‘I had to,’ he said on a long sigh of what sounded like regret. ‘Anyone could have come in and found us locked in each other’s arms,’ he echoed her thoughts huskily.
‘I suppose that would have hurt your pride and your reputation.’
‘It is not me I am worrying about,’ he argued impatiently.
‘Do not concern yourself about me, my lord. I will survive. I am quite good at it by now,’ she said flippantly and saw fury blaze in his eyes this time.
‘Survival is not good enough for you, or me. We have both survived for long enough and there has to be more than that from now on.’
‘Yes, there must be to make it worthwhile,’ she agreed, but it was all she could offer right now.
They avoided one another’s eyes as the afternoon sun suddenly crept out from behind the clouds outside and edged curiously in around the blinds that had frayed and faded and no longer protected Great-Uncle Hubert’s precious books as well as they should. That sun was already lower in the sky and soon it would be autumn and they would both be in Wiltshire at famously grand, classically splendid Stratford Park. And he would be my lord there and she would be an upper servant. Marianne the lover screamed at the rest of her to seize what she could, while she could have it. ‘I am probably barren, Alaric,’ she told him painfully and who asked the houri to speak?
‘And I probably do not care,’ he said, but how could he not?
He was a lord as well as master of large estates and all the family history dragging behind him like a ball and chain.
Ah, of course—he could not marry her, could he?
Not only was she the widow of an enlisted man and a mere vicar’s daughter, but she could not give him the children he needed so badly. A mistress who was unable to breed a pack of little bastards to complicate matters when he took a wife and bred his heirs would save him so much complication.
‘Well, I do,’ she said. She straightened her wilting stance, telling herself not to feel the loss of those children, bastards or no. She longed for them so desperately even as she eyed him militantly and hurt herself on a shattered dream she had not even known she had until now. Now she would have to regret not carrying his child as well as her abiding sorrow that she had never borne Daniel one either. Suddenly that felt like agony and something feral uncurled inside her to defend her from any more of that.
‘And you intend to use it as yet another weapon to keep me at a distance, I suppose?’ he said as if she was hurting him instead of the other way around and for no good reason either.
‘No, it is the plain truth, so I do not need a weapon to fight off amorous noblemen,’ she snapped, her past pain and frustration at her childlessness driving her into a fury way beyond any offence he might have offered her if she gave him a chance to. ‘And I would not marry you even if you wanted me to. Now if that is all I really must wish you good day, my lord. I am a very busy person and if you still want me to pack up my life once again and come with you to Stratford Park I need to hurry now, or is that scheme all over after this whatever it was we just did together?’
‘Of course I want you to come with us and you agreed to become Juno’s companion for at least a month, so do not use this.’ He stopped and looked helpless and driven and even a little bit hurt for a moment before he stamped Lord Stratford back on his face and manner and his gaze went stony.
He even imposed rigid control on his sensitive mouth and that was what made her stop and think because his mouth was so warm, provocative, so intimate and right on hers only a few seconds ago and now she was treating him as an enemy. Brought up short by his withdrawal of all warmth from her, she realised where her stupid temper and frustrated maternal instincts had taken her and was ashamed.
She had invented most of this painful scene by deciding his motives and intentions towards her without knowing what they really were. Temper put up a wall between them and she had no idea how to tear it down again. Her fury at an improper offer he had never even begun to make had led her to break something precious. Alaric looked so hurt before he shut her out that she felt more alone than she ever had before as they stood so close and so distant in this musty old book room and listened to one another breathe.
‘This altercation,’ he went on stonily as if that was all it had ever been and never mind the odd kiss or two, ‘of ours cannot be allowed to disappoint Juno so deeply when we have both promised to try and make her a better future.’
‘I will not renege,’ she said with a little bit too much dignity as well. This was her fault, she decided as she stared down at the one small pile of books she had managed to rescue from the dusty chaos all around them. Her insecurities were too ready to come to the fore and prod her into a defensive temper. Because she was so afraid she felt too much for him, she walked on briars when they were together, as if that was all she deserved.
This time she was stiff and defensive and far too sensitive to hurts he probably never meant her to feel and what a hopeless pair they were. It was probably just as well she had scuppered any chance he might be stubborn and reckless enough to ask her to marry him, whatever it was he felt for her. She wondered if either of them were quite sure what that was and bit back a regretful sigh.
‘I will have to hurry up if I am to be ready to leave tomorrow,’ she said as she looked down at that pile of books as if she was fascinated when she could not have said what they were or who wrote them if her life depended on it.
‘I shall not inflict myself on you once you are living under my roof,’ he said.
‘I kissed you,’ she argued stiffly.
‘Whatever we did, I should not have let it happen.’
‘We kissed one another because we could not help it and now we can, so that should not be a problem for us any more, should it?’ Suddenly she wanted to go with him so badly the idea of staying here looked faded and blank. Was there ever a more contrary female than Marianne Turner, née Yelverton? she asked herself as she traced the tooled leather cover of one of Great-Uncle Hubert’s most prized volumes and still had no idea what it said.
