Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

L illian kept quiet as Leo drove the borrowed chaise through the streets of Shrivenham, past the thatched-roof cottages and the Jacobean Manor House with its pointed gables and deep windows. She looked like a nymph of the dusk in a gown she’d borrowed from Temperance Woodfforde, her hair worked into elegant coils by the combined labors of Octavia and Faustina, whose giggles had drifted from her room as they prepared.

She also looked very serious.

“Farthing for your thoughts,” he said lightly.

She graced him with a smile, and there was that dimple that never failed to make his heart hitch.

“I’m astonished that Hester agreed to stay with the Woodffordes overnight. I thought she would fuss about us leaving her with the Caesars while we went to dinner without her. She’s never slept away from her family before.” She hesitated. “You don’t suppose…”

“That there will be a repeat of what happened with Bacon?” He guessed the line of her thoughts from the twist to her lovely lips. “No fear in the slightest. The reverend dotes upon your cousin even more than Temperance does. They will spoil her thoroughly and do everything to ensure her comfort.”

“I’ve never quite trusted anyone else to look after her properly. Including her mother,” she murmured.

“But tonight you are free to be young and frivolous.”

That dimple again. “I cannot recall when I was last frivolous.”

“When you threw caution to the wind and kissed a complete stranger after you lured him into your glasshouse,” he reminded her.

A shell pink blush traced the curve of her cheekbone. “There is that.”

“I believe that is a fault we share. Too little time spent being frivolous.”

Along the road to Highworth, the shops and cottages gave way to flat lawns of pasture rimmed with the occasional hedgerow to mark a field or border. The chesty, long-legged Wiltshire sheep, with their horns curling back from noble Roman noses, floated across the sea of green like a fleet of tiny galleons, sleek after their spring moulting. Lillian smiled as she watched the lambs gambol about the feet of their elders, butting one another and the occasional dam, who would raise her regal head and stare complacently until the youthful antics subsided.

“I beg your pardon,” Lillian said. “I am frequently frivolous. I spend my time sketching plants, don’t you know. What could possibly be more destructive to my prospects of securing a respectable husband and setting up a household of my own, than daydreaming and drawing when I ought to be improving my embroidery and my housewifery skills. And my posture,” she added, and he heard her Aunt Giles in her words. “And my topics of conversation. And my—very me -ness, really.”

Leo clicked his tongue as the horse, sensing laxness, bent his head to nip at a clump of thistles. “We are alike in that as well. Our families wishing we were more a credit to the name.”

“I still cannot believe your relatives would find anything lacking in you, Leo Westrop.” Lillian canted her shoulders toward him, careful not to crush her dress. “Have you told them of your discovery?”

“ You made the discovery,” he felt compelled to point out.

“I found the first set by pure luck,” she answered. “We were working together.”

His heart did something strange in his chest just then, shifted and settled like a dog circling in its bed. His mind had been taken up for most of the past few days by contemplation of his find, what to do with the bones, how to report to Craven, how to build a convincing theory for his peers.

Part of his mind had also been preoccupied with worrying about this dinner, Lillian’s first encounter with the Westrop family and Waringford Hall. She would see where he had been brought up, and she would see how his family regarded him. He worried she would see their view of matters and think less of him.

Or worse: she would look at Waringford Hall and see more. That the marquessate would be the lure that would make her want him, stay with him, be his in truth.

He didn’t want her to be another Empyrea, pursuing him for his possible future.

He didn’t see what else he had to offer.

But this was Lillian, who was as entranced by his antiquarian work as he was. She worked side by side with him, discussing options, making decisions. When he’d wanted to unearth the bones immediately to identify what animal they belonged to, Lillian insisted on brushing away the dirt, layer by careful layer, and drawing the bones in situ. She hadn’t fainted with horror when Claudius determined that the bones were human, that the skulls of the two seeming adults showed cracks, that one set appeared to have belonged to a child.

Lillian Gower was the perfect archaeological assistant, accomplice, and amanuensis. And he suspected the fit of her in his life accounted for the heights of pleasure he found in her arms. He could service himself, or hire a companion for the night, and it wouldn’t be close to the same. The pleasure was from being with her.

How could he make her want him, and him alone?

“My mother will be shocked that I’ve been handling bones at all.” He might as well prepare her for the evening to come. He turned off the Highworth road onto the rutted lane that led through the fields of the home farm and the rear approach to Waringford Hall. “You have met my mother, so you see what a stickler she is. In her prayers every night, I believe she thanks God for making her daughter to the Earl of Fossey so she may be addressed as Lady Mary. Calling her nieces by a courtesy title higher than her own would have eaten her alive.”

Lillian tucked in a smile. “If only you were reaching as high for yourself. It must be killing her that you lighted on a lowly baronet’s grandniece, a plain old miss. She tried so hard with you.”

