When Montsale flipped up the tails of his coat and took a seat beside her, Mandy didn’t know where to look. She had not his skills for masquerade and greatly feared the surge of joy brought about by his exchange with Mr. Tharp must be written across her face in giant capitals. Fixing her gaze on the red glow of the fire, she ventured to ask, “Do you stay long in High Meadows, my lord?”
“I fear I am promised to several house parties before everyone removes to London for the Season,” he drawled, every word reeking of the ennui for which he was noted. “My sister is newly married and demands my presence at her first grand entertainment, I am commanded to the Pontesburys for a week, and then to a friend’s for trout fishing.”
All while she was fixed on the bank of the Avon, taking notes. “Delightful,” Mandy murmured. A moment of hope, followed by more twists of the knife. His life and hers could not be more different.
“Will you ride with me the day after tomorrow, when you have had an opportunity to put off your evening wear?”
Startled, Mandy looked up, straight into piercing gray eyes that suddenly revealed hidden depths in his darkly handsome face. “Ride with you?” she repeated inanely, her brain refusing to take in the request.
“The Savernake Forest is surprisingly lovely in spring, with the trees coming on to green. And surely you cannot be so busy as you once were, for there can be little new about digging a tunnel that is starting its third season. I am convinced Merriwether can spare you for an hour.”
He was serious. Montsale was asking her to ride with him. And why not? her inner voice demanded as her mind began to function once again. The Wiltshire countryside was far from Hyde Park—who would see them but the navvies? There was, however, a problem beyond the social divide. “Even if I could convince Esmerelda not to die of embarrassment next to your stallion, my lord, I doubt she would take a lady’s saddle.”
One of Montsale’s rare laughs rang out. The four men at the card table raised their heads and stared. “Though I should truly enjoy the sight of someone attempting to put a sidesaddle on Esmerelda, I would not care to see what happened when you attempted to mount. Fear not, Miss Merriwether, I shall see that you are properly mounted.” He raised an inquiring eyebrow, waiting for her response.
Dissembling was impossible. She would do this, even if both heart and soul paid dearly for it when he returned to his own world, leaving her behind.
Just as Mandy proffered a faint smile and said, “In that case I should enjoy riding with you,” an explosion of thunder rattled the windows. A very odd occurrence since the worst of the storm had passed through, the thunder devolving into ever-more-distant rumbles. An omen? A heavenly punctuation mark?
“I have ordered one of the maids to sleep in your room tonight, Miss Merriwether.”
Mandy’s eyes went wide, her surprise closely followed by a mortifying blush as she caught his intent. She was the only female guest in a house full of men. Montsale needed protection in case her father decided to make an issue of her staying overnight at High Meadows without a female chaperone. In case John Merriwether planned to force the marquess into an unwanted marriage.
Mandy opened her mouth to tell him what he could do with their ride through Savernake Forest . . . and closed it with a snap. Why should she be any different than the other females chasing after him? She should, in fact, be grateful he considered her a threat, instead of just another tradesman’s daughter, so far beneath him there was no possibility of anything more than a hasty exchange of money to settle any accusation of misconduct.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “Most thoughtful. And now, if you would ask someone to show me to my bedchamber . . .”
Escaping Montsale did not help. The odd nature of her relationship with the marquess haunted Mandy for hours. Begun in hot words exchanged as children, mellowed by the spring two years ago when they had become friends. That friendship torn apart by Carewe and the rest of the Challenors. The short, startling reunion in Bath, and now this . . . whatever this was. Renewed interest? An apology? The marquess growing up, becoming his own man?
But what did she want? If he suddenly declared his love, what on earth would she do? She could not possibly fulfill the role of his marchioness. A marriage between them might well ruin both their lives.
He had asked her to go riding with him, that was all. Absolutely all. A few moments of indulgence in Wiltshire before the call of duty. He would soon be off on a series of visits and then to London for the Season, Amanda Merriwether merely a faint glow in his memory. Until next year . . . or the year after.
