Christmas Betrothals

Chapter Nine

A riding expedition seemed to be the entertainment for the next afternoon and as a keen horsewoman Lillian was looking forward to the freedom of racing across the Kentish countryside, though the eastern sky was draped in black billowing cloud.

Lucas Clairmont was again distant; he had tipped his hat as he had passed her, making his way to his horse, but he neither stopped in conversation nor offered to help her mount. John on the other hand was all attentive vigilance and her heart sank. Lucas Clairmont was due to return to America at the end of December, and would not return for many a long, long year, if ever. She was running out of time, the month of December almost upon them, and her father’s demands of a Christmas engagement beginning to look more and more worrying.

Pulling her cloak around her neck to make the fur collar sit up, she ordered the horse on. A sorrel mare, it was neither fancy nor plain and its disposition as far as she could tell was pleasant. A horse much like the man who rode beside her, seeing to her every whim.

Caroline Shelby’s mount trotted between St Auburn and Luc, her laughter returning on the eddy of wind to the rear of the pack. Three other couples completed the group, the Pagets conspicuous by their absence; Lillian presumed them to have packed their things and left. She sighed, hoping her father would not meet the odious man at his club and hear the story of her defence of Mr Clairmont as only he would probably see it. She seldom made enemies of people and the fact that she had worried her.

‘Lady St Auburn has not joined us this morning.’

John’s tone was puzzled.

‘Perhaps she will later,’ Lillian ventured, though she, too, had been surprised by Cassandra’s absence. In fact, if she thought about it, she was also surprised by the closeness of the relationship between the St Auburns and Luc Clairmont. Nathaniel had said that he had been to see him in Virginia. Had Cassandra gone as well? Tonight she would make certain that she asked Cassie of the details and ask her also as to the size of any land Lucas Clairmont owned.

If only he were … what? she ventured. Rich? Well liked? Connected to the right people? Her musings took on a shallowness that she would have thought abhorrent in others. Yet she could not pursue a man whose very presence aroused such strong condemnation in those about him.

The strictures and codes that applied to everyday social life were after all there for a reason and the protection that they afforded was comforting. Even John’s own layer of conventionality heartened her, for at least she could control him.

Luc Clairmont would be raw and ungovernable. The words made her wonder. He would not be repelled by a few false sneezes as John had been last night or distracted along any lines that she might favour. He would not be cajoled or dominated or managed. She remembered his kisses and her own unrestrained reaction to them and breathed in hard.

No. No. No.

Safety lay in correct behaviour, just as ruin lurked in the narrow margins of error and she would do very well to remember it. Sighing loudly, she tipped her head to the sky and decided that his entrancement with the Shelby heiress was probably for the best, though another feeling lingering beneath propriety wanted to scratch the woman’s eyes out. Oh, she was beautiful, there was no doubt about that. But she was also more than forward, a girl who would eye up her quarry and go for it, and here her quarry was definitely Lucas Clairmont.

The clap of thunder came as they wound their way into a meadow almost at the edge of the St Auburn land, and everybody reined in their horses. Everyone, that is, except for Caroline Shelby, whose mount bolted towards a copse some few hundred yards away. Her screams this time were truly alarming, the timbre of them sending Lillian’s own heels against the flank of her steed in pursuit.

Luc Clairmont, however, was in front of her already, his stallion galloping down upon the smaller mare and catching up with each long stride.

‘Keep your head down,’ he called to the terrified girl, ‘and hold on.’

Caroline Shelby, however, seemed frozen solid, her gait unsteady and swaying. Another few yards and she would be off and if the stirrup wrapped about her boot was not freed she would also be dragged.

‘Get your boots out of the stirrups,’ Luc was now yelling. ‘Or you will be unseated and caught.’

‘I ca … aaa … aan’t.’ At least some advice seemed to be getting through even though she chose to ignore it, lying across her horse in a position that suggested pure and frozen terror.

Luc was at her side, leaning down wide from his own horse in a way that made Lillian’s heart flutter. Goodness, if he were to fall in this position he would be under the hooves of both mounts and the jagged upstanding stones that scattered the field were not helping his cause either.

