The Highwayman's Lady (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Karen Lingefelt

  Felicity closed her mouth, her eyes wide as she glanced around the ballroom again, as if checking to see if anyone might have overheard what he said.

  “Or perhaps you’d like to step into the garden for a breath of fresh air?” he suggested.

  At this hour, the garden would be just as dark as the library had been the other night.

  “Or maybe you’d prefer I just wait until tomorrow and take you for a drive along Rotten Row? Tell me, Felicity. What do you really want?”

  I want you, she longed to say, but she couldn’t say that here, in this ballroom. Of course, if they went to the library or out to the garden…

  She hadn’t forgotten the feel of his ungloved hands on her naked derriere, and just under her breasts as he pulled up her night rail and passionately kissed her. Or the flick of his fingertip against her throbbing, swollen center. Her pulse quickened at the realization that her nude body had been flush against his clothed one, and if either of them ever admitted it to anyone else, they would certainly be forced to marry at once. As it was, he’d been ready to marry her the very next day, but not for the same reason she wanted to marry him—because she was falling in love with him.

  He broke into her flustered musings. “Perhaps there’s nothing you want. Or are you trying to scream?”

  “As a matter of fact, I’d love to scream right now,” she babbled. “But—”

  “Felicity, our dear niece!” cried a duet of excited female voices. Two matrons, identical in appearance, materialized on either side of her and Jack, creating a square.

  “Aunt Minerva, Aunt Martha!” Felicity exchanged hugs with the twin widows of her father’s older brothers, and introduced them to Jack. “Where are Troy and Sophie?”

  “Down at her ancestral home in Hampshire for a wedding,” said Minerva, now the dowager Duchess of Ainsley. “Her cousin James, the Earl of Thorndale, is finally marrying. I thought you were at the Howland house party with Cordelia and Lydia?”

  “I was, but—”

  “Is it true what we heard about the betrothal ring Howland is giving to Lydia?”

  “I’m afraid so, Aunt Martha, but—”

  “Oh!” Martha looked as if she wished to stamp her foot, but she was nothing if not a lady. “If only that highwayman I heard about could’ve stolen that instead of your betrothal ring!”

  So the gossip had reached London. To Felicity’s dismay, Jack gave a curt bow and said, “If you ladies will excuse me…”

  “’Twas a pleasure to meet you, Captain Jordan.” Minerva waved her fan in dismissal before turning to her niece. “Don’t listen to Martha, at least in regards to your betrothal ring. At least the highwayman didn’t kill you, like the blackguards who waylaid my Gerard. Quite aside from that, your highwayman did you a great favor…”

  Not if it meant Felicity had to spend the rest of the evening being interrogated by her twin aunts. She gazed after Jack longingly while they continued to ply her with questions they went on to answer themselves, until he disappeared in the sea of similarly clad male guests.

  And she silently cursed herself for not being as impulsive as she’d been the night they met.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jack cursed himself as Felicity’s twin aunts swept her away like a rush of rising floodwaters. She said she wanted to scream, which could only mean that she wanted him to go away. She probably welcomed her aunts’ less than fortuitous—for him, anyway—interruption.

  She didn’t want to dance. She didn’t want to venture out to the garden, nor did she wish to rendezvous with him in the duke’s book room. Perhaps she didn’t want him to kiss her or touch her the way he had the last time they’d been there. Maybe she didn’t want him at all—and why should she, when with her new dowry she could have any man she wanted—even if none of them, to include Jack’s fellow war veterans, were good enough for her?

  At least in his self-biased opinion.

  Why would she want Jack when he was responsible for what others believed was her ruin? Why should she settle for him simply because of that, if there were so many other prospects for her to pick and choose from—prospects willing to overlook any scandal in her background for the chance to claim her dowry?

  He longed for some fresh air, but glimpsed more than one couple slipping out the French doors into the garden. He had no wish to linger in the moonlight surrounded by people with better romantic luck than he had. He headed for the book room, where he could open a window for fresh air.

