The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla A Pink Carnation Novel by Lauren Willig Read Free Book Online Page A

reasons that Lucien had bolted when he had. Without his parents in it, Hullingden hadn’t been home; with Aunt Winifred in it, it had become a form of prison. Aunt Winifred had made it quite clear that she thought it a sad mistake on the part of Fate to allow the dukedom to fall to so unworthy a creature as Lucien, the debased product of a sad mésalliance.
    One would think she might be a bit more pleased that Lucien had obliged her by removing himself.
    “We would have consulted you,” said Uncle Henry mildly, “but we supposed you abroad.”
    The gentle reproach in Uncle Henry’s voice was worse than the vitriol in Aunt Winifred’s.
    Lucien looked from one hostile face to the next, at a loss as to what to say. Yes, it had been a childish trick to bolt, as he had, all those years ago. He could see that now. But he had never imagined his presence being missed. In fact, quite the contrary. Uncle Henry had the care of Hullingden and of Marie-Clarice; if Lucien had thought of it, he had imagined it all meandering on just as it had. He had never thought of himself as having any part of it, or as shirking by being away. He had never thought of Marie-Clarice as growing older; in his head, she was eternally a child of six, in the nursery with her governess.
    Lucien took a tentative step towards her. “Marie-Clarice—”
    “Clarissa,” she corrected him sharply, her accent very proper, very correct. Very English.
    “Clarissa,” he amended. “You are . . . well?”
    He didn’t know her, this woman with the proud face and the narrow, angry eyes. But, then, he’d never known her. Not well. She had been a child when he left, too much younger to be of much interest to a boy of fifteen, and particularly a boy so occupied with his own wrongs as he had been. She had seemed happy enough at Hullingden.
    Hullingden, a paradise in Lucien’s memory, turned so suddenly and unexpectedly into a nightmare.
    Had he been wrong? Lucien had told himself he was obliging them all by staying away, by failing to inflict upon them his unwanted presence. He had assumed that Marie-Clarice would be happy enough without him.
    She didn’t look particularly happy right now.
    “Very well,” she said, in clipped tones.
    “Her ball is in two days’ time,” said Aunt Winifred. Her hard round eyes swept the dusty hall. “It ought to have been at Belliston House.”
    From far away, Lucien could hear the echo of his mother’s voice, a half-remembered snippet of conversation.
    Winifred will never forgive Henry for not being the duke .
    And his father, responding in his own, dry way. No, my love. Winifred will never forgive you for being my duchess .
    They had spoken in French. They always spoke in French at home, his father’s the elegant accents of Versailles, his mother’s the rolling cadences of her island home.
    “I have no desire for a ball at Belliston House,” said Marie-Clarice—Clarissa—flatly.
    Lucien felt himself the center of a circle of censorious eyes. “The house isn’t really in any condition to hold an entertainment,” he said mildly. “From what I’ve seen of such things.”
    It seemed like a sacrilege to invite a herd of strangers to trample through the ashes of his past. He was too busy doing that himself.
    “Nonsense,” said Aunt Winifred, her bosom swelling to new and impossible proportions. She was a tall, thin woman, but, like a toad, she could inflate to several times her own size when the occasion called for it. “What do men know of such things? It’s no large matter to have the servants soap the chandeliers and shake out the rugs. It’s a scandal for the daughter of the duke not to have her ball in her own family home.”
    She made Lucien feel as though he were personally responsible for trampling on a litter of particularly adorable puppies.
    “I have no desire for a ball at Belliston House,” repeated Clarissa, in a tight, hard voice.
    “Your family heritage—,” began Aunt Winifred