by Norma Darcy
“That never stopped you before,” his friend pointed out helpfully and received a glare for his trouble. “She’s a jilted lover of yours looking for recompense.”
“She is not a jilted lover of mine,” insisted the earl.
“Did you get her with child? You needn’t glare at me like that, March. It’s not exactly impossible, is it? It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you had a brat or two come out of the woodwork,” said Sir Julius, pulling forth his snuffbox. “You’ve ploughed a field or two in your time.”
“Thank you for reminding me,” said his lordship dryly.
“Well, you have,” reasoned his friend. “There have been women you’d dropped, throwing themselves into the Serpentine just because you’d found yourself a new lover.”
Lord Marcham picked up his tankard and drank from it. “There was only one lady who did that, and she was as mad as a box of frogs,” he said, setting down his ale again. He turned to Sir Julius with a look of distaste on his face. “And do we have to talk about this?”
“You ran wild for years. I think your mother was never more glad than when you were sent to war in the Peninsular. She said it saved you from yourself.”
“Getting shot at is hardly the method I would choose,” said the earl caustically, glancing down at his once-injured leg.
“Well, ten to one she’s a harpy,” said Sir Julius.
“Who? My mother or Miss Blakelow?”
Sir Julius rolled his eyes. “Miss Blakelow, of course.”
The earl looked doubtfully at him, picked up a freshly baked bread roll, and pulled it apart. “A harpy who’s the epitome of moral perfection? Hardly. She sounds terribly straitlaced to me.”
Sir Julius rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Then it’s not likely you were intimate . . . so why does she have it in for you?”
“Heaven only knows.”
“Well, you cannot let her get away with bad-mouthing you. No, no, March, it simply will not do.”
“She hasn’t bad-mouthed me. You said yourself that she has not mentioned me by name. How do I know that she is referring to me?”
“Because there are too many circumstances that are familiar. And people who know you and who are intimate with your past cannot fail to make the comparison. And those who don’t will speculate that it’s you anyway. You can’t allow that.”
“Certainly I can,” replied his lordship coolly. “I will not give the woman the satisfaction.”
He’d been criticized and hectored by the moral busybodies of the world since he was seventeen. Everything he’d done, from his first affair to the scandalous duel that had almost caused his father to disinherit him, had been food for the gossips. He’d long since learned that many of them were hypocrites who had their own secrets that they would prefer to keep hidden. But this woman had found out about the Diana Ingham affair, which meant she must have spoken to someone whose information was worryingly accurate. What he’d told Sir Julius was the truth; at present he had no plans to address Miss Blakelow on the subject of her pamphlet. But in a few months, when all the fuss had died down, he would deal with her in his own way and in his own time.
“No,” he continued, “what I need is to finish my breakfast in peace.”
Sir Julius ignored him. He tapped one long finger against his nose, appearing to set his rather limited intellect to the task. “What would be the ultimate mortification to a spinster woman of high moral principle?” demanded Sir Julius.
His lordship snorted in amusement and reached for his coffee. “To be ruined by a rake.”
Sir Julius Fawcett’s face split into a wide smile. “That’s it! Damn me if it isn’t. Seduce the girl.”
Lord Marcham did a double take. “Ju, I was funning. I am not in the habit of seducing moralizing spinster bores. Besides, she may not be a girl at all. She could be ninety for all we know.”
His friend’s smile grew. “Her father was Sir William Blakelow, and he was five and sixty when he died, so she has to be younger than forty.”
“You relieve me,” murmured the earl.
“There’s no telling what she looks like, though. Those sorts of women are usually spinsters for a reason . . . but that won’t matter to you, will it?”
His lordship frowned. “I have standards, Ju.”
“You don’t have to actually like the girl, just pretend that you do. Miss Blakelow is going to fall in love with you.”
“Oh, Lord.”
A grim smile settled upon Sir Julius Fawcett’s thin lips. “Well, she will soon find that to be the object of desire of such a man is not at all pleasant, that any woman whose name is linked with yours is inevitably tarnished by the acquaintance even if you have exchanged nothing more than words. To be talked about in that fashion is not very nice. She will discover what it is like to be on the receiving end of some of the vitriol she has poured onto others.”
“Do you know, Ju, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that she has made you angry.”
Sir Julius smiled. “I am angry, I admit, but so are you.”
“Me? Am I?” replied the earl with a laugh. “How on earth do you arrive at that conclusion? I have already told you that I care nothing for what this nobody has to say.”
“You hide it well, but I know you. I have known you for years. I know what it means when you get that look in your eyes.”
“What look?” said his lordship, laughing and spreading his hands.
“The one you get when someone makes you angry,” said Sir Julius, fixing him with a knowing look. “You, dear boy, are preparing for battle.”
Lord Marcham smiled, but the expression did not reach his eyes. “Indeed? How well you think you know me. But I assure you that I am utterly uninterested in anything that woman has to say or do.”
“Hmm,” said Sir Julius. “And I’m Genghis Khan.”
CHAPTER 3
THE BIG BLACK DOOR was about to slam in her face.
