by Rose Lerner
Nev breathed an inward sigh of relief. Miss Brown had kept her word. “Yes, sir, and the mortgage papers too.”
Mr. Brown looked them over with an expert eye. “Well, the list’s honest, at least,” he said with some surprise.
Nev stiffened. “Certainly. Wait a moment-how the deuce did you know that?”
For the first time, Mr. Brown’s eyes twinkled a bit. “I asked a few questions. Do you think a man gets to be as rich as I am without being able to do a little thing like investigate a fellow’s debts?”
Nev had never considered the matter. “I suppose not, sir.”
Mr. Brown was looking at the total again. “Do you know, considering how much it’s going to cost me to dig you out of this hole you’ve got yourself into, I wonder if I ought not to ask you to change your name.”
“Er-change my name, sir?”
Mr. Brown nodded. “When my friend Lewis married his daughter to an impoverished nob like yourself, he made the fellow change his name to Lewis. And he was a dook.” Mr. Brown looked at his clerk. “The Browns of Loweston. It has a nice ring, don’t it?”
Nev stared.
“Indeed, sir. But I believe the fad these days is for hyphenation.” The clerk turned to Nev, eyes glowing with enthusiasm. “Which do you like better, my lord? Brown-Ambrey or Ambrey-Brown? I should think Ambrey-Brown, myself. Very euphonious.”
Nev tried to imagine his mother’s face if he told her he was changing his name to Ambrey-Brown.
Mr. Brown and his clerk burst out laughing. “Naw, I’m only teasing you, m’boy.” Mr. Brown clapped Nev on the back, almost knocking him over. “Imagine an earl named Brown!” The brewer laughed harder. The clerk grinned at Nev.
Nev knew a good prank when he saw one. He grinned good-naturedly back. “My congratulations. I was utterly taken in.” He laughed. “My mother would have had spasms.” He laughed harder.
Mr. Brown looked approving.
At the end of it he was ushered in to see Miss Brown again. She did not look as if she had slept well, but her expression was composed as she invited him to sit. “Have you and my father arranged everything to your satisfaction?”
“Indeed,” he said. “I have copies of the settlements right here. They aren’t signed yet-he said he and your mother want to get to know me a little better before they make their decision, and I’m invited to dinner this evening-”
“Yes, I know. Can I see them?”
He didn’t know how to refuse her, so he handed them over. To his surprise, she sat down at the little writing desk and began reading them methodically.
She was only on the third page when she gave a little cry of distress. “Oh, you have let Papa tie up over half the money in my jointure! I’m sure you could have talked him down to seventy-five thousand if you’d tried.”
He frowned at her. “It seemed fair. The money is his, after all.”
“Yes, but that is what you are marrying me for, and it seems a deal too bad if you must go to all the trouble and not get what you need!” She looked daggers at the contract. “And see here, if I die without heirs that whole portion reverts to my parents! Oh, I knew I should have insisted on being there when you drew these up!”
Unexpectedly, Nev felt a surge of protectiveness, mingled unpleasantly with guilt. Miss Brown deserved better than to be married for her money. “Morbid little thing, ain’t you? But I’ve no intention of letting you die without heirs.” He favored her with a lascivious smile. Nev ’s lascivious smile had been known to attract Cyprians from as far as fifty feet away.
Miss Brown smiled back distractedly. “How on earth did your seat come to be mortgaged? Aren’t those usually tied up in a settlement of some sort?”
“Entails have to be renewed every other generation.” Damn it to Hell, she was sure to think him the worst sort of fool. “And they can be broken. When I turned twenty-one, my father told me he wanted to sell a tract of land we had no need for, to fund an annuity for me until I inherited and a portion for my younger sister. We would break the old entail and draw up a new one that didn’t include that land.” He looked away. “As you have collected, I’m not much good with documents.”
Miss Brown’s jaw dropped. “He told you that you were merely breaking the entail to sell a small piece of land-and then he mortgaged the family seat without your knowledge?”
