Guinevere felt ill. She had not thought things could get worse than discovering what she had from Kilgore and then allowing herself to be carried away by lust and found in the woods with Asher. However, if he did not make a formal offer for her, things would become far worse because her mother would be correct. Guinevere squeezed her eyes shut on the thought that her actions may have set the course of her sisters’ lives. She may have taken prospects away from them that had not even been presented yet.
A scratch came at the parlor door, which blessedly sent Mama into momentary silence. Guinevere’s heart leaped with unreasonable relief that Asher had come, that he had not changed his mind.
“Enter,” her father called.
The door opened, and the butler appeared. “My lord,” he said, “the Marquess of Kilgore has come to call.”
Confusion blanketed her for a moment. Kilgore? Whyever would Kilgore be here?
“Send him in,” her father instructed before Guinevere’s mind could clear. If Kilgore was here, it had to have something to do with protecting Lady Constantine, but Guinevere honestly could not fathom how.
The butler shot her father a pained look. “Lord Kilgore insisted—”
“I insisted on following your butler,” Kilgore announced, pushing past Templeton to enter the room. With an apologetic look, the butler departed.
Guinevere felt her jaw fall open at the sight of Kilgore, and her mother gasped, scrambling to sit up and remove the cloth from her eyes. With hair askew, her mother waved a frantic hand at Guinevere. “Rise up. Rise up and conduct yourself like the lady we raised you to be.”
Kilgore, bless him, cut her mother a dark look. “There is no need for Lady Guinevere to rise, Lady Fairfax. I know full well that your daughter is the epitome of a well-raised lady.”
Oh, Kilgore was good! He knew just what to say to please Mama. She beamed at him and patted her hair.
“Kilgore,” her father said, rising to his feet, “to what do we owe the pleasure of this late call?” Her father’s words were polite but his tone was frosty.
Kilgore gave Guinevere a look that could only be described as conspiratorial and set worry in her chest. “Might I have a private word with Guinevere?” he asked, his voice and look insinuating that there was something between them Guinevere knew there was not.
“Oh!” her mother crowed, relief apparent on her face. “Guinevere, you—”
“I am happy to speak with Kilgore privately,” Guinevere rushed out before Mama could say anything that could not be undone, such as gloating that Kilgore was offering for her, which Guinevere knew he did not intend.
Her mother frowned at her. “I hardly think—”
“It inappropriate,” her father cut her mother off smoothly, eying Kilgore threateningly, “since they will be where I can see them. You may have a few moments alone in the small garden.”
Guinevere bit her cheek on hysterical laughter. Did her father think the man would become carried away by passion for her? If Papa only knew that Kilgore’s heart and lust belonged to another…
She didn’t know why Kilgore was here, but she knew for certain neither love nor passion had sent him here to offer marriage today, which they had already discussed. Her life may be in shambles and her hope for love dashed, but she was not going to be a party to destroying another’s chance at happiness.
She had to clench her teeth to force a smile, and she ground said teeth back and forth as she acted pleased to go with Kilgore to the garden directly in front of the parlor. Not long later when Templeton shut the door behind her, she abandoned her pretense of civility, marched down the remaining stone steps to the garden, and turned on Kilgore. “Why are you here?” She did not bother to temper her sharp tone.
He frowned. “You sent for me. I assumed you had changed your mind about wedding that dull wit Carrington.”
“I did not send for you, Kilgore.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples, which throbbed in time with her rapid heartbeat.
“You didn’t?”
The relief in his voice made her not only believe him but laugh. “I did not,” she assured him, “and based on your barely constrained look of relief, I’d say you are lucky indeed that I did not decide to take you up on your earlier offer of marriage.” Even if it had been just for pity’s sake.
“A thousand apologies, Lady Guinevere,” he said, moving closer.
“One apology will do,” she replied. “But if I did not send for you—”
Giggling from above their heads sent Guinevere’s heart into the pit of her stomach. She glanced up to see Frederica and Vivian huddled in the window overlooking the garden.