Not the year after. Next year the Challenor Tunnel would be finished, and that would be the end for both tunnel and Miss Merriwether’s fanciful dreams.
If fortune smiled . . . she would be able to break the spell, beginning of a new life far, far away from Wiltshire and the Marquess of Montsale.
If fortune smiled . . .?
Liar!
Chapter Fourteen
As much as he found the admission appalling, Bourne could only define the strange emotion that plagued him this morning as happiness. An unbridled bit of nonsense he vaguely recalled from a few special moments in childhood. Not that he didn’t experience a certain warmth of feeling on the occasions he and a few close friends spent an evening sharing a bottle or three while conversing about everything from horses and women to what appeared to be Britain’s almost certain entry into war on the Iberian Peninsula. And he’d certainly known pleasure, having supported a rather impressive string of mistresses since the tender age of nineteen. But happy, expansive, vulnerable? Those were emotions he had nearly forgotten.
Perhaps not vulnerable. Two years ago, when he had been forced to harden his heart against Amanda Merriwether, his world had turned gray. Controlled by that all-too-accurate expression, “needs must when the devil rides,” he had gone through all the motions of a young lord in London—with only a few telltale glasses of brandy too many here and there. He gambled, danced, attended races and mills, appeared at soirées, was unfailingly polite . . . and nearly uniformly grim. The effusive attentions of Lady Christabel, Lady Olympia, and their voracious mamas had not helped. Nor the bevy of twittering females who hovered just behind those diamonds of the ton, each displaying more vulgar demands for his attention than the last. He might be heir to a dukedom, well-trained in ignoring importunities, but there were times it had been far from easy. Particularly when he allowed himself to remember what he had given up. The bronze hair and green eyes, the exquisite face and body a courtesan would envy. Pride, sharp intelligence, warmth . . .
And then Carewe had sent him to Bath to rescue his brother. On that fateful journey he had discovered rage . . . and jealousy. He had been ready to rend his brother limb from limb. Yet what had he done? He’d rushed to the Pump Room and straight to Miss Merriwether’s side, once again falling under her spell, like a schoolboy experiencing all the pangs of first love.
And then, more consumed by jealousy than thoughts of doing his father’s bidding, he had dragged Jeremy off to London, where they had committed every excess young gentlemen could find in a town as given to sin as it was to sparkling society and sober government.
Vulnerable? Yes, he’d been vulnerable. That he could be rendered so by a common sprig of the middle class was not a comfortable feeling. Or so he told himself. Except, of course, Miss Merriwether was not the least common. Even his grandmère had conceded she was, “Not in the common way.”
And on the night of the storm the Lady of the Lock had actually been frightened enough to turn to him for reassurance. They had not quarreled beyond a flurry or two, nothing that mattered. The flash in her eyes when he invited her to ride with him had not been anger. Hope surged.
Nothing has changed. She is the daughter of a Cit, you are Montsale.
I have changed.
Carewe has not.
Truth was, Carewe could leave every bit of unentailed property and the considerable amount the Challenors had invested in the funds
to Jeremy and Lavinia, rendering the ducal estate impoverished. Was he willing to risk his patrimony? So far, the answer had been no. And he was too responsible to consider a yes for more than five seconds at a time.
And yet, somehow, he was still happy. The day was fair, the birds warbling louder—or was he just paying more attention? He was on his way to the bank of the Avon, leading a mild-mannered horse accustomed to a sidesaddle. On his way to meet Miss Amanda Merriwether, who intrigued and challenged him as no woman ever had before. Bourne raised his face to the sky, feeling the sun’s surprisingly bright rays. It was a good day, clouds banished, doubts locked away for another time. The Marquess of Montsale smiled as a vision of Amanda Merriwether danced before him as he rode. Happy? Devil a bit, he was ecstatic!