She shouted to him to be careful, sheer muscle and strength now keeping him in his seat, his centre of gravity so tilted as he tried unsuccessfully to rein in Lady Shelby’s horse.

Freeing his feet from his stirrups as the edge of the copse bore down upon them, in a daring leap of faith he jumped from his horse to the other and grabbed on the reins, the bridle pulling at the horse’s mouth and bringing its head back in a jerk.

The leafy green branches of the first oaks swiped him as he stopped, Caroline Shelby’s crying now at a fever pitch as she clung to him, arms entwined about his neck as though she would never let him go.

Lillian drew her own horse up a second or so later and slid off.

‘Are you hurt, Lady Shelby?’ she asked anxiously, and caught the golden glance of Luc Clairmont.

‘Not as badly as I am,’ he drawled and extricated himself from the woman’s grasp, jumping down from the horse. Touching a bloodied cheek he smiled, but after the fear of the last few moments any humour was lost on Lillian. She almost lifted her riding crop and hit him.

‘Hurt? You could have been killed!’ She made no attempt at all to curb her shout. ‘You could have fallen and broken your head open on the stones or been trampled by the hooves of these frightened horses.’

Caroline Shelby’s cornflower-blue eyes were now upon her, her terrified shrieks silenced. Gracious, Lillian thought, I have become exactly like her with such an outpouring of words. She clamped her mouth shut and turned away, bringing her whip down against a tree branch, liking the way the brown leaves fell at the action.

She was shaking, she felt it first in her hands and then in her stomach and as she took another step in the direction of her horse, a light-headed strangeness suddenly overcame her, a dry-mouthed fear that was overwhelming. Then the ground was swallowed by blackness and she could not stop her fall.

Luc caught her as she staggered the last few paces, her soft smallness easy to lift, her pale hair undone from its tight chignon as her hat fell to the ground. Her hair tumbled silver across his chest as he placed her gently on the grass.

‘Lilly. Lilly.’ He tapped her cheek and was rewarded by her eyes opening, shadow-bruised in uncertainty as she tried to sit up.

‘Stay still. You fainted.’

‘I … never … faint,’ she returned, though a frown deepened as she realised that indeed she just had. ‘It was your foolishness that made me …’

‘I’m not hurt.’

Her thumb reached up to touch the blood on his cheek. He turned into the contact.

‘From the branches,’ he qualified, ‘and just a scratch.’

Sweat marked her upper lip now and made her skin clammy. God, he could see Wilcox-Rice bearing down and he did not look happy. Behind him came the Hammonds. Nat was last and Luc could have sworn he had a smile on his face.

‘I wanted to tell you that I felt something, too.’ Her words were softly whispered, just before John claimed her and Lady Hammond bent to his side.

The kiss. She spoke of that? He knew she did. The words on the card he had sent said the same thing. Caroline Shelby stood behind him now, looking at them strangely, gratitude mixed with shock. Had she heard? Would she say? He made much of picking his hat up and wiping it against his riding breeches.

‘It seems the world is full of damsels in distress today,’ he quipped and stepped away, hating to leave Lilly behind him with a fear of everything in her ashen face and pale eyes.

Everybody fussed over her, made her comfortable, tucked in her blankets and fluffed her pillows. Aunt Jean, Lady Hammond and Caroline Shelby. Even Cassandra St Auburn with her red hair floating about her face, and looking the picture of glowing good health. Why had she not joined her guests and could she get her alone for five minutes to ask the questions that she wanted to?

Lillian was glad in a way for this bed, glad to be sequestered in a room far away from the chance of meeting Lucas Clairmont again after her last whispered and most unwise remark.

‘I wanted to tell you that I felt something, too.’

What had she been thinking? She shut her eyes against the horror of it all and Aunt Jean’s voice was worried as she shook her arm.

‘Are you feeling poorly again, my dear? Should I send for your father?’ Her query was accompanied by a hacking cough that made Lillian draw the sheet further over her face for fear of catching it.

‘No, I am perfectly all right, Aunt.’ And perfectly stupid, she added beneath her breath.

