Suzanne Robinson (40 page)

George and Robert came to the door and gave her their good wishes, but a look from Blade sent them away, and the door shut. He locked it and returned to her.

“You must rest,
chère.”

She touched his cheek. “Sing for me then.”

He took her hands in his and complied, but instead of making her drowsy, his voice resounded throughout her body. She watched his lips, reveling in their movement, and let her gaze melt down the length of his torso to his thigh. He stopped singing.

“Chère
, you mustn’t do that.”

“What?”

“Look at me.
Sacré Dieu
, one would think you learned that in the bedchambers of Amboise.”

He stirred restlessly. She noticed the way his body strained toward hers and smiled. He swallowed and gripped the covers with both fists.

“Don’t, Oriel.”

She rose and slipped her hand inside his jerkin and shirt to knead his bare shoulder. “ ‘Vanquished by desire for a youth through the work of soft Aphrodite.’ ”

“You’re not well,” he said as he pulled her hand from his shoulder.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and sank back into the covers. Her weight pulled him down on top of her, and he braced himself by pressing against the mattress. She countered by pulling herself up to meet him. Before their lips touched, he spoke.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know that full well. Now kiss me and still that beautiful voice, my love.”

He began to lower himself on top of her. “As you command,
chère
. In this it will always be as you command.”

SUZANNE ROBINSON has a doctoral degree in anthropology with a specialty in ancient Middle Eastern archaeology. After spending years doing fieldwork in both the U.S. and the Middle East, Suzanne has now turned her attention to the creation of the fascinating fictional characters in her unforgettable historical romances

Suzanne lives in San Antonio with her husband and her two English springer spaniels. She divides her time between writing and teaching.

Suzanne Robinson

loves to hear from readers. You can write her at the following address:

P.O. Box 700321
San Antonio, TK 78270-0321

She was every inch a lady …
but he was no gentleman.

THE
ENGAGEMENT
by Suzanne Robinson

England, September 1860

Deep in the countryside of Sussex, nestled in the midst of vast acres of private forest and park, lay the great country seat of the earls of Threshfield. Threshfield House contained the earl, the earl’s sister, his nephew, his nephew’s wife, and their son, all of whom the earl could do without. The only occupant of his vast eighteenth-century home that his lordship smiled upon was, at the moment, standing in a dark hall stacked high with packing crates.

She was a tall young woman who sometimes forgot her training and attempted to hide her stature by walking bent forward at the waist. She wore gold wire-rimmed spectacles that brightened her already astonishing green eyes. Yet the studious air the glasses gave her prevented people from discerning the vulnerability that often appeared in those jewel-bright eyes. Perhaps her air of stately dignity protected her from exposure.

Dim light filtered into the corridor through gaps in the heavy velvet curtains drawn over the tall windows at either end of the hall. Trying to see by a beam of light filled with dust motes, Lady Georgiana Marshal sank her arms up to the elbows in a wooden crate, arranged the objects within, and replaced the lid. Wiping her hands on her full-length apron, she picked up the box and started down the hall.

She passed a stack of crates. Beside it, against the wall, loomed a frozen figure of a striding man with the head of a jackal. Past another collection of boxes, beside an open doorway, rested the upright mummy case of a Theban priestess. Even in the near darkness Georgiana could see the outline of the gilded human-shaped container, its black wig and lifelike painted eyes.

Georgiana entered the gallery with its statues of pharaohs, part-human, part-animal gods; sphinxes; altars; and display cases. Crossing the long chamber, she shoved open a door with her boot and entered the workroom, her footsteps echoing on the marble floor. She went to a long table piled with more boxes, books, pottery, and various other objects and set down her burden.

“Did you find it, Ludwig?” she asked.

A domed, slightly bald head shaped like a cabbage popped up from behind a stack of books topped with a bronze scimitar. “Not yet. Oh, my heart, if I’ve lost it, Great-uncle will never forgive me.”

“You haven’t lost it,” Georgiana said. “I saw it not half an hour ago.”

Ludwig looked helplessly at the scimitar and made swimming gestures with his hands. His egg-shaped body wavered and almost toppled from the stool upon
which he was sitting. He regained his balance and tugged on his wispy mustache. Ludwig had adopted it after the style of the dashing royal dragoons and hussars in Her Majesty’s cavalry.

Taking pity on him, Georgiana said, “Let me look.”

She began searching between books and boxes, then sank to her knees to fumble among the items that had accumulated in piles around Ludwig’s stool. She vanished under the worktable and reappeared with a slim bundle of wrapped linen. The cloth was an aged yellowish brown, the bundle almost tubular and tapering at one end. Embedded in the cloth were the skeletons of insects and several thousand years’ worth of dust.

Georgiana held it out and sneezed. “Here it is.”

“Oh, my heart, you’ve found it! How did it get down there? It’s the only baby crocodile mummy we have, you know. Great-uncle bought it himself in, let me see, in twenty-four in Cairo. ” Ludwig took the crocodile mummy from Georgiana, laid it on the table, and picked up a pen. He scratched an entry in a heavy leather-bound volume while Georgiana returned to her carton.

“This box contains kohl tubes, unguent bottles, a chariot whip, and canopic jars holding the entrails of the high priest of Montu, eighteenth dynasty.” She picked up a cosmetic bottle of Egyptian blue faience. “Amazing. This eye paint is thousands of years old.”

