‘You could assist with all those things without my ring on your finger!’
‘But I could also make you respectable!’
‘I don’t give a damn about respectability!’ Or about being a damn marquess either. The last thing he wanted was the obligation of an estate he had no memory of, tenants, pensions and servants on top of everything else he had to worry about. That life wasnevermeant to be his.
‘Then if you refuse to care about your reputation or how that sullies the good reputation of your brother, at least think about all the staff here in this house! All the uncertainty they will have to suffer with no mistress! Or worse, a new mistress who doesn’t understand them.’
‘Is this all aboutthishouse?’ He almost slapped his forehead for not realising it sooner. ‘Because if you are scared I will suddenly evict you to some desolate dower house somewhere in the wilds of nowhere, allow me to put your mind at rest. You can live here for ever, for all I care. I have no attachment to this place.’
Luke had always loathed it, not that he had ever spent much time here. On the rare occasions when he had been summoned, it was usually either for a carpeting or a funeral. He could count his visits here in the last decade on one hand, and two of those were to watch first his father and then his brother get lowered into the ground in a sturdy mahogany box. Every bit of this fashionable mausoleum in Mayfair felt alien and cold. Everything was swimming in gilt or marble or unnecessary and opulent tassels, and Abigail’s servants seemed to watch him like a hawk in case he pocketed one of the ridiculously expensive candlesticks and pawned it.
Not to mention he could feel his dead ancestors’ silent disapproval everywhere, largely because there were portraits of them all over the walls. He couldn’t fathom their compulsive need to glorify themselves in perpetuity. It took a certain amount of arrogance and vanity to insist on displaying a likeness of yourself in every single room, even more to pay a small fortune to do so, however, Cassius and his father clearly had. Luke might not know much about art, but even he had heard of great masters like Gainsborough, Reynolds, Lawrence and Brookes and while the brushwork was magnificent, even those talented painters hadn’t properly captured the essence of the two previous Marquesses of Thundersley properly. If you scraped back the expensive paint, all that was left were soulless blank canvases which, in his humble opinion, better exemplified them.
‘I shall move out, Abigail.’ The sooner now, the better. He had already taken determined steps to remove himself at the first possible convenience prior to his sister-in-law’s unexpected bombshell last night. He could hardly uproot his mother to live here, even temporarily, when here had been the place where her mind had first begun to unravel. There hadn’t been a significant incident in years because she was making progress in the right direction and he wouldn’t allow anything to jeopardise that. She had hated this place.
So did he. But according to his new solicitor, he now apparently owned a large percentage of London because his illustrious family had always put more stock in property than people. He had houses coming out of his ears. ‘Keep the house, Abigail. I do not want it.’ And good riddance to her and it. He would happily never set foot here again.
She glared at him as if he were an idiot. ‘You might not want it now—but you will, or your future wife will.’
‘She won’t.’ Because he had no plans for a future wife. His particular responsibilities didn’t lend themselves to marriage and all that that entailed, and likely never would. Wives expected attention he couldn’t spare and likely wouldn’t be particularly understanding of the fact his priorities had to lie elsewhere. And that was if they were prepared to marry a man whose blood was tainted by the curse of insanity in the first place. Not that he had ever thought for one second his mother’s condition was hereditary, but as he had learned to his cost, the rest of the world weren’t quite so forgiving of the condition, which was why he was always at great pains to keep it secret and protect it at all costs.
‘Of course she will.’ Abigail was quite agitated now. ‘Addresses on Berkeley Square are few and far between and rarer than hen’s teeth so if you refuse to marry me, your new Marchioness will steal it from me. Or you will realise its value and sell it for a fortune. And then what is to become of me?’
He decided not to mention the twenty thousand pounds Cassius had left her in his will alongside a house in Bruton Place not ten minutes away. Exactly like his brother and father, his sister-in-law measured her own worthiness and standing in the world by the directions written on the front of her correspondence.
But there was a simple solution to all of this nonsense. ‘Then I shall transfer the deeds to you, Abigail.’
‘You will?’ She seemed a little placated at that and he almost sighed aloud with relief as he backed towards the door.
‘I shall even talk to the solicitor about it first thing...for your own peace of mind.’ Just as he would feel better as soon as he escaped. Perhaps he should do that first thing too? Take a room at an inn and put as much distance between himself and his cold, calculating and possessive sister-in-law as was humanly possible. ‘It will all be sorted; I promise. And then we can forget all this awkwardness between us happened...’ Not that he would ever forget it. He had never been so shocked or disgusted by anything in all his thirty years—and he had seen some dreadful things. ‘Goodnight, Abigail.’
Alone in his room—or rather the innocuous guest bedroom he had taken instead of the master bedroom which both his father and brother had lain in—Luke stripped off his clothes and sluiced himself in the cold water from the jug on his nightstand. It did little to wash away the cloying layer of disgust which seemed to cling to his skin. Then he stretched out nude on top of the covers and sucked in several calming breaths in an attempt to stop his mind racing so that he could sleep.
He had never understood his family or, for that matter, the aristocracy in general. Not the way they lived, their idleness and sense of privilege, the way they thought or the things they put such great stock in, but this was a new level of strange, even for them. It was incomprehensible to him that Abigail thought it acceptable to replace one brother with another in the same dispassionate way one would replace an old pair of boots, and he suddenly felt a wave of pity for them all.
And as for her knowing a few tricks! He involuntarily shuddered at the thought.
Desire couldn’t be manufactured, and even if it could he could think of nothing worse than a perfunctory coupling whose sole purpose was to beget the heirs she seemed to be obsessed with providing him. Desire should feel overwhelming and hot, as necessary as breathing, like the way Hope had left him feeling after only one stolen, drunken kiss. Even a lap full of icy pond water and frog spawn hadn’t succeeded in dampening his ardour last night.
He smiled at that memory.
It might well have started as a chaste kiss but it hadn’t ended that way thanks to Hope’s blatant enthusiasm for kissing. The way she had buried her fingers in his hair while her tongue had tangled with his had been...quite something. And she had instigated that part of the proceedings, which alleviated some of his guilt for clumsily and erroneously kissing her in the first place. The spontaneous heat and passion of it had knocked him sideways. So much that even the champagne hadn’t numbed his surprise and utter delight. She, on the other hand, had been both stunned and mortified by her distinct lack of piety and his shocking breach of propriety which he most definitely owed her a huge and grovelling apology for—hence he’d ended up in the fountain.
And rightly so.
Being drunk was no excuse for kissing her, so she was well within her rights to have torn him off a strip—and she certainly had.
After a month struggling with the fake politeness and the rigid code of behaviour in society, he’d rather enjoyed that too. Hope said what she meant and didn’t suffer fools gladly. When one added those refreshing attributes to the list alongside the intelligence, the looks, the magnificent figure, the crackling hair and the hidden well of passion, she was one hell of a woman!
He grinned and closed his eyes, grateful to finally be contemplating much more pleasant things at bedtime than his woes with Abigail and all the burdens of his unwanted Marquessate. For good measure, and because he could barely remember the last time he had been with a woman, he decided to think about the delectable Miss Hope Brookes some more to help banish all those other unpleasant thoughts away.
The sultry smell of her perfume.
The perfect curve of her generous hip beneath his palm. The soft sigh she expelled into his mouth as her lips fused with his, so real in his imagination he could almost feel it again as bone-weary tiredness tugged him gratefully into sleep.
In his dream, Hope deepened the kiss, her hand smoothing down his naked chest until it boldly wrapped itself around his erection, her triumphant chuckle at the way his body yearned for her touch.
Then he felt another whisper against his lips.
