‘But so quickly,’ Marcus protested. ‘You didn’t even pretend to consider it—which is not the proper way to refuse a business proposition.’
‘I never pretend, sir,’ and oh, dear what a lie that was, since her whole life, and even her name, was a pretence. ‘You have had my answer. Pray allow Jessie to escort you to the door.’
‘Without even the offer of a cup of coffee,’ he said sadly. ‘That’s no way to treat a guest, madame.’
‘You are not my guest,’ she flashed back at him. ‘You come here uninvited, force your way in—’
‘True,’ he said, still sad. ‘But how else may I speak with you, tell me that?’
His smile was so wicked, his eyes mocked at her so gently, that Louise felt as though she had begun to melt internally. She had never experienced such a sensation before. No, he was not handsome, but he was better than that—he must be to have such an effect on her. She licked her lips, and saw his expression change when she did so—and wondered why.
Louise was inexperienced in the arts of love because she had never been subjected to anything other than the acts of frustrated lust. She had no notion of what might attract or rouse a man. Marcus, watching her, was, to his surprise, sure that she was truly innocent, and that the signs of fear which she occasionally showed were genuine.
He was suddenly ashamed. He had been teasing her after the fashion in which he teased Sophia and the Two Neds, but where that had been innocent and playful this could be construed as malicious. More so when he could see her quivering lip and her trembling hand.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I should not be doing this, I did not mean to frighten you. I ought to go.’ And he began to turn away from her, to leave by the door by which the little maid had earlier left.
He was going! She would be alone again. Fearful though she was, Louise found that she did not want that. Beyond the fear of him which Marcus had briefly seen lay something else.
She was so lonely. All her life she had been alone. The only bright stars in it had been her guardian and later Athene Filmer and she had lost both of them. If he left her now, to whom would she speak this day? To the housekeeper, the little maid and later, perhaps, tradesmen, shop-girls, and barely them.
‘No,’ she said, the words almost wrenched from her, ‘don’t go. You…I…standing there you tower over me—pray sit down.’
Now what had caused that, Marcus wondered? There was even the faintest hint of a smile on her face, a tremulous one. Was he seeing the first breach in her defensive wall?
He said, as lightly as he could, ‘Oh, I am not so tall that I could be called a tower, but you are such a dear little thing that I can see I might appear to be if not a tower, a turret.’ And he pulled out a chair and sat opposite to her at table.
Yes, he had provoked a proper, if rueful, smile by his last remark. Emboldened by it, he asked, rather after the manner of a small boy seeking a favour, ‘Would your kindness extend to offering me a cup of what smells like excellent coffee? I was so anxious to meet you again that I skipped breakfast.’
Oh, he was impossible! How in the world had he managed to persuade her into not only allowing him to stay, but also to sit there, smiling, as though his proper place was in this room with her as though they had just risen from bed and were being Darby and Joan together.
What was worse was that she was now getting into the spirit of this disgraceful game he was playing with her. She rose, opened the breakfront cabinet which stood behind her and which contained a fine array of good china, took a cup and saucer from it, and poured him his coffee. She pushed it, the jug of cream and the sugar bowl across the table at him.
‘My thanks,’ he said, and drank the coffee slowly and appreciatively. He looked at her over the top of the cup, and said, now grave, all his former teasing mode gone, ‘You must believe me when I tell you that I am going to these lengths because I need to meet you in order to woo you, and you must know how difficult that is going to be—’
‘To woo me?’ Louise threw at him again. ‘To woo me into accepting a proposal to be your mistress is more commonly known as seduction. Have you no respect for virtue?’
Marcus put down his empty cup. ‘We could have a useful debate about what virtue consists of—’
‘No, we could not. We both know perfectly well what it is. Your behaviour, sir, is abominable—’
‘Unlike the coffee,’ he interjected, still grave.
‘Oh, yes, you are impossible. Since you obviously think of me as fair game, why have I allowed you to remain, why?’
