Beauty and the Baron

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He did not care for Angela Lacewood, no matter how much she had preoccupied his thoughts in the past twenty-four hours. Neither did the young lady care for him, in spite of her charitable offer to suffer another of his kisses as a means to convince the earl of their mutual devotion. He hadn’t made Miss Lacewood the kind of honorable proposal her brother believed.

She would never have accepted him if he had.

This was not a convenient time for an attack of scruples, Lucius decided as he forced himself to shake hands with Miles Lacewood. “Then let us sit down and talk some more about this commission business.”

The boy considered for a moment. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to talk.”

Lucius Daventry recognized a tone of surrender when he heard it. So far his campaign was progressing according to plan, with one slight but troublesome exception—his inconvenient fascination with Angela Lacewood.

If he was not very careful in future, Lucius feared his beautiful fiancée might begin to wield an undesirable influence over him.

For the first time in years of frequent visits to Helmhurst, Angela found her senses on heightened alert. She scanned the wide gallery, vigilant for any half-opened door or someone lurking behind a piece of statuary. She listened for the faintest footstep or squeaking door hinge behind her.

What foolishness! she chided herself. In the middle of a bright morning, with golden spring sunshine pouring through the tall windows that lined the outer wall of the gallery, she was in no danger of encountering Lucius Daventry.

Just because he had ventured out in daylight yesterday did not mean his lordship meant to break from his customary habits altogether. In the three years since he’d returned home from the war, she had only glimpsed him from a distance once or twice.

All the time she’d been paying her visits to the earl, Lord Daventry had been somewhere on the floor above in a shuttered and curtained room, enjoying his daytime slumber. He was probably asleep upstairs at this very moment.

The thought of it lulled her apprehension of meeting him again so soon after their awkward parting of the previous night. Yet at the same time it stirred a potent awareness of his presence in the house, as well as an unseemly curiosity.

Did his lordship sleep in a nightshirt? Or did he sprawl naked beneath the bedclothes, wrapped in the subtle but provocative musk of sleep? While Angela made her way toward the earl’s library, her imagination hovered over the slumbering form of Lord Lucifer.

“There you are at last, my dear!” cried the earl when she stepped into the room. “I was beginning to fear you’d had second thoughts about marrying my grandson, and had deserted me as a result.”

“Never!” Angela protested. “I overslept this morning, that’s all.”

After a night tossing and turning with second, third and fourth thoughts about the wisdom of accepting Lord Daventry’s offer. Only the fear that backing out so soon would make it too awkward to visit Helmhurst had decided her to proceed with their unorthodox engagement.

“What shall we do today?” she asked brightly, hoping to distract the earl from any further talk of Lord Daventry. “Read? Play chess? Shall I write a letter for you?”

“No, no, no.” The earl planted his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself to his feet with some effort. “Have you forgotten, my dear? We have a ball to plan.”

“The ball, of course.”

Angela fetched his walking stick and offered him her elbow for support on the other side. All the while, she tried to summon up the enthusiasm she’d felt for the project last night when the earl had first proposed it.

Perhaps her eagerness had been born of too much champagne.

The earl started for the library door with steps that seemed stronger and steadier than they had in some time. “This is a fine morning to take a stroll around the grounds and talk over our plans.”

The sunshine, fresh air and mild exertion would do him good, Angela reflected. They might sharpen his appetite and make him sleep more soundly. Planning for the ball would give him something to look forward to. Something to occupy his energy without overtaxing it.

The earl’s enthusiasm for this match between her and his grandson was obviously proving a tonic. Could it be that, taken together, they might provide powerful enough medicine to extend his days beyond the physicians’ grim reckoning?

“I take it Lord Daventry will not be joining us?” Angela strove to keep her tone casual as she slanted a glance toward the staircase.

The earl’s valet appeared in the entryway bearing his lordship’s old-fashioned tricorn hat.

“Heavens, no.” The earl donned his hat as they stepped through the open door into the morning’s lavish sunshine. “My grandson is long gone.”

Gone where and for how long? Angela found herself wondering. The earl’s cheerful announcement should have brought her a swift sense of relief, but it didn’t. Instead a queer pang of disappointment twisted her insides. Lord Daventry’s absence mocked her shameful fancy of hovering over him while he slept.

Though she knew any sign of interest from her would only please the earl, Angela resisted betraying her curiosity about his grandson’s whereabouts.

The earl needed no prompting, though. “He was up and away long before I left my bed. Said nothing to the servants about where he was bound, but I’m told he took no luggage, so I expect him home tonight.”

They wandered down the wide path of golden-brown crushed rock that wound through Helmhurst’s formal garden, abloom in a vivid tapestry of spring flowers.

“I don’t care much where he’s gone.” The earl chuckled. “Just so long as he has. I rather like being an old hermit, but the boy is too young for that. He needs something or someone to draw him out again.”

He gave Angela’s arm a fond squeeze. “You are proving to be that someone, my dear. Just as I’d hoped.”

Angela averted her face slightly as if to drink in the manicured perfection of the garden, when in fact she hoped the brim of her bonnet would hide her face from the earl long enough for her bright blush to subside.

“I wish I could take credit for Lord Daventry’s absence, if it pleases you, Grandfather.” How she loved being able to call him that. “But I doubt I had anything to do with it.”

“Nonsense! What else could be responsible? Yesterday, for the first time in three years, my grandson ventured abroad by day. He returned home engaged to you. Today he’s off again. Logic informs us that you must be behind it somehow.”

