Harlequin Historical September 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Read online

  The response was, once again, stunned silence.

  ‘I’ll leave it up to you to decide which of you will propose first,’ said Gem, pushing himself off the desk and making for the door.

  Nobody made a move to stop him, though all three swivelled on the spot, like clockwork toys, to watch him leave.

  He might be unable to move, or speak, but Ben’s heart was pounding. Pounding as hard as it had the night he’d danced with her.

  If only he could marry her. It would be like a dream come true.

  But he couldn’t. He had nothing to offer any woman, let alone a beauty like Daisy. She was so...perfect. With her golden hair, and her blue eyes, and her perfect little nose, and her luscious, petal-soft lips that made his mouth water...

  His hand half rose to his own mouth, which had never been his best feature, even before Salamanca. Now, with the scarring on his cheek, it stretched even further, giving him an almost permanent sneer.

  But even if he wasn’t so dashed ugly to look at, he wasn’t the sort of man her parents hoped she’d marry. Because she wasn’t just beautiful, she was titled and wealthy, too. They’d expect her to make a brilliant match. And he had nothing of substance to offer, except his heart, which she already possessed without having the slightest suspicion. Because he didn’t want her to feel sorry for him. Which she would, the tender-hearted creature, if she ever got wind of how he felt about her.

  But now Gem was...giving him permission...nay, encouraging him to...

  He shook his head. It would never work. Apart from his unsuitability, his unworthiness, there was the far more practical matter of the likelihood that he’d never be able to get the words out. He only had to think how tongue-tied he’d been the night he’d asked her to dance. Hah! He hadn’t even managed that.

  He’d asked Gem if he would permit him to dance with his sister, and Gem had been the one to lead him over to where she’d been standing and pretty much ordered her to take pity on him. Which she had done. At least, she hadn’t looked at him with any more exasperation than she’d looked at any other dance partner she’d had that night. In fact, she’d smiled at him when he’d led her into the set. A smile that had felt like a blessing, since she hadn’t bestowed them on many of her partners. He’d felt favoured, and honoured, and so damned aroused every time he’d taken her little hand in his that he’d been worried she would notice the effect she was having, or that everyone else in the ballroom would.

  He’d had to think of cold baths, then sleeping outside in a snowstorm, and then marching across the Pyrenees in the dead of winter in order to regain control. By which time her smile had faded. And he’d been left with the sinking sensation that, once more, she’d slipped through his fingers...

  ‘Is there anything to drink in here?’ said Walter, looking around wildly before going to the far end of the library, where a few armchairs clustered round a small table, on which stood a decanter and a selection of glasses.

  Horace followed him.

  And Ben knew that he’d have to walk over there too. Or they might guess, from the way he was shaking, and gulping and, yes, sweating, that he felt as if he’d just been struck by a thunderbolt.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Marguerite couldn’t believe her ears. Gem thought he could set his friends on her, did he? And she’d be so grateful she’d tamely accept whichever of them deigned to propose? Well, she’d see about that. Just as soon as they left and she could climb down from the top shelf, she’d...

  There was the noise of the stopper being removed from a bottle and the clink of a glass. And then the scrape of a chair leg and the creak of leather as somebody sat down.

  Bother. They could settle in here for the lord knew how long, once they’d started on the brandy, which, of course, they’d found. Father made sure refreshments were available in any room his guests might wish to use.

  Even the library.

  ‘Does he expect us to draw straws for her, do you suppose?’

  That was the voice of Walter.

  ‘I don’t care what he expects.’ That was Horace. Hairy Horace. ‘I ain’t going to marry Daisy. Would rather take an icicle to bed.’

  What? Well, if he thought she’d ever get into bed with him, he was very much mistaken! She’d rather kiss a...an ape! Which was what he looked like. And acted like, most of the time.

  ‘She isn’t cold,’ said Ben, ‘she’s shy. That’s what Gem said, remember?’

  ‘Shy?’ Walter again. ‘She ain’t shy, she’s just damned unfriendly. Never has two words to say to me.’

