‘Can you marvel at it? I would have to be the most unconscionable coxcomb ever born to enjoy the attention I am currently receiving – the extent of it, and the nature of it too.’ He was vehement, but there were others sitting nearby chatting or reading, and so he kept his voice low. Jeremy grimaced in understanding.
Marcus had been promoted after the Allied victory at Salamanca rather than having to purchase his Majority – promoted into dead men’s shoes, of course, as he was never likely to forget – and mentioned by name in dispatches then, and again after the disastrous retreat that was Huebra. So had many others, of course, and with much greater cause as far as he could tell. The true heroes of those days were most of them dead. But it was only when he’d returned wounded to England that he’d realised how much of a public figure he’d become in his absence.
For this, he came to understand once his wound was healed and he began to mix in company, he had in great part Lavinia to thank. She was still so lovely – she always would be – and in black, she must have been incomparable. No wonder she dazzled wherever she went. She had put off her full mourning now, more than a year after Ambrose’s death, but the muted colours – chiefly silver, palest blue and unadorned white – that she always wore became her ethereal beauty astonishingly well. Her hair was such a pale blonde as almost to be silver itself, though her brows and lashes were dark, and those extraordinary violet-blue eyes were like deep, mysterious pools at midsummer dusk, in which a man might drown. Poets wrote verses in her praise – so beautiful and so sad, and always (on appropriate occasions) accompanied by her poor fatherless child, as strikingly lovely as she was. Ladies of a susceptible nature had been known to weep at the mere sight of them together.
Society was disposed to be interested in tragic Lavinia, of course, and once the full details of her truly heartbreaking story were widely known (though surely she had not spread it abroad herself, but only told a very few trusted friends who had shockingly not kept her confidence), she became the sensation of the Season. And so did he.
He could not help being faintly nauseated by it all. He made a mawkish figure, he thought, in the tale – his chaste young love for her and hers for him, his noble renunciation of her at their fathers’ command, the way he had stepped aside to let his brother wed her, and the distorted, highly sanitised civilian’s-eye view of his subsequent military career. It was to be understood that his bravery had stemmed from the fact that he no longer cared if he lived or died, like some warrior of legend, as the love of his life was forever lost to him. And now, of course, the gossip-mongers eagerly picked over the torment he must be undergoing – and Lavinia too, poor suffering soul – to see her widowed, free to marry again, and yet tantalisingly out of his reach.
Or, came the whispers – and this was by far the worst of it as far as Marcus was concerned – was she?
When he had come home and as soon as he was well enough, his mother had put before him, expressionlessly, the legal papers that made his position perfectly clear. He had read them with an attention almost more painful than the lingering throb of his shoulder. But he had known it all already. It was not illegal to marry one’s deceased brother’s wife. It could be done, and was done, no doubt, every day, in every rank of society. But – was ever a legal judgment more perverse? – the marriage was voidable; if challenged, ever, for as long as the parties lived, it could be set aside in an instant. Rendered invalid, as if it had never happened. Which meant, of course, that any children of such a union would be made illegitimate, with no remedy for it. Marcus’s heir at present was a distant cousin he barely knew, a clever young lawyer who was not a wealthy man; who could doubt for a second that he would challenge and overturn such a match if Lord Thornfalcon were ever improvident enough to make it? Of course he would – he had so much to gain, and Marcus so much to lose.
It was unsurprising that his mother, and his sister Helena too now that she was old enough to understand, had the strongest possible objections to such a scandalous marriage. But he paid them the compliment of believing that they had only a fleeting concern for public notoriety and even for the future of the title, the estate and the name. No, their worry was for him, because they loved him; for what such a life of uncertainty would do to him, and particularly the bitter knowledge of what he would be inflicting on his innocent unborn children if he chose love over duty this time. The polite world found the whole situation highly romantic, as if his deepest feelings were some sort of play set out for public entertainment, but he had no taste for melodrama and his opinions were far, far otherwise. He was living a species of nightmare as he smiled and danced and rode in the park and kept his face impassive all the while, and if his mother and sister hadn’t needed him, London would have been the last place in the world he’d choose to set foot in.
