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Authors: Theresa Romain

BOOK: Season for Surrender
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So Louisa asked, “What type of man would you choose, Jane? If you had the freedom?”
“I don't know,” Jane said. “I'd want to marry someone who didn't see me only as Xavier's cousin. As a poor relative of someone they wanted to get close to.”
She shut her big hazel eyes. “My life is even duller than Xavier's. I'm sometimes tempted to create a scandal just so people can't look through me anymore.”
“I
knew
you wanted a scandal for Christmas.” Louisa took a deep breath. “But please believe me, being gossiped about can be dreadful.”
She was thinking of her own broken engagement to James, Viscount Matheson. A matter of convenience, it had been dissolved as logically as it was formed. But a scandal had erupted when James took up with her stepsister, Julia, instead; a humiliation of stares and whispers infinitely worse than being shuttled aside, unnoticed.
It had worked out well in the end, though. Julia and James were happily married, and Louisa . . .
Everyone had forgotten about her again.
“I do understand what you mean, Jane,” Louisa added. “Sometimes anything seems better than being ignored. Until something worse happens.”
Jane opened her eyes. “You're horribly sensible.”
She rolled up to a seated position. “And you, Louisa? What type of man would you choose?”
“Someone with all his hair and teeth.”
Jane folded her arms. “Give me a
real
answer.”
Louisa laughed. “Let me think. I've never had the power of choice before.”
An understatement. She'd never had a single suitor before James had seized on her for convenience's sake. Surely this was why Xavier and Lockwood had bet upon her: she was the most unlikely subject imaginable.
Her eyes roved over the painted ceiling. Sinuous classical gods and goddesses lounged across the span of the room in a swirl of smoky draperies and pale limbs. Apollo was Louisa's favorite, and always easy to spot: youthful and clean-shaven, with a lyre tucked against a narrow hip. The god of knowledge, truth, and the arts. He was interested in everything, that Apollo.
And he stretched his arm across the ceiling, lithe and long-limbed, his hair a ridiculous mop of curls. For the first time, Louisa wished that Apollo had tamed his hair a bit. Cropped it off short, so when he ran his hand through it in an unconscious gesture of frustration, the damage to his coiffure would be minimal.
She squeezed her eyes closed. “I would like to find someone who . . .” She swallowed. “Someone who would want to know what I'm really like,” she finished in a rush.
“Well, yes,” said Jane. “I took that for granted.”
Louisa's eyes flew open, and she stared up at her friend. Jane scrunched up her face. “That's all you want? You don't care if he's, say, wider than a beer barrel?”
But he's not
, Louisa thought.
“Not that wide,” she said, and Jane's expression un-scrunched a bit.
“And you don't even care if he likes you? Only that he really knows you?”
This was easy to answer. “Yes.” Louisa shoved herself upright and folded her legs before her. “That is, I'm not interested in a man who thinks he likes me
without
knowing me. I'm not possessed of either curves or giggles in plentiful supply, but if a man could look beyond that, then that would be a foundation for . . .”
She trailed off and raised a hand to her burning cheek. “Something real.”
“But if he knows you well and doesn't like you,” Jane asked in a small voice, wrapping her arms around her knees, “isn't that the worst thing in the world?”
Louisa considered. “Worse than being forgotten? Or never known at all?”
If no one ever knew her, she could maintain the fiction that someone, someday, would recognize her worth. But if that fiction vanished, she would be alone. And her Louisa catalogue would stretch on, lonely and long and unchanging.
Alex wasn't the answer to this particular prayer. She'd known that even before she'd rucked up her skirts so he could touch her fervent body.
Oh, he was a puzzle, and Louisa found puzzles irresistible. But resist him she must. As long as he was determined to hide his finest qualities from the world, she should not pin any hopes upon him.
“There are worse things than being alone,” she told her friend bracingly.
She wanted to believe that.
Chapter 16
Containing a Lavender Cravat
The following day, certain members of the house party remained abed late, not wishing to walk to a nearby ruin beloved by Mrs. Tindall.
Among the slugabeds were Lord and Lady Weatherby and Mr. and Mrs. Simpkins, whom everyone knew exchanged spouses as often as other couples changed their clothing. Less scandalously, Lady Irving elected to remain behind with Lord Weatherwax, imbibing and gambling in the morning room.
“Xavier's old butler has let slip that he hasn't uncorked the best bottles yet,” grumbled the countess. “Can you imagine? Keeping us here over Christmas without fostering inebriation.”
Louisa looked over her aunt's shoulder at the dozing Lord Weatherwax. His cottony hair was wildly disarranged, and he'd scattered his hand of cards before him on a felt-topped table that had been set up for the players.
“I don't think your companion needs any help becoming inebriated,” Louisa said. “Honestly, Aunt, aren't you ashamed to skin a gentleman who's only half-awake, and much less than half-sober?”
“I'm never ashamed of anything,” replied Lady Irving with a sharklike smile that set off the ermine trim on her turban and gown. “Besides, you'll be better off without me. Mrs. Tindall's serving as chaperone, and”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“that woman doesn't notice half of what goes on around her. Only get her napping, and you'll be able to do what you like. Within reason.”