“The epitaph we might carve on her tomb, in a day I hope is yet far in the future,” Leo said.

A reed bunting flared up from his hiding place in a buckthorn, a male with his black throat and white collar. His plainer missus joined him a second later, as if reluctant to abandon a nest. Even the plainest bird of field and meadow had his mate. A home, a family.

Lillian traced the golden embroidery on the silk of her robe, the panels a darker purple than the dog violet that bloomed beneath the hedgerow. “And the others I’m to meet?”

“My uncle the marquess will want to know every detail about the bones. He thrives on the morbid. He’ll talk at length about Rupert, about all the horrible ways he might have died—I’ll warn you now.”

“I understand he is grieving,” she murmured.

“Cursed, more like. The heirs to Waringford seem to meet horrible fates. My grandfather inherited after he lost two brothers. One died of malaria on his grand tour. The second died on the hunt. Pursuing a deer into the night, determined to catch it, for which he was thrown from his horse and drowned in the pond. They say you can hear the hoofbeats of his horse on certain nights as his ghost thunders down the drive, still in pursuit of that prized buck.”

“Terrible accidents,” Lillian observed.

“And that was the previous generation. My eldest uncle died in a duel. Over a woman. Not the respectable lady he was pledged to marry the next day, but the mistress he refused to give up, and whom an acquaintance reportedly slandered as he was gaming one night, deep in his cups.”

“He died the night before his wedding? In a duel over his mistress?”

“A tale belonging to a previous century, I know,” Leo agreed. “Not our enlightened age. Aunt Dorinda remains unmarried. Says she’s never found a man who interested her as much as coursing hares. It’s a wonder she hasn’t fallen from a horse and broken her neck, but she’s so disobliging she’d argue with the devil when he came to take her.

“Rupert’s father died in the Americas years ago, and my own father threw off his mortal coil in the most disagreeable circumstances at least a decade since. My uncle’s wife passed with great dignity and little lament two years ago, and that leaves my three cousins, all daughters, for whom I expect my uncle is madly planning weddings to avoid the detestable circumstance of having Waringford pass to me.”

“He cannot dislike you that much?”

“But his lifelong dislike for my father can spill over onto my brother and me.”

“Are you close with your cousins?”

“I grew up around them, you might say. They were girls, you see, and Rupert and I weren’t about to include them. Lucy, who is twenty-four, could beat us at most games if we let her. She was born to be a blacksmith or a metal worker—she has a fascination with old weapons. Catherine is twenty and in two seasons turned down every offer because she refuses to marry a man who knows less about ancient languages and civilizations than she does. Annibel is—hmmm, sixteen? She likes animals better than people.”

He glanced at Lillian. “Those chummy dinners we have with the Caesars at the manor? Please do not expect any charm from the Westrops. We are more a Greek tragedy than a romantic farce.”

But she would endure that, wouldn’t she, if she wanted badly enough to become a marchioness.

Lillian gazed around them as Leo pulled through a small wood and turned down a lane bordering a vast green park that had been landscaped to resemble a natural setting. Trees with full canopies bowed over the green swales like graceful ladies in court dress. A small river meandered to a quiet pool, complete with foot bridge and a pair of mute swans sailing the placid water. A small folly sat tucked beneath the drape of a massive willow. Leo had spent many an afternoon of his childhood splashing in that pool, making reed whistles, catching fish and tadpoles, sifting for favorite possessions that Rupert had stolen and tossed into the water.

An enormous neoclassical edifice sprawled before them, slashed with over a dozen bays of windows, each with its own cornice and pediment in white brick that contrasted with the flint-gray stone of the exterior. Lillian swiveled her head to stare as they traveled along the lane that circled to the outbuildings clustered to the south of the hall, including the stable yard and carriage house.

“You didn’t prepare me for how very large Waringford Hall is,” she said quietly.

Leo’s chest tightened. The Hall tended to inspire awe.

“I don’t know how to warn people it’s the size of a small hamlet. They wouldn’t believe me. The original hall was much smaller, that central section that you see. My grandfather extended the house on each side. My uncle built the parallel wings. You can go for days in that house and not see the other people who live there.”

“I’m not dressed for this.” Her voice faint, she gathered the folds of her traveling cloak tightly about her. “Leo—they are going to detest me.”

He wanted to gather her in his arms and assure her that his family would adore her. But as he turned the horse onto the gravel drive and pulled into the shadow of the house, Leo feared he’d made a terrible miscalculation. When had his family valued anything Leo deemed important?

An iron railing had been added along the top of the porch, creating a balcony accessible from the first floor, the room his grandmother had made over to a morning room. Leo wondered what else had changed in his time living in Oxford, then London. Waringford Hall wasn’t his home any longer.

One of the double doors smacked open and a young woman spilled onto the porch, cradling her apron. By the time he brought the vehicle to a halt, a phalanx of people stood with her, his family ranged beneath the white portico, the servants flanking them in formation. He was getting the formal welcome.