Lavinia, in one of their endless, tormenting conversations, just last night, had accused him of caring only for stuffy respectability and the future of his noble name. For base inheritance and worldly gain. She could not help but marvel at it, she told him often. She had thought she had known him, that their souls were as one, indivisible and eternal, but now she realised that she had been sadly mistaken. ‘I would give up the world for you,’ she said, those extraordinary eyes huge and tragic in her pale little face. Who but a heartless monster could make her suffer so? ‘I would risk my reputation, everything, to have your love again, to stand beside you proudly and openly as your wife. I would defy everyone and everything, and if anyone dared to question our marriage and brand me a whore, I would accept it as long as I had you. But I understand now that you would not do the same for me. It is excessively odd,’ she went on lightly, each word worse than a bayonet-thrust, her melodious voice tinkling like silver bells, ‘that you are the hero of the hour and feted everywhere, and yet in this, I am braver than you. I can only suppose—’ and here her voice broke at last ‘—that you never really loved me. Only desired me. And even that has left you. Has it not?’
She had a room kept ready for her in his town house – she had that right, as his brother’s widow and mother of a Thornfalcon child – and sometimes, she came to sleep there. There could be no impropriety, no whisper of scandal, since his mother and his sister lived there too. They were all one family, or supposed to be. The Dowager, frail and unwell as she was, must welcome the chance of spending precious time with her only grandchild, and of course someone as impeccably behaved as her daughter-in-law would not dream of denying her that. Lavinia had been heard to say publicly and frequently that never, never, no matter that it caused her the acutest pain to pass over the threshold of the house that had once been hers, would she think of keeping grandmother and granddaughter apart. If angelic little Priscilla should be present when these trembling words were spoken, as she often was, the fairy-like child would clutch at her mother’s hand and say, in her adorably high, piping tones, ‘Oh, Mama, dearest, I am sorry if it hurts you to be here, but do not keep me from Grandmama, I pray! I do love her so! And brave Uncle Marcus too!’ Ladies who witnessed this manner of affecting scene had often to be revived afterwards with sal volatile and hartshorn.
But on the occasions Lavinia chose to spend the night in Half-Moon Street at Thornfalcon House, it was a very different matter. The sensitive ladies would have been shocked to see it, and the printmakers delighted. It was all too easy to imagine what they would have made of what they witnessed. Once her child had been put to bed, once the mansion was quiet, Lavinia would slip silently along the corridor. Marcus could have locked his door; he should have. But then he would have to lie there in the darkness waiting to hear the handle turn, dreading it and wanting it at the same time. Because he knew that if the door was not barred to her, she would appear in his bedchamber in her nightgown and robe again, barefoot, beautiful as a dream, and do her very best to drive him out of his senses.
4
Sophie’s suggestion took possession of Amelia’s mind over the next few days, no matter how she tried to push it away. She didn’t think it was as sensible a notion as the Marchioness seemed to believe, but it wasn’t quite crazy either, Amelia thought; like all her sister-in-law’s schemes, it had a sort of relentless logic to it that was hard to argue with. Sophie, though they rarely spoke of it, had lived for many years outside society, fending for herself and surviving in ways that had made her sharp and ruthless and pitilessly clear-sighted. Public chatter said she had been a governess, but Amelia knew that, whatever she had been doing, it wasn’t that. She had a sort of veneer she assumed now when she chose to. She was charmingly idiosyncratic, a little absent-minded and prone to amusing mistakes in English, which was her second language: a great lady – unmistakeably an aristocrat of theAncien Régime, since her father had been a duke with an illustrious name – but with very little hauteur of manner. She didn’t care greatly for social gatherings, but when she attended them, she could captivate effortlessly, or so it seemed. But beneath all this, and even as she held her child in loving arms and ordered her grand households with tranquil authority, as though she’d never had occasion to do anything different, she could see the people around her, the ones she did not care about, as potential prey, and dissect their weaknesses. Amelia had swiftly learned to respect her judgement, and listened to her now.
‘Lord Thornfalcon loathes the situation in which he has been placed,’ the Marchioness said with calm certainty as they spoke of the matter again. Amelia was dressing for a quiet dinner at home followed by tonight’s ball, which Sophie would not attend, so they had dismissed the girl’s abigail to allow them to talk in private. ‘You can see it written on his face.’ She had finished arranging the younger woman’s hair, weaving a string of pearls through her lustrous dark locks, and stepped back to see the effect of what she had done.
‘I should think he must dislike it,’ said Amelia. ‘Thank you, that looks very well, I think. It is surely most disagreeable – and who should know better than I? – to be the subject of such gossip and be unable to prevent it. But he always remains impassive; we may be reading him wrongly. Perhaps he will think your idea quite mad, and refuse to countenance it for so much as a second.’
‘Bah! He is desperate for a way out – desperate to escape all the attention that is being showered on him. He will be delighted, I am sure, and most grateful to you for your providential suggestion.’