Oh, dear heavens.
“What have you two done?” she called up. Though, more than likely, it was three of them. Lilias might not be here, but Guinevere had no doubt that her best friend was involved.
“Guinnie!” Vivian said, sounding aghast that Guinevere should ask such a thing in front of Kilgore.
Guinevere waved a dismissive hand at the man in front of her. “Never you mind him,” she bit out. “Kilgore will keep our confidences as I keep his secrets,” she finished, glancing at him meaningfully. In the moonlight and the glow cast across his handsome face by the oil lanterns, he hitched his eyebrows but smiled slowly and nodded.
“Carrington sent Papa a note this morning that he would call later today. He wanted to ensure Papa would be in residence for them to speak about the unfortunate circumstance in which the two of you find yourselves,” Vivian said.
“Did the note use those exact words? Unfortunate circumstance?” she asked, not bothering to delve further into how it was that her sisters had come to read a private message meant for their father or why Papa had not mentioned the note to her.
When her sisters both nodded, Guinevere felt her breath release and her heart shrink to the size of a pea. She detested peas and men named Asher who made her heart ache, but most of all she detested the realization that she had not quite totally given up on him and what she had longed for with him, only him. How dare he call the prospect of wedding her an unfortunate circumstance!
“We convened a secret meeting with Lilias,” Vivian said, bringing Guinevere’s attention back to her sister.
So that’s where her sisters had rushed off to earlier. They’d said they needed ribbon, and Guinevere had been too distraught to give it much thought. Instead, they had gone to Lilias’s home; she had also come to Town after the “unfortunate woods incident,” feigning illness, bless her best friend, to be here if Guinevere should need her.
“It was decided in a unanimous vote by the members of SLAR who could be present that it would do Carrington some good to think he had competition for your hand. So we simply had to intervene.”
Guinevere could not suppress the bitter laugh that escaped her. “The man’s love for competition is what got the two of us in this horrid mess in the first place!”
“Pishposh,” Frederica said. “Where is our thanks for penning a note to Kilgore? Whatever the reason you are to wed Carrington, it will do him immense good to think Kilgore is offering, as well.”
“My,” Kilgore said, surprising admiration in his tone, “aren’t you two the scheming pair? Or rather SLAR? What is SLAR, if I may be so bold to ask?”
“You may not,” Vivian snapped.
She wanted to be angry with Vivian, Frederica, and Lilias, but she knew they were only trying to help her. “Kilgore, I’m so sorry,” Guinevere said. “I hope you did not have plans for this evening that have now been ruined.”
“Actually, they quite saved me,” he replied.
Before Guinevere could question his statement, movement in the window to her father’s study caught her eye. She turned her head ever so slightly as her skin prickled to awareness. She knew it was Asher before she saw him.
She tried to repress the dizzying current that raced through her body just knowing he was there, but she failed miserably. She would not, however, race inside to him. His words from the
woods, and the words he’d written to her father, echoed in her head, making her heart constrict.
Kilgore will never come to heel for ye. He wants to use ye, not wed ye.
Did Asher think she could not make a man fall in love with her? Of course he did! She was an unfortunate circumstance to him!
She glanced up at Kilgore, surprised to find him studying her, and all her hurt rose up to overcome her. She blurted, “He said what occurred with me was an unfortunate circumstance!”
“Well then,” Kilgore growled, his voice soft but dangerous, “let us show him not everyone holds that opinion.”
And before she knew what Kilgore was about, he kissed her.
Chapter Thirteen
Asher was well past the proper calling hour when he knocked on the door to Guinevere’s home, but he had sent a message to Guinevere’s father this morning inquiring if the man would be here this evening, and Asher had received confirmation that he would be. But the odd look the footman gave him, and then the even stranger one the butler tried and failed to cover, seemed to indicate that Lord Fairfax had not passed the news on to his staff.
