He turned his head, as though something in the housemaster’s book-cluttered study had caught his attention. In fact, Miles Lacewood’s frank stare at his mask unsettled Lucius. He sought to shield himself from it as he would have shielded his injured eye from the sun’s relentless glare.
“You are completing your final term here,” he continued. “I understand you would like to join your father’s old regiment once your schooling is finished.”
“The Twenty-Ninth Light Dragoons, sir.” In his eagerness, the boy seemed to forget both his surprise over his sister’s sudden engagement, and his wariness of Lord Daventry. “If only I could persuade Uncle Bulwick to buy me a commission. He’s set on my going into the city, though.”
Miles Lacewood wrinkled his well-shaped nose as if he could smell the drainage ditches of London’s East End.
Lucius wished the lad did not remind him so forcefully of himself in his younger years. “While you’d rather be off in India, riding, playing polo and pigsticking?”
“I know there’s a sight more to it than that, sir.” The boy’s whole face radiated enthusiasm for the soldiering life, just the same. “My father was killed at Laswaree when I was four years old. I still remember how splendid he looked in his uniform and how he used to hoist me up onto this saddle for a ride.”
Lucius envied the boy’s memories of his father. “I sympathize with your eagerness to follow in his footsteps. Growing up, I felt the same way about my father.”
Something compelled him to add, “You know, if our fathers had lived, I believe they might have encouraged us to pursue other paths in life.”
How many officers’ widows, desperate to sanctify their loss, had primed their sons to take up arms as they grew to manhood? Lucius wondered.
His own, certainly. Mrs. Lacewood, too?
“It wouldn’t matter.” The boy shook his head. “Soldiering is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“In that case—” Lucius quenched a pang of guilt over what he was about to propose “—I am willing to purchase a commission for you, if you wish it.”
“No!”
The boy’s abrupt turnabout from his earlier show of eagerness caught Lucius by surprise. “Didn’t you just say…?”
“I said I wanted to join my father’s old regiment.” The longing for it ached in Miles Lacewood’s candid brown eyes, which reminded Lucius too much of Angela’s. “I didn’t say I would sell my sister for a commission.”
“Sell your…?” Lucius fancied he could feel the slap of leather against his cheek. “That remark shows a decided want of delicacy, young man!”
“Delicate or not, that’s why Angela agreed to marry you, isn’t it?” The boy took a step toward Lucius, obviously afraid but refusing to be intimidated. “So you would do this for me?”
Lucius swung about to meet the lad’s indignant glare. His pride smarted at the suggestion that no woman would marry him except to gain advantage of fortune, though he had insisted the same thing to himself time and again. Had it been a futile attempt to toughen himself against the day he would hear the indictment from someone else?
“You credit your sister’s concern for your welfare, my boy, but you underestimate both her good sense and her integrity.” Lucius found himself grateful to Angela for making what he was about to say true.
“Whatever her private reasons for accepting my proposal, she refused my offer to buy you a commission. I insisted. Though if you’d prefer to work as a glorified clerk in some airless little office in the city, be my guest.”
“No!” Miles Lacewood cried for the second time in a very few minutes. This time a pleading note had replaced his earlier indignation. “Perhaps I was too hasty. I did not want Angela obligated to you on my account. If you had a sister, I believe you would understand, my lord.”
“I do understand. The attitude does you credit, my boy.” Lucius had seen too many men eager to sacrifice the happiness of their sisters or daughters for their own advantage.
“If you care for Angela and she for you, then I am grateful enough that you have made her an honorable proposal.” The boy flashed a frank, good-natured smile and held out his hand to Lucius. “I’ve always secretly hankered to have a brother.”
So had he. Yet Lucius found himself hesitant to grasp Miles Lacewood’s hand. He could not help feeling it would confirm all those innocent falsehoods the boy seemed anxious to believe.
He did not care for Angela Lacewood, no matter how much she had preoccupied his thoughts in the past twenty-four hours. Neither did the young lady care for him, in spite of her charitable offer to suffer another of his kisses as a means to convince the earl of their mutual devotion. He hadn’t made Miss Lacewood the kind of honorable proposal her brother believed.
She would never have accepted him if he had.
This was not a convenient time for an attack of scruples, Lucius decided as he forced himself to shake hands with Miles Lacewood. “Then let us sit down and talk some more about this commission business.”
The boy considered for a moment. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to talk.”
Lucius Daventry recognized a tone of surrender when he heard it. So far his campaign was progressing according to plan, with one slight but troublesome exception—his inconvenient fascination with Angela Lacewood.
If he was not very careful in future, Lucius feared his beautiful fiancée might begin to wield an undesirable influence over him.
For the first time in years of frequent visits to Helmhurst, Angela found her senses on heightened alert. She scanned the wide gallery, vigilant for any half-opened door or someone lurking behind a piece of statuary. She listened for the faintest footstep or squeaking door hinge behind her.
What foolishness! she chided herself. In the middle of a bright morning, with golden spring sunshine pouring through the tall windows that lined the outer wall of the gallery, she was in no danger of encountering Lucius Daventry.
Just because he had ventured out in daylight yesterday did not mean his lordship meant to break from his customary habits altogether. In the three years since he’d returned home from the war, she had only glimpsed him from a distance once or twice.
All the time she’d been paying her visits to the earl, Lord Daventry had been somewhere on the floor above in a shuttered and curtained room, enjoying his daytime slumber. He was probably asleep upstairs at this very moment.
The thought of it lulled her apprehension of meeting him again so soon after their awkward parting of the previous night. Yet at the same time it stirred a potent awareness of his presence in the house, as well as an unseemly curiosity.
Did his lordship sleep in a nightshirt? Or did he sprawl naked beneath the bedclothes, wrapped in the subtle but provocative musk of sleep? While Angela made her way toward the earl’s library, her imagination hovered over the slumbering form of Lord Lucifer.
“There you are at last, my dear!” cried the earl when she stepped into the room. “I was beginning to fear you’d had second thoughts about marrying my grandson, and had deserted me as a result.”
“Never!” Angela protested. “I overslept this morning, that’s all.”
After a night tossing and turning with second, third and fourth thoughts about the wisdom of accepting Lord Daventry’s offer. Only the fear that backing out so soon would make it too awkward to visit Helmhurst had decided her to proceed with their unorthodox engagement.
“What shall we do today?” she asked brightly, hoping to distract the earl from any further talk of Lord Daventry. “Read? Play chess? Shall I write a letter for you?”
“No, no,