by Amy Sandas
Eliza held back her smile. He had been so adamant in his little speech she couldn’t stop the bubble of amusement from rising in her chest. The poor man must have been beleaguered with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of attempts to get him to the altar.
She did not feel sorry for him one bit. It was likely one of the few down sides to being titled, attractive and so impossibly rich.
Nor could she keep herself from voicing one small correction. “Six.”
The marquess blinked. “What?”
“Six attempts. Rose and Regina are twins, so you may not have realized that Mother pushed each of them under your nose at different points during their shared season two years ago. I am actually the seventh Terribury daughter, and although I would like to say I am pleased to finally meet the illustrious object of Mother’s relentless efforts in finding us all suitable matches, it wouldn’t be entirely truthful, so I will skip that sentiment. I am sure you understand.”
Before he detected the insults in her characteristic run-off of words, Eliza quickly eased past him in the small space and opened the door to escape into the bedroom. She paced directly to the row of tall windows that spanned one wall of the room. Her own little bedroom boasted only a single window to open to the fresh air. She tilted her lips ruefully. Another benefit to being the Marquess of Rutherford and a close friend of their host, the Earl of Blackbourne.
She peered through the glass and looked out upon a grand expanse of perfectly trimmed lawn. Not a balcony, stone wall or strong limbed tree about.
So much from hoisting herself out the window.
“You won’t get out that way.”
Eliza started. She hadn’t even heard him come up behind her. “I had already deduced as much.”
She sighed and turned about to face him and was struck again by the blatant…manliness of his appearance. None of her sisters’ husbands came even close to boasting such a capable, athletic build. Her gaze was drawn involuntarily to the wide swath of skin revealed by his open shirt. She forced her breath through a suddenly constricted throat as the beat of her heart sped to a racing patter.
Closing her eyes, she turned her head to the side before opening them again. It seemed to work best to keep him in her peripheral vision. For some reason, staring at him full on twisted the thoughts in her head. She needed her full wits about her if she was to get past her mother.
“Are there any other doors? Perhaps leading to a sitting room or a secret passage or something?”
“There are no secret passageways at Silverly.”
Was there a hint of amusement in his voice?
Impossible. She was coming to believe the marquess did not possess even the tiniest drop of humor. Besides, she wasn’t about to look at him to find out if a smile managed to soften the harsh lines of his face.
Stay focused, Eliza.
“You may go out the way you came in.”
“But my mother—”
“Would have been taken care of by Simmons.”
“You are that confident in your man’s abilities?”
“Of course.”
She looked at him then. “Enough to stake your freedom on it?”
His brows lifted as if he were not accustomed to having his word questioned any more than she was.
“I would not have kept Simmons on for fourteen years if I did not have the utmost assurance in his ability to carry out every order and request to perfect completion.”
Eliza nodded, finally convinced. Of course, the marquess would expect only the best in his servants.
“All right then,” she said with a jaunty smile as she stepped around him and took long strides toward the door. “I will leave you to your toilette. This little encounter never happened.” With her hand on the doorknob, she turned to look over her shoulder. He stood near the bed, his large hands working at the buttons of his shirt.
“I never saw you,” he agreed without glancing her way.
It was on the tip of her tongue to warn him that her mother was likely already plotting another opportunity to throw the two of them together. If history with her older sisters was any indication, her mother would be relentless in trying to secure a proposal from the illustrious Marquess of Rutherford. Especially since Eliza, as the youngest and final daughter, was her last chance at snagging the top prize.
But then again, the marquess had likely thought of all that already and to date he had proven to be uncatchable, as he had stated himself.
He obviously needed no help from her.
As she slipped through the door and out into the hall, she still half-expected to see her mother sweeping down on her. Of course, she didn’t. Eliza hurried down the hall and around the corner toward the opposite wing where her own room was located.
Eliza would have to track down Simmons to ask him what magic he had employed to get her mother to do what he wanted. Her father would likely pay dearly for the trick.
Chapter Two
Michael Ellison Gerard, the Marquess of Rutherford, entered the Earl of Blackbourne’s study without knocking and immediately spotted his friend standing by the liquor service.
Blackbourne raised his head as the door opened. He wore an expression much like a fox caught in the dovecote but relaxed when he saw it was only Rutherford.
“Come on then,” the earl said with a casual wave of welcome. “Just in time for a drink.”
Rutherford closed the door behind him and came forward to take the brandy Blackbourne held out to him.
“You are not hiding from your wife, are you?” Rutherford asked in a wry tone. “I am not certain I wish to be an accomplice against that lady.”
The earl grinned and raised his glass. “No worries, my man. She agreed to allow me a couple of uninterrupted hours each day as long as I give her the same.”
“A marriage of equality, I see,” Rutherford commented dryly as he went to take his place in one of the overstuffed leather chairs placed before the unlit fireplace.
“Trust me,” the earl replied with an easy grin, “it is the only way. The benefits of keeping one’s wife happy far outweigh whatever may be lost in compromise.”
