“No.”
Now she was growing annoyed. “‘No’ is not a counteroffer, Mr. Brice.”
“Connor. And ‘no’ means the offer was too insulting to dignify with any other response.”
Was it? Well, how the blazes was she to know? She sniffed, because it seemed the only thing to do. “Well, it stands until you come up with one of your own.”
“Fine. Ten times a day.”
She gaped at him, shocked beyond measure. “Surely not. There is only one night in a day.”
“I know.”
Adelaide felt a moment’s panic. She was at a terrible disadvantage in this negotiation, utterly in the dark in the private ways of husbands and wives. With her mother gone, and her friendship with Lilly and Winnefred not yet the sort that allowed for the discussion of such delicate matters, there was no one to whom she might turn to for guidance . . . No one but Connor.
“Is . . . Ten times . . .” The heat of embarrassment and frustration filled her cheeks. Without realizing it, she leaned in a little and spoke in a lowered voice. “Is that normal?”
Connor blinked. For several long seconds, that was his only reaction. He stood mute and still as a statue. There wasn’t a trace of humor on his features, nor anger, come to that. There wasn’t a trace of anything that she could see. His face was a blank mask.
Good Lord, she’d shocked him stupid.
Adelaide straightened and twisted her lips. “The question hardly warrants that—”
“We’ll discuss it later,” he said suddenly, coming to himself.
His peculiar behavior deserved pondering, but his suggestion they revisit the conversation another time took precedence.
She shook her head in adamant refusal. “No. Not later. Now.”
She sounded like George asking after a biscuit. She didn’t care. Under no circumstances was she going to repeat this experience.
Connor stepped forward, took her by the elbow, and began to lead her down the hall. “Not everything needs to be decided today.”
This from the man who’d proposed after a day’s acquaintance? “But—”
“I’ve business to see to in Edinburgh this week. Take the time to think on matters.” He stopped, turned, and pulled her into his arms. “And while you’re thinking, keep this in mind.”
His lips brushed across hers, soft and warm as the sun of spring. There was no hurry to his kiss, no demand, only patient invitation delivered with devastating skill. She accepted without thought, caught off guard by the sweetness of it, and before she knew it, her mouth was moving steadily under his. She leaned forward, gripping handfuls of his coat.
Connor pulled back. “Want more?”
She nodded. Shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t like you.”
“I know.” Connor lifted a hand, trailed the backs of his fingers across her jaw. His face was so close, she could make out every shade of green in his eyes. “I want you,” he said thickly. “I wanted you the first time I saw you. Even before I knew who you were.”
Before he knew of her connection to Sir Robert? She pulled away and looked at him, the warmth of the kiss draining away. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“No.” His mouth quirked with humor, but she wasn’t sure if he was laughing at himself or her. “Which is why I’d never planned to tell you.”
“And yet you just did.” She shook her head. “You’re very much like your brother, you know.”
He winced. “Have I angered you again, or are you being unkind in retaliation for past slights?”
“I believe you’ll say whatever you must to get what you want. Both of you.” All of you, she amended, thinking of her brother.
“You were wearing a blue coat,” he said quietly. “It was torn at the hem, and too thin for the weather. I could see the red in your cheeks and nose from the cold, and this . . .” He lifted a hand and toyed with a lock of her hair. “I could see it peeking out from under your bonnet. You bent to kiss your nephew’s brow as you crossed the yard.”
“You couldn’t have known he was my nephew.”
“I didn’t. I assumed he was your son and you were bringing him to see his father, your husband—didn’t stop me from looking for you every Saturday for almost six months. The hem was mended next I saw you.”
“That proves nothing. You could have . . .” She trailed off as something he had said suddenly took on new meaning. “Six months? This past winter?”
He nodded. “And an ocean of grief I received from the other inmates for it.”
A sick weight settled in her stomach. “Your interest was known.”
“There’s no privacy to be had in prison.” His brow furrowed as he studied her face. “Have I offended you? Are you angry that I watched you?”
“No. Some. I . . .” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Her anger didn’t stem from that, directly. It stemmed from every lie, secret, and trap she’d fallen victim to—Connor’s, Wolfgang’s, Sir Robert’s. She was naught but a marionette in their show, and every time she thought to have gained her freedom, discovered where all their nasty little strings were attached, she turned about and found another.
Anger boiled and swirled. It was too solid to see past, too thick to speak through. She decided not to bother trying to do either. If Connor wanted to wait for his answer, then wait he would. And Wolfgang, she decided, could wait for his freedom.
Sir Robert could wait in hell.
“I wish to go home.”
Chapter 13
Connor knew that there were times when it was best to press, and times it was best to let things settle. He let Adelaide settle, making no attempt to fill the silence that accompanied their return carriage ride.
It cost him to do so. He wasn’t blind to the fact that something was bothering Adelaide, nor that the change in her demeanor had immediately followed his confession. He’d like to think she’d been struck senseless by the sudden realization of her good fortune, but even he could not lay claim to that level of arrogance.
He wanted to demand an explanation for her sudden change of mood or provoke her until the line between her brows disappeared. But he didn’t. He kept his peace as they came to a stop in her drive and issued only a few formal words of farewell after assisting her from her seat.
