Tied With a Bow

by Lora Leigh

  “Your parents will never consent,” Aimée warned.

  “Mama has already invited him. She’ll do what I want,” Julia asserted with all the confidence of a girl whose wishes had been indulged for the past eighteen years. “And Papa will do what she tells him.”

  Aimée raised her eyebrows. “The perfect model for marriage, in fact.”

  Her memories of her parents’ marriage were colored by the golden haze of childhood, when she had been safe and secure. But she liked to think they had loved one another. Certainly they had loved her.

  Julia met her gaze, her eyes alight with mischief. “Precisely. A purchased husband will be so much easier to manage, don’t you think?”

  Aimée laughed and shook her head. “I will tell you after I have met the gentleman. He may be less tractable once he has control of your fortune.”

  “Unless he falls wildly and madly in love with me.” Julia did a little twirl of glee, almost knocking into the bed. “Oh, Amy, it’s going to be the most delightful Christmas ever.”

  Aimée raised her eyebrows. She had always enjoyed the church service on Christmas morning, but the holiday was marked primarily by presents to the servants and children. She found it difficult to understand her cousin’s enthusiasm. “You expect Mr. Hartfell to present himself tied with a bow?”

  Julia giggled. “No, silly. Mama’s promised to hold a ball on Christmas Day. A masked ball, just like at Vauxhall. Isn’t that exciting?”

  A masked ball. At Moulton. On Christmas Day.

  Just for a moment, Aimée’s heart lifted as if she were quite as young and pretty and privileged as her cousin. Her head swirled with visions of candles, dresses, and dancing.

  “I shall be Venus, goddess of love and beauty,” Julia said dreamily.

  Aimée smiled wryly, recalled to reality. “Naked on a clamshell?”

  “I won’t be naked, silly. Mama has hired Mrs. Pockley from the village to make my costume.”

  Aimée smothered a sigh of relief. At least she would not have to add costume sewing to her other duties. “I don’t remember Venus wearing many clothes.”

  “Diana, then. The virgin huntress, fair and unattainable as the moon. With lots of silver drapery and diamonds like stars in my hair. And you must dress up, too.”

  Aimée wondered what Lady Basing would say about that. Certainly, there would be no diamonds for her hair.

  Her throat tightened. She had a sudden, poignant memory of Maman, her hair dressed high and a jeweled locket—a gift from Papa—at her throat, swooping down to envelope Aimée in a warm embrace and a cloud of perfume.

  Gone now. All gone.

  But such thinking was foolishness.

  Aimée straightened her spine.

  She would not give in to self-pity. She was grateful to her mother’s cousin for the roof over her head and the food she ate and . . . Well, she was grateful. With the servants already run off their feet with preparations for the house party, it would be her duty to make all of Lady Basing’s arrangements go as smoothly as possible, to keep track of the guest list and write the invitations, to assist with the menu and the decorations and the hundred and one other details that must accompany a ball, even in the country.

  This was her life now. Aimée stabbed her needle at a large darn, ignoring the jab at her heart.

  What she made of it was up to her.

  Chapter Three

  Lucien had always scorned the London marriage mart, the annual parade of well-bred chits trotted out like fillies at auction by their fond mamas and ambitious papas in hopes of attracting a buyer.

  But now he himself was on the block.

  As the Basing house party assembled in the drawing room before dinner, he was aware of his supposed bloodlines being dissected, his grooming inspected, his likely performance assessed.

  He made his bows, his collar chafing. His evening jacket squeezed his shoulders in a too-tight embrace. Miss Basing clung to his arm, hanging upon his every word.

  Julia Basing was everything Lucien should want—pretty, young, rich, and compliant. A month ago, when he was still hot with fury over Amherst’s interference, he had pursued her with single-minded skill and determination.

  His blood had cooled before two weeks had passed. But his circumstances had not changed. His time was running out.

  So here he was, committed to Lady Basing’s house party for the holidays. Not simply as her guest but as a prospective son-in-law.

