Marjorie Farrell (29 page)

“No. Jeremy was the only one I was concerned about, and if he knows, I feel no need to tell Lavinia.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“I wish you would stop calling me ‘my lord,’ Nora. And could you not sit down? I wish to hear all your story,” he added in softer tones.

Nora sat herself on the edge of the armchair furthest away from the sofa.

“I don’t know what purpose that would serve,” she replied. “Why would you be interested, now that you know the essentials?”

Sam leaned forward and looked intently into her eyes. “Because I love you. And now I don’t have to concern myself with your feelings for some mythical hero. I want nothing between us. There was nothing between us yesterday afternoon, after all.”

Nora’s eyes widened, and Sam cursed to himself. Hardly the most effective wooing, to burst out with a statement like that.

“I want to know you better, Nora,” he said gently.

He did. He wanted to know her in more ways than one, and Nora felt her last bit of resistance give way. He wanted to listen to her, to know the best and worst of her, and she was as vulnerable to that desire as to his touch. And so she told her story from the beginning.

As she spoke, Sam knew if he thought he had loved her before, it was nothing to what he was feeling now. He saw the young girl Nora had been, deprived of her mother and deserted by her father.

“Honora Margaret Ashton,” he said softly, almost to himself.

Nora looked up, startled.

“You were the daughter of a marquess?” he asked wonderingly, thinking how different her life might have been.

She nodded.

“Come, sit by me, Nora.” She was drawn to him as though she were being drawn home. She sat next to him, and he leaned back, his arm around her.

“Tell me more.”

And so she told him, haltingly, of her passion for Breen. Of how her love had clouded her vision.

“And after he died, you came south? Why didn’t you return home?”

“I thought my father had disinherited me. I have only just found out I never received his letter.”

“So your journey home was to a family you thought might still not receive you.”

“Yes, but I was welcomed. Just like the young girl in the old song.”

“So my version was the true one,” Sam said, humming the refrain.

“Ah, but it is all true, Sam. My love
was
too easy won. And I didn’t realize it, but I have hated myself for years for my naiveté
.
”

“And now?”

“I think I have at last forgiven myself.”

“I don’t see any need for forgiveness, my dearest. Loving is not a sin, and even if it were, you have more than paid for it.”

Nora pulled herself out of the circle of his arm. “Sam, I want you to look at me. I do not regret any of it. Breen, Miranda, my life here. Although I have blamed myself for loving so blindly, I could not regret it, for it brought me Miranda.”

Sam kissed her on the forehead and drew her back into his arms, this time pulling her head down on his chest and punctuating his sentence with kisses on the top of her head.

“Nora, I think we both owe thanks to Breen. There must have been some good in him, or you would not have loved him. And had you stayed in Northumberland, you would have wedded some young lord, and I would never have met you.”

Nora lifted her head at the same time that Sam was leaning down to plant another kiss. He groaned as her forehead met his nose, and the moments of quiet, almost sleepy affection were interrupted by Nora’s apologies, Sam’s mocking complaints, and their laughter. Nora pulled back for one moment and watched him rubbing his nose. She lovingly counted each wrinkle on his face and reached up to touch his thick, springy hair. As she did, she felt a surge of desire that surprised her, and pulled his head down to hers and kissed him hungrily.

“Nora…” Sam said, as they interrupted the kiss to take a breath.

“Don’t talk, Sam,” she replied, moving her hand under his shirt and delighting in the tendrils of hair on his chest.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

Nora didn’t stop her wandering hands for an instant. “Yes, Sam, yes,” she whispered. This time it was her hand that found him. Without needing to utter a word, they slipped off the sofa onto the rug, and Nora unbuttoned Sam’s shirt and pants and ran her finger down the line of hair from breast to belly.

* * * *

When they came back to themselves sometime later, Sam had to grin at the picture they presented. Nora was clothed only in her shift, and her dress and underthings were pillowing their heads. Sam’s shirt was off, but his pants hobbled him at the ankles, for they had not wanted even a moment’s delay to pull off his boots. The fire had died down, and Sam could feel himself getting chilled. He shook Nora awake, and almost started kissing her again when she said, “Wait, Sam, the fire’s died down. Let me add another log.”