She mumbled something vaguely like, “Safe journey,” and headed for the house.
Suppressing an oath, Connor climbed back onto the phaeton and started the horses off at a trot. Adelaide wasn’t the only one in need of settling.
I want you. I wanted you the first time I saw you. Before I knew who you were.
For the life of him, he could not say why he’d admitted to that, why he’d handed Adelaide what essentially amounted to a weapon.
He only knew that one moment he was enjoying the exchange, amused by the bartering, charmed by her incongruent mix of determined purpose and stumbling innocence. And the next moment, he’d felt like a jaded brute. Not exactly a novel sensation for him, but this time had been different.
He could still see the way the color had all but drained from her cheeks, then rushed back to leave her skin flushed.
“Is that normal?” she’d asked.
Bloody hell.
She’d unmanned him with that one question. Suddenly, she hadn’t looked sweet and brave and charming. She’d looked afraid, and cornered, and very, very alone. Like a babe in the woods.
It pricked at him now that he’d bargained with her, that he’d been amused at all. It irritated him that they’d spoken of contracts and the bedchamber in the same conversation.
He wasn’t buying her like cattle. He wasn’t purchasing the favors of a light skirt.
And he wasn’t the sort of man who found pleasure in watching a woman struggling to find her way out of an untenable situation. He didn’t kick at innocents. Certainly, when that innocence could be used to benefit, he took advantage. But he didn’t kick.
He didn’t want to be the sort of man who kicked.
Which was patently ridiculous, he decided. He was giving her something. Fifteen thousand somethings, to be exact. There was no reason for him to feel as if he were gaining the better part of a bargain. Therefore, there was no reason he couldn’t remember to show a bit of circumspection in the future.
Reasonably, if not wholly, satisfied with this line of logic, he set the matter aside. There were more immediate concerns that demanded his attention.
Not far from Adelaide’s house, he slowed the horses and carefully maneuvered the phaeton off the road onto a flat, grassy area surrounded by a thick line of evergreens. Then he hopped down, leaned against the front wheel and waited.
It wasn’t long before the sound of old leaves cracking underfoot reached his ears, and a young man in peasant’s attire emerged from the surrounding trees. Connor knew Graham Sefton to be four-and-twenty, a half inch shy of six feet, and currently the single most useful individual of his acquaintance. He’d been Sir Robert’s man of all trades for three months, and Connor’s for six.
A man met the most interesting fellows in prison.
Connor nodded in greeting. “What will you tell your master?”
Graham came to a stop before him, scratched a nose that looked to have been broken and reset more than once. For reasons that eluded Connor, women in the local village found the flaw, and the man, all but irresistible.
“Depends, don’t it?” Graham remarked in a voice that held the hallmarks of a low birth softened by a late education. “You want him flapping like a fish on a hook or squirming like bait?”
“There’s a difference?”
“There is.” Graham grinned, dark eyes creasing in a faced tanned by both sun and heritage. “Give me the coin for a pint and I’ll explain it to you.”
Connor dug out payment and held it up, then away. “Explanation first, then we’ll see.”
Graham considered, shrugged. “Bait knows he’s done for when the hook goes through. The squirming’s just the death throws. But a fish don’t always know its caught for good. Thinks all that flopping about on the line will earn his freedom. What’s a bit of metal through a lip, after all. So, which will it be?”
The image of Sir Robert squirming was tempting, very tempting. But Connor knew he couldn’t risk it. Sir Robert was unpredictable. The possibility of him directing his frustration at Adelaide was real.
“I want him confident. Tell him you witnessed an argument.”
“And what was the nature of this argument?”
“You were too far away to hear. Tell him it looked as if I made an advance, and the lady rebuffed.”
“Simple enough.” Graham held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. “Do I have me coin?”
Connor tossed it to him. “You’re a cheap traitor.”
“Aye,” Graham agreed with a wink, “but a loyal one.”
Adelaide didn’t immediately go into the house. The moment Connor drove away, she turned her steps away from the front door and strode around to the relative privacy of a side garden. She followed a stone path that was rapidly disappearing beneath an onslaught of dirt and weeds.
A stunted but cheerfully blooming hydrangea caught her eye. She stopped to stare at it. She’d planted it before the death of her parents, and it survived and flowered, year after year, despite her neglect. Happy blooms, courageously thriving in the inhospitable world in which they had been so carelessly deposited.
She wanted to stomp on them. Just this once, she wanted to know the power of being the cause of havoc, instead of its victim. She turned away before the ridiculous temptation got the better of her.
If it was devastation she craved, she’d be better served by paying a visit to Sir Robert.
What a damn fool she was.
She remembered, perfectly, the day she had met the baronet. It had been morning; she’d been on her way to town for bread and she’d come across him on the road. His horse had gone lame—that’s what he’d told her after he’d introduced himself and offered his company for the walk into town.
She’d known who he was. Her little corner of Scotland was not so rife with baronets that she could overlook one living but a few miles away. But they moved in different circles, different worlds, and they’d never spoken until that day.
