The Marquess Who Loved Me

The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey


CHAPTER ONE

Surrey, 11 February 1813

Nicholas Claiborne was not a sentimental man. And yet even he thought it would be pleasant to feel something better than anger upon seeing his ancestral estate for the first time.

“Damn her,” he muttered. “She would be hosting a party tonight.”

Did Ellie remember this date, this night, as he did? Or was her party a grating coincidence?

When Nick’s will had failed him over the last decade — more often than he cared to admit — he dreamed of seeing her again. Sometimes, his fantasy Ellie ran into his arms. Sometimes, she was so caught up in someone else that she didn’t notice him. But in every vision of his homecoming, he had forgotten an important point.

He couldn’t find his own house.

It was embarrassing, that. The pub owner in the last village, only a mile from Folkestone’s entrance gates, had assured him that he couldn’t possibly miss the estate. He might have done so more smugly had he known Nick was the long-absent owner rather than one of an endless stream of guests. But Nick hadn’t shared his real name — not in the village, not upon arrival at the East India Docks, and not at the London hotel he’d used for the past five days. If the attempts on his life in Madras had been ordered from London — or Folkestone — he wouldn’t make it easy for his assailants by announcing his return.

The date of his return was a coincidence. If he weren’t tracking a would-be murderer, he might never have returned. But on the eve of Ellie’s birthday, he couldn’t resist her. When his will finally, inevitably failed him and his compulsion for Ellie had overruled his common sense, he only had a vague sense of where to find his Surrey estate — hardly an auspicious homecoming.

Luckily, the pub owner’s directions were sound. The grand wrought iron gates stood open, more inviting than Nick had pictured them when his father had described them to Nick and his brothers. Beyond, some fifty carriages lined the drive. He heard the whinnying of horses and the stamping of hooves, muted masculine laughter and at least one protracted snore. Never mind that it was February — the drivers were accustomed to waiting hours for their employers.

Surely it was the cold that made him shiver, not the gates that waited for him. The colorful coat of arms at their peak was grey in the darkness, but the golden bits glimmered faintly in the moonlight. He had been forced to learn the arms at Eton — lions, unicorns, and roses, remnants of the ancient lines from which his father’s side descended.

His lip curled. What would his own arms be? Looms and rifles and tea leaves?

He urged his horse through the gates. If anyone in the house wanted a warning when he arrived, there was no one at the gatehouse to send it. He’d passed no carriages on the road — they likely thought all guests were accounted for and had gone off for a drink. If he were inclined, Nick could seize the gatehouse without firing a single shot.

As an invasion force, he was grossly outnumbered. But then, he held the deed to the property. Ellie’s opinions on the matter, like the rest of her, could go to the devil.

The long drive was lined with towering elms, their branches a naked winter canopy. Moonlight filtered through, casting light and shadow on the gravel as he rode. In summer the leaves would be impenetrable. His father, in one of his nostalgic moods, had said the tunnel was a bit of magic, cutting off the view of the main house until the last moment, the better to stun visitors with its grandeur.

The marquesses of Folkestone were supposed to be grand. As the latest in that accursed line, Nick didn’t care for appearances. He only cared for what helped him to achieve his ends. If grand hauteur helped, he would use every bit of it he possessed. He had hired a private room at the pub and trussed himself up in the evening suit he’d paid double to have tailored in London that morning. It wouldn’t do to show up like a travel-stained beggar, not for what he had planned. He’d left his batman in the village, too — under protest, since Trower thought Nick needed an ally at his back.

Perhaps he did. But this wasn’t a Madras back alley, and he’d found no evidence of a threat to his life in London. If Nick faced an attack at Folkestone, it would be more subtle — a cut direct with the eyes, not a saber.

He reached the end of the tunnel. It opened into a wide semicircular carriageway that cut across the acres of lawns and gardens in front of the vast house.

Nick reined in. His breath left him in a gust of frozen mist. The stories his father told had made Folkestone into a prison — Newgate, with fewer inmates and better ventilation.

But tonight, lit up outside with torches and inside with lamps and chandeliers, Folkestone was a shimmering invitation, a mansion seductive in its glory. Perhaps his father had dimmed his descriptions of Folkestone’s grandeur for Nick’s mother’s sake — as though to say that marrying her and being disowned for it had rescued him rather than ruined him.

