Troy heard her long before he saw her. The high-pitched, whingeing voice settled over his butler’s hoarse basso continuo. The volume swelled in a prolonged crescendo, the door opened, and Finney had just time enough to utter a croak and to flatten himself against the door before the Dowager Countess of Ravenhurst swept past him into the billiards room.
“I have heard most shocking news!” she announced to the world in general and to her grandson in particular.
Troy watched the last ball roll over the baize-covered slate, only to miss the hole in the corner and bounce off the cushion. He suppressed a sigh, straightened and made the formal bow as was expected of him. “Good morning, granddame.” He gave his butler a small nod. “That will be all, Finney. Thank you.” He turned his attention back to his grandmother, who regarded him with obvious displeasure.
“I will not wish you a good morning, Ravenhurst, because it is not a good morning.” She pierced him with a withering glance. “I demand to know this minute whether it is true.”
He laid his cue on the billiard board. “Whether what is true?”
Stalling was not one of the best tactics to employ with the dowager countess, and consequently, the lines around her mouth deepened even more. “Do not pretend to be a dimwit, Ravenhurst! Did you compromise Lillian Abberley, the girl your cousin plans to wed—yes or no?” Her thin nose quivered with indignation.
“If you put it like that…” Troy shrugged. “Yes.”
“Yes? You shamed the girl your cousin plans to make his viscountess, the Marquis of Larkmoor’s granddaughter, and all you give me is insolence?” She paused, but Troy knew better than to interrupt her. Instead, he mentally prepared himself for the thunderstorm to come.
“You behaved like the meanest blackguard, the basest scoundrel, you dishonored the family name, and this is all you can say? Oh no, Ravenhurst, this will not do! Do you want your poor father and grandfather to turn in their graves with humiliation at what their heir has done?” Bristling with anger, she approached him and poked her bony finger into his chest. “You will marry the chit, do you hear me?”
“Granddame—”
“I will have no grandson of mine put shame on the family name, oh no, not as long as there is breath in my lungs!”
“Granddame, I had reasons.”
“Reasons?” One white eyebrow rose. “To bring disaster upon your cousin’s happiness?”
Troy gritted his teeth until his jaw hurt. “He would have brought disaster upon himself had he married the girl, believe me.”
The girl who had branded him like an animal.
“You, Ravenhurst, are out of your mind!” The corners of the Dowager Countess’s mouth turned down in an expression of utter contempt. “You have been in London but four days. How can you even attempt to judge the character of Lady Lillian Abberley?”
“Lady Lillian Abberley? Lady Lillian Abberley? God!” Abruptly, Troy whirled and ran both hands through his hair. With his back to his grandmother he said, “Can you not trust me in this, granddame?”
Did he deserve this? Could she not show him a bit of common human sympathy? God, how he loathed this all! His hand splayed over his chest, where his shirt hid the darkened, burnt flesh.
His grandmother’s snort cut him like the lash of a whip. “You have put shame to our name, Ravenhurst.” Her icy voice was a bitter reminder of how much his grandmother had changed since his grandfather died. All warmth and love seemed to have turned into bitterness and spite, until the woman he had known and loved all his childhood was no more.
Wearily, Troy closed his eyes. “When I came home from France and you oversaw the doctor tending my wounds, did you not wonder at the marks on my back?” He turned around to look at the dowager countess. “Did you not wonder at the brand on my chest? Did you not ask yourself where they had come from?” He leaned down, his eyes never leaving her face.
A startled frown crossed her forehead. “Well… yes,” she admitted impatiently. “But I cannot see what that has to do with the situation at hand.”
Troy laughed. It was the kind of laugh he had come to learn during his years in the war, the laugh he had perfected during his time in a stinking French prison. “Because that is exactly where Lady Lillian has come from, too. So, you see, I could not let my foolish young cousin marry the woman.”
