Her voice was not merely genteel and well modulated, it was unmistakably of the upper classes. What on earth was a lady, a respectable young widow, doing acting as shopkeeper in a seaside resort, guarded by her miniature police spy and her formidable assistant? Lucian was conscious that the puzzle was doing nothing to dampen his very definite arousal.
How long had it been since he had been with a woman? Not since the beginning of this nightmare with Marguerite, he realised. Almost six months...a long time for him. Ever since he had been an adult he had been in a discreet relationship of some kind, sometimes simply brief affaires...more recently longer-term arrangements with a mistress. Lucian was naturally wary either of compromising his partners or of exposing himself to emotional entanglements. He was conscious of what was due to his name and his position and the reputation that his father had acquired as a womaniser did nothing to recommend a more flamboyant way of life to him. Finding himself responsible for a sister was an added incentive for discretion and the thought of next Season, when he had resolved to find himself a suitable young lady to court and marry, was another reason against setting up a new mistress. He had no intention of being an unfaithful husband.
But six months... No wonder the thought of taking a mistress was appealing. And pretty widows were often game for a brief liaison, ideal for a situation where his stay here was inevitably limited. But not, it seemed, this widow, who gave him the uneasy feeling that she was a mind reader and had no intention of reaching the end of the chapter as far as he was concerned.
Mrs Harcourt was almost out of sight now, still walking slowly, talking as she went to the lad beside her whose head was tipped to one side so he could look up at her. For some reason the slow pace seemed uncharacteristic—he could imagine her in rapid motion, swift, swirling, dangerous.
Dangerous? He really needed to get a grip on his fantasies.
* * *
That man had come out of the hotel and was watching her, she could feel it, even though she did not make the mistake of looking back. Sara kept her pace slow: let him look, she was not going to scuttle away like a nervous maiden and reveal how much he unnerved her.
‘Just drop that at the shop, there’s a good boy, and ask Dot for tuppence,’ she said to Tim as he shifted the big basket from one hand to the other. She kept going past Aphrodite’s Seashell and went into the third establishment she came to, Makepeace’s Circulating Library and Emporium, the town’s only library.
‘Good morning, Mr Makepeace.’
James Makepeace was sitting behind the counter, making up an order for one of the page boys at the hotel to take down for a visitor. He stood up, bowed from the neck and sat down again. ‘How may I assist you, Mrs Harcourt?’ He knew perfectly well who she really was, all the town did, but he kept her two identities, the shop and her social life, scrupulously separate like everyone else.
‘I wanted to consult the Peerage, if it is available, Mr Makepeace.’
If the library had been empty, which rarely happened during opening hours, he would stammer out Sara and she would call him James and he would blush rather shyly, his ears turning red, and offer her a cup of tea, which was as far as his notions of courtship dared go.
Sara did not encourage him beyond friendship, it would not be fair. She liked him very well, although not in any romantic sense. Besides, she had one marriage to a sweet, unworldly man behind her and she knew that it took a special kind of gentleman not to be dominated by her direct approach to life. The librarian was a friend, and always an amiable one, and that was quite enough for her.
‘It is on the usual shelf upstairs, Mrs Harcourt. Please let me know if I can be of further help.’
She murmured her thanks and climbed the short flight of stairs to the reading room with its panoramic view of the bay, one of its main attractions for those who were not bookish. Several people were out on the balcony in the sunshine using the telescope, two elderly gentlemen were engaged in a politely vicious dispute over the possession of The Times newspaper and a pair of young ladies came through from the lending section clutching a pile of what looked suspiciously like sensation novels.
Sara found the familiar thick red volume of the Peerage and settled down at a table. She had been out for less than a year before she married and she and Michael had moved immediately to Cambridge for him to take up his new post at one of the colleges. It was perfectly possible that she had missed seeing any number of members of the ton, including Mr Dunton, especially as her family had come to England from India only shortly before the Season began.
If I were going to take a false name I would keep it as close to my real one as possible so I would react to it without hesitation, she thought. Mr Dunton was about twenty-eight or nine, she guessed. His card gave his initials only, L. J., but Marguerite had called him Lucian quite naturally, so that was a start. She would begin with the Marquesses and work down the hierarchy because she was certain she knew all the dukes, at least by sight.
There was always the possibility that he was the heir to a title, which would slow the search down, but she was certain he was not a younger son. That gentleman had been born with a silver spoon, if not an entire table setting, firmly stuck in his mouth. Two pages...she turned the third and struck gold. There it was.
Lucian John Dunton Avery, third Marquess of Cannock, born 1790. Only sibling Marguerite
Antonia, born 1800. Seat, Cullington Park, Hampshire.
She closed the book with a satisfied thump of the thick pages which made the elderly gentlemen look over and glower. She smiled sweetly at them and they went back to their newspapers.
So why was the Marquess staying at the hotel incognito? There was nothing unfashionable or shocking about taking a seaside holiday in the summer and a good half of the ton did just that, although this was a quiet resort and not a magnet for society’s high-fliers like Brighton to the east or Weymouth, for the more sedate of the ton, to the west.
He was hardly outrunning his creditors and if there had been a great scandal involving him she must have noticed it in the papers, however little interest she took in society gossip. Or her mother would have written about it in the fat weekly letters that covered everything from the latest crim. con. scandals to the more obscure lectures at the Royal Society.
So the anonymity must be because of his sister and, as there was no shame in being unwell and a large proportion of the visitors were invalids or convalescent, there must be a scandal to be hidden, poor girl. She would need handling with even more sensitivity if that were the case.
Sara slid the Peerage back in its place on the shelf and went downstairs.
‘You found what you wanted, Mrs Harcourt?’
She was so preoccupied that James’s question made her jump. ‘Hmm? Oh, yes, thank you.’
‘Will you be at the Rooms tonight? It is a ball night.’ Despite being shy James Makepeace loved to dance and the Assembly Rooms’ programme always included two ball nights every week during the summer season. When she nodded he asked, ‘Will you save me a set, Mrs Harcourt?’
‘Of course. The very first.’ Even with the Assembly Rooms’ rather limited orchestra it was a pleasure to dance. She had missed that almost more than anything during her long year of mourning. At least the very serious and straight-faced Marquess-in-disguise was unlikely to indulge in anything quite so frivolous as a seaside assembly dance.
* * *
Lucian was in half a mind to order a sedan chair for Marguerite to take her up the hill to Aphrodite’s Seashell, amused to see that the resort still provided them. But when he suggested it she laughed, actually laughed, and he was so delighted that he could not bear to put a frown back on her face by insisting.
She had been so bitterly sad and angry—with him, of course. This was all his fault, according to Marguerite. Not that bas—All the spirit, all the