The Rogue's Reluctant Rose (24 page)

Araminta’s blood froze and her eyes shot up to meet Harriet’s as she wondered if the older woman could have possibly known or suspected what had occurred at Dillwood Park. She felt her face warm and was quick to stutter a denial.

“No, I suppose not. You have had a liking for Sir Timothy for a good while now, have you not?”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Araminta was quick to assure Harriet, though she felt guilty at telling another lie. In the past month or so, since the Marquis of Chestleton had wormed his way into her life, she had been telling a lot of lies. Soon, soon, she reminded herself, all this would be well behind her. She would begin her new life as a married woman, as Lady Stanton, and Dillwood Park would be nothing more than a faint memory of a youthful infatuation.

Lady Stanton
, she told herself firmly, as if hoping to rewrite what was already inscribed into her heart.

***

Things in Town had changed significantly when Araminta arrived at her aunt and uncle’s townhouse. She felt exhausted, not only from the long road, but from attempting to make conversation with Sir Timothy, who had spoken at some length on the subject of their forthcoming nuptials. Kitty had dozed off next to Araminta not long after congratulating them on the engagement, leaving Araminta to fend for herself.

Midnight blue eyes stared dolefully out at the picturesque English countryside they passed on their way, though she saw none of it

Sir Timothy was speaking of his intention to announce the engagement in the journals as soon as possible, and of the need to procure a marriage licence and have a dress ordered.

“Not to worry on that count, my dear,” Sir Timothy was quick to assure her, while taking a pinch of snuff out of his elegant silver and lapis lazuli snuff box. “My aunt knows a very good modiste in London — a Mrs Grayson. I am certain you have heard of her. Aunt Huston says that though her prices are closer to Paris than London rates, there isn’t a defter hand in all England when it comes to cutting the cloth.”

Araminta smiled sweetly and thanked him. But inside, her heart was breaking.

***

The Worthing townhouse was full of excited bustle when Araminta arrived. Sir Timothy stayed only long enough to greet her aunt and uncle before departing to see Lady Huston and share the good news.

Seated in a warm family circle in her aunt’s most comfortable parlour, Araminta did her best to answer all the excited questions thrown her way by her aunt and cousin. Her Uncle Worthing took care to sit away from the chattering circle of women, proclaiming that weddings and gowns were feminine frivolities in which he had little interest, though he congratulated his niece on the excellent match, and seemed as pleased as any of the women. Aunt Worthing shot him an amused look as he picked up his paper, and the significance of his staying in the room to listen to all the feminine frivolities was not lost on Araminta.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Araminta’s aunt suddenly, “but we have been so excited to have you back with us that it has quite escaped my mind that you would not have heard our own happy news.”

“Happy news, Aunt?”

“Just so. Why, Lord Harris has offered for Susan. It was put in the papers not long after you left.”

Araminta was genuinely happy to hear of her cousin’s upcoming nuptials, and her congratulations were genuine, as she clasped her cousin’s hand. Susan was a sweet girl, and the handsome Lord Harris, who was a kind gentleman renowned for his goodness, would make her a fine match. She was particularly happy that Susan would be making what was obviously a love match on both sides.

After her own brief acquaintance with a love so real it seemed to set her very heart aflame, and having had any chance of such happiness torn away from her, she realised now, more than ever, the rarity and value of such a connection.

Watching the happiness play across Susan’s face like a ray of sunshine, Araminta suppressed the sorrow she felt for her own loss, the knowledge that her own marriage would take place without any such profound joy. Love was a luxury quite out of her reach.

Susan’s marriage was to take place in the autumn, and a modiste had already been engaged to make her gown, though colours, fabrics and trim were still a hotly debated topic between the Sutton women.

“I meant to write you to share the happy news,” explained Susan apologetically, “but Harriet had written of your sudden illness and that you were away from home. It did not seem the time to excite you.”

“Oh, Susan, it is so very sweet and so very like you to worry over such a trifle,” laughed Araminta, “I am not at all offended. And I am convinced that you and Lord Harris will be very happy together.”

“And I can say the same of yourself and Sir Timothy,” said her cousin, warmly.

