The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter EIGHTEEN


Hours later, after another of her chef’s delectable but interminable dinners, Ellie wanted wine. Great, overflowing vats of wine, in such quantities that the fumes alone could cloud her judgment. She would drink to excess, flirt and laugh and dance until she could no longer stand, and confront reality in the morning. Or the afternoon, when her head stopped spinning. If she waited long enough, she could repeat the cycle again without confronting reality at all.

Could she spend the four months Nick demanded in a state of utter inebriation?

She suppressed a scowl and reached for her teapot, part of the Spode service that had been a wedding gift. Her father had commissioned it for her and Charles, and she had received it long after she’d already put off her mourning. “May I refresh your cup, Aunt Sophronia?” she asked.

Her aunt held up her cup with an irritated sigh. “I know you’ve found your respectability now that your sisters are with you, and I applaud you for it, but I had hoped for stronger stuff. Where are the perfectly matched footmen bearing chalices of wine?”

“Packed up and put away, your grace,” Ellie said as she poured. “But the tea is excellent, don’t you think?”

Sophronia sniffed. “I don’t wish to waste my remaining years on tea. And from the way your fingers are drumming the pot, you don’t wish it either.”

Ellie deliberately set the teapot aside and folded her hands in her lap. “You are a terrible influence, aunt.”

They were sitting slightly apart from the rest of the women in the company, who had spread themselves throughout the connected drawing rooms after dinner as they waited for the men to join them. But Sophronia was formidable enough to say anything she pleased, whether she had an audience or not. “I am above reproach,” Sophronia declared. “And if I say we should have wine, then no one would think to question it.”

“Very well, I shall summon the butler. You are not making it easier for me to reform myself.”

Sophronia sniffed. “You never did invite me to one of your bacchanals. I refuse to allow you to reform before I attend one.”

Ellie looked through the connecting doors to where Kate and Maria sat together, giggling and sharing secrets. Even if they had both set their caps for Sebastian, it was all innocent — not the kind of trouble they would have found themselves in at one of her earlier parties. She turned back to Sophronia with a small shrug. “You are too late for a bacchanal, aunt. And anyway, I couldn’t play the jade forever. Everyone must change eventually.”

Sophronia leaned in, suddenly serious. Ellie had seen the liver spots hidden under Sophronia’s gloves, but her grip was still strong as she took Ellie’s hand. “You can change however you wish, Elinor. I admit, I would rather see you become a patroness of Almack’s than some dreadful, loose-moraled minx. But I thought you’d learned this lesson already — be who you want to be, not whatever someone else would make you.”

“And if I don’t want to host another infamous party?” Ellie asked.

Sophronia waved a magnanimous hand. “There are other hostesses who will take your place. But I’ll still have wine tonight.”

Ellie laughed. Sophronia was a force unto herself. Ellie was a force in some circles as well — and could be in others, at least as long as they didn’t know of her sudden poverty and Nick’s lascivious demands.

But did she want that kind of influence, the kind that gave her power without friendships and solitude without anyone to question her? Or should she take her aunt’s advice and chart her own course?

Lady Salford joined them then, choosing to sit with Sophronia and Ellie rather than some of the younger ladies. “I must compliment your chef, Lady Folkestone,” she said as Ellie poured her tea. “Your meals are as charming as I’ve always heard.”

“Thank you, Lady Salford. I hope to persuade him to stay with me rather than Folkestone — I am sure his genius takes the credit for why people accept my invitations.”

She couldn’t afford her chef, or her parties, but Lady Salford couldn’t know that. At least if Ellie turned respectable, she might live more cheaply. Far better to be thought a dull stick than a bankrupt one.

Lady Salford took the cup from Ellie’s outstretched hand. The conversation stayed neutral, never dropping into unseen currents. Lady Salford was eminently proper — not boring, precisely, but not one to even tiptoe on the edge of scandal. How she’d raised her children to be such rebels was a mystery. Her daughter Amelia was a secret writer; her niece Madeleine, whom she had raised for decades, had acted on a public stage; and her son Sebastian was somewhat of an enigma, since he spent most of his time on his plantation in the Caribbean. Only Alex, now Lord Salford, was proper — but perhaps he was just a late bloomer when it came to sin.