  A chill traced down his spine like the brush of a feather. Almost, he wished he had not come.

  Julia took his arm with a proprietary air to present him to the local squire and his two unmarried sisters.

  The squire, Tom Whitmore, was a young man with thick dark whiskers that did nothing to disguise his very square jaw or his frown.

  Possibly he disapproved of bastards, however well connected. Or perhaps he would look askance on any rival for Miss Basing’s affections.

  He stuck out his jaw belligerently. “What brings you to Moulton, Hartfell?”

  He needed to marry money. Soon. Or crawl back to Amherst at Fair Hill. The rent on the Maiden Lane house was only paid through the end of the month.

  “I am here at Lady Basing’s invitation,” Lucien said.

  The squire’s square jaw became even squarer. “You have no family who require your attendance over the holiday?”

  It was a challenge, by thunder. A reference to his bastard status.

  Whitmore’s sisters looked anxious. Julia Basing caught her breath.

  “I am fortunate to be free to follow my personal inclinations,” Lucien said.

  Whitmore glared. “And those are?”

  Lucien smiled thinly. “Personal.”

  The sticky silence was broken by a rush at the door as a late arrival caught herself on the threshold. Lucien had an impression of bouncing dark curls and a wide, heart-shaped face before the woman lowered her head, slipping quietly into the room. Her unobtrusive demeanor was so at odds with her animated expression that his attention was caught. He narrowed his eyes, taking in her lace-trimmed cap and shapeless, faded gown. There were no rings on her fingers, no jewels around her neck.

  Not a guest, then. Nor quite a servant. Most likely a poor relation, one of the army of drab, dependent, unmarried females clinging to shabby gentility in the corners of England’s drawing rooms, indispensable and invisible to their wealthier relatives.

  Normally he would not even have noticed her. But the energy of her entrance lingered a moment, charging the stale air like a blowing storm.

  Lady Basing reclaimed his attention, leading the way into the dining room.

  Despite his lack of title, he found himself paired with Miss Basing at dinner. Amherst’s lineage, of course, was impeccable. And Lucien was connected, however irregularly, with Amherst. If Leyburn were truly his, if he were the man of property he pretended to be, he would be considered an acceptable match for a baronet’s daughter.

  He wondered how much time he had before Sir Walter demanded an accounting of his prospects.

  He forced himself to listen to Miss Basing chatter about the Season just past—her first—about whom she had met and what she had worn and which gentlemen she had danced with. He sipped his wine, bored almost out of his mind. Fortunately, as long as he inserted compliments at appropriate intervals, Miss Basing did not appear to find his attention lacking.

  Across the table, her brother, Howard Basing, made sly observations to the Misses Whitmore on either side. Lucien knew Julia’s brother only by sight, brown-haired, handsome, with sharp white collar points and teeth.

  A few places farther down, the poor relation divided her conversation between a country gentleman old enough to be her grandfather and a spotty boy barely out of the schoolroom. Lucien was not close enough to overhear a word of their conversation. But something about her compelled his notice.

  Beneath her cap, she had strongly arched brows and thick black lashes, a wide, curved mouth and a charmingly blunted chin
. She tilted her head—the better to hear her elderly dinner partner?—when suddenly, for no reason at all, she raised her gaze across the table.

  Eyes as blue as the October sky stared into his.

  The charge this time sizzled clear to his toes. Like the shock of recognition, a bolt of lightning, a jolt of longing.

  She was almost familiar to him. Not Nephilim, despite her angel’s face. She was . . . He didn’t know what she was. His hand curled around his wineglass.

  She did not immediately drop her gaze as any well-bred lady ought, as any meek companion must. She stared back at him, her lips parted, her eyes wide and dark. He watched her take one swift, deep breath, giving shape to her shapeless dress, and his own breathing stopped.

  Her lashes swept down. With a visible effort, she collected herself, turning to address a remark to the spotty youth at her side. The boy flushed and launched into speech.

  Lucien released his grip on the glass. His hand shook slightly.

