Lenora had just seen Lord Redburn from the house, had barely stepped foot over the threshold of the drawing room, before Margery was hurrying toward her, a half-eaten biscuit still gripped in her hand. “Is Lord Redburn the man your father has chosen for you then?”
Peter’s face, cold and unfeeling, swam before her tired eyes, until she managed to banish it. She nodded, allowing Margery to link arms with her and lead her back to her seat. With a sigh, she sat, resting her head against the back of the couch.
A small, warm body settled in her lap. She looked down to find Freya gazing at her with large, solemn eyes. A tiny pink tongue darted out to lick Lenora’s fingers before the dog curled up and drifted off to sleep.
“She’s not one to worry overmuch for people’s feelings,” Lady Tesh remarked, “so you must be troubled indeed. I take it you’re not happy with Lord Redburn’s suit.”
What could she say to that? Who wouldn’t be happy with the man? He was handsome and kind, titled and rich.
But he wasn’t Peter.
No! She would not think of him. He had made it abundantly clear that he didn’t care for her. It didn’t matter who she married now. It wasn’t as if she would give her heart to another.
That didn’t stop the grief from welling up in her chest, however.
“Perhaps if I were to have a choice in the matter,” she mumbled, more to herself.
“Don’t you?” Margery pressed a cool glass of lemonade into her hands.
Lenora drank deeply, letting the cool sweet and sour of it work its way into her weary body before shaking her head. “I knew it was to happen, of course. And it could just as easily have been some aged reprobate.”
“And that Lord Redburn is the furthest thing from an aged reprobate as I’ve ever seen,” Lady Tesh said. Her eyes went distant, a small smile flitting over her face. “Why, if I were fifty years younger…Hell, if I were twenty years younger.”
“Gran!” Margery exclaimed.
The older woman waved a hand in the air. “Don’t tell me you didn’t find that man attractive.”
Margery’s face went scarlet. “That’s neither here nor there. It doesn’t matter if Lord Redburn has the beauty of the angels—”
“Who wants an angel?” Lady Tesh muttered.
Lenora nearly choked on her lemonade.
“The earl’s looks don’t matter in the least if Lenora doesn’t wish to marry him,” Margery stated loudly. She turned to Lenora. “Do you want to marry him?”
“It hardly matters. My father has decreed I marry him or—” She swallowed down the lump that had formed in her throat, tried again. “Or I shall be disowned.”
Both women stared at her, aghast. “I know he threatened as much, but he can’t possibly have meant it, Lenora,” Margery breathed.
In answer, Lenora handed over the creased letter. The other women read it together, their faces leaching of color as their gazes traveled down the page.
Margery’s eyes found hers, wide and stunned. “He couldn’t be so cruel.”
“I have given him enough heartache in the past years with three failed engagements. He merely wishes to ensure this one is a success.”
“But they were not your fault,” Margery cried. “Not a one of them.”
The first had been. If she had only kept on pretending, Hillram might be alive even now.
Margery, however, was blessedly unaware of Lenora’s dark thoughts. “It must be a bluff.”
From the expression on Margery’s face, however, she didn’t believe her words any more than Lenora did. Margery had known Sir Alfred long enough to recognize that he didn’t say or do anything lightly. And his threats were never hollow.
Lenora’s heart, which she did not think would feel again, nevertheless lurched with a pitiful ache. To know that he would cut her from his life, as easily as if he were removing a splinter from his thumb, hurt her more than she could have thought possible.
Self-pity, however, would not do her a bit of good. She straightened. “He’s to come to the Isle. I’ll talk to him then. In the meantime, I have told Lord Redburn he may court me, so we may get to know one another better.”
Lady Tesh started. “But I thought…”
“Thought what, Gran?”
The older woman seemed to struggle for a moment before letting out a breath that made her appear to deflate. “I thought it would be much too soon for you to enter into another engagement. The last one ended less than a month ago, after all. There will be a terrible scandal.”
Lenora’s lips twisted. “No more a scandal than actually being left at the altar, I believe.”
“Yes, well.” She colored before falling silent.
Suddenly Lady Tesh straightened. Her piercing gaze settled on Lenora with almost frightening intensity. “If he’s courting you, I expect he’ll be around quite often?”
