Owen: Regency Rockstars Page 14

  Diana stirred in her sleep, and her fingers wrapped around his waist as she snuggled against him. He smiled, nuzzling his nose into her hair. Her perfume was a light floral fragrance. He caught the hint of lily of the valley and breathed in deep.

  “I will do everything to keep you,” he whispered.

  For a time, he sat, eyes closed and enjoyed the simple pleasure of holding Diana and listening to her soft breathing as she slept. He ran his fingers over her warm, brown hair and imagined what it would be like to wake next to her every morning. It was a moment of bliss.

  The crunch of boots on the stones outside stirred him from his thoughts. He checked from behind the curtains; a gentleman was walking his horse past the coach.

  Owen pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. It was close to six o’clock. Diana’s maid and the driver would soon be returning.

  Damn.

  “Time to wake, sleepyhead,” he murmured.

  After leaving Diana and then waiting in the dark of the bushes until her maid and the driver returned, Owen headed back to Windmill Street. He hurried upstairs and pressed his valet into service. By the time he arrived in the ballroom ready for the evening rehearsal session with the Noble Lords, his clothes were set to right and all traces of him having spent the past hour semi-naked in the back of a coach were gone.

  “You missed supper again,” said Callum.

  Owen nodded. He didn’t want to get into any sort of conversation about where he had been and with whom. He was determined to stick to the agreement that he and Diana had and keep their private meetings a secret.

  “Sorry. I just had some estate matters which needed to be sorted out on behalf of my father,” he replied.

  Callum raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He went back to polishing the fine silver flute he held in his hands. Owen didn’t bother adding any further to his reply. They both knew it was a barefaced lie.

  Owen took a seat next to Callum, and reaching down into the case next to him, picked up his violin and bow. He settled the violin under his chin.

  The action immediately brought back the memory of Diana laying with her head against his shoulder. Of the joy that had welled in his heart at hearing her soft sighs of completion.

  The other Noble Lords were still getting set up for the rehearsal session. Kendal, seated at his beloved piano, was working his way through an intricate set of scales, going faster and faster with each round. Reid was standing next to the piano, watching; a happy grin sat on his face.

  Owen pulled the bow across the strings of his violin and began to play Sonata in C Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. It wasn’t part of the Noble Lords’ concert repertoire, but it was one of his personal favorites. He closed his eyes and let the music take him.

  The time spent with Diana this afternoon had changed things for him. It wasn’t the sex, though that had been marvelous; it was the simple but soul-deep need just to hold her. The look on her face when she first saw his dragon tattoo had given Owen hope. She hadn’t recoiled at the sight of his intricate inkwork, which some women did. Rather, it had fascinated her.

  She was nothing like any woman he had ever met before. And while he had now accepted that fact, he still didn’t understand why. There was something about her that he could not quite put his finger on. While Diana would not be described as a traditional beauty in the eyes of the fashion-conscious ton, she had a presence which held him spellbound. Her very essence called to him.

  His mind was so deeply concentrated on Diana that it took a moment or two for him to realize that Kendal was accompanying him on the piano. His fellow Noble Lord was a master of the music, and soon all that could be heard in the ballroom was the sweet dance of violin and piano. The light touch of Kendal’s playing meshed perfectly with Owen’s soulful long strokes of the bow.

  When the music finally ended, a touching silence hung in the air. Kendal moved onto another piece of music by Bach. Owen leaned over his violin case and put the bow back into it. With the heel of his hand, he wiped away tears. His heart had spoken through the music.

  “Absolute perfection,” said Callum.

  Owen remained bent over his violin case and prayed that Callum couldn’t see his face clearly. Anyone who could would know that it was more than just a magnificent piece of music which had so affected him.

  Yes, she is perfection in my eyes. And no other woman will do.

  He was falling in love with Diana. But the hopelessness of their situation was heartbreaking. She would never be his, and there was not a damn thing he could do about it.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When a servant handed Owen a note the following morning, his hopes that it had come from Diana were quickly dashed. The brief missive was a command for him to attend his father at Lowe House.

  As he stepped into the foyer of the grand mansion on Mount Street, he was filled with dread. His father rarely ventured to town, and when he did, trouble for Owen more often than not followed.

  The Marquess of Lowe was at his desk in his study. A worried Owen joined him. He chanced a peek out the window suddenly remembering that it overlooked parts of Hyde Park.

  Bloody hell that’s Grosvenor Gate!

  It would be a bit of a passion killer for him to know that he and Diana were conducting their affair literally under his father’s nose. He looked again, relieved to see that, the trees around the gate hid the track from view.

  Lord Lowe rose from behind his desk as Owen stepped away from the window. He held his arms out and a reluctant Owen suffered his father’s embrace.

  “Come now, is that the best hug you can manage for your sire?” he chided.

  With a sigh, Owen wrapped his arms around him. A ruffle of the hair on the back of Owen’s head was an added extra. He chuckled. It was good to see his father.

  “How are you?” asked Lord Lowe.