‘Will you come to Stratford Park with us and keep your word to Juno, then?’
‘Stop making everything in your life about her, Alaric,’ she told him earnestly, because at least she could argue with his overdeveloped sense of guilt even if she could not take back what she had said and make this distance between them vanish. ‘Juno is too young and confused to take the weight of your guilt on her shoulders. You told me to stop being ruled by the past and start living again so I will if you will.’
‘Maybe I lack your courage.’
She shook her head and refused to meet his not-quite-as-chilly look. ‘No, I am a coward,’ she said sadly and opened the door and made herself walk away from him. She felt his gaze on her back and still made herself keep doing it. She did not want to carry the image of Alaric staring after her as she went all the way up the stairs and branched off to her room at the front of the house a floor further up in the attics because she told herself she had always liked the view and nobody else ever came up here. Except of course a picture of him before she managed to turn her back and leave did stay with her and she could not see the mellow afternoon countryside for the blur of yet more tears she blinked back furiously.
He looked so bleak and alone against the world again and it was lonely and stark up here as well, view or not. So much of her wanted to run back downstairs to tell him he could have anything he wanted of her; she would do for him what she had for Daniel and risk everything for love. Except this time she would have to cast every last caution to the four winds if she truly loved him. If she did that, she could not shackle him to a barren woman even if she insisted love was enough and would she have the courage to face the world as Viscount Stratford’s mistress and not his wife?
It would be even more of a transgression than loving Daniel seemed to the wider world, but she had never regretted that one
so maybe it would not be as empty and echoing as the word ‘mistress’ looked from outside. Yet what if he discovered love was not enough? What if he looked at her in five years or ten or even twenty and realised he had sacrificed too much for her? No, it felt like a cutting off of something precious and potentially wonderful, but maybe that petty, stupid quarrel she had forced on him was for the best.
‘Forget he is anything more than your employer from now on, Marianne,’ she whispered to herself once she was safely inside her bedroom with her back pressed against the door as if to keep wild and sensual Marianne out. Of course he had not come up here looking for her; Lord Stratford was too honourable to pursue a woman who had said no to him. ‘And stop lying to yourself,’ she told herself disgustedly. ‘You did not say no, he did when he called a halt to that kiss. You would have gone on saying yes until anything else was a technicality.’
Just as well he had, then, since she could not endure being cut off from her brother and Fliss and Viola for the sake of a scandalous liaison with a man so far above her touch. She did not have a thick enough skin to be anyone’s mistress, even if she could face the idea of never seeing her family again as the price for the sensual pleasure she knew she would experience in his bed. And what would Papa think when he found out his elder daughter had become a scarlet woman? He would be heartbroken and that was that, then—the last nail in the coffin of Marianne the mistress.
It did not stop her aching for Alaric the man while she got ready to pack her life up again. At least he was in Broadley by now, not a floor down and a few sturdy planks of oak away from her as he had been for the last few weeks. Even that was not nearly far enough away to let her rest peacefully tonight and somehow she had to learn to stop being a fool about a man she could not have.
Chapter Fifteen
After years of holding himself aloof from strong emotions, Alaric felt so many tearing away at him now it was as if he was making up for a drought. She was so vulnerable, the real Marianne under Mrs Turner’s brisk efficiency, and it was too soon to risk everything they could be before he knew it was for good. What a fine pair they were; him guarding his heart after losing George and succeeding to a title and estates he never wanted and her hiding so much hurt and grief for her Daniel behind relentless hard work.
This afternoon she had trusted him enough to cry in his arms and let some of it out and that had made him feel proud and racked with guilt at the same time. He had wanted her so much even while she wept for another man against his shoulder as if her heart might break. No wonder she had responded when he kissed her so lustily; she was overwrought, all her emotions too close to the surface, and she had trusted him. Then she had distrusted him and then she went sad and distant and mysterious on him and he would never understand women as long as he lived.
‘Brute,’ he still accused himself as he rode back to Broadley.
He had recognised something exceptional and significant about Marianne the moment they met and now he felt a fool for not realising how much she meant to him until they quarrelled and he did not know how to cross the barriers they had each put up to keep the other at a distance again. He had known she was true and strong at first sight, despite the snap of temper in her fine eyes and her impatience with lords like him. So, yes, Marianne tugged at his senses and challenged him and made him someone better than he was before he met her. And he wanted to confront her with everything they could be to one another if they only dared, but caution whispered it was too soon. And how could he reveal his dreams and dilemmas to her now he had persuaded her to become Juno’s companion? He had done it to give her a place to go when her brother married, but doing it left him tied hand and foot.
How could he tell her he felt explosive and on fire and desperate for her in every inch of his body and all his wildest fantasies when she was still grieving for her husband? Even if she was not in his employment and would not soon be living under his roof, how could he tell her that? Well, she had said they should give each other a month’s trial, had she not? Best hold her to that limit and maybe, after a month of trying his hardest to be a good and unthreatening viscount, he could finally manage to convince her he was a better man than the evidence so far suggested.
* * *
‘Juno? Juno? Where are you? The carriage is coming down the drive and your uncle is here to escort us on the first leg of our journey to Wiltshire.’