  And why would she bother, when he was such a...slow top?

  ‘Even if I did screw myself up to the sticking point, she wouldn’t have me.’

  Well, that was the first remotely intelligent thing she’d ever heard Walter say.

  ‘Ah, but only consider the advantages,’ drawled Ben. ‘You’d know any child she did have would be of your own get, which is saying something these days.’

  Somehow that didn’t sound like a compliment. It didn’t sound as though he believed she’d be faithful to her vows, but as if no other man would look twice at her. But that was Ben for you. Cynical. Morose. Which was ironic, with that mouth of his that always looked as if it was on the point of smiling. But never did.

  ‘She’d never wear your ears out with all the infernal chatter some girls would,’ Ben continued, as though he was ticking the points off on his fingers, which he probably was, since it was an irritating habit of his. ‘She’s wealthy, and,’ he concluded, ‘you’d be part of the Patterdale family. Good connection, you can’t deny. And Gem would be your brother. Couldn’t ask for a better chap as a brother-in-law. No surprises, either. We’ve known them all for ever.’

  There was a grudging murmur of agreement.

  ‘Sounds as though you’d like to take a pop at her yourself,’ said Walter.

  ‘No!’

  Well, that was certainly heartfelt.

  ‘I think you should,’ Ben continued. ‘You’re the...well, the best of us, Walter.’

  ‘Dammit, Ben, that’s not true. You’re the highest ranking of us now that you’ve become an earl.’

  ‘Got to stop thinking of yourself as merely a younger son,’ said Horace, in that annoyingly knowing voice he often used when trying to make a point.

  ‘Rank doesn’t weigh with her,’ said Ben, ‘does it, though? Or she’d have had Lord Martlesham.’

  ‘I heard,’ said Horace, ‘that she couldn’t bring him up to scratch.’

  Ooh! How dared he? Though it was probably what everyone thought. Lord Martlesham wouldn’t want anyone to know she’d turned him down flat. He was too proud. And, coupled with the way her father had decided to remove her from London before she could embarrass him by humiliating any other decent, honourable men, he’d have a clear run at telling his side of the story.

  ‘And you’re a captain in the army,’ added Walter. ‘Girls love a man in a scarlet coat. Get your uniform on, Ben, old chap, and dazzle her!’

  ‘Leave him alone, Walter,’ said Horace. ‘He clearly don’t relish the challenge Gem has set us any more than we do.’

  Which shouldn’t hurt. After all, she didn’t care what either of the others thought. But Ben... Ben, surely, couldn’t dislike her this much? When she thought of all the hours she’d spent with him that summer when he’d broken his collar bone defending the ruined priory against, well, Roundheads, she rather thought it was that year. She lost track. If her brothers weren’t being Cavaliers and Roundheads, then it was Saracens and Crusaders, or Pirates and Customs men, with each brother’s friends choosing a tribe to which they’d belong, and waging warfare all over the estate for the duration of their summer break from school. She’d been so shocked when her brothers had just continued their campaign and abandoned Ben to his sick bed without a backward glance. Even more concerned when neither of his parents ha
d shown any inclination to come and take him home. He’d lain, day after day, on a sofa, gazing morosely out of the window, so she’d heard, while the rest of them had carried on whooping and braying up and down the corridors when it was wet, or fighting pitched battles through the woods and laying siege to the ruins when it was fine.

  Until the day she’d got permission from Mother to go and read to him, as long as she had a maid in attendance.

  Ben hadn’t thought much of the book she’d brought. And had appeared downright suspicious of her motives for visiting him every day. It had taken days to persuade him that, no, she hadn’t come to torment him while he was unable to defend himself by reading at him. That, on the contrary, she’d been attempting to help him get through a painful and lonely ordeal. What else, she’d asked in exasperation, could you do while stuck inside with only one working arm? He’d scowled at her for a few moments, shifting a bit as though trying to decide whether to take her words at face value. Eventually, he’d admitted he wouldn’t mind playing cards, in an offhand way that hadn’t deceived her. He would clearly enjoy playing cards. The trouble was, she had no idea how to play any of the games he suggested. He’d been astounded when she’d explained that her brothers never wanted to let her join in, and that even if they had, not one of her governesses had considered learning card games should form part of her curriculum.

