The Lady Forfeits

Now?

And apparently awaiting her in the library …

Well, who had more right than Lord Gabriel Faulkner, the newly titled Earl of Westbourne, to be awaiting Diana in what was, after all, now his library, she scolded herself. Besides, had she not been anticipating just such an opportunity in which to personally inform the new earl exactly what she thought of both him, his blanket offer of marriage to herself and her two sisters, and the serious repercussions of that preposterous offer?

Diana stiffened her spine in preparation for that conversation. ‘Thank you, Soames.’ She continued confidently into the entrance hall before removing her bonnet and handing it and her parasol to the maid who had accompanied her on her morning errands. ‘Is my Aunt Humphries still in her rooms?’

‘She is, my lady,’ the butler confirmed evenly, his expression as unemotionally non-committal as a good butler’s should be.

Nevertheless, Diana sensed the man’s disapproval that Mrs Humphries had taken to her bed shortly after they had arrived at Westbourne House three days earlier and that she had chosen to remain there during the uproar of Diana’s efforts to ensure that the house was cleaned and polished from attic to cellar.

Diana had been unsure as to what she would find when she reached Westbourne House. Neither she, nor her two sisters, had ever been to London before, let alone stayed in what was the family home there. Their father, the previous earl, had chosen not to go there either for all of ten years before his death six months ago.

The air of decay and neglect Diana had encountered when she’d first entered Westbourne House had been every bit as bad as she had feared it might be—as well as confirming that the new earl had not yet arrived from his home in Venice to take up residence here. The few servants who remained had fallen into almost as much decay and neglect as the house in the absence of a master or mistress to keep them about their duties. An occurrence that Diana had dealt with by immediately dispensing with the servants unwilling or unable to work and engaging new ones to take their place, their first task being to restore the house to some of its obvious former glory.

A task well done, Diana noted as she looked about her with an air of satisfaction. Wood now gleamed. Floors were polished. Doors and windows had been left open for many hours each day in order to dispel the last of the musty smell.

The new earl could certainly have no complaints as to the restored comfort of his London home!

And, Diana knew, she had delayed that first meeting with the new earl for quite long enough …

‘Bring tea into the library, would you, please, Soames,’ she instructed lightly, knowing that all the servants, old as well as new, now worked with a quiet and competent efficiency under the guidance of this newly appointed butler whom she has interviewed and appointed herself.

‘Yes, my lady.’ He gave a stiff bow. ‘Would that be tea for one or two, my lady? His Lordship instructed that a decanter of brandy be brought to him in the library almost an hour ago,’ he supplied as Diana looked at him questioningly.

Diana could not help a glance at the grandfather clock in the hallway, noting that the hour was only twelve o’clock—surely much too early in the day for the earl to be imbibing brandy?

But then what did she, who had lived all of her one-and-twenty years in the country, know of London ways? Or, the earl having lived in Venice for so many years, were they Italian ways, perhaps?

Whichever of those it was, a cup of tea would do Lord Gabriel Faulkner far more good at this time of day than a glass or two of brandy. ‘For two, thank you, Soames.’ She nodded dismissively before drawing in a deep and determined breath and walking in the direction of the library.

‘Enter,’ Gabriel instructed tersely as a knock sounded on the door of the library. He stood, a glass half-full of brandy in his hand, looking out at what was undoubtedly a garden when properly tended, but at the moment most resembled a riotous jungle. Whoever had seen to the cleaning and polishing of the house—the absent Lady Diana, presumably?—had not as yet had the chance to turn her hand to the ordering of the gardens!

He turned, the sunlight behind him throwing his face into shadow, as the door was opened with a decisive briskness totally in keeping with the fashionably elegant young lady who stepped determinedly into the library and closed the door behind her.

The colour of her hair was the first thing that Gabriel noticed. It was neither gold nor red, but somewhere in between the two, and arranged on her crown in soft, becoming curls, with several of those curls allowed to brush against the smooth whiteness of her nape and brow. A softness completely at odds with the proud angle of her chin. Her eyes, the same deep blue colour of her high-waisted gown, flickered disapprovingly over the glass of brandy he held in his hand before meeting Gabriel’s gaze with the same challenge with which she now lifted her pointed chin.

‘Lady Diana Copeland, I presume?’ Gabriel bowed briefly, giving no indication, by tone or expression, of his surprise at finding her here at all when his last instruction to the three sisters was for them to remain in residence at Shoreley Park in Hampshire and await his arrival in England.

Her curtsy was just as brief. ‘My lord.’

Just the two words. And yet Gabriel was aware of a brief frisson of awareness down the length of his spine on hearing the husky tone of her voice. A voice surely not meant to belong to a young lady of society at all, but by a mistress as she whispered and cried out words of encouragement to her lover …

His gaze narrowed on the cause of these inappropriate imaginings. ‘And which of the three Lady Copelands might you be in regard to age?’ In truth, Gabriel had not been interested enough in the three wards that had been foisted on him to bother knowing anything about them apart from the fact they were all of marriageable age! Time enough for that, he had decided arrogantly, once one of them had agreed to become his wife. Except none of them had, he recalled grimly.

‘I am the eldest, my lord.’ Diana Copeland stepped further into the room, the sunlight immediately making her hair appear more gold than red. ‘And I wish to talk with you concerning my sisters.’

