Jo Beverly (14 page)

Sophia was the dowager Lady Ashart, Thalia’s sister-in-law.

“Royal blood?” Genova gasped.

“But safely on the wrong side of the blanket. Off you go and enjoy yourself, but behave! You can marry as soon as you wish, so there’s no need for impatience. Are you sure you want banns, dear…?”

Regeanne was draping Genova’s merino shawl around her shoulders. Genova gathered it and escaped before Thalia pinned her down to day and minute.

A
 s Genova shut the door behind her, shivering slightly in the cooler air, she realized that no footman waited. Perhaps she hadn’t been expected to return downstairs, or perhaps she should have rung for service. Whatever the cause, her reaction was delight.

She looked up and down the corridor. The coast was clear. She had freedom, which as Lord Rothgar had pointed out, was beyond price. Before it could be snatched away, she hurried off in the opposite direction to the main staircase.

Perhaps it was scandalously impolite to wander a house in which she was a guest, but she wouldn’t enter any rooms. She just wanted some peace and quiet in which to think.

She turned into another corridor where dim light suggested lack of current use. The light came from occasional candles well guarded with glass that provided only enough illumination to prevent accidents.

As a result, Genova felt she progressed into a mystery, but one blessed with solitude. And not only solitude but the opportunity for exercise! Even in Tunbridge Wells, constrained by Hester’s ideas of what was suitable, she had managed walks to shops, church, and the lending library. In the past few days her only walks had been from vehicle to inn.

She followed whatever turn took her fancy, setting a brisk pace and swinging her arms until she’d shaken the misery from her bones. Probably much of her blue-deviled mood had been simply need for this.

Heart beating, skin tingling, she paused to stretch,
reaching out on either side to walls still far away, then up, up, to the shadowy ceiling. Then she carried on, regretting that tomorrow guests would pour in, filling the house.

She stopped. What an ingrate she was. She’d thrilled to the idea of a grand house party but now wanted to be alone. She’d been desperate to escape Hester’s house, but now she almost wished she were back there, where the trials were familiar. She continued her walk, pondering this.

As she’d left childhood, she’d grown weary of the hardships of navy life. Even the best ships stank down below, where—if you were lucky—poor animals were confined to provide milk and meat for the voyage. Transporting cavalry horses was even worse.

On a long voyage food was often limited, and sometimes barely edible. Knocking weevils out of biscuits and scraping mold off cheese were everyday matters.

Weevils.
She directed a baleful thought at Ashart, wherever he was.

In fine weather the sea could be beautiful, but in foul, it was hell. Then, no part of the ship could be completely dry, and those not needed to fight the storm huddled in misery in places awash with sloshing seawater and worse.

Life ashore had been a delight by comparison. With the thoughtless selfishness of youth, she’d sometimes prayed for battles, because then she and her mother were left in the nearest port. Often she’d wished for a permanent home back in England, and fate had given it to her. When her mother died, her father had retired, and they’d settled in a pleasant house overlooking Portsmouth.

Had she been happy?

No, but how could she be with her father so miserable? He’d seemed to need her company, perhaps as substitute for that of his Mary, but hadn’t welcomed guests. She’d made some friends, but had little opportunity to spend time with them.

Then Hester Poole, the widowed sister of a fellow officer, had come into their lives. Her father had found
joy again. The move to Tunbridge Wells had not appeared to be a problem, since Genova hadn’t set down deep roots in Portsmouth.

Now, within months, she’d seized this chance to escape, and the thought of returning there filled her with panic. It wasn’t just that she found her new home oppressive; she feared what she would do. A screaming match with Hester would break her father’s heart. Her suppressed unhappiness was already wounding it.

After the distressing confrontation over the
presepe
, her father had helped her pack it away, trying to make light of the problem. As they’d closed the box, he’d said, “We always made a
presepe
wish, didn’t we?”

Past tense. Past tense.

She’d pointed out that they did that on Christmas Eve, but he hadn’t seemed to care. “This is my wish for you, Genni-love. A fine husband and a babe in your arms by next Christmas. Then you’ll have your own home in which to set up the
presepe
, and a child to share it with.”

