Chapter Six #2
“Mr. Walsh has agreed to take it for the winter edition of the History Review,” Lucy said.
Lady Kenton beamed. “Excellent! He has always been a good friend to us and eager to publish our works.”
Lady Kenton herself was a well-known author of stories based on Highland folklore. Many of the members of the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society were authors or poets and were published in a variety of journals. Lucy was proud to be the youngest of their published authors.
“Have you given any further thought to a betrothal with your cousin Wilfred Cardross?” Lady Kenton inquired. “I am certain that your dear mama would have approved the match.”
They were back on her godmother’s favorite topic. Lucy had known it would only be a matter of time. Lady Kenton was a woman with a mission.
“I cannot marry Wilfred, ma’am,” she said, deciding that bluntness might offend her godmother but it was better than prevarication. “I told you, I don’t like him.”
Lady Kenton’s plump little face took on a dissatisfied expression.
“You cling to the ghost of Lord MacGillivray,” she said disagreeably.
“Your father was a fool to permit such an engagement, promising you to a doddery scholar old enough to be your grandfather!” Her fingers beat an irritable tattoo on the arm of her chair.
“Really, Lucy, to throw yourself away on a man with one foot in the grave! I could only be glad that he died before the marriage, because the wedding night would most surely have finished him off and that would have been both scandalous and very unpleasant for you.”
Lucy could feel the hot color stinging her cheeks.
She was not going to tell her godmother that she and Lord MacGillivray had planned to spend their wedding night in animated discussion of James MacPherson’s epic poems. She opened her fan and flicked it back and forth to cool her hot cheeks.
There was an odd, trapped feeling in her chest, as though her laces were drawn too tight.
She felt it whenever anyone addressed the topic of her engagement.
The door of the conservatory opened and Robert Methven strode in.
He was about the last person Lucy had expected to see, and she felt her heart leap up into her throat at the sheer shock of his appearance.
He looked as though he had ridden hard. Rain had spattered his traveling cloak, and as Lucy watched he swung it from his shoulders to reveal a beautifully cut sporting jacket beneath.
He did not look at home indoors. There was something too restless and too physical about him to sit comfortably with the elegant furnishings of the conservatory, the pastel shades of the ladies’ gowns, the clink of teacup and the polite chatter of conversation.
“What on earth is he doing here?” Lucy exclaimed, too discomposed to phrase the question with her usual courtesy.
Gentlemen were only invited to the meetings of the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society if they were eminent scholars.
She was certain that Robert Methven could not possibly be present in an official capacity.
Yet it seemed that he was, for as Lucy watched, Lady Durness sailed forward to greet him, taking his hand warmly in hers.
He bent and gallantly pressed a kiss on the back of it.
The high-pitched conversation in the room dropped for a moment and then swelled again to an excited babble.
Methven’s gaze scoured the room and fixed hard and fast on Lucy. Lucy’s heart jolted. Her fan flicked out of her trembling fingers and leaped up in the air, to land on the rug by her feet.
“Ah.” Lady Kenton sounded agreeably pleased. “This afternoon’s tutor has arrived.”
“Tutor!” Lucy was scrabbling to retrieve her fan, grateful that her scarlet face was hidden as she bent down.
“Allow me, Lady Lucy.”
Methven had gone down on one knee beside their table, picking up the wayward fan and handing it back to her gravely. Looking up, Lucy saw a fugitive smile in his eyes as he took in her flustered appearance. Damn him.
“Thank you.” Lucy knew she sounded ungracious. She took the fan gingerly from him, making sure that their fingers did not touch. He straightened up and bowed. “Perhaps I might join you?” he said.
It was the last thing that Lucy wanted. She felt extremely discomposed.
“It might be better, my lord,” she said, staring pointedly at his mud-spattered boots, “if you changed your attire after what must have been an arduous journey. You are hardly dressed for the drawing room.”
Methven pulled up a spare chair. “Then it is fortunate we are in the conservatory,” he said. “I am persuaded that you will forgive my disorder.”
Fizzing with annoyance, Lucy drew her skirts away from the offending boots. Lady Kenton gestured to a footman, who fetched an additional cup and replenished the pot.
“How do you take your tea, Lord Methven?” Lady Kenton inquired.
“Hot and strong,” Robert Methven said, looking at Lucy, who was furious to feel herself blushing.