‘Because,’ he said, fixing her with his eyes, ‘I believe that you are as attracted to me as I am to you—is not that so? Believe me that if I made you my belle amie I would treat you with the same love and care as if you were my wife—nay, with more love and care than most of my fellows treat their wives. It is not because of your lesser rank that I do not ask you to marry me, it is because I have no intention of ever marrying. With the exception of one, most marriages seem to me to be shams—and I cannot hope that mine would be different from the common run. Accept my offer, I promise to be faithful to you, and do my best to make you happy.’
What he was saying had the ring of truth in it. For what had her marriage with Sywell been but a ghastly travesty of what marriage ought to be? More, she knew how hollow most marriages were. But, and it was a big but, she had a sense of herself, despite all that she had been compelled to do to save herself, as a woman of honour. If virtue and a desire to be honest were all that were left to her, then she must cling to them.
‘I believe you,’ she said slowly. ‘I deem you to be a man of your word, but it is not enough.’
‘There is nothing I could say that would change your mind?’
‘I can think of nothing.’
He leaned across the table and took her hand. ‘I cannot let you go. I need to meet you again, to try to convince you otherwise—’
She shook her head at him.
‘No? Not even to meet you as a friend?’ What he said next was wrung from him without warning, spontaneously, he could never previously have imagined himself saying such a thing. ‘Félice I am a lonely man, and have been so from childhood. If I promised not to badger you or to follow you—’
‘Or to have me followed,’ she put in.
Marcus bowed his head. ‘Yes, forgive me for that, but I was desperate. If I kept my promise to behave myself, could we meet occasionally? If only to talk.’
‘How can I believe that you would not—’ she began and then, ‘But how could we meet? Either in private or in public?’
‘Not in society, that is true, but occasionally I could walk with you, or drive you where we are not known.’
‘In secret,’ Louise said bitterly, thinking that all her life had been one long secret.
‘Not entirely,’ he told her. ‘If you were willing to be a little devious I could be your cousin who has just discovered your whereabouts after many years.’
‘M’lord Angmering’s unknown cousin?’ queried Louise. Her smile was a strange one.
‘By no means. I shall be Mr Marks, and we shall be discreetly friendly—if you will permit, that is. Mr Marks’s means will be modest—as well as his style.’
Louise gained the distinct impression that M’lord was enjoying himself. He reminded her of a small boy who had been given a new toy. The fear she had felt for him ebbed away a little.
‘I should not be listening to you,’ she said. ‘But—’ and she hesitated.
‘But you are,’ he returned eagerly. ‘Think with what pleasure we can meet—simply to converse, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Louise her tone sardonic. ‘So long as you remember that, m’lord, we shall do well together.’
‘Mr Marks,’ he corrected her. ‘I am to be Mr Marks—you will find our adventure easier since you will retain your name.’
‘So long as I retain my honour,’ she said, but she was smiling while she said it.
‘I promise tha
t Mr Marks will behave himself rather better than Lord Angmering has done. Now inform me that Mr Marks will be allowed to take Madame Félice for a short drive this afternoon—not in M’lord’s curricle, but in the Hackney cab in which he will call on you at two of the clock. Reassure your little maid that when he next calls he will behave like a perfect gentleman. In the meantime you may pour me another cup of coffee.’
‘Alas, it has grown cold, but perhaps, later this afternoon, when we return from our drive, you will take tea with me.’
Marcus rose and bowed. ‘M’lord Angmering will take leave of you, Madame Félice, until this afternoon—when Mr Marks will call on you.’
I must be mad, thought Louise, trembling a little from she knew not what, to allow him any rope at all, any chance for him to start his nonsense with me again. Why in the world have I given way?
She was not being honest with herself and she knew it. She had given way because she had, for once, allowed her heart to overrule her head. She had done so, however, fully aware of the most supreme irony of all: that Marcus Angmering should pretend to be her cousin when he was, in truth, her cousin—even if only a distant one!
