Page 46 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
“I wish I hadn’t had to be.” Lizzie found herself tearing at thin strands of tarragon to flavor the cream sauce. The earthy scent tickled her nose, so much the richer because it was fresh and not dried and flaked. She gave a little gesture toward the mushrooms. “Those go into the pot just there.”
Dutifully, Imogen gathered up a handful and tossed them in. “Most of my friends had a Season,” she said. “I was so—sojealousof them. I thought I deserved as much as well.”
Lizzie winced. “Of course you did,” she said. “Just as Georgie deserves to go to school like Papa promised.”
“But you also deserved a Season,” Imogen said. “And I never considered that—thatyoushould have had one even before me. That you deserved as much as the rest of us.” She gave an odd little laugh and scrubbed her sleeve across her eyes. “I have caused so much trouble for you,” she said. “If I had not behaved so very badly, none of this would have happened.”
Well, that much was true. “But if it hadn’t, Georgie would not be going to Eton,” she said. “It’s notallbad, Imogen.”
“And you’ll be a…a marchioness,” Imogen said. “I suppose that’ssomething. Though I do not envy you the man himself. He’s entirely too arrogant.”
Not especially, Lizzie thought. Or at least, not quite as much as she had once thought. And she could not say if it was Luke who had changed, or if it was merely her perception of him. “I think that just goes part and parcel with being born into the aristocracy,” Lizzie said. “Probably he can’t help it.”
Imogen managed a weak laugh. “Oh, Lizzie, I’m so very sorry. I truly have been selfish, and thoughtless, and—”
“You’re my sister. I love you even when you’re selfish.” Lizzie offered a small smile, which Imogen returned. “I have had regrets too, you know. That I couldn’t give you the Season you should have had. That Georgie had to stay home instead of going off to school. That we had to sell the books that Jo loved so much. But I never regrettedyou. Not for a moment. Not even when you were perfectly intolerable.”
Imogen tucked her head against Lizzie’s shoulder; a fond, familiar motion. “Will you be happy, Lizzie? Above all, you deserve to be happy.”
“I shall be the same as I have ever been, I suspect,” Lizzie said, with a gentle smile. But she feared they both knew that it had not been the answer for which Imogen had been hoping.
Chapter Nineteen
Abride is meant to wear her best gown to her wedding.”
Lizzie screeched in surprise, nearly upsetting the pan upon the stove. “I beg you, donotsneak up upon me,” she muttered sourly as she lifted the bacon from the pan to rest upon a plate.
Luke’s hand slipped past her, filching a strip before she could bat his hand away from the plate. “My apologies,” he said. “But the point still stands.”
“Thisismy best gown.” What was he even doing up at this hour? On the days in which he deigned to wake for breakfast, he rarely made it downstairs prior to its arrival upon the table.
“That’s…regrettable.” She could feel the rake of his gaze, the judgmental stare that considered and dismissed her faded yellow gown as significantly beneath his expectations. “No matter. We’ll buy you new in London.”
Just the thought made her stomach clench with nerves. To busy her hands, she carved several thick slices of bread from the remainder of last evening’s loaf, placing them in the pan the bacon had recently vacated. “As to that,” she said, “I have been thinking.”
“Have you, now?” A second strip of bacon met its end at his hands. “Ought I be concerned?”
“I shouldn’t think so.” She snatched up a piece of bacon herself, lest the whole lot fall victim to him before breakfast could be served. Collecting the tongs she’d abandoned, she used them to press the bread into the hot pan, concentrating upon the sizzle of it. “There truly is no need for us to go to London.”
A heartbeat of silence. “Of course we must go to London. I happen tolivethere the vast majority of the time.”
“You could go to London,” she said, lifting the edge of the bread, which revealed itself to be perfectly crisped, and then flipping the slices. “But we—that is to say, Imogen, Jo, Georgie, and I—could stay here.”
“Georgie is going to Eton.”
“That’s no matter. We can take him. Wedohave a carriage, my lord.”
“Luke,” he corrected mildly. “And your carriage is a disgrace. He cannot go to Eton in that unfortunate conveyance. Frankly, I’m surprised it has not fallen apart altogether.”
That was a vicious exaggeration. It wasn’t, perhaps, in thebestof repair—but it was structurally sound and, if not precisely comfortable, neither was it in eminent danger of falling apart. “We’ll manage, I’m certain.”
“Of course you will. Because you—allof you—are coming to London, and that is final.”
A frisson of anger sizzled to match the toast in the pan, and she turned on him, jabbing the tongs toward his chest. “Youhave no right to order me about!”
“I will have, in approximately two hours.” He seized the tongs from the tight clasp of her fingers and set them aside. “Besides, you can’t remain here. I’m having the house renovated. It’ll be largely unsuitable to live in.”
“Renovated?”