Lillian was underdressed, by the look of them. Her silk robe was elegant enough, a simple round gown with side and back panels of royal purple, embroidered with gold thread, and a front panel of cream silk embroidered in purple. But her neck and hands were bare of jewels, while the Westrop women fair dripped with them, and their hair looked as if they’d sat getting their heads dressed for the better part of the day, while Lillian had nothing but a simple knot of purple flowers anchored in her coils.

The delicate scent surrounded her. The Westrop women looked stately and useless, flowers bred in a glasshouse for show. Lillian, like a medicinal flower of the meadow, was useful in every part.

He gripped her hand firmly as he helped her descend the chaise and sent off a quick prayer to every higher power he could think of. “If they see what I see, Lillian—” what he had glimpsed in her that very first night in his library, in fact— “every Westrop will be at your feet, as you deserve.”

Which would smooth her way to a higher position, were that what she wanted of him.

Leo scanned the front of the house, looking for a friendly welcome. The servants stood woodenly, his family composed and expressionless. He went down the receiving line, only recognizing one face among the male servants, the butler who seemed an aged pillar when Leo was young. He wore breeches and white hose, a dark cutaway coat and a periwig.

“Haskins,” Leo greeted him. “You look—” Haggard. Aged. “As dignified as ever.”

“Welcome home, sir.” Haskins tilted his chin in a formal nod.

“Annibel.” Leo greeted the youngest female. “Is that a hedgehog in your apron?”

“Of course.” She lifted a mutinous jaw. “An innocent, fat little hedgehog. What else could it be?”

“Oh, how adorable. I’ve always wanted one for a pet.” Lillian reached out a hand, and Annibel twisted the cradle of her arms in the opposite direction.

“Watch out, he bites.”

Lillian dropped her hand but retained her forced smile. “I do believe she’s holding a stoat,” she whispered to Leo.

Catherine dipped her knees in a tiny curtsy. “ Kalispera, cousin.”

“Still speaking Greek, I see,” Leo murmured. “Good afternoon to you, too.”

His cousin leaned close to whisper. “ Kali dunami .”

Lillian stared curiously. “She wished me good strength for my coming ordeal,” Leo said for her benefit.

Lucy looked him up and down. “You don’t look any more distinguished. Shouldn’t you?”

Leo kissed her cheek and tried not to bristle at her insolence. “Should you?”

She sniffed. “I suppose you haven’t actually done anything distinguished.” She gave Lillian the same frank stare. “Except attach yourself, finally. Good day to you, Miss Gower. Aunt Dorinda is in fits that you haven’t chosen an heiress, Giddy. She thinks if you couldn’t have gone for breeding, you could at least have gone for wealth.”

Leo fit his teeth together. “Is that why she isn’t here? Hiding out in a pet?”

“No, she went back to Leiden with Aunt Winifred. Swanning through the canals and picking tulips as we speak, I’m sure.”

“Dorinda is the aunt I told you about, the one who does nothing but course hares, and Aunt Winifred is Rupert’s mother,” Leo explained to Lillian. “Consoled herself with a count from the Low Countries after my uncle died in the war with the American colonies.”

“Leiden is home to the Hortus Botanicus. One of the oldest horticultural gardens in Europe, and one of the most impressive. Perhaps your aunts will have the good fortune to see it.” Lillian remained unruffled in the face of his family’s rudeness. Did that mean she was not desperate for their approval? Or was she playing a longer game?

Leo’s mother bristled like an upright arrow beside the marquess, telling him who of the household women had won the battle to declare herself hostess and erstwhile lady of the house. “Hello, Mother.”

She offered a cold cheek to be kissed. “Gideon. Your hair needs a trimming. And you brought her, I see.”

“You remember Miss Gower.” Leo linked his arm through Lillian’s, who curtsied.

“Lady Mary.”

“We’d have had a better moon if you’d accepted our invitation when we sent it,” his mother said to Leo. “You’ll barely have enough light to find your way home tonight.”

“We’ll manage. Thank you for your concern.”

His uncle had aged also, and not well. He seemed a stone heavier than when Leo had departed for Oxford, and leaned on an ebony walking stick with a curved gold handle carved with intricate floral designs.

“Gideon,” he said, his voice the same slow rumble. He wore an antique powdered wig and silk breeches, and spared a disdainful assessment of Leo’s gray pantaloons and somber dark blue coat. “Couldn’t be bothered to turn yourself out for your family, I see. Nor call on us when you first arrived, though your mother tells me you’ve been in Ashbury for nearly a month.”

“I wasn’t certain of my reception here, sir. And you of course are welcome to call upon me at any time. Lillian, this is my uncle, the Marquess of Waringford, Earl of Highworth, Baron Hannington, and the Baronet Westrop of Redlands. Uncle, this is Miss Gower, niece to Sir Lloyd, the Baronet Gower of Gileston.”

