by Emily Ward
“I’m sure that this damages her prospects.” Liam nodded. “I feel confident that I can find someone for her. I have some friends that should be of her social standing and with an excellent dowry she can still have plenty of options.”
Eleanor’s father held up a finger. “I’m sure there’s something that we can work out. After all, your father was a very reasonable man.”
“That he was.” Liam gulped slightly as he nodded along. He could already see exactly where this was going, and he felt a sudden wave of grief wash right through him.
He suddenly knew that his bachelorhood was over. He had sacrificed it at the altar of not getting arrested and it would never be the same. Her father looked her up and down. “We need to solve this problem. Her honor is impugned.”
“I understand this, sir. We can work something out.”
“Oh, I’ve already been working on a plan with your mother. I’m only here to inform you of the decisions that were made.”
Chapter 6
Eleanor grabbed a pillow off of the bed and held it to her face before she screamed into it. “How could you do this to me?”
“You did this to yourself.” Her father had that look. That look of pure disappointment on his face.
“I didn’t do anything.” She groaned, exasperated as she threw her pillow back on the chair in the sitting room. “It’s not my fault.”
“You were in that alley with him.” Her father kept his frown. “What did you think would happen if you two were caught in a worse position.”
“There is no worse position.” She finally admitted to herself as much as she admitted it to her father.
“I know. I was just- I was just trying to make you feel better. I know how hard this must be on you. Your reputation is ruined. Prospects are leaving.” He sounded sad like his dreams had been crushed.
“I can solve this.”
“I already solved it.”
Her eyes snapped to her father’s face. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve arranged for Lord Francis to officially court you.”
“You did what?” Eleanor stared at him in disbelief. “The man is a cad, he would never agree.”
“He already has.”
Eleanor had the sudden urge to spew out some very unladylike words, and somehow, she managed to bite them back. She couldn’t believe that this was happening to her. She was being set up with a man that had damaged her reputation already. She was being pushed into what was going to amount to a marriage with a man that was driving her crazy.
“He’s downstairs, waiting for you.” And with those words, her father was gone. She picked up the pillow again, screaming into it. This was something that was really happening to her and she didn’t have a choice in the matter. All because she was trying to save her brother from his own stupid mistakes. And now she was stuck in a situation that she had no idea of how to handle. After all, there was so much going on, and now it looked like she was destined to marry a man she couldn’t stand.
Still, she thought about how it felt when he had touched her. It had almost felt right, even there in the alley. And he wasn’t a pompous dirtbag that only wanted her as a trophy. Instead, he was stepping up to do the honorable thing. Maybe there was something underneath all the arrogance and danger that he carried around.
There was no way for her to tell. She screamed into her pillow once again. This was something that she didn’t want to do at all. But she knew that she had to. She glanced in the mirror, straightening her gown and trying to make herself look presentable.
She made her way down the stairs a few minutes later, feeling a hole in her chest where her heart once was. She tried to remind herself that she was a victim of society, just like he was. It would do no good to blame him for this. She may have hated it, but she was held to certain expectations.
He was waiting in the main sitting room, perched on the edge of the couch, looking every bit of a defeated man. He was staring at her. “What is it?” She snapped, trying to hold back the tears that were threatening to spill out.
“I wanted to apologize.” He stood quickly and made his way over to her. He reached for her hand. “For everything.”
She stood there in shock and let him take her hand. He was watching her carefully as she stared at him for a moment. She had noticed that he was handsome before. After all, he was the talk of society for ages, a handsome young rake that many of the girls found the type to giggle about when the men weren’t around.
She had always rolled her eyes about these tittering nightmares of functions. She had to be dragged to them when she went, and always tried to leave as soon as would be considered polite. But he was handsome. And she suddenly remembered the feel of his body against him. Pure heat and strength as he held her up in his arms. The closeness she felt to him. The way his body reacted to hers.
For the first time in her life, she understood why women had the urge to swoon. Everything about his body made her want to fall back into his arms. But she knew that it was wrong. She had to know better than this. It was wrong. Nobody should draw her in like that. She was supposed to be stronger.
Her hand was in his and they shared the long silence while she tortured herself. “Eleanor?” He finally broke it.
“Yes. I’m sorry.” She stumbled over her words. “I hadn’t been expecting this.” She felt a soft heat rise up to her face. She must have been blushing.
From the smile on his face, she could tell that Liam saw it. “Expecting me to run away then?”
“What were you thinking?” She asked him.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know they would recognize you. I assumed that they would think you were just some- “ He didn’t finish that sentence, possibly because he realized how badly it would turn out for him.
She raised an eyebrow. “Did you really think that I was a lady of the night? Or that I even looked like one?”
“I didn’t know. I was just trying not to get into any worse trouble. We had to think quickly.”
