Silence stretched between them, the marquis still appraising at her as if he were waiting for her to burst into flames. Eleanor felt her heart sink like a stone within her.This was all a waste of time. You may as well pack up the girls now and try to find employment in some lord’s country house. If you’re lucky, you can all stay together.
“Traveling abroad, you mentioned . . . most unusual. Do you often take tea in the middle of the night, Miss Eastwick?”
His question was unexpected and his tone overly casual. Eleanor floundered. She was grateful for the break in the topic, for it allowed her to suck in a breath and push back the tears that had been hovering just beneath the surface of her composure, but the question itself left her feeling unmoored. “I-I beg your pardon, my lord?”
He gestured to the full afternoon tea service before them before lifting his cup, taking a long swallow before resuming. “Do you often enjoy afternoon tea at nearly two a.m., Miss Eastwick?”
Eleanor snapped her mouth shut after a moment, realizing she had opened it in shock at the audacity of such a question.Of course not, and he bloody well knows it.“I don’t, my lord, no. Although, Iamoften up at this hour. Sleep does not find me easily these days, and I’ve always been a bit of a night owl. I’ve never entertained company of the nocturnal persuasion, and I only sought to make your visit more comfortable, Lord Stride. My sincerest apologies if we failed in our attempt.”
The Marquis of Basingstone grinned, chuckling to himself.Perhaps he’ll hurry up and leave once he says no. The less you have to look upon his smug smirk, the better, and you’ll never need to see him again.
“You intimate that you lack social graces and you’ve no experience with the monstrous gentry, and yet,” he drawled, draining his cup, “you took into account the time of our little tête-à-tête, understood that this would be what you would consider the middle of the afternoon for me, and you made accommodations to the best of your ability. You are a charming hostess, a genial conversationalist, I’m assuming, when you don’t have such a rude partner, of course, and lovely to behold, if not a bit conservative. I don’t find you hopeless at all, Miss Eastwick. I accept your offer. I should be glad to help you secure a husband at the Monsters Ball. As a matter of fact, I can guarantee it. The joy of your company will be payment enough, of that, I have little doubt. My only request is that you do exactly as I say and don’t second guess my methodology. By the time I’m through with you, you will have your choice of suitors.”
He left shortly thereafter, and by the time his carriage disappeared into the dark road, Eleanor was slumped against the door. The tiered tray of sweets and savories had barely been touched, but it was expensive meat and cheese, too fine to go to waste, and the girls would enjoy the tiny delicacies the following day.
He was going to help her, she reminded herself, finally trudging to bed, only an hour or two before dawn. He was going to help her and things were going to work out. It didn’t matter that she would be marrying a stranger, both in personality and form, nor did it matter that the Marquis of Basingstone and his sharp gaze left her discomfited. She was simply going to have to get used to it.You’re going to be spending a lot of time in his company over the next few weeks. What was that he said? He would be in London indefinitely for the next several months? Plenty of time to flourish under his tutelage.Optimistic words. Aspirational, even. Something to strive for, to do right for a change.
At least, Eleanor thought, closing her eyes determinedly, he was nice to look at.If nothing else, he’s handsome. Who cares if he’s rude. He’s a lord, of course he’s a snob, what did you expect? He’s also the one who’s going to get you out of this mess.She knew that, knew that he was her only hope, but that didn’t keep her stomach from braiding itself into knots at the thought of spending any more time in his cool, condescending company.
Silas
ThemanoratBasingstonewas an oasis of sun-bleached stone walls, climbing with ivy and winking with more than a hundred palladium windows, the leaded glass gleaming in the sunlight each afternoon. The prize-winning rose garden was a resplendent sea of color, the petals kissed with dew in the early dawn hours, and the topiaries that lined the long gravel pathway cast jumping shapes across the lawn in the high, midday sun. There was a breeding pair of mute swans that nested on the grounds, he was told, and every spring, they would glide regally across the lake, downy little cygnets paddling furiously behind them in the golden, sun-kissed afternoons. The rolling hills behind them were lush and green, and the majestic cliffs before them overlooked the ever-crashing waves. Basingstone was lovely in the day. Or, at least, so he’d been told.
