Sophia James - Christmas Betrothals

‘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.

‘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!