She’d smiled to cover pain, because the wish was as much for him as for her. He did love her and want the best for her, but he wanted peace in his new nest, too. This journey had been her escape, but after just three days in a coach with the Trayce ladies, she fretted for solitude.

She realized she’d come to a halt and hurried on again. Was she impossible to please? Was she one of those people who could never be content, no matter where they were? Surely not. She’d been blessed with much happiness and knew how to appreciate it.

She was simply upset by today’s events, but they would set a saint on edge. As a result, she was in no state to think clearly about anything. What she heeded was a good night’s sleep. With luck, Thalia would be tucked up and snoring by now.

She turned to retrace her steps, but realized she had no sense of where she was. Which way? How embarrassing to become the first truly lost guest.

She picked a direction, trying to steer a straight line
through random corridors, then turned a corner and saw light. It was cool and pale, so must be moonlight through a window. She headed for it, sure she could get her bearings from a look outside. She could even, she thought with amusement, navigate by the stars.

The light spilled through an archway, not a window, an archway into a long room moonlit by a wall of tall windows. She walked in and turned, not surprised to see ranks of pictures. This was the Malloren portrait gallery.

The wash of light turned the ancestral faces a ghostly gray, which seemed disturbingly appropriate, as if any of them might step out of a frame to haunt her. Facing her, however, was a portrait of someone very much alive—the current marquess.

He stood in formal dress, haughty and austere, young but very much the magnate. He seemed unoffended by her invasion, but his direct gaze was so perceptive that she shivered. She looked away—and saw another marquess.

Lord Ashart lounged on a window seat, long legs stretched before him, hands in the pockets of his breeches. He was studying her in a manner chillingly like that of his cousin.

Disregarding courtesy, he did not rise. “Is this a damsel which I see before me?” he said, misquoting Shakespeare. “Come, let me clutch thee.”

She hesitated, as much from sizzling response as from fear. She was in no state for another encounter, but pride would not let her turn and run away.

She replied from the same speech of Macbeth’s. “Perhaps I am but a damsel of the mind, my lord.”

“The worst sort. What are you doing here, Miss Smith?”

“If marquesses may wander in the night, may not we lowly commoners do the same?”

“Ah, you’re fleeing Mallorens, too, are you? Then flee this room. It’s full of them.”

“In fact, my lord, I’m fleeing Trayces.”

“Still a mistake. You’ve found me. And”—he gestured lazily—“my infamous aunt.”

Genova couldn’t resist. She walked closer to him until she could turn and study the picture on the opposite wall.

She shivered at a truly ghostly effect—the features floated into nothing. Then she realized it was a sketch for a portrait either hung elsewhere or never completed. The picture showed head and shoulders of a girl in Grecian costume, arms bare, holding a lyre, her dark hair tumbling around her laughing face.

“She doesn’t look mad,” Genova said.

“But madness is mad itself, and can come and go.”

“Do you truly think her husband drove her mad?”

He gestured to a portrait beside the sketch. “There he is.”

Genova studied a formal portrait of a powdered-haired man with a mild, amiable face. Beyond that was one of a lady who looked both lovely and sweetnatured. There was a matched kindness and poise that made Lady Augusta seem wild.

“Portraits can lie,” she said.

“But generally to conceal fat and warts, not soul.”

“I’ve seen the one of you the Trayce ladies have.”

“Ah, that. I remember being deadly bored. But that is the condition of man, is it not? Inconstancy, anxiety, and boredom.”

She turned to study him. “Are you drunk, my lord?”

His heavy-lidded eyes could give a deceptively sleepy appearance. “Don’t people say, ‘drunk as a lord’? It’s clearly my duty to be drunk, and of course, noblesse obliges. May I oblige you?”

Genova sighed audibly to cover a shiver of foolish temptation. His proposition gave her an excuse to leave, however, pride intact.

Before she could move he said, “Come, sit with me, Miss Smith. I promise not to offend, and we should plan our strategic disengagement.”

