by Sara Ramsey
Alex held up a book, cutting her off. “Prudence said she had an errand in the library, and as we had been discussing architecture until five minutes ago, very properly chaperoned by our mothers, I offered to escort her. If you had been here alone, no one would have thought a thing of it.”
“No one needs to think a thing of it if you will keep this quiet, Alex!” Amelia said.
Malcolm held up his hands. “Might we discuss this in the morning, when our tempers have cooled?”
Amelia whirled on him. “We won’t discuss this in the morning because there is nothing to discuss. This may look suspicious, but it won’t happen again.”
“You’ve promised that before, Amelia,” Salford reminded her.
“What the devil does that mean?” Malcolm asked, watching as Amelia turned red.
Prudence snickered. “Amelia will make such a wonderful political wife for you, Lord Carnach. So obedient, so proper...”
Amelia silenced her. “We all make mistakes, Alex. Don’t hang me for mine just because you haven’t gotten around to making your own.”
There was dead silence. Salford stared at Amelia, assessing. Prudence looked at her feet, her thoughts seeming miles away. Malcolm wanted to know what Amelia’s previous offenses were — but now that they’d been caught, he would have a lifetime to learn about them.
Salford was the first to blink. “I’ve made mistakes too, Mellie. After that business with Madeleine and Ferguson this spring...”
He paused. Really, the man was driving Malcolm mad by hinting at impropriety, then changing the subject. Malcolm knew Ferguson’s marriage to Salford and Amelia’s cousin was swift, but what was Salford’s role in it?
Salford spoke again. “I won’t threaten to send you away. Knowing you, you’d only enjoy it. But I can’t ignore what I saw tonight. If Carnach doesn’t agree to marry you, I’ll find a way to ruin him without bringing you into it.”
“I already said I will marry her,” Malcolm said.
“And I already said I won’t marry anyone,” Amelia replied.
“And I said I would marry Lord Carnach, but apparently that doesn’t signify,” Prudence said.
Salford and Amelia both started talking at once, but the earl’s stronger voice carried the floor. “You are better off without the bounder, Prudence. You deserve someone with a keen mind, not a rake.”
She leveled a glare at him. “There are no men with keen minds in the ton, Alex.”
Alex looked wounded. Amelia followed with another blow. “Do I deserve a bounder, then? Not a very brotherly sentiment, even from you.”
“Enough,” Salford snapped. “You’ve had every chance to live the life you want, and yet you risk it all far too often. Perhaps Carnach can control you where I’ve failed.”
Malcolm could have told him it was the wrong thing to say. For someone so renowned as a collector, Salford really had the most inelegant way with women. Even Prudence winced, and she was not in Amelia’s corner.
Amelia gaped at her brother. Malcolm felt a twinge of sympathy. Whatever she had done, she didn’t deserve to be castigated for it in front of him.
“I won’t have you talking to my future wife like that, Salford,” Malcolm said, stepping toward Amelia and taking her hand in his. Her fingers curled lightly in his palm, devoid of their earlier passion, but she didn’t evade him.
It was Salford’s turn to gape. Finally he bowed to his sister. “I am sorry, Amelia. You know my words escape me when I’m in a temper.”
She didn’t respond. Malcolm squeezed her hand, lightly. She retrieved her fingers from his grip. When she finally spoke, her voice was frozen. “I won’t forget, you know.”
“I won’t expect you to. Carnach, if you will wait on me in the morning, we can discuss settlements.”
Amelia stooped to retrieve her slippers, then walked to a nearby footstool so she could sit and tie them on. Malcolm felt the chill emanating from her as she spoke. “At least promise that if Carnach and I don’t suit, we may break it off.”
She wasn’t looking up, and so missed what Malcolm saw — the brief softening of Salford’s face before he answered. “Divorce is out of the question. But you needn’t marry for a few days. If you truly don’t suit, I won’t force it.”
Her resulting smile was strangely triumphant. Malcolm ignored it. They suited, at least physically. And not even a deaf man could miss the heat of their banter. If the scandals Salford hinted at were truly awful, she was exactly what he didn’t need in a bride. But was it worse to take her anyway, or risk Salford’s wrath just as he was trying to build influence in London?
Amelia looked up and met his eyes. Her smile was positively wicked. He could read the thoughts behind it. Even though his honor was at stake, he gave her a wicked smile of his own.
She would try to escape him — to prove they weren’t compatible.
And the devil within him was eager to prove her wrong.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Amelia was irate, aggrieved, enflamed — she could list adjectives for days, and probably would when she next sat down with pen and paper.
But she was also guilty. And ashamed. She would find a way to escape this engagement, no matter how intent Malcolm and Alex were on arranging it. But could her friendship with Prudence survive?
She dragged her eyes away from Malcolm’s smile and forced her clumsy fingers to tie her slippers. “Shall we go to our rooms and leave the gentlemen in peace?” she asked Prudence when she was done, as though it were any other evening, as though nothing between them had changed.
“Can I bring my book with me, or do you plan to steal that too?”
Amelia winced. She heard her brother stifle a laugh, but she was done with him for the night. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Prue. Carnach kissed me, not the other way around.”