“I know it sounds fantastic. I know I ought to have read the new entail more closely. But there were pages and pages, with the most dashed tiny printing you ever saw, and I-” I was in a hurry to meet my friends, get roaring drunk, and gamble away some money, he didn’t say. Her pitying expression made him feel faintly ill.
She straightened her shoulders. “No matter. In the future you shall have me to read over such things for you.”
That odd combination of protectiveness and guilt rose in him again. “I really will try to make you happy,” he said, not knowing what else he could offer her.
To his surprise, she flushed. “Actually, I-I made a list. Of-of terms. I thought some things were best agreed on right away, while you can still change your mind.”
Fat chance of me changing my mind, he thought with a flash of resentment. He needed that money. But-“you made a list?”
She flushed harder. “It’s a habit of mine. So that I am sure not to forget things.”
“All right,” he said blankly.
She pulled a sheet of paper out of a desk drawer, with a column of neat writing down the side. She frowned at it. Her blush was working its way under the neckline of her gown. Nev wondered how far it extended. He pictured it sweeping over the curve of her breasts and darkening her nipples…
He struggled to focus on her voice.
“I suppose there is but one,” she was saying. “I am very fond of my parents, my lord. I could not be mistress in a home in which they were not welcome. I don’t mean you must entertain them with your friends, but just that they might visit me, and perhaps have dinner with us every so often when we dine en famille.” Miss Brown met his gaze squarely. “I won’t have my mother hurt. I know she drops her h’s, but if she should ever get so much as a hint that you despise her for it-”
Nev ’s eyes widened. “Gad no! A petty rogue I should be, to take her money and condescend to her. I can’t answer for my family, I’m afraid. My mother can be-difficult.”
She bit her lip. “I understand that one cannot choose one’s relations or always control their behavior as one would like. But I must have, at least, your word that you will do your best to make her civil.”
“You have it.” He was relieved to have got off so lightly. Then it dawned on him that there was a whole column of writing on that sheet. “Wait a moment! That can’t be all you’ve got there.”
She glanced at him, and with a jerky movement crumpled the paper. “Never mind. It was very late when I wrote this. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Now Nev was dying of curiosity. “Oh, no you don’t.” He made a grab for the paper. She snatched it back quick enough, but didn’t recognize the gesture for the feint it was. His other arm snaked around her and seized the fist that held the scrap of paper. Unfortunately, this brought her breasts in contact with his waistcoat, distracting him for the crucial moment it took her to spin round and try for escape. Nev narrowed his eyes and lunged.
A few seconds later she was pinned to his chest, his arm across her arms and stomach, and he was uncurling each clenched finger from around the note.
“Let me go!” she said in a low voice. That was a good sign. She didn’t want to call the house down upon him. Yes, that was good, because Nev didn’t want to let go of her. She was warm and small and fit beautifully against him, and besides, he had a very good view of her neckline from this angle. And she was breathing hard. Mmm. Unable to resist, he let his grip on her body relax and slid a hand up to cup her breast.
She drew in a sharp, startled breath and let go of the note. Catching it, Nev bent to kiss her neck. If he had calculated right, she would tilt her h
ead back and arch her body, and that would press her breast more firmly against his palm…
But Nev had calculated wrong, as usual. She jerked away from him as if he had the plague. “Of all the low-down, dirty tricks! Give it back!”
Nev sighed. “I don’t think I shall.” He straightened out the sheet of paper. She made one last attempt to snatch it back, but he held it over his head, and she was apparently too dignified-or too afraid for her virtue-to tussle for it.
Retreating to the window seat, she sat with her face averted. “You needn’t consider them binding. I told you I had reconsidered.” Her mouth was set in a cold little line.
For a moment he almost gave in. Then he realized what she was doing. “Oh, no. No feminine wiles. Trying to make me feel guilty, are you? Well, I won’t stand for it.” He held the paper in the light and read it. 1. No leaving me in the country while he gallivants about town. His stomach clenched. That had been one of his father’s favorite tricks, leaving his wife and children in the country while he went up to town for a few days on business-and came back two weeks later. But he and Miss Brown would both be rusticating for a while. From what his solicitor had told him, Loweston was a wreck. He didn’t think Miss Brown would find that comforting.
