‘Ah,’ she said, sighing a little, ‘but you must admit that your belles amies are light, else they would not be your belles amies. No virtuous woman would agree to such an arrangement. Lowly I may be, but virtuous I intend to remain, even though it might mean that I never marry.’
‘What is virtue worth,’ asked Marcus, smiling seductively, ‘if it prevents us from finding happiness?’
‘I would not be happy if I were your mistress, m’lord, and I would deem it a favour if you released my hand. I did not give you permission to take it.’
‘Certainly, but not before favouring it with yet another kiss.’
‘You are impudent, sir.’
‘Always when pursuing beauty,’ and he kissed her hand again before slowly releasing it. ‘I would not displease you by refusing such a reasonable request.’
‘Then pray oblige me by agreeing to another reasonable request from me—that you leave.’
‘Without placing an order for a shirt?’ he asked her, his face comically sad.
Louise could not help herself. She began to laugh, recovering herself sufficiently to splutter, ‘Lord Angmering, you are the outside of enough. Please, take your noble self and your unseemly offer away at once. There, is that enough to persuade you that I am serious in refusing even to consider what you obviously think to be a great honour: that I become your latest barque of frailty?’
‘So, your answer is no?’
‘No, no, and no again—did you expect anything else, m’lord?’
‘I hoped—what did I hope?’ Marcus was asking himself that question, not Louise. Faint heart, he thought, never won fair lady, and Marcus Angmering prided himself that his heart was not a faint one.
He leaned forward to look down into her beautiful eyes and tried not to drown in them. ‘I must inform you,’ he murmured confidentially, ‘that I have a most inconvenient habit. I never take no for an answer. No, I think, challenges me more than yes.’
Louise repressed a desire to laugh again. She had hoped that her repeated refusal might persuade him to leave. She had deliberately not mounted a high horse by taking a loud moral line, since he had not attempted to attack her physically in any way, unlike Sandiman and some others she had heard of. Other than by taking her hand and stroking and kissing it gently, that was.
‘Do I understand, m’lord, that you prefer a challenge? If so, let me persuade you that I am not prepared to enter a verbal jousting match with you over whether or not I shall become your current ladybird. Had you offered me marriage my answer might still have been no, seeing that our acquaintance has been so short.’
She ended by pulling out her little fob watch and staring at it before saying, her bright eyes flashing fire, ‘I calculate that our two meetings, taken together, have not lasted so much as half an hour—which must constitute some sort of achievement, seeing that it has included one improper proposal and two proper refusals. That being so, and seeing that I have a great deal of work awaiting me, I must, again, ask you to leave—and, nobleman though you are—that you will be gentleman enough to obey me.’
Marcus bowed. ‘Splendid, madame. I do believe that between us we could write a Drury Lane farce which would rival Sheridan—were we not both so busy I might suggest a collaboration. That fact alone persuades me to go, bearing in mind that “he who fights and runs away, will live to fight another day!”’
Louise could not resist murmuring back at him as he bowed his way out, ‘Oh, is that what we have been doing, m’lord, fighting?’
He turned towards her before he left and shook a finger at her, ‘Address me as Angmering, if you please, not m’lord: I can see that you are not yet ready for Marcus. I shall be back, soon.’
Louise sank on to one of the chairs provided for customers, and put a hand to her hot face.
No, I am not ready for this, or for him, nor will I ever be—I think. I thought that being Sywell’s wife would have affected me as cowpox is supposed to affect smallpox, as an inoculation against men—but no such thing. And what is the most surprising fact of all is that he bears no resemblance whatsoever to the handsome hero whom I used to dream about when I was poor little Louise Hanslope. The hero who would come to rescue me from penury and misery. He’s certainly not handsome—but he’s something better. He’s not a dandy either, simply a strong man who is full of confidence in himself.
But he shall not have me for his doxy unless I truly wish it, and I have no notion what my real feelings for him are—or might be.
But she was lying to herself, and knew it. The physical pull of him was so powerful that now he had gone she found herself shivering, and what did that tell her?
Something which she did not want to know.
Marcus could not truly read his own feelings either. He had not flattered himself that Madame Félice would succumb to him immediately, but he had been of the opinion that it might not be too difficult to win her.
He thought that no longer. There was steel there. By her appearance he might have thought her fragile. Fragile! Oh, she might look so, but she was actually as fragile as the Emperor Napoleon or one of his marshals. Send her to Spain, and Wellington would surely win his war there in short order!
On the other hand there was little pleasure in an easy conquest. His campaign to win her into his bed might be long, but it would be entertaining if this afternoon was anything to go by, and the prize he would gain at its end would be well worth winning.
To the victor the spoils—and now to return to his humdrum life again, to visit his old aunt, his mother’s sister, who had arrived in London for a short stay and had written to him to say that she particularly wished to see him.
What puzzled him was what she could possibly have to say to him. He remembered meeting her once, years before, and even then, when he was little more than a child, noticing that, unlike his mother, she was no beauty. He had heard that she was married to a Norfolk squire and had had a large family: his cousins, whom, for one reason or another, he had never met.
He discovered that she was still not a beauty, but, like his stepmother, had a face full of character. Her pleasure at meeting him was great and unaffected.
‘Oh, how much you resemble your father!’ she exclaimed when all the proprieties had been gone through, and they were seated together and he had accepted a glass of Madeira and some ratafia biscuits.
‘I always admired him, you know, and was sad when he offered for Danielle, and not me. On the other hand I was later relieved that he had not done so, for I should not have liked to go to India, so hot and nasty, and I could not have had a better husband than my dear Robert, God bless him.’
Robert Hallowes had died some years earlier and she had been living at the Dower House on the Hallowes estate near King’s Lynn. She spoke briefly of her life there, and asked Marcus about his in Northumberland.
‘I suppose you knew of, if you did not mix with, that dreadful man, Sywell. He was someone to avoid, you know. His reputation was bad from the first moment he burst into society, and believe me, burst was the right word! Your father grew to dislike him intensely and there were some rumours about him and Sywell both being interested in another young woman before he met Danielle and myself in our first season. Fortunately I was not the sort of youthful moneyed beauty Sywell was always pursuing.’
She gave a jolly laugh after saying this, and Marcus could scarcely believe that she was his mother’s sister, so unlike was she to her. She took a sip from her glass of Madeira before saying in a more serious voice, ‘I think that it is time that I spoke to you about the reason for my asking you to visit me. I have often thought that you ought to be told the truth about your parents’ marriage and when I heard from a friend that there had always been some