MISTRESS TO THE MARQUIS by Margaret McPhee Page A

her head was a small stylish hat he had not seen her wear before. Beneath it her fair hair, so haphazardly pinned up, had allowed pale golden strands to escape and waft artlessly around her neck. It was fresh and simple. He had watched her so many times twist her hair up and pin it all within a minute, only to have him unpin it and slip his fingers through those long silken skeins and take her into his arms and kiss her.
    She looked comfortable, confident and yet with that same slight shyness that had always intrigued him. Her eyes were lowered as she listened to something that Hawick was saying, but she was smiling. The sight of her made Razeby feel things he did not want to feel. Not now that it was over and he had set his mind to doing what must be done. There was the hard thud of his heart. The fast rush of his blood.
    And the awful sinking sensation of his predicament.
    Miss Pritchard was by his side, her mother and sister walking behind. Razeby realised what he was going to have to do. What any gentleman in his position would have to do. And the prospect of it sent a chill all the way through him.
    Alice had been his mistress. The woman walking by his side could be his wife.
    Duty. The word seemed to resonate with every beat of his heart.
    Du-ty.
    Du-ty.
    Du-ty.
    He had no choice.
    He turned his eyes away from Alice. Kept his focus steadfastly elsewhere. Cutting her, as the rules of polite society dictated. As if she were some stranger. As if she were not the woman he had loved every night of the past six months.
    But he could see her in his peripheral vision, that blur of yellow and cream and blonde, slight beside the tall loom of Hawick’s darkness. And he could hear the rustle of the silk of her skirts, hear the distinctive lilt of her softly spoken words, smell the faint scent of her perfume.
    His heart beat faster.
    He could sense her, feel her, the awareness as sharp as if his eyes were studying her every detail.
    He measured every step that brought them ever closer on this path, knowing that they must pass one another, that it was far too late for retreat. Neither of them could turn away from this.
    He knew that Alice’s attention was all fixed on Hawick. As if she had not even noticed Razeby. As if she were cutting him every bit as much as he were cutting her. And he should be glad of it. Truly he should. But it was not gladness that he felt as the little group strolled towards him and his party through the sunshine.
    Every step brought her nearer.
    Five feet... She was so close now that he could hear the soft breathiness of her laughter at Hawick’s joke.
    Four feet... Everything sharpened. Everything focused. The hushed ripple of grass blades in the breeze. The sweep of her eyelashes, soft as a butterfly’s wing.
    Three feet... The sound of his breath. Alice.
    Two feet... The beat of his heart...and of hers. Alice.
    One foot... Razeby turned his gaze to Alice. And in that very last moment, that second in which all of time seemed to slow and stop, she raised her eyes to meet his.
    The jolt hit his stomach and rippled right through his body. It was as if they were the only two people in the park. As if all of the past six months flashed between them in stark vivid clarity. As if the dark blue depths of her eyes swallowed him up and submersed the whole of him in this moment and this woman and all that was beating through him.
    Their gazes locked and held. And he could not look away, not if all of the future depended on it, which in a way it did.
    And then the moment was past.
    She was past.
    Walking on with Hawick and the others. Walking away from him.
    His steps never faltered. He kept on walking. As if nothing had just happened.
    No one else noticed. Everything else went on just the same. Miss Pritchard’s fingers still lay upon his arm. Mrs Pritchard was still selling the family pedigree behind him, her younger daughter chipping in smart little comments here and there.
    But Razeby was not the