There was no argument against that as it was both true and not. Still, he’d managed to wound not only her feelings but also her pride. She’d earned a bit of indulgence if she wanted a pound of flesh from him. “I have some things that require my immediate attendance, Miss Barrett. Excuse me. Whatever you heard here today, I promise it is not what you think. And whatever comes, it has to do with doing what is right, and not avoiding our shared destiny.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left, knowing that he would not be returning any time soon.
*
Jane watched her betrothed hasten from his father’s home. He left so quickly that the door didn’t even latch properly behind him. The wind caught it, whipping it open again. The butler immediately set it right, but the damage was done. The wake of Lord Althorn’s departure and the subsequent rush of cool air that had entered had ruffled the vase of flowers on the hall table, sending petals and leaves cascading down onto the inlaid tabletop. Jane watched them fall and felt a strange kinship to those poor flowers. She felt as if many of her own petals had been sacrificed in their bloodless but still damaging exchange.
There had never been any false hope for her that theirs would be a love match. In fact, she had never anticipated that her betrothed would have any wish to marry her. It had been drilled into her almost since birth that her father had used his money to procure a match for her that would result in position and social cache for him. She was the sacrificial goat that would bring him into the highest reaches of society where he longed to be. What it might do for her or to her was entirely incidental. Of course, it was one thing to accept that her betrothed might be less than eager. It was another entirely to face the knowledge that he not only wasn’t eager, but was, in fact, completely unwilling. It scalded her already singed pride, adding greater insult upon pre-existing injury.
Repugnant, he’d said. That word wounded her to the quick. Her looks had never been remarkable. At best, she’d been called pretty by those who were feeling charitable, but never beautiful. Her figure remained stubbornly trapped in childhood. Round faced, flat chested, with no waistline in sight, she looked closer to girlhood than womanhood though the opposite should have been true. At nearly fourteen, other girls her age were beginning to wear their hair up and dress in lovely gowns. She still had braids and looked like a child. Was it any wonder he was so repulsed by the idea of marrying her?
It was of no consequence that she’d harbored the most tender of feelings for him, even if she hadn’t expected them to be returned. She couldn’t allow it to be. Handsome as he was, as charming as she’d seen him be with other people while always being stiff and formal with her, she’d only ever felt shy and embarrassed in his presence. Now, only the embarrassment remained. Humiliation, she corrected. He loathed her and the idea of being wed to her left him utterly repulsed. What on earth was she to do with herself in such a circumstance? She could not wed him, not knowing that.
At least hearing his awful admission had freed her from the painful worship she’d harbored of him. He hadn’t simply fallen from the pedestal she’d had him upon, but leapt from it with abandon. The shyness that had always kept her frozen in his presence had vanished in the face of that and she’d finally managed to speak coherently, if rather scathingly, to him.
Her father entered then, the butler closing the door softly behind him. He frowned when he saw her, but that was his typical response whenever she was in his line of sight. Immediately averting his gaze and addressing the butler as if she were not even present, he demanded, “Was that Althorn leaving?”
Riggs, the duke’s staunch and loyal butler nodded. “Yes, Mr. Barrett, sir. Lord Althorn had to depart somewhat hastily.”
Her father turned his cold, sharp gaze on her. “Did you speak to him?”
“We spoke, Father,” she answered evenly, not revealing the unpleasant nature of the exchange.
“About what?” he snapped. “Answer me, girl! I’m tired of this nonsense!”
“I believe,” she offered hesitantly, “that the Marquess of Althorn is not pleased at the prospect of our coming marriage. It is my understanding that he and the duke have disagreed quite vehemently about it. Perhaps the duke will be able to provide more insight.”
Her father looked at her with disdain. “Can’t say I blame the boy. You’ve done little enough to make yourself even remotely palatable to the opposite sex.”
“What should I have done then? Painted myself like a harlot?” she asked. Normally, she would never have spoken disrespectfully to him. But it was a rare day to have her heart broken and her lingering pride crushed in one fell swoop.