  No sooner did he cross its threshold than the memory of his forbidden encounter with Felicity inside these four walls made him stiffen with the desire to finish what he’d started that night. But if he ever had that chance, he hoped to do so somewhere besides the room where the Duke of Halstead tended to his correspondence—or ignored it if it happened to be from Lady Tyndall. Jack wanted to seduce Felicity in a private place where there was no chance they’d be interrupted…no chance they’d be caught…no chance someone else would demand they marry.

  He felt his way to the window, his hand brushing across some drapery that gasped and pushed him away—in which case, it wasn’t drapery, but a woman.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “You must be hiding from someone.”

  “Yes, I am. Please go away.”

  Jack didn’t have to be told twice. The last thing he needed was to be caught in the duke’s book room with a woman he’d never even seen before. With long, swift strides, he returned to the front hall, nearly colliding with his host.

  He silently cursed again, standing stiffer than his arousal that was thankfully subsiding as he made a curt bow. “Your Grace.”

  “Jordan. Why are you coming out of my book room as if there’s a ghost in there? My valet thought he saw one in there the other night, but it turned out to be my cousin Felicity. She can’t be haunting my books again because I just saw her on the dance floor with Lord Ellington.” Halstead grimaced. “I can only hope nothing comes of that. He’s twice widowed and drowning in the River Tick thanks to his gambling losses.”

  Yet she wouldn’t dance with Jack. Ire flared within him.

  “Does my cousin really not want you, or have your affections been engaged elsewhere all this time?” Halstead flicked his eyes to the gaping doorway of his book room, as if he suspected the object of the alleged affections was still in there, putting herself in order.

  “Your cousin really does not want me.” Jack fought to keep the pain out of his voice. “I thought I would sulk in your book room for a short while, but it seems there’s someone else in there already, so I thought I should leave before a third party showed up. I guess I was too late.”

  Halstead’s stern expression softened. “Do you know who it is?”

  “We didn’t bother with introductions. She said only that she was hiding from someone, so I left before that person came searching. I trust I wasn’t too late to avoid him?”

  Halstead looked briefly flummoxed before brushing past Jack into the book room without another word or backward glance.

  “I guess I was,” Jack muttered, as he returned to the ballroom, satisfied that at least this time, he’d dodged the proverbial bullet.

  Sure enough, Felicity was on the dance floor. She appeared to be making her share of wrong steps, but then so was her partner, who looked a bit on the bosky side.

  Yet she wouldn’t dance with Jack.

  He found his sister and brother-in-law, told them he was leaving, and then he left to walk back to Ellsworth House.

  * * * *

  Over the next few days, Felicity turned away every gentleman who called in the wake of her coming-out ball. She might have been thrilled with all the flowers and sweetmeats, until Blake told her of numerous florists and confectioners in Town who were owed money by these same men, all of whom had been plying other heiresses with bouquets and sweets.

  The only man who didn’t call was Jack.

  She hoped to see him at Ellsworth House, after receiving an invitation to attend a ball ce
lebrating the recent marriage of his sister and brother-in-law.

  “They’ve postponed it once already,” Dolly remarked, as she and Blake and Felicity sat in the dining room taking tea that afternoon. “I suppose that brother of hers will be there, though I still say you can do better, Felicity, especially after he left your ball so early the other night.”

  Not for the first time, Felicity wondered if it was because he’d seen her dancing with Lord Ellington. She’d hated every minute of it, and once the set was over, she’d searched everywhere for Jack but in vain. She couldn’t bring herself to ask his sister if she knew his whereabouts.

  “And what about you, Blake? Didn’t you see a single chit that evening who made you think, ‘Duchess of Halstead’? And don’t say, ‘Just you, Mother.’”

  Blake looked trapped, and understandably so. After fleeing Lord Ellington, the first place Felicity had gone searching for Jack was the book room, only to find Blake with a woman who wasn’t one of the debutantes. Nonetheless, she was in no position to betray him to Dolly.

  He was saved by the butler, who entered the dining room and announced, “Lady Tyndall,” even as Cordelia nearly knocked him over as she followed quite literally on his heels.

