The Affectionate Adversary (42 page)

“You are the heir apparent,” the vicar reminded him. “You must think of the duchy.”

“I am thinking of the duchy.”

“Then you have found a woman?” The duke sat forward.

“No!” Lord Blackthorne gave a laugh and leaned back against his chair. “Father, marriage is the last thing on my mind.”

“Surely not! You will go to town this season and select a wife. I fully intend to see your heir before I die.”

“Be reasonable, Father. I have been away from England three years, and my own brother tells me I am browner than a sailor. What lady would have me?”

“Any lady with good sense!”

“I have not the slightest inclination to dress myself up as a dandy and parade from one ball to another all season. Before I left England, it was common intelligence that the marquess of Blackthorne had the manners and bearing of a rogue. I was considered arrogant, thoughtless, insolent, headstrong, and rude.”

“Ruel! You are shocking!”

“Shocking was not the least attribute of my reputation, Father. Ask any lady in London and you will hear the same. I am disagreeable and ill-tempered. I am willful and boorish.”

“Nonsense!”

“I am afraid it is quite true, Father,” Sir Alexander put in. “Blackthorne performs with greater success at cards than he will ever do with the ladies. Swoon at his fine physique they will, but marry him they will not.”

“I cannot believe it,” the vicar of Tiverton said firmly. “Lord Blackthorne is to be a duke. Why, anyone would be?”

“My manners have only grown more coarse,” Lord Blackthorne interrupted, “with the influence of Americans. I believe even the servants at Slocombe House have labeled me a blackguard.”

He lifted his focus to Anne, amusement written in the tilt of his handsome mouth.

She glared at him from her position by the fire. He had toyed with her in the kitchen, he had her lace in his pocket, and he was teasing her even now. She would not be sorry if the marquess found a wife as headstrong and insolent as he.

“You are not a blackguard!” the duke cried. “You are my son and my declared heir! Any woman with half the sense of a toad would marry you!”

“Any woman?” Lord Blackthorne leapt to his feet and took two strides from the tea table to the hearth. “Any woman, Father? Shall we put your assertions to the test?”

He dropped to one knee at Anne’s feet and grabbed her hand. She gasped, but before she could jerk her fingers away he placed a firm kiss on them. Flourishing one hand in a grand gesture, he looked straight into her eyes.

“My dear Miss … what is your surname?”

“Ruel, do not be absurd!” the duke cut in, chuckling. “Come, come now, my boy.”

“Your surname, madam?” Lord Blackthorne repeated.

“Webster,” Anne managed.

“My dear Miss Anne Webster, in the course of our acquaintance I confess I have fallen most violently in love with you. From the moment I took note of your magnificent eyes, I have been bewitched. Never before have I witnessed in any woman such tantalizing, almond-shaped eyes. Their upward tilt is charming, and their color … the shade of an oak leaf in autumn … the whisper of dark coffee—”

“Her eyes are brown,” Sir Alexander spoke up. “I have had a look at them myself. Brown eyes.”

“My dear Miss Webster, your hair falls about your shoulders like a sheet of molten bronze, a river of the finest liqueur, a cascade?”

“Brown hair,” Sir Alexander pronounced. “Brown, brown, brown. Brown as a mouse’s rump.”

Lord Blackthorne’s eyes softened as he studied Anne. “Chocolate, I think. Hot chocolate laced with cinnamon.”

“You have quite terrorized the young lady, Lord Blackthorne,” the vicar said. “I should think you have gone far enough.”

“On the contrary.” Lord Blackthorne leaned his arm on his knee and scrutinized Anne. “By heaven, she is a beauty. She actually is truly fascinating.”

He turned to the assembled company. A chorus of “nonsense” and “absurd” followed his proclamation. Lord Blackthorne ignored the comments and gazed at Anne a moment longer.

Mortified, she could do nothing but stare back.

“Miss Webster,” he said in a low voice, “your cheeks blush with the damask pink of new roses. Your skin is as soft as the down of a petal. Your lips are like ripe peaches in the heat of summer.”

“Peaches!” Sir Alexander exclaimed. “Oh, very good, Ruel. You will win her heart with that one.”

“Your brow speaks of high intelligence and your speech of good breeding.” His eyes narrowed. “I think, perhaps, you can even read books. Can that be true, Miss Webster?”

Anne longed to pull her hand away, but the marquess was looking at her with such intensity. His fingers on her wrist were warm and firm. His eyes had melted to rain-cloud gray, and his lips curved with the hint of pleasure. He was making sport of her, of course. She was nothing but a housemaid, the object of everyone’s derision.

“The Bible,” she said, lifting her chin. “I read it nightly.”

“The Bible? Then you are a moral and virtuous woman, two strong qualities to add to your engaging beauty.” The marquess looked at her a moment longer, then caught himself. “Well, to get on with it. My dear Miss Webster, you cannot be indifferent to the fact that I have come to admire you devotedly. At the hour of our parting this afternoon, I felt that I could not go on. Indeed, I cannot release you now without telling you my heart and asking you if I may have your affection in return. Will you take me, Ruel Chouteau, marquess of Blackthorne, as your husband and protector through life?”

Anne stared at the man who still held her hand. The vicar cleared his throat, but Lord Blackthorne never took his eyes off her. She knew she could play the blushing housemaid. She could run from the room in horror and leave them laughing in her wake. Or she could play the affronted parson’s daughter and hand Blackthorne a moralizing sermon on the evils of dissimulation. Or she could be herself.