  They’d both glanced stealthily at the maid, who’d been busy darning socks. And then Marguerite had leaned in, murmuring that she knew where she could lay her hands on a pack of cards, which she’d bring with her the next day.

  The maid hadn’t cared when Ben had started teaching her the rules of whist, and piquet, and vingt-et-un. And it had been interesting, more interesting than Marguerite had thought it would be, to learn the intricacies of those games. So that once she’d grasped the basic principles, she’d actually wanted to have a go at playing properly.

  He’d been at a distinct disadvantage, having only one hand he could use. Until she’d come up with the notion of using all the books he hadn’t wanted to listen to her reading to build a kind of screen behind which he could still lay all the cards out flat on the tabletop.

  She’d spent hours making allowances for his scowls and grumbles, because she’d known he was in pain and felt so wretched at being left out by his friends and abandoned by his parents. She’d started to think they’d become friends, and had gone out to wave him off at the end of summer when the boys had all gone back to their various homes and he to school. She’d actually looked forward to seeing him again when she’d heard he’d be coming to stay at Christmas, thinking they’d be able to resume their friendship. But instead of showing any inclination to spend time with her again, he’d avoided her like the plague. Flushed bright red and looked at the ground at her feet rather than her when he absolutely couldn’t get away with ignoring her altogether. Stuck closely to the pack surrounding Jasper and generally behaved as though he was thoroughly ashamed of having had to spend so much time the summer before in the presence of a mere girl.

  And it still smarted. But that was boys for you. Males. Selfish beasts, the lot of them!

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Horace, ‘why don’t we go and play at billiards while we try to come up with a way out of this?’

  ‘Why don’t we just draw straws,’ complained Walter, ‘and whoever gets the shortest...’

  ‘No. I ain’t leaving this to fate,’ said Horace firmly. ‘Let this game of billiards be the first of a few challenges between us. So that at least we stand a chance of working our way out of the obligation.’

  She heard the sound of glasses slamming down on the table and booted feet marching across the floor, and then the door opening and closing. She raised herself on one elbow and peeped over the parapet warily before making any attempt to emerge from her hiding place. And only when she could see that they’d definitely all gone did she clamber down the bookshelves, leave what should have been the safety of the library, and storm back up to her own room.

  She flung open the door, stepped inside and slammed it shut. Then opened it and slammed it once more to relieve her feelings.

  Marcie, her maid, who had been scrubbing the back of the armoire, looked up, her jaw dropping open.

  ‘Lor, my lady, never say those young varmints got you in the end? Not with you being so careful, and all?’

  Marcie was referring to her two younger brothers, Joshua and Julius, who had arranged a welcome home gift by filling her armoire with pigeons, no doubt hoping they’d all fly out when she opened the door and send her screaming around the room with them fluttering after her. Their trick had failed, for two reasons. Firstly, she had expected them to have laid some kind of trap, so she’d done a thorough inspection, using her parasol to sweep under the bed, in case they’d filled her chamber pot with frogs, and over the canopy in case they’d spread worms all over it, which would drop on her while she lay sleeping, later. She’d also yanked back the bedcovers in case they’d put snails in there, and all that only after pushing the door to her room open with the tip of her parasol in case they’d balanced a bucket of water on the lintel. The second reason their trick hadn’t worked the way they’d probably hoped it would was because they’d had to shut the door to the armoire to keep the pigeons cooped up. And, since it was dark inside, they’d all gone to sleep. It hadn’t been very hard to pick the sleepily cooing birds up, carry them to the window, and throw them outside. Unfortunately, in the meantime, the pigeons had done what pigeons do all over the clothing in the armoire, which was why poor Marcie had spent the last little while removing soiled clothing and then scrubbing down the shelves.