‘I can easily credit that he would be glad to forgo women flinging themselves at his feet, and falling off horses so that he is obliged to rescue them, and fainting into his arms at balls so that he is obliged to catch them, and all that sort of nonsense. Presumably, such behaviour would have to stop, once we were betrothed, and that must be a relief to him. But what of the great romance with his brother’s widow? If he does genuinely intend to marry her, despite all the reasons why he should not, the last thing he will wish to do is to engage himself to someone else.’
Sophie made a rude, unladylike noise of derision. ‘If he had wished to do that, he might have done it already, quietly – a marriage of that peculiar nature must always be quiet. That the lady desires such a match, I can well believe – thathedoes, I would not wager a penny on. It is a very pretty, romantic tale, no doubt, and it is no wonder that it should be, since she herself has crafted it in what I must admit is a most impressive way, and made sure that it is spread about.Isee what manner of person she is, even if others do not. The question is: does he, or is he blinded by love and by desire? And it is very simple, after all – if he wishes to take this grave step and wed her, he will refuse you, and you will be no worse off than before, for I am sure he would not tell a soul.’
Amelia digested this. ‘If you are right about her, and he does say yes to my suggestion, she will be my enemy,’ she said slowly. ‘I will have ruined all her plans – or if I have not in truth, because I have no intention really of marrying him, of course, she will think I have.’
‘There is always a price to be paid for anything worth having, I have found. And youwillhave ruined her plans, because even if – when – it is known that you have jilted him and the engagement is at an end, it will hardly suit the nature of her story to marry him afterwards. He will have chosen another, but then been rejected by her, and she will be second choice. It will not seem so much like a great and noble sacrifice a man makes for the woman he adores, but rather a lack of imagination on his part. “Oh, there she is again, I had quite forgot; I might as well marry her.” That is not very romantic, and I do not see her as a woman who has ever been second choice in her life, or would stand to be seen by the world as such. I think she is very proud, though it is an odd kind of pride to my mind.’
‘That’s very bad, then – I would be destroying her life and taking away her future. I can’t do that, Sophie! That would be a dreadful thing to do to another woman, and especially one who has already been widowed so young!’ Amelia swivelled on her stool with a swish of blue and gold silk, so that she could meet her sister-in-law’s eyes, not just catch their reflection in the mirror.
Sophie shrugged in Gallic fashion. ‘You would only be destroying her life if His Lordship truly plans to marry her. If he does not, you have done nothing to her; the responsibility is his, and unless she is excessively stupid, she must realise it. And her fantasy remains intact, if she cares for that. The man she adores has chosen duty over love again. It is her tragic fate, and his, to be parted once more. He doesn’t loveyou, naturally. Nobody, least of all her, need think it is that sort of marriage – he weds to please his family and secure the succession, not to indulge his own feelings.’
‘But what of my terrible reputation?’ protested Amelia. ‘How does that fit with the story? I doubt most respectable families would be willing to welcome me, and a connection with the scandalous Wyvernes.’
‘Your reputation is irrelevant for the purposes of this fiction. Nobody is threatening to declareyourmatch publicly invalid, nor brand your future children bastards, no matter how bad the Wyverne name is. In fact, it may even be forgotten in the press of all these other exciting events. That would be a good thing, no?’
‘I suppose it would. But I still think Lady Thornfalcon is bound to hate me.’
‘Probably she will. But what of it? She cannot hurt you, and if she slanders you, it will be put down to sheer jealousy. And Amelia, if I have understood your peculiar English laws aright, if Lord Thornfalcon has an ounce of brain in his handsome head, he cannot seriously mean to wed her, however much she wants him to, and even if he wishes to for his own part. He has responsibilities to others than himself, and to his unborn children most of all.’
‘Yes, but if he loves her…’
‘If he loves her, he will not engage himself to you. He will make this crazy match to the extremely annoying woman with the horrid lisping child, who can call him Papa Dear instead of Uncle. But if he does not love her, he will leap at the chance you offer him. It is not as though your jilting him, when you finally do, will damage him in the least. It will very likely free him from his disagreeable entanglement, and when he is free, he will still be handsome, rich and eligible, with a hero’s reputation to boot. Such men will always find suitable brides, you need have no doubt of that. Worry about yourself, not him.’
‘I can’t believe it’s as simple as you make it sound.’
‘Perhaps not. But probably he will be at the ball tonight, escorting his sister, and you will have the chance to observe him, will you not? And his brother’s widow too, if she is there, which I expect she will be. One disadvantage of the situation she has created – I expect she did not realise it in advance, for it is difficult to plan for every eventuality if one is not greatly experienced in scheming, which I imagine she is not – is the enormous number of ladies of the ton who have been so impressed by her romantic fantasy and his heroic nature that they have decided to throw themselves at him.’
