Not do better, Inverivy implied, because Leo’s people had been little more than wealthy farmers. Marielle hadn’t cared about that, and Leo hoped she was still indifferent to rank and title.
A knock interrupted the solicitors’ exhortations.
A skinny boy in a worn coat tugged off his cap. “A note, Mr. Hollyburn, for his lordship.”
Leo took the note from the boy before Hollyburn could snatch it, and tossed the lad a coin. “Happy Christmas.”
“Thank you, milord!” The boy scampered off, while Leo eyed the sealed note. Lady Semple had put pen to paper, her hand remarkably like Marielle’s. Perhaps all English school girls developed the same graceful, looping script while they waited for English schoolboys to mature into worthy articles. Leo slit the seal with some foreboding.
* * *
My lord,
I am exercising a lady’s prerogative and changing my mind. You are without doubt a fine man, and I wish you a happy future, but I can assure you from experience, marriage to a relative stranger would be a tepid undertaking at best. I deserve better, and so, I daresay, do you. Please accept my apologies for causing you needless travel on a day cold enough to freeze Lucifer’s ears off.
Lady Drew Semple
* * *
“The lady and I are in agreement,” Leo informed the solicitors. “We’ve both thought better than to proceed with a negotiated courtship. She won’t be joining us, nor will she become my marchioness.”
Her ladyship’s decision solved a considerable problem, and Leo was grateful to her for her honesty. The irony wasn’t lost on him though—but for this errand in Chelsea, he’d not have spent the most wonderful night of his life with Marielle.
Who was doubtless waiting for word from him back at the Ox and Ass. He jammed the note into his pocket, departed on the moment, and was soon enduring Rafe’s grumblings as they waited for their horses at the livery stable.
“We’ll return to the inn,” Leo said. “We should get there before noon, if the wind stays at our backs.”
“We’re going right back the way we came?”
“Right back to where I ought to have stayed, ten years ago, until I’d had a chance to discuss matters with the lady herself. Marielle deserved that much from me, but I was too willing to believe her father’s lies.”
Lady Drew’s note crackled in Leo’s pocket as he swung into a frigid saddle. She sounded like a practical soul, and kind, but determined on her objectives. Leo wished her well, and would hoist a holiday toast to her, just as soon as he and Marielle were reunited.
“The wind is apparently no respecter of daft marquesses,” Rafe said as they trotted onto the main road and took the brunt of a winter breeze right in the face. “But don’t mind me. Nothing I’d rather do on Boxing Day than freeze my jewels off, traipsing back and forth along the same misbegotten stretch of miserable English road. I’ll learn the names of all the highwaymen and their horses. The holidays are supposed to be a friendly time of year, after all.”
“Raphael, if you’re getting too old to accompany me on my travels, I’ll buy you a cottage in Dorset and write to you twice a year.”
Though Rafe again had a point: The temperature was dropping, and if Leo hadn’t been traveling back to Marielle’s side, he’d have waited out the weather for at least another day.
“I don’t fancy Dorset,” Rafe said. “Too many sheep, not enough taverns. God’s hairy arse, it wasn’t this cold in Austria.”
“Cold enough to freeze Lucifer’s….”
“Bum,” Rafe went on. “Though as best I recall, it’s hot where Old Scratch bides. My sainted granny was convinced of it, and she knew everything, including all the places I hid my papa’s brandy.”
Cold enough to freeze Lucifer’s ears off. Across a dozen countries and a dozen years, Leo had encountered only one woman who used that comparison.
“I might like to settle down,” Rafe mused, “now that you mention my centuries of loyal service. I’d forgotten the pleasure of time spent with a good Englishwoman on a chilly afternoon. The dark-eyed lasses on the Continent have their charms, but there’s nothing like a pair of kind blue eyes to warm a man’s heart.”
Cold enough to freeze Lucifer’s ears off. Leo pulled Wulf to a halt, extracted the note from his pocket, and read it again. He hadn’t seen Marielle’s penmanship in more than ten years, but this could well be her writing. A tickle of heat up Leo’s spine more than suggested that fate was playing a vast, seasonal joke on him.
Or maybe Marielle was? Had she intentionally spent the night with a man she was about to reject?
“Have you lost your everlovin’ marbles, my lord colonel? It’s bloody awful cold, the wind is howling, and the snow is getting deeper by the moment. I could be sitting in the snug with Miss Petunia, sharing another round of toddies, and here you are, impersonating a statue on the king’s highway.”
“Miss Petunia is Marielle’s companion,” Leo said, stashing the note away. “How did you meet her?”
“Had to share my toddies with somebody when you went off with her ladyship, didn’t I? Not even your daft lordship would let good hot toddies go to waste.”
“Who is her ladyship?”
Rafe gazed up at the snowy heavens, then speared Leo with a patient look. “Miss Petunia Semple is companion to Lady Drew Semple, in whose bedroom—if I am not mistaken—you passed Christmas night. I considered you was having a last lark before sticking your neck in the noose of aristocratic stupidity. Using solicitors to find a wife, God save us. The Quality is daft, and the nobs are barking mad.”
Rafe nudged his horse into a trot, while Leo remained unmoving on Wulf.
Marielle was Lady Drew Semple. The facts all fit, and yet, what had her motivation been? Had she known she was bedding the Marquess of Cadeau?
Wulf shook his reins and stomped his hoof, clearly unhappy about being separated from the retreating Welly.
“I owe my lady a fair hearing,” Leo said. “I owe her a chance to explain. I owe her… to hell with that. I want to give her my name, and children, God willing, and every Christmas night for the rest of my life.”
He tapped his heel against Wulf ’s sides, cantered past Welly, and didn’t stop until the Ox and Ass had once more come into view.
Rafe lead the horses in to the stable, while Leo tromped up the snowy steps and bellowed for the innkeeper.
“Beggin’ your pardon,” Mrs. Somerset said, bustling out of the kitchen. “Himself is bringing in extra coal on account of the storm. Will you be bidin’ here with us again tonight, sir?”
“I will, and you please inform Lady Drew that I’ve returned.”
Mrs. Somerset wore a ridiculous sprig of mistletoe, the white berries dangling from her cap. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Colonel. Lady Drew was off this morning, shortly after breakfast. Coachy said she was on her way to back Town, hoping to beat the storm.”
What in the hell was Marielle up to? “She’s not here?”
“I hope she’s safe and snug back in Town, sir. Will you be needing a room?”
Rafe stomped through the door, shaking snow from his greatcoat, scarf and mittens.