Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

E ven as a child Grace had disliked the earl. Ravenscroft had loomed over every occasion, crowding people, his booming voice obliterating what anyone else had to say. In the ensuing years he'd become a rather frail old man, but he'd obviously not lost his taste for making a grand entrance.

Lord Everdene dropped his hand from Grace's waist and moved toward his father. "What are you doing here?" His words seared through the room like lightning.

"An acquaintance informed me that my daughters had arrived at Everdene Hall and there was a party being given in their honor. My invitation must have gone astray."

Simon moved beside Lucien, blocking the earl's path.

All night, Lucien had looked severe, never truly at ease. But, now, as he faced the earl, his whole body exuded something almost frightening.

Someone had to break the awful spell that gripped the room. Grace approached the earl and dipped into a curtsey. "Good evening, my lord. I fear you will not recognize me without a doll in my arms. I am Grace Elliot from The Willows."

She'd hoped to defuse the situation, but her words seemed to heighten the tension. The earl's eyes took on a shrewd glitter. "That interfering Lady Barbara Elliot's chit. I've no desire to renew our acquaintance."

His gaze fixed on his daughters like the point of a blade. "Cassandra. Jane. Come greet your father as obedient daughters should."

Simon's teeth set and he moved as if he wanted to grab the old man by the collar. But Lucien put a hand on his brother's arm, nodding to the other people gathered around.

"This family reunion should be conducted in private," Lucien said with a tight smile. "If our guests will excuse us."

Cassandra cut in. "Perhaps the company would like to visit my studio before we Harcourts retire. Now that father is here, I am even more eager to display my paintings—see if he thinks the art lessons he supplied were worth the expense." She turned that cat-eyed stare on the earl. "I painted one in particular with you in mind."

The earl's nostrils flared in disdain. "By all means, let us see my daughter's works of art . And then I might finally meet my grandson."

He hadn't met his own grandchild? Grace tried to comprehend it. The child was eight months old.

"Impossible," Simon ground out the word.

What was happening here? Grace felt as if she'd walked in mid-way during a very disturbing play. Jane was trembling. Grace went to slip her arm around her waist. Lucien shot her a glance so grateful it shook Grace to the core.

The crowd flowed up the stairs, following Cassandra, the earl between his grim-faced sons. At the door to the studio, Cassandra held up a hand.

"Wait here until I light the lamps. The first impression is always the most important." She slipped into the room and partially closed the door. Grace stole a look at the earl and his children. She remembered her own father over the years. Papa was not perfect, but she'd never once doubted he loved her or the boys. Or that Papa loved her mother, in spite of what gossips might say. The earl's sons regarded him as if he was their enemy. One daughter was so frightened by his presence she was trembling. The other…

Clinks and rustling sounded inside the studio, then light began to glow. At last, Cassandra bade them enter. The room was lined with canvases in various stages of completion.

Cassandra Harcourt was gifted. That was Grace's first impression even before Penelope's art-loving sister, Fanny, began to exclaim. There was passion in the brushstrokes, power.

But it was the canvas on the easel in the room's center that arrested Grace's attention. Cassandra had clustered branches of candles around the painting, as if encircling it in flame, the image so powerful it took Grace's breath away.

A half-naked dark-haired man sprawled on his back, while two women held him down. His mouth gaped wide in a silent scream as one woman wrenched his head back to expose his throat, while the other prepared to slash it with a knife.

"The original is far better than my copy," Cassandra said. "But the subject pleased me."

"What is it called and who painted it?" Fanny asked, mesmerized.

" Judith Slaying Holefernes. It was painted by a woman. Artemisia Gentileschi."

"You've done a remarkable job," Grace said staring in fascination. "My mother and I read about Artemisia. She was the first woman admitted to the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence."

Cassandra arched her brows in approval. "Very good, Lady Grace. But Artemesia's skill wasn't the thing her contemporaries remembered most about her. She was raped by her father's apprentice, Agostino Tassi, and the court tortured her with thumbscrews to try to get her to recant her accusation."

"How awful." Grace shuddered, curling her own fingers into her palm.

Cassandra's gaze fixed on the earl, her last words chilling Grace to the bone.

"Her father watched."