“Though it pains me to acknowledge your superiority, even in this single instance, I will allow you to remain the expert on that score,” Rutherford readily conceded.
Even after six years, he still hadn’t gotten used to how comfortable his old friend had gotten in the role of husband and father. He lifted his snifter in a subtle salute and tasted the fine amber liquid. Not as good as his own stash, but good enough.
Blackbourne’s smile slipped a little as he took the other chair. “On that point, I apologize for not giving you fair warning. I knew the Terriburys had been invited, but I had no idea there was another daughter making her come-out this season, or that she would be in attendance with her parents this weekend.”
The image of the young Miss Elizabeth Terribury flashed through Rutherford’s mind and he frowned. It annoyed him that a mental image of the girl formed so readily and that the vision was not altogether unpleasant.
He would prefer not to recall her curvaceous little figure or the way her full cleavage pressed against the bodice of her gown. Or the fact that her eyes were a muddled mix of green and brown and held an impertinent combination of intelligence and humor. And he really wished he hadn’t noticed the gleam of sexual interest in her gaze when she had boldly examined his nude body.
Of course, at that point he hadn’t known who she was and he had reacted to her perusal as any man would, feeling her gaze as if it were her fingertips traveling over his skin. It had been an unexpectedly sensual experience. One that had been recalled to his memory multiple times throughout the day since.
Her innocence had been painfully obvious, and that alone should have been enough to turn him off. Innocent girls tended to think in terms of matrimony, and he had trained himself into steering clear of any woman, young or old, who might have that goal in mind.
Not that he intended to never marry. He just
intended to do it in his own time and on his own terms.
It was something Lady Terribury had not been able to accept even after nearly a decade of hunting him through ballrooms and dining rooms, soirées and weekend parties.
“At least this is the last of them,” Rutherford commented, less to put his friend at ease than to remind himself that once he made it through this season he would be free of the tenacious Lady Terribury once and for all.
“Elizabeth, I believe her name is,” Blackbourne went on conversationally. “I met her only briefly, but she seemed a pleasant young woman. Witty humor, sensible. Not the dramatic sort like her mother, and a much better conversationalist than Lord Terribury.”
He eyed the earl suspiciously. “Are you trying to sell the girl?”
Rather than deny it, Blackbourne shrugged and lifted his brandy for a drink. “It wouldn’t kill you to start considering your options, you know.”
Rutherford scoffed. “You sound like Grandmother. She has been singing that song for years. I assure you, I have plenty of time before I must shackle myself to a wife. And when I do, the Terribury pond is the last one I’ll be fishing from.”
He was saved from having to hear the earl’s response as the door opened and two men staggered in.
The Lords Grimm and Whitely rounded out the set of friends that had formed during their shared years at school. In their youth, the four men had been inseparable as they caroused about town in search of amusement. Though each of them had very different personalities, they shared a loyalty to each other forged over years of willful indiscretions. Regardless of how wild their antics had been or how hazardous their scrapes, no word of their exploits ever made it to the scandal pages. Even Lord Whitely, who’d managed to grace the lips of the gossips a thousand times over for his personal behavior and even seemed to delight in his notoriety, would never consider betraying the confidence of his friends.
The strength of their friendship held firm today though so much had changed since the wilder times of their youth. Blackbourne had been gone for years touring the world before returning to England and reuniting with the bride he had abandoned. Whitely and Grimm had both fallen into the marriage trap as well, though via very different routes. Grimm had married the girl of his father’s choosing and could barely tolerate being the same room with his shrewish wife. Whitely, on the other hand, had spent years reveling in the ignoble practice of luring young innocents into dark corners. It was inevitable he eventually be forced to do the honorable thing by a righteous father. Lucky for him, he’d adored the chit who had become his wife and still did.
“Here now, and didn’t I tell you we’d find them,” Whitely was saying with a bright grin as he clapped Grimm on the back before heading to the liquor service. “I am sure the four of us can wrack our brains to find a way out of your dilemma.”
Rutherford noticed then that Grimm had the look of a man who had eaten some bad fish—green complexioned and dragged down with regret.
Whitely came around to stand by the fireplace with a drink in hand. His eyes were bright with suppressed humor as he nodded across the room to his tormented friend. “Tell them what you did, mate.”
Grimm groaned with heavy despair, fell onto a sofa set against the wall and reached to pull a pillow over his face. “I’ve signed my bloody death warrant is what.” The words were muffled by the pillow but audible enough.
None of the men in the room were surprised. Grimm had a tendency toward a dramatic form of melancholia, and Rutherford suspected he was exaggerating his circumstances as was typical. Of course, Grimm also had a dreadful penchant for making horrible decisions, which was why his brutish father made most of them for him. As one would expect, this did not lend Grimm much confidence in his own abilities to handle the little bumps in life. In most cases, his problems could be solved with a little ingenuity and a pair of bollocks.
“What this time, Grimm?” Rutherford asked finally.
