The Savage Marquess (6 page)

“You do?” Ismene said, her eyes narrowing.

“Oh yes,” sighed Lucinda. “It is my greatest pleasure and
Don Giovanni
is my favorite opera.”

Ismene shifted irritably in the narrow coffin-shaped bath. “I have some sewing and mending for you, Lucinda,” she said. “It is better you remain at home this evening.”

“Very good, my lady,” Lucinda said in a voice deliberately laden with disappointment, and then turned away so that Ismene should not see the smile of satisfaction on her face.

After Ismene had left for the opera, Kennedy came into Lucinda’s bedroom and quietly removed the basket of sewing. “Have a bit of a rest, miss,” she said soothingly. “I like sewing and she’ll never know it was me who did it.”

Lucinda felt a lump growing in her throat. “You are very kind, Kennedy,” she said, and added with a sudden burst of candor, “Your life cannot always be easy.”

“No, it is not,” said the maid. “But it is hard these days for servants to find good positions—unless,” she added with a grin, “they want to work for the Marquess of Rockingham. He can never keep anyone.”

“Perhaps the living conditions are too cramped,” said Lucinda, who knew from remembered gossip she had heard on visits to her rich relatives that aristocrats often kept their money for their country estates and rented only inferior accommodation in town for the Season.

“No, ’tis not that, miss,” said Kennedy. “His lordship has a fine town house in Berkeley Square, Number 205, with plenty of spacious rooms, but he is so wild and so dissolute that they all give their notice sooner or later.”

Kennedy bobbed a curtsy and left, taking the sewing with her.

Lucinda settled herself in the battered armchair. She reached out to the table beside it, but the novel she had been reading had disappeared. With a cluck of annoyance she went through to Ismene’s bedchamber, confident that the girl had borrowed it. But there was no sign of the novel. Lucinda was about to leave when her eye fell on the fireplace. She stiffened. It was full of blackened, burnt paper. Ismene would not… could not…

She knelt on the hearth. One half-page was all that remained. She pulled out the blackened mess and studied it, and then sat back on her heels, her face white. Ismene had taken her book and had burnt it, the book that had carried a loving inscription from her father on the title page. Such spite was frightening.

“I can’t go on,” whispered Lucinda. “I can’t.”

She rose shakily to her feet and went out and downstairs to the library to find something to take her mind away from the horrors of her present situation. She used the back stairs, not wanting to meet the earl, who she knew had stayed behind. The door to the library led off a small landing on the back stairs. A door to the earl’s study led from the same landing, the door being opposite the library door. Most rooms in the large mansion had two entrances, one for the servants and one for the masters. She gently put her hand on the knob of the library door. And then she heard the earl’s voice coming from behind the study door. He was speaking to a visitor.

“So you see, Cartwright,” the earl was saying, “I have nothing against this Miss Westerville myself, but my lady and Ismene are going to make life hell for me until I get rid of her. Ismene came back from her ride in the park and insisted I send Miss Westerville packing by the end of the week.”

His voice became louder as he approached the door. Lucinda opened the library door and darted inside, her heart beating hard.

So it was soon to be all over. At the end of the week, she would leave London—but that would mean her father would have to leave the care of Beechings. Hot tears began to run down her cheeks. She must do something. If only someone would help her.

Being her father’s daughter, she began to pray for guidance. But when she had finished her prayers, an idea struck her—a solution—and she trembled, for such an idea could only have come from Lucifer himself.

She fled from the library to escape the voice in her head. She collected Ismene’s novel, the one she had been reading to her, from her room and forced herself to read the adventures of surely one of the most tiresome heroines in English literature.

Had Ismene summoned Lucinda on her return from the opera, Lucinda might then have tried to change her mistress’s mind about dismissing her. But Ismene did not.

So when Lucinda awoke early the next morning, that wretched voice was there, and louder, urging her on.

“All you have to do,” it wheedled, “is to ask the Marquess of Rockingham to marry you. No one wants him. No one wants you. A match made in heaven.”

“All
right
,” said Lucinda, answering the inner nagging voice. “’Fore George! I’ll do it!”