Once Asher explained who he was and that he was there to see Lord Fairfax and Lady Guinevere, the butler’s jaw actually dropped. Suspicion rose in Asher, and when the butler requested he wait in the entrance hall while he announced him, Asher declined. The butler merely pressed his lips together and turned on his heel.
As Asher walked through the corridors of the home where Guinevere had grown up, her words from the woods replayed in his head again.
You think because I am a game to you, that no one can want me! I suppose only you think I’m not desirable enough to offer for.
Confusion flared as before. And suspicion. And hope. Hope that was dangerous. Clearly by want she meant something more than desire, something like wanting her as a wife. He wanted to rub at the annoying ache in his chest, but he didn’t. Of course, he did not think that! The notion that no one would want to have her as a wife, to protect her, to cherish her, to possess her, was preposterous.
His mind kept circling back to her words. If she believed he’d only been toying with her—truly believed it—maybe even been led to believe it by Kilgore, Asher could see how she would have been hurt. How she would have wanted to strike back at him with, say, a grand performance in a skit she knew he would see.
He should have considered it yesterday during the skit, but again, he did not react reasonably when it came to Guinevere. The desire to protect himself was at war with the need to hang on to the hope, especially now that they were irrevocably bound for life. The kiss had ensured that, or rather, being discovered in the woods had.
His blood pumped hard through his veins. This night would set the course of their life together. Would it be a marriage of hope or distrust? He felt like a bumbling lad of ten summers rather than a grown man.
“Your Grace,” the butler said, waving a hand at the closed parlor door, “Lady Guinevere is just in here with—” the man paled considerably “—the others.”
Asher frowned at the man’s increasingly strange behavior but said, “Excellent. Then should ye not announce me?”
The butler looked distinctly uncomfortable but inclined his head in agreement. He knocked on the door, and when a call to enter was given, the man opened the door and announced Asher.
He hadn’t expected a warm greeting, given the circumstances he and Guinevere had been discovered in, but nor had he expected the words Guinevere’s mother bellowed.
“Oh, good heavens! Not now! Not with Kilgore still here, possibly offering for her!”
Asher’s entire body tensed, and hope slipped, but he tapped the butler’s shoulder, who turned to face him, mouth agape. Asher motioned for the man to step aside and moved into the room, sweeping his gaze over Guinevere’s father first, who arched his eyebrows before narrowing his eyes at Asher, and then Guinevere’s mother, who at least had the good sense to look appalled.
“Oh my. Oh, Your Grace,” she rushed out, but instead of moving toward him to curtsy, she almost tripped over a rug in her haste to move in front of the window. She was too late, though. Asher’s blood went cold at the sight of Kilgore kissing Guinevere.
Damn Kilgore. Damn Guinevere. And damn himself for being such a fool for her again and sodding again.
Guinevere’s mother blabbered beside him, demanding his attention, but he stared straight ahead, unable to rip his gaze from Guinevere and Kilgore. She did not shove Kilgore away. They stood, locked in their kiss. Fury crackled inside Asher, and he turned abruptly from the window. His gaze crashed into the hard one of Guinevere’s father. The man didn’t like him, though Asher supposed it was not surprising considering the past and the very recent compromising of his daughter.
“It seems I’m no longer needed here,” Asher clipped. Now protecting himself was all there was.
“Oh, Your Grace—” Guinevere’s mother started to cry out, but Fairfax interrupted.
“Silence, Georgette,” Fairfax stated in a firm but gentle tone. The warning look on his face, however, was forceful.
Lady Fairfax opened and shut her mouth several times before finally deciding to listen. She clamped her jaw shut and sat with a loud sigh.
“Your past actions and today’s letter,” Fairfax said, picking up a piece of foolscap from his desk, “would lead me to believe this—” he waved a hand toward the garden “—should be a happy turn of circumstances for you.”
Asher frowned. “What part of my letter leads ye to believe that?”
