It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers #2)(23)

CHAPTER 5

Unaware of the assault that would soon be launched against him, Marcus relaxed in the study with his brother-in-law, Gideon Shaw, and his friends Simon Hunt and Lord St. Vincent. They had gathered in the private room to talk before the formal dinner started. Leaning back in his chair behind the massive mahogany desk, he glanced at his pocket watch. Eight o’clock—time to join the company at large, especially as Marcus was the host. However, he remained still, and frowned at the watch’s implacable face with the grimness of a man who had an unpleasant duty to perform.

He would have to speak to Lillian Bowman. With whom he had behaved like a madman today. Seizing her, kissing her in a berserk eruption of misguided passion …The thought of it made him shift uncomfortably in his chair.

Marcus’s straightforward nature urged him to deal with the situation in a direct manner. There was only one possible solution to this dilemma—he would have to apologize for his behavior, and assure her that it would never happen again. He would be damned if he would spend the next month skulking through his own house in an effort to avoid the woman. Trying to ignore the whole thing was not feasible.

He only wished he knew why it had happened in the first place.

Marcus had been able to think of nothing else since that moment behind the hedgerow—his own astonishing breach of restraint, and even more bewildering, the primal satisfaction of kissing the annoying shrew.

“Pointless,” came St. Vincent’s voice. He was sitting on the corner of his desk, staring through the stereoscope. “Who gives a damn about views of landscapes and monuments?” St. Vincent continued lazily. “You need some stereocards featuring women, Westcliff. Now there’s something worth viewing through this thing.”

“I would think that you see enough of those in three-dimensional form,” Marcus replied dryly. “Aren’t you a bit preoccupied with the subject of female anatomy, St. Vincent?”

“You have your hobbies, I have mine.”

Marcus glanced at his brother-in-law, who was politely expressionless, and Simon Hunt, who seemed amused by the exchange. The men were all remarkably different in character and origin. Their only common denominator was their friendship with Marcus. Gideon Shaw was that most contradictory of terms, an “American aristocrat,” the great-grandson of an ambitious Yankee sea captain. Simon Hunt was an entrepreneur, a former butcher’s son who was shrewd, enterprising, and trustworthy in every regard. Then there was St. Vincent, an unprincipled scoundrel and a prolific lover of women. He was always to be found at some fashionable party or gathering, staying only until the conversation became “tedious,” which was to say that something meaningful or worthwhile was being discussed, and then he would leave in search of new revelry.

Marcus had never encountered a cynicism as deep-seated as St. Vincent’s. The viscount almost never said what he meant, and if he ever felt a moment of compassion for anyone, he concealed it expertly. A lost soul, people sometimes called him, and it did seem likely that St. Vincent was beyond redemption. It was equally likely that Hunt and Shaw would not have tolerated St. Vincent’s company were it not for his friendship with Marcus.

Marcus himself would have had little to do with St. Vincent were it not for his memories of the days when they had attended the same school. Time and again St. Vincent had proved himself to be a supportive friend, doing whatever was necessary to get Marcus out of a scrape, sharing packets of sweets from home with nonchalant benevolence. And he had always been the first by Marcus’s side in a fight.

St. Vincent had understood what it was like to be despised by a parent, as his own father had been no better than Marcus’s. The two boys had commiserated with dark humor, and had done what they could to help each other. In the years since they had left school, St. Vincent’s character seemed to have eroded considerably, but Marcus was not one to forget past debts. Nor was he one to turn his back on a friend.

As St. Vincent lounged in the chair beside Gideon Shaw’s, they presented a striking picture, the two of them fair-haired and abundantly favored by nature, yet so qualitatively different in appearance. Shaw was urbane and handsome, with an irreverent grin that beguiled all who saw it. His features were agreeably weathered with subtle signs that life, despite its bounty of material riches, had not always been easy for him. Whatever difficulties came his way, he handled them with grace and wit.

St. Vincent, by contrast, possessed an exotic male beauty, his eyes pale blue and catlike, his mouth edged with cruelty even when he smiled. He cultivated a manner of perpetual indolence that many London fashionables tried to emulate. Had it flattered him to dress like a dandy, St. Vincent undoubtedly would have. But he knew that ornamentation of any kind only served to distract from the golden splendor of his looks, and so he dressed with strict simplicity, in dark, well-tailored clothes.

With St. Vincent present in the study, the conversation naturally turned to the subject of women. Three days earlier a married lady of good standing in London society had reputedly tried to commit suicide when her affair with St. Vincent had ended. The viscount had found it convenient to escape to Stony Cross Park amid the furor of the scandal. “A ridiculous display of melodrama,” St. Vincent scoffed, using the tips of his long fingers to play with the rim of his brandy snifter. “It’s being said that she slit her wrists, when in reality she scratched them with a hatpin and then began screaming for a maidservant to help her.” He shook his head in disgust. “Idiot. After all the pains we took to keep the affair secret, she does something like this. Now everyone in London knows, including her husband. And what did she hope to gain from it? If she sought to punish me for leaving her, she’s going to suffer a hundred times more. People always blame the woman the most, especially if she’s married.”