‘How old was he?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘Not such an age gap and not at all unusual, if he waited until she was eighteen.’
‘But he didn’t, did he? He lured the girl into believing herself in love with him instead of doing the honourable thing and waiting, keeping his distance, until she was out. I should add that he is probably the most beautiful young man I have ever seen—blond hair, blue eyes, Classical profile and so on and so forth. Even Mary admitted it gave her palpitations just to look at him. When I get my hands on him he is not going to look so pretty, believe me.’
‘You refused him permission, I assume.’
‘Of course I did. She was far too young, he had no prospects and no money beyond the salary I paid him. How did he think he was going to support the daughter of a marquess in the manner she was accustomed to? By sponging off me, I suppose.’
‘Perhaps she would have been happy to live more modestly?’ Sara ventured. ‘And if he is a good private secretary he might have hoped for a career in a government office or the Bank of England.’
‘That is academic. I refused him and warned him that if I ever discovered him alone with my sister, or writing to her, I would break his neck. I should have booted him out there and then, but his father the Rector was an old friend of my father’s, a decent man, and I hoped to keep this from him. Then I had to deal with Marguerite. I was an unfeeling brute, I had ruined her life, cast dishonourable aspersions on the motives of the man she loved, et cetera, et cetera... She threw an inkwell at my head and refused to talk to me.’
‘Go on.’ Sara poured more tea and Lucian realised he had drained his cup.
‘I had no idea that he had gone behind my back, but Farnsworth must have set out to seduce her almost immediately, if he hadn’t already. I worked it out when I eventually found her and talked to the doctor who told me how far along the pregnancy was. Two months after I forbade the match Mary came to me in strong hysterics, waving a note from Marguerite. I had forced her to take desperate measures, she said, so they had eloped and would be halfway to Scotland before I read the note.’
Sara’s gaze was fixed on his face. ‘Did they make it to Scotland?’
‘It was a bluff.’ Lucian blanked out that nightmare journey to the Border and back from his mind with the same concentration that he had applied to stay sane, to keep thinking and find their trail. ‘He took her to Belgium, to Brussels, thinking that they would find an English cleric there to marry them. They did find one. When I finally got on their track and found him he told me he had refused point blank, guessing that she was so much underage. It seems they then decided to try in Paris. Since Waterloo the Continent is full of English visitors and it was a reasonable assumption that they’d find someone, if not at one of the Anglican churches in the cities, then a private chaplain or tutor accompanying tourists.
‘They finally located a cleric, in Lyons. Their money was running out and Marguerite was six months pregnant. Farnsworth left her in a lodging house, telling her that he was going to interview the clergyman. He never came back. You may imagine the state she was in when I found her three days later.’
‘I can guess at it.’ He was so lost in the black misery of that time that he almost jumped when Sara put her hand over his. ‘And you must have been beside yourself with worry and exhaustion if you’d been chasing them the length of England and back and then across Belgium and France.’
‘Me? What I felt did not matter. I found my sister, my little sister, having a miscarriage in a run-down French lodging house with a landlady threatening to throw her out if she didn’t get paid. There was no hope of saving the child and for days I thought we would lose Marguerite as well. Even when the doctor said she was out of danger she simply turned her face to the wall. All she would say was, “He must be dead. They are both dead. I want to die, too.”’
Marguerite was all the family he had and he loved her and he had failed her.
‘And you have been looking after her ever since. How long?’
‘Three months.’
‘Is your mother alive? Are there no female relatives to help? Your cousin Mary?’ Sara’s warm hand was still over his, her fingers firm and comforting.
I do not need comforting. I am a man, I should be able to cope with this. It was surely a sign of weakness that he couldn’t bring himself to draw his hand away.
‘My mother is dead and I do not trust our aunts to know how to help her—they would be shocked and disapproving. Mary was in hysterics, it was all I could do to get her to be silent about it. Of course, I should have married as soon as I inherited. If I had found the right wife then she would have seen what I did not, but I had put that off, believing I had ample time.’ Another failure on his part, the selfish reluctance to plunge into the Marriage Mart, try and sift through the seemingly identical mass of pastel-clad, simpering misses to find the perfect Marchioness.
‘I thought it best to take Marguerite where no one would know her and gossip about her looks and her low spirits. Then, when she’s stronger, she can come out next Season, find a husband. If there is someone she takes to, then I will make certain her dowry will be large enough to ensure he doesn’t think about her past.’
‘But she will still be mourning Gregory,’ Sara protested. ‘She will not be ready to think about another man by then.’
‘He seduced, deceived and deserted her. Once she recovers from the miscarriage she will realise what a fortunate escape she has had.’
‘Idiot!’ Sara pushed away his hand abruptly and got to her feet. ‘I hardly know your sister, but I can tell she is no fool. And she is loyal. She has had to keep her feelings entirely to herself with no one to talk things through with, so how do you expect her to realise if she was mistaken? Or how could she convince you, for that matter, if she was not wrong about him? If she truly does love him, then you will have to find out what happened to him so she can begin to heal.’
‘If I thought he was still alive I’d be on his heels with a pistol, believe me.’ Lucian found he was on his feet, too, toe to toe with the maddening woman on the narrow balcony.
‘Oh, that would be very helpful!’ Sara prodded him painfully in the sternum with one long finger. ‘How do you expect her to cope if her brother kills the man she loves?’ She jabbed him again. ‘And it is not for her, is it? All this sound and fury is because of your honour. You believe you did not protect her. You failed as a self-appointed watchdog, so now you have to restore your own self-esteem, whatever the cost.’
‘I did fail to protect her and it was my duty to do so. And stop prodding me.’ He caught her hand in his just before the nail made contact for the third time.
‘Why? You deserve to be hit over the head with the tea tray, you and every other muddle-headed, bloodthirsty, honour-obsessed man.’
And then he realised that she was not simply angry, she was on the verge of tears. They gathered shimmering in her eyes, making them look like two great moonstones. With an impatient gesture she dragged the back of her free hand across them and Lucian pulled her towards him, against his chest, and wrapped both arms around her. ‘Don’t cry, I’m sorry, don’t cry, Sara.’ He was not sure what he was apologising for, but he felt sick, as though he had struck her.
She stamped on his foot, pushed against him. ‘Let me go! I am not crying, I never cry. I am angry.’
He released her warily and reached into a pocket for a handkerchief, aware it would probably be thrust back into his face. And, finally, his brain started working, started piecing clues together. ‘How did your husband die?’
‘In a duel. A pointless, stupid duel with his best friend who is somewhere out there—’ she waved a hand vaguely