Willpower can stretch only so far before it breaks. Genova joined him on the seat, but left enough space between them for one or two imaginary chaperones. They were necessary. Moonlight flowed down his virile body, making him seem half light, half dark, and breathtaking.

“Strategy, my lord? We seem to have no difficulty in finding disputes.”

“True, peace might be more difficult, but perhaps we should try it. We need to be besotted for a day or two to lend credence to our commitment.”

Genova’s skin tingled with anticipation and alarm. “Why?”

“Come now, you’re not dull-witted. If Tess Brokesby is tattling, guests will arrive tomorrow pregnant with gossip and watching our every look. If we are already at sword’s point, the betrothal will look spurious, or at least forced. If they witness a day or two of devotion, you’ll emerge as victim of my callousness.”

“I don’t care to be seen as any sort of victim!”

A smile moved the corner of his lips. “Then I’m sure we can portray it as a triumph of virtue over vice.”

Not if you smile at me like that.

Genova flicked open her fan to provide a shield. “Very well, my lord. I will try to pretend devotion for a day or two, but the dramatically enjoyable separation will be my reward.”

That smile deepened. “Can I interest you in a dramatically enjoyable joining first?”

Parts of her trembled, but Genova was not such a fool as that. “If you seduce me, my lord, I will not release you from this engagement.”

That wiped the smile away. “A worthy opponent. So be it. When shall we two part again? Not, at least, until after Christmas. We don’t want discord to disturb the season of joy and peace.”

She studied him, cursing the uncertain light. “Don’t we? I assumed you were here to do precisely that.”

“Why?”

The air suddenly felt colder. She should brush past the subject, but for survival’s sake she needed to know what was going on. “Truth,” she said.

“Ah, yes. I am Loki at this feast.”

“Loki?”

“The Norse god of discord.”

“Talk sense, my lord! What do you plan?”

“It’s no concern of yours.”

He was right, but it wasn’t in Genova’s nature to back away from a just cause. “If it threatens your great-aunts, it is. I won’t let you hurt them.”

“You may trust me with their welfare, Miss Smith.”

She wanted to protest, but she recognized one of those lines a sensible person did not cross.

“You look,” he said, “as if you are biting your tongue.”

A touch of wry humor gave her courage to persist. “Are you really planning havoc, my lord, because of a tragedy nearly forty years old?”

“Ah, don’t,
pandolcetta.
Don’t meddle there.”

The sobriety of the warning raised the hairs on her neck.

“
W
 e have more interesting conflicts,” he said with false lightness. “We must bill and coo.” Genova wanted to resist his warning and his deflection, but her courage failed her. She preferred to think of her cowardice as sensible caution.

“Only in public,” she said.

“I don’t remember that proviso.”

She looked at him over her fan. “Why would you want to bill and coo in private, my lord? We are nothing to each other.”

The smile was back, the wicked one that threatened impossible, mouthwatering delights. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“About the Mallorens…” She raised it deliberately as defense.

“About our attraction.”

“Our
pretended
attraction.”

“Our passion.”

“Our problem.”

“Our love.”

“Our war,” she retorted.

He laughed. “Very well, I will stage
amor
, and you will stage war, though I warn you, I lack experience in my role.”

She raised her brows in disbelief, and he said, “We’d need another word.”

“You won’t shock me, my lord. I know them all.”

“How interesting.”

She recognized that her retort, though true, had been unwise. It had given him a wrong impression.
But at least he wouldn’t presume that he was dealing with a naive miss.

“So, let us plan war,” she said, “since that is unambiguous.”

“Is it? You will need provocation. Shall I let you find me in another woman’s bed?”

“It would give me cause,” she agreed, hating the thought. “But wouldn’t you end up at the altar?”

“Not if the lady was married.”

She was caught unawares by that. “Then at sword’s point with her husband? I’ll have no blood spilled over this, my lord. I must have your word on that.”

“Must,” he echoed. “You have a too commanding disposition, Miss Smith.”

“You’re probably correct, but I mean what I say. I will not be a cause of bloodshed. You
must
avoid that.”