Until he was close enough to see the welcoming committee waiting on the riverbank. Merriwether, Tharp, Appleton, Prescott and, clustered across the tow path blocking his way, the navvie foreman Jeb Banks and four of his most stalwart men, armed with picks and shovels. Bourne slowed to a halt, blank indifference closing over the rank foolishness of his besotted smile. “Good morning, gentlemen.” Although the array of grim faces left him in no doubt as to their purpose, he raised an eyebrow in polite inquiry.
From the rise of the bank above the tow path, John Merriwether spoke over the navvies’ shoulders. “Good morning, my lord. I doubt I need spell out why we have organized such a formal reception for someone who has had the run of our dig for years and whose hospitality we have enjoyed.”
Bourne inclined his head. “You do not, but I had hoped you knew me well enough to know that I would never harm Miss Merriwether, for whom I have great respect.”
“Your very presence harms her, Montsale. As you very well know, there is no future for the two of you. Any wishful thinking in that direction harms you as well as my daughter.”
The navvies were fingering their pickaxes and shovels as if they could scarcely wait for the signal to attack. Hell and damnation, he was speechless. No one, except Carewe, had ever defied him. Denied him.
“You may speak with her,” John Merriwether said. “Obviously, my daughter is aware of my concern and understands that any . . . friendship she might have with you must come to end. After you exchange farewells, I shall expect you to return to London within the next day or two.”
Bourne took a few moments to study each implacably hostile face in turn. “I fear I am not good with farewells, Merriwether. Please extend my regrets to Miss Merriwether that I was unable to fulfill my promise to take her riding.” With a click of his tongue to the horse he was leading, Bourne turned his stallion on the narrow tow path and headed away at a measured trot.
Coward, coward, coward.
Not. Surely leaving without saying goodbye was less painful. Merriwether was right. Alone in the woods, faced by his fierce attraction—which he was nearly certain she reciprocated—what might have happened? Would he have lost control, turning her love to hate?
Not love. He refused to acknowledge that illogical emotion. Yes, it was possible they were enmeshed in an attraction of two kindred spirits that was threatening to turn to lust. But love was for fools, the self-delusional. Marquesses did not love. Young ladies of Amanda’s age, fooled by girlish fantasies and too many fairytales and novels, only thought they did. Nonsense, the lot of it. Sometime after he was thirty, he would set up his nursery with a lady chosen for her lineage and compatibility. Not with the termagant daughter of a bastard engineer.
The horses clattered over the old stone bridge across the Avon. On the other side, Bourne slowed to a walk, allowing his stallion to find his way home while images of Amanda Merriwether, from age eleven to age eighteen, whirled through his head, sounding a dirge for fantasies he’d never quite allowed himself to dream.
“Papa! What have you done?” In her head Mandy was screaming, but the words were no more than a whisper as her father stopped a few feet short of her, the other men drifting away like smoke from a campfire.
“It was necessary.”
“No-o!”
“Come inside, Amanda. If we must have this argument, let it not be in front of all and sundry.” John Merriwether lifted the tent flap and stood back. With a soft huff, Mandy followed him inside. “Sit,” he commanded, but did not join her, electing to loom large above her in uncharacteristic dominance.
“Why?” The word emerged as a wail, adding to her humiliation.
“Amanda, if he truly cared for you, he would have ridden through the lot of us.”
“You were an army!”
“Amanda . . .” John sighed and folded himself into one of the camp chairs. “Two years ago you were both so young . . . I still thought of you as a child. The friendship seemed harmless. But no one—not even a father blindly absorbed in building a canal—could miss how you pined when Carewe called his cub away. Which he surely did. You know it, I know it, everyone around us knows it.”
Humiliation overrode Mandy’s fury, forcing her spirit into a dark hole inside her. Of course everyone knew her deepest, darkest secret. How could it be otherwise? She had worn the willow for the Marquess of Montsale as prominently as a knight displayed his lady’s colors.
“But Montsale’s return, his invitation to dinner, the two of you returning to the ease of past friendship as if two years had not passed . . . as if he had not swooped into Bath and spirited his brother away—”
“Papa!”