  “Tired. But well,” replied Owen.

  Lord Lowe pointed him toward a table that sat to the left of the door. On it were a stack of papers. Owen’s heart sank. This was not going to be just a friendly family visit. His father wanted to talk business. Of course, he did.

  Since having inherited the title of Marquess of Lowe two years earlier, much of his father’s time had been spent in doing all he could to keep the family finances afloat. Owen had loved his grandfather, but he could never forgive him for having gambled away much of the family fortune.

  Owen and his father both took a seat at the table, and the marquess pulled a pile of papers toward him.

  “I would ring for tea, but apparently you have taken half the staff with you to Follett House, and the rest are the idlest bunch of wastrels I have ever had the displeasure to employ. We could die of old age before sustenance arrived,” said Lord Lowe.

  Owen winced. He hadn’t been expecting his father back in town anytime soon. He had been hoping that his father would remain in the country until the end of the summer and leave him alone.

  “I am sorry about that. I could send some of them back here if you need,” he replied.

  “No. I don’t plan to be in town long. I just came up for a day to see you. I will be on the road home to your mother by tomorrow morning,” said Lord Lowe.

  Owen’s gaze settled on the topmost paper of the pile which sat in front of his father. It bore a familiar crest on the letterhead. Coutts Bank.

  His father picked up the letter and laid it in front of Owen. His finger pointed to a number at the bottom of the page. It was too small to be a good number.

  “The sum total of our deposits with Coutts Bank,” he said.

  “Dare I ask what the other side of the ledger looks like?” asked Owen.

  Lord Lowe sat back in his chair and fell silent for a time. Owen’s sense of unease grew with every second.

  “We need Lady Amelia Perry’s dowry if we are to save the estate. And even then, it will take years of effort for us to build our finances back to a level where we can invest and grow,” he said.

  Owen felt sick. His
reluctance to marry Lady Amelia had first come from a place of not wishing to be saddled with a dull, country mouse for a wife; now it came from him needing to be with Diana. To be faithful to her. He closed his eyes. He was a fool. Diana was married, and much as he could wish it away, her husband may one day return to England and take up his rightful place in her bed. And then where would they be?

  The most he would ever have with Diana was what they had now—secret meetings and a forbidden relationship. A future with Diana as his wife was nothing more than an impossible dream.

  He blinked away tears and held his hand over his eyes. How bitter an irony it was that the one time he had fallen under Cupid’s spell, it was with a woman he could never call his wife.

  “Talk to me, Owen. Tell me what is happening in your life,” said Lord Lowe.

  “Nothing. Just the Noble Lords,” he replied. How could he possibly expect his father to understand? The Morrison estate was facing disaster, yet the heir apparent was busy thinking himself in love with another man’s wife.

  He couldn’t refuse his father. The late Marquess of Lowe, his grandfather, had been a habitual gambler. His death had simply passed the financial mess he had created on to his son. Instead of Lowe Park being a well-kept country estate, many of its buildings had not seen repairs in Owen’s lifetime. What the estate earned from the land and livestock was barely enough to cover the interest payments on the family’s significant loan balances.

  “And this Noble Lords lark. How long do you intend to keep it up?”

  “Just the remainder of the summer. After that, I expect I will have to do as you wish and marry Lady Amelia. But is there no other way?” replied Owen.

  His father sighed. For a time, he sat and flicked his thumb through the top inch or so of the papers. “I have done all I can, but you need to take up some of the load. You must do your part to ensure that you have an estate to inherit.”

  It wasn’t the first time Owen and Lord Lowe had discussed the situation of him marrying an heiress or a daughter of title who had a significant dowry. In the days before Owen left for Belgium, his father had made him promise to begin the search for a suitable bride as soon as he returned from war.

  Owen, being unsure as to whether he would return from battle at all, had agreed. He had gone off to fight with the expectation that he may never see England again.

  “I know I have my duty. It’s just that sometimes duty comes at a heavy price,” said Owen.

  “Go on,” his father encouraged.

  Owen sighed. “I am in love with someone, and it is most certainly not my fiancée.” Revealing his love for Diana was pointless, and probably more than a little self-indulgent. His father would never agree to him giving up everything for her, especially when she was not free to be his. Even Owen was not fool enough to think a future with Diana could be anything other than a hopeless dream.

  “From the sound of despair in your voice, I take it that the woman does not come with a dowry sufficient enough to save us?” replied his father.

  “No. She is married. Her husband is working overseas.”

  Lord Lowe cleared his throat.

  Owen braced himself for a lecture on the morals of messing with other men’s wives. His father had delivered it to him enough times over the years, but Owen had steadfastly refused to listen.

  “I can tell from the look on your face that me warning you off a married woman will have no effect. But you must understand that if Lord Perry finds out, he will not take kindly to knowing that you have a woman on the side when you are supposed to be marrying his daughter. If word of your affair was to reach his ears, he may set aside our thirty-year friendship and call off the betrothal. If he does that, you and I will be staring destruction in the face.”