  ‘It wasn’t my younger brothers,’ said Marguerite. ‘It was Jasper.’

  ‘The oldest one? I thought you said he was too top-lofty to indulge in such pranks any longer.’

  Toplofty was exactly the way she’d described James when talking about him to Marcie when she’d first come to work for them. Once she’d started to see her as an ally. ‘No, Jasper isn’t the oldest one. That is James. Jasper is the next in line. But how did you know I’d had an encounter with one of my brothers?’

  ‘You look as if you’ve been sweeping a chimney, my lady,’ said Marcie. ‘Begging your pardon, but you might just as well have stayed here and helped me scrub out the cupboard.’

  Marguerite went over to the young woman, who’d been hired to help do housework in the Town house during her season, and had ended up becoming her personal maid, for a variety of reasons, and plucked a feather from her hair. ‘At least I haven’t ended up looking as though I have been fighting pigeons. This...’ she swept her hand down the length of her skirts, which she noticed for the first time bore the evidence of her scramble up the shelves, and her time lying in the dirt ‘...is merely dust, not soot.’

  ‘If you say so, my lady,’ said Marcie with the cheeky grin and irreverent attitude that had so endeared her to Marguerite.

  ‘And I am glad I did go down to the library,’ added Marguerite vehemently, ‘or I would never have discovered what Jasper is planning.’

  Did he really think she would tamely agree to marry whichever one of those...buffoons asked her to marry him? Who were even now playing billiards to see which one of them would end up with the onerous task of having to propose? Who’d rather take an icicle to bed?

  Icicle, was she? She’d show them icicle!

  ‘Marcie, have I anything white to wear for dinner this evening?’

  ‘Why, yes my lady. The things in your trunks are all clean still, and only want pressing.’

  ‘Then press me out the whitest gown you can find. Which I shall wear with the silver gauze overdress.’ And finish off with pearls, and crystal adornments, as many as she could cram into her hair and round her neck and up her arms. She’d positively glitter when she went down to dinner. And have frost running through her veins and steel in her backbone, to boot.

  CHAP
TER THREE

  Marguerite wasn’t surprised to find the long saloon where everyone gathered before dinner awash with her brothers and their friends. She’d seen the jumble of curricles and phaetons in the stable yard, the mounds of luggage piled in the hall, when she’d arrived earlier in the day.

  Neither was she surprised to find that the atmosphere was one of celebration. Everyone was jolly glad Father had cut her Season short so that they could get back to doing all the things they really enjoyed.

  James, who had recently become very conscious of his worth as heir to the Wattlesham estates, had invited only the two friends of his who were already lords to stay this summer. Marguerite was not the slightest bit impressed with either of them, even though they were both handsome, and so beautifully clothed that they could have walked out of a fashion plate. For she knew that not so long ago those arrogant, self-satisfied faces had been covered in pimples.

  During her time in London she’d witnessed several girls sighing over one of them, Lord Bowes, and comparing his features to those of a Greek god. It had made her want to roll her eyes, although of course she’d never succumbed to the temptation, since that would have been most unladylike behaviour. And not just because she could not sigh and simper over any male in that hen-witted fashion. No, it was because she had such vivid memories of the year he’d developed a spot on the very end of his nose, which had grown so big her younger brothers had started calling him Cherry.

  Jeremy’s friends, most of whom were now at university with him, were all going through the pimply phase right now. They hung together, as close as they could get to James and his friends, trying not to look as though they were listening to the conversation avidly, in the hope they could later emulate the self-assured phrases and mannerisms of the slightly older males.

  As for the youths who gathered round Joshua and Julius, they were all sniggering and nudging each other, clearly thinking up pranks they could play on the older brothers. Pranks that would involve ink, or pond water, or a variety of other materials that would spoil the elegant clothing and carefully styled hair of anyone they thought needed bringing down a peg or two.