For a moment, his grandmother seemed confused. “Murgatroyd…” Her hands reached up as if to touch his shoulders. But then, she drew her hands back and stepped away. “Whatever the reason for your most unseemly behavior last night, it might have had a somewhat contrary effect to your wishes.” Her voice was cool and smooth again. “For your foolish young cousin, as you named him, plans to go off to Larkmoor’s this morning.” A thin brow rose as if in mockery. “To atone for your sins, I believe.”
With that, she left: a regal-looking old woman, who had just condemned her grandson to something worse than death.
Troy stared after her, not really seeing anything. He remembered the sounds of ripping material, the feeling of soft flesh under his hands. Most of all, he remembered the sight of blood on her lips. Her blood. And the triumph he had felt. To have dominated her. To have saved Alex from this woman.
He heard the front door close.
With a roar he banged his fist onto the billiard table, and the hard slate jarred his arm.
~*~
Of course, Aunt Louisa could not understand why Lillian had refused the viscount’s offer of marriage. Indeed, she was horrified. She paced around the room, clucking her tongue and muttering to herself, only to stop in her tracks from time to time and moan: “The girl will go to ruins! To ruins, I say!”
Nanette, by contrast, sat in the corner of the drawing room and busied herself with her needlework. She always did some sort of needlework. The scarves and frocks and wraps she knitted she gave to the people of the poorhouse, Lillian knew. Everything needs balance, the voice of the old woman whispered in her head. One to do the healing in a place where another does all the wounding. One to think of the people in need while society moved from amusement to amusement, their only worry which invitation to accept, which ball to attend, which dress to wear.
Lillian looked out the window to the street below, where fashionable ladies bloomed like flowers against the gray of the city. She yearned for the silence of an overgrown garden where nobody had tread but her. She remembered how she had sat in the grass by the lake and the summer breeze had caressed her cheek, while her thighs had still been smeared with—
Lillian flinched.
She clasped her hands together in her lap to stop their trembling. Aunt Louisa’s steps suddenly seemed to echo loudly in the room. Her sighs and moans rasped on Lillian’s nerves, and she felt the beginning of a headache like a white hot iron behind her eyes.
“Oh dear, oh dear!” Aunt Louisa lamented. “Whatever shall we do now? Papa will have to call him out, after all. Oh dear, oh dear! He will be killed and then what shall we do? That wretched, wretched man! Oh, how I would wish to strangle him, yes, I would! Put my hands around…”
The butler cleared his throat noisily. He stood in the open door and, judging from the volume of his throat clearing, he had been standing there for some time already. “My lady?”
“…his scrawny neck and—”
“My lady?”
Irritated, Aunt Louisa turned around. “Yes, what is it?”
By this time, the butler’s face had taken on a delicate shade of pink. “There is a visitor.”
“A visitor?” Aunt Louisa wrung her hands. “Who would want to visit us in our misery? Who?” All at once, her expression changed and she gave the butler a suspicious scowl. “It is Lady Jersey, isn’t it? She has come to gloat, I am sure of it! To cancel her invitation in person.”
“No, my lady. It’s… er—”
“The Earl of Ravenhurst,” the Earl of Ravenhurst said as he stepped into the room, obviously having grown impatient waiting downstairs.
Aunt Louisa gasped.
> Lillian’s fingers clenched until her nails dug painfully into her palms. With an effort she relaxed her hands, even as his gaze settled on her like blue fire. She raised her chin and met his gaze look for look. No longer shackled and bound, he exuded danger, the play of his long, powerful muscles only half hidden by his clothes.
“Papa!” Aunt Louisa screamed, and Ravenhurst visibly winced. “He is here!” She pointed an accusing finger at the man she had wanted to strangle not a minute before. “How dare you to come here? This is all very annoying! Papa will have to call you out now and you will fence in our drawing room and get blood all over the floor!”
From Nanette’s direction came an unintelligible mutter.
Ravenhurst merely raised his brows. “I come with the most honorable of intentions, I assure you,” he said smoothly.
Hasty steps were heard in the hallway and soon after Lillian’s grandfather appeared in the door. When he spotted their visitor, he came to an abrupt halt.
The younger man turned around and bowed slightly. “Lord Larkmoor.”
“Ravenhurst.”
