‘No, it is not,’ Sara snapped back. ‘It is in your hands. Do not try and tell me that a young man from a vicarage can match you with either rapier or pistols. If he is dead already in some accident, or the victim of footpads, then she will mourn him, but eventually she will recover. If you kill him, she will never forgive you.’
‘He is a predatory seducer.’
‘I very much doubt that. Marguerite might be young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, but she is not foolish, nor is she a bad judge of character, I think. You need to ask her what happened the first time they...were together.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It is not my story to tell.’
He stared at her, frowning for a long moment, then gave a bark of laughter. ‘The little minx seduced him?’
‘I imagine that there are some circumstances when a man, especially an inexperienced young one, might find things are well out of his control before he knows what is happening,’ Sara suggested carefully.
‘They should have come to me.’
‘Really?’ She stopped, her glass halfway to her lips. ‘I should imagine they were terrified of you!’
‘Nonsense. He is a man—it is up to him to do the right thing even if he is terrified, not go dragging my sister all over the Continent. The only mercy is that she appears to have had the sense not to go about in Brussels and Paris and be recognised.’
‘Marguerite thought that if she stayed then you would send her away into hiding and then take her child from her.’ When he stared at her, speechless with what she hoped was outrage at the suggestion and not guilt that she had guessed rightly, she pressed on. ‘If you can only find it in you to promise Marguerite that you will not call Gregory out if you find him alive it would make all the difference to her. She would tell you everything she knows about what he was doing in Lyons and you might well be able to find him.’
‘And you know what he was doing, where he told her he was going?’
‘Yes,’ Sara admitted, reluctantly.
‘Then tell me.’
Oh, yes, those two young people would have had every reason to be scared of Lucian, she thought as the hazel eyes focused sharply on her face and she read the barely leashed anger and intent there.
‘No. Marguerite told me in confidence. If I have to, then I will employ my own investigator to locate him for her, whether it is his person or his grave. At least then she will be able to find some peace.’
Lucian put down his glass of ale with a deliberation than was more frightening than if he had slammed it on to the board. ‘It is not your affair to interfere in.’
The mouthful of bread and butter Sara had so unwisely taken turned to sawdust in her mouth. She swallowed and took a sip of lemonade. ‘You made it my affair.’ She let that sink in, then added, ‘And I like your sister, I would like to be her friend.’
Lucian’s mouth hardened into a thin line. ‘I am beginning to wonder if that is a good thing. All I wanted was for her to be encouraged to develop a few interests, to get out and about and not be moping inside.’
‘Moping inside? She is mourning a lost baby, frantic with worry about the man she loves and racked with guilt because she has disappointed her brother and you call it moping?’
‘I want her to forget him,’ Lucian said stubbornly.
There was more than anger in his expression now. There was pain and frustration and something very like despair. He had always been able to make the world right for his little sister, Sara realised, and now he had come up against something that was outside his experience, something that money and power and intelligence could not knock into submission. She had seen it in the faces of her brother and father when Michael died and they could do nothing to put it right for her except kill his killer, as if that would help—and Francis had fled out of their reach.
She trampled on the surge of sympathy. ‘She will never forget and there is nothing you can do about it except promise her you will not call Gregory out, will not hurt him—and then go to Lyons and find what happened to him.’
‘I cannot promise that.’
‘Then you risk losing your sister,’ Sara stated bluntly and saw the involuntary grimace at her harsh words. ‘She wants to understand why you acted as you did, why you are still so obdurate, and she wants to forgive you for it, but I have no idea how long that will last.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘No, you stubborn man! I am warning you.’ Her temper snapped like a dry stick. One moment she was sitting there with a glass of lemonade in her hand trying to reason it out, the next she found herself striding across the lawn between the scattered tea tables under the curious gaze of the other visitors. Behind her she heard raised voices, presumably the waiter demanding payment from Lucian.
‘Your help to mount, if you please,’ she said as she approached the grooms watching over the horses. ‘The gentleman will pay you in a moment.’
One of them tossed her up into the saddle and Twilight began to sidle, catching her mood. ‘Thank you. Come on, my lovely.’ She gave the mare her head towards the track up to the clifftop, riding on a loose rein. They both knew the way and the ground was sound.
If she thought that unfamiliarity with the track and a natural caution would hold Lucian back, she was mistaken, she realised, as she heard the hooves pounding behind her. Of course, no gentleman would allow a lady to ride unaccompanied, she fumed. Goodness knows what dangers might await her. Rabid rabbits, Sara muttered as they emerged from the woods and on to flat ground. Sex-crazed smugglers, unhinged hedge-layers...
The hoofbeats behind her were getting closer, much closer. She risked a backwards glance and realised that the only danger to her just at that moment was the Marquess himself. He looked as though he wanted to throttle her.
Sara twisted back round, wishing she was riding astride and not wearing this so-fashionable habit with its trailing skirts and broadcloth that slid on the saddle. As she thought about sliding a buzzard flapped up out of the long grass, a rabbit in its talons. The mare jinked, stiff-legged, swerved back and Sara lost her stirrup, lost her balance and went over Twilight’s shoulder down to meet the turf with a thud.
Instinctively she rolled, tucking herself up into a ball as her great-uncle the Rajah’s syce had taught her. The clifftop was almost as hard as the sun-baked Indian plain, she thought as she tumbled, arms around her head, braced for the hooves of Lucian’s horse.
There was the sound of furious, inventive, swearing, then she came to a stop, untrampled, and lifted her head warily in time to see Lucian dismount from a rearing horse in a muscular, controlled slide.
‘Sara!’
He was by her side and she closed her eyes strategically to postpone his anger and in sheer self-preservation. He had looked like a god just then and she could put no reliance on her own self-control. ‘Mmm?’ she managed.