The brutal image combined with Cassandra's words hit Lucien like a fist. From the instant his father had burst through the door, he'd wanted to drag the earl out of Everdene Hall and send him to hell or Bitterne Tower. Now, more than ever. But that was impossible with the guests looking on—which was how the scheming earl had planned it. The last thing Jane and Cassandra needed was another cruel attack by their father.

Lucien took Simon's arm, saying under his breath, "I'll deal with father. Keep Jane and Cassandra and everyone else the hell away from him."

Simon nodded and Lucien stepped to the earl's side.

"My lord, I need to speak to you on an urgent matter regarding the estate," Lucien announced. "Alone." Cassandra started to argue, but Lucien's pointed glance at Jane stopped her.

"We can talk after dinner," the earl insisted.

"No. You and I will conduct our business while the others retreat to the dining room."

He thought the old man might defy him. Their eyes locked and he realized that if the earl made a scene he would remove him by force if he had to.

The moment seemed to teeter on a razor's edge until Grace broke the fraught silence. "The smells wafting from the kitchen are divine!" she said, starting to herd the other guests toward the doorway with Simon and Penelope's help. "I am sure we are all growing hungry after so much dancing."

At the doorway, she paused and glanced back at Lucien. He shot her another grateful look then retired with his father to the study. Once inside, he closed the door and locked it.

"Still determined to play my jailer, are you?" The earl took the chair behind the large desk where Lucien conducted the business of the estate. Another calculated maneuver—seizing the seat of power.

"What are you doing here?" Lucien demanded.

"I am an old man," the earl said with deceptive innocence. "Is it so strange that I want to see my daughters before I die? I am their father. Your father."

"You gave up your rights when you sent Cassandra and Jane away twenty years ago. You've done enough damage."

"What about your own part in this little drama? Your mother and Simon may be weak enough to forgive you, and Jane…she would cry for a bee that died after it stung her. But Cassandra…ah, now, she is a different matter. She knew how to hold a grudge from the time she was born. And she resented you even before you gave her such good reason to. She would have made a formidable political ally out of Thornsby if she'd wed him as I planned. But no. Your mother had to meddle."

"Cassandra wasn't even fifteen yet."

"The girl had steel in her spine for all that. You know as the others never will that ruthlessness is required if a man is to lead."

"Which is why I'll do whatever is necessary to keep my sisters safe." Lucien struggled to keep from clenching his fists. "I am summoning your coach and you are leaving Everdene Hall before the others finish dining."

"You would send your father out onto the open road in the middle of the night? How will you feel if I am killed by brigands or the coach plunges off the road?"

"You should have thought about that before you came here. I won't have you sleeping under the same roof as Jane and Cassandra."

"A little late for you to play the great protector, is it not?"

The old man's verbal riposte drew blood, but damned if Lucien would let him see it. He forced his voice to remain cold, calm. "We had an agreement that I would be responsible for the Harcourt estates and you would remain at Bitterne Tower."

"Yes, yes." The earl waved one heavily beringed hand. "If I refused to comply, you would reveal my machinations to the ton and drown the Harcourt titles in scandal. But the title will be damaged anyway. There are rumors you have made certain comments regarding the Irish question that are most disturbing for a landlord and peer of the realm. My former allies in parliament consider you a traitor to your class. You are making dangerous enemies."

"Are you one of them?"

"Your sister might be. It was not just my head she was imagining on that platter. The last year she was at Everdene Hall your mother even moved you to separate rooms to put an end to your fighting."

Yes, they had squabbled. Cass had been furious that he was taking father's side in their parents' conflicts.

Now he knew she'd been right.

"My issue with you is that you've not provided an heir."

"Simon has a son."

"One he won't even let me see! Simon and that wife of his are no more capable of raising a peer of the realm than they are of flying. You know full well that a future Earl of Ravenscroft must be raised from the cradle to bring honor to his name. By the time you were five years old you'd learned to respond to my directions with alacrity. Do you remember?"

God, Lucien wished he could wash himself clean of the memory. That strange, heady sensation his father had fostered in him, that Lucien was marked by fate…special in the eyes of the world…and in the eyes of his demanding father.

"Until the title is secured to my satisfaction, I will continue my interest in everything that affects the Harcourt name." The earl's gaze bored into his. "Marry, get your wife with child, and my interest in your sisters will wane. Until then, I will do as I see fit."