‘As your two sisters are not in this room at the moment I have absolutely no interest in discussing them.’ Gabriel frowned his irritation. ‘Whereas you—’

‘Then might I suggest you endeavour to make yourself interested in them?’ Diana advised coldly, the narrowness of her shoulders stiff with indignation.

‘My dear Diana—I trust, as your guardian, I may call you that?—I suggest that in future,’ he continued smoothly without bothering to wait for her answer, ‘you do not attempt to tell me what I should and should not interest myself in.’ A haughty young miss too used to having her own way presented no verbal or physical challenge for Gabriel after his years spent as an officer in the King’s army. ‘As such, I will be the one who decides what is or is not to be discussed between the two of us. The most immediate being—why it is you have chosen to come to London completely against my instructions?’ He stepped forwards into the room.

Whatever sharp reply Diana had been about to make, in answer to this reminder of the arrogance with which she viewed Lord Gabriel Faulkner’s “instructions”, remained unsaid as he stepped forwards out of the sunlight and she found herself able to see him clearly for the first time.

He was, quite simply … magnificent!

No other word could completely describe the harsh beauty of that arrogantly handsome face. He possessed a strong, square jaw, chiselled lips, high cheekbones either side of a long blade of a nose, and his eyes—oh, those eyes!—of so dark a blue that they were the blue-black of a clear winter’s night. His dark hair was fashionably styled so that it fell rakishly upon his brow and curled at his nape, his black jacket fitted smoothly across wide and muscled shoulders, the silver waistcoat beneath of a cut and style equally as fashionable, and his grey pantaloons clung to long, elegantly muscled legs, above black and perfectly polished Hessians.

Yes, Lord Gabriel Faulkner was without doubt the most fashionable and aristocratically handsome gentleman that Diana had ever beheld in all of her one-and-twenty years—

‘Diana, I am still waiting to hear your reasons for disobeying me and coming up to town.’

—as well as being the most arrogant!

Having been deprived of her mother when she was but eleven years old, and with two sisters younger than herself, it had fallen to Diana to take on the role of mother to her sisters and mistress at her father’s home; as such, she had become more inclined to give instructions than to receive them.

Her chin tilted. ‘Mr Johnston merely advised that you would call upon us at Shoreley Park as soon as was convenient after your arrival from Venice. As, at the time, he could not specify precisely when the date for that arrival might be, I took it upon myself to use my own initiative concerning how best to deal with this delicate situation.’

Haughty as well as proud, Gabriel acknowledged with some inner amusement at the return of that challenging tilt to Diana Copeland’s delicious chin. She had also, if he was not mistaken, already developed a dislike for him personally as well as for his role as guardian to herself and her sisters.

The latter Gabriel could easily understand; as he understood it from his lawyer, William Johnston, Diana had been mistress of Shoreley Park since the death of her mother, Harriet Copeland, some ten years ago. As such, she would not be accustomed to doing as she was told, least of all by a guardian she had never met.

The former—a dislike of Gabriel personally—was not unprecedented, either, but it usually took a little longer than a few minutes’ acquaintance for that to happen. Unless, of course, Lady Diana had already taken that dislike to him before she had even met him?

He quirked one dark, mocking brow. ‘And what

“delicate situation” might that be?’

A becoming blush entered the pallor of her cheeks, those blue eyes glittering as she obviously heard the mockery in his tone. ‘The disappearance of my two sisters, of course.’

‘What?’ Gabriel gave a start. He had known the Copeland sisters had chosen to absent themselves from Shoreley Park, of course, but once he was informed of Diana’s presence at Westbourne House, he had assumed that her sisters would either be staying with her here, or that she would at least have some idea of their whereabouts. ‘Explain yourself—clearly and precisely, if you please.’ A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw.

Diana gave him a withering glance. ‘Caroline and Elizabeth, being so … alarmed by your offer of marriage, have both taken it into their heads to leave the only home they have ever known and run off to heaven knows where!’

Gabriel drew in a harsh breath as he carefully placed the glass of brandy down upon the table before turning his back to once again stare out of the window. While he’d known the three Copeland sisters had absented themselves from Shoreley Park, to now learn that his offer of marriage had actually caused the two younger sisters to run away, without so much as informing their older sister of where they were going, was not only insulting but, surprisingly, had also succeeded in affecting Gabriel when he had believed himself to be beyond reacting to such slights.

He had been forced to live in disgrace all these years, always knowing that of all the people Gabriel had previously loved or cared about, only his friends Blackstone and Osbourne believed in his innocence. It had meant he hadn’t particularly cared, during his five years in the army, as to whether he lived or died. Ironically, it had been that very recklessness and daring that had succeeded in making him appear the hero in the eyes of his fellow officers and men.

Realising that two young, delicately bred ladies had been so averse to even the suggestion of marriage to the infamous Lord Gabriel Faulkner that they had chosen to flee their home rather than contemplate such a fate had laid open a wound Gabriel had believed long since healed, if not forgotten …

‘My lord?’

Gabriel breathed in deeply through his nose, hands clenched at his sides as he fought back the demons from his past, knowing they had no place in the here and now.

‘My lord, what—?’ Diana recoiled from the icy fury she could see in Gabriel’s arrogantly handsome features as he turned to glare across the room at her with eyes so dark and glittering they appeared as black as she imagined the devil’s might be.

He arched a dark brow over those piercing blue-black eyes. ‘You did not feel the same desire to run away?’