The Lady Most Likely...

by Julia Quinn

  They would have got away with it, too, if Aunt Octavia (as she would eventually be known) had not decided to tell her side of the story.

  “OH MY GOD!”

  It was what Gwen was thinking. Oh my God oh my God oh my God. Really, what else would she be thinking? She had (she was pretty sure) just got herself engaged to the Earl of Charters, who was (she was quite sure) doing very wicked things to her left breast, which (she was definitely sure) she was enjoying very much.

  “OH MY GOD!”

  Gwen’s thoughts, however, rarely took the form of a shriek.

  “ALEC!”

  She froze. Or rather, Alec froze, his large hand still covering her. And his face took on an expression of dread.

  “Alec Darlington, don’t you ignore me!”

  Gwen heard Alec curse, but still, he did not move. With great trepidation, she peeked out from behind him.

  “What are you doing?” yelled Octavia Darlington. Her arms were up in the air, waving madly about, and Gwen could not help but think that it should be quite obvious what they were doing. She ducked her head back behind Alec, mortified beyond belief.

  “Alec!” Octavia yelled again, and this time she actually whacked her brother on the back. “What are you doing? Oh my God, Alec, when I asked you to get rid of Miss Passmore, I didn’t mean this!”

  “Octavia,” he growled. “Shut up.”

  But Octavia Darlington, once on her high horse, refused to dismount. “Don’t you tell—”

  “Quiet!” he snapped. He twisted into what looked like an extremely uncomfortable position. But he was keeping Gwen covered while he turned to face his sister, so she was grateful for that.

  “Good Lord, Octavia, you sound like a fishwife.”

  “How could you do this to me?” she yelled.

  “I assure you,” he bit off, “it has nothing to do with you.”

  But then Gwen started thinking. “What did she mean …” she began.

  “You were kissing her!” Octavia shrieked. “Kissing her!”

  “For the love of—”

  “What did she mean,” Gwen said, with greater volume, “about getting rid of me?”

  “Nothing,” Alec said quickly, then: “Octavia, turn your back.”

  “I will do no such thing.”

  “Turn your back or, as God is my witness, I will strip you of your dowry.”

  Octavia gasped in outrage, but she turned. Gwen stepped away from Alec and righted her dress. “What did she mean,” she said firmly, “about getting rid of me?”

  “She is an idiot,” Alec snarled.

  “I heard that!” Octavia snarled right back.

  “You were meant to!”

  “Oh!” She planted her hands on her hips. “May I turn?”

  “Er, yes,” Gwen answered, since Alec was too busy glowering.

  Octavia turned around, and Gwen only barely resisted the urge to take a step back. She looked furious. Her color was high, her ringlets (which Gwen did not think were natural) were bouncing, and her eyes were positively venomous.

  “You are the worst brother in the world,” she said to Alec.

  “No!” Gwen cut in furiously. “Don’t say that. You are not allowed to say that.”

  “You can’t speak to me that way.”

  Gwen stepped forward, jabbing her finger in Octavia’s direction. “Don’t you ever say that about him again. Do you have any idea what I would give to have one more minute with my brother? One chance to tell him how much I love him?”

  Octavia’s mouth clamped into a firm line. Gwen couldn’t tell if she was angry or embarrassed, and at that moment, she didn’t care. “My brother was my best friend, and he looked out for me, and if he were still alive, he’d be here at this house party with me, just like yours is here with you, so don’t you dare say that your brother is—”

  “Gwen,” Alec said gently, placing a hand on her arm.

  But she would not let him comfort her. She shook him off, taking another step toward Octavia. “Why do you hate me?” she demanded.

  “I’m not talking to her,” Octavia said, turning pointedly to her brother.

  “No,” Gwen shot back. “You can’t ignore me.”

  “Alec,” Octavia said, “I want you to escort me back to the house.”

  “You can’t ignore me,” Gwen said again. All through the season, Octavia Darlington had been just horrid. She never invited Gwen anywhere. Her little groups of friends always seemed to close ranks when Gwen was near. And when the two were forced into contact, she was sour and curt.

