Chapter 8
The shaft of light penetrating through the curtains was what woke her at first. But then when she saw Michael standing beside the window as still as a statue, silently staring out at the gardens below, her memories from the evening before came flooding back to her in full force, jolting away the remnants of sleep.
And oh, good lord, he was standing there naked too.
Holly gasped, glancing down at the bedsheet covering her. She was in Michael’s bed and naked too. Mortification flooded her. She pulled the sheet up, ensuring every inch of her was covered, all the way to her chin. Her inhibitions had returned with full force in the light of day.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” There was no warm morning greeting in his words as one might expect from a lover. Not that Holly really had any idea how a morning after was meant to be like, but she hadn’t expected a coldly formal Michael. A man who was simply gazing out the window not even bothering to glance back at her. So distant and different to the gentle lover who’d held her last night and showed her what it was like to experience passion.
“Tell you what?” she asked, not liking the where the direction of this conversation was heading.
He straightened his shoulders, a rigidity within him she hadn’t seen before.
“Tell me, that you were a virgin.” His voice was monotone, and one would think he was discussing the weather, if not for the white of his knuckles as he clutched the frame of the window sill.
“Oh that.” Embarrassment flooded her. Of course, she knew what he’d been referring to, she just hadn’t wanted to address the issue. “I didn’t think it was important.”
“Not important?” Slowly he turned to face her. “Are you entirely serious? Of course, it was bloody important! I just took your virginity!”
“You don’t have to yell,” she pertly informed him.
“Was your husband so incompetent that he couldn’t do the deed of actually making you his wife, or did you fabricate your poor dear Harold Carlton entirely?”
He was staring at her with such a look of accusation on his face, that for the first time she was scared. Not that he’d hurt her. Never of that. But she was scared that he would never forgive her for lying. And in that moment, she acknowledged that Michael was important to her. That he had always been since childhood, and their years apart had not changed her affections. She took in a deep breath and pulled her legs up to her chest, ensuring the sheet was still covering her fully. “I made him up.”
For the space of a minute Michael said nothing, staring at her, his eyes wide with blame. “Of course, you did.” He laughed bitterly. “Your housekeeper called you Miss Holly the other day when she was seeing me out, but I just thought it was a slip of the tongue. I should have known better. Especially taking into account your dowry. What man would turn away five-thousand pounds? None would. I was stupid to ever believe such a tale.”
“You’re certainly being stupid now carrying on like this.” Holly raised her chin and met his gaze, only to be met with scorn.
“Oh, I am, am I?”
“Yes. Completely stupid!” she replied.
“Was it all a ruse then? To trap me?” There was an accusation in his gaze, but also what she thought could be hurt swirling underneath the anger too.
A slowly burning fury began to coil inside her belly. “Trap you with what?”
“With marriage, of course!”
“Marriage?” Her mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about? I don’t want to marry you.”
He stalked over to where his pants were laying on the floor and began shoving his feet through them. “No, of course you don’t. Why would you wish to marry a viscount and heir to an Earldom, with buckets of money, estates and servants at his beck and call. Not when you can pretend to be a widow, living in a modest little town house instead.”
“I adore my town house, thank you very much! I work extremely hard to afford the rent on it!” Holly pushed back the sheets, uncaring of her nudity as a mounting rage filled her. She marched over toward him. “And how dare you sit in judgment of me, when you have no clue what that stupid dowry of yours did.”
Michael stopped buttoning his pants mid-button and gulped hard, seemingly unable to do anything else but stare at her. If she wasn’t so furious she’d be somewhat satisfied that he seemed entranced by her body, but all it did now was make her mad. Mad that he’d ruined a perfectly good morning after one of the most amazing nights she’d ever had. “I didn’t make up poor Harold to trick you into marriage, Michael Drake!” she continued. “I made up poor Harold to protect myself and my sisters from my uncle, you dolt!”
She trudged over to where her chemise was laying on the floor and grabbed it, before tugging it over her head. “I wouldn’t marry you if you begged me to. Not if you were the last man in England. Not if you were the last man on the entire planet. Not even for all the gold in the world. Why, not even if—”
“Alright, enough already!” he interrupted. “You’ve stated your position.”
Holly glared at him as she pulled on her drawers, then her crinoline, tying it up at the back. “I hope so! Because honestly, as if I would marry England’s answer to Don Juan! You’re completely egotistical to think I orchestrated this all just to marry you. I had nothing to do with your stupid wager, now did I?”
“No,” he conceded. “You didn’t.”
“You were the one pursuing me.” She didn’t even bother putting on her corset, instead she shoved her dress over her head, not even caring to tie up the ribbons at the back. “And yet you have the nerve to think I was trying to trap you into marriage!”
Holly didn’t think she’d ever been so mad in her life. “You might be heir to an Earldom, Michael Drake, but you’d be a terrible husband!”
Michael hesitantly walked closer to where she was now trying to put on her cloak. “Why did you have to protect yourself?”
