How to Impress a Marquess(12)
As she gazed out the window, her eyes burning and head aching from lack of sleep, her thoughts tangled up. Her own life fused with Colette’s.
The sultan, having finally captured Colette, bound her with silken sashes. She was his slave to do with as he pleased.
“You shall eat proper meals,” he growled in menacing tones. His brows drew down in a hawkish manner. “You’ll receive plenty of sleep each night and do calisthenics each morning.”
A shiver ran down Colette’s back at his unsavory demands. He may be the master of her body now, but her spirit would soar free from its bodily cage.
“Are you even paying attention?” the sultan demanded.
Colette answered in a broken whisper, “Ahhbuhh,” and bowed her head.
“What? You’re not making sense,” the sultan spat. “This illustrates my point. You’ve beaten your wings to exhaustion because you’ve had no proper guidance. Well, that has changed.”
He seized her elbow as the carriage rolled to a stop. She tried to protest his brutal treatment, but his retinue descended upon her, ripping her from the carriage. His enormous tent was ablaze with torches.
“Show her to the parlor.” His powerful voice thundered in her ears.
Colette was taken inside the tent, ordered to wait upon plush cushions for her master’s cruel bidding, and asked if she required “a spot of tea or a biscuit.”
She tried to speak but her lips wouldn’t move. Her eyelids were closing fast. The sultan must have poisoned her. She fought to remain conscious.
She heard a female voice behind the tent door. “Lilith is staying with us! No, no. What will Mother say?”
Ah, yes, Lady Marylewick, that beautiful, perfect valide sultan—queen of the harem.
“Hush, my dear Penelope, she will hear you,” the sultan barked.
Penelope, Lady Fenmore? Why was the sultan’s sister with him and not with the harem of her husband? Those were Colette’s last thoughts before being carried away in the swift, black undertow of sleep.
George entered the parlor to inform Lilith of her waiting bedchamber. He found her collapsed on a sofa, sound asleep. Her hat had toppled from her head, freeing her auburn hair. Her lashes cast shadows on her face. A beautiful sleeping tigress. He knelt beside her and studied the lines and planes of her face. Her symmetry.
She hummed and shifted onto her side.
“Miss Dahlgren,” he whispered. He rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Lilith.”
She clasped his hand, slid it under her cheek and cuddled around his arm. Warmth flowed from her body into his.
The clock on the mantel chimed five. Parliament had begun. Outside, the long shadows of the afternoon were beacons of the coming gloaming. After Parliament, he had several balls to attend. Today’s adventure had set him behind in his estate work. He had a multitude of reasons to hurry on, but he couldn’t stop gazing at the picture she made and enjoying the tingle of his skin where it touched hers. “What am I going to do with you?”
She drew up her legs and snuggled even closer. “So tired,” she mumbled and rubbed her cheek against his arm, as if settling into a pillow.
He knew it was improper and unwise, but he wanted to feel more of her. He brushed a stray lock, the color of brandy and firelight, from her face. How could he make her mind as delicate as her nose, her manners as pleasing as her lips, and her ways as soft as her silky hair? If only he could find a way to temper her wild, disorderly nature and keep her as gentle as this moment.
He lingered five minutes longer, savoring the soothing rhythm of her breath on his face, until he couldn’t put off his responsibilities any longer.
“Come.” He tenderly gathered her up. “Let’s tuck you in bed.”
George’s carriage rambled through the streets as he contemplated the Lilith problem. Away from her, cold reason set in again. The truth was she was too great a risk at the house party. Politics was a careful, subtle dance in a house of cards. One jarring move, one misspoken word, and all his good work would fall apart.
He couldn’t let her attend, no matter how this might deflate Lord Charles. In fact, George took secret pleasure in thwarting the man.
He straightened his parliamentary wig and made his decision. On the eve of the house party, Lilith would contract a chill and be temporarily removed to a nest of spinster relations housed in Chester, where she would adhere to a strict regimen of improvement as laid out by George. Then, for the rest of the spring, she would remain under Penelope’s feminine tutelage, with George acting as the firm authoritarian whenever Lilith strained Penelope’s delicate countenance. By late summer, he hoped to have Lilith’s wild tendencies ironed out. Then he would quietly establish her.