  Unless there were witnesses.

  And Gwen, quite simply, had had enough. “Why do you hate me?”

  “I don’t hate you,” Octavia sniffed.

  “Oh, yes you do.” Gwen turned to Alec and planted her own hands on her hips. “She does.”

  “I know,” he said with a sigh.

  Octavia let out a gasp, then pointed an angry finger at Gwen. “She is the one who is rude and standoffish. She is the one who steals every available gentleman from the rest of us. She is always surrounded, and does she make any attempt to send some our way? No!”

  Gwen could only gape. If Octavia only knew how desperately she hated the season. She’d have happily sent over all of the gentlemen if she’d had any idea how to do so.

  “Well, you won’t have to worry about that any longer,” Alec said to Octavia. “I have asked Miss Passmore to be my wife, and she has consented.” With a sharp, sudden movement he turned back to Gwen. “You have, haven’t you?”

  Gwen started to say yes, but then she narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t tell me what she meant about getting rid of me.”

  “It was nothing,” Alec ground out. “She asked me to distract you so that the other gentlemen would not seek you out. A request with which, I might add, I was happy to comply.”

  “You didn’t tell me you were interested in her,” Octavia muttered.

  “Would it have made a difference? Good Lord, Octavia, and don’t you say yes!” He held up a hand, warding off whatever it was his sister had been about to say. “If you say yes, I will not be able to forgive you. I promise you that.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t!” he said sharply. “If you say yes, that means you care more about hurting Miss Passmore than you do about your own happiness, and if that is true, I can’t bear to think that I might have had any part in your upbringing.”

  Finally, Octavia was silenced.

  Alec turned back to Gwen, taking both of her hands in his. “Gwen,” he said. “The Gwen.”

  She felt herself smile. She couldn’t hold it in.

  “I love you. I have no idea how such a thing happens in so short a time, but I know myself, and I know that it is true.”

  Gwen swallowed, trying to hold back tears. She didn’t know, either, wouldn’t have thought it possible, except …

  She felt the exact same way.

  “I adore you.”

  She nodded, hoping he would correctly interpret that as, “Me, too.”

  “I want to spend my life with you.”

  “I draw bunnies,” she blurted out.

  He blinked.

  “What?” Octavia asked.

  “In my sketchbook,” Gwen said. She had no idea why she was saying this, and in fact, was already coming to regret it, but now that she’d started, she could not stop. “You asked to see my drawings. I draw bunnies. And squirrels.”

  “That’s n—”

  “With fangs.”

  “Fangs?” Octavia sounded curious, and perhaps a bit delighted as well.

  Gwen ignored her, keeping her attention on Alec. “Some of them look like people I know.”

  He started to smile. “Do any resemble me?”

  She almost lied. Almost. “There was one squirrel,” she admitted. “From this morning.”

  Alec’s grin grew wider. “Is he handsome?”

  “Not very, no.”

  He started to laugh.

  “But I did
draw him before I saw you at the lake. If I were to draw it now …”

  “If you were to draw it now …” he prodded.

  “I don’t know,” she said, frowning as she considered the question. “I suppose it might look a bit like Lord Briarly.”

  Alec let out a loud bark of laughter at that. “What has Hugh done to you?”

  “Nothing,” she admitted, “but there is no one else to consider. And he did write that horrid list.”

  “What list?” Octavia asked.

  “Maybe you could give him horsy teeth,” Alec suggested, tugging her a little closer, “instead of fangs.”

  “I could do that.”

  “What list?” Octavia asked again.

  Gwen smiled at her new fiancé, letting herself sway into his arms. “I could draw him as a horse,” she said, starting to lose her focus on the conversation. Alec was looking at her in that way again, and—

  “Don’t you kiss her again!” Octavia yelled. “Don’t you kiss her in front of me.”

  Too late.

  He kissed her.

  And she loved it.

  Almost as much as she loved him.

