But his next words were.
“I was on the verge of ruin when Margery came into our lives.”
Margery. Rand pictured her young upturned face, her delicate features framed by the palest blond curls. Between her sporadic letters, he hadn’t thought of Margery often—he’d avoided thinking of anything at Hawkridge for years—but when he had, they’d been fond thoughts. He thought of her much like a sister.
Never, ever as a potential wife.
“I’m wedding Lily,” he repeated. “Soon.”
For heaven’s sake, she could be carrying his child.
The marquess dipped the quill and began signing papers while he talked. “As Margery’s guardian and eventual father-in-law, I’ve managed her extensive lands along with Hawkridge’s for twenty years. The loss of those lands and income would be devastating, leading to eventual bankruptcy.”
One of Rand’s hands reached up to find the ends of his once-long hair, then fisted and dropped to his lap. “Surely you exaggerate.”
“I do not.” The marquess flipped a page.
Rand figured the man’s half attention was calculated to make him feel worthless, but it wasn’t going to work. He wouldn’t let it work.
“Should you refuse to marry Margery,” his father continued, “her land will be lost to us, and all of Hawkridge will suffer.” At last, he looked up. “All, Randal.”
All.
Not only what was left of the family, but the old family retainers. Etta and the other servants. The tenants, the villagers—everyone who depended on Hawkridge for their livings.
Rand knew his father was preying on his sympathies. The old man bore no great concern for the people—he worried for himself, and himself alone. But knowledge of the marquess’s machinations did little to mitigate the effect of the threat.
Rand rubbed his palms on his velvet breeches. “I don’t care,” he said, afraid that he did.
A man didn’t turn his back on people who relied on him.
The marquess’s expression remained stony and resolute. He signed the paper in front of him, the scratch of the quill loud in the awkward silence.
“Lily has a dowry,” Rand said. “Three thousand pounds.”
“Three thousand wouldn’t begin to make a dent in Hawkridge’s needs.” The page crackled when he flipped it to look at another. “You may leave now. I have much to do. We’ll discuss this again tomorrow.”
Rand was dismissed. He rose and walked to the door, then turned back. “Perhaps tomorrow you’ll come to your senses.”
Though it had often cost him dearly as a boy, he never had learned to resist getting in the last word.
THIRTY-SEVEN
FOR THE FIRST few minutes she was left alone, Lily wandered around the magnificent Queen’s Bedchamber, alternating between worrying about what Rand and his father were discussing and marveling at the exquisite furnishings.
She supposed the queen really had graced this room at least once, 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.
However, Lily had little inclination to gaze upon Hawkridge’s gardens. Her own father’s were much more impressive. And while she had no doubt she’d been shown to this chamber in the hope it would convince her of the marquess’s wealth and power, having fought Rose—and herself, she admitted—for Rand, she wasn’t willing to give him up easily.
Along with the other priceless furnishings, the Queen’s Bedchamber contained a lovely rosewood harpsichord. No matter the marquess’s intentions, he really couldn’t have assigned her to a more perfect room. Smiling in spite of her heavy heart, she sat down to play.
And that was where Rand found her half an hour later.
For a moment, or maybe longer, she’d managed to lose herself in the music. But one look at Rand’s face brought her crashing back to reality.
“It didn’t go well,” she said. A statement, not a question.
He dredged up a smile—a weak, obvious effort. “Everything will be fine. I need to think. I need to…to go off by myself. Sometimes I do that, and I just wanted to let you know.”
“All right.” But she stood, reaching to catch the stool when she nearly knocked it over. “Where are you going?”
“I just need to run.”
“I’ll come along—”
“Alone, Lily. I’ll be back soon.” He took a step closer, close enough to meet her lips with his own. A soft, apologetic kiss. “I promise.”
She searched his eyes, her fingers brushing the slight roughness on his cheek. “May I walk you out of the house?”
He shrugged, then silently peeled off his surcoat and tossed it on the bed. His cravat followed. As he strode from the room, he began rolling up his sleeves.
She hadn’t taken him for a moody sort of man, 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? It wasn’t as though he were asking to go to another woman.
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.
“What did your father say?” she asked Rand, watching his shoulders tense beneath the thin white cambric of his shirt. “Is he demanding you leave Oxford to live here?”
“That