“Perhaps,” Angela agreed, albeit reluctantly. Better the earl should credit her influence than guess that Lord Daventry might have gone off to further consult with his grandfather’s doctors.

The earl stopped and took a deep breath of the fresh spring air. “You know, I’m not such a blind old fool as to believe the pair of you love each other. But I believe you can, in time.”

He did believe it, too. The certainty radiated from him as if the bright promise of spring sunshine had taken up residence in his heart.

Angela could not bring herself to meet his steadfast gaze. A great lump of unshed tears settled in the back of her throat.

Fortunately, the earl appeared to misunderstand her chagrin. “Don’t think I fault you for accepting his proposal on other grounds, my dear. A woman must think of her future, no matter what sentimental twaddle one hears to the contrary these days.”

“I have no designs upon your grandson’s fortune, sir!” Thank heaven she could say that with a clear conscience.

The earl dismissed the notion with a swish of his walking stick. “Of course not, my dear. I should be the last to think it. But you have enough good sense not to hold his comfortable income against him. As I said last night, I know you accepted for the same reason he proposed—to please an old man who dotes on you both.”

He would drive her to tears yet, drat him!

“Is it such a bad reason?” She could say that much, surely, without blurting out the truth.

“The best in the world, as far as I am concerned.” The earl winked, then immediately turned sober. “Only do leave your heart open for something more, won’t you?”

“I’ll try.” More words, ones she hadn’t meant to give voice, came tumbling out. “If Lord Daventry will let me.”

“Don’t ask his leave.” The earl began to move forward again, with greater strength in his step to match the force of his words. “What a lady does with her heart is her own business.”

She should distract the earl from the whole disconcerting subject of hearts and her relationship with Lord Daventry. Talk about the ball might do it.

Before Angela could come up with any suitably diverting remark, the earl continued. “It may take some doing, but I expect you know that. In spite of his fortune and title, my grandson has not had an easy lot in life, poor fellow. Being raised by a dusty old stick like me, to begin with.”

“You know that’s not true,” Angela insisted. “Why, he’s devoted to you, far beyond what most men are to their fathers.”

The earl looked pleased yet somehow regretful. “You may be right, though that is more to his credit than to mine. At the very least I should have taken better care in his religious education. You don’t give any credence to that silly gossip about my grandson being involved in unholy practices…do you?”

“No!” Angela hoped she sounded more certain than she felt. “Of course not!”

The earl lifted his stick, pointing toward a hill half a mile to the east. “That’s where he goes, I believe, most nights after we’ve had dinner and spent a quiet evening together. After I retire to bed.”

Angela stared toward the hill, the base of which she and Lord Daventry had skirted on the previous evening when he’d driven her home. “H-have you ever asked him what he does there?”

The earl lowered his stick by slow degrees until it hung at a dispirited angle. “Never. I’m not sure I could stomach his answer. And he has never volunteered the information.”

As they walked on a little farther in silence, it seemed to Angela as if the distant hill cast an invisible shadow over the vibrant garden.

At last the earl spoke again. “My grandson has never told me what happened to him at Waterloo, either. That is how it’s always been between us. We are both very fond of each other in our ways, I believe, but so much left unsaid.”

Angela understood, perhaps better than the earl might have realized. Lord Daventry had an air about him that firmly discouraged anyone from trespassing on his privacy. Even when the man had something important he wanted to convey, like his proposal to her, he had gone about it in such a riddling, roundabout manner that she’d almost given up listening.

Surely the earl wasn’t hoping his grandson would take her into his confidence? The very notion set Angela’s heart in a rapid, shallow beat. Like the earl, she wasn’t certain she could bear to hear what Lord Daventry might tell her.

“This is no fit talk for such a fine day,” the earl scolded himself. “We have a ball to plan—remember?”

Those words were as sweet to Angela’s ears as a cup of warm chocolate in Tibby’s kitchen at the end of a hard day.

“So we do.” She glanced around her. “Is it feasible to hold one out of doors, do you think? When I proposed the idea last night, I had rather a lot of champagne in me.”

“Tipsy or sober, it was a brilliant suggestion, my dear.”

They had come to a fork in the path. The earl tugged Angela toward the south lawn.

“What ballroom in the kingdom can compare to this?” He raised his walking stick in a sweeping gesture.

Angela had passed this way many times. A few years ago, when the earl had been stronger, the two of them had often played pall-mall here on summer evenings. Now, looking at the south lawn in a new light, she had to agree it was perfectly suited to what she’d imagined.

The broad, tiled terrace would make an ideal area for dancing, while the lawn itself was so smooth and flat it could easily be set with clusters of small tables and chairs. As for the ornamental trees that ringed the lawn…

The earl pointed toward them. “What would you think of hanging small tin lanterns from the branches?”

“Like fairy lights—marvellous!”

They enjoyed a leisurely walk, planning where the musicians should set up and where the supper buffet should go. They discussed the guest list at length, though most names the earl mentioned Angela only knew by reputation. Suddenly she was pleased on her own account that she’d suggested a masquerade.

All these illustrious guests might be less intimidating dressed up in fanciful costumes. In her own disguise, she might be able to pretend she was someone else. Not some countrified spinster living on the charity of wealthy relations, but a fine lady worthy to be the bride of a baron. If that didn’t work, she could at least hope her mask might hide the worst of her alarm.