Page 9

Marcus, sitting alone in his library during the hour at which morning calls were traditionally paid, was a little surprised to receive a note, via one of the footmen, which said that his sister required his presence immediately in the small sitting room.

Helena wasn’t the sort of person who stood on ceremony; she was an energetic young woman, and if she wished to speak to him, she would generally run down the stairs in a most unladylike fashion and burst in upon him with the words she meant to say already trembling on her lips before the door had closed behind her.

So that was strange. Moreover, his mother and his sister both knew that the very last thing he desired to do was to come and take tea with them while a procession of ladies passed through the house and attempted to further their acquaintance with the family.

Lady Thornfalcon might tell the butler that she was not at home to most of her visitors, but she couldn’t turn away everyone, and certainly not ladies she’d known for many years, or relatives.

But that didn’t mean he had to be present.

He couldn’t avoid his many admirers in public places or at events to which he was obliged to escort his female relatives, but he was damned if he’d help to encourage them in his own house.

He wasn’t hiding in the library precisely…

Very well, that was exactly what he was doing. He felt hunted.

Still, the small sitting room wasn’t the room where visitors were normally greeted, but was the chamber Helena had claimed as her private space, so Marcus felt reasonably safe going to see her there.

He tried very hard not to peer anxiously out of the library door into the hall before he opened it fully, but judged from the grins hastily wiped from the other attendant footman’s face that he hadn’t entirely succeeded.

Shaking his head, he made his way up the stairs at a faster pace than he would normally have used, for he had heard the tap of the doorknocker, and knew himself in peril.

He was not safe even in his own home. Wasn’t an Englishman’s home supposed to be his castle?

This was obviously untrue. Or if this house in Half-Moon Street was his castle, it was a castle under siege.

Marcus was surprised, and far from pleased, then, when he opened the door of Helena’s room and found that she was not alone in it.

She had a companion – just the sort of fashionable young woman he was at such pains to avoid.

Though they must have been expecting him, since he had been summoned not five minutes since, the expression of trepidation that animated both their features now made him even more irritated than he had previously been.

If Helena was plotting something with some foolish friend of hers, it would be the outside of enough.

He opened his mouth to utter a reproof which, although it was perforce designed for other ears than hers, and therefore far less blistering than it might have been, would still leave his sibling in no doubt that he was gravely displeased with her, and surprised too at her insensitivity.

He had no chance to share his thoughts. Helena said hurriedly, ‘Marcus, I can see from your face that you think I have tricked you into the company of one of the young ladies who has developed a foolish passion for you, but I promise you, the truth is far otherwise. This is Lady Amelia Wyverne – oh, Amelia, I suppose I should have presented Marcus to you first, but you know exactly who he is, obviously, so that would really be the height of folly. Marcus, Lady Amelia is also suffering a great deal from unkind and unfair gossip this Season, as I am sure you have heard, and in looking to find a way to better her own sad situation, she has hit upon a way to improve ours. To improve yours, in particular, and I am sure that if you are honest, you will admit that you are in grave need of it. So I will leave you alone together and she will share her idea.’

And with a whisk of her muslin skirts, she was gone, and the door closed behind her with a significant clunk.

Marcus looked at Lady Amelia silently, and Lady Amelia looked at him.

If he’d been inclined to be interested at all in young women of the ton, which he wasn’t, he must have admitted grudgingly that she was a reasonably attractive specimen of the breed.

She was tall enough that he did not get a crick in his neck staring down at her, and her hair was dark and lustrous, curling fashionably atop her head.

Her eyes were an unusual shade of dark blue-grey, sparkling with life, and her face was mobile and expressive, her features fine and her mouth, in particular, well-shaped.

Soft. Appealing, even. But he wished her at the devil, all the same.

An awkward little pause grew between them, which at last she broke.

‘Lord Thornfalcon,’ she said in a resolute tone, ‘what your sister says is all true. I have a great deal of sympathy for what you’ve been going through as a family – though it’s none of my business and I don’t propose to discuss it at all,’ she added hastily, presumably in response to the thunderclouds she saw in his countenance.

‘I imagine, if you have had any leisure at all to listen to the whispers circulating around the polite world when they’re not busy talking about you, then you must know how I am spoken of. ’

Marcus became aware rather belatedly that he hadn’t uttered a word since he had entered the room, but had been standing staring at his unexpected visitor like a gaby.

‘Yes,’ he said reluctantly, trying not to growl.

‘I have never cared for gossip, and I care for it considerably less now, but moving in society as I have been doing these last weeks, I have not been able to avoid hearing…’ And then he said, remembering his manners, ‘Will you not sit down, Lady Amelia? I have no real idea what you and my sister are about, but we can at least sit while we discuss it. I assume you must have some serious motive in contriving that we should be alone in this improper fashion.’ He knew he sounded like a pompous ass; he didn’t seem to be able to help it.

‘I suppose your sister might have stayed, for propriety’s sake,’ she replied, seating herself gracefully in one of the sofas after she had moved a pile of Helena’s books.

If she saw his words as a reproof, it didn’t seem to disconcert her greatly.

‘I have nothing to say to you that I have not already told her, but I understand that you are expecting a great many callers today…’

‘Today and every day,’ he said grimly, sinking into an armchair opposite her.