Silas had never been awake to appreciate the sight of his ancestral home in the morning hours, nor had he ever experienced a stroll through the rose garden when the petals still held the glimmer of dew. He could not tell what sort of rainbow display the winking leaded glass of the windows was meant to create, having never seen it for himself, and whatever shadows the sun cast on the topiaries in the afternoon, it surely paled to what the moon did after midnight, he was certain — her icy white light creating longer, leering shapes that leapt across the gravel. He had never seen the swans swimming in the midday sun and wasn’t sure if he’d know a cygnet if he stepped on one. He had no idea what his home looked like in the hours before dusk, and he was sick to death of hearing about it thirdhand from near strangers.
“He said that a decision must be made soon, my lord, before the weather changes too thoroughly. If you’d like, I can consult with the house steward at Killendare and ask what course of action they’ve—“
“Just do whatever it is you need to do, for the love of the moon, Kestin,” he interrupted his steward, stopping the mothman’s long-winded soliloquy on whatever it was the groundskeeper had relayed needed to be done before the spring season fully returned. Silas felt a tension headache brewing behind his eye, a half dozen members of the household vying for his attention all bloody evening, a consequence of his time in London but still an absolute nuisance, and all he wanted was to be left alone to nurse his brandy and brood in peace. “I don’t bloody care. Prune back the roses, set them on fire; it makes no difference to me. Just do it without needing me to hear about it.”
Kestin had been at Basingtone for nearly two decades, a comfort in his position that was evidenced by the way the mothman’s lip curled back, his nose rising a fraction as his wings rustled in offense. Silas rolled his eyes. He had returned to Basingstone the previous night, and evidently his steward-in-residence had expected to be cosseted like a child who’d been left alone for the summer holiday. Silas turned away, refusing to be cowed by the feathery antennae that had straightened out like arrows.
“Is there anything else?”
“Yes, my lord.” The mothman gave him a patronizing smile. “Your sister is here.”
Silas’s head dropped, shoulders slumping as he waved Kestin away. He wasn’t surewhyhe’d expected a single night’s peace, a preposterously foolish notion, he understood now, for the study door had scarcely closed behind the steward before Silas heard her voice.
“Silas!”
He wasn’t certain what his sister Maris ever meant to achieve by shouting his name from down the hall. He had no intention of leaving his study, and she still had an entire corridor to traverse, yet this was how she opted to announce her presence every time she came to visit him, which was every time he was in residence at the manor. That ridiculousness of shouting had never stopped Maris before, and that evening would be no different, apparently.
“Silas!”
“Maris, darling, please don’t shout,” he called through the closed door, his voice flat, uncaring if she heard him or not. “You can raise your voice all you want. It doesn’t mean I’m getting up for you.”
His sister burst into the study, not bothering to knock. It had always been this way. There were four years that separated them, but Maris had decided sometime around the age of seven or eight that she no longer needed to take his orders, despite the fact thathewas the one with the title.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home?” she asked peevishly, flouncing to the chair before to his desk, seating herself without invitation. “You could have sent word, you know. I would’ve had a welcoming dinner prepared for you.”
“Unnecessary,” he muttered. “In any case, I won’t be here long.”
“You’re never here long,” she shot back. “Just long enough to cause trouble before you flit back to London and leave us to pick up the pieces.”
“Well, I daresay I won’t be here long enough to cause any trouble, love,” he lied smoothly. He had every intention of paying a visit to the fair lady of Derrybrook that night, having run into her husband the previous evening as the lord journeyed to London. Draining his balls before going to bed was a sure way to ensure his headache would be extinguished while he slept, and Lady Derrybrook had a fantastically firm grip.
Maris rolled her eyes, clearly not believing him. “We really need to throw a ball, you know. Invite all of the most eligible—“
“No.”