Later, he called the meeting a wondrous spot of fate, a delightful sprinkling of serendipity. She’d thought the sentiment rather sweet. She’d even felt guilty that she’d not been able to summon a similar enthusiasm.
What good fortune, he’d said. What fine providence. What grand luck.
What a pile of rot. Sir Robert had sought her out.
Adelaide didn’t fully believe Connor’s story of wanting her. She wasn’t inclined to believe much of anything that came out the man’s mouth. But he’d not have lied about showing an interest in her during his imprisonment or being teased because of that interest. That was too easy a claim to verify or refute.
Just a few inquiries at the prison, that’s all it would take. Sir Robert wouldn’t have had to make the trip to the prison. His pocketed guards would have come to him with the information. And it wouldn’t have taken months for them to do it.
Apparently, it had taken him a month or two to figure out how to use Connor’s interest to his own advantage, but then, he was an idiot. A nasty, lying, cowardly idiot.
They all were. She was furious with all of them. Sir Robert for his lies. Her brother for his lies. Connor for his lies . . . And his truths.
Oh, yes, that anger was present as well. It was irrational, unfair, and quite simply wrong, but in that moment, she didn’t care. She was happy to shoot the messenger. She was willing to do most anything that might ease the painful, humiliating truth . . . She had fallen prey to not one, but two false courtships.
Good Lord, had she no gauge of character? Was there not a single man of her acquaintance who she’d not misjudged?
“Idiot,” she whispered, uncertain, at this point, to whom she was directing the insult. It hardly mattered. It fit the lot of them.
She scrubbed her hands over her face, trying to settle her temper and clear her mind. One step at a time, she reminded herself. One choice at a time.
Only she hadn’t a choice left. Her steps had already been mapped out for her.
So be it, she thought darkly and marched back to the front of the house. There would be no more excuses. No more delays. She would mail the letter to Sir Robert today. Now. And when Connor returned from Edinburgh, she would give him exactly what he asked for.
She would marry him and make his life a living hell.
She opened the front door, glanced into the parlor, and saw Isobel, fast asleep on their grandmother’s old settee. Her arm was bent under her head, half hidden beneath a soft tumble of blonde hair. Her expression was one of innocent contentment. She made the very picture of peaceful repose. And it irritated Adelaide no end. No adult member of the Ward family had any right to feel so bloody relaxed.
“We’re to be rich!” Adelaide shouted and slammed the door.
Isobel jolted awake at the sound, nearly tumbling off the settee. “What? What?”
Slightly mollified by the sight, Adelaide yanked the ribbons of her bonnet free. “Fifteen thousand pounds a year. That is to be my allowance.”
“Fifteen—?Beg your pardon?”
“We’ll reside at Ashbury Hall.”
“Ashbury Hall?”
“Are you a parrot?”
The remnants of sleep drained from Isobel’s face. She eyed her sister warily as she rose to stand. “Your mood is very peculiar.”
Her mood was foul.
“Well, it isn’t everyday a lady must forgo the affections of a coward for the fortune of a scoundrel.”
The pretend affections, she amended silently.
“I see.” Isobel gave her a bolsterin
g smile. “It’s to be Mr. Brice, then, is it? I must say, I am glad you’ve decided against the dragon—”
“I did not want to decide!” Adelaide threw her bonnet down on the foyer side table. “Why must I always be the one to make the decisions, Isobel? Why am I always the one to make the sacrifices?” She didn’t want to be the one with the choices. She didn’t want to be the one with the abysmal expectations. “I’m not the maiden of this kingdom, I’m its whipping boy! It’s pathetic, ridiculous—!”
“No! No! No!”
George’s angry shout cut Adelaide off mid-tirade. Horrified, she looked to the second floor landing, where she found him peering through the bars of the banister, blue eyes wide with confusion and anger. Remorse gripped her like a vise. She hadn’t seen him there. She’d been so swamped in her own resentment that she’d not even thought to look for him.
“Oh, Georgie, I’m sorry.” She climbed the steps two at a time. “I’m so sorry. You’re absolutely right. No more shouting.”
“I just put him down for a rest,” Isobel said. “I thought he’d fallen asleep.”
Clearly he hadn’t. A bit of shouting wouldn’t wake George from a nap. Cannon fire wouldn’t wake George from a nap. A more sound sleeper was not to be found in Scotland.
Adelaide picked George up and settled him on her hip. He felt soft and warm in her arms, his weight a familiar and comforting burden. “Did I give you a fright, darling? I didn’t mean to. Aunt Adelaide is very naughty. And very sorry.”
She brushed his curls back from his forehead and kissed his nose. That was all it took to appease him. His eyes cleared, he gave her a distracted kiss in return, then squirmed in her arms.
“Down.”
Adelaide sighed and considered. She ought to put him back down in bed. Heaven knew, without a proper rest during the day, the boy became impossible by evening. But she wanted to coddle him a minute longer. He deserved a bit of coddling.
“Yes, I’ll take you downstairs, but only—”
“Down!”
“You are not climbing down the steps, Georgie. Not until—”
An Unexpected Gentleman (The Haverston Family Trilogy Book 2) Page 13