Araminta returned her bright smile, though her heart clenched at the other girl’s words. She knew she ought to be furious with Chestleton, who had thrown her life, all her plans regarding Sir Timothy, into absolute disarray. It had all seemed so easy before she had allowed herself to indulge in absurd fancies about love. And yet, as they spoke of weddings, some stubbornly naïve part of her could not help imagining that the rakish marquis would turn up in the middle of her own wedding and call a halt to the proceedings before sweeping her off her feet…
and straight into disrepute and ignominy,
she reminded herself sternly. No one swept people out of weddings in real life — the scandal would be tremendous. And to go with a man like Chestleton, a man who would never marry her, would ensure her complete disconnection from polite society. She would be received nowhere, and despised by everyone.

And yet she still dreamt of him sweeping her away, and marrying her, as though a man like him could ever do such a thing. She could feel the warmth of his gaze, see the brilliant glow of their passion, and, more than that, their love.

It was thoughts like these that hurt her the most. She forced them away as soon as she was able, and was glad that the house was large enough so that no one need hear her cry into her pillow every night.

***

The sensible thing to do would have been to go back to London right away, to let gentlemen’s clubs, expensive liquor and card tables heal the pain that was devouring him from within. Chestleton would never admit to such weakness. He was, after all, a man far above childish emotions, and yet since
she
had left him without so much as hearing his explanation, his suffering had become evident to everyone who saw him. His eyes were shadowed with grief, and his face had become pale and wan.

He had never been a man to worry over the opinion of a woman, not since his youth had taught him the price of caring. He had never bothered over his reputation, having decided long ago that polite society could go to the devil, with all its codes and mores. He was a law unto himself, and he had never failed to make the world work for him.

Until
she
had come along.

Jasper had been horrified at the realisation that he cared what the ravishing girl thought of him, her determined eyes and her stubborn mouth so unable to hide her every emotion. With her strange combination of morals and shamelessness, the girl had woven a spell around him from which he now found himself powerless to escape.

He had been sure that having her stay so near him would quickly dissolve any fascination he may have come to feel for her, as it had done with countless mistresses over the years, women who had been as dishonest in their affections as he had been in his.
She
had been different. She had never pretended affection for him until she had come to feel it in earnest, and then she could neither combat nor hide it: he had seen it blazing at him out of her wounded eyes before she turned to flee from him. And instead of tiring of her, he found her nearness maddening, his fascination spurred to new heights with each day of having her under his roof. To have her so near and be unable to touch her. He longed to taste her silky skin, and make the most sinful kind of love to her while she begged him for more.

Jasper Devereaux was even more horrified to discover that, at some stage, he had come to believe that she would stay forever. Had allowed himself to wish for her to become his — to become his lawful wife. God help him, he had set out to seduce her and had been entrapped by her instead, to the extent that he had fallen in love with her!

He ought to have known better, he thought bitterly. Happiness, especially that of the heart, was not meant to last. Whatever claim he may have meant to stake on the beautiful rose he had come to think of as his own, it had not stopped her from fleeing his house and disappearing from his life.

And the most sickening thing about this ridiculous attachment was that he could not be at peace with the knowledge that she had fled without ever having learned the truth. He did not care if the rest of the world thought him a rotten scoundrel — they could be damned! But he could not stomach the thought that Araminta Barrington would never learn the true reason for his behaviour.

Lord Chestleton was not accustomed to such turmoil. He felt rent in two, tormented by the thoughts that plagued him, and yet utterly unable to turn his thoughts from the bewildering sorceress who had inspired them. No, he would have to speak to her, and she could go to the devil if she refused to see him.

It was a matter of minutes before he was astride Dante, galloping full pelt towards Fanshawe Hall, his coat billowing, the strong horse all but frothing at the mouth as the marquis urged him on to greater speed. Chestleton’s steel grey eyes were hard, his jaw set with the firmness of purpose as he drew closer and closer to the house.

After what felt like an eternity, the marquis arrived at Fanshawe Hall. Reining Dante to a halt, he dismounted in a single, fluid movement, and strode to the door. He hammered upon it, and was greeted by a butler, whose attempts to prevent Chestleton from seeing Araminta only further incensed the marquis.