“And after that contrary display, he dares invite you for a solitary ramble in Savernake Forest. I think not!”
“Papa, you cannot think—”
“I can and do, Amanda Grace. You know quite well he cannot marry you. But with you so obviously wearing your heart on your sleeve, what is he to think but that you are ripe for an offer of carte blanche.”
“Papa, stop!” Hunched down in her chair, Mandy clapped her hands to her ears.
Except for a single hiccuping sob, silence reigned.
“I am truly sorry,” John said at last. “I like him. Though I cannot grant that he cares for you as much as you care for him, Montsale is far better than most of his kind. He is a worthy landlord and will make a splendid duke. But you have to know he is not for you, my dear. I am merely attempting to keep pain from becoming tragedy.”
Mandy lowered her hands, steepling them in front of her face. “Yes, I know, Papa, but it was just a ride, one little ride.”
John sighed. “My dear innocent, the Savernake is not Hyde Park. Who knows what empty cottage or secluded glade lurks there. I could not risk it.”
At twelve, fourteen, even sixteen, a girl might be brought to admit she has suffered a youthful infatuation. But at eighteen Mandy’s steadfast affection could only be termed a disaster. Her mortification was almost as intense as her pain.
And yet . . .
Papa did not seem to realize he had left her one ray of hope. She and Montsale had been effectively separated, but this time he had not left of his own accord. As mad as Mandy knew it to be, hers was a dream that would not go away. The battle was not yet over.
Chapter Fifteen
London, June 1808
In an effort to avoid a portly lady whose purple ostrich plumes were nearly as tall as she was wide, Bourne stepped deftly to one side, only to have the sharp point of a palm leaf come close to putting out his eye. He stood for a moment beside the dastardly potted palm, blinking rapidly, and trying not to think ill of his mother for insisting on his escort to the Bartholomew’s soirée. A circumstance that inevitably plunged him straight into the arms of Lady Christabel Mainwaring, Lady Olympia Betancourt, and their grasping mothers. He had, in fact, named the four women the octopi, endowing them with relentless tentacles, ever maneuvering to clutch him tight and thrust him toward mouths ready to swallow him whole. Which was why he was escaping to the card room, the supper room, the terrace, anywhere he would not see Lady Christabel’s fluttering lashes, hear Lady Olympia’s inane giggles, or have his stomach squirm under proprietary looks from both Lady Pontes
bury and Lady Silverdale.
And if one more person asked him when the happy announcement was to be made . . .
He was a marquess, confound it! Heir to one of the premier dukedoms in the land. Yet he was running from a gaggle of females . . .
A waft of fresh air from a double panel of doors sent him scurrying into the shelter of the night, feeling like a chastised puppy running for cover with his tail between his legs. To the devil with them all, he could do as he pleased! But the smell of damp earth from the garden brought back memories of a riverbank . . . a girl with bronze hair and green eyes. A girl who did not simper or cling, a girl who gave as good as she got. Perhaps a wee bit more. A proud Lady of the Lock who would cut a swath through these London misses and never look back.
“Ah, there you are,” Lord Jeremy exclaimed. “I bear a message from maman. Carewe has arrived and she grants us our freedom. But she expects your presence at Carewe House tomorrow, promptly at eleven.”
“Eleven? Are you certain that’s what she said?”
“Eleven. Which means we shan’t have much freedom to enjoy the rest of the night—unless we avoid our beds altogether,” Jeremy added hopefully.
“Devil a bit, that can’t be good. Tea time means conversation, eleven a scold.”
“She cannot wish you to marry the Mainwaring. I know maman sees through her wiles. I told her about your calling the lot of ’em the octopi, by the by. You should have heard her laugh.”
Bourne managed a tight smile. “I fear that when lies are repeated often enough, they take on a life of their own. Add to that all the hints, raised eyebrows, if-only-I-could-tell-you’s bandied about the ton these past few months, and I fear Armageddon is closing in.”
“Do you still think of her? Miss Merriwether?”
“Do you?”
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