Yes, that would be the best plan of action, he thought as he stepped out of the carriage at the Palace of Westminster.
Six hours later, he had different thoughts as he stood by the dance floor at Lord Winterston’s ball. He seethed inside but kept his features composed in a pleasant, nonmurderous expression. The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. And if Lilith Dahlgren is involved in said plans, they go spiraling down into the pit of hell.
He just waited for yet another powerful member of Parliament, whose vote the Tory party had been courting since the winter, to approach him and say, Lord Charles tells me that you have a delightful cousin attending your house party. I will enjoy making her acquaintance, or Lord Charles tells me that Miss Lilith Dahlgren will attend your house party. How wonderful that I shall finally meet her. My sister sang her praises at school, or the oddest one of all, coming from Lord Harrowsby, the oldest member of the House of Lords, I hear from Lord Charles that you’ve kept a charming little dove hidden from us; we are all actually looking forward to your house party this year.
What did that mean? Did no one enjoy his house party?
George thought he was the better man, but he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy.
He had spent months trying to bring the Stamp Duty Extension Bill to people’s attention. Meanwhile, Lilith showed up at the park one afternoon and suddenly England’s politicians were on fire. But he knew the truth of Lilith. She dazzled people in bright, short bursts, but if they lingered any longer, her charming facade soon began to melt and there would be George, behind the glitter and glow, mopping up her mess again.
On the dance floor, the waltz had ended and partners were beginning to form for a quadrille. George’s temples ached. He wanted to go home and crawl in bed with Colette, but he needed to dance with the Whig host’s daughter, play a rubber with an MP from Sheffield, and then drive five blocks to another ball and dance with more daughters and play more cards. It was no use standing here, silently cursing Lilith and letting her steal any more of his precious time. He turned and headed for the host. He preferred the old-fashioned, courteous method of asking a lady to dance: inquiring of the father.
He had not gone two steps when he heard, “Lord Marylewick, dear boy.”
Lord Charles sauntered over, his blond-red hair shiny under the huge chandelier. In an easy motion, he grabbed two champagne glasses from a passing servant, handed one to Marylewick, and then took a sip from the other. “How is it that Miss Dahlgren was in your possession all this time? You could have been a regular fellow and mentioned it earlier. I’m quite cut up at your shabby treatment of me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve made no secret of Miss Dahlgren.”
Charles’s azure eyes glittered as they had when he had cheered on his schoolmates to toss George’s shoes and coat up in the trees. “Don’t tell me you have your own plans for her—down on one knee in an orangery, babbling of undying sentiments and devotion.”
“Don’t be daft! I’m her guardian,” he said, simplifying the complex relationship. “I oversee all aspects of her life.”
“Ah, I see. Then I must romance you, if I’m to romance her.”
“You seem quite taken by a lady you met just this afternoon.” George didn’t hide his incredulity. He knew Charles cut a wide swath with London’s more willing ladies. Now the man seemed to be waging a campaign for a woman he hardly knew.
Charles pressed his fist to his chest. “But in my heart, I’ve known her an eternity. I’m rather romantic.”
“I’m sure that in a week’s time you will have forgotten about Miss Dahlgren and found another quarry.”
“There is no other woman but Miss Dahlgren. All is Miss Lilith Dahlgren, I assure you. Come now, consider my suit: I’m the third son of a duke and that makes me a lord with all the usual paraphernalia—estate, funds, and so forth, but without the stringent matrimonial requirements of my elder brothers. I stand in Parliament, so I’m not a completely useless fribble. I vote on issues of national importance, such as stamp duties. You know about those. I believe you and your Tory kind in the House of Commons are trying to shove one down this nation’s throat.”
His true meaning flowed beneath his drollness. You have something I want romantically, and I have something you want politically.
George drew a long sip of bubbling spirits. “My cousin is not a political pawn.”
“I’m not sure what prompted you to say that. How could I sully pure, innocent affection with filthy politics? I merely tell you that my intentions are honorable, and I ask that I be allowed to pursue them at your house party.”