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“Of course.” He studied her face.
“Please don’t let the others know,” she said. “I don’t wish to alarm anyone.”
He nodded. “Mama,” he said, “now that we’ve officially welcomed Simon home, I beg you will excuse Lavinia and me,” he said. “We have wedding matters to discuss.”
“Wedding matters, indeed,” James remarked. “Oh, that I had such delicious matters to attend to myself.”
“James, really!” Lady Thurlby exclaimed, frowning at him. “Certainly you may, Lucas, but have a care that these matters are discussed in public so that propriety is maintained.”
“Of course, Mama,” Lucas said. “I wouldn’t have it otherwise.” He nodded his farewell to his parents and the others and escorted Lavinia from the room, his brothers still quietly chuckling behind them over James’s last remarks.
Lavinia didn’t care.
* * *
“What is it, Lavinia? What’s troubling you?” Lucas asked when they arrived at her bedroom door. He opened his arms wide, and she stepped into them and leaned against him. She was so wary of men, and for her to express this level of trust toward him now spoke volumes. He wrapped his arms about her and rested his chin on her head, waiting for her to answer.
“I was wrong when I told you we should wait to tell your parents there is no betrothal,” she said softly. “Delia and Artie simply cannot behave as anything other than what they are. You would think actors would be the most capable people of carrying out a fiction. But they must spout Shakespeare and behave as caricatures using the broadest gestures—what other man do you know who would play the dragon to Edmund’s St. George?”
Lucas thought about it. “I might—if it were my own son asking.” A son with curly red hair and clear gray eyes. Or a daughter. Or both. His and Lavinia’s children.
She heaved a sigh, and Lucas savored the warmth of her breath against his cheek. “Oh, Lucas, you wonderful, terrible man. Just when I resolve to take my friends and myself away from here at the soonest possible moment, you say something like that and I am undone. But the truth will come out. It’s inevitable. I’ve never seen Delia in such a state as she was just now. I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately, but she isn’t her usual self. I hope she isn’t ill, but at her age, who can know for certain? Regardless, she or Artie are bound to let something slip, and then we will have to face your family and tell them they have been harboringactors—”
Lucas shuddered theatrically. “Actors, good heavens. I am shocked and dismayed.”
She leaned back in his arms enough to look him in the eye. He wanted to kiss her and had a devil of a time keeping his eyes from wandering to her lips.
“Lucas, be serious,” she said. “We actors think we are fine enough folk, but you know that to others, especially an aristocratic family like your own, we are entirely beyond the pale. I will not be able to bear the looks on your family’s faces when they discover the truth—especially your parents. Your mother has taken me under her wing and led me upstairs and downstairs, teaching me”—she choked on her words—“teaching me what I need to know to run my own house. She has been kind and accepting of me when I know how reluctant she was at first. Oh, Lucas!” She collapsed against him, and Lucas held her, feeling the weight of his guilt. He had thrust this encumbrance upon her. Her little ruse at the White Horse had been nothing compared to the demands he’d made on her and her friends in order to spare his pride.
He was ashamed of himself.
He continued to hold her quietly outside the door to her room. “Don’t worry, love,” he said. “We’ll sort it out. All will be well, I promise you. Trust me.” He couldn’t bear to let go of her, so he simply held her until he felt the tension in her body begin to subside.
“I don’t think either Delia or Artie said anything that was beyond what my family has come to expect from those two,” he said. It dawned on him, in retrospect, that Lavinia’s upset was rather extreme for what had occurred in the drawing room. “Is there something else troubling you of which I’m unaware? You can tell me, you know.”
She turned sad eyes on him and shook her head, giving him a weak smile. “Nothing, really, beyond the realization that my past will inevitably find me no matter where I go. We need to tell your family the truth before they learn of it some other way. We must do it soon, Lucas.”
“And we will. You’re right: they must know. But today they will be celebrating Simon’s return, and we will let them have that celebration. And tomorrow my father has business in Peterborough that will keep him from home most of the day. I will arrange for us to meet privately with my parents two days hence, then, and we will tell them the truth together.” He placed a soft kiss on her mouth. “Now, rest and cease worrying. Promise me?”
“Yes. But, Lucas—”
“What, my love?”
“You think all will be well when we tell them, but it has been my lifelong experience that they will not take kindly to having played host under false pretenses. Actors are a motley group, from the most talented and respected thespians in the country to the vagabonds hiring on for bit parts, and everything in between, and most are not accepted in genteel society. You already know this. So I am warning you—your family will not accept our confession well.”
“I hear what you are saying, Lavinia, but I also know my family. I know their ability to forgive and accept.”
“As you were able to with Isobel and Thomas?”
She’d landed a worthy blow with her question, and it deserved a truthfulanswer. “My family is better at forgiveness than I am, but I am learning. I allowedmy pride to blind me to the truth. We have made peace with each other.”
“Truly, Lucas?” she asked, her eyes wide and searching.
“Truly. So for now, I ask that you trust me—or, at the very least, trust that my family’s goodness is greater than mine.”
She nodded. “Very well. I will try.”
“That is all I ask.”