By the time the men entered the drawing room a quarter of an hour later, Ellie was itching for some sin herself. Propriety was all well and good. But the wine Sophronia had ordered and the restless prickling under her skin as she spoke of nothing and more nothing with Lady Salford combined to make her reckless.

If this were five years earlier, she might have taken a lover from one of her guests — a rake who wouldn’t hurt her but also wouldn’t press for the heart she couldn’t give him. But she’d been done with lovers for ages.

Until Nick had walked into her ball and claimed her. He walked into the drawing room the same way tonight, part proprietor, part predator. He’d leashed his darkest elements, feigning some transparent bonhomie with Lord Norbury, who regarded him with the confused, suspicious air of a man who had been warned to expect a lion and was instead presented with a housecat.

Ellie would have laughed at the thought of Nick as a housecat, but she knew his claws weren’t sheathed for her sake. Until tonight, he’d barely spoken to anyone in the party but her. His manners at the previous night’s dinner had been cold and aloof. Tonight, though, he had mounted a charm offensive that would have left all the foreign diplomats in the Court of St. James in the shade.

“You must join me for the hunts next year, Norbury,” Nick said as they entered. “My brother says we’ve a fine hunting lodge in some county or another, if I can find it.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow at Marcus, who entered directly behind them. He shrugged slightly. Neither had ever heard Nick show the slightest interest in retiring to the country. Marcus walked over to where Ellie sat. She remembered an instant too late that she hadn’t forgiven him.

“Your grace. Ladies,” he said, bowing to them.

“Mr. Claiborne,” she said. She kept her voice neutral. No one else could know of the rift that had sprung up between them. “I trust the gentlemen were comfortable with their brandy?”

His eyes flickered back to Nick, who had clapped Norbury on the back — odd, since Ellie was sure Nick would rather give up everything and become a lead miner in Derbyshire than become friends with the viscount. “Quite comfortable, Lady Folkestone, now that my dear brother has determined to play the host.”

“How charming,” she said.

Nick didn’t approach her. He kept Norbury cornered instead, taking him through the connecting doors to the green saloon where they might have brandy instead of tea. Norbury glanced at Ellie on the way as though she might rescue him, but she shook her head.

“Poor Norbury looks like he’s a Christian sacrifice in Rome, don’t you think?” Sophronia observed.

“Norbury can hold his own,” Ellie said. “And Lord Folkestone doesn’t bite.”

“Do you care to verify that personally?” Sophronia asked.

“Did you just wink at me?” Ellie asked.

“I would never be so vulgar.”

Then she winked again.

Ellie sighed. She should turn Folkestone into a lunatic asylum and charge her family and friends for their upkeep. None of them were sane, and they were fast pulling her down with them.

She kept that uncharitable thought to herself. “Ladies, how shall we entertain ourselves tonight? Shall we have dancing? Or perhaps a game?”

“I would defer to you, Lady Folkestone — whatever the young people prefer,” Lady Salford said. “I am quite content to watch from beside the fire.”

“If there are to be no professional dancers cavorting for us, I have no preference,” Sophronia said.

“If you want to give a scandalous party for your own friends, I am sure I could help you arrange it,” Ellie said. “But I will not be hiring any more opera dancers for this house.”

“That is a shame,” Marcus mused. “I quite like it when you hire opera dancers.”

Sophronia tittered. Ellie almost rolled her eyes — she knew, even if no one else did, that his thoughts had turned to Lucia. But she caught herself in time. “If no one has a suggestion, I shall consult Lord Folkestone. Aunt Sophronia, please ensure that Mr. Claiborne behaves himself in my absence.”

“I will if you promise to hire opera dancers for my party,” Sophronia said. “And you must find a smuggler who will sell us real French champagne. Respectability is no excuse for drinking swill.”

Most definitely insane. What did it say about her friends and family that Ellie was grateful to take her leave, even when Nick was her destination?

Or what did it say about herself? Even after the revenge he’d plotted for so long, she still felt his pull through the rooms like a tether. He’d hooked her, set the hook too deep to dislodge, and could pull her in without the slightest effort.

But a hooked fish still struggled. Ellie didn’t fight the pull. If she was a fish, then she was a stupid fish, perhaps even a suicidal fish — willing to leap into the boat to lie, gasping, at his feet.

Perhaps everyone else was sane and she was the madwoman.