Page 8

Chapter Eight

Two wrongs do occasionally make a right…

I nitially, Caleb had been confused. But then his brain had ceased to function properly somewhere after Lady Crowden thoroughly misconstrued or remained intentionally obtuse in the face of his every attempt to let her down gently. Now, having rallied, he understood it far too well. Lady Crowden was tossing both him and the lovely but clearly quite dumbfounded Miss Ashton to the wolves to save her own deceitful hide. Better to have caught someone else in the act than to be caught in it herself. It seems that Lord Crowden was perhaps not as understanding of her extramarital pursuits as she had intimated.

He might have protested. Might. But there was good reason not to do so. His initial quandary had been solved entirely. He no longer needed to seek an introduction to the dark-haired beauty. They were now embroiled in a scandal together. Miss Marina Ashton had been presented to him almost like a gift. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, s he was not Lady Crowden . That was a rather significant point in her favor. Fairly rational, seemingly avoidant of conflict and overly dramatic displays—Miss Ashton might well be a Godsend.

While he remained somewhat concealed within the shadows, Miss Ashton was perfectly visible in the light spilling in from the corridor. It gave him the opportunity to study her with more leisure than had been afforded in the ballroom. Taking in every detail of her appearance, he noted that he could not find a single flaw. To call her beautiful was too pale a term for her appearance. With her black hair pulled back in an elaborate coiffure with soft tendrils left loose to curl about her face, the style accentuated the soft curve of her jawline and her chin, marked with the faintest cleft. He much preferred the softer method of dressing a woman’s hair to the dowdy style favored by so many young ladies. They pinned all their hair up in symmetrical clumps atop their ears until they looked like spaniels.

Caleb couldn’t quite make out the color of her gown in the room’s dim light beyond it being pale in shade, as befitted a young unmarried woman. In the ballroom, he hadn’t bothered to notice anything beyond the perfection of her face. The color of her gown had been trivial in comparison. Now, with an opportunity to study her, he could see the cut of it displayed a graceful neck, the gentle curve of her shoulders, and the barest hint of décolletage.

He might have liked a bit of time to make a decision about whether or not he actually wished to pursue marriage to her. But as she was the first woman he’d encountered amidst the glittering display of London society who had tempted him in the least, it wasn’t that much of an obstacle to his mind. Barring some great disparity between her character and her form, he had no concerns.

Caleb did not believe in love as poets wrote of it. It wasn’t some flash of lightning—some loincloth swaddled cherub flinging arrows at people. Love, to his mind, was not something one fell into. It was something one built. If she was of a practical mind, as he was, then they might truly have an opportunity to make a good and happy life for themselves. And yet it seemed fate, in the form of Lady Crowden’s impulsive but convincing lies, had allowed him to find himself in his current untenable position of having compromised the very woman he’d set his sights on.

Of course, there were far better ways to get one’s self betrothed than through the twisted machinations of another man’s faithless wife. As for the pair at the door, he had no notion what they were about. The young woman appeared quite disappointed, but not for the same reasons the gentleman did. It was quite obvious that Mr. Nutter, as Lady Crowden had addressed him, had harbored some tender feeling or at least romantic intentions toward Miss Ashton. Why another young woman, one who clearly was no friend to Miss Ashton, had accompanied him to find her was something of a mystery. Curious as it all was, there was no denying that their current situation went far beyond farcical. In short, it was nothing less than an utter fiasco. And all of it, every last bit of it, harkened back to a moment of too much brandy and Lady Crowden having mistaken him for someone else entirely. Whether that event was his salvation or downfall remained to be seen.

“We must not leap to conclusions,” the young woman beyond the door said. “There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why Miss Ashton was in this room, unchaperoned, with a man who is hardly known to any of us.”

If she was trying to improve the situation, she was failing greatly. But then Caleb suspected, a suspicion fueled by the wicked gleam in her eyes, that making things better for Miss Ashton was the very last thing the young woman wanted. The current predicament might not have been what she’d imagined for Miss Ashton, but she was certainly willing to exploit the situation that had been presented.

Lady Crowden stiffened. “And what else could it be, Miss Whitmore? Do you dare question my understanding of what I observed here? A married woman who is far more worldly than a mere miss such as yourself could ever presume to be. They were behaving with great impropriety. I shall not sully your innocent ears with further details on the matter. That will be for discussion with Lord and Lady Deveril. You will return to the ballroom, Miss Whitmore, and say nothing of this. I shall not have it be said that my home was the origination of such wickedness or such nasty gossip!”

To that point, Caleb hadn’t uttered a word. In all honestly, there had hardly been a second’s silence not eaten up with Lady Crowden’s prattling. “Lady Crowden, do be so good as to provide me a moment of privacy with Miss Ashton. I assure you it will all be quite proper. You may even leave the door open if you will simply step outside. I think we should have a moment to discuss our plans since our names and our futures will now be closely linked.”

Lady Crowden turned to him then and the fury that burned in her gaze was staggering. It was disproportionate to the situation in a way that simply made no sense. Could it really be that a simple misunderstanding and what he’d hoped would be a very gentle rejection could make her hate him so much? But when he looked at her once more, her gaze wasn’t on him, or even on Miss Ashton. She was looking out into the corridor, to the man lurking in the shadows there. Who was he? And what had he wandered into the middle of?

Given the lengths she’d just gone to save her own reputation, it was obvious she was a master schemer. And he had no doubt her machinations would reach far beyond the room they currently occupied. But who else was involved in the mess she’d created for them? Regardless of where her animosity truly lay, he knew that he’d made an enemy of her. And now she would be the unfortunate Miss Ashton’s enemy as well.

There was no opportunity for that private moment. Mr. Nutter returned and with him was a very handsome couple, the man tall and proud, the woman petite and delicately beautiful. They complemented one another in both their appearance and manner. And Miss Ashton bore some similarity to the gentleman.

“Lord Deveril, I have the most distressing news,” Lady Crowden said. “I happened upon your niece, Miss Marina Ashton, in a most compromising position with the Earl of St. Aiden. I shall leave it you and Lady Deveril to handle the situation moving forward. I will go and attempt to curb Miss Whitmore’s penchant for gossip. Sadly, I must assume the news is already making its way around the ballroom.”

Caleb braced himself for the dressing down of his life, which if circumstances were as Lady Crowden had painted them, would have been well deserved. But nothing could have prepared him for what actually occurred. The three people gathered there ignored him entirely.