The Reckless Love of an Heir: An epic historical romance perfect for fans of period drama Victoria

Susan looked up. He was very close, she could see every detail of his eyelashes and every shade within his brown eyes. “You could have said do not come in, you know?” The scent of his expensive London cologne enveloped her.

“I thought it was the footman come to take away the tea-tray.”

“You knew it was me when I entered.”

“And perhaps then it was more amusing to not yell at you and make you go away.” His voice had lost its mocking edge and dropped into a low pitch. “…The lesson was better taught by leaving you to discover what your rebellious nature had led you into.”

“Sayeth Lord Henry Marlow, the prodigal son, he who has just been thrown from his curricle in a race and nearly broken his neck and admitted he has probably learned no lessons at all.” Her voice had dropped in pitch too.

His eyes seemed full of questions as he looked at her. Then his gaze travelled across her face, studying her as he’d studied her painting. When his gaze came back to hers, he said, “Quite.” Then he turned away and began walking back across the room, with Samson in his wake.

“I truly am sorry that you were so badly hurt, Henry!” Susan called after him, her awkwardness and her empathy for his pain, pushing her into more words. “But I do not think that anything I do compares!” She had not known what to say, but she had needed to say something to turn whatever had just happened back into something tangible that she could understand.

He turned and walked a couple of steps backwards, with his free hand cradling his poorly arm. “I am truly sorry…Your voice rings with guilt, Susan, as it did yesterday when you saw my bruises. Did you think I had been acting out my pain, and wearing a sling for my pleasure? You… The rescuer of every wounded thing, wild or tame…”

“No.” Her instinctive denial cut through the air, and stopped him moving.

He smiled in that hideous mocking way, that said, I know I am right.

Oh be honest with him, he would be honest with her. “I thought you deserved to be injured. You are the reckless one. It is you who needed to be taught a lesson. But I would not have wished your life endangered. I came to your room yesterday as much to apologise for the meanness of my thoughts as to fetch Samson.”

The rogue looked up at the ceiling and laughed for an instant before looking back at her. The amusement had brightened his eyes. “Think as meanly as you wish, Susan, it will not do me any greater harm than I have done myself. I dare say, on this occasion, I may have finally learned the lesson you wished me taught.” He turned away once more.

“Where are we eating?” She called before he left the room.

“In the formal dining room, Papa is home.”

When they ate, she had intended to sit beside Sarah, but Alethea drew Susan’s attention, and so she could not then walk around the table to sit with Christine and Sarah. She ended up taking a seat on the opposite side of Henry to her sister.

Alethea spoke to Aunt Jane as Henry silently fought to eat his food one handed.

Susan swallowed, she wished to make conversation, to stop herself from suffering with the awkwardness that hung over her. “How are your bruises today, are they improving?” she said lamely.

“Turning from almost black to a lighter purple, but perhaps I have a new one since you struck me.”

She looked at him. “Sorry.”

He smiled. “If we are on the grounds of apologies, then I owe you one too. I am sorry I did not tell you to go away the other day. I should have done. I did not mean my teasing to discompose you earlier, but I can see it has done because every time you look at me you turn a greater shade of pink.”

Oh, she wished to smack him again.

“You are forgiven for striking me, if I am forgiven,” he concluded.

“You are forgiven only if you agree never to mention that I went to your room again.”

A half laugh rumbled from his chest.

Alethea turned and said something to him. But before he turned to reply, he said to Susan, “Are we friends again then?”

“Henry! Alethea asked for your opinion.” his father interrupted before Susan could answer. There must have been some greater conversation about the table they had lost track of. Henry turned away.

Once they had finished eating, Susan rose to return to the library. Every one else stood at the same time. She would have walked on ahead but Henry touched her arm.

“Wait a moment. I have not yet secured your agreement on our pact.”

He had not forgotten his desire for a truce, then.

Alethea walked on with Aunt Jane, and his father walked with Christine and Sarah.