“Oh, I’m sure that was all it was.”
“It really was.”
She frowned. “I cannot believe that you would do something like that to me.”
“I didn’t mean to.” He frowned right back at her, then smiled again. “I have a carriage outside. Would you like to go for a ride? Maybe we could discuss it in some measure of privacy.”
“Yes. I think that would be better.” She gathered her senses.
“Wonderful. I’ve brought a footman to escort us. Don’t worry, he knows when to turn his head.”
She nodded, gulping softly as he led her out the door while everything inside of her told her to run away, that this was just going to end with her falling so deep that she couldn’t keep her senses about her.
Instead of running she let him help her into the carriage where she sat in silence for a long time, a worried look on her face. She was concerned, to say the least. This was a man that could have had any woman at the functions, but never showed any real interest in any of them. But here he was, in a carriage with her and there wasn’t much that she could do about it. She was bound by the rules and the fact that she had been caught with her dress half off in an alleyway. It destroyed all her prospects for the future with that, all her prospects except for him.
Except for the fact that there were enough troubles. She tried to be grateful for the fact that her brother wasn’t in some jail cell somewhere, but it was hard to do as Liam sat across from her. “Why would you do this?”
“I’m not a monster.” He looked at her straight in the face. “I know that I made a mistake. And I know this mistake will hurt you more than it will ever hurt me.”
“And you’re just trying to make it right.” Her voice dropped to a shy whisper as she realized that all that heat had been imagined. He must not have felt anything about her. And she suddenly felt like some sort of a chore to please and save. And she hated that fact.
“Yes. I am. You didn’t deserve to have all your prospect
s ruined by something I did.”
“What about my brother?”
“He doesn’t owe anyone anything anymore. I’ll keep him out of anything that may come from this.”
She nodded slowly, chewing on the inside of her lip. “At least there’s that.”
“And this.” He waited for her to say something. “How do you feel about this?”
“I don’t know how I feel yet. It’s a lot to take in.” She nodded, looking down at her hands. The conflict in her head was ringing out. She had no idea what she was going to do about this. Liam was handsome, but he was also a rogue, and she didn’t know how she felt about a man that didn’t seem to take anything seriously.
“I know you had turned a lot of men down. Is there a reason?”
“I have no interest in being a trophy or a prize.”
This seemed to make Liam smirk. “Now that would be a waste of you, wouldn’t it.”
The comment caught her by surprise. “What makes you say that?”
“It would be a waste of a brilliant woman. Someone who could challenge a man and make him better in every way he could be.”
She stopped, staring at him again. Her mind suddenly went blank and her face looked shocked. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, why just look at you when I can look at you and talk to you?”
“That’s… no one has ever talked to me like that before.”
“Really? That’s surprising. It’s why you are so highly regarded in certain circles. There are some men that love strong women.” He smiled and reached out for her hand and for a moment she forgot all about where she was.
“Are you just saying that?”
“I don’t say it if I don’t mean it. I’m not in a position where I have to charm you anymore.”
“I can still say no.”
“And die an old maid.”
He had just lost it with that. Whatever he had meant to say, she felt backed into a wall. “Why would I want to be with a man that stands for nothing and spends his days playing at being a criminal.”
He actually looked hurt by that. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”
“Well, you did.” She spoke in no uncertain terms. Her voice was harsh with anger.
“I don’t have to charm you. I want to charm you.” He tried to explain again.
“Oh. I didn’t realize that.” She suddenly felt the blush crawl up her cheeks again. She looked down at her hands, there was no way that she could make herself face him after that outburst.
She felt his hand on her chin as he pulled her face up. “Don’t worry. We’re already stuck together. My mother would kill me if I backed out of this.”
“You’re being forced into this too?”
“It’s the only way to save face.” He agreed with her. “But can we agree to try to make this as pleasant as possible?”
“I think I can do that.” She nodded, and her eyes caught on his. She felt like she was going to fall into those blue eyes that were staring at her.
“Good. That’s all I can ask of you.” He leaned in and put his lips up next to her ear so he could whisper. “I can tell you that if I had to choose someone to be trapped in this situation with, I could think of no one better than you to be here with.”
She blushed again. “Thank you.” She was stammering as she tried to answer the compliment, he had laid on her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“That pretty blush on your cheeks is enough.” He smirked at her. “Now, tell me, what do you have in mind for our very public courting process?”
They started to plan out some ideas. There were so many possibilities for them to do, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Neither of them was the type to go to events, and that’s exactly what was going to be expected of them.
By the end of the night, Eleanor found herself laughing. Like a gentleman, Liam dropped her off at her home before heading out and she found herself tucked into bed that night and wondering exactly what was going to come of this. After all, a man like Liam wasn’t going to just fall for someone like her. She was too loud. To willful for men to desire, but he seemed to love that about her.