Lucinda’s courage almost deserted her as she walked to Berkeley Square. It was a lovely late-spring morning. The streets were quiet and deserted. An egg-shell-blue sky stretched overhead. Thin lines of smoke were beginning to climb up from the chimneys. Soon London would be covered by its usual ceiling of thin smoke. But for that moment the air seemed to have blown all the way from the country, scented with lilac and early roses.

She had memorized the marquess’s address, she realized, the minute Kennedy had mentioned it, almost as if such an outrageous idea had been at the back of her mind from the minute she had first heard of the Savage Marquess’s search for a wife.

Lucinda walked twice around the square until the thought of her ailing father stiffened her spine and gave her courage. Rockingham might just laugh at her. But Ismene would not rise until about two in the afternoon and so her job as companion would still be waiting.

She marched to the marquess’s town house and stood on the doorstep, looking up at the building.

Her courage deserted her again. Am I merely full of self-pity? wondered Lucinda. I am clothed and fed and my father is taken care of. With a little cunning, I could surely manage Ismene’s moods. She changes from moment to moment, and although she has told her father she wants quit of me, she could be made to change her mind. A little judicious flattery, a little fawning,
that
is all that is required. But then the thought of Ismene and everything about her personality filled Lucinda with revulsion.

Choking back a little sob of fright, like the noise a child makes when waking from a bad dream, she seized the knocker and performed a vigorous tattoo on it.

There was a long silence. Then a dust cart went past, the old horse pulling it clop-clopping over the cobbles, a blackbird sang in one of the plane trees in the square behind her, and next door a window shot up and a curious housemaid looked down.

Lucinda hammered on the knocker again.

She was just about to turn away when the door suddenly opened. Chumley stood on the step.

“Yes, miss?” he asked politely, his eyes quickly taking in the respectability of Lucinda’s dress. They roamed behind her as if searching for an accompanying maid, and, finding none, came to rest on Lucinda’s face with a tinge of wariness mixed with severity.

“I am come to call on Lord Rockingham,” said Lucinda.

“It is very early in the day. I must ask the nature of your business with his lordship.”

“A personal matter… of… of
great
importance.”

“Your card, miss?”

Lucinda fumbled in her reticule and took out one of her last, precious calling cards, turned it down at the corner to show she was calling in person, and handed it to Chumley.

His eyes searched her face again. Chumley at last recognized Lucinda as the pretty lady his master had helped in the park.

He hesitated only a moment. “Be so good as to enter, Miss Westerville.”

Chumley ushered Lucinda into a gloomy hall and then held open a door leading off it. She found herself in a damp, musty saloon. Chumley bowed and closed the door behind her and then she could hear his footsteps mounting the stairs.

She looked curiously about her. There were some fine chairs, quite modern judging by the fact that all had arms, the new style of lady’s and gentlemen’s dress allowing for such an addition, whereas the old-fashioned panniered gowns and coats with their skirts stiffened with whalebone had not. There was a William Kent bureau, surmounted by an eagle with one outstretched claw on which someone had hung a lady’s dusty garter. A backless sofa was placed in front of the fireplace. In front of it stood a sofa table, one of its open drawers revealing several well-thumbed packs of cards. The corners of the floor were still damp, as if the room had been recently scrubbed by a heavy hand and not allowed to air.

Over the fireplace was an oil painting of a stern-faced woman leaning on a pillar, while thunder clouds piled in the sky behind her. She had a nasty little smile on her face.

Lucinda nervously smoothed down her silk pelisse. The fact that the pale blue pelisse was one of Ismene’s, changed to fit her thinner figure, gave her a stab of guilt, and once more she wondered whether she was a weakling and a coward, running away to marry a rake.

The door opened and the Marquess of Rockingham walked in. He could hardly be called a pretty sight. His thick black hair was tousled, he was unshaven, and his tall athletic body was wrapped in an Oriental dressing gown gaudily embroidered to the point of decadence. His bare feet were thrust into Turkish slippers. His green eyes were bloodshot. He had left Almack’s and had gone to a gambling hell. A long night’s drinking in a smoke-filled room had worked its usual ruin. He had had only a bare two hours’ sleep.