“I hear you are to tutor our meeting this afternoon, Lord Methven,” she said. “How singular that will be.”
“You do not think me qualified to lecture you, Lady Lucy?” Methven quizzed gently.
“Or perhaps you fear my delivery will be lacking?” He stretched and Lucy averted her gaze from the muscles rippling beneath his splashed pantaloons.
Until that moment she had not even been aware that she was staring at his thighs. How inappropriate of her.
“You are in good company,” Methven added. “My grandmother considers me a complete dullard.”
“I could not possibly comment,” Lucy said, “until I know your subject. We do, however, have very high standards here at the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society.”
“I am duly warned,” Methven said, “and promise not to let the side down.”
Lucy waited but he did not enlighten her as to his specialist subject.
His silence set the current of irritation coursing through her once again.
He knew that she wanted to know, so he was deliberately withholding that information.
She supposed her curiosity was vulgar and her implication that he was not qualified to address them was downright rude, but somehow she could not help herself. He ruffled her serenity.
“How did you hear of the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society, my lord?” she asked.
Methven smiled at her. “So many questions, Lady Lucy. I am flattered by your interest.”
“I am not interested in you,” Lucy said, “merely in the source of your information.”
“Ah.” He sounded amused. “Because the Highland Ladies is a secret society?”
“Quite so.”
“You may trust my discretion.”
Again it was no answer and again Lucy felt annoyed by his deliberate evasion. She watched as he finished his tea and replaced the china cup gently on the table. He stood and bowed to her.
“Excuse me. I must go and prepare for my lecture. I shall hope to see you there, Lady Lucy.”
“That depends on the topic,” Lucy said.
He laughed. “Are you always so impatient? I had no idea.” He put one hand on the back of her chair and bent close so that his lips brushed her ear.
“Sometimes,” he said softly, “the anticipation is the best part.”
He straightened and strolled away.
“How very provoking that man is!” Lucy burst out.
Normally she would not dream of expressing a view of an acquaintance, especially not in public, but Robert Methven had got under her guard.
Sensation fluttered in her belly. He was looking back at her now and she felt the awareness like a flame rise and scorch her.
It was not unpleasant, but it was disturbing.
There was a flicker of excitement in her blood that she had never felt before she had met him.
“I wonder why you dislike him,” Lady Kenton said. Her gaze was thoughtful as it rested on Lucy’s face.
“The boot is on the other foot,” Lucy said shortly. She fidgeted with her teaspoon, avoiding Lady Kenton’s gaze. “He does not like me.”
“He is direct, perhaps,” Lady Kenton conceded. “Not like your Edinburgh beaux. But I saw no sign that he dislikes you. Far from it.”
“I am not comfortable with him,” Lucy said. It was the closest she had ever come to admitting that there was something about Robert Methven that both fascinated and troubled her. Or, more accurately, something about her reaction to him that troubled her.
“You have lived too much amongst scholars,” Lady Kenton said.
“Not that a man of taste and education is a bad thing, but it must be tempered by something a little more earthy, more masculine. Now, Robert Methven is very much a man. Rich, personable and intelligent and I’ll wager he is most lusty in the marriage bed.
I would think he could give a woman great pleasure. ”
Lucy closed her eyes and shuddered. Lady Kenton was of a generation that was so much more outspoken in its language, but hearing her godmother’s frank assessment of the Marquis of Methven’s sexual prowess when she was looking directly at him across a tearoom was more than a little disturbing.
“I did not look for lustiness in my marriage, Aunt Emily,” she said. “I wished for a meeting of minds, not bodies. Lord MacGillivray was sober in his conduct and intellectual in his studies.”
Lady Kenton stifled a broad yawn. “I am well aware of that, my love,” she said, “and thought him a dead bore for it. Why, in my day we wanted so much more than that, a hero fresh from the battlefield with a sword in his hand. The youth of today have let their standards slip, I fear.”
A hero fresh from the battlefield...
Lucy paused. Yes, that was it. There was something primitive about Lord Methven; something disturbing that invoked the warriors of the previous century, the wild men of the northern isles who had Viking blood in their veins along with their fierce Scots heritage.
A long, slow shiver brushed across her skin.
That was not what she wanted. She had never wanted passion.
Her life was smooth and ordered, with a calm and perfect surface, which was exactly as it should be, and that was the way it was going to stay.