2. Do not overspend our income. “I assure you, I’m just as eager as you are to stay out of debt.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I know, my lord, but I am also aware you have been used to every luxury. Old habits are hard to break.”
In twenty-three years, he could not once remember refusing a dare-old habits were, indeed, hard to break. He straightened. “I can do it!”
A hint of a smile curved her lips. “If you say so.”
She would see. He could be a miser if he wished to. And yet…he was not sure how. He had always been a spendthrift; he had only ever pursued amusements that cost money.
3. Don’t be ashamed of my parents. They’d discussed that. 4. Don’t be ashamed of me. He frowned. “Suspicious little thing, aren’t you? Do you imagine I’ll pretend I don’t know you at parties and make you walk ten paces behind me in the street?”
She paled a little, and he was startled to see he was near the truth. “I hardly know what I imagined, my lord. I asked you not to read that, but if my doubts were unworthy of you, I apologize.”
“I don’t know what you’re so worried about. You’re hardly vulgar.”
Her lips tightened. “They say what is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh.”
Nev wished he knew who “they” were, so that he could wring the vipers’ necks. He didn’t know how to convince her. “The behavior of a gentleman’s wife reflects on him,” he tried at last. “Her honor is his honor. I cannot be ashamed of you without being ashamed of myself.”
“Have you never been ashamed of yourself, my lord?”
That drew him up short. Her list made it plain what she thought of him-that he was a rake and a ne’er-do-well with no more self-restraint or capacity for self-reflection than a newborn infant, who would spend her money on himself and despise her. Why would she think anything else? “Of course I have. Knowing what you do of me, can you doubt it?”
“The mere fact of wrongdoing does not in itself produce repentance. After all, you have done no more than a hundred young men of your rank-though with rather more imagination, which naturally produced more notoriety.”
He did not know what compelled him to continue, when it could hardly help his case. “You yourself saw me carousing the night of my own father’s death! Every feeling revolts-”
She started, and took a step toward him. “But you didn’t know he was dead!”
Nev ’s father wouldn’t be dead for hours yet when Nev had seen Miss Brown, but somehow that wasn’t the point. “No. But I would have known sooner if I had been home. My little sister knew. She saw them bring in his shattered body.”
Miss Brown’s lips parted in a silent exclamation. “I hadn’t thought-”
He didn’t want to hear it. He turned back to the list. 5. Do not resent me. We have made an honest bargain, from which you benefit as much as I do. He shrank from the cold statement of it, in that neat clerk’s hand. How like a merchant she sounded, there! But he knew very well how she would react to that sentiment-or rather, he thought she would react unpredictably, but badly.
6. Allow me to still correspond with Edward. “Why the devil would you ask me who you can correspond with?”
She blinked. “You’ll be my husband.”
His brow wrinkled. “I can’t remember m’mother ever asking my father who to write to. She’d be in the morning room half the day scribbling away and he never came near her. So long as you don’t bed the fellow-”
She looked away.
He frowned. Could Edward possibly be-but no, she was a virgin, he would stake his life on it. And then he forgot all about Edward as item #7 burned into his eyes. “No mistresses?”
Five
The black words stood out accusingly from the crisp white paper she had used. 7. No mistresses. Nev remembered his fingertips burning on Amy’s shoulder as he watched Miss Brown. He felt overheated. “You saw me at Vauxhall, didn’t you?”
“I told you, I changed my mind!” She would not meet his eyes. “You mustn’t suppose that I think I have bought you, and will try to control your every movement. I know it’s nothing to do with me if I-if you occasionally find yourself in need of more than I can provide.” Her voice trembled a little. “So long as you’re discreet and don’t give me the pox.”