  Chapter 9

  Carolyn didn’t think that it would be boasting to say that her plans generally went exactly as she intended them. One couldn’t run the three assorted households attached to the Marquessate of Finchley and not become an expert at organizing people and things. But just now she was finding herself in the grip of a new and rather frustrating emotion.

  The Duke of Bretton was still leaning against the tree and counting, trying to get to one thousand and obviously hoping that she wasn’t noticing when he skipped numbers. Or hundreds of numbers.

  “This is hide-and-seek, Duke,” she told him. “Please try to keep your mind on those numbers.”

  Bretton groaned and kept going.

  “Darling,” she said to her husband, who had just ambled up, “did you see who Gwendolyn Passmore walked off with?”

  Her husband squinted around, looking about as uninterested as a man frankly bored by the mating practices of the ton could look. “Last time I saw, she had Charters gaping after her like a trout on a hook.”

  “She’s not supposed to be with Charters,” Carolyn hissed. “I marked her out for Hugh. And if she didn’t want Hugh, it was supposed to be because she was in love with him—” she waved her hand at the duke—“but now that it turns out he can’t even count properly, I’ll have to forgive her for that.”

  “Nothing wrong with Charters,” her husband said. “Good old family, an earl, nice fellow.”

  “I had her marked for Hugh,” Carolyn said, feeling a little tearful. “Now my brother may never get married. I’m not sure that Miss Peyton is suitable.”

  “Why not? I had an interesting chat with her yesterday about drainage.”

  “That’s just it,” Carolyn said. “I like Kate, I really do. But I’m not sure that Hugh will appreciate all her knowledge. And she’s so blunt!”

  “Men like that,” her husband said, bluntly. “Plus she’s got a sweet little mouth. Though not,” he said, leaning over and dropping a kiss on her lips, “as sweet as yours.”

  The duke straightened up from the tree. “One thousand,” he said triumphantly. “I say, where is everyone?”

  “That’s for you to find out,” Carolyn said, almost waspishly, except she was never waspish. Well, hardly ever. “They’re hiding, since this is hide-and-seek. Miss Darlington made it to a thousand at least two minutes ago, and she already ran off to find people.”

  Her husband grabbed her by the hand. “We need to hide,” he said.

  “Hide? I can’t hide. I’m supposed to delegate. I have to stay—”

  He pulled her away. “Go find everyone who’s hiding,” she called to the duke over her shoulder. And then, because His Grace had the look of a man about to take a nap or chase after that glass of brandy he had been talking about, “Go on, find them!”

  Her husband pulled her straight into the house, up the stairs, and into her bedchamber. Luckily, her maid was nowhere to be seen. “What on earth are you doing, Finchley?” she asked, panting.

  He pushed the door behind them. “We’re alone.”

  “Well?”

  “Then I’m not Finchley, am I?”

  Despite herself, a small smile caught the edge of Carolyn’s lips. “I suppose not.”

  He backed her against the door, his big warm body crowding her against the wood. “So what’s my name, then?” He bent his head and started doing something delicious to her neck.

  “Hugh calls you Finchbird,” she said teasingly. She found herself untying his cravat without quite knowing how it happened.

  “My name,” her husband growled, “is Piers.”

  “Yes, but you don’t like being called Piers in public,” she whispered. She had to whisper because he had managed to wrench down the bodice of her gown and … She gasped.

  “We’re not in public,” he said, swinging her into his arms.

  She put her hand on the curve of his cheek. “I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m supposed to be organizing games for my guests. They’ll wonder where I am.”

  “Games,” he said with scorn. “Leave them alone, Carolyn. In only a few days, I’ve witnessed more games than I ever played in the nursery. They’re grown men and women.” He dropped her on the bed.

  She lay back and wondered whether she should let him continue. “Games are useful,” she said, loving the little wrinkles by Piers’s eyes and the way he was unbuttoning her gown, faster than her maid could on a good day.

  “Nonsense,” he said, easing her gown down over her arms and starting on her corset.

  “They force people to be together,” she explained, kicking off her slippers. “It’s part of my master plan to ensure that Hugh finds someone appropriate to marry.”

