was holding her too tightly and gave up. It was far too pleasant to lie there and share the joke, held against the wet heat of his body, the pair of them smelling of mud and lake water. ‘When Mata said that about the otter and the harrier, I nearly spluttered into my tea. And your face—I couldn’t decide whether you had a mouthful of pond beetles or were trying not to laugh.’
‘It was laugh or weep,’ Lucian said wryly. ‘I have hardly appeared in a very impressive light since I got here, have I? Almost floored by your brother on the drive, being raked over the coals by your father for my immoral behaviour with his daughter, making an utter mull of a marriage proposal and then emerging from the lake dripping with pond weed for the amusement of the entire house party.’
Sara managed to lever herself upright and twisted to look into his face. It was exceedingly unfair that he managed to look so good even soaking wet when she imagined she looked as though she had just emerged from a close encounter with a ducking stool.
‘Is that really how you think you appeared? Let me tell you that your restraint in not punching Ashe straight back was admirable, you stood up to Papa with great dignity and courtesy and I have to admit to an utterly shameful pleasure at being carried around by such a strong man.’ Lucian began to grin, so she added, ‘But I agree, that was an appalling proposal.’
‘I know. I will try again when we are both dry.’
He will? Did she want Lucian to propose? For a moment Sara seriously considered it, then she realised what she was doing. She did not want to marry a man who did not love her, whom she did not love—and it did not matter how good he was in bed, or how good looking or how eligible.
‘Lucian—’
‘You look enchanting wet through, you know. I feel as if I had fished out a water nymph.’ He gathered her in again and kissed her, open-mouthed, possessive, very certain.
The weak, primitive female part of her kissed him back, tongues tangling, her body arching to get as tight to his body as she could, and all the time the sensible part argued that this was wrong, that she was encouraging the ridiculous notion that they might marry.
Lucian released her far too soon for the primitive part. Too soon for the sensible part, if she was honest with herself. ‘That was skating rather too close to behaviour I gave my word not to indulge in while we were here. And you will catch a chill in those wet clothes. See—you are shivering.’
She was shivering from reaction, not the wet clothes, but Sara did not contradict him. ‘Yes, you are quite right.’ She got to her feet. ‘I will order baths for both of us and I will see you later, before dinner. Prepare yourself to be teased or interrogated by everyone though. I suspect the joke may be too good for the company to resist.’ He had laughed at the lake, but would his sense of humour stand teasing? Most marquesses held themselves very high and such a loss of dignity would affront all of them—except Papa, of course. She hadn’t seen much evidence of a light-hearted side to Lucian before, but then his worry about Marguerite would explain that, no doubt.
* * *
Lucian watched Sara’s progress to the terrace steps and then into the house and wondered at the emotion stirring in his chest. She should have looked amusing, her skirts bedraggled and clinging to her legs, muddy water dripping, her hair in rats’ tails. And yet he felt no temptation to laugh, only to smile. The feeling, the warmth in his chest, must be affection, he supposed, although it was very different from the affection he felt for his sister.
Lord, but he had made a fool of himself, making that proposal as though it were nothing more important than an offer to take her for a drive in the park—and one made on the spur of the moment, at that.
He had misjudged the moment, her emotions and, he supposed, his own. But, strangely, it did not make him any less determined to try again. Sara had been pleased that he had found some humour in the situation, he realised as he got to his feet and grimaced at the state of his breeches and his Hessians. She must have thought him very dour and intense all the time she had known him and he suspected that humour was important to her.
Lucian made his way round to the garden door and found an old settle to sit on while he pried off his sodden boots and stockings before he sullied the polished floors. He was met by the butler in the hallway who ushered him upstairs with the air of a man to whom half-drowned marquesses dripping on the marble were an everyday occurrence. Lucian managed to keep the straight face that his dignity was obviously supposed to require until he was inside his room and then gave way to mirth.
Lord knows what I’m laughing about, he thought as he began to wrestle with the knot of his neckcloth. My sister isn’t out of the woods by a long chalk and when she is I’ve got to find some way of advancing Farnsworth’s career. I have just made a complete fool of myself in front of a highly select company who will doubtless spread the tale all round town as soon as they can get pen to paper. I’ve thrown my perfectly rational plan for finding a wife out of the window and I have made a pig’s ear of a proposal to my mistress. Who, at the moment, is not my mistress but my host’s daughter.
‘My lord?’ Charles, the footman who had been delegated to act as his valet, came out of the dressing room, his arms full of towels. Pitkin, his real valet who was enjoying a much-deserved holiday in Sandbay, would have simply ignored his master’s behaviour, but this young man was obviously uncertain.
Lucian grinned at him and threw his arms wide, an invitation to view the wreckage.
The footman’s lips twitched. ‘Your...your bath is ready, my lord. I will consult with Mr Rathbone, his lordship’s man, and seek his advice on restoring your boots and garments.’
‘Thank you, but do not spend too much effort on them, I fear they are beyond redemption.’
‘Mr Rathbone works miracles,’ the young footman assured Lucian in awed tones, almost setting him off again. His host’s valet was obviously far more awe-inspiring than any marquess, especially a sodden one.
He dismissed Charles, stripped, and wallowed in hot, pine-scented water and thought. When was the last time he had laughed out loud? Not a laugh at some single joke, but uninhibitedly at something ridiculous, at himself. Laughed for the joy of it, because he was happy.
But what had he to be happy about here? Marguerite’s situation was still to untangle, his dignity was in tatters, his proposal of marriage had been rejected. There was no prospect of lovemaking until they left Eldonstone. And yet... It was Sara, of course. She made him happy and even when she was angry with him his heart lifted at the sight of her, at the sound of her voice. He enjoyed her courage and her common sense and her intelligence and her passionate defence of Marguerite and Gregory. She made love like an angel. A wicked angel, he corrected. And...
The thought trailed away unfinished, leaving him staring at the picture hanging on the wall opposite. A still life of exotic fruit and foliage was absolutely no help in focusing his disordered thoughts. And... And I love her?
I love Sara? No, impossible. Love, from what he had heard of it, involved a great deal of mooning about sighing, the urge to write poetry to the lady’s eyebrows and an inability to focus on anything but the beloved object and her perfections.
There was nothing, from what he had ever heard, about brooding on the beloved object’s imperfections and she certainly had those. Sara was independent to a fault, argumentative, worryingly apt to produce weapons when thwarted and
