Sara simply had to shake out her skirts, Lucian had to wrestle with shirt tails and breeches and Sara’s attack of the giggles. ‘You look as disarrayed as Gregory did when I found them in the library.’
‘Your Mrs Farwell is about as terrifying as an enraged brother on the warpath,’ he grumbled, giving up on his neckcloth. He tied a rapid, plain knot and jammed the loose ends into his waistcoat.
‘Nonsense. She approves of you, she did right from the beginning. Mind you, it is probably the perfection of your profile and the width of your shoulders that she admires rather than your moral character.’ Lucian pretended to preen and they were both laughing when they opened the door and found Dot clearing the table.
‘You let your tea get cold,’ she said, fixing Lucian with a severe stare. He returned it with his best Marquess-on-his-dignity look and was rewarded with a twitch of the woman’s lips. Dot Farwell would have done well as the retainer who rode behind Caesar in his triumphal chariot, whispering, ‘Remember you are mortal...’ in his ear.
‘The word is spreading already,’ she reported. ‘It was all over the receiving office by the time I left. Hope you don’t mind, but that silly noggin Makepeace overheard me dictating the message and I put him in his place by telling him about his lordship here. And Lady Wharton is having vapours because her daughter danced with you, my lord, all unknowing that you were a marquess and if only she had worn her primrose silk you would have been so smitten you would have fallen for her and not Mrs Harcourt.’
‘Am I in everyone’s black books for not announcing who I really was?’ Lucian enquired. For himself he couldn’t care less, but he did not want to make Sara the target for jealousy on top of the gossip.
‘Only with Lady Wharton and no one takes any notice of her, what with all her airs and graces despite her husband being knighted for all the money he made in boot blacking,’ Dot announced with snobbery equal to any dowager duchess. ‘And that Mr Winstanley at the hotel is wringing his hands because he put you in the second-best suite and now he doesn’t know whether to move all your things before you get back or wait and grovel all over you and see what you think of the best rooms.’
‘It is a perfectly adequate suite that I am in. I suppose I had better go down and reassure him before he is too distracted to pay any attention to all his other guests.’ This was the last time he went anywhere incognito. Marguerite was always reading romances with dukes in masks and princelings of improbable European principalities roaming around in disguise and winning the hearts of poor but virtuous maidens before revealing their true selves. He had tried it and Sara had him spotted as a marquess within hours and everyone else was in far more of a taking about it than if they had known from the start.
He looked at her and saw to his relief that the colour was back in her cheeks and her eyes were bright. His conscience was troubling him over dragging her about the country on one long journey after another, but that glorious bout of lovemaking had restored her. As for him, he was fully prepared to do it all over again now. Perhaps the hire of one of the hotel’s bathing machines and a chilly swim was in order.
The door opened and three ladies came in, all hardly able to disguise their excitement.
‘Mrs Harcourt, I will leave you now, I am sure you must have much to do. Perhaps you would give me the pleasure of dining with me tonight at the hotel?’ He kept his tone formal.
‘Certainly, thank you.’ She was just as proper as he in her response. ‘It is ball night at the Rooms and I would appreciate your escort, Lord Cannock.’
‘Delighted.’ He bowed, the ladies sighed gustily and Lucian took himself off down the hill, amused despite himself. At least this was likely to do wonders for the profits at Aphrodite’s Seashell because all of the curious ladies would have to buy something to justify their snooping.
Conscious of Sara’s reputation, Lucian ordered dinner to be served in the hotel’s dining room, not in his suite. Mr Winstanley assured him that the chef was giving it his most personal attention, sent up four different menus for approval and a request to decide between the best table in the room in the bay window or the discretion of the screened corner. As Lucian had no intention of appearing to have anything to hide, that was an easy choice, but he nearly lost all patience when offered the choice between roses and a mixed floral arrangement for the table. Could his lordship tell him the colour of Lady Sara’s evening gown so they could co-ordinate the flowers, perhaps? No, his lordship had no idea.
His lordship, if truth be known, would rather like to dine with Lady Sara wearing no clothes at all and with a menu consisting of oysters and strawberries and cream. An afternoon swim, which apparently was quite outside the normal hours for such activity, although he was assured that the tide was perfect, had done little to cool his physical need for her. In fact, he suspected that the exercise had merely sharpened it.
Sara arrived, was ushered into the dining room with huge ceremony, which from the unusually serious expression on her face was making her want to laugh. She did chuckle quietly when they were finally left alone at their window table to drink their soup.
‘Was it very bad?’ she asked sympathetically.
‘I was about to ask you the same thing. Remind me, when I am complaining about the work involved when we hold our first ball, that it cannot be as bad as this. I escaped eventually and went for a swim.’
‘This afternoon? My goodness, you must have thrown the entire town into a tizzy. I am amazed no one came to tell me. No one, but no one, swims in the afternoon.’
‘I will start a fashion in that case. It certainly cost me a pretty penny—double the usual rate and I had to pay for a dipper whose services I entirely dispensed with.’
Sara was wide-eyed. ‘You mean you really did swim? You didn’t just lurk under the awning of the bathing machine and duck yourself? Oh, my, every telescope in the town must have been trained on you.’
‘Certainly I swam. Out and around the point into the next bay.’ He gave her a significant look which made her blush deliciously. ‘I find I have a great deal of surplus energy to get rid of.’
‘I wish I could have swum with you,’ she murmured. ‘There are some coves along the coast where no one goes because the paths down are steep. If the weather is fine tomorrow—’
She broke off suddenly, the colour draining from her face as she stared out of the window at the promenade, lit by the hotel’s lights and a string of lanterns swaying in the light breeze.
‘Sara? What is it? You look as though you have seen a ghost.’ Lucian twisted in his seat, trying to see what she had seen, but all there was to be seen was the cavalcade of beach donkeys being led back to their stable, a gig drawn by a single horse vanishing into the distance and a few strolling couples.
‘I...’ She made a visible effort to compose herself. ‘I think I probably did. See a ghost, that is.’ Her laugh was utterly unconvincing.
‘A ghost? You mean your husband?’ Had their betrothal stirred up memories and feelings she had buried?
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, not Michael. Not the ghost of anyone dead, at least, I hope not. It was nothing.’ She stared at the salt cellar as though it held some vital significance, then took a deep breath and shook her head. ‘I am not going to be brave and independent about this. That would be foolish. Now we are betrothed I should tell you what worries me, share with you as I hope you would with me if something was wrong.’
Despite her words she stayed silent, not meeting his eyes. Lucian waited, forcing himself to patience until Sara took a shuddering breath and spoke. ‘I thought someone was watching the house last night when we arrived. It was a fleeting impression and I put it down to being half-asleep.