Aunt Louisa hurried to her father’s side and gripped his arm. “You have to call him out, of course.” She shuddered. “Oh dear, oh dear!”
Lillian felt a most particular sensation in the region of her heart. “Grandfather…” She stood, her gaze imploringly drawn to his.
“As I just told Lady Wishart, I have come with the most honorable intentions.” The Earl of Ravenhurst’s voice was filled with subtle mockery. Yet he bowed again. “May I ask you most humbly for your granddaughter’s hand in marriage, my lord?”
Aunt Louisa, momentarily robbed of speech, gaped at him, while Lillian’s grandfather looked him up and down. “Your methods of courtship are most uncommon, my lord,” the Marquis of Larkmoor finally said in a hard voice.
“You can always call me out, of course.”
At the earl’s challenge, Aunt Louisa shrieked and made as if to faint in her father’s arms.
This particular farce, Lillian decided, had gone far enough. “Quelle bêtise!” she said firmly, and stepped forward, ignoring her aunt’s shocked gasps. “My lord, I would suggest that you go home now. I will not have my grandfather call you out, and I will not have you.” Even though you’re bearing my mark on your skin.
He stared at her, his eyes as blue as the summer sky. Then his lips turned up into a humorless smile and he gave her a mocking little bow. “I beg to differ. It seems that I have compromised you, so my honor”—his eyes flashed— “demands that I rectify the wrong done to you.” As if by belated thought, he added: “My lady.”
“No.” Lillian shook her head. Why would he want to do such a thing? When the wrong she had done him was so much greater?
Her grandfather left Aunt Louisa standing with her mouth slightly open. He went to Lillian and took her hand to pat it lightly. “My dear, this seems to be the only solution.”
“No.”
“My dear.” There was compassion and sympathy in her grandfather’s eyes. “You have no other choice.”
“No.” She looked over his shoulder to the tall man who was watching her intently, a small, derisive smile curling his lips.
He stood with his arms crossed in front of his chest, and Lillian saw how broad his shoulders were. She remembered how, at another time and place, his body had been so lean that the ribs had seemed to be poking through skin, how his shaved skull had gleamed in the candlelight. Most of all, she remembered the brand, the angry red brand, the flesh puckered and raw, and the blood marring his pale skin.
He was no longer so pale, and his shock of auburn hair had a healthy glow. He was no longer a prisoner, and no dogs had torn his body to pieces. Only the eyes, Lillian saw, the eyes were still the same, always the same: an intense cornflower-blue that seemed to burn her very soul with anger and hatred.
“Grandfather.” She looked back to the Marquis of Larkmoor, whose kind eyes reflected worry and concern. “I would like to speak with Lord Ravenhurst in private.”
He searched her face. “Very well, my dear,” he finally said and released her hand. “But it will not change anything.” He turned around to face the younger man. “This time, you will behave.”
The Earl of Ravenhurst bowed. “I assure you, I will.”
“Oh, my lord!” Nanette left her needlework and rushed to Lillian. Her arms fluttered through the air like the frail wings of a small bird. “Please, my lord, you have already heard Lillian’s reasons. Please.” She glanced at the earl with something approaching dread in her eyes. “Don’t do this.”
The Marquis of Larkmoor gave her a sad smile. “I am afraid we have run out of choices, Nanette. Come.” He beckoned to her to leave the room. “We will leave these two alone for a while.”
Not one muscle moved in Lillian’s face as she watched them go out of the room. When the door closed, she turned and went back to the window, looking onto the street below, where people ambled by and life whirled past, uncaring.
“I will not marry you,” she said quietly. “I cannot marry you.”
“Why?”
“You know why.” Because I pressed the hot brand against your skin and witnessed what she did to you.
“Oh.” Sarcasm dripped from that one small sound. “You mean, because of our—how shall we put it—history?” She heard his steps behind her, and she remembered the iron grip of his hands as he grasped her shoulders and wrenched her around. And his scent. She remembered his scent, that dark, beguiling mixture of sandalwood and oakmoss, so different from the stench of prison and of fear. “Well, that’s just too bad, Lady Lillian. Because I will be damned if I stand aside and watch you marry that young fool of my cousin!”