“Never heard of the place,” the marquess said by way of greeting.

Leo squeezed her arm. “They’re usually more polite,” he told her. “I am sure, were you on your own, they could manage to show basic courtesy to you.”

The marquess narrowed his dark eyes. “I’ll show you regard when you’ve earned it. Well, come in. Haskins, tell Cooksey to send up the first course before everything goes over cold.”

“Yes, milord.” Haskins bowed and disappeared in the direction of the servant’s stair while the marquess led the procession into the house.

Lillian drew in a breath as they stepped into the vast entry hall, her eyes widening at the grandeur. The two-storied space evoked a temple of ancient Greece, with arched doorways and carved entablatures above the pillars lining the wall. The busts, vases, and full-length marble statues were none of them antiques, many of them commissioned by the marquess’s extravagant older brother, who’d had a love for all things classical. Their shoes tapped over the black-and-white marble tiles, echoing off the carved ceiling. It was an austere room, empty and cold, and he’d never noticed how devoid of color the room was until Lillian, with her vibrancy, stepped inside of it.

“It gets better,” he bent to murmur in her ear.

Her shoulders rippled, as if his voice, his breath, moved through her. “Define better,” she murmured back.

Instead of the formal dining room, his uncle, with Leo’s mother on his arm, led them to one of the smaller dining rooms, the one Leo thought of as the blood-orange room due to the color scheme of the papered walls and draperies lining the tall, narrow windows. In the center of the Axminster rug stood a small mahogany dining table, its drop leaves extended, laid not with the Sèvres set his mother preferred but the plainer Worcester porcelain, patterned in orange and blue. Candles glimmered from the crystal chandelier and the tapers lining the table.

“We thought a simple, intimate family dinner, Gideon,” his mother said with a bland smile. “As we didn’t want to overwhelm your guest.”

Your guest, not our . They were determined to make Lillian feel unwelcome.

He debated whether to object to the slight. How much did he want Lillian to feel at home? As if someday, all this could be hers?

“How kind of you to arrange for a cozy family gathering, Lady Mary.” Lillian smiled sweetly. “Leo and I have been rather rustic of late, living at the manor house in Ashbury. We should feel quite overwhelmed by anything too grand. How clever of you to realize.”

His mother had moved out with a pawn, and Lillian had brought out her knight. His darling girl had teeth. Leo wanted to squeeze her and laugh when he saw the sour twist to his mother’s mouth as her jab was deflected.

“Haven’t set foot in the Chapel Manor in an age,” said a new voice, drawing Leo’s attention to the divan against the far wall. “Any headless monks roaming the place? Ghost of an old abbot, roaring in his cups?”

“Hello, Aunt Melina.” Leo gently tugged Lillian across the room toward the elegant woman sitting amid yards of silk done up in the style of three decades past. “I’ve brought you a treat. Miss Lillian Gower, botanist and floral illustrator, who I think is the first person who might match you in your love for orchids. Lillian, this is my formidable aunt, Lady Melina. She’s the one who was a lady of the chamber for the late Queen Caroline, then waited on the favorite mistress of the second George. None of us are certain why she gave up running the country to live a quiet life among her flowers, but here we are.”

“That’s orchis mascula in your hair, girl,” Aunt Melina said. Her bright eyes gleamed from a finely boned face layered in delicate wrinkles. “Don’t try wearing it after it’s fertilized, it will stink to high heaven.”

“Early purple orchid? I’m aware. Is that red helleborine in your posy?” Lillian indicated the knot of purple and pink flowers pinned to Melina’s bodice. “I’d love to know where you found it.”

“My glasshouse, of course. I’ve got Anacamptis morio and Orchia purpurea as well. That’s green-winged and lady orchid for you dolts that don’t know,” she said to Leo, gripping her walking stick and holding out her free hand so he might help her stand. “I’ll show you my collection if you persuade me you’ve the sense to appreciate them.”

“Do you have a ghost orchid?” Lillian asked. “I’ve been looking for a specimen to study.”

“ Epipogium aphyllum ? Mine haven’t flowered in a few years.” Melina transferred herself to Lillian’s arm and hauled her toward the table, ignoring the others. “Now, girl, if you can tell an Ophrys sphegodes from an insectifera , I’ll believe you’re worth something.”

Lillian guided the older woman to her preferred chair and helped seat her. “I really can’t tell the early spider apart from the fly orchids until they flower,” she said apologetically. “My lady, it is truly impressive that you can recall all the Linnaean names.”

“Only my orchids,” Melina chuckled, “and only because I wanted to frighten you. Leo told me about your book, so I studied up. You’ll give me a copy of your florilegium when it’s published, of course. Mary, stop looking like you ate a sour twist, I let you have the foot of the table.” She gestured toward the hostess’s customary seat. “You can trouble yourself about what everyone is eating, and I’ll talk to this intelligent young woman.”

