Page 41 of Fit for a Duke
When the gentlemen had finished with the port, Mark left the dining room directly through the open French doors and made his way briskly towards the orchard beyond the stables. He had an engagement to keep with a lady who did not smile upon tardiness. None of the gentlemen appeared to notice that he had not followed them into the makeshift ballroom. He would join them again before he was missed.
‘My love.’ He pulled Isobel Walder into his arms the moment he reached the agreed spot and found her waiting for him beneath an apple tree. ‘I thought I would never get away.’
He kissed her, enjoying her enthusiastic response and the feel of her supple body pressed against his as his hands roamed over her voluptuous curves. She tasted of wine, strawberries and wild expectations, an intoxicating combination that fired Mark’s lust and increased his determination to overcome Clio’s feeble objections to his proposal. Everything hinged upon her acceptance of it.
‘How is the strumpet?’ she asked when Mark finally released her.
Mark was shocked to find that he disliked hearing Clio described in such derogatory terms. She was an impertinent baggage who deserved a good thrashing for being such a tease, but he hadn’t started to develop feelings for her, had he? He dismissed the possibility with an impatient shake of his head. Virginal misses made poor substitutes for the voluptuous, hedonistic, unrestrained female in his arms.
A very small part of Mark’s conscience balked at his determination to win Clio’s hand simply to gain control of her considerable fortune. That realisation surprised him mainly because his conscience, such as it was, rarely troubled him nowadays. Men married for money all the time, he reminded himself, and Clio would be besieged by fortune hunters when she came out next year. Mark owed it to his commanding officer, a man whom he had actually respected, to save his daughter from that ignominy.
That respect had waned, he conceded, when Benton privately told Mark that he accepted Wickham’s version of events regarding his dalliance with the Spanish tease. He made it clear that he hadn’t had Mark cashiered only because he was thinking of the regiment’s reputation.
Benton became very aloof after that. He no longer treated Mark as a confidant and friend, and things hadn’t been comfortable between them. Perdition, the victor enjoyed the spoils of war—it was his right and an unwritten law. Besides, the hussy had been willing enough, until her father discovered what she’d done, then she had tried to put the blame on Mark. The recollection still rankled. Mark had never had to force any woman into his bed, certainly not a Spanish filly with over-developed notions of her own importance.
The possibility of courting Clio sprang to mind only after Mark lost his commanding officer’s respect. It seemed like poetic justice. The chit needed someone to protect her interests. Why not him? They were acquainted and Clio had always seemed to like him. Well of course she had! So he would do Benton a service and look out for his precious daughter. His intentions at that point had been more or less honourable, and he felt pleased with his decision to give up soldiering and make the not unattractive child a devoted and attentive husband.
Then he met Isobel and everything changed in a heartbeat. He fell head over heels in love for the first time in his life with her wild, untamed beauty and her even wilder behaviour. They were kindred spirits in all respects. He wanted her exclusive company but recognised a shadow of his own character in her conduct and accepted that one could never tie a free spirit down. Besides, marriage was out of the question. England was no longer at war and he could hardly ask a lady of her refined tastes to live on a serving officer’s half pay. Suddenly, pursuing Clio was no longer an idle means of exacting revenge upon her father but a matter of extreme urgency.
‘Thawing,’ Mark replied succinctly, firmly believing…well, hoping that she would. Eventually. He was not about to admit to the woman he adored that he was continuing to encounter a brick wall, or that he would enjoy consummating their relationship, by force if necessary. Other men, better situated than he was, were sniffing around Isobel’s petticoats and he wasn’t about to lose her for the lack of a means of support. ‘What of the duke?’
Mark held his breath while he waited for her to answer. He had been horrified when he first realised that she intended to come to this party, not so that she and Mark could continue with their affair, but in order to pursue Wickham. Of all the men to lose her to…But she hadn’t been here long before he observed how little interest the duke actually took in her.
‘He is biding his time,’ she replied, looking away from Mark and sucking in a sharp breath. ‘It’s all a ploy, of course, and he enjoys keeping me guessing. He cannot possibly be serious in his disinterest.’
‘He would be a damned fool to overlook you.’
Mark breathed more easily, aware that it was not a ploy. Wickham was known to be inordinately selective when it came to feminine company, as though the majority of the ladies who batted their lashes at him were beneath the ducal notice. Mark thought it very unlikely that he would settle his interest on another man’s widow, especially one who did not enjoy a spotless reputation, but he said none of those things. Let her harbour her dreams. He would be there to console her when they failed to come to fruition.
They had entered inevitably into what she assumed was a harmless affair, thinking Mark to be on the point of winning Clio’s hand. He couldn’t trust her to know that it was all a strategy—a means to an end so that he could metamorphose into the gentleman of means he had been put on this earth to become—free of all encumbrances other than those of his own choosing.
‘He does not deserve you, or appreciate you.’
Isobel lifted one shoulder. ‘We shall see.’
Mark pulled her back into his arms and kissed her for a second time, only more thoroughly. ‘Do we have time?’ he asked when he broke the kiss, aroused almost to the point of no return, nodding in the direction of the hay barn.
‘Best not. Come to my room tonight.’
‘Try and keep me away. I yearn for you, my love.’
‘What was that?’ she asked, cocking her head to one side and jumping out of his arms. ‘Did you hear something?’
Lady Walden’s cloying perfume lingered in the dining parlour and on Ezra’s person long after she had quit the room with the rest of the ladies. He took little part in the gentlemen’s conversation as the port circulated, his mind full of his problems and Clio’s determination to insinuate herself in the midst of them. Her reason for being so insistent was less clear to him, but if pressed she would doubtless claim that Salford’s pursuit of her gave her a legitimate reason to expose his ill intentions.
Which was all well and good, but it was dangerous and she must somehow be made to see that fact. Ezra admired her spirited and selfless determination. He couldn’t recall the last occasion upon which a member of either sex had done him a service with no expectation of reward. But it wouldn’t serve. If Ezra was right and an anonymous someone was ruthlessly wiping out his family one male at a time, he wouldn’t think twice of cutting down any female who got in his way.
Determined to extract a promise from Clio not to involve herself in his affairs, Ezra left the dining room with the rest of the gentlemen when the port stopped circulating. He stepped out onto the terrace when the dancing began, in no mood to stand up with anyone until he had thrashed matters out with Clio, and perhaps not even then. A swift glance around the room had failed to identify her amongst those eagerly taking to the floor and Ezra suspected that he might find her out here, avoiding Salford.
But there was no sign of her.
Or of Salford, which was infinitely more worrying. If he had followed her outside and forced himself upon her in a brutish attempt to pressure her into matrimony then Ezra would not be responsible for his actions. The foolish child should have remained inside, where she would have been safe. Somehow Ezra was unsurprised to discover that she had not. The strength of his determination to protect the chit shocked him rigid. He was here with the sole purpose of discovering who wanted him dead, not to look out for a child who meant nothing to him.
Well, almost nothing.
‘Where the devil…’
He glanced in the direction of the stables for some reason, unsure what had drawn his attention. The music coming from the house made it impossible for him to hear anything other than the sound of a fiddle being played not especially well and that of feet dancing an energetic jig on a boarded floor.