“The part in which you stated these were unfortunate circumstances.”
It was not the best choice of words now that he thought about it, but he’d had no sleep. “I was not referring to the lady but to the event that led to our betrothal.” And to the fact that she wanted Kilgore.
“Ah.” Fairfax’s countenance relaxed immediately. “I was hoping that was the case. Since it is, I extend an invitation for you to remain until, er, we know how things should unfold.”
“I must decline,” Asher replied. He’d seen how things were unfolding.
He’d be damned if he was going to wait around like an eager pup to learn if Kilgore had asked Guinevere to wed him and she had accepted. It was more than his company and his pride in the balance now. It was the very real need to protect himself. He kept trying to relinquish hope. He’d thought he’d managed it on several occasions, but it kept springing back up like a weed to taunt and tease him. The kiss between Kilgore and Guinevere seemed to be a blinding indication that he had to relinquish hope. She’d just crushed it under her delicate slipper, after all. Only a fool would continue. Only a fool would have ever come to London to meet a father who had not wanted him, but he’d done that, as well. He had to quit being a fool.
“If ye would, please tell yer daughter that I will consider our informal betrothal formally broken.”
“Your Grace,” Lady Fairfax burst out. “You cannot mean that. Truly, let us not be hasty and wait until—”
“Georgette!” Fairfax thundered, and though Lady Fairfax flinched, she kept speaking.
“You caused her ruin.” Lady Fairfax sniffed.
There were actually two of them involved in the kiss, but to argue the point was fruitless. He had initiated it. “I’m aware,” Asher replied, having to unclench his jaw to do so. It was why he had not ended the betrothal just now. He would give Guinevere the opportunity to do it. “I was going to say, please tell yer daughter I will consider our informal betrothal broken unless she sends word requesting I return to make it formal. I will await word from her until tomorrow night.”
After that, he intended to leave England and Guinevere behind him, no matter how much he did not want to.
Guinevere shoved Kilgore back and slapped him. “Why did you do that?”
“To help you,” he replied, rubbing his cheek.
“I need to speak to Asher and explain,” she blurted and then turned, getting a glimpse into the study window. “Where
is he?” she cried out.
“I do believe Carrington is departing,” Kilgore replied. “That’s what I would do.”
“No! He cannot depart!” She clenched her skirts in her hands as she raced toward the house. She’d wanted him to realize what a fool he was and to see how another would wed her and want her. He was supposed to realize he loved her desperately!
She took the stairs at a most unladylike two at a time and raced down the corridor at a speed that would cause her Mama palpitations if she witnessed it. Guinevere paused, unsure if she should head toward her father’s study or the front door. If Asher had truly left, then she would not chase after him, though God above knew she was good and ruined if he had departed. She ran down the corridor, hearing Vivian and Frederica rushing down the stairs in the distance.
She burst through the parlor door and wanted to weep at the sight of only her mother and father there. “Did Carrington leave?” she asked, hating how breathless she sounded.
“Yes,” her mother wailed. “Did you accept Kilgore’s offer?”
“There was no offer,” Guinevere replied, only then realizing she’d left Kilgore alone in the garden.
“Oh, you’ve ruined everything again!” her mother burst out. “Oh dear. You must run after one of them! Yes, go now!” Mama stepped toward her, but her father spoke.
“Sit down and quit talking this instant, Georgette. And if you refuse my request again, I will cease to allow you to push me about with your every whim!”
Guinevere felt her mouth fall open, as did her mother’s. Papa never raised his voice, even when he endured a great deal from Mama, but he did indeed look and sound vexed now.
Her father stepped toward her and took her by the shoulders. “You must make a choice, Guinevere. Carrington has said that he will consider the informal betrothal broken by you unless you contact him to return to make it formal. He will wait until tomorrow night.”
Lady Guinevere And The Rogue With A Brogue (Scottish Scoundrels: Ensnared Hearts Book 1) Page 16