Her father said nothing, just turned and walked away. It was not an uncommon occurrence. He despised her and always had. Jane glanced over to the butler whose normally stern expression had softened into something akin to pity.
Holding her tears of humiliation at bay, Jane kept her voice calm and composed as she said, “I believe I will sit in the garden for a while, Riggs, if anyone should ask for me.” If anyone could be bothered to care.
“Certainly, Miss Barrett,” he said. “I will see to it they are informed if anyone should ask.”
Jane turned then and headed toward the doors at the back of the corridor that would lead outside into the small garden that butted against the mews. No bigger than her own bedchamber, the tall hedges still offered more privacy than she typically found inside the house. Her father would badger her at the behest of her soon-to-be stepmother. The duke would be all that was polite, but he was so stiff it was never pleasant to be in his company.
Instead, she utilized the only escape that was available to her. Despite the cold, despite the burning pain that had blossomed in her chest and the withering of her paltry confidence in the face of Marcus Balfour’s clear displeasure at their match, she retreated into a world where it didn’t matter that she was plain. It didn’t matter in the least that she was still as flat chested as a boy. She lost herself within the pages of a novel.
Chapter One
Eight Years Later
Jane smiled politely at the Duchess of Elsingham as the sherry was poured. Dinner was shaping up to be another disaster in what had been a long list of disasters besetting their annual visit to the Duke of Elsingham and his wife. Each year, it became more and more difficult to get through the weeks without everyone in the house succumbing to fits of either the vapors or ill tempers, depending upon one’s proclivities.
“It is so lovely of you all to come and visit us here,” the duchess said, gulping her sherry more than sipping it. “Ever since the Battle of Corunna and poor Marcus’ disappearance, our society is so limited. No one quite knows what to do with us! Are we in mourning? Are we not? Is it within the bounds of propriety to invite us to dinners but not to musicales? I find it so tiresome to sit in the house and look at the same walls day in and day out! At least dear Charles made it home safely. Just imagine how awful it would have been had we lost them both to Bonaparte? How I despise that awful war! It’s done terrible things to society!”
The duchess paused in her diatribe long enough to cast a sympathetic glance toward Jane. “But it must be so much worse for you, my dear! To have your betrothed simply missing… your life perpetually in a state of limbo when you ought to be well married and setting up house with children of your own! You are not getting any younger either! Time does slip away so quickly!”
Jane’s only response was a tighter smile and a raised eyebrow. She was one and twenty, hardly in her dotage. Of course, as there was no end in sight to her strange period of half-mourning, that offered no comfort at all. She’d spent the last five years wearing nothing but drab gray or black. Their visits to town were infrequent and the stodgy country society near their home would never dream of inviting someone in mourning into their midst. Sadly, the dismal company of the Duke and Duchess of Elsingham was the closest thing to social interaction she could lay claim to.
Dull, dreary and always disappointing, it was hardl
y something to be anticipated, as they were trapped in the same state of limbo she was. Of course, she couldn’t blame society hostesses for their reticence in including them. What were they to say? What were their other guests to say? I’m terribly sorry your betrothed would rather run off to war than marry you. I’m terribly sorry your family had the misfortune to post the banns before he left and now you’re stuck in matrimonial purgatory. I’m terribly sorry that your betrothed, who couldn’t stand the sight of you, has been missing for five years and your life is in stasis because of it.
Upon further examination, Jane decided that it was simply better for everyone involved if she had limited social engagements and fewer opportunities to be insulted or reminded of how poorly her life was playing out. Of course, as she would rather spend her days with fictional characters than real ones, that really was not such a terrible thing. And if the Duchess of Elsingham wished to continue harping upon it, Jane intended to make certain that the woman’s sherry glass was refilled liberally and frequently so that the conversation might be shortened. If, Jane thought, she could get the duchess deep enough into her cups, she could call an early night for herself and retreat to her room and the trials of Lady Gray. That book had her in fits!
