Georgie Lee - Rescued From Ruin

He stiffened, struggling to hold his smile. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, especially from her.’

‘Do my ears deceive me or is the notorious Marquess of Falconbridge embarrassed?’ she gasped in mock surprise and Randall’s jaw tightened. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had dared to tease him like this.

‘Do you have a reputation, Mrs Thompson?’ he asked, determined to take back the conversation, the old familiarity too easy between them.

Darkness flickered through her eyes and she fiddled with her gold bracelet, turning it on her wrist. Whatever suddenly troubled her, he thought it would bring the discussion to an end. Then she raised her face, bravely meeting his scrutiny, her smile alight with mischief. ‘If I do, it is far behind me in Virginia and unlikely to be discovered until well after the Season.’

He stepped closer, inhaling her warm skin combined with a heady, floral scent he couldn’t name. ‘Perhaps I may discover it sooner?’

She met his low voice with a heated look from beneath dark lashes. ‘Only if you have a very fast ship.’

‘My ship is never fast, but lingers upon the salty water,’ he murmured, his body tightening with desire. ‘I’d be most happy to take you sailing.’

Her tongue slid over her parted lips, moistening the red bud, daring him to be bold and accept the invitation in her eyes. Then, like a wave rushing out to sea, the hungry look disappeared, replaced by her previous mirthful smile. ‘A very tempting offer, but I fear being disappointed so early in the Season.’

Randall coughed to suppress a laugh and a bitter sense of loss. ‘The Season will disappoint a spirited woman like you much quicker than I.’

‘After enduring such a difficult crossing, I can only hope you’re wrong.’

‘I’m never wrong.’

‘Then you’re a very fortunate man.’

‘Not entirely.’ For a brief moment, the hard shell he’d cultivated since coming to Town dropped and he was simply Randall again, alone with her in the Falconbridge study, free of a title and all his London escapades. ‘Even the life of a Marquess has its dark moments.’

Her teasing smile faded and a soft understanding filled her eyes. ‘Everyone’s life does.’

He’d watched stone-faced while mistresses wailed on their chaises and stepped casually to one side to avoid the errant porcelain figure lobbed at him. None of these overwrought reactions cut him to the core like her simple comment. For the second time in as many minutes, the shame of his past gnawed at him before he crushed it down.

‘Good.’ He smiled with more glib humour than he felt, clasping his hands behind his back. ‘Because in London, I’m a very good acquaintance to have, especially for someone who’s left her reputation across the Atlantic.’

‘I shall keep it in mind. Good evening, Lord Falconbridge.’

She dipped a curtsy and walked off across the room to join a small circle of matrons standing near the window.

He watched her go, the boy in him desperate to call her back, the man he’d become keeping his shoes firmly rooted to the floor.

‘Quite the morsel, isn’t she?’ a deep voice drawled from beside him, and Randall’s lip curled in disgust. Christopher Crowdon, Earl of Strathmore, stood next to him, a glass of claret in his thick fingers.

‘Careful how you speak of her, Strathmore,’ Randall growled, hating the way Strathmore eyed her like a doxy in a bawdy house. ‘She’s an old acquaintance of mine.’

‘My apologies,’ Strathmore mumbled, trilling his fingers against the glass, a rare fire in his pale eyes as he studied Cecelia. ‘Is it true she has extensive lands in the colonies?’

‘Why? Are you in such dire straits as to chase after heiresses?’

‘Of course not,’ he sputtered, the claret sloshing perilously close to the side of the glass before he recovered himself. ‘But there’s something to be said for a widow. They know the way of things, especially when it comes to men. Best to leave such a prize to a more experienced gentleman.’

‘Should I find one, I’ll gladly step aside.’ Randall turned on one heel and strode away.

* * *

Cecelia stood with the other matrons, trying to concentrate on the on dit, but she couldn’t. Randall’s rich voice carried over the hum of conversation and she tightened her grip on the champagne glass, willing herself not to look at him.

When she’d first seen him standing in the centre of the room, as sturdy as a wide oak in the middle of a barren field, she’d been torn between fleeing and facing him. The girl who’d once pressed him about their future together in the Falconbridge conservatory, only to be sneered at by a man unwilling to debase the family name with a poor merchant’s daughter, wanted to flee. The woman who’d helped her husband rebuild Belle View after the hurricane demanded she hold steady. The wealth and plantation might be gone, but the woman it had made her wasn’t and she’d wanted him to see it.

She finished the drink, the biting liquid as bitter as her present situation. Despite her time at Belle View, she’d returned to London no richer than when she’d left, her future more uncertain now than it had been the day she’d climbed aboard the ship to Virginia, the husband by her side as much of a stranger as the people in this room. She might shine with confidence in front of Randall, but everything else—the land in the colonies and her wealth—was a lie. She wondered how long her fine wardrobe and the width of the Atlantic would conceal her secret and the nasty rumours she’d left behind in Virginia. Hopefully long enough for either her or her cousin Theresa to make a match which might save them.

She deposited the empty champagne glass on the tray of a passing footman, the crystal clinking against the metal. As the footman reached out to steady it, she glanced past him to where Randall stood with a group of gentlemen, his square jaw and straight nose defined as much by his dark hair as the practised look of London ennui. Then he turned, his blue eyes meeting hers with a fierceness she could almost feel. Her thumb and fingers sought out the gold bracelets on her wrist while her lungs struggled to draw in an even breath. For a moment she was sixteen again, desiring him beyond reason, and nothing, not the long years of her marriage or the hours she’d spent managing Belle View, seemed to matter. She’d loved him, craved him, needed him, and in the end he hadn’t experienced the same depth of feeling for her.

She looked away, shaken by how, after all these years, he could still needle her, and chastising herself for speaking so freely with him tonight. No matter how easy it was to tease and flirt with him as she used to, she couldn’t afford to be bold with a man like him. It might ruin her.

‘Mrs Thompson, I hear you’ve been living in America,’ a woman’s distant voice intruded, snapping Cecelia’s attention back to the circle of ladies.

‘Yes. I have a plantation in Virginia.’ Her stomach tightened with the lie.

‘What brings you and Miss Fields back to London after all this time?’ Lady Weatherly asked.

Cecelia met their curious looks, the same awkwardness that nearly stole her tongue the night Daniel had presented her to the Richmond families at the Governor’s ball stealing over her. She squared her shoulders now as she had then, defiant against her unease and their scrutiny. ‘I brought my cousin back to London in the hope of seeing her settled.’

‘Did she not have suitors in Virginia?’ Lady Weatherly pressed like a small terrier determined to dig out a rat and Cecelia bit back the desire to tell the Countess to keep to her own affairs. Despite a dubious reputation, the statuesque young woman draped in gauzy silk was a fixture of society whose good opinion Cecelia needed to keep. Swallowing her pride, Cecelia repeated the story she and Theresa had practised during the crossing.