“I suppose. Though if you have any qualms about his presence, Gran, I understand.” For a moment, hope flickered that she might be able to get out of seeing the man at all before her father arrived. A silly wish, for there was no good reason to spurn the man’s suit. The signed contract and the threat from her father aside, he was one of the nicest, handsomest men she had ever known.
But he isn’t Peter.
The voice whispered again through her mind, desperate now. Grasping her hands tightly in her lap, she tried with all her might to push back the encroaching panic at the lack of control she had over her own fate. Not that she had ever had much control over it before.
Lady Tesh’s next words crushed whatever small, silly hope she might have had in getting out of seeing Lord Redburn.
“Of course I don’t mind. In fact, I think having Lord Redburn around will be positively wonderful.”
The sly look on Lady Tesh’s face was quickly replaced by a look of polite interest. It happened so quickly, Lenora thought perhaps she had imagined the whole thing.
“As a matter of fact,” Lady Tesh continued, “I believe you should send a note off to him, to invite him to dinner here tonight.”
Once again a vision of Peter’s face flashed through her mind, the coldness in his eyes, the cruelty in his voice as he crushed the remains of her heart to dust.
She swallowed hard. “I’m not sure that’s wise.”
“Nonsense,” Lady Tesh declared. “It’s perfect. Now off you go.” She made a shooing motion in Lenora’s direction, dismissing her.
Confused, Lenora lifted a sleepy Freya, placing her on her embroidered cushion at Lady Tesh’s side before walking from the room in a daze.
* * *
Peter considered leaving the Isle. For one mad moment, he stood at the edge of the cliffs surrounding his great-aunt’s estate and dreamed of booking passage on the next ship, leaving his belongings and even Quincy behind, escaping the heartache that was this blasted island. Why should he stay? To court more pain?
But even as the idea slinked with temptation through him, he knew he would not. His mother’s face took shape in his mind, her beauty a mere shadow after the ravages of want and grief and illness. He had ignored his promise to her to his detriment these last thirteen years, had suffered from the guilt of not seeing it through. Her presence had haunted him all that time. Now he had a chance to put her soul to rest once and for all. He couldn’t turn his back on it.
That didn’t mean, however, that he need return immediately. So he stood on the edge of the rock that was the Isle, looking out over the vast expanse of seemingly unending sea. Feeling as if he were at the edge of the world. But even here he was reminded of Lenora. The breeze tugged at his hair as her hands had done last night. The sun warmed his skin as her slumbering body had done, curled against his. She was in the sigh of the branches, in the call of the seabirds.
He tried with all his might to recall why she didn’t deserve his thoughts. She was engaged to another. Worse, she’d been engaged thrice before. All this time he had thought her pining over Hillram. Instead she’d given her fickle attentions to a parade of others. He had merely been last in a long line of them.
There should be nothing but rage within him. He had nearly abandoned the plans he’d spent so long forming in order to be with her.
Yet he still wanted her. More than anything.
Furious with himself, he bent and scooped up a rock from the ground, sending it sailing in a wide arc through the air to plunge into the sea far below. A litany began in his head, a list of names repeated over and over. Lord Hillram. Lord Fig. Lord Landon. Lord Redburn. All men she had been promised to, all men she had been ready to bind her life to. He found, however, that the more he focused on that list, the less power it held. Who was he to expect that she should have sat waiting for his arrival all these years? He was no saint, after all, had certainly not been without companionship. And she was a woman from a good family; marrying well was expected of her. He had heard some of her father. No doubt she had not had much say in the matter.
He punished himself with the image of Lord Redburn bowing over her hand. The two had looked to be in their own world in that moment, the very picture of romantic love. And how well she had looked with him, her dainty blonde fragility only enhanced by the other man’s dark elegance. Redburn’s looks complemented her in every way.
Bile surged into his mouth, bitter and jarring. Damnation, he couldn’t do this. Bracing his hand on a nearby tree, he dug his fingers into the bark, breaking off bits to fall to the still damp ground.
He stood that way for a time, breathing in deeply of the salty sea air, letting the heaviness of it fill his lungs. It was only when the sky began to darken, when the breeze pushed up by the churning waves began to force a chill into his bones, that he heaved a sigh and pushed away from the tree. He would return to the house and attend the blasted dinner party Lady Tesh had planned for this evening, would finish off his time here with as little further emotional entanglement as he could manage. And when he finally left this hellhole, he would not look back.