The Bachelor's Bargain (5 page)

Frowning at Anne, the marquess stepped around her and sat down in a chair near the table. “I am sorry to tell you that your sister-in-law passed from this earth last year, Father.” He accepted a cup of tea from the footman and turned his attention to the company. “Madame Chouteau was indeed highly esteemed, and with Pierre Laclede she was the mother of four children after Auguste. While in her presence, I found her to be a most charming and cordial hostess.”

“She married this Laclede fellow, then?” the vicar asked.

The marquess gave a small smile. “Difficult, given her presence in a Catholic territory and the awkward matter that her husband, my father’s brother, René Chouteau, did not die until 1776, well after she had given Monsieur Laclede his four children.”

“Harrumph.” The duke cleared his throat and took a sip of tea.

“Indeed,” the vicar put in, “I have heard it said that Americans are more than a little coarse and unrefined. Rough about the edges, so to speak. Did you discover this to be so, Lord Blackthorne?”

“No more than we,” he replied.

Immoral, the whole lot of them
, Anne thought as she studied the group of men conversing around their tea. A married woman bearing four children by a man who was not her husband! But how much better was England’s
ton
?

Many Sunday mornings she had heard her father denounce immorality from his pulpit. At the family dinner table, he told stories of King George III, who lived at Windsor Castle and had gone utterly mad. His son, the prince regent, had ruled England in his father’s place for five years now. And Anne’s own father could not name a more dissolute, contemptible, and immoral man in the entire realm.

She watched the marquess take another gingerbread nut. No better than their regent were these high-born Chouteaus, with their penchant for chasing housemaids about and wooing ladies of Society without benefit of marriage. They were indecent, the whole lot of them. America, for all its wild savagery, could hardly be worse.

“What of your plans now, sir?” the vicar asked during a pause in the duke’s inquiry about his son’s travels. “Will you settle at Slocombe House for the summer?”

Lord Blackthorne thoughtfully stirred his tea. “Perhaps.” He lifted his gaze and fixed it on his father. “Or I may travel again. I am thinking of a tour of pleasure in France.”

“France?” The duke rapped his cane on the floor. “Nonsense, boy! We shall be at war with France again in six months’ time. You must stay here and take your place. I am not long for this world, and Marston will be wanting a duke.”

“Now it is I who must respond with a hearty ‘nonsense,’ sir. I expect to be taking tea with you well into your hundredth year.”

The duke and the others laughed, and Anne could see by the glow in the old man’s eyes that he deeply loved his son. The marquess reached out and laid his hand over his father’s. Unwilling to witness the mutual tenderness between two men she was determined to despise, she lifted her focus to the fireplace and began counting the statuettes on Sir Alexander’s mantelpiece. Blackthorne had her lace, and she hardly cared if he and his father lived to be two hundred. She wanted it back.

“You dare not deprive Society of your presence for another Season,” the duke was saying. “Alexander simply cannot bear the press of admiring ladies alone, can you, my boy?”

“I shall warrant my brother’s charms have been missed,” Sir Alexander conceded.

“I fully expect you to get yourself to London and select a young lady to marry, Ruel,” the duke continued, his voice taking on an imperious tone. “Alexander has engaged the lovely daughter of the Comte de la Roche; have you heard?”

“I have given him my congratulations.”

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

“I am thinking of the duchy. Indeed, I think of little else.”

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

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

“Surely not! You are a healthy young man with duties clearly spelled out. You will go to town for the remainder of this Season and select a wife. I mean to leave the duchy in good hands, and 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.”

“Bah!”

“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, any woman would be—”

“My manners have only grown more coarse with the influence of Americans,” Lord Blackthorne interrupted. “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. In perfect agreement with the common assessment of Lord Blackthorne’s reputation, she glared at him from her position by the fire. He knew he had toyed with her in the kitchen, he knew he had her lace in his pocket, and he knew he was teasing her even now. She would not be sorry if the marquess found a wife as vain and obnoxious 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 rose and stepped 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 seized her hand. She gasped, but before she could jerk her fingers away he placed a firm kiss on them once again. 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, I beg you,” the duke cut in, chuckling. “Come, come now, my boy.”

“Your surname, madam?” Lord Blackthorne repeated.

“Webster, sir,” Anne managed.

“My dear Miss Webster, I confess that in the course of our acquaintance 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 the 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 stream 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.”

Anne suppressed a gasp. No one—certainly not a man— had ever addressed her in such personal terms. While Lord Blackthorne’s description was appealing, she knew he meant it as a joke.

“You have quite terrorized the young lady, Lord Black-thorne,” the vicar said. “I should think you have gone far enough with this charade.”

“On the contrary.” The marquess 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. Ignoring the comments, Lord Blackthorne 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 velvety 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. Is that 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 that add depth to your engaging beauty.” He 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 held her hand. The vicar cleared his throat, but the marquess 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 daughter of a parson 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, your false esteem is truly 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.”

“Gracious,” the vicar exclaimed in a somber voice. “Young lady, your impudence is startling.”

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

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

Anne glanced at the duke. He rolled his eyes and nodded. She stared at each of the Chouteaus in turn. Vain, self-important, heedless pagans. Her dismissal was imminent, she realized, 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, then,” Sir Alexander declared with amusement sparkling in his eyes. “Reward their grand contribution to our cause. Make the Webster family barons or knights.”

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

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

Anne squared her shoulders. “Now I should like to 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 could place a bouquet of roses in its stead and sell it to the laceman for a price, small though it might 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 one way and then another.

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