“It does, indeed. More sherry, your grace?” Jane asked softly.
The woman’s eyes brightened. “Yes, yes indeed!”
The Duchess of Elsingham was not all that much older than Jane herself. Just shy of thirty, she’d married the Duke of Elsingham and become stepmother to Jane’s betrothed only days before he left to join the fighting on the Peninsula. It always grated when the woman, who had not had children herself, reminded her that her own precious child bearing years were slipping away. Of course, she was still preferable to Jane’s own stepmother.
Mrs. Barrett, as she insisted upon being addressed even by Jane herself, was the very devil. Luckily, she had not yet come down. The woman was perpetually late, more so because she liked to make an entrance than because she poorly managed her time. She’d, no doubt, be wearing one of her new gowns, brightly colored and prettily trimmed. It was that, even more than her difficult personality and questionable character, which prompted the current intensity of Jane’s dislike of her at the moment. She resented the woman’s freedom and her seeming imperviousness to William Barrett’s foul moods and fouler temper.
As a footman refilled her grace’s glass, Jane asked the question that propriety demanded of her. “Has there been any word from the investigators yet or the war office on Lord Althorn’s whereabouts?”
The duchess shook her head sadly. It was an expression she adopted routinely when anyone asked about the fate of her stepson. She had taken to the roll of martyr with aplomb from the very moment of Marcus’ disappearance on the field of battle. No one had ever looked so fashionably grim in their mourning clothes as the lovely Duchess of Elsingham.
Jane had the sneaking suspicion that because black was so flattering to the woman’s cool blonde beauty, it was she and not the duke that delayed in having the Marquess of Althorn declared dead. It allowed her to draw out the period of mourning for ages longer.
“No, my dear. None at all. I fear we may never know what fate has befallen poor Marcus. So young and so handsome,” the duchess mused. “What a shame for Alfred! His only son and heir gone without a word of explanation! The poor dear… his health is failing him so dreadfully. He has been all that is kind and gracious to me. Why, I could not ask for a better husband! He says nothing of what I spend. He is content to entertain himself and does not require that I dance attendance upon him at all times. Why the thought of—well, not to be indelicate, Miss Barrett, but the rules of etiquette are quite muddied on this subject. Alfred is significantly my elder and, as such, will likely precede me in death. I will, of course, mourn him terribly.”
“Your grace, I cannot help but feel a question is buried somewhere within that soliloquy,” Jane said, hoping to hasten the woman to the point. She had found that the duchess frequently took a meandering route to the heart of any conversation.
The duchess smiled and looked coquettishly at Jane through her lashes. The woman flirted shamelessly with everyone regardless of age, gender, or infirmity. It occurred to Jane that the woman was so spoiled by her own beauty she had never thought to explore anything else she might have to offer in life beyond a pretty face and a charming smile. Age would be a cruel comeuppance.
After a deliberately dramatic pause, the duchess continued, “I cannot help but wonder if I would be thought badly of if I did not continue to mourn Marcus once Alfred is gone. Would it be very gauche of me to pack away anything resembling black bombazine after a suitable period has expired?”
“I don’t think so,” Jane said. “You hardly knew Marcus, after all. It would be quite unfair for society to expect you to mourn him as you would a son when I do believe he is, in fact, your senior by at least two years.”
Her grace sat back in her chair and beamed with a beatific smile. “I will continue to wear black on occasion, I think. It does look very lovely on me… and it camouflages any number of sins, particularly related to cook’s lemon cakes. I haven’t worn satin in ages. Do you not miss it, Miss Barrett? Opening your wardrobe and seeing an array of lovely colors spread out for your choosing?”