Suddenly, her anger evaporated and all she felt like doing was tucking herself into a ball and crying. She didn’t want to tell him, but she knew she at least owed him an explanation for lying to him, even if he’d leaped to the ridiculous conclusion it was to trap him into marriage.
Taking in a deep breath she sank down to sit on the edge of his bed. “After Edward died, our estate passed on to the next male heir which was my Uncle Reginald.”
“A rather sniveling weasel, if I remember correctly.” Michael gingerly sat down next to her.
“Yes, that perfectly describes him,” she confirmed. “I often wondered how he and my father were brothers. They were the exact opposite of each other. My father was kind and generous and he loved to tinker with everything.”
“Your father was a very good man and highly regarded,” Michael agreed. “I missed him after he died. I especially missed our chats about his latest inventions, and being accepted by him, without any demands or expectations.”
A sense of wistfulness filled her. There wasn’t a day that she didn’t miss her papa. He’d been the first to spark her interest with locks and anything mechanical, and though he was particularly absent minded when it came to the household, he’d had such a gift of imagination, that the house had always held such laughter and joy when he’d been around.
Things hadn’t been the same since his death, and then when Edward was killed, her Uncle Reginald had showed up to claim his inheritance. “When my uncle found out about the dowry you’d bestowed on me, well one night, he and his son, my cousin Bernard convinced me to go to a county assembly with them both for a charity ball. Even though I was in mourning, it was for a very worthy cause so I agreed.”
Taking in a deep breath, Holly’s memories of that night rose to the surface. “It didn’t take me long to realize that the carriage wasn’t headed for the assembly.”
“Where were they taking you?” Gently, Michael reached his hand across to cover hers.
The warmth of his skin touching her own was comforting. “To Gretna Green, apparently.”
“What?�
�� Michael all but roared. “The Devil they were!”
“My uncle wanted to get his hands on my dowry, you see, and had decided that I should marry Bernard for him to do so. He believed he was doing me a favor by kidnapping me. He said that if I married Bernard then my sisters and I would be allowed to stay in our home and he wouldn’t throw us out into the streets.”
“I’m going to kill the bastard.” His grip on her hand tightened and Holly squeezed his hand back. “How did you get away?”
“I grabbed the lantern from inside the carriage and swung it into their thick heads. It knocked them out and I was able to get the carriage driver to stop the carriage. Then with the help of the pistol my uncle always kept under the seat in case of Highway robbers, I forced them all to the side of the road and took the carriage back home.”
She glanced over to Michael and though there was anger burning brightly in his eyes, it wasn’t directed at her any longer. “I knew I had to get my sisters out of there and quickly too, before my uncle and cousin eventually found a way to return. So, we packed up what little we could take with us and using the carriage fled to London.”
“You should have come to me.”
“You were fighting a war, Michael,” she gently reminded him.
“How did you survive then?”
“Luckily, I had a very good friend living in London who was happy to hide us from my uncle until I could sort out what to do. And thankfully, the lock picking skills my father had taught me ended up being very useful.”
“Oh God, you didn’t resort to thievery, did you?”
Rather than be offended at the remark, Holly chuckled. “No, I did not resort to thievery. I discovered that my friend was being blackmailed. Someone had stolen her journal and was threatening to release the contents of it to Society, if she didn’t keep paying him an income.”
“And let me guess, you went and retrieved it for her, using your lock picking skills to do so?”
“Exactly so!” Holly enthused, relieved that she could finally tell someone the truth. “That was when my consultancy business was born.”
“Your…consultancy business?” Michael sounded weary. “Why do I feel a headache coming on?”
“Word spread, anonymously of course, about my ability to successfully retrieve stolen items for ladies in precarious positions, and now I get paid a very healthy fee to do so. Enough so that I’ve been able to look after my sisters in comfort, if not luxury.”
“And that’s why you invented Harold. To lend an air of respectability to everything and protect your sisters and their reputations.”
“Indeed, I did.” She sighed. “My poor, wonderful, darling Harold, has been a life saver for me. I didn’t want to kill him off, but a widow has so much more freedom. And being in mourning allowed myself and the girls to essentially stay hidden for a year, so that my uncle couldn’t find us. And with Harold dead, I didn’t have to make up any excuse surrounding a missing husband, instead I could extol on how amazing he had been. The perfect husband a girl could ever have.”
“I imagine a pretend husband would be perfect,” Michael muttered. “As he wouldn’t talk back, or question you, or pull you into line. You’d have free reign with a husband like that.”
“Yes, exactly. He was the most perfect of husband’s, indeed.” Holly turned to face Michael and smiled, but he was peering at her with such a look of intensity on his face that her smile disappeared.
“Well, I’m certainly not going to be perfect.”
She blinked. Had she heard him correctly. “What are you saying, Michael?”
Letting go of her hand, he stood up abruptly and strode over to the door. “It means we’re getting married, Holly. After I procure a special license.”
“I’m not marrying you, Michael.”