“I'm always reasonable,” Louisa sighed, accepting her aunt's pat on the head with better grace than the gesture deserved.
A familiar group marched westward into the cool air toward the ruin at which, Mrs. Tindall confessed, the late Mr. Tindall had first professed his love (her ruddy face reddened still more before she squeaked out the final word). The party included Lady Alleyneham, keeping her daughters on a short leash; Jane; Lockwood and Kirkpatrick; Signora Frittarelli and Mrs. Protheroe; the stolid Mr. Channing, whom Louisa had rarely heard utter more than three words together; and Freddie Pellington, whom Louisa had rarely heard utter fewer than three sentences.
And Alex. Striding at the side of Mrs. Tindall, he was all cool colors, his coat the same gray of his eyes, his boots the coal dark of his hair. His hands were gloved against the cold, but she remembered the hot slide of his bare skin over hers.
This memory was not helping her determination to keep him at a friendly distance.
A distraction, then. “Jane.” Louisa pasted a smile across her face and turned back to her newfound friend. “Do come and walk with me.”
Jane had been dogging the footsteps of Lord Kirkpatrick, and at Louisa's invitation she trudged away from the oblivious baron.
“Stupid man,” she muttered as she reached Louisa's side. “I told you, he never notices me.”
Jane was swathed, as usual, in a too-bulky cloak over a too-bright gown. Her cheeks were rosy, as though she was baking in her layers of fabric.
“I'm the last person anyone should consult for romantic advice.” Louisa's breath blew frosty from her lips. “Well, possibly second-to-last. If there's a hermit on the grounds somewhere, I could probably do better than he.”
Jane shook her head. “I don't think there is. Sorry.”
They walked on, both preoccupied, to the boundary of the Great Hall's manicured grounds. When they crossed it, gentle hills and scrubby gorse unrolled in a gray-brown stretch of wintry heath. The tenants farmed to the east, Louisa realized; to the west it was only this wild, untamed land.
“Why are we always having to walk everywhere?” Jane complained. “I'd much prefer to be back with your aunt, drinking myself into a stupor.”
Louisa interpreted this statement to mean
This outing is not amusing me, because I hoped for a dramatic change, which has not occurred, in the behavior of the object of my interest.
Ha. She could hope for that, too, couldn't she? Alex had taken Mrs. Protheroe on one arm and the busty
signora
on the other. Playing the part of Lord Xavier to perfection. Not a flicker to betray that anything the slightest bit special had passed between himself and Louisa.
She hated him for that, just a little. And she hated herself for caring. She'd known it would be this way; she'd expected it. Even encouraged it. So she had no right to hope for anything else.
“I'll tell you what, Jane.” She extended a gloved hand to pull her shorter friend up a rise in the heath. “When we get back to the house, we'll get drunk as sailors. Your mother won't notice, and my aunt will call us vulgar and then forget all about the matter.”
This brought a small smile to Jane's face. “It
would
be vulgar, wouldn't it?”
“It would be nothing more or less than what the men of the party do every day.”
But she knew, and knew Jane did, too, that they would never follow through on this promise to get roaring drunk. Just as Alex had told Louisa, unmarried women couldn't bear much scandal. And Louisa was too grimly sensible to think that an excess of drink would give her anything but a headache.
“In any case,” she added in a brisk voice that made Jane squint at her, “it's a lovely day to walk out. I've never seen a ruin. Don't we owe it to ourselves to snap up a few new experiences?”
“I hate it when you're logical,” Jane muttered.
“No, you find it intellectually bracing.”
“Bracing. Yes. That's what I meant.” Jane rolled her hazel eyes, but she smiled.
They walked on, and Mrs. Tindall scurried ahead, her round figure moving with surprising lightness. She called back, motioning for everyone else to hurry. “Almost there!”
The ruins of Finchley Castle reared up suddenly when they rounded a hill. The old bones of the medieval fortress were barely recognizable as such anymore. A few arches remained, and the round base of what had once been the keep, but most of the ancient walls had tumbled into piles of rubble, and the stone was hung with straggling ivy, brown and dry.
“Lovely,” Louisa breathed. The place seemed full of hidden knowledge.
Jane looked mildly interested. “It's exactly like something out of a horrid novel. Do you think there's a dungeon?”
Before Louisa could reply, Alex had turned toward them from the edge of the ruin. “Jane, come and see. I've found the steps to the dungeon, and now I can lock you in.”
“And there are cellars over this way,” cried Mrs. Tindall, waving her arm for the line of puffing guests to follow her. “Ever so private. I'll show you the one where my dear Mr. Tindall and I . . .” She covered her mouth.
“Does my mother,” Jane said in a tone of infinite disgust, “honestly think that a cellar is a good place to meet a lov—no, I can't say it. It's too repellent.”
“When a woman's in love, I suppose a ruined cellar is as good as a castle,” Louisa replied.