“If I knew flower names instead of animals, you’d call me intelligent,” Annibel grumbled, sliding into a chair on her great-aunt’s other side.

“You won’t be interesting for another five years, chit,” Melina retorted. “And if you dare bring a stoat to the table, I’ll put it in the dish with the veal.”

“Oh, very well.” Annibel, with a yank of her ties, pulled off the delicate muslin apron and handed the bundle to the footman beside her, who had just delivered himself of a platter of turbot dressed with smelts, lemon, and barberries, and what smelled like a lobster sauce.

Eyes widening, the footman sent a look of appeal at Haskins, who was placing the haunch of venison before his lordship. A twitch of Haskins’ brow indicated the footman was to take the animal and say nothing of it. The footman hurried from the room, holding the apron away from him in stiff arms, as if it were old fish.

Lady Mary closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, nostrils flaring. Leo, taking his own chair after seating his mother and cousins, caught the glance Lillian snuck across the table at him and grinned.

She was marvelous. He was almost glad his family was behaving abominably. It made Lillian take Leo’s side all the more.

“So, Gideon,” the marquess said as he carved the venison, “don’t suppose you’ve found anything interesting. It’s nothing but an old cave, after all, and everyone told you so.”

“I am sure our findings wouldn’t be of interest to you, sir,” Leo said blandly.

Lillian raised her brows, her astonishment clear. “My mother won’t wish me to talk of human remains at the table,” Leo explained.

Lucy’s fork clattered on her plate. “Bones? You found human bones?”

Leo nodded. “It’s a barrow after all. My theory has been confirmed.”

He knew his face mirrored Lillian’s broad, pleased grin. She’d shared every moment of their discovery with him, from his elation to his doubt about what to do with their findings and worry about how his write-up would be received.

“Who? The Danish king they say is buried there?” Catherine demanded.

“Nothing so grand. All we found with the remains were a flint arrow and a quern stone. Lillian identified the quern stone,” he added. “If there were any grave goods, they were likely carted off centuries ago by clever thieves. Or perhaps the people buried there were not rich, but the fact that they had their own chamber suggests a position of some importance. We suspect they might have been some kind of royal family—a king, his queen, and their little prince.” Lillian had proposed it was a family burial, and that made as much sense as anything, given how little they knew.

“How do you know they’re human bones?” Annibel asked, pushing aside the turnips and carrots to get at the harrico of mutton.

“The shape of them, and the skulls.” Leo flicked a glance toward Lillian, who was addressing a veal cutlet garnished with lemon peel and a Seville orange. “I have friends who belong to the Society of Antiquaries who I hope will be able to tell me more. The Ashbury coroner was out to look at them already, which was Miss Gower’s idea.”

Lillian nodded. “That is the procedure my parents always follow, as sometimes the coroner can identify the cause of death. They’ll be quite envious of you, Leo.”

“That’s right, your parents are antiquarians as well.” The marquess scowled. “Would have thought a baronet’s nephew would require a real trade to support himself.”

“Archaeology is a profession to my father, milord. He is fortunate to have benefactors who support his work.”

Leo saw his mother recoil at the discussion of trade and income at her table. Lillian, unaware, scooped pea soup from the tureen. “My parents are excavating with Mr. William Cunnington at Stonehenge this summer. They have been digging around one of the fallen trilithons. Their theory is there is a cache or grave beneath that displaced the soil, and that is why the stones fall.”

Annibel straightened in her chair. “I should like to see Stonehenge.”

“And you ought—there’s no other stone circle quite like it in Britain, or on the Continent, from what I’ve read,” Lillian said. “But the rings at Avebury are nearer, and larger, if you are interested in that sort of thing. Your cousin ought to take you sometime.” She winked at Leo, who shook his head with a rueful smile.

“Can see why Leo wants to marry you,” Aunt Melina remarked, forking up French beans. “You like the same old things.”

“I suppose it helps,” Lillian agreed, adding a slice of lamb pie to the older woman’s dinner plate.

Leo dropped his eyes to his slice of roast chicken, slathered in parsley butter sauce. He hoped Lillian never learned that what brought them together—what made him mark her, apart from her angelic interference with his mother’s Ponsonby scheme—was that he’d known of and admired her parents. He sensed that, in the way of women’s vanity, she would not appreciate this knowledge.

“Such a distasteful hobby, Gideon.” His mother shuddered. “You’ve made me quite lose my appetite, going on about old bones. But I suppose we saw it coming, with how much time you spent as a child, digging about the old earthworks in Sevenhampton when you ought to have been at your lessons.”

“Those are the remnants of a medieval village, from how Leo described them to me,” Lillian said, her voice animated. “And he found a Saxon belt buckle made of bronze and a glass bead. Such a discovery has made many a young lad into an antiquarian, I would wager.”