  “Pray, dear aunt, what does Lydia need now?” asked Blake, eager for the diversion. “I can’t help noticing that since Felicity came to London, I haven’t received a single express from you.”

  Cordelia grabbed the nearest chair, as if to break an impending fall. “Then you didn’t send her to the farm in Northumberland, after all?”

  “Because a soldier just returned from the war happened to kiss her? As for the farm in Northumberland, I sold that old midden heap to Lord Gorham last year. It marches his estate.”

  Felicity waved her napkin. “Here I am, Aunt Cordelia.”

  “Merciful heavens!” Cordelia plopped into the nearest chair. “I vow I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Allow me to help you,” said Blake. “Lydia needs…”

  “Oh, Lydia needs nothing now. She and Lord Renton eloped!”

  Astonishment ripped through Felicity. “They what? I mean, they eloped?”

  “I’d like to say it happened because of that highwayman,” Cordelia huffed, as if very annoyed that she couldn’t find a way to link this latest debacle to said highwayman.

  Blake stiffened in his chair. “What highwayman?”

  “Didn’t you read the express I sent the same day Felicity left Howland Hall?”

  “Oh, you mean the one that didn’t mention anything about Lydia?” Dolly asked dryly. “You wrote only that Felicity had been ruined by a ‘thieving rogue’ who stole a kiss but couldn’t marry her even though she was no longer engaged to Renton, but you never explained why and Felicity couldn’t either, except to say, ‘Aunt Dolly? Cordelia!’ Which, now that I think about it, would explain everything.”

  “I meant the highwayman!” Cordelia said with a wring of her hands. “But getting back to my daughter and Renton—it seems he wished to marry her for quite some time. But he was already promised to Felicity and could do nothing about it.” She paused before adding, as if the afterthought was necessary, “Until she jilted him!”

  Felicity halfway expected Cordelia to shoot her a look of condemnation at that, but instead her aunt kept her eyes on Blake. Apparently she still meant to cut her niece.

  “What highwayman?” Blake asked again.

  Felicity pressed her hands into her lap, fighting the urge to grab her teacup lest she toss the contents at her aunt. “I did not jilt Renton, but if I’d had the slightest inkling about him and Lydia, I would’ve exercised the prerogative of ending our betrothal the moment I found out. Do you know for a fact that they’re already married? Unless they left Howland Hall right after I did, it’s entirely possible they haven’t yet reached Gretna Green.”

  “They never went to Scotland.” Cordelia said that as if it should have been obvious even to a lackwit like Cordelia herself. “He already had the special license, which permitted him to marry her anytime, anywhere. They are married and enjoying a seaside honeymoon in Brighton even as I sit here gasping for breath and wondering if anyone is going to offer me a cup of tea.”

  The butler promptly poured her a cup of tea and set it in front of her.

  “Well!” Felicity said. “If he already had the special license, then he must’ve acquired it before we left for Howland Hall. That should exonerate me of any allegations that I might’ve been the one to jilt him because of some highwayman.”

  “What highwayman? And note this is the third time I’m asking,” said Blake. “Shouldn’t this be the charm?”

  “If Renton already had the special license, then I doubt there’s anything I could’ve said or done to prevent this,” Felicity ranted on, again as if Blake hadn’t interjected. “Clearly he was too much of a coward to end our betrothal once he realized his feelings for Lydia.” Feelings she wished Jack might have for her.

  “But a gentleman cannot end a betrothal!” With the tongs Cordelia picked up a lump of sugar and held it over her teacup as if waiting for a drum roll.

  “In the first place, he’s not a gentleman,” Felicity snapped back, “and in the second place, he did. He was only waiting for me to make some scandalous misstep that would give him the excuse he needed while making me look as if I were the one at fault.”

