Lily ignored her. “The room is magnificent.” She wasn’t surprised the queen really had graced the Queen’s Bedchamber, for it certainly looked like it had been decorated for royalty. Even Lily, whose own family home was worth gawking at, found this chamber astonishing.
The enormous state bed, hung with costly cloth of gold, sat on a raised parquet dais behind a balustrade in the French style. Great poufs of ostrich feathers crowned each of the bed’s four posts. The ceiling was elaborate painted plasterwork, the furniture gilt wood. The walls were hung with rich tapestries, and the marble fireplace boasted gilded crowns over the chimneypiece and on the piers.
But above all, the position of the room demonstrated its status. Beyond its windows, as in a royal palace, the gardens and avenues spread out in perfect symmetry, from this, the exact central vantage point.
Rose stood at one of those windows, examining the view with a critical eye. “Father’s gardens are much more impressive,” she remarked.
Lily blushed for her, but Rand only chuckled. “I hope you’ll tell the marquess so.”
Along with the other priceless furnishings, the Queen’s Bedchamber contained a lovely rosewood harpsichord. No matter the marquess’s intentions in bestowing the chamber—and Lily had no doubt he’d meant to overawe his guests with a sense of his wealth and power—he really couldn’t have assigned her to a more perfect room. The thought made her smile.
Not to say that she was comfortable here. Just knowing the unpleasant Lord Hawkridge lurked somewhere in the mansion was enough to make her wish herself home. “Have you spoken with your father already?” she asked Rand as soon as the servants had left.
“A bit.” He dredged up a smile—a weak, obvious effort. “I’ll tell you about it later. I need to think. I need to…to go off by myself. Sometimes I do that.”
“All right. Where are you going?”
“I just need to run.”
“I’ll come along—”
“Alone, Lily. I’ll be back soon. I promise.” He took a step closer, leaning in to meet her lips.
Rose cleared her throat.
Rand paused, frowned, then settled for kissing Lily’s forehead.
She bit her lip, slanting a look at her sister. Rose stood at the gilt dressing table, re-pinning her hair with an air of innocence.
“Will you be all right here for a bit, Rose?” Lily asked “I’m going to walk Rand out of the house.”
Rand lifted a brow, then shrugged and turned toward the door. Lily followed him into the adjacent antechamber, where he peeled off his surcoat and cravat. After draping them over a fashionable japanned chair, he began rolling up his sleeves as he strode from the room, leaving her to hasten after him.
Lily hadn’t taken him for a moody sort of fellow, but then, she admitted to herself, in truth she hardly knew him. But she knew she loved him. And if he needed some time to himself, how could she begrudge him that?
She followed him from the chamber and down the massive oak staircase, another feature of the mansion that had clearly been built to impress. Beneath the handrails, pierced wooden panels were carved with armor, cannons, muskets, spears, and lances. Trophies of war, their details highlighted by gold and silver leaf.
A display of force and power.
Lily quickened her pace. “Can you at least give me a hint? Is he demanding you leave Oxford to live here?”
She watched his shoulders tense beneath the thin white cambric of his shirt. “That minor detail hasn’t even been discussed yet.” He sighed and stopped to wait for her. “He’s forbidden our marriage.”
Though her heart leapt into her throat, she ordered herself not to panic. Lord Hawkridge couldn’t really prevent them from wedding, could he? They would wish for his blessing, of course, but as a last resort, they could always elope. Especially given that Rand seemed to care little for his inheritance.
As he resumed his descent, she reached for his hand. “Why?”
“My brother was to wed my father’s ward, a girl named Margery Maybanks. I told you about her, didn’t I? The marquess expects me to honor that commitment.”
“Would you not make a poor substitute? She loved your brother, not you.”
A short, harsh laugh tore from his throat. “Oh, I doubt she loved Alban. Aside from my father, I’m aware of no one who did.” At the bottom of the staircase, he headed across the great hall toward the front door. “Margery’s father saved the marquess’s life in the Battle of Worcester, and the marquess promised him a boon. A few years later, on his deathbed, the man made his claim: that the marquess raise his motherless young daughter here and marry her to his heir on the day she turned one-and-twenty.”
A footman opened the door, and they stepped out. After the dark tones that dominated the mansion’s interior, Lily blinked in the sunshine. “And now you’re the heir.” She tugged on Rand’s hand until he stopped and turned to face her. “Can you refuse?”
“I have refused. But…there’s more.”
“What—”
He hushed her with two fingers on her lips. “Let me think, Lily. I’ll return soon.” He bent to replace his fingers with his mouth, but after a quick kiss, he ran off around the corner of the house, his boots loud on the cobbled pavement.
His gait looked determined. She followed slowly, rounding the corner in time to see him cross a lawn and disappear into a tangle of trees. A wilderness garden, perhaps. It seemed to be more planned than the woods that bordered Trentingham, with man-made paths cut through it.
She would honor his request for solitude. She had little interest in the gardens, and should he look back, she didn’t want him to think she was tailing him. Instead, she wandered around the perimeter of the house, vaguely following the sounds of barking dogs.
On the west side of the mansion she found a yard, bordered by several small buildings. A bakehouse, a stillhouse, a washhouse, a brewhouse, a dairy. She peeked in the diamond-paned windows of the last, seeing milking
