Chapter Two
Four years later
“He loves her. He loves her not. He loves her. He loves her not.”
Milli hung onto the smooth rung of the ladder in the Duke of Elbourne’s library, letting her gaze roam over the massive bookshelves.
That book was here somewhere, she thought.
Candlelight flickered about the room while music from the string quartet playing in the ballroom floated beyond the closed doors. She found herself swaying to the melody.
“I think he loves her.”
Lord Hughmont’s deep voice startled her. She looked down. She had almost forgotten the young man was there.
She was a bit embarrassed she had been talking out loud. But Lord Hughmont had no idea she had been daydreaming about Lord Marcus.
She leaned further into the shelves, hanging on with one foot. “Well,” she replied, smiling. “I do believe there is nothing more wonderful than the love of Romeo and Juliet, don’t you think?”
She reached for one of Shakespeare’s works, but couldn’t quite grasp it. She shoved her ball gown out of the way. “Push me over a bit, would you?”
“Huh?”
Milli dropped her gaze to find the blond man staring up at her, his blue eyes glazed over with what must have been love for the grand library.
Not many people would think a man with Lord Hughmont’s good looks would be so interested in Shakespeare. His muscular build made him more fit for Gentleman Jackson’s boxing ring. Of course, he did box, and rode horses, and did everything else a man about town was supposed to do. But the theater was his joy, as it was hers.
A wide grin spread across her delicate face as she gazed in appreciation about the dark paneled library. The smell of clean polished wood reached her nostrils. “I admit, the duke has a great number of books in here that could keep us busy for a long time.”
The man swallowed and looked away. “Jupiter, Miss Millicent. This library rivals anything I’ve ever seen. Does he, uh, read them all?”
Milli grinned. “Of course not. He is so in love with his duchess, he barely gets through the day’s work as a duke.”
Lord Hughmont’s blue eyes twinkled. “Sounds like one of those plays one would read in his library.” He gazed up at her and grabbed the ladder. “‘Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.’”
She giggled. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
Lord Hughmont chuckled. “Indeed, it is.”
Milli sighed, tilting toward the shelves with one hand on the ladder. “The duke and the duchess are quite the romantics. I guess you could say that about my sister Elizabeth and Stephen, as well as Lady Emily and Lord Stonebridge. Oh, I cannot forget Briana and Clayton either.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “The heart is but the union of two souls, together at last, caught adrift in the abyss of endless time.”
“Sounds rather familiar. What play is that from?”
Milli’s lids lifted, delight gleaming in her pale gray eyes. “It’s not from a play. I just made it up.”
Her gaze wandered over the books. She shook her head and frowned, then glanced at Lord Hughmont. “Drat, I thought that was it. It’s probably on the other side of the room. Push me over there. Would you, please? If we want the book for this month’s meeting, we must find it now.”
Lord Hughmont glanced toward the doorway, his blond brows dipping into a frown. “Why now? I know you wanted to show me the library, but I thought we were going straight back to the ball.”
“I did show you the library, did I not? This is it. As to the play, I can’t wait, that’s why. When I want something, I go after it.”
Besides, she thought, Marcus might believe she was with one of her admirers, and he would come to her rescue. Not that she was with any rake. But perhaps Marcus would worry if he realized she had left the ball. A little competition made for a greater love.
“Oh. It’s just that, well, Miss Millicent, one hears stories about those Clearbrooks brothers, and I can tell you—”
Milli waved an untroubled hand in the air. “Pish posh. Don’t worry about them. I can handle anything that comes our way, even the Clearbrook brothers, no matter how domineering they may be.”
Lord Hughmont straightened, and Milli could see she had hurt his pride. “King George, I am not worried,” he snapped. “I can hold my own. But don’t want anyone getting ideas, don’t you know.”
Milli’s brows rose. “I suppose you’re right.”
She was being a bit silly about Lord Marcus. He still thought her a child, no matter how hard she tried. She was beginning to think it was useless to gain his attention. But she wanted that book, and this was as good a time as any to snatch it from the shelves.
“Very well,” she said, turning back to the books. “Just let me find the older version of that play, then we can return to the ball. I think our theater group would love to see it!”
Milli met once a month with her theater group, which included many lords and ladies of the ton. They read from plays and discussed many of the works performed at Drury Lane. Lord Hughmont was part of the group too.
“Do I have to ask again?” she said with a trace of amusement, realizing the twenty-three-year-old lord was captivated by something near her foot. “I would like to swing to the other side of the room, if you please.”
He looked up, his cheeks flaming. “Forgive me. Found myself engrossed in, uh, the literature.” He jerked the ladder and swung Milli to the side wall in a whoosh of muscle.
Milli grabbed on and let out a whoop of laughter. Her pink ball gown blew out from under her.