  “Well, it’s done.” The sugar dropped into Cordelia’s teacup with a disgruntled splat. “And the whole house party came to an abrupt end because of it. I was deathly afraid I might be blamed and banished to who knows where since she did have an understanding with Lord Howland. Her father and his had planned their marriage for years. We were only waiting to emerge from mourning for one relative or another.” She cast a scathing, sidelong glance at her niece, as if the deaths in their family in recent years—and the deaths in Renton’s, resulting in his elevation to the peerage—were all Felicity’s fault.

  At least her aunt was no longer cutting her, but still Felicity silently fumed. Cordelia seemed to have forgotten that what made her so deathly afraid was the same thing she and Lady Howland meant to impose on Felicity herself.

  “How did you come to London?” Dolly inquired.

  “Lord Howland and his mother kindly invited me to ride in their carriage. Since he is in need of an heiress, he’s come to Town in hopes of marrying one now that he’s lost the prospect of Lydia’s dowry.”

  “How convenient! For you see, we’ve just dowered Felicity here—”

  “No!” Felicity cut in, her voice hoarse and raspy with sudden panic.

  “—to make her more attractive to suitable prospects in the wake of her unfortunate experience,” Dolly went on as if Felicity wasn’t even there.

  Cordelia widened her eyes at Dolly, and her face lit up. “I do believe I know what you’re thinking!”

  “I do believe I know, too,” Felicity rapped out, “and the answer is no! No! No!”

  Yet to her mounting horror, the two aunts continued to discuss this new and thoroughly diabolical idea as if neither she nor Blake even existed, let alone were present for the inauspicious inception. Alas, if they didn’t think Felicity existed, then how did they expect to…oh, she could barely stand to think about it, let alone speak it aloud as they were doing.

  Marry Lord Howland, who’d long been promised to Lydia, if not as long as Felicity had been promised to Renton?

  Marry the man who’d sent her away from his ancestral pile because of the scandal she’d supposedly brought down on his house party? Jack had said that Howland had been one of two friends, the other being Lord Rollo, who’d exhorted him to waylay a carriage for their own puerile amusement. Then Howland had sent her away in a manner normally reserved for people condemned to meet some grisly end on a scaffold, knowing he was just as much at fault as Jack or Felicity for the reason why.

  Never mind Howland was probably acting on orders from his domineering mother. Felicity would never forget the way Lady Howland and Cordelia h
ad talked about her just as Cordelia and Dolly were doing now—as if she were invisible. Lady Howland had insinuated the necessity for Felicity to leave the house party before her son’s betrothal to Lydia could be formally announced. And her craven son, instead of standing up to her and explaining the truth to her—in effect, confessing his own supporting role in Felicity’s downfall—had chosen to remain silent about his part and let her be thrown to the dogs.

  And never mind the turn matters had taken, thus sparing her and the dogs. The fact remained that he, his mother, and Cordelia had intended that day to send Felicity where she’d never be seen by anyone again.

  Just as screaming didn’t come as easily to her as it did to Lydia, neither did raising her voice to make herself heard over her aunts’ excited prattle. Or casting glances of entreaty at Blake, who only shook his head and smiled ruefully.

  “I’m sorry, Felicity,” he said. “At least my mother isn’t talking about my marriage prospects for a change. You must permit me to enjoy the respite.”

  She shot back with sarcasm. “Oh, thank you, cousin. You’re as noble and gracious as your title and style.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. With a deep breath she practically shouted, “I will not marry Howland!”

  “Felicity!” Dolly finally addressed her. “A lady never raises her voice unless—unless—”

  “Unless she’s being ravished by a highwayman,” Felicity supplied.

  “Ah, the highwayman again,” said Blake, his tone jocular.

  “Oh, merciful heavens!” Cordelia fluttered and swayed, nearly pitching to one side but grabbing the edge of the table as soon as she realized there wasn’t a chair close enough to her own to keep her from falling to the floor.

  “Felicity, I beg you to consider the importance of marrying him,” said Dolly. “Lydia and Renton have already caused a scandal by eloping when both were promised to others—of which you were one! If you marry Howland immediately, that would douse the fire. Or to be slightly less metaphorical, you might say it would confuse the enemy.”