She would never have given Blandbury a second glance if it hadn’t been for her father’s welcome home three days prior, delivered with a stern edict that’d stolen any light from her heart.
Clarence Goode, Baron Cresthaven, had always cowed her. But never so much as when she was made to stand before the desk he’d mounted on a massive dais in his study, simply so he could look down at people as if from behind the Queen’s Bench in court. He was a veritable force of nature, tall and broad, but not in the way that Titus had become. Not with that lean strength and effortless grace. Her father was a rotund man with the dimensions of a whiskey barrel and the hands of a cooper, rather than a nobleman.
He had stared down at her with a disapproval she hadn’t yet earned, regarding her with an assessment any ewe at auction might still find insulting.
“Every man wishes for a boy to take on his legacy,” he’d begun, stroking at his impressive mustache as if delivering a homily of great import. “Since your mother and I were not so blessed with an heir, that doesn’t change the nature of the necessity. Were you a son, you’d be groomed to take over my title and my company. I’d apprentice you to the shipping trade and school you in politics so you would be a pinnacle of the Tories.” His eyes had taken on a dreamy cast then, as if this was a pleasant fiction he visited often in daydreams.
Nora hadn’t been able to contain a sneeze, and the sound brought his disapproving gaze squarely back to her. He made it immediately clear her sinuses were not the only part of her body he currently found offensive. “As you are a woman, you haven’t the constitution nor the intellect for such matters, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a duty to uphold to your family as firstborn.”
Nora hadn’t known what to say to that, so she kept her own council. Brevity wasn’t among her father’s repertoire, so she settled in for a lengthy diatribe.
“If our legacy is to advance, then you must marry well, as you know. I am spending a veritable fortune on this upcoming ball to put you out in society, and it is incumbent upon you to make a match in your first season, to make way for Prudence. You and your sister shouldn’t be coming out so close together, but I suppose that couldn’t be helped what with the entire year it took you to gain your strength after your contracting that dastardly fever.”
He said this as if fevers were an affliction of the morally degenerate, and indeed, they’d treated her as such for quite some time after her illness.
Perhaps if she hadn’t collapsed at the garden party she’d been forced to attend at Buckingham Palace, against the doctor’s wishes, she’d have not been so thusly berated.
Her father continued, picking up a pen and opening a folder to study its contents as if the conversation was not important enough to keep his complete attention. “With your charm and beauty, and your competitive dowry, you could snag a Duke if you set your cap to one. There being a marked shortage of marriageable Dukes, I’ve been talking to the Marquess of Blandbury regarding his son, Michael. It is understood between his father and me, that you will have a proposal at next month’s end after no fewer than four social outings with him.”
At that, her stomach had lurched, and she’d had to stabilize herself by gripping the high-backed chair she had not been invited to sit in. “But, Papa…how can I be all but promised before I’ve even had a chance to—”
He stood then, startling her into silence. “You’ve always been an amenable girl, Honoria. Something I’ve admired in you. Don’t let us disappoint now.” He’d moved to the window to stare out over his view of the West End. “With the Marquess as an ally, I could finally clinch the support of the Home Secretary and get my hands on the Metropolitan Police Commissioner position. That done, I’d run the most powerful organized force in the Empire that isn’t military.”
And that’s what it was all about to him.
Power. Prestige. Clout.
She’d be bargained away so her father could play at having a force of minions that would make him feel as though the city belonged to him.
And her buyer was this incomparable idiot who hadn’t so much as allowed her a word in edgewise for going on ten minutes now.
Nora took in a breath as deep as her constricting peach gown would allow, and tried to listen to what the braggart was saying. Something about what he and his awful society of Oxford friends did to prank the unsuspecting acquaintances of their parents.
He talked too loudly with irritating animation, his eyes alight with self-satisfaction. “You see, it’s not stealing, what we do. It’s merely a lark. We don’t take jewels or silver, because what’s the fun in that? We all have plenty of our own, and often such items won’t be missed for days or weeks. However, the lads and I pilfer small portraits or love letters, bank notices or diaries. You know, things that are impossible to replace. Then, we sit back and watch the mayhem ensue. One time, Lady Birmingham sacked her entire household!”
He brayed with laughter while Nora’s insides twisted.
“That’s…horrible,” she gasped.
“Nah.” He waved his hand in front of his face as if batting away her rebuke. “It’s harmless mostly.”
“Not if people are losing their positions. That’s how they make their living. How they feed their families.”
He rolled his eyes. “They’ll find another. Who wants to be a servant, anyhow?”
She stared at him, aghast, before finding her voice. “I’m sure no one fantasizes about a life in servitude, but as you’re aware, it’s a vocation of distinction to work in a noble house. Not to mention a far sight better for many than the dangerous work at the factories, and—”
“Oh, please don’t tell me you’re one of those people in the ton who fancy themselves a liberal,” he sneered, leaning his hip on the banister.
“I don’t know what I am,” she replied honestly. “I merely fail to see how being so unkind is considered entertaining.”
Rather than allow her rebuke to riffle him, he leaned closer, his pale blue eyes darkening with lurid notions. “I’d be kind to you, if you’d let me.”