Nick set his jaw. Folkestone could go to the devil too. He hadn’t needed it when he’d unexpectedly inherited it ten years earlier, and he didn’t need it now. Besides, he was accustomed to such displays of wealth. The Claibornes had snubbed Nick’s mother for no reason other than that she was the daughter of a garrulous Welsh miner-turned-merchant, but the business his maternal grandfather had started could buy Folkestone twenty times over. There was no point in ogling Folkestone like a street urchin.

And he would rather carve out his own eyes than be caught staring at it by someone who was either his servant or his guest.

Or Ellie.

His teeth ground together. He forced his jaw open. It was pointless to order himself not to think of her. He had given himself that order ten thousand times. It was the only place where his discipline failed him. But surely he could be disciplined tonight — if not for his pride, then for the effectiveness of his revenge upon her.

He rode around the courtyard’s central fountain. The statues, replicas of Grecian water-bearers, were silent in winter, the water drained to keep from freezing and cracking the stone. At the foot of the house, a wide, shallow staircase beckoned, leading up half a story to the open double doors. He heard hundreds of voices, but no music — the party had not yet begun. But Ellie would have no trouble filling the house with guests. No one would refuse an invitation to such a lavish display, even with the two-hour drive from London.

A handful of grooms watched his approach. The Folkestone grooms typically wore green with gold trim — or at least they had twenty years earlier, when Charles Claiborne, his cousin and unlamented predecessor to the Folkestone title, had stolen all of Nick’s clothes and left only a suit of Folkestone livery in Nick’s chest at Eton. The hot, furious shame of that moment had faded, but the vivid memory of that green coat where his Eton robes should have been would never leave him.

But the grooms wore sumptuous red and blue tunics with puffed sleeves and hose — livery that would have been more at home at the Tudor court, not a modern country seat. They were all improbably young and impossibly smooth as they bowed to him.

“Welcome to Folkestone, sir,” one of them said as Nick slid from his horse. He had the diction of a posh Londoner, not the broad accents of Surrey.

Nick slid off his horse and tossed a guinea to the groom. “Stable him. I’m staying.”

That should have startled a look of surprise out of the servant. His face stayed unconcerned, though. He took the reins and led the horse away without a word.

How many other men had said the same thing, to make Ellie’s servants so accustomed to his boldness?

One groom ushered him politely toward the steps. The others ignored him. No questions about luggage. No demand to see an invitation. No curiosity about why he had arrived on horseback rather than driving a smart curricle or carriage. Nick wanted to know why they were so lax. He wanted to know why they were dressed as Tudors. He wanted to know why they didn’t recognize their master — surely Ellie kept at least one painting of him somewhere in his house? She’d painted him enough times to fill a room — unless she’d painted over him, removing his face from her life as ruthlessly as she’d cut out his heart.

He kept his questions to himself and strode up the steps. But his anger rose. He let it come, preferring rage to thoughts of what might have been — what his life would have been, if he had claimed this house the day he had inherited it. It would have been easy enough to do — take his damned cousin’s title and the estate his father had never been allowed to return to.

And his cousin’s bride — the woman who should have been his.

His thoughts were consumed by Ellie tonight. But he still had space to examine the house’s defenses. If his would-be murderer had followed him from India, it would be absurdly easy to slip onto the estate. In fact, it seemed no slipping was required — Napoleon himself could likely walk into this party unmolested, and perhaps be offered refreshments and a bath before he started hacking away at people.

The tide of his anger swept him up the stairs and warmed his blood. An answering blast of body heat met him at the door. A crush of people milled in the grand foyer, spilling into the public drawing rooms and salons beyond the entryway.

It was a masquerade party — that much was clear immediately. The guests wore even more elaborate Elizabethan garb than the servants. Beneath the perfume of hothouse flowers, he smelled musty cedar. Some of the guests wore costumes that had been stored for decades, if not centuries. The gold and silver threaded clothes and bushels of jewels would do a maharaja proud.