He had a sudden image of Miss Brown, raving, her pretty features rotting away. He shuddered. It didn’t matter; he had known in the back of his mind that he would have to give Amy her congé anyway. She was too expensive.
“I promise you”-he drew a deep breath and didn’t think about Amy-“I promise you that the connection you witnessed will be at an end immediately, and that your sensibilities will never hereafter be wounded by hearing of another.”
Her eyes flew to his face. Then she smiled, shyly. “It would, perhaps, be nobler to insist on letting you go your own way, but I won’t. You are very generous. Thank you.”
He knew very well he wasn’t generous in the least. But he let himself smile back and say with mock solemnity, “No mistresses.”
By rights, Penelope ought to have been hoping her parents would take a dislike to Lord Bedlow at dinner; then she could say that she had done her best and be free of the whole matter. But when he showed up with his cinnamon hair combed rigidly into place and a nervous smile on his lips, she felt it would be hideously unjust if they rejected him. Couldn’t they see he was trying?
She found herself relieved and a little disconcerted when both her parents showed signs of succumbing to his charm. He complimented the food, Mrs. Brown’s embarrassingly large pearls, and Penelope’s gown-all with apparent sincerity.
When her father, who did not drink, offered to have a bottle of claret opened, Penelope held her breath. One of the things her father had never forgiven Edward for was that he had once, years ago, got himself foxed at a Brown Jug Brewery Christmas party. Mr. Brown had made some terrible remarks about Papists. And Penelope knew that Lord Bedlow drank.
To her surprise, the earl hesitated for only a moment before saying, “No, thank you.” Mr. Brown commended him and launched into one of his sermons on the value of sobriety. And her father owned a brewery! But Lord Bedlow didn’t even point out the inconsistency. Penelope flushed in mortification and sighed in relief all at once.
She was on tenterhooks for the half hour the gentlemen remained at table with their watered-down wine. She played snatches of Scotch airs on the piano and replied to her mother’s conversation in monosyllables.
She heard her father’s uproarious laughter first. Then she caught the sound of footsteps, and they entered the room, her father’s arm slung about Lord Bedlow’s taller shoulders.
“That’s a good one! Mrs. Brown, do you know what his lordship said when I told him how many obscure musical inst
ruments Penny would insist on bringing with her to his house? ‘In for a Penny, in for a pound,’ he says!” Mr. Brown laughed again.
Penelope flushed. She knew it was contrary, but the more her parents were won over, the more she resented how easily they were taken in. It was so obvious that a gentleman like Lord Bedlow would not have found anything to admire in a prosaic parvenue like her if he had not needed her money, or anything to flatter in her parents-so patently clear that he was too good for them, and too good for her.
But Lord Bedlow, though he had to slouch to fit under Mr. Brown’s arm, just smiled sheepishly at her and winked. If he was disgusted, he hid it well.
It was as though he had the Midas touch. He went straight to her mother’s wall of sentimental engravings and old book illustrations in gilt frames, and pointed to a garishly colored old engraving of Venice that her mother loved. “It’s the Bridge of Sighs! Have you been to Venice, Miss Brown?”
“No,” Penelope said. “I have never been out of England.”
Mrs. Brown smiled. “Oh, those old pictures are all mine. Penny is much too elegant for such trifles! I hope very much to go to Venice with Mr. Brown someday.”
“Oh, you must!” Lord Bedlow said. “It’s splendid! I wish the gondoliers still sang Tasso, but it looks just the same as always! My grandfather bought some sketches when he was there half a century ago, you know, and a Canaletto, and-”
A familiar gleam came into Mrs. Brown’s eye. “Oh, yes, your grandfather’s art collection is very fine, isn’t it?”
Lord Bedlow shrugged. “I’ve been told it is. People come rather often to view it.”
Mrs. Brown looked anxious. “You haven’t sold any of it, have you?”
Penelope winced at her mother’s lack of tact, but Lord Bedlow did not seem to take offense. “No. Fortunately my father allowed all of it to remain entailed, or I might have been tempted. I had offers from all over the country for the Holbein.”
