The marquess’s shoulders tensed beneath his jet-black velvet suit. “You’ll marry her over my dead body.”
For a moment, Rand wished he could arrange that.
Though he could feel Lily quaking beside him, her spine remained straight. He met the man’s cold gray gaze with one of his own. “Might I request you get to know the lady before you forbid our marriage?”
“My lord,” Lily added in a tone both respectful and steady, “I’m from good family, and I am in love with your son.”
The marquess’s expression didn’t soften. “Then you will make him an excellent mistress,” he snapped, and turned to go into the house.
“That’s enough!” Rand called after him dangerously.
But the stubborn man didn’t even glance back.
Appalled, Rand turned to Lily. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice was quiet so as not to be overheard, but determination laced every word. “He won’t keep us apart.”
Rand hadn’t known his sweet Lily had so much steel inside her, but he was supremely grateful to find out. “He won’t,” he agreed, matching her confidence outwardly.
But he knew that no matter how misguided his father’s reasons, the man would fight to the bitter end. The Marquess of Hawkridge always got his way. Together, Rand and Lily would have to make sure this time was the exception.
Servants were milling around them, handing down luggage and carting it up the steps. Rand was surprised to find he still recognized most. They smiled, and he did his best to smile back as he drew Lily up the two sets of stone steps and into Hawkridge’s imposing great hall.
Arms crossed, the marquess waited inside, eyeing the luggage sitting on the black-and-white marble floor. His expression of disapproval had given way to disbelief. “She cannot be thinking to stay the night.”
Rand set his jaw. “Lily and I are betrothed. If she leaves, so do I.”
The marquess thought on that a moment, but he’d always been a man who knew which battles were worth fighting. He beckoned to one of the waiting maids. “Etta, put her in the Queen’s Bedchamber. For now,” he added ominously. After pausing a moment for effect, he also added, “Randal, you’ll join me in my study.” Without waiting for agreement, he turned to leave.
The maid curtsied and touched a hand to the white cap that covered her gray curls. Rand blinked in shock. His old nurse had been demoted to a housemaid.
“Nurse Etta—” he started.
“You’d best go,” she warned, though her voice was kind. Her gaze strayed to the marquess’s stiff, retreating back. “I’ll take care of your lady.”
Lily went off with her head held high. Rand headed for the study, hoping she’d find the Queen’s Bedchamber a comfortable place to wait.
The room had acquired the name years earlier, shortly after it had been redecorated for a visit by Queen Catharine of Braganza, King Charles’s wife. Though Rand hoped Lily would feel honored to be assigned the chamber, he knew the truth: His father meant her to be intimidated. In anticipation of the queen’s using it, the room had been fitted out in a way meant to display the marquess’s power.
It also—by no coincidence, Rand was certain—sat as far from Rand’s own chamber as physically possible. In the opposite wing, on a different floor.
In another move meant to intimidate, the marquess sat behind his desk, which rested on a raised dais toward the back of his study, and waved Rand toward a chair on the lower level.
Rand dropped onto it, sat back, and crossed his arms. Looking up at his father this way used to make him feel like a contrite child, but he’d come too far to fall for the old goat’s tricks.
The marquess was one of the few men Rand knew who wore a periwig every waking hour of every day, even tucked away out here in the countryside. When that gray gaze settled on Rand, he braced, waiting for his father to make mention of his uncovered, chopped-off hair. Then he chided himself. It had been too long for the man to recognize the difference. Or he hadn’t noticed. Or he simply didn’t care.
Or all of the above.
The marquess wasted no time on preliminaries. “Your brother, as you know, had been betrothed since childhood to Margery. I swore to her father they would marry the day she turned one-and-twenty. That happens to be next week. I intend for you to fulfill that pledge.”
Rand felt as though the air had been knocked out of him. He closed his eyes for a moment, then forced them open, a failing attempt to appear unruffled.
Margery. How could he have forgotten how these developments would impact Margery?
“Where is Margery?”
“In London. I sent her to obtain a proper wardrobe for mourning. She returns tomorrow.” The marquess lifted a quill, pristine white lace falling back from his wrist. “I expect you to greet her as befits a husband-to-be.”
“I cannot.” Rand had washed his hands of the marquess long ago. He wasn’t responsible for the man’s twenty-year-old agreement. “I’m sorry for Margery, but I’m pledged to Lily.”
Not to mention he’d bedded her as well.
“My honor is on the line,” the marquess continued, breezing over Rand’s refusal. “And the family wealth is at stake.”
Looking toward the heavens for patience, Rand waved an arm, the gesture encompassing the overblown glory that was Hawkridge Hall. “I cannot imagine how the family wealth could be in jeopardy.”
For once, his father looked almost uncomfortable. “I’ve never had any reason to discuss family finances with you. But you may as well know that I mortgaged the Hawkridge lands to raise funds for Charles.”
Rand knew he meant Charles I, not the current King Charles, and that the funds had gone to support the king’s side in the Civil War. The money would have been lost along with the battles, but William Nesbitt had been and still was a
