming through Isobel’s chest, but this time it was the simmering of frustration. Or was it? She couldn’t tell the difference any longer between desire for him and the sheer irritation of the game he was playing. “Lucius,” she said, returning his counterfeit grin with one of her own. “Lucius, Lucius, Lucius.” She took a step towards him each time she uttered his name. By the end, they were almost nose to nose. She rose up on tiptoe to look him in the eye. “Only one of us is play-acting at present. And the other one…” The wickedness overtook her now, as though by pretending she had willed it into being. “The other one is an exquisite kisser. I have it on very good authority.”
There. He couldn’t sustain that cool, roguish aloofness. Not with her looking him in the eye. Not with her standing so close that they could both feel their breath rise and fall in unison.
“Careful.” His eyes lingered on her lips, tension ticking tight in his throat. “I may not have the romantic soul that you do, but I’m only human. There’s only so far you can tempt me before I do something we’ll both regret.”
Isobel kissed him. Just once, lips closed, fleeting. She bounced back down onto her heels to see how he would respond.
Now that was oddly pleasing. She’d stunned him. If anyone happened in on them at that moment, they’d think she had just punched Lucius in the face.
The wicked, frustrated yearning brought her blood to a rolling boil. Isobel rose on her tiptoes again and gave him another kiss. And another. She kissed him as though she were coaxing something out of him, unpicking his tight grip on that powerful force which had swept over both of them in the orangery, in the garden. He was a lion that had taken fright, just for a moment, at a mouse – and she, the mouse, wanted to be devoured.
The fourth kiss drew a groan from somewhere deep in his throat. She did not have the opportunity for a fifth. He had swept in ahead of her.
His hand clenched in her hair, the other seizing her waist, drawing her in tight against him. And she realised she’d been wrong to imagine that he hungered for her.
No. He was ravenous .
He kissed her as though he were starving to death and her touch was the only thing that could sustain him.
Isobel closed her eyes, revelling in each new burst of pleasure as his mouth travelled from her burning lips to her earlobe, to her cheek, her forehead, her neck. Then he lifted her chin to bring her mouth to his again, and at last found it in himself to pause. She opened her eyes.
“Isobel,” he breathed, brushing her lips with the sound of her own name. “I warned you. We will both regret this.”
The door to the yellow sitting room swung open. It moved slowly enough, but Isobel and Lucius were so entangled that there was still not enough time to leap apart. Lucius’s eyes flared wide, that inner agony flashing over his face as he relinquished her.
“My apologies.” Only then, when that smooth murmur cut through her confusion, did Isobel realise that it was Randall who had happened upon them.
She whirled around, one hand pressed to her half-fallen hair, the other to her mouth, as though she could hide the aching imprint of Lucius’s kiss.
Randall’s eyes flickered from her to Lucius. Back to her again. His back was a little too straight, his smile too wooden. “I heard the harp music,” he said, by way of explanation. “But I see someone else heard it, too. And he got here first.” He gave Lucius a stiff bow. “Congratulations, Whitby. I wish you joy.” Though his words were directed towards Lucius, he was looking only at Isobel. “And I think you’ll have it,” he added softly. “No – I know you’ll have it.”
“No need to get carried away, Randall,” said Lucius. He spoke so briskly, so tight and careless and offhand, that it was as though he had suddenly become someone quite different to the man who had been clutching at Isobel only moments before. She glanced back, alarmed to find his features set into a granite wall.
No way to scale it. No way to see what lay behind.
“Nothing has been decided yet.” Lucius looked at Isobel and gave a little shrug – the sort of shrug a man might give if he often went about kissing women and announcing engagements without ever worrying that it might mean anything at all. “Do excuse me, Randall, Lady Isobel. I must go and have a word with Lord Bell.”
Randall raised an eyebrow. “It doesn’t sound as though Bell will enjoy the experience.”
Lucius answered him with a mirthless grin and left without so much as a backward glance. She watched him go, still catching her breath from the kiss, half-tempted to run after him and kiss him, shake him, take his face in her hands and force him to look at her – whatever it would take to knock down that stone wall he’d constructed about his heart.
“Isobel –” began Randall, moving towards her with a strange light in his eyes.
“I have never in my life met anybody as maddening as that man,” said Isobel, more to herself than to Randall. “Oh, not now, my lord. I simply can’t support another overwrought encounter.” She brushed past him, the sound of her name following her as she left him in the sitting room.
“ Isobel! ”
The absolute cheek of it, presuming they might still be on first-name terms.
But that was nothing to the audacity of Lucius pretending that kissing her had not shattered his world in two. Pretending to be careless. Pretending to be concerned with his reputation as a rogue and a romancer. And asking her to pretend with him, and, worse than that, imagining that he could pretend it all well enough to fool her.
Isobel was thoroughly sick of pretence. It was time to bring the charade to an end.