‘No. No, thank you. You are very kind, but I shall be better by myself. I am so sorry.’
‘It is I who am sorry,’ Anne Meredith replied as she helped Antonia to the front door.
Marcus caught his sister’s gaze as she swept into the room, guessing from the sounds of carriage wheels on gravel that she had just sent Antonia home. His mouth set in a grim line, he continued to play, determined to give Anne no opportunity to speak to him that evening. Beside him, Claudia pressed her thigh against his, her breast brushing his arm whenever she leaned across to examine his cards. No, he needed to avoid Anne tonight: he had other plans.
One o’clock struck as he dismissed his valet from his bedchamber. ‘I will undress myself, thank you, Bain. And if you see Lady Anne as you leave, tell her I have already retired.’
‘Very well, Your Grace.’ The valet, used to Marcus’s ways, bowed himself out, leaving his master staring rather grimly at the big bed.
Marcus shrugged out of his swallow-tailed coat and waistcoat, removed his cravat and pulled on a light silk banyan. He had no doubt that his solitude would soon be interrupted by Claudia, lured by the promise of his kiss in the conservatory. He could not have given her a much clearer signal that the weeks of denial were over and that tonight he wanted her in his bedchamber.
Restless, he tugged aside the heavy curtain and looked out over the pleasure grounds, then his focus changed and he found himself regarding his own reflection as though in a looking glass. ‘You damn fool,’ he told his image. ‘Now get yourself out of this mess.’
He was still at the window when the door opened quietly and Claudia slipped in. He watched her reflection without turning as she tiptoed across the carpet, her negligée of yellow silk gauze moulding her voluptuous body. She pressed her palms flat against his shoulder blades, then ran them insinuatingly down the planes of his back until she reached his waist.
Marcus turned then, catching her wrists in his hard grasp, arresting their knowing progress.
‘Darling.’ She pouted. ‘You are so masterful.’ She shivered and looked into his face, her tongue-tip running lasciviously round the full curve of her lips. ‘It has been so long, Marcus. Come to bed now.’
She started to back towards the four-poster, only to be pulled up short and none too gently by Marcus’s immobility. ‘Mmm.’ She smiled wickedly at him. ‘So you want to do it here?’
‘No, Claudia, I do not. And I do not want to take you to my bed, now or in the future. It is over.’
Ever a fighter, she was unwilling to concede defeat. ‘I do not believe you. The way you kissed me tonight tells me you do not mean it.’
‘I had to make sure you would come to me here. There is nowhere else in the house we can be certain of being alone.’
Ready tears started in the lovely blue eyes. ‘Marcus, how can you be so cruel? You know you love me, and I have been faithful to you, only to you.’
‘Faithful to my fortune, my dear Claudia. I have never had any doubt that you would remain faithful to that while you had any hopes of presents. Or until a bigger, richer, fish swam by.’
The tears slid decoratively over her rouged cheeks, but a hardening anger was forming in the depths of her eyes. ‘How could you be so cruel? Inviting me down here only to spurn me when I have done nothing to incur your displeasure. Come, darling, come to bed. You are tired and cross, let Claudia make it better…’ She wriggled seductively, sending the gauzy fabric sliding from her shoulders. Only the fact that he was still holding her wrists prevented the entire garment slipping to the floor.
‘Yes, Claudia, I could go to bed with you. You are a very beautiful woman. But that beauty is only skin deep. It took me just a few weeks to realise that. You knew it was over, you knew I did not want you here, yet somehow you cozened my sister into inviting you down. Since you arrived, I have done nothing to encourage you, yet you persist.’
‘But I love you, Marcus,’ she wheedled.
‘You love only yourself. You are vain, self-absorbed, cruel and dismissive of others’ feelings. You are redeemed only by your beauty – for so long as that lasts, my lovely. Do not frown so, Claudia, frown lines are so very ageing.’
‘That did not concern you when you were in my bed taking your pleasure of me,’ she hissed, two hot spots of colour mottling her cheek bones.
Marcus dropped her wrists and stared down at the spiteful little face that tonight, despite the artful maquillage, had lost every iota of its freshness and appeal. ‘But then you managed to hide those characteristics from me so well, did you not?’
Claudia reached up one long-nailed finger and ran it down his chest, exposed by the open shirt neck. ‘I hid nothing from you, remember?’
Marcus did, vividly. Then he had been consumed by passion for the sophisticated, available – oh, so very available – Lady Reed. The burning desire had been short-lived, now he felt only distaste that he had surrendered so easily to her lures. A reflection of his thoughts must have shown on his face.
Claudia, her wheedling smile vanishing in a second, struck like an adder, the flat of her hand cracking across his cheek so hard his head snapped back. Beyond touching the stinging weal with his fingertips, Marcus did nothing, but his eyes must have held something that stopped Claudia’s breath. With a sob which was half-petulance, half-apprehension, she ran from the room, her negligée swirling in disorder around her.
Marcus stalked across the room and shut the heavy panelled door behind her, then slumped down into a wing chair before the empty grate. He stuck his legs out, easing the tension from his long frame, then ran his hands through his hair.
That had been unpleasant. He blamed himself for having become entangled with Claudia in the first place. At first he had admired her spirits and beauty, the courage with which she coped with an empty life married to a corrupt man old enough to be her father.
Society was full of grass widows, game for a fling with any gentleman who was willing. As long as everyone concerned was discreet, no-one turned a hair, even when there were some aristocratic households where all a man could be certain of was that his first-born son and heir was his own.
But that sort of life had palled, Marcus realised. It was no longer enough to have passion without attachment. Not since he had met Antonia.
A great weariness suddenly overcame him. Marcus shrugged out of his clothes and climbed into the great four poster. His last thought before he fell asleep was that he must ride over and see Antonia in the morning. He knew how much he must have hurt her in the conservatory, but he would explain how he had needed to shield her from Claudia’s venom, and her vicious, gossiping tongue.