There had never been an array of colors in her wardrobe. Her father had always been quite the skinflint with her. As he’d already secured a husband for her, it would have been, in his words, a waste of funds to try and make her a silk purse from a sad, little sow’s ear. She’d had only a handful of gowns and they’d been worn only in society. At home, she’d worn simple day dresses of rough fabrics that would have easily seen her pass for a scullery maid.
“I don’t suppose I should speak of such things to you,” the duchess said, clucking her tongue sadly. “My poor dear! Unless Alfred relents and has Marcus declared dead, or if Charles can do so if my poor Alfred does pass, why you might never wed! You will be stuck mourning for a man who might have been your husband for the rest of your life. I do believe that might be the most tragic fate I could imagine.”
Jane nodded noncommittally. Had it not been for her father’s insistence that the banns be posted so early, right after Lord Althorn had left for the army and never returned, she’d have been free to marry as she chose with the belief that Lord Althorn was dead. Of course, it had been a strategic move on her father’s part. Announcing the betrothal had given him entree into the society that he craved. The connection to a dukedom had elevated his status just as he’d hoped. And her reluctant marquess had been conveniently absent to protest.
She was forever trapped and her own father had done that to her with his obsessive greed for a title. As it was, her grace was undoubtedly correct. With Althorn simply vanished, and no word of where he might be, dead or alive, there was no path open to her to move forward other than spinsterhood. Not that she wished for one, she reminded herself. Marriage was a fantasy best saved for pretty young girls with no notion of how cruel and unfeeling men could be. She was simply biding her time until her next birthday and the small settlement her grandfather had left for her would allow her to finally escape her father.
The duchess sipped her sherry. “Perhaps by next season we might slide ever so slightly into half-mourning? Perhaps dip our toes in the water by adding some lavender or lilac touches to these drab widow’s weeds, no? We could still go to some parties, just nothing too grand or gay. Surely, no one would frown upon that after so many years?”
The door opened and the butler entered, pausing with his toes directly even with the door. “The honorable Mr. Charles Balfour, your grace,” he intoned with all the gravitas of one announcing the Prince Regent himself.
Charles entered immediately after him, his dark hair dusted with snow and a too-bright smile on his lips. He might have been handsome had his nose been a tad shorter and less hawkish, and had there not been a coldness about him that even the brightest of smiles could not truly hide.
“Well this is a pleasant surprise! I had not realized you had come to visit, Miss Barrett!”
The sentiment was offered with a false warmth that always made Jane uneasy. While a small part of her was flattered by his attention, her discomfort far outweighed it. Lovely compliments from a tainted source certainly lost some of their luster.
“Mr. Balfour,” she said, inclining her head. Being in his company grated on her nerves. “I cannot imagine how you would find it surprising. We are here for two weeks following Christmas every year, are we not?”
He laughed, though there was an ugly gleam in his eyes at her slight rebuke. “What a wit you are, Miss Barrett! I find it quite difficult to equate the shy little girl you once were to the beautiful and witty woman before me. I daresay, you have come into full blossom.”
“My father is closeted in the library with the duke. I have no doubt their conversation would prove much more edifying to you than the humdrum gossip that her grace and I are indulging in,” she suggested gently.
His smile stretched into what could only be described as a predatory grin. “On the contrary! I’d much prefer to stay here. And if your conversation may be lacking in edification, I will still have a far superior panorama to console me, will I not? I daresay, the two loveliest ladies in all of London are before me!”
“Only in London?” the duchess questioned. “Surely in all of England at the very least!”
The door opened again and, once more, the butler stepped inside, toes even with the doorframe and his posture completely stiff. “Dinner is served, your grace,” he intoned, dry as the dust that was never permitted to settle anywhere in the house.
The Duchess of Elsingham nodded in acknowledgement and then looked to Mr. Balfour for his escort.
Charles smiled again, this time with a predatory quality. “Forgive me, your grace, but if I may… I’d like a private word with Miss Barrett before going in to dinner.”
The Missing Marquess of Althorn (The Lost Lords Book 3) Page 2