Could she just stay hidden, pleading some illness that was inexplicable? But how then could she journey home? Gracious, if she had been in London this would have been a whole lot easier, but she was here at a country house an hour’s drive away and in close proximity to a man to whom her reaction gave her a lot to be concerned over.

She could not trust herself, she decided, doom spreading at the conclusion.

She was now a feckless and insubstantial woman who did not trust her own mind and whose opinion was forever yo-yoing between this idea and that one.

To love him!

To love him not!

A man can smile and smile and be a villain!

Lucas had said so as he had spoken of his own shadows and mirrors and alluded that she might have her secrets too. Well, she did, and it was a secret that she could never tell anybody.

She … loved … him.

And she had done from the very first second of laying her eyes upon him outside the retiring room at the Lenningtons’ ball. Loved a man with a smile in his eyes and a voice that held the promise of every single thing that she was not.

Brave. Free. Wild. Untethered.

And today with the chance of death dogging his bravery she had recognised it, her very heart pierced with the impossibility.

‘Oh, Lord God, help me, please …’

The prayer circled in her head, another petition to smite from her soul the horrible recognition of what was there.

Cassie St Auburn now sat on a chair near her bed, all the other women gone for the moment, and yet in her newly found revelation she did not dare to ask anything about Lucas Clairmont. What if he was a villain? What if he truly did inhabit the underworld of crime and gambling? What if she as a friend who knew him well warned her off?

‘I am glad to see you better, Cassandra,’ she began, at least filling the silence with something.

‘Oh, I am only ever sick at mid-day. After that I am always much recovered.’

Lillian could not quite get the gist of her illness.

‘I am pregnant,’ Cassandra St Auburn laughed. ‘Already halfway along.’

A great surge of envy overcame puzzlement. Cassie had a husband who loved her and was now awaiting her first child. With her smiles and happiness she had a life that Lillian suddenly felt was very far from her own. A solitary quiet life, her father’s daughter, and burdened with a stalwart code of behaviour that was beginning to look faintly ludicrous and infinitely lonely.

‘Lord Wilcox-Rice has been asking after you almost hourly,’ Cassie continued, ‘though I have made it clear to him that you need your rest.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Nat also had the doctor look at Mr Clairmont’s injuries, but apart from a torn nail and a cut that has needed to be stitched across his cheek he is in fine form. He also asked after your health.’

‘He did?’ She tried to keep the interest from her question, but knew that she had not succeeded.

‘Indeed. He felt somehow responsible for your faint.’

Lillian nodded and looked away. ‘I thought that he might have been killed.’

‘Nathaniel says that Lucas is a man who can easily look after himself.’

‘I do not doubt it.’

‘The wound on his cheek makes him look even more unruly than he normally does.’

‘But it is not deemed dangerous to his health?’ Lillian hated the tremor of worry in her words and hoped Cassie would not detect it.

‘I doubt the doctor could have made Lucas stay in bed to rest even had the injury been worse.’

‘I believe Mr Clairmont will be returning to America at the end of December? Has he already arranged passage?’ Goodness, and she had promised herself that she would find out nothing, but Cassandra stood and looked at the time on a clock by the bedside table.

‘I must not wear you out as the doctor asked for quiet and I think it might be wise for you to sleep.’

When she was gone Lillian wondered about her quick exit. Her hostess had not wished to answer any questions about Lucas Clairmont, that much she could glean. Why ever not? Were the St Auburns in on some sort of ruse? The headache she had been pretending for the past hour suddenly became real and she closed her eyes against the growing pain.

Caroline Shelby waylaid Luc in the drawing room after dinner and he wished he had left the salon when the other men had. She looked rather excited, her colour high and her eyes bright.

‘I would like to thank you again for your help, Mr Clairmont.’

As she had already thanked him numerous times he held his counsel and waited.

‘I would also like to ask you a question.’ She looked around to make certain that there was no one behind her, eavesdropping. When she saw the coast was clear she continued, albeit a little more softly. ‘I would like to ask you of the relationship between you and Lillian Davenport?’