But the young woman, who had waited a month for the appointment with the earl and who had ridden two miles in the rain to his estate at Holme Park, was not about to be undone at the last hurdle by Mr. Davenham, his lordship’s pompous butler, who had been in the earl’s employ for years. She thrust her foot into the rapidly closing space between the door and the frame, resisting the urge to yelp as the impact seemed to crush every bone in her foot.
“I must see Lord Marcham,” she said, pushing the door back in the startled servant’s face.
“I have already informed you that his lordship is not at home to visitors,” said Mr. Davenham, his voice becoming high-pitched with panic in the face of this determined young lady.
She brushed past him and into the hall and stood looking about her. It was a large affair with a polished marble floor and paintings of lords and ladies frowning down at her from all sides.
Yes, you may well stare your disapproval, but when your descendant will not keep his appointments, then what else is one to do? she thought.
She suddenly felt the force of her actions, barging her way into a gentleman’s home, unaccompanied, when the owner of the house was probably at breakfast, or worse, still abed. She thought again of her home and her family and remembered that her case was desperate. She was sorry for the intrusion, but she needed to see the earl before it was too late.
She was a trim woman, tall, and by no means in the first flush of youth. Mr. Davenham thought her around the age of thirty and someone’s governess to boot. She was dressed entirely in black, suggesting a recent bereavement, and the overlarge clothes hung off her slender frame, suggesting that they were someone else’s castoffs. The garments were well made but outmoded and shabby, as if they had been made some time ago. Her face was pink and flushed from the exercise of riding, and she possessed a short, slim nose and generous lips that were curved in a smile guaranteed to break down the butler’s defenses. Under her bonnet could be seen the frill of a mob cap and a pair of green eyes hidden behind ugly spectacles.
If Mr. Davenham h
ad been fortunate enough to see her without the spectacles and the cap and the prim clothing, he might have thought her an attractive woman, but as it were, he thought her a country dowd and someone’s poor relation at that. The suspicion that she was about to claim some link to Lord Marcham and wheedle her way into his purse was not lost upon the butler, nor was the thought that she might be some lightskirt from the earl’s colorful youth about to foist a love child upon him. Equally alarming was the thought of what his lordship would do to Mr. Davenham if he let her anywhere near him. He ran a forefinger between his collar and his neck, already imagining his master’s hands around his throat. He watched the young lady tuck away a long tendril of chestnut hair. It had escaped from the prim arrangement of her headdress and curled gently against her cheek.
“Well, he will be at home to me when he hears what I have to say to him,” she replied, stripping off her gloves. “I have an appointment of some weeks’ standing. My father’s man of business arranged it, and I am not about to be turned away at the last fence by you or anyone else. I know that his lordship has a policy of not receiving visitors, but this is not a social visit, I can assure you. I am here on business, and I must ask you again to please inform Lord Marcham of my arrival.”
“His lordship is indisposed,” said Mr. Davenham, his slightly protruding eyes almost popping out of their sockets.
“If he is truly indisposed, then I am sorry for it, but if he is, as I suspect, avoiding me—”
“Wait! Ma’am, you cannot go in there!”
The woman had moved swiftly across the hallway toward a closed door from behind which she could hear masculine laughter and excited shouts of encouragement. She placed her hand upon the doorknob.
The butler looked at her so fearfully that she felt sorry for him.
“Madam, please, his lordship will turn me out of the house if I let you in there! Come into the parlor, and I will fetch my master to you.”
She smiled at him kindly. “What a silly creature you are to be so afraid of the earl. He must be a tyrant indeed to instill such fear in you,” she marveled. “But never fear. He will not seek retribution from you, I promise. Forgive me, Mr. Davenham, but I really will not be put off my purpose this time.”
She turned and flung the door wide open and for a moment stood in stunned disbelief, as the scene before her was one that she had not ever encountered before.
The room was dim, the curtains still drawn even though it wanted only fifteen minutes until midday, and the candles burned low in their sockets. Around the table were perhaps ten or twelve gentlemen of differing ages, some with their wigs askew, others with their coats cast aside and cravats undone, chins unshaven, eyes bleary with drink and lack of sleep. The room reeked of alcohol, and the table was littered with empty bottles, wineglasses, and the remains of supper. Several young ladies in varying states of undress sat on the laps of the gentlemen; one couple was engaged in a very indecent embrace on a sofa against the wall. Rose petals were strewn across the tablecloth, and standing in the middle of the table as the centerpiece was a woman, clearly in the process of stripping off her clothes for the entertainment of the gathered male company. The shouts she’d heard had been encouragement to remove the last item of clothing, a rather expensive-looking but decidedly improper undergarment. The half-dressed woman had halted her disrobement as the door was opened and now stared agog at the prim woman looking so coolly back at her.
To the woman standing in the doorway, it seemed that twenty pairs of eyes had swiveled in her direction. Every instinct told her to flee. She most definitely should not be in such a place. She knew that Lord Marcham had a certain reputation; indeed, everyone knew it. But this? Who could have expected his debauchery to sink him so low?
“Who’s this, Marcham?” asked an elderly gentleman, slurring his words. He turned in his chair and raised his eyeglass, staring at her impertinently through it for some moments. “Have you brought your housekeeper to entertain us? Or is she the village schoolteacher?”