  Owen slumped in the chair. The figures didn’t lie. His grandfather had brought the entire Morrison estate to the brink. If his father couldn’t meet the demands of his creditors, they would have to sell much of their land holdings, including Lowe House.

  The price of saving his family’s long-held wealth would be losing Diana. She had already made it clear that she would never stand to share him with another woman. When Lady Amelia Perry became his wife, Diana would end their love affair. And where would that leave him? Having meaningless affairs with wayward wives and then having to come home to the wife waiting in his bed.

  The appeal of his rakish ways now dimmed against the light that the love of a good woman had shone into his life. Doing his duty to his family and the Lowe title would cost him the only woman he would ever love.

  But doing his duty had to come first. He owed it to his parents and to the children that would come from his marriage to Lady Amelia. He could not fail them.

  He got to his feet, resigned to his fate. He couldn’t blame his father for being the cause of his heartache. He couldn’t blame anyone else but himself. He had toyed one too many times with a married woman and now found himself in love.

  “Rest assured, Father, I will do everything to keep my relationship a secret and come the end of August I will do my duty and marry Lady Amelia Perry. However, until the end of the summer, I will remain at Follett House and continue to play with the Noble Lords. You owe me that much.”

  “Alright. But as soon as Lord Perry sends word that he and his daughter are coming to London, you must end your relationship with this woman,” replied Lord Lowe.

  Owen nodded, then headed for the door. He would do what was asked of him, but in the meantime, he would steal every moment and claim it for him and Diana.

  He could only pray that his future bride and her father didn’t find out.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Do you actually have a plan in mind here, or are you simply going along with whatever he decides?”

  Amy stabbed at her salted cod with her fork, then pushed the piece of fish around her plate. It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t hungry this morning; with a full day ahead of her, she knew she must eat a half-decent breakfast. It was more that she needed the time in which to formulate a sensible response to Colin’s question.

  She struggled with finding the right words—the truth being that her well-laid-out scheme to make Owen Morrison fall in love with her was teetering on the verge of collapse. If he fell in love with Diana, not Amy that would be the worst. When the truth of who she really was, eventually surfaced it would destroy all that currently bound them together.

  Mere weeks ago, she may not have cared. But now having spent time with him, Owen’s magic had worked itself on her. Amy’s heart was now in serious peril.

  And while it was still true that he was guilty of thinking he was meddling with another man’s wife, that he was an unashamed adulterer, her opinion of Owen was slowly but surely changing. Every minute they spent sharing their bodies in the seclusion of her coach was a minute she treasured.

  She would wake in the night, her body longing for his touch. To feel his lips and skillful fingers lighting her up in all her secret places.

  If lust had been all that she felt for him, Amy would have been content. But over the past few days, the first stirrings of what she now feared might be love had taken place. His smile. Those pale blue eyes. That long, dark hair. All those pieces of him which seemed designed purely to test and tempt her.

  Don’t get me started on his magnificent tattoos.

  She met Colin’s gaze and shrugged. “I’m not sure anymore.”

  Amy had continued to assure Colin that all meetings with Owen were being conducted in public. And until this morning, he had not raised the issue of the state of her and Lord Morrison’s relationship.

  The truth was, however, somewhat different to the lie Amy was peddling to her brother. After she and Owen had met for the second time in Hyde Park, they’d settled into a comfortable routine. They met as often as they could, sharing their bodies and mutual passions in the privacy of her hired coach.

  She cleared her throat; Colin’s continued silence informed her that he expected more of an
answer.

  “It is just taking a little longer than expected for me to form a connection with Lord Morrison. There is only so much I can learn about him while standing in the middle of Hyde Park or a ballroom.” She sat straighter in her chair and met her brother’s gaze. That was a plausible enough excuse for her to be taking her time over coming to a decision as to whether Owen would make a suitable husband or not.

  “Yes, but what have you learned while you have been secretly meeting with him in Hyde Park, hidden away in your coach? I don’t suppose that he has been teaching you how to play Speculation,” replied Colin.

  Amy was grateful for not having stuffed any of the smoked cod into her mouth; she would have choked on it if she had.

  “You didn’t think I was that naïve, did you? Come now, Amy. I might be a country man at heart, but I do know something of the workings of London society. You are not the first couple to be conducting a secret relationship within the greenery of Hyde Park.”

  Colin had been staying in the background at parties, observing from a distance, but he had also been cunningly keeping a close eye on her comings and goings the rest of the time. There was no point denying it. He obviously had his reliable and accurate sources.

  “How long have you known?” she replied.

  “A little while. I only started sniffing around for clues when I saw that you and Owen did not seem to spend a great deal of time together at parties or Noble Lords’ concerts; but when I have seen the two of you in each other’s company, you appear to be, for want of a better term, familiar with one another’s person. And of course, I know you well enough to be sure that you would not be sitting at home all day doing nothing while this betrothal hung over your head like the proverbial sword of Damocles,” he said.