‘Miss Davenport?’A hammer swung against the beat of his heart. She had heard Lilly’s words and everything was dangerous. Fury leaked into caution and into that came the obvious need for sense.

‘I stopped her falling when she fainted. Something I would have done for any woman.’

‘Any woman?’ Lady Shelby looked relieved. ‘So there are no special feelings between you?’

‘There are not. I barely know her.’

‘Then would I be remiss to ask you if you might accompany me home on the morrow? I need to be back in London and would appreciate an escort.’

‘Of course,’ Luc answered. ‘I would be delighted.’

When she had left he poured himself a large cold drink of water.

Nat found him forty minutes later sitting watching the night through the opened curtains.

‘You are not in bed?’

‘I am leaving with Caroline Shelby first thing in the morning.’

‘A change of plans, then?’

‘The woman came right out and implied I had feelings for Lilly Davenport.’

‘Lilly?’

‘And I haven’t.’

‘Of course not.’

‘I would ruin her.’

‘Lord, Luc. Sometimes I think that you are too hard on yourself and Virginia is far from here.’

‘It is my home, the only one I have known.’

‘Only because you refused to ever come back.’

‘No.’ Anger was infused in the word. Real anger. ‘You do not understand …’

‘And God only knows how I wish I could, but you will not let me in! There is something you are not telling me, and if there is one person in the world who owes you a favour you are looking right at him. After Eton …’

‘None of it was your fault, Nat.’

‘It was me who stole the watch, remember, and you who took the blame.’ This confession was said with such a sense of doom that Luc began to laugh.

‘Lord, Nathaniel, it was your damn watch in the first place and the master had no right in taking it.’

‘Still, it was not one of my finest moments and I always regretted such a lapse in courage.’

‘You just wanted your property back and I was desperate to be gone. Each of us gained what we hoped for. You know that.’

‘If you had stayed in England, I could have helped you.’

‘Getting expelled from Eton saved me, because with my mother and father out of the country, I had a chance to escape them and become my own man.’

‘You were fourteen.’

‘Going on twenty.’ Luc took another sip of the water in his glass. ‘And you and Hawk were the only damn friends that I ever had there.’

‘Not much of a friend, I fear. Look at Paget bringing up the past like it was yesterday.’

‘He is a man who still has much of the boy in him.’

‘And there is the trouble of it all, Luc. People here are long on memory and short on forgiveness and without a family name to shelter behind you are open game. If we came back to town and you moved in with us …’

‘I think it wiser to keep a distance, Nat.’

‘Because of your intelligence work? You said it was over and finished. You said that you no longer worked for the army in any capacity.’

‘I don’t, but there are remnants of other things that don’t so easily fade.’

The moon suddenly came out from behind the clouds and through the open curtains the landscape around this tiny corner of Kent was bathed in light. Touching the newly stitched scar on his cheek, Luc stood and downed the last of his drink. ‘You’re a family man now, Nat, with the promise of a child come the summer. Concentrate on those things, aye.’

On the silver lawn an owl swooped, its talons catching a field mouse in full flight, taking it up into the sky, a small and struggling prey that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Like himself as a youngster, Luc thought, and unlatched the ties so that the curtains fell across the scene in a single heavy tumble of burgundy velvet.

Chapter Ten

‘There is some evil afoot, Lillian,’ her father said quietly as she lifted the first of the Christmas garlands into place around the hearth in the blue salon. ‘Lord Paget has been found dead at his house this morning.’

Lillian fastened the bough of pine before turning, trying to give herself some sense of time.

‘But he was with us at the weekend at the St Auburns.’

‘Which brings me to the very reason that I mention it. Some are saying that his death is suspicious for there was an argument, it seems, between him and Clairmont. The American has been taken in for questioning.’

‘But Mr Clairmont did not cause the argument, Father, he tried to stop it.’

‘Oh, well, no doubt the constabulary will get to the bottom of what happened and it’s hardly our problem. From all accounts the man is a renegade and why he continues to frequent the soirées of the ton eludes me. I for one would not give him the time of day.’ Standing beside her, he put his hand up to the greenery. ‘That looks lovely—will you place one on the other side too?’