“May we call ourselves friends? I do not think we have really been friends for years. I would like to think of you as my friend, Susan.”

She hated the way he said her name, his enunciation made her stomach twist about with a strange sensation.

He held out his left, good, hand, which was gloveless. She accepted the gesture.

She wore no glove either. The warmth and the softness of his skin surprised her as his hand surrounded hers. Yet he had not held her hand in the way he held Alethea’s hand, he held Susan’s in a firm gesture, his whole hand gripping her whole hand, not merely pressing her fingers.

The queasy feeling in her stomach tumbled over. She had never held a man’s naked hand, except for her father’s.

He shook her hand a single time, firmly, and then let her go. “May I escort you to the library? I wouldn’t mind another look at your painting, we might even persuade Alethea to stop by…” His good arm had lifted as he spoke. He was offering it to her…

She looked at his forearm, before glancing up and then laying her fingers on his arm self-consciously.

Her fingers closed about the sinuous muscle of his arm through his thin shirt. The cotton was so fine she could feel the hairs on his skin.

The strange sensation in her tummy coiled up like an adder waiting to strike.

“So how many flowers have you attempted so far?”

Susan swallowed before answering. Her throat had dried. “I am only on my second.”

“And how many are in the book? I seem to recall about fifty. You will be here for a year.”

She smiled at him. “Or two.”

This was Henry at his most persuasive, he could turn this side of himself on and off so easily. She had always found his charm annoying before, but then it had never been solely directed at her.

Now it was directed at her…

It felt complimentary, and he was surely doing it to make her feel at ease with him again, which was kind. Although it must be embarrassing for him if she was blushing at every moment.

His charm was working, though, she did feel more at ease.

For the second time in her life, she felt wholly in charity with him.

Perhaps he would not make such a bad brother-in-law.

Chapter Six

An odd atmosphere arrived in the carriage with the Forths, Henry could sense it even as he looked down into the hall. Uncle Casper’s shoulders were stiff and Aunt Julie’s manner was much more restrained than normal; she far too calmly kissed his mother’s cheek.

Henry walked down the last flight of stairs to the hall as Alethea entered.

She was wearing a light bright blue again so that the material of her evening dress extenuated the colour of her eyes. Susan entered behind her sister, wrapped up in a large paisley shawl, but he could see the hem of her dress. It was a pale, dove grey.

He’d dressed fully for dinner, as the Forths were officially invited guests rather than arriving simply as callers, and so he had his grey waistcoat and black evening coat on over his shirt. His arm was still strung up in a sling, though. Yet it had been less painful to dress, and it was not agony to be clothed now the swelling had declined to some extent.

What remained of the pain, as long he did not make any sudden movements, was a dull constant ache in his shoulder, a soreness in his wrist and stiffness in both. The rest of him was healing quite nicely.

Papa’s valet, who had been shaving Henry since he’d come home, was now urging Henry to exercise his bad arm, but Henry had refused to attempt it for another week at least; he did not wish to send it into agony again.

“Uncle Casper.” Henry bowed in a swift informal movement. Even though there was no relationship via bloodlines he’d always felt as though Lord and Lady Froth were his uncle and aunt—and Alethea like another of his cousins—and truly that was the level of his affection for her.

He swallowed trying to moisten his dry mouth suddenly, as Uncle Casper’s lips lifted in a stiff smile. Definitely there was an unusual atmosphere.

Henry glanced at Alethea as his father came to welcome Uncle Casper more heartily.

He liked her considerably. She was amusing company, funny and entertaining, and she was polite and genteel; she would make the perfect countess when he inherited his father’s title. She was good with people, confident and jolly. He knew full well she would manage a house admirably. She had all the qualities of a wife.

But he was not ready to marry. He was too young. Yet he could feel the nets being set about him.

Four times this week she had hinted at the fact she was not going to wait forever for him to ask and Uncle Casper’s gaze stated that nor did he wish Alethea to have to keep waiting. They were becoming impatient with him.