He threw Lucinda a jaundiced look, strode over to the sofa and stretched out on it, clasped his hands behind his head, looked up at her, and said, “Well?”

Lucinda looked down at him miserably. This was hardly a Sir Galahad. She doubted if the marquess had one chivalrous thought in his brain.

“I have made a mistake,” she said quietly. “I must apologize for troubling you, my lord.”

“Don’t be silly,” he snapped. “You have roused me at this unearthly hour for some reason, you have risked ruining your reputation by calling here, so you had better tell me what it’s all about. God, my tongue feels like a carpet.” He threw back his head and roared, “Chumley! Chumley! Where are you, you lazy hound?”

The door opened and Chumley came in carrying a tray with a steaming pot of coffee and two cups.

“As usual, Chumley,” said the marquess, “you have read my mind. Put it down on the table. Miss Westerville shall serve us.”

“Very good, my lord.”

The marquess pulled himself upright and patted the sofa beside him. “Sit down, Miss Westerville.”

“I… I… I…”

“
Sit down!
”

“There is no need to bark at me,” mumbled Lucinda, gingerly sitting on the edge of the sofa. “I am not deaf.”

“Pour the coffee and tell me what you are doing here.”

Amazed that her hand did not shake, Lucinda poured him a cup of coffee, and then one for herself.

“I came here,” she said in a colorless voice, “to ask you to marry me.”

“Odso, why? No, no, don’t tell me. I think I know. You must escape the clutches of the horrible Ismene. You must provide for your father.” He raised a mocking eyebrow at her and quoted:

He studied her face. The wide hazel eyes looked at him miserably.

“Well, I don’t see why not,” he said. “Pour me another cup of coffee.”

Lucinda did as she was bid. “It was bold of me to come here,” she said. “Perhaps I should return to my post as companion. Ismene means to send me packing, but I am sure I could flatter her into a good mood.”

“Not for long,” he said languidly. “You are a deuced sight too pretty.”

“Pretty? I?” Lucinda looked at him in surprise.

“Yes,” he said, amused. “You. Pretty.”

“You do not seem at all surprised by my proposal.”

“I shall be when my poor addled brain clears. Have you any conditions? I accept the care of your father.”

“Yes,” said Lucinda nervously, fiddling with the material of her gown. “I would like six months’ grace before we enter into the, er, intimate side of marriage.”

“In return for which…?”

“I shall not interfere with your life in any way, but if we can manage together tolerably well, then after six months I shall do my best to give you heirs.”

“And if we do not suit?”

“Then the marriage, not consummated, can be easily annulled.”

The marquess wondered whether to tell her that he had heard Chamfreys fulminating in the card room at Almack’s over the fact that one of his relatives should have to work and had sworn to go to Beechings and remove Mr. Westerville into his own care. But if he told her that, she would not marry him, and then he should have to go through all the dreary, boring business of courting someone.

“I accept your terms,” he said. “Now, hear mine. We will be married today—”

“No!”

“Why not? A little bribery and corruption and I can have a special license in my pocket within the hour. Either you marry me, or you don’t. I’ve accepted your terms, so it’s not as if I’m going to drag you to the marriage bed.”

Lucinda looked at him, trying to find some hint of compassion or concern behind those mocking green eyes. “Can’t we wait?” she asked feebly.

“No. Chumley!” he roared, making Lucinda jump.

When Chumley came in, the marquess said, “Take the required amount of money from my desk and go and get me a special license.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I am getting married today to Miss Westerville here. Think you can arrange that?”

“Yes, my lord, provided Miss Westerville is over twenty-one.”

“Oh, curse it all. Of course she’s not over twenty-one.”

“I am… just,” said Lucinda. “But—”

“There you are, Chumley. Your new mistress is over twenty-one. Hop to it.”

“Very good, my lord.”

When he had left, Lucinda said with a weak smile, “I suppose it is rather like going to the dentist. ‘If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.’”

“Not an apt quotation. It is marriage you are supposed to be contemplating, not murder.”