Marianne realised at breakfast this morning that the girl had grown more silent as the day to leave Owlet Manor came closer and she had barely managed to eat a thing today now it was actually here. Marianne urged Fliss and Darius to say their goodbyes, then go on a visit to Miss Donne so there would not be quite so much of a break when the time came for Juno to leave. Now Seth and Joe were carrying their luggage for the journey out for the grooms to buckle or tie in place and the rest had gone ahead by carrier. Lord Stratford was waiting outside on a fine horse obviously much more suited for a gentleman to ride and waiting to escort them to his home and Juno was nowhere to be seen. Marianne heard her own voice echo up into the lofty roof timbers and beside that there were only a few murmurs as the coachman and grooms got on with preparing the luxurious carriage for the journey. She shouted Juno’s name again; silence met her voice again and felt like far too much of it for comfort as her heart began to race. That terrible feeling of urgency she remembered when Juno was missing felt like ice as a fear that history was repeating itself shivered down her backbone. She ran up the stairs as fast as she could raise her skirts and sprint.
‘Juno?’ she shouted again as she pelted down the bedroom corridor and heard only the sound of her own feet thumping on ancient oak floorboards and the echoes of her own voice again. ‘Juno?’ she repeated, desperate now as she ran into the room expecting to find it empty and Juno halfway to goodness knew where. She was so convinced she was right that she nearly turned away too soon and missed the glimpse of skirts and petticoats that was all she could see of Juno from the doorway. She peered around it and saw the girl sitting on the floor in the furthest corner of the room, rocking herself backwards and forwards like a desolate child. ‘Oh, Juno, why are you down there? Whatever is the matter?’
‘I cannot, I just cannot,’ Juno wailed incoherently and Marianne almost wished her own mother was here, or Viola. Or anyone who had experience of sobbing and incoherent girls who were not yet quite old enough to really be women would do right now. ‘Tell Uncle Alaric I am sorry,’ the girl said.
‘You must tell him that yourself,’ Marianne said and there was her lifeline. He was Juno’s guardian and protector; he would know what to do and say. Or if he did not he would just have to learn fast.
‘Lord Stratford!’ She ran back down to the head of the stairs, calling out his name. ‘Tell Lord Stratford he must come inside and you had best have the horses unharnessed and taken off to the stables, Joe. There has been a slight delay to our plans.’
Now she was feeling guilty at her panic about having to deal with Juno’s distraught tears and that strange frozen look on her poor woebegone face. Alaric dashed in through the front door, then took the stairs in as few bounds as he could and she was so glad of him she almost wept herself.
‘What is it?’ he demanded curtly.
‘I have no idea, but Juno needs you,’ she told him breathlessly and was almost on his heels when he had to grab the upright of the door to stop himself in his headlong haste to get to his niece. Then he was sitting down by Juno on the floor and doing what Marianne ought to have when she found her there. He simply pulled her into his arms and rocked her like a little child as she howled into his superfine coat.
The poor man would be getting through them by the dozen if distraught females kept on weeping all over him like this, Marianne mused, feeling decidedly surplus to requirements, yet still she could not make herself go away and leave them in peace to talk about whatever Juno wanted to talk about.
Juno surprised Marianne after a few moment
s of unrestrained woe by sitting upright and fighting back her tears. She owed the girl an apology for expecting her to go on sobbing until she was so incoherent with misery she had to be put to bed. ‘I thought I could, but I cannot,’ she said rather bravely. ‘Stratford Park,’ she explained as a sob and a shiver hit at the same time and she buried her head in Alaric’s shoulder again and seemed to find some of his strength in there. She shook her head as if she was furious with herself for reacting in this way.
‘I have heard of it,’ Alaric said lightly and Juno actually managed a laugh.
‘The girls from London, I simply cannot go back and face them, Uncle Alaric. I tried so hard to find the nerve to, but I truly cannot do it.’
‘Ah, and now we are getting to the heart of things at last. Why did you not tell me about them before I set all these ridiculous plans in motion, love?’
‘I wanted you to be proud of me. I want to be brave and strong and look them in the eye and show them I am not a looby or a wantwit or even a silly little wallflower. I am, though, because I cannot do it.’
‘Is that what they said? And who are they?’
At last it all came tumbling out—the full story of Juno’s miserable debut Season in so-called polite society. Never had Marianne been more grateful she was too humbly born and Papa too poor for her to do more than attend a few local parties and a subscription ball at the Assembly Rooms in the nearest town when she was old enough to be considered officially out.
‘I cannot understand why those girls turned against you,’ Marianne said from her place on the bed where she had sunk while she heard all the vicious tricks a few haughty young women had played on Juno once they discovered they could get away with it, ‘especially when some of them are your uncle’s neighbours and should have known better.’
‘At first they were eager for me to join in with them, but I suppose I am too quiet and I had never been to the waltzing parties or any of the events their mamas arranged for them before they were officially out so they were at ease and I was not.’
Unsuitable Bride For A Viscount (The Yelverton Marriages Book 2) Page 15