Well let them. He would not be forced. His father may call such an attitude careless. Henry would call it wise.

“Good evening, Henry. I trust you are feeling better?”

Henry turned to face Aunt Julie. “I am, thank you.”

She gave him a look which seemed anxious, before touching his shoulders and lifting to her toes to better reach to kiss his cheek. On a normal evening, in the past, her arms would have wrapped around his neck and her exclamation would have been, “my darling boy!” before she pressed a kiss on his cheek. She had no sons, so Aunt Julie had treated him as though he was her son since his birth. But perhaps her calmness was out of awareness for his injuries.

“It is good to see you again,” he said, before kissing her cheek in return.

A very abnormal half-hearted smile stirred her lips.

They had hoped he would announce his and Alethea’s engagement tonight. That was it. They had received the invitation to dine and misconstrued its meaning.

Damn it, Alethea must have been waiting for him to ask all bloody week and now she had told them he’d said nothing.

“You are looking very well despite your accident.”

“Thank you, Aunt.”

She was definitely restrained—unhappy with him.

He looked at Alethea. She smiled at him, but even her smile was not quite so full.

There had been a conversation about him in the carriage, he’d lay a bet on it. One that had berated his lack of a proposal. But he would not be bloody pushed into it. He would propose when he was ready to be settled, not before.

Yet he was not immune to a sense of guilt.

He turned to face her, as she came to him, holding out her hands. He took hold of them, then kissed the back of them in turn, before leaning forward and kissing her cheek. “Hello, you look very beautiful,” he whispered towards her ear before he straightened.

She blushed, and smiled more naturally. “Hello.”

He smiled too, looking into her very blue eyes, then let her hands slip from his and turned to greet Susan.

He did not normally greet her in anyway, they were too close for formal greetings, and they had no other reason to greet each other with any special welcome. But tonight… He had welcomed her parents having not seen them for months and it would seem odd after that not to say a particular good evening to Susan too.

“Susan.” She blushed, not deeply, but there were very definite roses blooming in her cheeks. She had been blushing every time she saw him since their long conversation in the library, or rather since her visit to his room.

She did not offer her hand. He took it from where it hovered by her waist anyway, and kissed the back of her fingers. Her hand trembled and her grey eyes looked directly into his for a moment before she looked at his fingers holding hers.

She was a funny anomaly.

He let her go, then turned his attention back to Alethea, and offered his arm.

His family and the Forths turned towards the drawing room.

“We shall have a glass of wine before we go through to dinner, Casper, Julie.”

Henry wondered if his father had picked up upon the atmosphere and read it correctly too. If so then Henry would be in for a lecture after they had left.

“You are fully dressed…” Alethea whispered.

“I could hardly dine with your parents in my shirt.”

“They would not have minded.”

“I would have felt a fool, and I think I might have made them feel foolish too.” Sarah had taken charge of Susan and was walking with her. Christine walked beside Aunt Julie, with Henry’s mother, while his father spoke with Uncle Casper. “Were they expecting me to announce our engagement tonight?” He’d learned as young as his boarding school years that it was always better to be direct when dealing with an awkward situation, otherwise awkward situations festered.

She blushed a deep crimson, much darker than the colour Susan had been turning for the last couple of days. Yes, then.

“Yes. I am sorry—”

“You have no need to be sorry. But I am not going to propose to you while I am home. I’m not ready to settle yet, I am young, Alethea, it is too soon, and I will not apologise for it.” He’d slowed his pace, so that the others walked on ahead, then he stopped and faced her. “I am sorry if that distresses you. I know you will make a good wife but I will not commit until I know I would make a good husband and I think that will be when I am older.”

She looked into his eyes—searching for answers—perhaps to understand his feelings. What were hers? Did she think more of him than he thought of her? That thought was a little petrifying.

“But I am getting older too, Henry,” she said quietly. “It is different for a woman. If I wait much longer I shall become too old to be considered. What if you change your mind then? Then I will not have another chance.”