Louise was hugging this delightful thought to herself when she walked into the kitchen where the housekeeper and the little maid were in urgent conversation—about her strange visitor, no doubt. She really had no need to explain herself, but thought that it might be politic to do so if Marcus was going to come a-visiting.
‘It turns out,’ she said after some discussion of what her dinner might consist of, ‘that the gentleman who visited me today is my long-lost cousin.’ And that was no lie, was it? ‘Mr Marks, who has had the good fortune to discover my whereabouts. He will doubtless be calling again.’
If the two women facing her thought that this was the biggest Banbury tale they had ever heard, they offered her no outward and visible sign of their disbelief.
‘So that is why he gave me a half-sovereign!’ exclaimed the little maid.
‘Probably,’ said Louise, gratified that she had extricated herself from yet another difficult situation—and hoping that she would not have to do so again… Up to now her life had seemed to consist of one difficult situation after another, and today’s was only the latest. She had to hope that her luck, which had held good so far, would not suddenly desert her.
Chapter Three
M arcus Angmering was thinking that luck was with him. Madame Félice’s sudden decision to allow him to visit her was promising, to say the least. There was a determination about her, though, which warned him that she would not lightly surrender to his advances. She had received his first overtures with disdain, even though it was plain that she had been attracted to him.
He arrived back at Berkeley Square after his drive with her where he had behaved himself perfectly, to discover that his father had had an unexpected visitor. It was Jackson, whom he met on the point of leaving the house.
‘You were looking for me?’ he asked a little puzzled.
‘Not exactly,’ Jackson said. ‘I came to see your father in order to clear up some points relating to the Marquis of Sywell’s murder. Now that I have seen you, however, I would be grateful if you would agree to speak to me about it.’
Marcus raised his eyebrows. ‘Seeing that I was in Northumberland at the time of his murder, I scarcely imagine that I can have anything to tell you which you would find of the slightest use.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Jackson persisted, ‘it is possible that you are aware of something which means little to you, but which would assist me.’
‘In that case,’ said Marcus, ‘go ahead, although I warn you that you might be wasting your time.’
‘Oh, I’m willing to risk that,’ Jackson said cheerfully as Marcus ushered him into the drawing-room.
‘Now, m’lord,’ he began. ‘I understand that at times you visited Jaffrey House when the Marquis was living at Steepwood. Did you ever meet him, and more importantly, did you ever, by chance, meet, or have occasion to see, his wife?’
Marcus shook his head. ‘I was warned by my father to avoid him as much as possible. True, on the very few occasions on which I visited Jaffrey House I occasionally saw Sywell at a distance. Of his life at Steepwood I knew nothing, except for those rumours of which I am sure you have heard.’
Jackson nodded his head thoughtfully. ‘As I expected. But his wife, the young Marchioness, did you ever see her? Have you any notion of what she looked like? The thing is, what I find very strange is that no one confesses to having seen much of her at all. If you could remember anything of which you might have heard of—or seen yourself—it would help me.’
Marcus shook his head again. He could hardly tell Jackson that he hated his rare visits to his father and had kept himself to himself as much as possible on them. He thought that might be the end of the interview but Jackson had yet another question for him.
‘I understood from one person to whom I spoke that the Marchioness was reputed to be a great friend of Miss Athene Filmer who married an acquaintance of yours. Miss Filmer has given us a description of her which might fit anyone. Now Miss Filmer appears to have had few friends, and I wondered whether you ever saw her with the Marchioness, either when they were children together—or later.’
‘I can’t exactly remember,’ said Marcus, cudgelling his brains. He tried to recall walking in the woods at Steepwood on his visits there. Something fluttered at the edge of his memory. Yes, when he was only a lad of fourteen he had stayed at Jaffrey House for a brief time, and once, when he had been out walking he had come across a young girl who might have been Athene Filmer. She had had another, smaller, girl with her who had tripped while larking around a pond and had cut her knee.
