‘Yes, that, too.’ She felt his chuckle and smiled. ‘And suddenly I must have no opinions, I must pretend to be ignorant and sweet and demure. I must pretend to know nothing about the relations between the sexes. I had to learn to be a ninny.’
‘Surely your parents did not want that?’
‘No, but they also wanted me to fit in. My father was the Marquess and we had no choice but to live here, to live within this society. They wanted me to be happy, but it was obvious that somewhere compromises would have to be made, either by me or in society’s expectations of me.’
‘You had no beaux? Surely you were courted.’
‘Oh, yes. But you see because I was exotic many of the men thought I was also…loose. And I was a virgin and I did not want to behave in the way they expected. So I spent a lot of time snubbing gentlemen or sticking hatpins in them. It was all very tiring.’
‘And your father and brother did not do anything?’ Lucian sounded outraged.
‘I made very sure they did not know. Can you imagine the trail of challenges and duels if those two had guessed?’
‘It would
only have taken one for the point to be taken.’
‘At what risk? Anyway, I soon became good at repelling advances, but I did not see anyone I could feel the slightest tendre for. They all seemed so alien.’
‘Do I seem alien?’
‘Of course.’ She dropped her hand to his thigh and squeezed it in apology for her words. ‘And then, one night at Lady Lanchester’s ball, I slipped into an alcove shielded by palms to sit out a dance in peace and found there was someone already there. He was reading a book.’
‘Michael Harcourt.’
‘Dr Michael Harcourt, if you please. Spectacles on the end of his nose, totally engrossed. So I sat down and pretended to ignore him and he must have reached the end of a chapter because he looked up and saw me and shot to his feet, sending the book flying. By the time we had rescued it from under a chair and found three scattered bookmarks and flattened the bumped corners we were firm friends.’
‘And he was at Cambridge? A don?’
‘Yes. Classical languages and philology. I knew enough Latin and a little Greek to understand what he was talking about and I speak several Indic languages, which interested him. And he listened to me and he would argue things out with me. It was so refreshing. Before long we were firm friends and then, gradually, more. He had come to London to keep his mother from fretting at him about finding a wife and settling down, but he wasn’t enjoying the Season much either.’
‘Was he good looking?’
Was that a slight overtone of masculine rivalry there? Sara smiled and closed her eyes, strangely comfortable with this intimate confession as she half-lay against Lucian’s broad chest. ‘No. He was not ugly, you understand, or even plain. He was almost as tall as you, but of a more slender build. His hair was mousy and his eyes grey and his nose not particularly distinguished, but his chin was firm. His face was a little too long for good looks and his ears stuck out, just a little, but perhaps that was because he was always jamming pens behind them. It was a kind face and an intelligent face and… Michael’s face.’ She found that tears were running down her cheeks. Tears of recollection and regret, but not desperate tears. She let them flow, strangely comforted by them.
‘And one day,’ she said, clearing her throat because it was a little husky, ‘we were in Hatchard’s bookshop. We both stretched up for the same book and bumped elbows and the next thing I knew I was in his arms and he was kissing me in the corner of the Greek and Latin translation section. Fortunately, it is not a popular area.’
Lucian’s grunt of amusement made her smile, too, and suddenly Sara realised that she was smiling over a memory of Michael for the first time since his death. Smiling out of amusement and affection, not the sad smile of memories and regret.
How strange that it was this man, her lover, who had given her that humour back.
‘So what happened next?’ Lucian prompted when she had fallen silent for several minutes.
‘Michael dropped three different translations of Homer that he was carrying and the shop assistant came and he had to end up buying two of them because the corners were bent.’
‘Not with the books, with your romance,’ Lucian said in her ear. ‘Women! Never can tell a story.’
Laughing—how did that happen when she was crying, too?—she nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘So Michael took himself off to see Papa, all very proper and formal, and Papa was really very good about it. I don’t think he had ever come across someone like Michael because he had not gone to university himself, but straight into the East India Company army, so intellectuals were a strange breed to him.’
‘And I should imagine he was a terrifying prospect for a quiet scholar.’ Lucian shifted a little and managed to link his arms around her.
‘Oh, no. Michael could stand up for himself. He was quiet, certainly, but exceedingly intelligent, so he could play Papa like a fisherman with a trout, long before Papa realised he was being manipulated. And he had courage. He loved me and he wanted me, so he was going to stand up and ask for me. He was not a poor man. Not rich, but he could keep us in very respectable comfort. And Papa, bless him, did listen and talk to both of us and then it was agreed. Before the Season was over I had married and moved to Cambridge and I was learning an entirely new culture.’
‘You liked life in a university town?’
‘Yes. I made a lot of friends amongst intellectual women—bluestockings, I suppose you would say—and I began to learn Greek in earnest and I taught Michael the languages I knew and we were friends as well as lovers. We were so happy.’ I was safe.
‘Are you weeping?’ Lucian murmured, close to her ear.