They had always known there was this obligation upon them and neither of them had expressed any disagreement, and yet this was the first time they had spoken about their marriage openly.

“When will you ask me? I will not wait for you for years. I wish to be married and settled.”

There, his speaking openly had led her to do so too. This was the sentiment she had been hinting at ever since he’d returned—that she would not continue to wait.

“I cannot say, or rather I will not, I suppose, because I do not know; someday in the future. You will have to choose whether or not you wait.”

Uncertainty shone in the blackness at the heart of her eyes. “I do not know if I can wait.” Her hand slipped off his arm and she walked ahead.

Touché. He laughed internally, and followed.

When Henry entered the formal drawing room his father was already offering Alethea a glass of wine. The footman poured it as his father turned and asked Susan if she would like a glass.

Susan had removed her shawl. The dove grey colour of her dress suited both her hair and her eyes, and oddly her light grey eyes seemed more striking than Alethea’s blue as she looked at his father and accepted the glass he had taken from the footman to give to her.

Henry walked forwards as the footman poured another glass.

When Henry took the glass, his father’s gaze caught Henry’s and his eyebrows lifted.

His father had picked up upon the atmosphere too and deciphered it. Henry was in for a hard debate when the Forths had gone. His father would be of the same opinion as Alethea. Why are you waiting?

Wonderful. It had been on his initiation that the two families had come together. This meal had been his suggestion, and now he would not be able to bloody digest it. Perhaps he should have spelled his perspective out more clearly when he had written to Alethea from London. Yet it was nonsense for them to grasp at this gesture with such silly hope. In undertaking one rare act of thoughtfulness, which his father had been remarkably pleased by, he had knocked open a hornets’ nest.

Lord, though, he hoped his father had not thought the same. Had that been why he’d been so happy with the idea? Damn. This was not meant to be an enactment of the prodigal son parable. He had not intended the fatted calf to be slaughtered and a toast raised to the fact he had returned home and would remain forever. The intent had only been to see his aunt and uncle before he returned to London.

He sipped from his glass. Alethea had turned her back on him and walked across the room to speak with Sarah.

Wonderful!

Yet to be fair, if she fell out with him and married someone else, he would not grieve over it. His heart was not involved; it would not be broken. It would make no difference to him, other than that when the time came for him to take a wife he would have to look for one.

He looked at the back of her head. Her blonde hair was beautifully and perfectly styled, and then there was the curve of her narrow neck. She bowed her head a little as she spoke to Sarah and it presented the area of skin just above the neckline of her dress. He sighed. His heart may not care but other parts of him would very willingly become involved in a relationship with her.

He breathed in, what were her sentiments? Was it merely compliance with their families’ wishes or did she have some greater affection for him? Perhaps at some point he should ask her that, and that too should become open between them.

“Henry. You are quiet and brooding, neither of which are terms I would use to describe you. Is your arm hurting?”

He turned to face Susan.

It was uncharacteristic for her to approach him and speak to him voluntarily.

Those pale grey eyes were intensely grey tonight, thanks to her dress, which exaggerated the colour just as Alethea’s dress made her eyes bluer. But Susan’s spectacles also seemed to make her grey eyes shine with a vibrancy that had more depth than Alethea’s blue eyes ever did.

Susan had recklessness within her, she might deny it as many times as she wished, but she did, and a dash of rebellion that her sister never displayed.

Alethea may have just told him she was willing to marry someone else if he did not hurry up and place a ring on her finger, but that had not been rebellion, she had merely hoped to gee him up.

“My arm always hurts since I fell from my curricle,” he answered.

“I am sorry.”

He smiled, bless her, she did look genuinely sorry for him, too. Since their truce she had become far more tolerant of him, and he might keep teasing her over her rebellious nature but it was no more than a pale shadow compared to his, while her caring side… She out won him a thousand to one on her ability to care for things.

“I am not complaining, I am only stating a fact, not asking for your pity.”

She started to smile but her teeth pressed into her lip, to prevent it.