“Let me, Nora.”

“No, no, I can do it,” she answered automatically, starting to get up.

“Nora, let me do it for you.” Sam enunciated each word, slowly and in mock anger.

She leaned her head back and said, “All right, Sam.”

Sam shuffled to the hearth, his boots tangled in his pants, and leaned over to drop the log. He was hardly the picture of the romantic protector, and Nora started to giggle at the sight of his long bare legs. She tried to stifle her laughter, but it was hopeless, and as Sam turned to look at her, and down at himself, they both fell into whoops.

When they at last caught their breath, he sat down and pulled her into his lap.

“Just say thank you,” he whispered.

“Thank you, Sam,” Nora replied.

Although Prinny’s behavior at the christening of his niece, Alexandra Victoria, was the foremost topic of gossip during the Season of 1819, for at least one week in June no one could talk of anything but the discovery that the young Countess of Alverstone was the granddaughter of a marquess.

At first there was only a mild ripple of interest in the fact that the Marquess of Doverdale was visiting London again after many years absence. “Not, you understand,” said one intrigued dowager to another, “that the Ashtons ever left Northumberland very often. They were a family who clearly preferred to rusticate.” But then, when an unobtrusive notice was discovered in the
Post
,
announcing the marriage of Honora Margaret Ashton to Marcus Samuel Vane, Viscount Acland, no one was without an opinion.

It seemed that the Marquess’s daughter, none other than a person of no great consequence, Nora Dillon, had been reconciled with her family. The fact that she had also managed to bring to the altar one of London’s most popular but confirmed bachelors caused the ripples to swell into waves which washed through every polite drawing room.

The Duke and Duchess of Sutton did their part to calm the waters, quietly confirming that, yes, Lady Honora Margaret had made an unequal match with Lieutenant Dillon, and owing to a misunderstanding, had assumed herself cut off. And wasn’t it wonderful that she had, in the past year, both reconciled with her father and found a most suitable husband.

A week later, when the Viscountess Newton was discovered in an intimate situation with a captain of the Guards, the tide of gossip turned and the newlyweds enjoyed a quiet Season, devoted for the most part to furthering the relationships between the marquess and his granddaughter, and Lady Honora and her half-brother, Richard.

Lavinia, who, between the engagement and the quiet marriage, had had time to let go of her half-serious, half-habitual expectation that someday her old suitor would renew his suit, hosted a Richmond picnic to celebrate the newlyweds. As Sam watched his new wife drinking champagne from the fine crystal Lavinia’s servants had carefully packed for the outing, he could not help remembering that first picnic on the Heath, and the shared bottle of lemonade. He moved closer to Nora, who, with a fine-tuned awareness of his physical presence, without thinking drew his hand around her waist and moved next to him.

“I will be glad when we can go home, Sam,” she whispered as he leaned down to kiss her neck.

And although she had naturally taken up residence on St. James Street, “home” for that night would be the cottage, which they had kept as a refuge from the city; a place where master and mistress could stretch out in front of a cozy fire on the plush new Turkey carpet, which Sam insisted his old bones needed, having taken to himself so unconventional and shameless a wife.

Although the friendship between Joanna and Nora is fictional, Joanna Baillie herself is not.

Born in 1762, Baillie lived in Hampstead from 1806 until her death in 1851. She wrote and published verse, and then the tragedies which brought her fame. “If you wish to speak of a real poet,” said Sir Walter Scott, “Joanna Baillie is now the highest genius of our country.” Byron himself declared she was the only woman who could write tragedy.

She was described by contemporaries as a lovable, sincere and trustworthy woman, one who might well have been Nora’s friend. Her longtime residence, Bolton House, still stands on Holly Bush Hill, Hampstead.

Copyright © 1991 by Marjorie Farrell

Originally published by Signet (ISBN 0451168747)

Electronically published in 2013 by Belgrave House/Regency

Reads

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

     http://www.RegencyReads.com

     Electronic sales: [email protected]

This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.