“You have professed your admiration of me, Lord Blackthorne, and I thank you,” she said clearly. “Although you intended to ridicule and mock me for the amusement of your company, I believe your esteem is merited. I am, indeed, educated and virtuous. The shape of my eyes and color of my hair are the endowment of my parents, but my skill as a designer of bobbin lace has been honed through my own diligence. Few in Nottingham and none in Tiverton surpass my ability to envision and design lace borders, fans, shawls, caps, and collars. Few can equal the skill with which I am able to prick my designs onto parchment. Some may have similar deftness in the twisting and winding of silk from a thousand bobbins across such a parchment pattern pinned to a pillow, but I am surely one of the most accomplished.”

“Good heavens!” the vicar exclaimed in a hushed voice. “Young lady, your impudence is not to be tolerated.”

“Let her continue,” Sir Alexander countered. “This is diverting.”

“Miss Webster?” Lord Blackthorne signaled her to go on.

Anne glanced at the duke. He rolled his eyes and waved her on. She stared at each of the Chouteaus one by one. Vain, self-important, heedless pagans. Perhaps she was only a servant in their house. All the same, her dismissal was imminent, and she wanted her lace.

“I descend from a proud line of Britons,” she stated, turning her focus on the marquess. “My family are not nobles, but the surname Webster speaks to our profession. We are weavers. We create fabrics, fashion them, stitch them, and mold them to the pleasure of the aristocracy. Without us, Lord Blackthorne, you would appear in society no better dressed than the legendary pompous emperor whose new clothes were made of invisible thread.”

“My goodness!” Lord Blackthorne swung around and gave his brother an incredulous look. “Did you ever think of that, Alex? Without this charming young lady and her family, we should all be as naked as eels.”

“Bestow a title on them!” Sir Alexander declared. “Make the Webster family barons or knights!”

“You have requested a difficult thing of me, Lord Blackthorne,” Anne said to her mocker. “I am a woman who places a high value on honesty, charity, and prudence. You have asked for my affection. You do not have it.”

“No?” Turning to his father, he held up his hands. “I do not have her affection. What did I tell you?”

Anne squared her shoulders. “Now I would ask something of you, Lord Blackthorne. I request the return of my lace panel.”

He tugged the lace out of his waistcoat pocket and draped the fragile masterpiece across his knee. Anne stared down at the craftsmanship that represented more than a year of her labor. Though torn where Sir Alexander’s heel had spiked it, the narrow panel was still clean. She could pick out the tattered edges and rework them. Perhaps she could even cut away the central medallion that formed the Chouteau lozenge. She might place a bouquet of roses in its stead and sell it to the lace man for a price, small though it would be.

Lord Blackthorne lifted the border and held it to the firelight. For a terrible instant, she thought him so cruel as to toss it into the flames. She held her breath as he turned the lace first one way and the another.

“You designed this, Miss Webster?” he asked.

“Yes, my lord.”

The gossamer silk caught the sparkle of the blaze and glowed with an inner radiance. “By George, I am mesmerized. This lace is a work of art. Here is our lozenge, Father, depicted in a most accurate and delicate fashion. These roses are … well, they are magnificent.”

“Thank you, my lord.” She bent slowly toward the lace as she spoke. “I spent more than a twelvemonth in the border’s design, and I should very much like?”

“I am afraid I shall have to keep it,” he interrupted her, stuffing the lace into his pocket before she could grab it. “When I have your answer, Miss Webster, the lace will be yours again.”

“She told you she could not like you,” Sir Alexander said with impatience. “What more can you ask of the wench?”

“Until I know whether or not she intends to accept my hand in marriage, I fear my father will pursue me relentlessly on that account. I must have Miss Webster’s formal rejection, and then His Grace will understand there is not a woman in the land who would willingly yoke herself to me.”

“Now then, Lord Blackthorne,” the vicar intoned, “do leave this poor serving girl in peace. You have tormented her beyond reason already.”

“Indeed.” The duke gave his son a scowl before turning his attention to Anne. “Miss Webster, go and find Mrs. Davies at once. Tell her housekeeper to prepare the chambers of the marquess. They are to be dusted and aired with no little care. Then you may inform Mrs. Smythe to ready an elegant dinner on my son’s behalf. Stop at nothing. We shall have the finest from our larder.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Tearing her eyes from the marquess’s waistcoat pocket, Anne gave the duke a curtsy.

“Prepare the fatted calf,” Sir Alexander declared with a grand sweep of his hand. “The prodigal son has returned.”

“‘We should make merry and be glad,’” the vicar quoted from Scripture, “‘for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. ’”

“Amen!” the duke pronounced, as if he were God Himself.

As Ruel watched the dismissed housemaid slip away, three things occurred to him at once.

First, it occurred to him that in Christ’s parable of the prodigal son, the younger brother had in no wise welcomed home his wandering sibling. He had been, in fact, jealous, angry, and resentful. Was Alex as pleased as he seemed at Ruel’s return? The turn of events meant that Alex had lost the opportunity to be declared heir apparent. All the same, the younger man wore his usual cheerful demeanor, and Ruel could not believe his brother had meant anything of substance by his allusion to the parable.

Second, it occurred to him that Miss Anne Webster
did
possess the most intriguing pair of golden brown eyes and the most luxurious mane of chestnut hair he had ever seen. She spoke with fire and wit and had shown not the slightest fear in declaring her utter dislike of him. Moreover, she was undoubtedly as talented in the creation of lace as she had asserted.

Finally, it occurred to Lord Blackthorne that he still held that panel of ethereal lace in his possession and that Miss Anne Webster had not given him her answer.