Lillian’s approval warmed Leo, sliding down his chest like warm butter sauce.

“Father says mucking about England’s mounds won’t yield anything useful,” Catherine said. “If Gideon wanted to make anything of himself, he’d go work at important sites, like Herculaneum or Pompeii.”

“Those would certainly be fascinating excavations,” Lillian said in her steady, mild tone. “But I should think it also necessary to illuminate the British past. Think of what is buried beneath the earth all around us, right here.”

Quiet ensued, as if the diners were contemplating this possibility. Suddenly Lucy roared and lifted her arms, her fingers shaped into claws. “What’s beneath us , right now, are the bones of old giants slain by Brutus. If they ever rise, they’ll shake down the walls of this house Father is so proud of, and the ghosts will eat us all in our beds!”

Annibel recoiled and emitted a tiny shriek. Catherine shook her head. “Ghosts don’t eat people, Lucy.”

“But vampyres do.”

“Vampyres don’t exist. Voltaire said so in his encyclopedia. You really ought to read it sometime, though you’ll have to improve your French if you wish to?—”

“Gideon,” his mother said sharply, “look what you’ve begun. This is the influence you have on your cousins?”

“His cousins are silly enough on their own,” Aunt Melina remarked. “Can’t blame Leo’s influence. Vampyres, children? Piffle.”

“His name is Gideon.” His mother frowned.

“I prefer Leo.”

“Gideon was your father’s name. You should be proud to bear it, despite?—”

“We will not discuss my brother at this table,” the marquess said through tight lips. “Talk of human remains and vampyres are gruesome enough. You’ll turn my appetite, and I’m ready for the next course.”

On the word Haskins signaled for action and the footmen removed the first course, bringing in the second: turkey poults, roasted rabbits, and fricassee of lamb. Lillian’s eyes widened at the sight of the lobsters; Leo knew she had a fondness for them.

“So, Miss Gower.” His mother turned her attention to Lillian. “Your accomplishments are to know a bit about flowers?”

“A bit, ma’am. My specialty is the yellow lady’s slipper orchid. The Cypripedium calceolus ,” she said with a wink to Melina, who grinned around her apricot puff.

“Are we to be impressed?” Lady Mary sniffed and turned to Leo. “Empyrea Ponsonby is accomplished at watercolors, music, dancing, drawing, and embroidery, and her French is flawless.”

“Lillian knows French, German, Italian, Latin, and Dutch, and she can organize a library,” Leo replied. “A useful, rather than decorative skill.”

“Your father stands to inherit the baronetcy, I suppose.” The marquess turned his attention to Lillian as well. “But where will it go next, if he has no son?”

“It might pass to my husband, and my son, should I have one,” Lillian answered.

The marquess gave Leo a glittering stare. “He’d hardly know what do with your paltry Welsh title, did he inherit all of mine.”

Lillian watched Leo herd his peas about his plate, and he realized she was anxious for him. The apricot tones of the room looked as if blood had been let there many times before, and left to stain.

“Gileston Hall is a respectable house, sir, and the farms are productive, the tenants loyal,” Lillian said. “I believe my uncle has been a good landlord, though he doesn’t speak a word of Welsh and spends a great deal of time in London. He attends as many meetings of the Linnean society as he can.”

“And where were you raised?” Lady Mary inquired. “What about your education?”

“My mother saw to my learning, ma’am. I believe she made a very good governess.”

“You think so?” Lady Mary showed her dismay. “A Welsh woman, raised at the fringes of society, thinking she can breed a girl up to sit at a marquess’s table? Those are very lofty ambitions indeed. I associate with the Levenson-Gowers, you know. They don’t acknowledge your branch of the family at all. Your great-uncle must have done something hideous, or the baronet before him, to be expelled so abjectly from the family line.”

Lillian visibly swallowed; he watched her slender throat work. “My mother is not Welsh, mum. She’s from Galloway, so, Scottish. Or Norse-Gaelic, if you wish to go further back.”

“The Westrops were here before the Normans came,” Catherine said helpfully. “Or the Danes. At least, the town was. It’s a Saxon word meaning west village. We were probably bakers or something. Common, like the Gowers.”

“Is your mother’s family of any note?” Lady Mary demanded, talking over her niece.

“Not as distinguished as the Westrops, mum. Or the family of the Earl of Fossey,” Lillian said, and Leo thought the lilt in her voice was not meekness. She turned to Catherine. “Fossa is a Latin word, is it not?”

“A pit or cavity, like Gid—Leo and his barrows,” Catherine replied. “Aunt Mary’s family doesn’t go back as far as ours, though. I know, because she’s applied to the college of heralds at least a dozen times to find something older in her ancestry.”