‘So that she does not wish to leave your mother alone to entertain them. I will be brief, then. You know, sir, that my reputation is… tarnished, because of my father and my stepmother.’

‘I have seen that lady upon the stage,’ he told her, interested, rather against his will, to know where she could be going with this tale which at present was unfortunate, certainly, but no affair of his.

‘My friend Jeremy dragged me to see her as part of my recovery, or so he said. She makes a powerful impression.’ Rosanna Wyverne was not the greatest actress who ever trod the boards, far from it, but she was a striking presence: beautiful and arresting, whether despite or because of the rumours that circulated about her poverty-stricken early life and her long marriage to the notorious Marquess.

‘Does she? I have never so much as set eyes on her. My family have always gone to a great deal of trouble to keep us apart, trouble which they might as well have spared themselves, given that my reputation is no better for it, as far as I can tell. You do not know me, but I assure you, I have done nothing to deserve the things that are said of me.’

‘I must sympathise, since my mother and sister are also suffering through our current notoriety, even if they are not subject to gossip on their own account – as in your case, the stories that circulate about my family and hurt them so have nothing whatsoever to do with any actions of theirs. I cannot quite say the same myself.’ He winced; he had not meant to say anything of the kind to her, and was not sure why he had said even that much when he had intended to be completely silent upon the matter.

‘Will you give me the word without any bark upon it, ma’am, and tell me why you are here?

’ An edge of frustration roughened his voice still, and he heard it and cursed inwardly.

She had done nothing – yet – to deserve harsh speech from him.

She swallowed visibly, but said bravely, ‘Very well. My idea – it was my sister-in-law’s plan, but I have adopted it and must own it – is that the only way I can redeem my reputation is to be courted and eventually betrothed to someone of unimpeachable reputation. Unlike myself.’

Her voice was very small as she spoke those last two words, and he felt a spasm of pity for her, but it was lost almost instantly in his growing anger.

‘So you intend that I should wed you, then, Lady Amelia, and redeem your reputation in that rather startling manner?’ he said icily.

‘I must congratulate you; none of the other ladies who have been… so kind as to interest themselves in me recently have actually gone so far as to propose marriage to me with such boldness. Not in so many words, and not to my face. Some of them have proposed other things, of course. But I confess I had not expected a young woman of birth and breeding to offer herself to me in such a blatant fashion. I suppose I should say I am honoured, but you will forgive me if I do not feel able to deal in false coin just now. I must of course refuse your very generous proposal.’

He had had no intention of letting any part of his anger and bitterness – which was little enough in all conscience to do with her – bubble up within him, but once he had begun speaking so unguardedly, he had found it impossible to stop before he had vented just a small part of all the emotions that were boiling inside him in volcanic fashion.

At least he hadn’t sworn at her, not quite.

When he realised what he’d done, though, how unnecessarily cruel and unforgivably rude he’d been, he was ashamed.

He’d never made a lady who was almost a stranger to him cry before; it was a new low.

Women – chiefly Lavinia, of course – generally had to know him more intimately before they were reduced to tears by his words or actions.

‘Oh!’ she said, and he realised with surprise that the crystal drops that sparkled on her long, dark lashes were tears of frustration rather than maidenly distress.

‘Oh, you are a provoking man, and so self-righteous! I wonder so many ladies wish to… to entangle themselves with you. I am sure they would not if they knew you even a little better! Will you not at least hear me out before you give me a dressing-down I have not in the least deserved?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly. ‘I was intemperate. But what am I to think?’

‘Perhaps not always the very worst, on so little evidence?’

He grimaced. ‘A hit, a very palpable hit! Go on. I shall not interrupt you again.’

‘We shall see if you can manage it. I don’t have the least desire in the world to marry you, I can assure you, but I am suggesting a false engagement.

One that shall last a little while – long enough, at all events, to persuade the world to think a little differently of me than it does at present, and then be terminated, at my instigation, naturally, but by amicable agreement on both sides. ’

‘Why me?’ he asked bluntly. The idea was completely crazy, but he had promised to listen, and he would.

‘Because of your reputation,’ she returned in the same level tone. ‘Because you are known to be so very noble and good and…’

‘Nauseatingly virtuous and high-minded.’

She grinned at him unrepentantly. If his heated speech had thrown her off balance, it had not been for long, it seemed. She had brothers, he recalled irrelevantly. Perhaps that accounted for it. If he had ever spoken to Lavinia so…

‘All of that. And a hero, too. Who would ever imagine that such a person could be interested in someone like me, from a family like mine?’

He chose not to address this. ‘I don’t see that it could possibly answer.’

‘Your sister thinks it might.’

‘My sister is a silly little goose. She wishes nothing but good for me, and I am sensible of it, but she has no knowledge of the world.’

‘Well, perhaps I am a silly little goose too, and perhaps I am also na?ve, but I think it could work. As I said to her, I can more readily see that it could help you in your awkward situation than me in mine. My problem may in fact be insurmountable. But at least I’d be doing something positive. I feel so helpless at present.’

‘I can certainly sympathise with that,’ he said with feeling. Helpless was the perfect word to describe his current situation.

‘I suppose the question is,’ she said lightly, still meeting his eyes with a bright challenge in hers, ‘not whether my plan has any chance of success, but whether you actually want to be rescued.’