Suddenly she was very aware that her side of the railing abutted a wall, and that no one could see them out here unless they came through the doors and turned in their direction. “Oh. Well that’s—”
He leaned closer. “I’d be downright generous…if you’d return the favor.”
She cleared a gather of nerves from her throat. “I can’t possibly know what you mean.”
His lip quirked, but not in the direction she thought it would. “Don’t play coy. Not with me. If we’re to be married, then everything is permissible.” His step toward her felt like an advance, and she retreated in kind, bumping into the wall behind her.
“Are we not supposed to see each other four more times than this?” she reminded him, feeling very cornered. She glanced to the side, meaning to slip away from the wall and dash back inside where they might find someone lingering in the hall if they were lucky. “We’ve only just met.”
He leaned in to brace one hand next to her head, cutting off her path of escape. “I’ve danced with you twice. Our engagement is all but announced.”
Her thoughts began to race, pinging about like a trapped bird looking for escape but doing nothing but crashing into walls. “But I—wouldn’t it do to wait until—?”
He didn’t kiss her so much as he smashed his mouth to hers with such force, their teeth met. As she opened her lips to protest, his tongue punched past them, filling her entire mouth and causing her to gag.
His lips were wet and salty, still flavored of the fish they’d had at the banquet, which caused her own meal to rise up her esophagus in revolt.
She broke the kiss by wrenching her head to the side, and he followed her, pressing his mouth to her cheek, breathing hot air against her flesh as he sought to reclaim the kiss.
His weight was crushing, and it seemed as if all the air available to her in the world was his moist, fetid inescapable breath.
“I don’t think we should,�
�� she said weakly.
“Who gives a damn about should?” he said against her skin, his hands resting on her hips. “This moment is ours, Nora. You’re the most beautiful catch of the season and you’re mine.”
She hated the way he said that word. The possession in it disgusted her, and still she did her best to remain calm. She’d actually been taught in finishing school how to possibly discourage such advances. What had they said? When men are ruled by their baser natures, appeal to their higher intellect. Remind them they are better.
“We’re not engaged, Michael,” she said in a beseeching whisper. “If I were caught like this, I’d be ruined.”
He scoffed. “I’d still marry you. My father needs your dowry for his estate. Make me a happy man now, and I’ll make you a marchioness.”
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t—”
His mouth caught hers again, cutting off her words. His tongue invaded as tears sprung to her eyes. Hands roamed up and down her waist, his hips pressing her to the side, forcing her against the banister until it bit into her thigh.
Panic gripped her, clawing at her skin. What were her options? To allow him to do this to her or to make a reputation-shredding scene. He was going to be her husband… but how far did he expect to go tonight?
Was this what intimacy was going to be like with him?
Forever?
A soft, low growl emanated from the shadows.
And then Michael was gone.
In the time it took for her to gasp a breath into her starving lungs, Titus Conleith had thrown the future Marquess of Blandbury onto the ground and imprisoned him there by grinding his heel against the man’s jaw.
In different circumstances, Nora might have found the sight of the boy’s cheek squished between Titus’s shoe and the ground rather humorous as his body flopped about.
But at the moment, she was too distressed and astonished to ever imagine laughing again.
“Miss Goode said no,” Titus informed him with a lethal calm she found more terrifying than if he’d snarled or roared.
“All right. All right, man. Let me up!” Blandbury’s voice cracked when Titus’s heel ground his face further into the flagstone. His golden eyes glittered with a dangerous intent, as if he considered popping the man’s entire head like a ripe melon.
“No.” Nora rushed forward and took his arm. “Please don’t. Not tonight; it would ruin everything.”
His features became still as stone, but a conflagration blazed in those tiger eyes.
It could have blistered her skin if he stared at her for long.
However, at her behest, he took his shoe off the boy’s jaw and even lifted Blandbury to his feet, going so far as to brush a smudge off his dinner jacket.
The lord’s features mottled with rage. “You’re only a footman? You dare to put your hands on me?”
Titus appeared unaffected, bringing his nose level with her aggressor’s. “You put your hands where they didn’t belong first, remember. That deserved an answer.”
This time, it was Michael who took a step in retreat. “It is you who’ll answer for this, the both of you!” He smoothed down his mussed hair and pulled at the lapels of his jacket with anxious, jerky movements as he backed toward the door. “The engagement is off, you hear me? A complete and utter fantasy, thinking to marry so far beneath me. I’ll ruin you.” He jabbed a finger at Titus, who’d positioned himself in between the furious lord and Nora. “And you. You’ll be stricken from every decent household in the Empire. You’ll die of some god-awful lung disease in the factories. Or worse, the workhouse.”
“Marquess of Blandbury?” Clad in a footman’s livery, Titus lifted a white-gloved hand to tap his chin as if recalling a memory. “Isn’t it well understood that your father is dying of cancer?”
Michael’s complexion deepened from mottled to purple. “You don’t deserve to say his bloody name you—”
Titus’s head cocked to the side. “Is it cancer, though? Or syphilis? What would they think, the Tories, about a man who can’t abstain from syphilitic whores? What would the papers say?”