“I have come to see Miss Barrington, and I mean to do so!” he thundered at the scandalised butler, when the man tried to tell him for the third time that Miss Barrington was not home.

Chestleton was about to push his way into the house, by force if necessary, determined that the infuriating woman would sit down and listen whether she wanted to or not, when Lady Fanshawe herself appeared in the entrance hall.

“Johnson? Whatever is all this fuss?” she asked in her soft, cultured voice as she approached the door.

The butler looked flustered. “A gentleman is here, your ladyship. A Lord Chestleton, demanding to see Miss Barrington, though I assured him that she was not at home,” Johnson informed the lady of the house with an indignant sniff. Chestleton could not see Lady Fanshawe because the elderly man still blocked the doorway, but he imagined by the silence that followed that she had stopped to contemplate his visit.

“Very well,” she said with a sigh, “let his lordship in. I will see him in the guest parlour.”

Chestleton heard the lady retreat, and was allowed inside by Johnson, who gave him a very suspicious look before turning to lead him to the appropriate room. The marquis could not help looking around him at the house, in hopes of seeing what it was that Araminta loved so much about the old building: what it was that made it worth the sacrifices she had been willing to make just to keep it. Her attachment went beyond inheritance or history, and in her presence at Dillwood Park he only began to get an inkling of what that might be.

To him the house looked a touch shabby, a sad remnant of former elegance, though it was by no means in a state of ill-repair. There was nothing to suggest that it could not easily be put to rights.

Lady Fanshawe sat stiffly in the formal parlour, facing the door, with her back to a wide window that allowed a generous view of the garden. The woman looked thin and her alarming pallor marred the prettiness of which she had previously been possessed. He supposed this was a product of the grief and pressure under which she had been of late. Her eyes regarded him with certain chilliness, even as she rose to greet him politely.

“Lord Chestleton. I was not expecting you to call,” she said once they were seated and he had refused her offer of refreshment. A need for swiftness still gripped him, and he could not bear to waste time on petty formalities.

“I have come to see Miss Barrington. It is urgent that I speak with her.” He did his best to keep his temper in check, frustrated as he was by the woman’s apparently deliberate attempts to obstruct him.

“My butler informed you, I believe, that my sister-in-law is not at home,” observed the lady calmly. “What is this about?”

“It is a private matter.”

She stared at him curiously and not without a hint of distaste, though her sense of propriety evidently did not allow her to express any such thing in words. “I see. I have been meaning to write you with my thanks. You were kind to care for Araminta through her illness. It was very good of you to offer her room under your roof and summon a physician.”

“No thanks needed, I assure you,” he responded briskly, causing her to raise an eyebrow.

“Nonetheless. I am also aware that you were a friend of my late husband, though our paths never crossed. Still, I cannot fail to be aware of your reputation, Lord Chestleton, and I cannot help observing that you and my sister did not part on the best of terms. I wonder, then, what you might want with her.”

Anger flashed in his eyes, and Harriet could not help but notice that Chestleton was an attractive man, despite the scandalous reputation which his behaviour had so far done nothing to rebut. “My business with Miss Barrington is private, though I assure you I do not mean to
dishonour
her.” The acid dripping from his voice and the anger which bubbled below the surface of his words assured Harriet of the man’s desperation to see Araminta. She wondered what had really gone on during Araminta’s stay at Dillwood Park. The man looked quite beside himself.

“I see. And would you give your word on that?”

“My word of honour.”

She was taken aback by the sudden emotion in his voice. In place of the haughty anger was a note that, in any other man, would have seemed like pleading. In the marquis, it seemed to hint at a wealth of pain, a depth of sorrow that shocked Harriet, coming from a man with such a wild reputation as his. It made up her mind for her. “You are a very curious sort of man, your lordship. I own I do not understand you,” said the widow. “But if you are so determined to see Araminta, then she has gone up to London to stay with her Aunt and Uncle Worthing. She awaits the announcement of her betrothal to Sir Timothy Stanton.”