* * *
Lucian watched Sara’s progress to the terrace steps and then into the house and wondered at the emotion stirring in his chest. She should have looked amusing, her skirts bedraggled and clinging to her legs, muddy water dripping, her hair in rats’ tails. And yet he felt no temptation to laugh, only to smile. The feeling, the warmth in his chest, must be affection, he supposed, although it was very different from the affection he felt for his sister.
Lord, but he had made a fool of himself, making that proposal as though it were nothing more important than an offer to take her for a drive in the park—and one made on the spur of the moment, at that.
He had misjudged the moment, her emotions and, he supposed, his own. But, strangely, it did not make him any less determined to try again. Sara had been pleased that he had found some humour in the situation, he realised as he got to his feet and grimaced at the state of his breeches and his Hessians. She must have thought him very dour and intense all the time she had known him and he suspected that humour was important to her.
Lucian made his way round to the garden door and found an old settle to sit on while he pried off his sodden boots and stockings before he sullied the polished floors. He was met by the butler in the hallway who ushered him upstairs with the air of a man to whom half-drowned marquesses dripping on the marble were an everyday occurrence. Lucian managed to keep the straight face that his dignity was obviously supposed to require until he was inside his room and then gave way to mirth.
Lord knows what I’m laughing about, he thought as he began to wrestle with the knot of his neckcloth. My sister isn’t out of the woods by a long chalk and when she is I’ve got to find some way of advancing Farnsworth’s career. I have just made a complete fool of myself in front of a highly select company who will doubtless spread the tale all round town as soon as they can get pen to paper. I’ve thrown my perfectly rational plan for finding a wife out of the window and I have made a pig’s ear of a proposal to my mistress. Who, at the moment, is not my mistress but my host’s daughter.
‘My lord?’ Charles, the footman who had been delegated to act as his valet, came out of the dressing room, his arms full of towels. Pitkin, his real valet who was enjoying a much-deserved holiday in Sandbay, would have simply ignored his master’s behaviour, but this young man was obviously uncertain.
Lucian grinned at him and threw his arms wide, an invitation to view the wreckage.
The footman’s lips twitched. ‘Your...your bath is ready, my lord. I will consult with Mr Rathbone, his lordship’s man, and seek his advice on restoring your boots and garments.’
‘Thank you, but do not spend too much effort on them, I fear they are beyond redemption.’
‘Mr Rathbone works miracles,’ the young footman assured Lucian in awed tones, almost setting him off again. His host’s valet was obviously far more awe-inspiring than any marquess, especially a sodden one.
He dismissed Charles, stripped, and wallowed in hot, pine-scented water and thought. When was the last time he had laughed out loud? Not a laugh at some single joke, but uninhibitedly at something ridiculous, at himself. Laughed for the joy of it, because he was happy.
But what had he to be happy about here? Marguerite’s situation was still to untangle, his dignity was in tatters, his proposal of marriage had been rejected. There was no prospect of lovemaking until they left Eldonstone. And yet... It was Sara, of course. She made him happy and even when she was angry with him his heart lifted at the sight of her, at the sound of her voice. He enjoyed her courage and her common sense and her intelligence and her passionate defence of Marguerite and Gregory. She made love like an angel. A wicked angel, he corrected. And...
The thought trailed away unfinished, leaving him staring at the picture hanging on the wall opposite. A still life of exotic fruit and foliage was absolutely no help in focusing his disordered thoughts. And... And I love her?
I love Sara? No, impossible. Love, from what he had heard of it, involved a great deal of mooning about sighing, the urge to write poetry to the lady’s eyebrows and an inability to focus on anything but the beloved object and her perfections.
There was nothing, from what he had ever heard, about brooding on the beloved object’s imperfections and she certainly had those. Sara was independent to a fault, argumentative, worryingly apt to produce weapons when thwarted and had no hesitation in telling him that she disagreed with him on the subject of masculine honour and a man’s responsibilities to his womenfolk.
And she had made a love match before, had felt her husband had been a friend. Lucian scrubbed his back and tried to fit that kind of relationship into his model of a ton marriage. It did not fit, however much he twisted and turned it.
So why did he want to marry her? Because he desired her? But they were already lovers. Because she was so good to Marguerite? But they could remain friends whether sisters-in-law or not.
He slid right under the water and came up again with a sudden flash of insight. He felt alive when he was with Sara in a way he did in no other company, or his own, come to that. She made him feel happy.
Lucian climbed out of the bath and began to towel his back, then, swathed toga-style in a pair of large bath sheets, strolled into the bedchamber to find Charles laying out evening wear.
‘What do you think about happiness, Charles?’
‘My lord?’ The young man eyed him warily. Nobs were obviously not expected to come out with questions like that, but he answered readily enough. ‘I’m all for it, my lord.’
‘So what makes you happy, Charles? Not just cheerful for the moment, but happy.’
Charles pondered while he smoothed out a shirt. ‘Having a good place, like this, where they’re fair and there’s opportunities. And being with my girl.’ He shot Lucian a sideways glance, obviously assessing his views of staff ‘walking out’. ‘If I make second footman then we could get married, because she’s head dairymaid now and I reckon her ladyship will let us have one of the little sets of rooms over the dairy. Anyway, I’m happy when I’m with Miriam. And going home to see my old mum and her being proud of me, like she is. Plain black silk stockings, my lord? Or the ones with the stripe in them?’
‘Oh, striped, I think. Let us be frivolous today, Charles.’
* * *
Sara was in the drawing room before dinner, in the midst of a group of the younger guests, when Lucian came down looking immaculate and not at all like a man who had been pitched into a muddy lake. He took a chair opposite her and smiled when the other men chaffed him about his misadventure.
‘Most inelegant, I know. The word will get around town and I’ll be cut by all the swells,’ he said easily. ‘I trust you not to spread the word, gentlemen, or I’ll be lampooned in the press as the Marquess of Duckweed.’
‘You’re a good sport to take it like that, Cannock,’ Lord Tothill remarked. ‘Me, I would have been contemplating putting an end to my existence.’
‘Oh, I was utterly cast down for a while,’ Lucian agreed. ‘Actually fingering the edge of my razor. But then I had a most uplifting conversation about happiness with my temporary valet, a young man named Charles, and now I am positively cheerful about the whole thing. After all, I have the satisfaction of making you gentlemen all feel superior, of entertaining the ladies and of having the opportunity of holding Lady Sara in my arms for minutes on end.’
‘That,