A musical tinkling caused Ludwig to gasp. He dropped his pen, fished in a pocket of his waistcoat, and withdrew a watch. “Bless my life! It’s two o’clock already and I’m not nearly finished cataloging.” Ludwig fluttered his pale hands around his ostrich-egg-shaped
body, found a kerchief, and wiped his forehead. “Dear Georgiana, would you be so kind as to meet the shipment from town? You’re so good with workmen, and you know they’ll treat that royal sarcophagus like a box of tinned meat.”

“Of course, Ludwig. Don’t alarm yourself. I’ll attend to it at once”

“Oh, thank you. I told them to stop at the front so I could meet them You can ride with them around to this wing”

Georgiana removed her apron, wiped her grimy hands on it, and set out on the time-consuming journey from the Egyptian Wing to the entrance to Threshfield House. She had lived all her life in grand houses, but Threshfield was unique. It consisted of a central building flanked at its four corners by pavilions linked to the main block by curved corridors. Its ground plan resembled a crab’s body.

Georgiana left the southwest pavilion, called the Egyptian Wing, went down the corridor, and entered the library. Then she crossed the huge saloon with its domed glass roof. Beyond lay the vast entry hall built to resemble a Roman atrium with its twenty fluted alabaster columns, alcoves filled with Greek and Roman statues, and white plaster friezes of centaurs, trophies, and arabesques.

She stepped carefully on the slippery Italian-marble floor and at last came out onto the Corinthian portico. Broad flights of white stone steps marched up to the portico on either side. Ludwig said the facade was made to resemble the buildings on the Acropolis at Athens. Statues of Venus, Ceres, and Bacchus topped the pediments overhead, and Georgiana looked out on a wide gravel drive and expanse of
lawn. Down the avenue bordered with ancient oaks clattered a wagon pulled by four draft horses. Across the drive someone rode out of the trees along one of the riding paths. Georgiana waved at her aunt Lavinia, who waved back.

She waited for the freight wagon, her hands clasped in front of her, on the portico. Her journey through the vast house would have been much more laborious and slow if she’d worn a crinoline. She would have had to maneuver it through doorways and control it on staircases, but today was a workday, and she wore a work dress. She had, in fact, two types of dresses: those made long enough to wear with a crinoline, and those fashioned to wear without one. When she worked in the Egyptian Wing, formality was cast aside, a luxury Georgiana had seldom experienced at home.

For the first time since learning of Jocelin’s tragedy, she was happy. She was close to achieving independence frani a father for whom she felt little but contempt. Ever since she’d pried Jocelin’s secret from her mother, her rage had been growing. Jocelin had been a youth when their uncle had approached him sexually. He’d begged his parents for protection, only to be blamed for lying. Brave, sad Jocelin had been sacrificed for the sake of the family reputation, cast out as an object of disgust by those who should have safeguarded him.

When she’d learned the truth years later, she’d almost taken one of Aunt Lavinia’s shotguns to Uncle Yale. Aunt Livy had stopped her, saying that soon Yale would pay for his crimes in a grotesque manner—the progressive ravages of a disease visited on the promiscuous. Aunt Livy had refused to be more specific, but
Yale was disgustingly sick now, and the plague was eating his brain.

Imagining Jocelin’s suffering shot a stab of pain through her chest, and tears stung her eyes. She had never been able to distance herself from, the sympathetic pain. She had nightmares in which she imagined horrible things happening to Jocelin while she stood by, unable to prevent them.

Georgiana swallowed hard and forced herself to think of more pleasant thoughts. She was most pleased at the understanding she’d reached with her father. Over the last year the duke had bungled his finances a bit, thus endangering the princely mode of living to which he was accustomed and to which he knew he was entitled. In return for the duke’s consent to the marriage, the earl would settle the bulk of Clairemont’s debts She was mightily fond of Threshfield.

He was her fellow conspirator, willing to help her escape from her bear trap of a family, and asking nothing in return. However, Threshfield felt that having to live for a few years with his odd, grasping family was the sacrifice of a saint. The memory of his caustic comments upon the various Hydes in residence brought a smile to her lips as the freight wagon drew slowly alongside the double staircase.

The driver set the brake and jumped down, pulling off his cap and bowing. She listened to his description of the enormous effort he and his laborers had put forth in shifting the red-granite sarcophagus from the railcar to the wagon without damage. Walking around the wagon, she tugged on ropes and inspected the wads of padding that encased the heavy wooden crate. She was tugging on a rope that had come loose in the journey from the rail station when one of the
laborers exclaimed and pointed. She looked over her shoulder, blinked, then turned around to face the oak-lined avenue.

An apparition cantered toward her on an enormous roan horse. The man on this giant beast must have seen her, for he kicked his mount into a gallop, bent over his horse’s neck, and aimed right at her. The horse picked up speed in seconds, racing toward her and causing the men around her to scramble out of the way. Annoyed at this unaccountable belligerence, Georgiana shoved her spectacles up on the bridge of her nose, lifted her chin, and stood her ground. She regretted her decision at once, for she could feel the vibration of the animal’s hooves through her boots. This rude stranger was trying to frighten her. He’d succeeded, which made her furious.