Lillian nodded, though the Christmas spirit had quite gone out of her as she thought back to the weekend.

Luc Clairmont had already left when she had finally risen on the Sunday morning, accompanying Lady Caroline Shelby back to London! He had not stayed to find out more about her hastily whispered promise of feeling ‘something’ and had not tried to contact her since.

Could he have murdered the man? For an insult? Her whole world was turning upside down and she had no way of stopping it doing so.

The pile of decorations she had had the maid bring down from the attic lay before her, a job she usually enjoyed, but now … She looked over at the tin soldiers and varnished collages, the paper cornucopias all waiting to be filled and the hand-dipped candles that she had so lovingly fashioned last year. A pile of gay Christmas cards lay further afield and the dolls she used every Yuletide in the nativity scene beneath the tree were neatly packed in another box. All waiting!

When a maid came to say that there was a caller and gave her the card of Caroline Shelby, she was almost relieved to be able to put off the effort of it all.

‘Please show her up,’ she instructed the girl and Lady Shelby appeared less than a scant moment later.

‘Miss Davenport! I am so sorry to intrude, but I have come on a matter of a most delicate sort.’

Gesturing for the newcomer to sit, Lillian took the chair opposite and waited for her to begin. ‘It’s just I do not know what to do and you are so sensible and seem to know just exactly what next step to take about everything.’

Lillian smiled through surprise and felt a lot older than the young and emotional girl opposite.

‘The thing is that I have found myself becoming increasingly attracted to Mr Lucas Clairmont from Virginia and I came because I heard you talking to him when you were recovering after your faint.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Of everything Caroline Shelby might have said this was the most unforeseen, and she hoped her own rush of emotion was not staining her face.

‘At the St Auburns’. I heard you say that you felt something for him.’

Lillian made herself smile, the danger in the girl’s announcement very alarming. ‘Perhaps you have made an error, Lady Shelby, for I am about to be engaged to Lord Wilcox-Rice.’

The woman looked uncertain. ‘I had not heard that.’

‘Probably because you were too busy fabricating untruths,’ she returned. ‘John and I have been promised to each other for the past three weeks and my father has given us his blessing.’

Caroline Shelby stood, placing her bag across the crook of her arm. ‘Oh, well then, I shall say no more about any of it and ask most sincerely for your pardon of my conduct. I would also ask you, in the light of all that has been revealed, to keep the words spoken between us private. I should not wish any others to know.’

‘Of course not.’

She rang the bell and the maid came immediately.

‘I bid you good afternoon, Lady Shelby.’ Lillian could hear the coldness in her words.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Davenport.’

Once the woman had gone she sat down heavily on the couch. Gracious, could this day become any worse? She did not think that it possibly could although she was mistaken.

Half an hour later John Wilcox-Rice arrived beaming.

‘I have just seen Lady Shelby and she led me to believe that you had had second thoughts about our engagement.’

Lillian looked at him honestly for the first time in weeks. He was an ordinary man, some might even say a boring man, but he was not a murderer or a liar. Today his eyes were bright with hope and in his hands he held a copy of a book she had mentioned she would like to read whilst staying at the St Auburns’. She added ‘a thoughtful man’ to her list.

‘Perhaps we should speak to Father.’

Ernest Davenport broke open his very best bottle of champagne and poured four glasses, her aunt Jean being summoned from her rooms to partake in the joyous news.

‘I cannot tell you how delighted I am with this announcement, Lillian. John here will make you a fine husband and your property will be well managed.’

Her aunt Jean, not wishing to be outdone in gladness, clapped her hands. ‘When did you think to have the wedding, Lillian?’

‘We can decide on a date after Christmas, Aunt,’ she replied, the whole rigmarole of organising the occasion something she did not really wish to consider right now.

‘And a dress, we must find the most beautiful gown, my dear. Perhaps a trip to Paris to find it might be in order, Ernest?’

Her father laughed, a sound Lillian had not heard in many months and her anxiety settled. ‘That seems like a very good idea to me, Jean.’