She swallowed hard, lifted her chin, and stared back.
“Nothing to do with me, Henry,” said a deep voice from the far end of the room.
“I have come to see Lord Marcham, and I wish to see him in private,” she announced in a firm and clear voice.
“I’ll wager you do,” someone muttered, and there was a rumble of suggestive laughter.
“Mind your manners, Anthony,” chided that same deep voice, but there was a hint of amusement nonetheless.
“What do you want with him?” demanded the elderly gentleman named Henry.
“It is a private matter of business,” she replied.
“Never ’eard it called that before,” said one young woman clad in an indecently low-cut gown.
“Get her up on the table!” suggested a skinny man with a droopy nose, waving his arm aloft. “Let’s see what’s under that mourning garb.”
Several men slapped the table in appreciation of this idea.
“Yes!”
“Capital idea!”
Her hand gripped tightly upon the small pistol buried in the pocket of her cloak. “I have a long-standing appointment to see Lord Marcham at eleven thirty this morning,” she said firmly, trying to control the rising sense of panic that was threatening to send her flying from the room but taking strength from the feel of the pistol in her hand.
“Oh, March never keeps his appointments,” said another man with bright-blue eyes and a kindly face. “Anyone can tell you that. Famous for it.”
“Which one of you is Lord Marcham?” she demanded, her eyes traveling from the handsome man with the blue eyes to another man’s puce cheeks to another who had thick gray eyebrows like caterpillars.
“I am Lord Marcham,” said a man seated at the far end of the table. He stood up and came toward her, smiling at her in a way that made her feel as if she wanted to take a bath. He was clearly still drunk, and his dress was in considerable disarray. He had long ago discarded his coat and cravat, and his very hairy chest could be seen at the low neck of his shirt.
She balked a little but stood her ground, gripping the pistol ever more tightly in her fingers as he came nearer. Was this Lord Marcham? She had not set eyes on the earl in years, but even so, he looked very different from the man she remembered. He offered her his hand and she chose not to take it. There was another rumble of laughter. He pulled out a chair from the table and invited her to be seated in it with a gesture of his hand. She remained where she was.
“Oh, Prudence, will you not come near the fire at least?” he asked. “You are soaked through.”
The rain had percolated through her thick cloak to her gown underneath, and steam was slowly rising from her back. She would have dearly loved to warm herself before the fire, but she did not trust him an inch and stayed where she was.
“Won’t you take off your cloak, my dear?”
Given that every man in the room appeared to be speculating about how she looked under her cloak, she declined.
“And what is your name, fair Cyprian?” he asked, smiling, and his friends laughed at the very idea. He was of the same height as her, but she was almost certain that when she had met Lord Marcham before, he had been very much taller than she was. Whoever this man was, he was not the earl, and he had a lecherous look in his eye that turned her stomach.
“You are insulting, sir.”
“Am I indeed? And why, may I ask, are you dressed in widow’s garb? I don’t remember requesting such an outfit. Does your madam imagine any man wants to see a woman dressed in such a fashion?”
He reached out a hand to untie the ribbons on her cloak, and she slapped him away. “I am in mourning, sir,” she said, glaring at the man’s friends, who seemed to fairly lick their lips in anticipation.
“Are you?” the imposter replied, walking around her as if examining a prize heifer. “You are playing the part of the prude rather too well, my dear. Teasing is all well and good, and I like it as much as the next man, but if you wan
t to get paid, you’ll take off your cloak and be quick about it . . .”
“I beg your pardon?” she said blankly.
The man waved a hand at the lady in the thin chemise. “Molly here has kept us more than well entertained without you, but you are a little late for the party, wouldn’t you say? You were supposed to have been here yesterday. But I’m sure we can make up for lost time.”
Before she knew what he was about, he had seized her by the waist, brought her against his bony body, and kissed her hard on the mouth. She clamped down her teeth upon his lower lip and he yelped in pain. She followed this by raising her knee in a swift but unladylike assault on his unmentionables and the man doubled over, grunting in pain. Guffaws of laughter followed from his friends.
“Enough,” said the man with the deep voice, wearily rising from a chair at the far end of the room.
“She kicked me!” the man said, doubled over. “The little shrew!”
“Larwood, calm down.”
“Look! I’m bleeding! I’ll take her upstairs and show her what—”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind. I rather think that there is some mistake. This young woman is not one of your . . . er . . . entertainers.”
She pulled the gun from her pocket and aimed it with a remarkably steady hand at the figure that had come forward into the firelight.
The man quirked a brow. “It appears my surmise was accurate,” he said.
The room seemed to suck in its breath with anticipation.
“I wish to speak to Lord Marcham,” she said, leveling the pistol at his chest, inwardly shaking so much she was amazed she could keep the gun straight. She thought again of her family and her home. She thought of the dire straits they were in and how much she needed the earl’s help. Every fiber of her being told her to flee the room before her reputation was in tatters, but she knew she had no choice but to stay.
“And you will have the opportunity of speech with me, once you put the gun away,” said the man gently, his hands upturned as if in surrender as he slowly came toward her.