He leant a little forward and said near her ear, in a quieter conspiratorial voice. “You have no need to be sorry for me remember, I did it to myself.”

She laughed suddenly, only for a moment, but then she smiled fully. God, had she ever smiled at him before? If she had perhaps he had not seen it up close, but the vibrancy in her smile was quite striking. Alethea had always been the bright, exuberant one. But there was exuberance in Susan, too, it was simply hidden.

“How long before you may take off the sling?”

“Another week or so.”

“You will be well enough to attend the assembly in York then. Alethea will be pleased. You will go?” The last was half question half statement.

Alethea will be pleased…

Of course there was another way to glean the level of Alethea’s attachment to him, he could ask her sister. They were close, they must share confidences. “I am not so sure she will be pleased, she may prefer to use the occasion to flirt with others and throw me off. We have just fallen out because I believe your family had an expectation that I would have proposed prior to this evening, and I have just assured Alethea that she should not expect it during my current stay or indeed in the months following.”

The brightness in Susan’s expression extinguished. “Why?”

“Why will I not propose? Because I am not ready. Is it not better for me to wait until I am happy to settle? I am too young. I like my life in town.”

“You are so self-centered.”

Her words struck him, and spurred him into biting back. “And you are always direct.” He swallowed back his temper. “Will she be very hurt do you think?” That was not really the question he was asking.

“Of course she will. She will be cut by it. How can she not be?”

Cut in what way? Cut through the heart? “I have not told her I will never propose merely that she should not expect it yet.”

“Then that is even crueller. She is not young and you wish to keep her dangling on a line of hope, like a caught fish you are trying to tire.”

Susan was far too quick. “It is not like that. I am not doing it deliberately to vex Alethea or delay—”

“Merely thinking of yourself.”

Damn her. “I am being wise. I am thinking of us both. I do not wish her to be unhappy with me, and I would be unhappy if I married her now. Would that not make her unhappy?”

“You are as self-centered as ever, Henry.”

“And you judge me as poorly as always, Susan.”

“Because you have always been arrogant and only interested in the things which benefit you. You were spoiled as a child, Uncle Robert freely admits it, and you have grown up idle and irresponsible.”

Oh Lord. Idle and irresponsible.

He laughed internally. “And there was I thinking we had shaken hands upon a truce.” He could not defend himself, her accusations were true. He drew an income from his father’s estate and lived in town amusing himself with his friends, and women.

It was doubly amusing, though, that considering all the years he’d known Susan, he did not really know her. That also served to prove her point—he was self-centered. He smiled more broadly. “You are probably right, I was and am. But regardless that does not make it right for me to rush into marriage with Alethea, no matter my motives or lack of them.”

She huffed out a sigh. “And you are probably right.” It sounded as though she was cross that she was forced to agree with him and she looked at the others across his shoulder as though she had had enough of the conversation.

“What is the level of Alethea’s attachment to me?”

Her eyes turned back to stare into his. “You should ask Alethea.”

“I know, but I believe it might set the vipers upon me. At the current time, it is better to ask you.”

“What is the level of your attachment?”

Touché again. “I think I ought to only tell Alethea that.”

“Well there you are then.”

“Dinner is ready, my Lord!” Davis stated to the room in general.

As Susan stood beside Henry, he offered his arm to her. As she’d done the other day, when he’d only worn his shirt, she did not merely lay her fingers on his arm but held it with a gentle grip that did things to his body he ought not to feel stir when this was potentially his future sister-in-law.

He sat between Aunt Julie and Alethea at the table. The latter turned her head away from him throughout the meal, avoiding conversation, and also left a footman to cut up his food.

Instead of speaking to him Alethea talked animatedly to Susan and Sarah, the conversation flowing across the table. They spoke of the assembly Susan had mentioned earlier. It was to be held in a couple of weeks’ time. He would probably be well enough to return to town before the assembly occurred, and yet it was to be Sarah’s first, apparently, so he really ought to stay and show his support and dance with her, as her eldest brother.