‘I know. I don’t encourage him, Dot. I just want to be friends. It isn’t because of who I am—it’s because I don’t think of him in any other way.’
‘Aye, poor bugger. He knows it, so don’t you be worrying about breaking his heart. He wouldn’t do for you anyway, but he’ll be hard put to compete with the likes of that other one now he is on the scene.’
‘What other one?’ As if I don’t know. ‘Honestly, Dot, shouldn’t you be off home?’
Her henchwoman, superbly indifferent to hints, made herself more comfortable with one expansive hip propped against the doorframe. ‘That Mr Dunton. If he’s a plain mister, then I’m the Duchess of Devonshire. And he’s taken a fancy to you. Not an honest one, that’s true, but where’s the harm in a bit of fun between the sheets, you being unattached and no maiden, as it were?’
‘Dot, stop it this minute. A bit of fun between the sheets indeed! I wouldn’t think of such a thing.’
Which is a barefaced lie. I haven’t thought of much else since I set eyes on him. The Mystery Marquess. Only his presence here was not such a mystery now she knew about his sister.
‘Aye, well, that’s what you say. You have a good time and if the Rooms are too dull, you drop in at the Dog and join in the sing-song.’ She took herself off on a gale of laughter at the thought, leaving Sara torn between amusement and exasperation.
Home for you, my girl. A nice bath, a few letters to write and then get dressed up and off to the Rooms for some wild dissipation, Sandbay-style.
*
Sandbay’s Assembly Rooms were only a year old, the creation of a consortium of the town’s leading businessmen who had raised the money for the construction. They had visited Weymouth and Brighton to seek inspiration and had returned to order a building containing a ballroom, card room, tea room and the associated retiring rooms, cloakrooms and entrance hall.
It was all very shiny, still smelled faintly of paint and had proved an instant success with the visitors and local gentry alike. Sara, who had a subscription for the season, paid off her sedan chair, left her outer clothing at the cloakroom and entered the tea room which served as the foyer during the evenings. A little flurry of new visitors was clustered around the Master of Ceremonies, Mr Flyte, who abandoned them with a smile and descended upon Sara.
‘Dear Lady Sarisa, welcome, welcome.’ She was his highest-ranking subscriber—unless Mr Dunton had subscribed and been recognised—and flattering her was far more important to the Master of Ceremonies than any number of newly arrived minor gentry.
‘Mr Flyte, please do not let me interrupt. You were speaking to these ladies and gentlemen.’ She bowed slightly in apology to the waiting visitors, annoyed that he had deserted them to toady to her, and went on through to the ballroom.
Although the music had not yet begun the room was already filling up, none of the subscribers feeling the need to demonstrate fashionable ennui and drift in halfway through proceedings.
James Makepeace appeared at her side, slightly pink and scrubbed around the ears, but smartly attired in his best evening suit. ‘Lady Sarisa, good evening. You have not forgotten that you promised me the first set, I hope?’
‘I have not.’ She put her hand on his proffered arm and they strolled around the room, greeting old friends and stopping to chat with the local squire, Sir Humphrey Janes, whose grandfather had built the first lodging houses which had given the resort its initial impetus. His son had invested in the hotel and the bathing rooms and the present baronet saw it as his family duty to encourage the social life of Sandbay.
‘You are in great beauty tonight, my lady.’ He bowed over her hand, twitted the librarian mildly on his courage in leading out the belle of the ball and warned Sara to ready herself for a visit from his sister. ‘She has plans for a charity bazaar and is scouring the town for committee members for the organisation. You would do well to flee to Brighton, if not Scarborough, to be at a safe distance.’
*
It was the laughter that caught Lucian’s attention as he entered the ballroom, Mr Flyte at his side. Rich and musical, it sent a shiver of awareness down his spine.
‘Now, Mr Dunton, you must not hesitate to call upon my services for any needs you have while you are a guest in our little town. We may be small, but we pride ourselves here in Sandbay on giving our visitors our most personal attention. Suggestions for tours, recommendations for the most reliable livery stable—’
‘Who is that lady? The one in the amber and the emeralds? The one laughing.’
It couldn’t be, surely? A shopkeeper in silk and gems? Perhaps they were paste, but he doubted it—the green glowed in the candlelight with the authentic fire in the eyes of a black panther.
‘That, Mr Dunton, is our most distinguished resident, Lady Sarisa Harcourt—Lady Sarisa Herriard as was—the only daughter of the Marquess of Eldonstone.’ The Master of Ceremonies beamed as though he was personally responsible for the appearance of so elevated a personage. ‘A widow, you understand,’ he murmured. ‘We are fortunate that she recovers from her loss amongst us.’
‘Mr Flyte, this morning I took my sister to a shop called Aphrodite’s Seashell and met a Mrs Harcourt who bears a most uncanny resemblance to that lady.’ Someone was playing games with him and he did not like it.
‘Oh, hush, sir, I do beg you.’ Flyte was positively flapping his hands in agitation at this indiscretion. ‘A little eccentricity in a lady is something to be indulged, is it not?’
‘It is?’ Eccentric dowagers were one thing, beautiful young widows were quite another.
‘Oh, most certainly. Lady Sarisa lends lustre to all the social and char
itable occasions in the town and also amuses herself harmlessly by providing entertainment of a cultured and unexceptionable kind to ladies of all ages.’ He cleared his throat and lowered his voice even more. ‘We assist in keeping her ladyship’s two, shall we say, lives quite separate.’
What the blazes her father the Marquess thought of this Lucian could not imagine. He had met the man, and his exquisite and alarming Marchioness, two years ago when they had come to England from India when Eldonstone inherited the title. The East India Company soldier and his exotic, half-Indian wife had caused a stir amongst the ton and there had been a son and daughter, he recalled now, but he had not met them because he had been called from London to his father’s deathbed and the remainder of that Season had passed without him.
Lady Sarisa had inherited her mother’s looks, but her father’s blond hair and grey eyes, striking in contrast with the pale gold of her skin. For a moment he speculated that her marriage had caused a rift in the family, but if it had, she had not been cut off without a penny, because that gown and those gems had not been bought on a shopkeeper’s earnings.