At that, Michael blanched, and Nora was again repelled by a man whose skin was so reactive to his every emotion. “How do you—where did you find out?”
“What matters is what I’ll do with the information. Which is nothing if you apologize to Miss Goode, go to the washroom to sort yourself out, and—after thanking the Baron and his wife for their hospitality—get the fuck out of this house. Because you’re right about one thing…” Titus prowled forward, his arm bent behind his back in the posture of a solicitous footman, which made his words land with all the more gravitas as they slid into the night. “There’s no hope of a wedding, but I know they can arrange a funeral even without a body.”
Nora watched with queer, horrific fascination as Michael struggled to breathe. He just stood there, saying nothing until Titus feinted a threatening lunge forward.
“I’m sorry!” he cried. “I—I apologize. I shan’t touch you again.”
Nora didn’t forgive him, of course, but she nodded, if only to release him from their company so he could scamper down the hall.
Once he’d gone, she was seized by a bout of intense vertigo, feeling as if the floor beneath her had become a small sea craft tossed by waves. She collapsed onto a stone bench, not certain her legs could take her weight for much longer.
The repercussions of this would be dire. Her father was going to be so angry, and that frightened her a little, but not so much as the tongue just shoved down her throat.
Repulsed by the memory, Nora wiped at her mouth with the back of her glove. Only when it came away damp did she realize tears now streaked down her cheeks in hot rivulets.
A handkerchief was pressed into her fingers, and she looked up to see Titus staring down at her with that alarmingly indecipherable gaze.
“Thank you,” she managed.
Swallowing, she scooted over and gathered some of the ruffles of her dress to make space for him on the bench.
He took it, folding himself carefully next to her, making no move to touch her as she turned away to wipe her tears and dab at her nose.
“Did he hurt you?” The question was low. Dark. And it made her turn to look at him.
“No, not really. I’m not crying about that.”
He nodded before his gaze lowered. “If the violence frightened you, I—”
“No.” She put her hand on his arm to stop that thought from forming, and he became instantly rigid beneath her touch. “No, you were wonderful. I don’t know what I would have done. What I would have allowed him to do because I was too afraid or embarrassed to stop him.”
“Allowed him to do…” Titus didn’t finish the thought. He just stared at her hand on his arm as his brows drew together.
“How could I have stopped him without ruining everything?” she rushed to explain. “My father would have been furious with me. My reputation ruined. Any chances of a good marriage, to him or otherwise, completely dashed. My—my entire life would have been over. He knew he had put me in that position, I think. That I was truly helpless, because I’d gone with him into the dark. How could I have been so thoughtless?” She hit her own knee with the hand that clutched the handkerchief.
A frustrated mélange of emotions welled up inside of her. Resentment. Fear. Animosity. For Michael. For her parents. For the entire dastardly world.
For herself.
“That was—” Her breath hitched on a raw sob. She began to shake with the power of her reaction. “That was my first kiss.”
She buried her face into the handkerchief, thinking it felt warm and familiar as she allowed a few more tears to fall. She’d taught herself to cry quietly from early on, and to regain her composure in an instant, forcing it all down beneath a façade of serenity before anyone could ascertain a weakness with which to whip her.
And she might have composed herself now, if a large, gentle hand hadn’t splayed on her back and stayed there
.
Titus didn’t babble meaningless words. Nor did he caress her or crush her to him. He asked no questions and gave no encouragements. He offered comfort merely by being there, by letting her be and allowing her to feel what she needed to feel without the fear of reproof.
It must have been why she curled toward him, tucking her head against his shoulder, breathing in the cedar-sweet smell of his collar and neck. She could think of no other reason to do what was so utterly out of character. Something about the silent strength of him—something she fancied she glimpsed in that alert, opaque gaze of his—drew her toward him like a viper mesmerized by an exotic flute.
His arm cradled her against his side, the other reaching toward her face as he looked down at her with those extraordinary eyes. He’d taken off his gloves, she noted, as his fingers lifted toward her cheek. He hesitated before he touched her, as if waiting for permission.
Nora’s lashes swept down, causing more tears to fall as she turned her face into his awaiting palm.
He thumbed away the drops with skin so rough it abraded hers, but still she buried her cheek deeper against his hand, seeking the warmth and strength she found there, tempered by utter gentility and something else she couldn’t begin to define.
For the first time in her short life, Nora felt as if the pressure of the entire sky wasn’t doing its utmost to crush her into the ground. This boy had strength enough in his shoulders to bear the burden that was her for a moment.
And he seemed willing enough.
She couldn’t say how long they stayed like that before something restless stirred inside of her. Something that wanted more of him. Of this.
“Titus?” she whispered.
“Yes, Miss Goode?”
“Will you call me Nora? My friends all call me Nora.”
He paused. “If I took such liberties, I’d lose my position here.”
It was odd, him saying that, when they found themselves in such an intimate posture. But, of course. How stupid of her to forget. She wasn’t the only one constrained by her station. “I only meant when we’re alone.”
Courting Trouble Page 4