“You damn well are!” he said. “I promised your brother I would look after you, not that I would seduce and then abandon you.”
“You didn’t feel that way before you knew I was a virgin.”
“And that very fact changes everything, completely. I have no intention of ruining you and then not making it right. I might be a bounder, but I’m not that much of a scoundrel.”
“Well you haven’t married any of your other conquests thus far, have you?”
“None of them were virgins.” He dragged a hand through his thick hair and swore. “God damn it, Holly, you infuriate me at times.”
And before she could respond further, he’d stalked back over to her, kissed her breathless and then strode out of the room without a backward glance.
For a minute, Holly sat there, speechless. He’d never bedded a virgin before? And he insisted on marrying her, now?
His upset was making a great deal more sense. But if the man thought he could simply dictate that they were getting married, he was quite mistaken, indeed. She had absolutely no intention of being shackled in matrimony to a rake who didn’t love her. No, thank you very much! Especially, when he was only going to marry her to satisfy his idea of being noble and fulfilling his promise to her dying brother.
They’d be miserable in such a situation. Holly, the most miserable of all knowing he’d only married her out of a sense of duty and obligation which had nothing to do with love. Particularly not, when she suspected she was starting to become a bit enamored with him. And caring for him, while watching him cavort with other women, which was something he was bound to eventually do, would rip her apart and destroy her.
Well, she wouldn’t marry him. No matter how tempting the idea may be. She just had to stay strong against what she was sure would be a very determined viscount.
With her mind made up, she left his room, slipping though the hallways without being seen. He’d of course be furious she’d left, but best he realized sooner rather than later that she was an independent lady who would not be told what to do.
Chapter 9
Michael stood pacing in her entrance hall, waving around the note she’d had delivered to him that afternoon, a massive scowl on his face, looking for all the world like a great big, angry bear.
“You refused to see me all day yesterday and now you summon me like some damned errand boy!” He stopped pacing and let out a harsh breath.
“Yes. I did,” Holly answered, trying to hide the slight smile wanting to creep up the corners of her mouth. She imagined that the sight of Michael carrying on like he was would be enough to send most fleeing, but she thought it was rather adorable, and she’d missed him, having refused to see him all day yesterday after his declaration that they would be married. “Now, would you calm down so we can converse like rational adults.”
“Calm down?” His eyes narrowed upon hers. “Calm down?” The timber of his voice ricocheted around the entrance, no doubt reaching every corner of her small townhouse and most likely into the neighbors’ residence too.
“What is going on here?” Violet yelled as she skidded into the hallway from the sitting room, her eyes darting between Holly and Michael in concern. “And why on earth are you roaring like a banshee, Lord Blackthorn?”
Holly couldn’t help the bubble of laughter that rose out of her chest. She clapped a hand up to her mouth and tried to appear contrite, but if the expression on Michael’s face was any indication, she was not being very successful in her endeavor. But comparing him to an Irish female spirit was rather hilarious.
“A banshee?” He spun around to face Violet, a thunderous expression on his face. “A banshee.”
“Personally, I thought you sounded more like a bear,” Holly pointed out.
Michael paused and seemingly tried to regain his patience, taking in a very deep breath and exhaling it, infinitely slowly. “You Jenkins’ girls would try the patient of any man foolish enough to enter this residence.”
“Doesn’t say much about your state of mind, now does it?” Holly smiled sweetly at him. “For you are the one who entered.”
“Holly!” Violet hissed. “What has gotten into you?”
She hadn’t
told Violet about her recently updated relationship status with the viscount, and she certainly hadn’t mentioned that the blasted man had been demanding she marry him. After all, some things were best left in private, and besides there was no point in telling her sister about a marriage that was not going to eventuate. No matter how persistent Michael had been yesterday trying to discuss the matter with her.
If it hadn’t been for Lord Pembrook’s hunting party which was commencing later today, she would have refused to see Michael again until he agreed to cease and desist with his ridiculous demands that she marry him. Honestly, her plan to be his mistress was still perfectly acceptable even if he refused to now consider it.
The man had even had the nerve to go and procure the special marriage license he’d mentioned after finding out the truth of her widow status, or lack thereof. Why couldn’t he simply be the rake society believed him to be? Things would be a great deal simpler for both of them if that was the case. Instead, he was acting all noble and honorable. Drat the man!
“I shall tell you what has got into her,” Michael began, “the fact of the matter is your headstrong, stubborn, foolish sister, is refusing to marry me!”
Daphne, along with Mrs. O’Dowd, had chosen that moment to walk into the entrance hall too, and everyone except Holly and Michael gasped, with equal looks of absolute shock on all of their faces. It was almost like a pantomime. Holly sighed. Wonderful. Just wonderful.
“You’ve asked her to marry you?” Violet’s eyes widened. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday morning,” Michael replied.
Holly cringed at the look of knowing now in her sister’s face. There would be a great deal of questions from Violet when they were alone. Something else to look forward to, much like a tooth ache.
The Mistletoe Mistress Page 7
