Chapter 4 I believe His Grace is waiting

CHAPTER FOUR

"Oh, what are we to do?" Lucia groaned, sinking weakly onto the plush velvet sofa "Lavinia was always an impulsive child, but this time she has gone too far, Arvinia, he is waiting downstairs in the withdrawing room. What are we going to tell him?"

Tell whom?" demanded Arvinia, who, still struggling to make out the smudges and scribbles that made up her cousin's letter, had been only half listening "Who is waiting?"

Oh dear, you mean you don't know?" Lucia said with awful significance. "I was sure I told you. But then, I am not as young as I used to be, and Lavinia's letter quite knocked me off my mind."

"Yes, no doubt," Arvinia agreed, her patience growing thin. "Now be so kind as to tell me who is waiting in the withdrawing room?"

"Why Alexander, of course," responded Lucia, blinking a little at Arvinia's sharp tone. "The man Lavinia is promised to marry, only she is already married to dear Bernard with whom she has now run away, leaving me to explain things to the duke and, worse, to my brother-in-law, the earl. I cannot understand what she could have been thinking to do anything so utterly calculated to bring ruin upon us."

"I, on the other hand, know exactly what she was thinking." Arvinia declared grimly. "Oh, how I should like to let her stew in the bumblebroth she has made for herself! But I cannot." Sitting down before a small secretary, she dipped a quill pen in ink and began to hastily write. "See that this is carried to my father immediately," she said, rising again and handing the letter to Sophie. "Our only hope is that he and my brothers can find Lavinia and bring her back. Until then, I shall do what I must to avert a scandal."

Then she picked up the golden ring and slipped it resolutely on her finger: "Well?" she said pointedly to the elderly lady. "I believe His Grace is waiting."

Alexander Frederick Horatio, the newest Duke of Alfreton, leaned his elbow on top of the mantelpiece and stared somberly into the fire. He was sardonically aware that he was being perverse in choosing to remain standing, when the incessant throb in his thigh cried out to him to take advantage of one of the overstuffed wing chairs ranged cozily before the fireplace. Even the relatively short journey to London from Thornhill in Surrey, had taken its toll, just as the doctor had warned that it would. He would pay the price with a sleepless night. Better that, however, he thought cynically, than to disgrace himself before his promised bride by finding himself, once seated, unable to rise. The corner of his mouth twisted wryly. Not that it would signify, he thought. He had come, fully expecting the young beauty to cry off.

Frowning, he twisted the gold ring back and forth on the little finger of his left hand. The gesture was a habit, one of which he had long since ceased to be aware. He had worn the gold band so long that it, like the sword, which, until recently, had hung at his side, had become an integral part of himself. Now the sword was retired to a closet at Thornhill, along with his regimentals. All that was left as a reminder of the past eleven years spent serving king and country as one of Wellington's most trusted young officers was the only partially healed wound inflicted by a French musket ball that had embedded itself deep in his thigh. It had ended his military career and sent him back to an existence that was as little welcome to him as the prospect of wedding a female he had met only once before in his life.

With the same sense of unreality that had attended his arrival at Thornhill some six weeks before, he stared down at the ring bearing the intricately wrought figure of a hand adorned at the wrist with an emerald. How ironic that the golden ring,which a ten-year-old child had placed on his finger the day before he embarked for Germany, should serve not only as his only tie to a past so remote that it seemed somehow to belong to someone else, but as his single bond to the present as well. A bond, he reflected sardonically, that was at this moment exceedingly tenuous. When Lavinia Augustus came through that door and beheld the wreck of a man she was promised to wed, the ring, no doubt, would go the way of the sword.

As if in answer to that thought, his attention was caught by the soft rattle of the door handle turning. The handsome features hardened, assuming their habitual mask of cool impenetrability, only a bare second before the door opened.

Alexander straightened, taking care not to place any undue strain on his injured leg, and turned to meet the startlingly direct gaze of a young woman who did not in the least resemble the description in her uncle's letters. This statuesque beauty, with her grave bearing and decidedly pensive air, hardly conformed to his expectations of "a high-spirited, impetuous little minx in need of a man's steadying hand." Quite the contrary, he sensed a quiet strength about her, an arresting steadiness in her regard, that was anything but coquettish.

She came gracefully toward him. "My lord Duke of Alfreton?" she inquired in a voice pleasingly low.

"Even so," he drawled and bent his head over the slender hand she offered. "Miss Lavinia Augustus, I must presume?"

Her lips curved somewhat ruefully, and she raised her chin with a peculiar air of determination. "Your Grace," she said, as though bracing herself, "I am-"

Then straightening, Alexander lifted his eyes to hers.

The smile froze on Arvinia's lips and her thoughts scattered as she found herself staring into eyes of the most spellbinding blue she had ever seen. It was not their color precisely that took her breath away, though they were of a particularly brilliant hue. Like the dazzling blue of the sky on a still, clear day, she mused whimsically. But rather it was their intensity, which, seeming to pierce her through to her very soul, rendered her peculiarly breathless.

A darkening frown in the remarkable orbs brought her suddenly to an awareness that she had been staring in mute fascination at the nobleman for quite some twenty seconds.