The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,1

Nick faced an attack at Folkestone, it would be more subtle — a cut direct with the eyes, not a saber.

He reached the end of the tunnel. It opened into a wide semicircular carriageway that cut across the acres of lawns and gardens in front of the vast house.

Nick reined in. His breath left him in a gust of frozen mist. The stories his father told had made Folkestone into a prison — Newgate, with fewer inmates and better ventilation.

But tonight, lit up outside with torches and inside with lamps and chandeliers, Folkestone was a shimmering invitation, a mansion seductive in its glory. Perhaps his father had dimmed his descriptions of Folkestone’s grandeur for Nick’s mother’s sake — as though to say that marrying her and being disowned for it had rescued him rather than ruined him.

Nick set his jaw. Folkestone could go to the devil too. He hadn’t needed it when he’d unexpectedly inherited it ten years earlier, and he didn’t need it now. Besides, he was accustomed to such displays of wealth. The Claibornes had snubbed Nick’s mother for no reason other than that she was the daughter of a garrulous Welsh miner-turned-merchant, but the business his maternal grandfather had started could buy Folkestone twenty times over. There was no point in ogling Folkestone like a street urchin.

And he would rather carve out his own eyes than be caught staring at it by someone who was either his servant or his guest.

Or Ellie.

His teeth ground together. He forced his jaw open. It was pointless to order himself not to think of her. He had given himself that order ten thousand times. It was the only place where his discipline failed him. But surely he could be disciplined tonight — if not for his pride, then for the effectiveness of his revenge upon her.

He rode around the courtyard’s central fountain. The statues, replicas of Grecian water-bearers, were silent in winter, the water drained to keep from freezing and cracking the stone. At the foot of the house, a wide, shallow staircase beckoned, leading up half a story to the open double doors. He heard hundreds of voices, but no music — the party had not yet begun. But Ellie would have no trouble filling the house with guests. No one would refuse an invitation to such a lavish display, even with the two-hour drive from London.

A handful of grooms watched his approach. The Folkestone grooms typically wore green with gold trim — or at least they had twenty years earlier, when Charles Claiborne, his cousin and unlamented predecessor to the Folkestone title, had stolen all of Nick’s clothes and left only a suit of Folkestone livery in Nick’s chest at Eton. The hot, furious shame of that moment had faded, but the vivid memory of that green coat where his Eton robes should have been would never leave him.

But the grooms wore sumptuous red and blue tunics with puffed sleeves and hose — livery that would have been more at home at the Tudor court, not a modern country seat. They were all improbably young and impossibly smooth as they bowed to him.

“Welcome to Folkestone, sir,” one of them said as Nick slid from his horse. He had the diction of a posh Londoner, not the broad accents of Surrey.

Nick slid off his horse and tossed a guinea to the groom. “Stable him. I’m staying.”

That should have startled a look of surprise out of the servant. His face stayed unconcerned, though. He took the reins and led the horse away without a word.

How many other men had said the same thing, to make Ellie’s servants so accustomed to his boldness?

One groom ushered him politely toward the steps. The others ignored him. No questions about luggage. No demand to see an invitation. No curiosity about why he had arrived on horseback rather than driving a smart curricle or carriage. Nick wanted to know why they were so lax. He wanted to know why they were dressed as Tudors. He wanted to know why they didn’t recognize their master — surely Ellie kept at least one painting of him somewhere in his house? She’d painted him enough times to fill a room — unless she’d painted over him, removing his face from her life as ruthlessly as she’d cut out his heart.

He kept his questions to himself and strode up the steps. But his anger rose. He let it come, preferring rage to thoughts of what might have been — what