‘Very. Young Henry has already dug holes in the lawn for his cricket stumps and his little sister Frances appears to regard me as an endless source of sugar plums.’
Antonia laughed, remembering the blonde girl clinging tightly to Marcus’s neck in the yard. ‘You pretend to be severe, Marcus, but I can tell you are a fond uncle.’ His affection for the children was a pleasing trait, another point in his favour. She wrenched her imagination back from that. She must be careful or she would find herself saying, yes, without properly considering this.
They both seemed relieved that the tension between them had passed. ‘And do you have many other guests?’
‘My sister was accompanied by an acquaintance of hers, Lady Reed. She comes alone. Her husband is at Brighton, commanding a regiment of foot.’
A friend of his sister’s, indeed. Antonia remembered the lovely face smiling up into his and felt a deep stirring of unease.
‘Two friends of mine are with us already, and my sister is chaperoning a Miss Fitch. Her mother and mine have some matrimonial enterprise in hand, but who the lucky man is to be, I have no idea as yet.’
‘You, perhaps?’ Antonia asked lightly.
Marcus laughed. ‘Good lord, no. I have it on good authority that she considers me to be almost in my dotage.’
Antonia looked at the tall rangy figure, the thick blond hair, the firm set of his jaw and wondered if Miss Fitch was in need of an oculist. No, Marcus Renshaw was in his prime. She buried those thoughts and protested, ‘Unkind, indeed. Why, you cannot be more than five and thirty.’
‘I am thirty, Miss Dane. However I am flattered you consider me so mature.’ His tone was severe, but his eyes were twinkling with amusement at her teasing.
‘Antonia dear, this hem… Oh, Your Grace, forgive me, I had not realised you were here.’ Donna had her arms full of dull gold silk which she was trying to conceal without crushing it fatally.
‘I was just leaving, Miss Donaldson, I would not dream of intruding further as you are so much engaged with domestic affairs. Good day, ladies.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘I look forward to your company tomorrow even
ing. I shall send the carriage at seven, if that is convenient.’
As soon as he was gone, Donna spread the fabric out over a chair back, tutting over the creases.
‘Donna, what are you doing with my new gown?’
‘I came down for your advice on the length of the hem. But I was so put about by finding the Duke here, I fear I have creased it. Do you think he will recognise the gown when he sees it tomorrow?’
‘What if he does?’
‘I would not have him know you are reduced to making your own clothes.’ Donna smoothed it down anxiously. ‘There, after all, it is not too badly crushed, it will steam out.’
‘I doubt whether the Duke of Allington, in common with most of his sex, would remember such a thing from one day to the next.’ Antonia was sorely tempted to tell Donna of Marcus’s declaration, then thought better of it. Her companion would see no obstacle to acceptance. Indeed, she would regard it as the height of her ambitions for Antonia, and would never enter into a rational discussion of Antonia’s misgivings on the matter.
‘Now, let me see what remains to be done with this gown, and while we work I will tell you what Marcus told me of his guests.’
‘It seems strange to be setting out in evening dress when it is so light,’ Antonia remarked as they settled themselves against the luxuriously upholstered squabs of the carriage Marcus had sent, just as he had promised.
‘Not so strange when you consider it is but a few weeks from the longest day,’ Donna observed prosaically. ‘But for me the strangeness lies in going out into company at all. It must be quite nine months since we last put on long gloves.’ She looked down complacently at her own, and adjusted a pearl button.
Antonia smiled back, thinking how like a neat little bird her companion was in her elegant dark garnet shot-silk with its modest infill of lace at the bosom. Miss Donaldson had never been a beautiful woman, even in the first flush of youth, but now, in her mid-forties, she had character and style and a surprising taste for fine fabrics and Brussels lace.
‘How pleasant it is to travel in such comfort,’ Antonia observed, running an appreciative hand over the seat beside her. ‘One would hardly credit that this is the same track over which we jolt with Jem in the dog cart.’
The observation seemed to start a train of thought in Donna’s mind. ‘It would be such a relief to me to see you settled into a mode of life suited to your breeding,’ she sighed.
‘Mmm?’ Antonia pretended not to hear. ‘Oh, do look at the setting sun on the west face of Brightshill, turning the stone pink. How very pretty.’
Marcus came out onto the steps as the carriage pulled up, sending Donna into a flutter by handing her down with a bow giving Antonia the leisure to observe him. She reflected that his rangy figure and long well-muscled legs could bear the fashion for tight trousers better than most. His coat of dark blue superfine set superbly across his broad shoulders and his shirt front gleamed white in the now-lengthening evening shadows.
His glance as he handed her down was openly appreciative and his fingers found, as if by chance, the gap between the pearl buttons at her wrist, lingering caressingly on the smooth flesh there. Antonia shivered and met his eyes. There was banked fire behind the bland politeness of his expression, a danger she had only glimpsed before when he was angry. But he was not angry now. Antonia, recognising raw desire for the first time in her twenty-four years, dropped her gaze and swallowed hard.
It was only a few minutes later when, still shaken, she was following Lady Anne’s maid to a bedchamber to leave her cloak and tidy her hair, that she wondered why he had not shown those feelings when making his declaration. How could she have resisted him then?
Donna came over and pinched her cheeks. ‘You do need a little colour, you have gone quite pale, my dear.’