  “Amy does not often join us for dinner when we have company,” Miss Basing confided beside him. “I am so pleased Mama invited her to make up the numbers after Freddy threw the table off. But he is home from school so seldom, poor boy, it would have been a shame to exclude him.”

  Lucien dragged his memory. Freddy would be young Keasdon, the son of local gentry. And . . .

  “Amy?” he repeated.

  “Cousin Amy. Weren’t you looking at her just now? Oh.” Miss Basing bit her lip. “But you were not presented, were you?”

  “I have not had that pleasure,” he said curtly. “She was not in the drawing room before dinner.”

  “I expect she was still in the nursery settling my sister’s children—my sister Susan, Mrs. Netherby,” Miss Basing explained. “They were overexcited after the long carriage ride here.”

  “She is their governess?”

  Miss Basing looked surprised. “Oh, no. My sister let the governess go to her family for the holiday. Why should Mr. Netherby be put to the expense of paying the creature a Christmas bonus when Amy is willing to watch the children?”

  Lucien hid his distaste. “Very obliging of her.”

  “Amy is always obliging. Of course, she must be conscious of what she owes Mama. We took her in, you know, after her parents were killed. In the Terror. It was a great tragedy,” Julia said comfortably.

  She was French, then. An émigré. A refugee.

  Perhaps that explained his jolt of recognition, his feeling of déjà vu. Perhaps he had seen her, even rescued her on one of his forays across the Channel.

  He frowned at the ruby reflection of his wine on the snow white tablecloth. He and Gerard and Tripp had snatched hundreds from the shadow of the guillotine, men, women, and children. He could not remember them all.

  “How long ago?” he asked tightly.

  “Oh, ages. I was just a child when she came to live with us. Ten? Eleven. Amy was older, of course.”

  Before his time on earth, he thought. Before he’d found Amherst.

  His mouth dried. Holy God.

  He remembered very little from before his Fall. The Nephilim were not born as human infants. That distinction was reserved for the Most High. They Fell as children or adolescents, losing their knowledge of Heaven along with their angelic powers, thrust into human existence in the land and year of their offense.

  But the circumstances of that night were seared into his brain, the filthy prison, the dying mother, the defiant child in her nest of straw.

  You are killing me, she had cried passionately.

  He stared unseeing at the table, recalling her wide blue eyes, her rounded, jutting jaw. He had violated her free will, tearing her from both the life she knew and the death she had chosen.

  And so he had been condemned to lose his own life, his very identity as a child of air.

  His stomach knotted. Was it possible . . . ?

  He reached for his glass, risking another glance down the table at Julia Basing’s French cousin.

  Amy. Aimée.

  She was not very old. Early twenties, at a guess. The cap aged her. She could be . . . Ah, he hoped she was not. He hated to think he had saved her from one prison only to thrust her into another. Both of them sentenced by his choice to live out their lives in the shadows, condemned to a life of servitude. Her bright light, dimmed.

  He set down his wine untasted.

  It made no difference, he told himself. His course was set. Even if she were the same woman, she was not his responsibility now.

  He glanced again down the table. But he had to know.

  He was staring at her. Mr. Hartfell. He had beautiful eyes, bright and green as emeralds, gleaming in the light of the candles.

  Aimée’s heart beat faster. For a moment, when she first looked up and caught him staring, she had been drawn. Dazzled. Like a moth to a flame, like Icarus flying into the heat of the sun, completely insensitive to danger.

  She clasped her hands together in her lap, focusing with determined concentration on sixteen-year-old Freddy Keasdon, who had launched into a description of his last cricket match at school.

  “. . . off the wicket on the on side,” he said, his Adam’s apple working earnestly. “So I went out at it on my left leg—no, wait, it was my right—and . . .”

  She had no idea what he was talking about. But as long as their conversation revolved around him, he was quite willing to give her his full attention. Like any other man, she supposed.

  Living in her cousin’s house, she had learned to be wary of masculine attention. But Freddy—“caught it square a couple feet from the ground,” he told her—was charming in his enthusiasm. And quite harmless.