“Lady Catherine,” Mary said with set teeth, “I believe our family history needs no justification. I would be interested to hear more of Miss Gower’s breeding.”

“You mean lack of breeding when you use that tone,” Annibel said, wide-eyed. “Are you going to make a comment about the size of her slice of cherry tart? You are always telling me to watch my waistline or men won’t ask me to dance, yet you haven’t made a single comment about her plate, and she’s plumper than Lucy.”

“I’m not plump, I’m robust,” Lucy replied. “Sturdy. Miss Gower is simply…ample.”

“That is one way to put it,” Lillian agreed, with a beet color rushing to her cheeks.

Leo nearly choked on his turkey. He knew it fell to him to defend Lillian, but he was trapped. A gentleman didn’t comment on a lady’s shape, and he didn’t know whether to acknowledge his family’s rudeness or ignore it. What had gotten into the girls? Lucy was prone to speaking her mind—it was one of the things he most liked about her, actually—but he’d never known his cousins to be cruel. They were far too aware of their own eccentricities, individually and as a collective, to find it in them to hold forth in judgment over others.

This must be his mother’s influence. Why couldn’t his family simply be cordial to Lillian, as the Gowers had been to Leo?

He glared at his mother, but she had Lillian in her sights still. “And what about the rest of your family? The woman who was with you at Westrop House, the widow—she is your aunt?”

“My father’s sister, madam.”

“And your grandfather married his cousin, did he not? Another Gower. So perhaps the inbreeding would account for why your cousin is simple.”

Lillian went as still as if she were posing for a portrait. “There is nothing wrong with my cousin Hester.”

“Oh, is there not? Forgive me, I had heard talk that she is a bit—what is the kind way to say it? Slow.”

“Innocent?” Lucy proposed.

“Not entirely innocent, for I hear there’s a reverend in Kingstone Winslow who is pursuing her quite determinedly. Though a girl can be simple and sly together, I suppose—the two aren’t exclusive.”

“Hester doesn’t have a sly bone in her body,” Leo exclaimed.

“Hester, is it?” His mother’s cutting gaze swung to Leo. “Not Miss Giles? You two must have become intimately acquainted.”

“Not intimately.” Leo bristled.

“There is nothing going on between Hester and Reverend Woodfforde,” Lillian said, though Leo heard the doubt creeping into her tone. “He has simply been kind. His sister loaned me this gown for dinner as I had nothing appropriate in my luggage, and no way to find anything in Ashbury on short notice.”

“I can see how that gown would belong to a reverend’s sister. So Gideon did not tell you we invited you to dinner weeks ago?” Mary murmured. “How odd. I would have thought he would give his intended time to prepare to meet us. Given that he is asking us to accept a girl we know nothing of—who never moved in our social circles, who had no background and breeding to speak of—into our family.”

“I have been busy with the excavation, Mother. I didn’t intend a slight. Besides, you just saw me in London.”

“But you didn’t bring Miss Gower to the house once to meet us then, either,” his mother pointed out. “It’s almost as if you were ashamed of her. Embarrassed by a decision made in haste, the kind of thing you might now regret but not know how to free yourself.”

Aunt Melina chewed her cherry tart. “I can still see the gel—she’s right here. Is she invisible to the rest of you?” She turned toward Lillian with a rustle of silk and lace. “In my day, we wouldn’t say ample, we’d call the girl effulgent.”

“With emphasis on full, ” Lillian murmured. “Rather clever.”

“I offered for Lillian on her own merits,” Leo said, hoping the others couldn’t hear the grinding of his teeth. Lillian hadn’t touched her lobster; in fact, she’d put down her fork entirely. It was an outrage that she should be served foods she loved, then shamed into not touching them.

“You did not know Miss Gower existed until that night I introduced you to Empyrea Ponsonby,” Lady Mary retorted. “When, much to my surprise—and yours, I’d wager—we found her lurking in your library. Almost as if she were planning something.”

The marquess lifted his head from his apricot puff. “Eh, what’s this? When was the betrothal announced, Mary?”

“June the second, sir,” Mary said primly.

“How convenient. Shortly after we learned Rupert had been killed in battle at ?les Saint-Marcouf.”

The room went entirely silent, save for the scrape of Aunt Melina’s fork on her plate as she calmly consumed the last of her tart. Everyone else stared at Leo’s uncle, then at Lillian. The candlelight hollowed her cheekbones and made her eyes shine like brilliants.

“You are not,” Leo said quietly, “suggesting what it might seem you are suggesting, sir.”

“That she didn’t know a thing about you until you stood in line for a marquessate?” Waringford shot back.

It couldn’t be true; he wouldn’t entertain the thought. “Lillian came to my library—your library, Uncle—looking for a book you’d purchased. The last thing she cares about is whether I have a title.” He hoped. This was the opportunity to test that truth, wasn’t it? “I beg you will forfeit the title back to the Crown if you think I’m so unworthy. Or marry off Lucy and get her breeding as quickly as possible.”