He had come to the country to relax, not to watch his friend wallow in the depths of despair. He felt a twinge of sympathy for the man who had spent his entire life under the oppressive thumb of his father’s heavy hand. Poor Grimm seemed destined to remain downtrodden no matter how hard Rutherford or the others had tried to lift him up over the years. Best to help him through his latest calamity so they could move on to more enjoyable distractions.
Grimm groaned again as he pushed himself to a seated position.
Casting a wry smile aside to the other men, Blackbourne rose and handed his own drink to Grimm who promptly downed what remained in the snifter. He held the glass out in a silent request for more and the earl obliged. Once he had another full glass in hand, Grimm filled his lungs with a heavy breath and lifted his dreary face to his friends.
“I am sure you will both get a grand laugh out of the whole thing. Whitely did.”
“Whitely laughs at everything.” Rutherford replied, to which Whitely chuckled in point of fact as he sipped his drink. “Tell your tale and we will decide the humor of it ourselves.”
“You know the signet ring I always wear,” Grimm began, “the one that came down to me through four generations.”
“The one currently absent from your finger,” Rutherford offered dryly.
Whitely snorted back a laugh.
“Bloody hell, this is serious,” Grimm retorted with flash of uncharacteristic anger. “My father is going to string me up.”
“No need to panic. We’ll find the ring,” Blackbourne assured him, throwing Whitely a look of mild admonishment. “Where did you last have it?”
Grimm hesitated and the greenish hue of his skin turned red with embarrassment.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Whitely interjected with an expression of pure delight as he took the chair Blackbourne had vacated. “He gave the heirloom to his mistress.”
Silence fell over the room as Rutherford and Blackbourne digested the information.
“Were you foxed?” Rutherford found his voice first and was surprised by how even it sounded when he wanted to follow Whitely’s lead and laugh out loud at the ridiculous situation their friend had put himself in.
“No.”
“Under physical duress?”
“No,” Grimm groaned, dropping his head into his hands.
“Then what made you think it was a good idea to give your mistress such a valuable, not to mention identifiable, item?”
“She wanted a keepsake to remind her of our time together.” There was a long pause before Grimm lifted his head again. “I had nothing else on me at the time.”
The marquess looked at his long-time friend and considered how nice it would be to be so careless with one’s decisions. Having inherited his title and responsibilities at a very young age when his parents were killed together in an accident, Rutherford had always been fully aware of the far-reaching consequences of every step he took, large or small. And if he ever forgot it, his grandmother had been there ready to harp on him until he swore to stay focused on duty and the honor of the Rutherford legacy.
He shook his head in disbelief at his friend’s reckless stupidity. Taking a sip of his brandy, he wished it were something a bit stronger. Then he realized the others in the room were all watching him and waiting for his response.
He gave a short nod and agreed with Grimm’s previous assessment. “Your father is going to string you up.”
Chapter Three
“There she is,” Grimm announced a touch louder than was necessary as he lifted his hand to gesture across the modest-sized ballroom.
Rutherford stopped him with a heavy hand on his arm. “No need to point. Describe her location.”
Grimm shifted beside him and Rutherford wished the man would settle down. For each hour his ring remained in the possession of his lady love, Grimm’s panic had grown. Rutherford could only shake his head and try not to show his amusement. It was hard to fathom how one could be so swept away by passion as to completely lose every ounce of good judgment. And poor Grim
m did not have much to spare.
So Rutherford had offered, or rather been unanimously nominated, to help his friend find a solution to the very real dilemma. When Grimm’s father learned of the loss of the ring, he may not string him up per se, but he would very likely cut off a large portion of Grimm’s allowance. Such a punishment would be devastating to Grimm since he had a wife who adored spending money, no way to earn any income of his own and a financial situation that relied solely upon his father’s generosity and the promise of his inheritance.
Rutherford wasn’t sure why Grimm couldn’t just walk up to the lady and ask for the damned trinket back. It seemed the obvious solution, but Grimm refused such a method. He thought himself in love with the woman and refused to hurt her by reclaiming the gift.
“She is there by that grouping of potted ferns. The rather tall one with black hair.”
The marquess glanced across the room in the direction of Grimm’s pointed gaze with a heavy sigh. His friend had absolutely no subtlety.
He located the ferns quickly enough and flinched at what he saw. “Good God, you don’t mean Lady Terribury.”
“What? Er, no. The younger lady there, her daughter, Lady Ashdown.”
“Your mistress is one of the Terriburys?” Would he ever escape their cloying presence?
Grimm looked at him blankly. “What of it? Judith is a delight. A goddess. A—”
“Understood,” Rutherford interrupted with an incredulous shake of his head.
He looked back across the room and reluctantly studied the object of his friend’s reckless affection. If he recalled correctly, the lady in question was the second of the Terribury brood and the one who most resembled her mother in appearance and manner. As he tried to draw forth any other details he could remember about Lady Ashdown that may assist in his effort to resolve Grimm’s little problem, he was distracted as two more joined the group by the ferns.