  She felt very sure the same could not be said of Lucien Hartfell.

  Really, he had no business staring at her at all. He was here to court Julia.

  Her cousin was sitting right there beside him, looking as fresh and lovely as spring in a gown the soft pink of apple blossoms. The deep neckline and short, puffed sleeves revealed a great deal of her rounded bosom and arms.

  Aimée had taken care that her own dress revealed nothing at all. Its original sour green color still showed faintly at the seams where she had picked them apart, letting out the bodice until her shape resembled nothing so much as a sack of flour tied with ribbon. She would not be accused of luring Cousin Howard’s attention again.

  At least Mr. Hartfell had been staring at her face and not her breasts.

  It was a relief when Lady Basing signaled that dinner was over. The ladies withdrew, leaving the men to their port.

  In the drawing room, the other young ladies engaged in polite competition to entertain the company. Aimée began to calculate how soon she could excuse herself. But then Julia required her sheet music and Lady Basing demanded her shawl. Aimée had just finished passing the cakes from the tea tray when the gentlemen trooped in.

  A throat cleared behind her. “Er, Miss Blanchard.”

  No escape. Her back stiffened. She turned to smile at young Freddy Keasdon.

  And Mr. Hartfell. She caught her breath as her gaze tangled with his.

  Close up, he appeared even more handsome and very large, his broad shoulders made wider by his tight-fitting evening clothes. His thick gold hair, worn slightly longer than was fashionable, created a halo around his severely beautiful face.

  Something wavered in the corners of her memory, but she could not bring it quite into focus.

  Freddy ducked his head bashfully. “May I present Mr. Hartfell?” he asked, indicating the man beside him. “You didn’t meet him before dinner, did you?”

  She had not been presented to any of the Basings’ guests, a slight that did not trouble her in the least. She would have preferred to say in the nursery, out of sight. Out of mind.

  Out of trouble.

  Mr. Hartfell bowed. “Miss Blanchard,” he said, a faint emphasis on the first word.

  As if he had the slightest interest whether she were married or not, Aimée thought wryly. She was n
ot an heiress like Julia.

  She bobbed a curtsey. “Mr. Hartfell.”

  “Your name is an old and noble one in France,” he said politely. “You are not by chance related to the Comte de Brissac?”

  For a bastard, he was very interested in her antecedents. Perhaps his own birth made him sensitive to such things? “My father,” she admitted.

  His eyebrows arched. “Then—forgive me—are you not the Lady Aimée?”

  “A distinction without a difference,” Aimée said. “Titles have been abolished in France, Mr. Hartfell. The king himself signed the decree a decade ago.”

  Even if her rank had survived the Revolution, it could not have survived life with her mother’s relatives. It would be untenable, intolerable, for the impoverished Lady Aimée to take precedence over Miss Julia Basing and Lady Basing in their own home.

  She glanced toward the pianoforte where Julia was settling herself to play. Her cousin was bright-eyed and pink-cheeked with anticipation. Or annoyance. Tom Whitmore hovered stiffly beside her, ready to turn the pages of her music. Julia, however, turned her gaze hopefully toward their corner of the room, rustling the sheets of music together.

  Hiding her amusement, Aimée addressed Mr. Hartfell. “I believe my cousin requires your assistance, sir.”

  He raised his brows, in no apparent hurry to heed Julia’s summons. “You do not play, Miss Blanchard?”

  Why did he not go? “I do not play in company.”

  His green eyes filled with lazy amusement. “You are too modest.”

  Something in her rose to meet the challenge of those eyes. “Not at all. But since I am not in the running for a husband, I see no point in showing off my paces.”

  He laughed, a short, surprised bark that transformed his rather cool, disdainful expression to wry humor. “And if I were not forced into the running for a wife, I would keep you company in your corner.”

  She grinned foolishly back.

  Very foolishly, she realized a moment later as heads turned. She should not be seen amusing herself.