He wanted to see what Lillian would do if it were clear the title would not pass to him. Would she stay with him, choose him anyway?

“I beg you will leave me out of this,” Lucy retorted. “I already hear it enough from your mother, if you please. I’m not about to throw myself on a man simply because I think a title is in the offing.”

“Yet you believe Lillian would.” Leo laid his knife beside his plate; he had the regrettable urge to curl his fingers around the handle. “Have me declared unfit and give everything to Joshua, Uncle. I don’t want anything from you.”

“Joshua can’t bear the weight of the responsibility, and you know it,” the marquess said, his voice sharp as a whetted blade. “And that would be your fault as well, wouldn’t it?”

“I am not the reason Joshua is as he is,” Leo said, his jaw aching with the force with which he clenched his teeth.

“We all know that’s balderdash,” his marquess said. “Though you’ll never admit your part, will you? Too busy holding yourself apart and above the rest of us. Thinking yourself so much better than your own blood. Can’t say I blame you, given her influence, but I don’t like it one bit, you insolent pup.” He stabbed a utensil in the air, indicating the foot of the table, where Mary gasped and went pale.

“I beg your pardon, Waringford. My influence?”

“Think you’re better than us as well,” Waringford barreled on, raising his voice. “You drove your husband to half his antics. Most of them, come to that. He might have settled some of his wildness if you weren’t always preaching to him about respectability and trying to curtail his actions. Any man of blood would have broken his traces, tight as you held them. And now you’ve gone and ruined your sons, both of them. Turned them into simpering nanny goats.”

“Gideon is not a nanny goat,” his mother cried, her face spotting red.

“You said so yourself! Not enough man to tell when he had a real find before him, and fool enough to shackle himself to the worst possible match. All to thumb his nose at you, Mary, and me as well. And now I’ve lost all my heirs but these two? What’s a man to do?”

“If this isn’t the most vulgar discussion I ever heard.” Melina wiped her fingers on the table linen and grabbed the handle of her walking stick. “Get a hold of yourself, Cornelius, you’re turning into a boor. And you’re raising your daughters to be so as well. I declare, I thought the king’s whores the cattiest women I’d ever meet, but you surpass them all.” She turned to Lillian. “Shall I send a footman to light a lamp and I’ll show you my glasshouse, gel?”

“That won’t be necessary tonight, Aunt Melina.” Leo rose from his chair. “Lillian and I will be taking our leave.”

“Oh, don’t drive at night, Giddy,” Lucy exclaimed. “That’s unwise.”

“Why not? There’s a moon. We’re not going to encounter robbers between here and Ashbury.”

“What if your horse steps in a hole? What if it throws a shoe?” Annibel demanded. “Think about your animal, at least.”

“We really have been beastly, haven’t we? After I told Father we didn’t want to.” Catherine’s eyes filled with tears.

“This is just like you, Gideon,” his mother said in a strained voice, half-rising and pressing a hand to her bosom. “To leave in a sulk and not listen to sense?—”

“I won’t listen to insults, not for myself nor for the woman I love. Come, Lillian.” He held out his hand, and she placed her palm against his as if she were accepting an invitation to dance.

“Are you certain you want to leave in this fashion?” she murmured, leaning close. “Not stay and make amends?”

“I’m not in any state of mind to make amends. We can be home in two hours without risking our necks. Say you’ll come with me?”

He curled his fingers around hers, drowning in her deep blue gaze. A shadow moved across her face, more than the moving light of the candle, but her expression was steady and clear. Trusting.

“I cannot say no as I have no transport otherwise,” she said dryly, “but I’ll go whither thou goest, Leo.”

Haskins had Lillian’s wrap and Leo’s hat ready at the door, along with his gloves, caped coat, and driving whip. Leo thought he detected a flicker in the butler’s expression—disdain? Wistfulness? It was impossible to guess what Haskins was feeling.

“I hope we’ll be seeing more of you, Mr. Westrop,” the butler said.

“I am less and less certain that my future lies in this direction, Haskins,” Leo said dryly. “Do look after yourself, and Aunt Melina.”

“I shall do so, sir.”

Leo took Lillian’s arm and stepped off the porch to the chaise and horse, held by a yawning stableboy. A heavy load fell away with each stride. The weight of expectation was a tangible burden leaving his shoulders as he helped Lillian up into the carriage. And as he drove away from the vast expanse of Waringford Hall, he didn’t look back to see which rooms had light at the window or try to guess who might be peering out.

He'd always known he didn’t fit with his family, that he’d never live up to what they expected of him. He’d dreaded the thought of a final break, the tear that would leave him alone and unsupported in the world.

But he had Lillian beside him. She didn’t want the marquess to be. Just plain Leo Westrop, antiquarian. And that was all he needed.