“How was that?” Hughmont asked, a smile flickering about his mouth as he eyed her ankles.
A stray tendril of chestnut hair fell over her eye, and she felt her face flush with excitement. Her gray eyes sparkled down at him. “Do that again! Goodness, this is more fun than sliding down the banister!”
The merriment in her voice made Hughmont’s gaze glitter as he took in her small frame. “Jupiter! There aren’t many women like you, Miss Millicent!”
Milli snorted with laughter. “I don’t like to be a bore. Bores are so very . . . well, so very boring.”
Hughmont eyed her from head to toe and jiggled the ladder.
Milli squealed. “How about swinging me again? This is much more fun than that boring ball. Though I adore dancing.”
A little corner of Milli’s heart squeezed with pain. Marcus hadn’t been paying any attention to her at all. In fact, after he had seen her in her new pink gown from Madame Claire’s, he had glared at her, mumbled something, then had ignored her the rest of the evening. Ah, well, if she wasn’t going to dance with him, she might as well have some fun in the library.
Hughmont frowned as he looked over his shoulder at the closed door. “I don’t know.” He tugged at his cravat. “Uh, don’t you think we had better go back to the ball? Someone may be missing us.”
Milli’s glance turned toward the happy voices and music seeping into the room. “Goodness, no one is missing me.” And that was probably the truth. Oh, Milli had her admirers, but none of them were Marcus.
Her sister Elizabeth loved her, but she was occupied with her husband Stephen, and barely kept an eye on her. The rest of the Clearbrooks, though they adored Milli in a sweet way, they still thought her a child and probably thought she had gone to bed, even though she had been attending balls for the last year.
She put a hand to her head and swayed on the ladder. “Dear me, there are so many people in that ballroom, I think I might faint.”
“Don’t try that acting on me, my girl.” Hughmont gave the ladder another shake.
Milli grabbed the rung above her and let out another squeak of delight. “Oh, this is so much more fun! Swing me to the right!”
The sudden whoosh made Milli hang on with all her might. Her dainty form clutched the ladder, and her carefree laughter filled the room. A glance of snow white skin peeked out from the bottom of her skirt
Below her, Lord Hughmont stood mesmerized.
Milli let out another yelp of joy as she grabbed the book in question. “I have it! Romeo and Juliet and a few more of Shakespeare’s plays. Oh, is this not exciting? We can show this to our group!”
The young man kept staring where her skirt had caught on the side of the ladder.
Oblivious, Milli opened the book. She read a few passages, almost forgetting about the man below her.
The young lord looked away and cleared his throat. “Uh, Miss Millicent, I daresay, I think we have been gone long enough, don’t you think? Perhaps you should come down now.”
No answer.
“I daresay, it is getting rather late,” he said a bit louder. “Perhaps we should return to the ball?” He glanced at her ankle, then anywhere but there. He tugged at his cravat again and swallowed. “Getting a bit hot in here, don’t you think?”
“No, I’m rather cool, if I do say so myself.” Another page turn.
Hughmont ogled her ankle and mumbled to himself.
“What was that?” Milli looked down.
“Well, confound it. What if one of those Clearbrook brothers came in here and found us alone like this?” His voice rose a notch.
Milli threw her head back and burst out laughing. “I thought we covered that subject already. Don’t be such a peagoose. No one will bother us.”
Hughmont puffed out his chest. “It’s not as if I could not take one of them on. Like I’ve said, I’ve been practicing at Gentlemen’s Jackson’s.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “But all four, I daresay, that’s another thing altogether.”
Amusement flared in Milli’s gray eyes. “I assure you, you are not Mr. Fennington.”
Lord Hughmont blanched. “That’s exactly what I am talking about. Heard they killed the poor fellow.”
Milli’s lips quivered in merriment. “They did not kill him. Mr. James Fennington tried to woo Lady Emily. She was their only sister, and he was a fortune hunter. Of course, they were upset.”
“Like I said, they killed him.”
She tried not to chuckle, but his serious expression was too much. “Oh, for goodness sakes, they were worried. They had every right to be. Luckily, Lady Emily married Lord Stonebridge and that was that.”
Hughmont kept sending wary glances toward the door. “I hear things didn’t stop there.”
“No, they didn’t. Stupid Fennington then tried wooing my sister Elizabeth. And to make a long story short, Lord Stephen took care of that. Why, I was there when he plowed the bas—”
The young man’s gaze jerked up, his eyes widening in shock. “Miss Millicent!”
She caught herself, but her gray eyes flashed with excitement. “Well, Stephen boxed the man’s ear. But he did not kill him. Not that he didn’t want to, because later Fennington tried to escape with my sister.”