She stared at his face, saw how the clear lines of politeness had shifted to reveal the burning anger below. His eyes seemed to spray blue hatred. The corners of his mouth were drawn back into a feral snarl.
“Do you hear me?” He shook her.
How easy it was to spark his anger. “I will not marry you.” She wrenched out of his grip and slipped past him.
It is yours, so you will have the honor of setting the mark, the echo of Camille’s voice whispered in her head.
Mine.
My responsibility.
“So?” he growled. “And what do you think your family will do? Your grandfather is too old to call me out; I would never fight against an old man. And your reputation is now ruined in any case. The only chance you have got to avoid social death is to marry me. Me, do you hear me? Not Alexander!”
At that, Lillian had to fight against hysterical laughter. Did he not know that she had already turned his cousin down? And did he really think she cared about what society did or thought? But then, he would not want to hear any of this, and in the end, it did not matter. Only one thing did—
“I will not marry you,” she repeated. She turned and looked at him. “I will not.” She clasped her hands together, so he would not see them shaking, and took a deep breath. “And I am no longer a virgin. Surely you must care about that.”
A sneer distorted his face. “Did you really think I expected anything else?” he spat. “Surely not! But I have got the honor of my family to protect. And I would do much worse than marry you in order to keep my cousin safe.”
When she did not react to his barely veiled threat, he strode toward her until their bodies nearly touched. “And you?” Effortlessly he towered over her. “Have you ever spared a thought to your family? Your ruin will be theirs. Society will not just cut you. They will suffer, too.”
Lillian went very still. She recalled her aunt’s fear that Lady Jersey might cancel their invitation. That the other woman had come to gloat.
“But perhaps you are so cold that this does not matter to you. That they will keep to the country, exiles in their own land. And you one of them. All your clever scheming will be for naught.”
Lillian felt light, floating almost. She had not really thought about how the scandal would affect her aunt and
her grandfather. She had not known that it would affect them.
Everything needs balance…
She almost laughed then. She had not wanted to ruin Alexander Markham’s life by marrying him. And now it seemed as if she had to marry his cousin so as not to ruin the lives of her family.
Everything needs balance…
She looked at him.
Camille liked her men attractive. Even shackled and clumsily shaved and much too lean, this man had been beautifully made, his body finely proportioned. With his health restored, his body would be even more beautiful now—but his back still would be marred by the scars of the whip lashes, and his chest… on his chest would bloom a lily for evermore.
A lily for Lillian.
Her mark on him.
Her guilt.
Her responsibility.
Everything needs balance…
April was a cold month. Cool drafts found their way through the slits under doors and windows. And now, Lillian reached for the chill and cloaked herself in the coldness. It seeped through her skin to the place where her heart was beating.
It did not matter.
Nothing did.
Ever.
Subtly, she straightened her shoulders and looked him straight into the eyes. “I accept your offer, my lord,” she said.
Chapter 7
On the morning of Lillian’s wedding day the skies of London were weeping. She was married barely a week after the engagement had been announced to the public in the Morning Post, the Gazette, and The Times. Aunt Louisa had wrinkled her nose and had sniffled a bit. At least he did something in style, she had said while cutting the articles out to put them into the box that already held the announcements of her own children’s engagements. But she did not like the fact that there would be no reading of the banns for her niece. The groom had insisted on a marriage by special license. He had insisted on quite a lot of things Aunt Louisa had not liked—to leave for his country estate directly after the ceremony was probably the worst. There would be no wedding breakfast for her to organize, which she considered a scandal, a scandal indeed.
Their steps echoed loudly in the wide, empty cathedral as Lillian walked on the arm of her grandfather up to the altar. Under the high arches to their right and left hovered shadows that the faint light of the morning was not able to dispel. The thick, solid walls of stone kept the air inside to an icy chill. With each step Lillian let the coldness seep deep into her flesh and bones until it seemed to her as if her white and silver dress had turned to woven snow on her skin.
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