the seriousness of the story Sara had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. She could just imagine poor Gregory, his masculine pride crushed as it was explained to the infuriated Marquess that he was the one who had been taken advantage of. No wonder he refused point-blank to allow Marguerite to tell her brother. Marguerite might know how to seduce a man, but she had no idea how their minds worked.
‘And then I discovered that I was pregnant.’
That reminder chased away all inclination to smile. ‘Didn’t you think your brother would let you marry then, even if he disapproved?’
‘No.’ Marguerite shook her head vehemently. ‘He would have whisked me away to one of my horrible aunts in the country and I’d have had my baby and they would have taken her away from me and Lucian would have called Gregory out and killed him.’
It was difficult to argue against that, Sara thought. It sounded exactly the kind of solution Lucian would have come up with, especially the calling-out. ‘So you decided to run away together?’
‘Yes, Gregory said we must marry as soon as possible. We thought if we went to the Continent then he might be able to find work as a secretary over there and there would be English clergy—but all the ones we found were so difficult because of my age. They could tell I wasn’t a servant or a tradesman’s daughter so they thought there would be a scandal and they would be in trouble if they helped us.’
‘Lucian thinks Gregory left you because of the baby and not having any money?’ Sara risked the question and was rewarded with an indignant denial.
‘No! Gregory was going to find work, any work at all, in Lyons. He would have dug ditches for me, but he had heard of a merchant who needed someone who could speak English because he wanted to export fans and small luxury items to England. Gregory was going to see him after he had spoken to the clergyman we had been told about. We hoped if we were married then the merchant might let us have a room in his house.’
It all seemed perfectly reasonable to Sara. ‘Did you tell Lucian this?’
‘When he found me I was too ill and it was almost a week before I realised that Gregory had vanished. I thought Lucian had killed him at first, but he swore not and he wouldn’t listen when I told him about the clergyman and the merchant. He said Gregory had been hoping to extort money from him and I was just an innocent, gullible child who had fallen in love with a handsome face.’ She blew her nose again with a defiant, inelegant snort.
‘And so I did—I fell for a man who was as lovely inside as he was outside. Gregory wouldn’t have asked Lucian for money, he was far too honourable and proud. He explained to me before we ran away that we would have to live very modestly on what he could earn and that if I didn’t think I could bear that, then it was best to go and confess all to Lucian.’ She gave Sara a sideways look from under her lashes. ‘I suppose you think I am wicked and silly and gullible, too.’
‘No. I think you really did love Gregory and that he was worthy of your love.’ Marguerite was a mixture of innocence and feminine wisdom, but she was also intelligent and honest. If there had been a false note in her lover’s protestations she would have heard it. If the vicar’s son had managed to fool Lucian into giving him a position of trust and responsibility and then seduced Marguerite with such skill that she had believed him utterly, then he was a great loss to the English stage, or the best confidence trickster in the country.
‘Thank you.’ She scrubbed at her eyes as the tears welled again. ‘I wish I knew what to do. I can’t ask Lucian to find Gregory because I know what will happen if he does and I don’t know anyone else who could afford to send an enquiry agent to France and who would cross Lucian into the bargain.’
No, but I do. If it came to it then she would write to Ashe and ask him to track down the handsome blond Englishman in Lyons. Her brother would know who to send and he would not ask endless infuriating questions if she told him it was important. ‘I will think about it,’ Sara promised. ‘There must be some way around this.’
‘Thank you.’ Marguerite’s chin was up now and her eyes, although red-rimmed, were dry. ‘Show me what is in the rock pools, please.’
They splashed about, soaking the hems of their old cotton dresses, laughing as they chased shrimps that darted into crevices, grimacing as seaweed wrapped itself around their ankles.
Sara collected several jars of brown and pink and black weed and some discarded crab shells and Marguerite’s handkerchief was stuffed with shells and sea glass in jewel colours, worn smooth by the waves. As they explored they chatted. Sara told stories about her family, their life in India, the dismay at realising that they must leave because her father had inherited the title and how strange England had seemed.
Marguerite asked questions and, her guard completely down, dropped little nuggets of information about her romance, about her lover, that Sara stored away to brood about later.
She kept an eye on the state of the tide and finally dragged Marguerite away. ‘See how it has come in? If we don’t go back now, we’ll have to walk back over the headland and there is no proper path. It is quite hard going and your brother will not thank me for exhausting you. Besides, it is time for luncheon.’
‘Lucian wants the best for me, I know. He just doesn’t understand.’
‘Men think about love differently from us.’
‘You mean because they can just have sex when they want to so it doesn’t mean much to them and then they get sex and love muddled up?’
‘Er...’
‘Gregory wasn’t like that.’
‘No, neither was my husband. And my parents and my brother made love matches. But Lucian is protective of you and he’s ambitious for you. He wants you to marry someone of your own class who can give you the life you should expect as the daughter of a marquess.’
‘Your father is a marquess and he let you marry a commoner.’ Marguerite was beginning to drag her feet through the sand like a tired child.
Sara linked her arm through the girl’s and slowed her pace. ‘My parents are very unconventional and Ashe knew Michael really well by then. But it seems to me that most men are happy if they have a companionable wife who makes them a comfortable home, children—and, as you, say, there is the sex. The fact that they would be even happier if they loved their wives doesn’t appear to occur to most of them, although actually I think a lot of them do and just don’t recognise that is what they feel.’
‘It would be better to be the daughter of some shepherd on the Downs, I think sometimes.’
‘No, it wouldn’t. You would not want to live in a little hut and besides, even then your father would be on the lookout for a son-in-law with a prize ram or who was handy training sheepdogs or something.’
That made Marguerite laugh and they were still making up the requirements for every kind of tradesman’s son-in-law by the time they reached an overturned boat by the low jetty and sat down to put on their shoes.
‘A butcher would want skill in getting all the meat off a carcass and his daughter would want a big chopper!’ They both doubled up in thoroughly unseemly laughter at the double entendre until a shadow fell across them.
‘I am not going to even ask what that was about.’ Lucian was on the jetty, hunkered down just above their heads.
‘Housekeeping,’