He had stopped and used his handkerchief to clean and bandage the knee and…she had limped off…the flash of memory ended. Except that there had been something about the child which it was important that he should recall. But all that he could remember was that she had had a pretty voice, and so he told Jackson.
‘Fairish hair,’ he said slowly. ‘It was years ago, well before I went to university, that I saw Athene Filmer in the woods at Steepwood with another little girl who had fairish hair, and striking eyes. I suppose that it’s possible that she might have been the child who later became the Marchioness. Miss Filmer did say once that she had known her briefly in youth. I can say, however, that I never saw anyone who might be the Marchioness after her marriage to Sywell, because at that time I rarely visited Steepwood.’
What was it about the child’s eyes? And what else had briefly intrigued him? He still couldn’t remember—it remained on the edge of his mind.
Jackson nodded. ‘Fits,’ he said briefly. ‘I was told that by several who thought that they might have seen her, but that describes too many young women, don’t it? It’s not particular in any way. And Miss Filmer you said. It’s true she hadn’t many friends, but one of them is that woman in Bond Street who makes the Quality’s dresses.’
‘Madame Félice!’ exclaimed Marcus. ‘She’s Athene’s friend! How did she come to know her?’
‘Exactly,’ said Jackson. ‘She, the Filmer woman, I suppose that I ought to call her Cameron now, claims that she knows nothing of where the Marchioness might be—not that I’m after believing her. She’s a fly young woman.’
‘True,’ said Marcus, smiling. ‘But it’s a big jump from that to suppose that she knows where Sywell’s missing wife went when she disappeared.’ All the same he was intrigued, and wondered what Jackson would come out with next.
What the man did was to change tack disconcertingly—a favourite trick of his.
‘Of course, you know all about your Pa’s feud with Sywell, I suppose.’
‘Everyone who met him feuded with Sywell,’ said Marcus dryly.
‘So I’m told. But the more I learn about him the more I learn about the Yardley connection with him. That duel all those years ago, the one where Sywell shot and killed the then Earl—a rum do, that. Burneck�
�s evidence proved that it was a put-up job. Sywell murdered your distant relative and got Steepwood Abbey through it in consequence—not your Pa. It was lost to the Yardleys, apparently permanently.’
Ah, so Jackson was suggesting a motive for his father murdering Sywell, was he? That since Burneck’s evidence of Sywell’s villainy came after Sywell’s death, his father might have disposed of him in an effort to regain the Abbey.
‘Now, that cock won’t fight,’ said Marcus coldly. ‘The Abbey is worth very little—quite the contrary. Now that my father has recovered it, as a consequence of the fact that Burneck revealed that Sywell gained it fraudulently and murdered my cousin into the bargain, it’s going to take thousands to restore. No one but a fool would have murdered the man simply to get it back again.’
‘Aye, and your pa ain’t a fool,’ agreed Jackson. ‘I’ll grant you that. A pity we have to run anyone in for topping such a regular out-and-outer as Sywell was—but justice must be done, you know. We can’t have people running around killing Marquises and getting away with it.’
‘Agreed,’ smiled Marcus, ‘to your first proposition, but not the second—seeing that the law couldn’t top Sywell we should be grateful to the man who did. Gave us all a bad name, didn’t he?’
Jackson nodded. ‘You might say that. Thank you for your time, m’lord—most helpful.’ He turned for the door.
‘Think nothing of it,’ said Marcus to his back as cheerfully as he could, but happy to see him go. He was a little premature, for Jackson swung round as he pushed the door open, and said, ‘Oh, and by the by, if you can remember anything more about what Miss Filmer’s friend—who might have been Sywell’s lady—looked like, pass the news on to me if you would. You know where to find me. I’d dearly like to question her, so I would.’
Marcus stared at the closed door. Now, what was all that about? And Madame Félice, how did she arrive in the conversation? What’s her connection with the Steepwood mystery—other than that she was Athene Filmer’s friend? And that was something Jackson didn’t see fit to tell me when I engaged him to investigate her.
The Missing Marchioness (Mills & Boon Historical) Page 5