Jane shuddered. “I'd rather have Xavier lock me in a dungeon than hear any more of my mother's bizarre romantic past.”
Louisa laughed and waved Jane away. The younger woman trudged over to her mother, and Lady Alleyneham followed, herding her daughters before her. They looked as reluctant as if they were going to get teeth drawn.
Alex didn't follow at once, Louisa noticed. He was standing upon a fallen block with arms folded, scanning the sweep of ruined stone, the fallen-in cellars. Posing like the statue-lord he'd played upon Louisa's arrival at the house party: looming on his front steps, trying to impress everyone with his grandeur.
She knew him better now, and she could recognize the cracks in his disdainful mask: the softening of his mouth when he saw his younger cousin safely led around by her mother; the furrow of his brow as Lady Alleyneham shoved her elder daughter into the path of Lord Kirkpatrick, and the younger toward Mr. Channing.
He was watching out for them all, but he didn't want anyone to know it. She could have kissed him and kicked him for that.
Instead, she turned away.
And bumped right into Lord Lockwood.
“Careful, sweeting.” He clutched her forearms, though she was in no danger of losing her balance.
She shook her arms free and stepped back. “I'm always careful, my lord. And if you've forgotten my name, you need not be ashamed. I am willing to make allowances for the incompetent.” She paused. “And lords.”
The marquess was wearing a lavender cravat—evidently she'd been right about his sartorial innovation. The color was pleasant against his deep blue coat and olive skin. But the expression on his face was everything dreadful: a syrupy quirk of the lips; calculating eyes.
“Miss Oliver. Ruined.” He rolled the consonants over his tongue.
“Ah, you do remember my name. Good for you, my lord.” She gave him a pitying smile; she couldn't be openly rude to a noble. “But you puzzle me. Does it surprise you that a ruin should be in a ruined state?”
He narrowed his eyes and widened his smile. Quite a feat of engineering. “Is the ruin the only thing that's been . . . ruined?”
“I doubt it,” she said calmly. She would not think of Alex's fingers trailing over her body. “These are Lord Xavier's guests. Are they not purported to include the scandalous along with the fashionable?”
“Ah, how right you are.” He drew a watch from his pocket and began swinging it at the end of its fob, as though they were sitting tête-à-tête in a parlor. “Sometimes the scandalous become fashionable, though the fashionable rarely become scandalous.”
Swing, swing, went the watch on its golden chain. Louisa followed it back and forth with her eyes. The case was elaborately chased and inlaid. No doubt expensive. He was fortunate not to have lost it to a creditor, if the rumors of his financial troubles were true.
“And which are you, Miss Oliver? Scandalous or fashionable? Or both?”
Louisa blinked and looked up at Lockwood's face. He was studying her with ill-concealed curiosity.
“I'm neither,” she said. “I'm a prosy bluestocking who wanted to see Clifton Hall's library.”
“Ah. Is that why you came to the house party?” He flipped his watch and tucked it back into its pocket. “And here I thought you had a more personal interest in someone at the party.”
“I am honored, my lord, that you've devoted an iota of thought to me.”
“As you should be. It's more than many did during your London season, if I recall correctly.”
Ah. Her debut in society, marked by desperate loneliness. Lockwood had scored a direct hit, and he knew it. Louisa struggled to breathe normally. If she showed him he'd drawn blood, he would only strike again.
“You do recall correctly,” she said. “Which is why I find myself unwilling to shackle you any longer with the dullness of my presence. Do excuse me, my lord.”
She turned and strode over the rough ground, pebbled with stone chips and clotted roots. She had come several yards closer to one of the deep stone pits—a dungeon or a cellar, she couldn't yet tell—before Lockwood caught up with her and seized her arm again.
“I do not require your assistance,” she said, tugging free from his grip.
“Very well. How about my company?”
She walked straight ahead, not looking at him again. “You are free to do as you like.”
“I know it.” His drawl was no more than a passable imitation of Alex's own Bored Voice.
And where was Alex? Not that she needed him herself. But if he could steer Lockwood in another direction—such as into the bosomy path of
la signora
—the diversion would be most welcome.
He had climbed down from his stone perch, and she couldn't locate him at once. A cacophony was issuing from one of the other pits. People were hustling down the steps, and Mrs. Tindall's unmodulated tones were clearly audible.
That must be the Cellar of Love, then, and their hostess was expounding on her long-ago romance. Louisa hoped no souvenirs from that romance were to be found in the cellar. Jane would likely suffer an apoplexy.
Lockwood followed Louisa's gaze. “Xavier's relatives. Poor fellow. I'm thankful to claim no blood relation to Mrs. Tindall, though I'm sure she's a very good sort in her own way.”
“In anyone's way, I should say,” Louisa corrected. “She's a very kind woman. I've never seen her in an ill humor.”
“Because she sleeps more than a cat.”
Louisa ignored this slight to their hostess and looked down into the stone pit. About twelve feet deep, a square twenty feet by twenty, it had probably once been used as a root cellar. The light wind that nipped under the edges of her cloak would leave the excavated space unbothered; cool in summer and sheltered in winter.

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