Ellie’s birth, as the daughter of a duke absolutely obsessed with bloodlines, had always been high enough to attract a better class than Nick. Her current milieu said she’d found it.

He was tall enough to see over most of them. It had been a consolation years earlier, when they would have had him scraping at their feet. Now, it was merely a convenience. His eyes were already scanning the crowd, looking for red in a sea of blondes and browns and silvers, when someone tapped his elbow.

A servant stood at his side, frowning imperiously. Too young to be a butler — but then, the grooms were young as well. The servants weren’t just young, though. They were perfectly formed and immaculately dressed, as though Ellie had hired staff better suited to standing for her paintings than for menial labor.

Nick raised an eyebrow.

“My lady was most specific in the invitation about the preferred costume for this evening. Sir,” he added, with just enough doubt to set Nick’s teeth on edge.

“My lord,” Nick supplied.

The man colored slightly. “My lord,” he repeated. “My apologies. But still, the marchioness…”

Nick handed him his greatcoat, hat, and gloves, stripping them off with a predatory efficiency that made the servant flinch. The man almost refused, starting to gesture toward a cloak room. But Nick didn’t stop. “Send someone to air out my room. And tell me where to find the marchioness.”

“May I have your card, my lord?”

“No.”

He’d been in London five days and hadn’t ordered calling cards. It was likely an offense grave enough to have him tossed out of the House of Lords — but they would have half a dozen other reasons not to welcome him before they even reached matters of etiquette.

The servant swallowed. “If you would be so good as to wait just a moment, my lord, her ladyship will welcome all of her guests soon.”

He had stayed away from her for ten years. Part of him wished for another ten. Another part of him didn’t want to wait ten seconds. But he shrugged, let just enough displeasure show in his eyes to make the servant wince again, and waved a magnanimous hand. “Very well. I will find her myself after she’s greeted the guests.”

“Would you care for a mask, my lord? Not that you must take one, of course,” he added hastily, when Nick’s eyebrow slowly rose again.

He looked out over the crowd. Nearly all of the others wore costumes, not masks. Few would recognize him — few had known him, other than his fellows at Eton, and he’d seen none of them in over a decade. But if the servants were too dense to realize who he was, he would save the surprise for Ellie herself.

Maybe he would see something on her face to repay him for everything she’d done.

He turned back to the servant and took the mask he offered. He pulled on his formal gloves, obeying that social rule even if he cared for none of the others. And then he strode through the crowd, ignoring muttered huffs of protest as he elbowed toward the closed double doors on one side of the foyer.

If the house map his father had once drawn for him wasn’t an exaggeration built on years of exile, a massive ballroom lay beyond those doors. He had just reached a prime vantage point when the doors were flung open. Everyone turned en masse, chattering excitedly.

“Do you think she’s topped her Roman bacchanal?” a woman near him whispered to her companion.

“I do hope she’s brought back the opera dancers,” a man said, laughing at his wife’s mock censure.

“Of course her costume will be splendid. But I came for her chef’s efforts…”

Nick stopped hearing the people around him. They were drowned out by a sudden crashing in his ears, a roar that came from somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. Through the doors, he saw a throne. And on the throne, a queen.

Ellie.

Not a queen. An angel.

A devil.

His eyes blurred.

The servant who had greeted him before — perhaps the butler after all, despite his youth — cleared his throat. “The Marchioness of Folkestone welcomes you,” he announced, in a voice that wasn’t a shout but still somehow carried through the crowd.

Nick looked across the distance between them, over the heads of those who already moved down the carpet to greet her. The last time he’d seen her, she had worn orange blossoms in her red hair, his bloody cousin’s ring on her finger, and a smile that would have driven him to gut her if he hadn’t noticed, from where he lurked uninvited in the cathedral’s shadows, her downcast eyes and the uncertain tilt to her chin.

There was no smile now, but no uncertainty either. She wore a crown instead of orange blossoms and a golden velvet gown instead of sweet, innocent muslin. She looked regal, serene, just a little bored — a perfect match to her costume.

She hadn’t seen him yet, just as she hadn’t seen him at her wedding.

He smiled under his mask.

Tonight, she had no choice but to see him. And then…

And then he didn’t know, exactly, what would happen.

But this time, he would win.