Hughmont’s eyes grew. “And then?”
“And then,” she lowered her voice, “the remaining Clearbrook brothers, including the duke, Lord Clayton, and Lord Marcus, took him away. They tarred and feathered him, hanging the man from the nearest tree.”
Hughmont was staring at her, his mouth dropping open in horror.
She realized she was bending toward him and straightened her bodice.
“King George? They hung the poor fool, then?” His pale eyes blinked in awe. “I say, that wasn’t very good of them.”
Milli bent at her waist, forgetting her low bodice and stared at her friend with the most dastardly expression she could configure. “And then...”
The young man took a step up the ladder, his blue eyes as wide as saucers. “And then?”
She lowered her voice to a mere whisper. “They made a fire, danced around the body under a full moon. Naked.”
Hughmont jumped off the ladder. “Jupiter!”
Milli cackled with laughter.
The young man’s cheeks turned beet red. “You little liar!” He slammed the ladder toward the other end of the room. Milli barely grasped the rung above her and held on with all her might, not able to control her giggling.
“It was true,” she said between laughing breaths. “At least the part about Fennington going after Lady Emily and my sister.”
“I can take a jest, Miss Millicent, but sometimes, you are too mischievous for your own good.”
“Truly!” She laughed. “The odious man tried to woo my sister Elizabeth, and we haven’t seen from the man again. I have Fennington’s horrid quizzing glass to prove it.”
“You do not!”
“I do, and it’s the biggest quizzing glass you’ve ever seen!”
He chuckled, looking up at her. “The devil of it is, I think you’re telling the truth about that.”
“Yes, and I think it would make a glorious prop at our next meeting. However, you must not let Lord Marcus see it. He hates it! He thinks I threw it in the Thames!”
Hughmont rattled the ladder. Milli clutched the book, barely able to hold on. “John!”
His mouth twitched. “That’s the first time you called me by my Christian name. But I am thinking it’s time to go. I do hold you in high regard, Miss Millicent. But I am not about to fall into some marriage trap.”
Milli blinked in shock. “Marriage! How could you think such a thing?”
His smiling eyes locked with hers. “Tit for tat, Miss Millicent.”
She chortled. “I should throw this book at you, you beast.”
He snorted. “I think it’s time we return to the ball.”
She raised her delicate brows. “Oh, so you have a few ladies looking for you, do you?”
“I may have a black eye if one of those Clearbrook brothers ventures into this room. Now, hurry up and come down.”
“Pshaw! They all have wives and are properly chaperoned. Except for Lord Marcus, who has probably been mobbed by all those silly matchmaking mamas.”
Milli had no wish to see that! And that was another reason she was here. She didn’t want to watch the beautiful ladies in their beautiful gowns dance with Marcus.
Her heart pinched every time he took one of those ladies into his arms. She had been going to balls for over a year, and he had only danced with her once. That was last month. After that, he had made a point of ignoring her. It was so humiliating. She was fooling herself, thinking he would chase after her.
“Played cards with Marcus at the club. Even boxed with the man. He might come in here, thinking, well, you know....” Hughmont looked at her ankles again and gulped.
Milli shrugged and licked her fingers, flipping another page of her book, trying not to show how affected she was at the mention of that man’s name.
She angled her slippers on the ladder rung and pretended to look at more books on the shelf beside her. “Marcus has too many women following him around that ballroom. They will never let him out of sight. Besides, he is too stuffy to leave and do anything out of the ordinary.”
She flung her hand in the air. “Proper gentleman,” she said with a snooty air. “Never does anything outrageous. Not a stitch of silliness in the man. Boring as a church mouse. He’s not at all like you.”
She dropped her gaze and batted her huge gray eyes at him.
Hughmont pulled at his cravat again, his eyes roaming her face. “I have been thinking Miss Millicent...”
Milli shifted her gaze back to her book and turned another page. “You know, sometimes Romeo is rather stupid. He reminds me of someone I know.”
Lord Marcus for one, she thought. That man aggravated her like no other. He thought her nothing but a child. And she loved him. But what did that matter?
“Miss Millicent?”
She sighed, hanging onto her book and clutching the ladder, anything to make her forget Lord Marcus and his stuffy, gentleman ways. “Very well, if you insist, a few good swings, and then we can go.”
Hughmont’s snort of amusement sent Milli’s nerves tingling with adventure.
“You are incorrigible,” he said, shaking his head. “Very well, you little tease. A few good swings!”
Milli closed her eyes and grasped the ladder like a child holding onto her favorite pony. “I’m ready!” The ladder swung to the right, then to the left, then to the right. Milli’s shrieks of glee only made Hughmont swing her faster.
The two young people never heard the harsh growl of displeasure that exploded behind the curtains near the window seat.