  “Maybe Hugh doesn’t want to marry yet,” Piers said.

  “He does! He’s the one who asked me for the list. But I’m afraid that Charters has stolen away Gwendolyn Passmore. I’ll just have to focus on Kate now.”

  “Just as well,” Piers said, wrestling with a recalcitrant corset tie. “Oops, snapped that. Gwendolyn wouldn’t have kept Hugh on his toes.”

  “Do I keep you on your toes?” She stared at him, feeling a little qualm.

  He pulled off her corset. Carolyn looked down. Somehow, he’d managed to strip her down to her chemise, and he was still dressed. She reached out and started unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Piers?” she asked. “Do I?”

  Her husband was utterly absorbed in stroking the curve of her breast, and though she appreciated the thought, she persisted. “Do I keep you on your toes?”

  “No,” he said thirstily, stripping off his coat and throwing it to the side.

  She blinked at him. “No?”

  His shirt flew across the room, and his boots thumped onto the floor. “I don’t?” She felt absurdly disappointed. Of course Piers loved her. He—

  A big male body landed on top of hers. “You don’t want me on my toes,” he growled in her ear, pressing down in a way that … well … made Carolyn feel a sudden wave of heat. She wound her arms around his neck.

  “I’m much better company when I’m off my feet altogether,” her husband continued. He pulled up her chemise, and his mouth descended on her breast.

  “I don’t know … we should be out there playing hide-and-seek,” she whispered, nipping his ear.

  She felt his shiver right down the length of his body.

  “I am now going to play hide-and-seek,” he said a few minutes later, grinning down at her.

  By then Carolyn had forgotten the conversation. She reached up to him. “Please, I need—”

  “First hide,” he said, a positively wicked spark in his eye, “and we’ll worry about seek later.”

  The marchioness gasped, and then—well, gasped again.

  By the time the marquess and his marchioness went downstairs again, the game of hide-and-seek was over. Rather re
luctantly, Carolyn slipped her hand out from her husband’s. There was a group of young ladies clustered around Miss Octavia Darlington, who looked, to her experienced eye, as if they were getting into a tizzy about something.

  Piers pulled her back for just a second, and whispered in her ear, “How long until bedtime?”

  She looked back at him, feeling a little blush in her cheeks. She shook her head. “Hush!” And then she moved away from him, feeling as if she’d like nothing more than to go back upstairs and take a long nap.

  “Hello, dear ones,” she said, nimbly inserting herself into the circle. “Do share the story with me, Octavia.”

  Octavia had her hand thrown over her face and was moaning “My eyes! My eyes!” but at the sound of Carolyn’s voice, her hand fell down.

  “It’s nothing, Lady Finchley,” she said. Two other girls nodded. “Nothing at all.”

  Carolyn sighed. She knew that nothing. “Now, I insist,” she said gently. “What has happened to your eyes, Octavia? Are you getting a sty? Or a case of pinkeye?”

  “No!” Octavia exclaimed. “It’s just that my brother—”

  Carolyn kept her smile bright. She’d bet one hundred pounds that Gwendolyn Passmore wouldn’t be joining her extended family. Poor Hugh. “Let me guess,” she said. “Your brother has fallen in love.”

  “Well, you could call it that,” Octavia said disapprovingly.

  Carolyn took the young lady by the arm. “We could call it that because it would be the truth, wouldn’t it?”

  Octavia was silent for a moment, so Carolyn gave her a little pinch. “Because I’m just guessing, but I’ve noticed that your brother seemed enamored with Gwendolyn Passmore.”

  “He—in the woods—”

  “He asked Gwendolyn to marry him in the woods,” Carolyn said, adroitly cutting off whatever indiscretion Octavia was about to blurt out. “Isn’t that romantic?” She fixed the other girls with a minatory glance, and they all nodded obediently. “I think we can all agree that darling Gwendolyn was the most beautiful girl of the season, and we can also agree that it’s quite nice to see her so happily matched.”

  They all nodded like little puppets.

  “Plus,” she added, “all her suitors are now free to look elsewhere.”