Chapter 7
Liam stepped into the house to be met immediately by the maid. “Your mother is waiting for you.”
He sighed. “I’ll go and tell her what happened.”
With that, he walked towards her sitting room. The woman was probably still quite angry about what had happened between them. He paused outside the door before knocking, ready to walk into the storm that his mother seemed to carry with her all the time. “Come in.”
He held his breath as he walked into the room. “What took you so long?”
“I took her on a carriage ride.”
His mother nodded. “Then she agreed to it?”
“She did.” Liam nodded.
“Of course, she did. She’s marrying up.” His mother had a tight frown on her face, the kind of look she got when her son had finally hit the top of her disappointment. Nothing he could do would ever make her forget what he had done.
“It’s not like that at all, Mother.” Liam tried to explain to her.
“Don’t tell me you actually feel something for this girl. I’ve heard about her. She’s a trouble maker, to say the least.”
Liam didn’t know how to respond. He knew that she was more than people said about her. “Eleanor isn’t as bad as the rumors say.” He kept his voice calm, trying not to raise any more ire from the matriarch sitting in her chair.
“I’m sure she’s a perfectly nice girl. She managed to catch many people by surprise by being caught with you. Everyone spoke about her like she was untouchable.” His mother had always paid close attention to the rumors that circulated the functions for the young unmarried people in high society.
“She’s more than you give her credit for.” Liam surprised himself by defending her, but he continued. “She’s incredibly intelligent. She’s beautiful. She’s got a powerful heart.”
“A rare gift.” The sarcasm in his mother’s tone wasn’t lost on him. “You may go.”
Liam said his goodbyes and walked out with a sigh. There would be no getting his mother to understand. She just wouldn’t understand what he saw in her until she got a chance to see the woman that he would end up having to marry for his mistake. He had ruined so much of Eleanor’s life, and no matter what his mother had said, it was she that deserved so much better than him, not the other way around.
The only hope he had was to do the right thing by her and somehow find himself a way out of the life that he was living. It would do her no good to be stuck with a man that had criminal habits. He knew that it was time to start distancing himself from the contacts that he had, but the question was how he was going to do it after all this sort of thing was never easy and it wasn’t something that he could just buy himself out of.
His contacts weren’t exactly the type to just take a bribe to let a person go. It operated on people and connections, and he had the kinds of connections that let them get out of trouble and allowed them to put more people with important families in their debt. He sighed and made his way back out of his family home and into town.
He chose to walk; he didn’t want anyone to know where he was going and it wasn’t going to take him long to get to the small gentleman’s club he was heading to. The kind of place that vaguely catered to high society but held some dangerous rumors about it.
The place was comfortable, but he didn’t wait for long in the main areas, making his way to the back rooms. It was there that someone was waiting for him to come. The older man looked up from the table. “It’s about time.”
“I know, it took some time to get away from my family. My mother was quite angry about the entire situation.”
He was met with a soft chuckle. “With the Cole girl?”
“I’ve heard it’s gotten all over town.”
“It certainly got you out of trouble.” The older man smirked at
Liam.
Liam shivered. “Xavier. Look, we need to discuss this.”
“That we do.” Xavier nodded at him and dismissed the brute that was standing in the corner. “We lost a large number of goods in this raid and I can’t help but wonder how they found out about it.”
“It wasn’t me.” Liam shook his head.
“Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t. You can buy your way out of any legal trouble. Or at least your family could.”
“What are you implying?” Liam squinted at the man that sat on the other end of the table. He hadn’t sat yet and had no intention to until he knew exactly why he was there.
“That we need to remake the money that was lost in that warehouse.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Liam tried to cover his sigh of relief with a yawn. He was extremely pleased with the fact that he didn’t have to run for his life.
“We’ll have to do more work. That means some of your friends are likely to be hit by our guys.”
“Are you sure we have to go that far?” Liam frowned heavily.
“Relax. It will never ever come back to you.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.” Liam kept the frown on his face. None of this sounded like something that he wanted any part of it. It was different when it was people he didn’t know that was being robbed when they were away, but he had always shielded those that he respected using his influence on the leader of the organization he had found himself working with.
That wasn’t going to be the case anymore, clearly. “I’ll even let you make the call. Now. I think that we can make this work for you. After all. If we hit the Cole family, it would make them more willing to work with you if you’re as interested in the woman as my men say.”
“What are your men saying?”
“Just that the saw the two of you together. For an act, it looked very real.” He kept smirking at Liam.
“It’s not like that. Just a convenient cover.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind at all. We just need for you to tell us the next time they go visiting some of their family friends.”
“Look.” Liam stopped because he didn’t know how to convince his companion that he was going to leave. The decision had already been made after all.