Prudence raised an eyebrow.
“It’s true,” Amelia insisted. She was starting to panic, but she tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. “You’re welcome to him, if you still want him.”
Malcolm glared at her, but Prudence shrugged. “No, Alex is right. I need a man whose intellect is keen enough to recognize the woman in front of him for what she is. None of the men in my acquaintance qualify.”
She had, with one statement, comprehensively insulted them all. Amelia would have applauded, if only because Prudence had finally found her voice, but Prudence had already turned toward the door.
Alex frowned as Amelia rose to chase after her. “Are you sure you should follow her, Amelia? She doesn’t seem like herself.”
Amelia snorted. “She’s right. You don’t know her at all. If I can’t apologize now...”
She trailed off and dashed after Prudence. Prudence was the slowest to anger of all of them. But once her temper ignited, it burned everyone in its path. When the flames died, her heart would be so hardened that Amelia would never be admitted again.
Prudence was walking fast, nearly running, but Amelia’s longer stride caught her. She grabbed Prudence’s arm just as they reached the great hall. “Prue, I’m unbelievably sorry.”
Prudence whirled around, wrenching her arm out of Amelia’s grasp. “Not here, you ninnyhammer,” she hissed.
There was no one about, but the great hall was so cast in shadows that a dozen footmen could have hidden in the alcoves between the high, mullioned windows that lined the longest wall. The giant double doors were barred and locked, their iron fittings ominous in the moonlight. Amelia shivered. The ancient room bore down upon her, chilling her heart.
In five hundred years, how many forced marriages had happened here?
Probably more than she wanted to know of. But she wouldn’t let herself be the next one. And she certainly wouldn’t lose Prudence’s friendship over it.
“Fine,” Amelia whispered. “Your room or mine?”
Prudence didn’t answer. Amelia followed her across the great hall and up the stairs to the guest wing. But when she tried to follow Prudence into her room, Prudence b
locked her.
“I have nothing to say to you. You have nothing I wish to hear.”
Amelia crossed her arms. “If you don’t let me in, I’ll start discussing this so loudly that we’re both ruined,” she threatened. “As there’s only one earl downstairs to marry, we shouldn’t risk it.”
“There are two earls downstairs, if you count your brother,” Prudence said mulishly. But she stepped away from the door and let Amelia in before her.
“If you want Alex, you should have him — although why you would marry such a prig, I’ve no idea,” Amelia said, standing awkwardly in the center of the room as Prudence removed the pins that held her hair in place. “This is the second time in less than six months that he’s forced a woman under his care into marriage.”
“Madeleine wanted to marry Ferguson, if I recall,” Prudence said, dropping pins one by one into a little ceramic dish on top of her dressing table. “From what I saw in the library, you and Carnach will rub along together quite tolerably. ‘Rub’ being the appropriate word, of course.”
For a moment, when Prudence grinned at her own jest, it was just as it always was between them. But then Prudence remembered what Amelia had done, and the smile disappeared.
Amelia twisted her fingers. Her cracking knuckles were like icicles breaking off in the silence. “I didn’t go to the library to kiss him, you know. I planned to throw the two of you together so you might discover some sort of attraction.”
Her friend ignored the excuse. The last pins came away, and Prudence’s hair fell to her back. It was waist length and wavy, and the firelight added a golden edge that no one in society ever saw when it was contained by caps and chignons. Prudence shook it free, then savagely started brushing.
Amelia winced as Prudence tore at one of the tangles. “Shouldn’t you wait for the maid?”
“I’m quite accustomed to brushing my own hair. The maid has enough work as it is,” Prudence said. Each stroke crackled with static. “Without Carnach to rescue us, I may become a lady’s maid myself.”
“Surely it won’t come to that.”
“No. I would try for a governess position first.”
She set down the brush and bowed her head for a moment. The curtain of hair obscured Amelia’s view, but she heard the distinct sound of a sniffle. Amelia reached for Prudence’s shoulder, tentatively, but Prudence shrugged the hand away.
“Why did you do it, Amelia?” Prudence asked, finally turning to face her. “I thought you didn’t even like the man.”
Amelia paused. The words that always came so easily for her were frozen someplace, blocked and inaccessible. How could she explain an attraction she couldn’t understand and didn’t want?
Finally, she leaned against Prudence’s bed. She stared down at the slippers that had ruined her. If only she’d worn them in the library, she might have been able to sway Alex. “I don’t like him. And I didn’t want to kiss him. Whatever came over us in the library was madness, nothing more. It was like...like lightning, and I was the only tree on the plain. It struck me hard, and I couldn’t move away from it in time.”
“You never use hackneyed phrases like that — you must be overset,” Prudence observed. Then her eyes narrowed. “Is that why you wanted to turn me against him today? So you could have him for yourself?”
“No!” Amelia exclaimed. “No. You know I don’t want to marry.”
Prudence examined her face. “I know. But you’re not as immune to men as you pretend to be. And when this one came along, offering kisses, you didn’t think a thing of hurting me.”
Amelia cringed. “That’s not true. I tried to stop him.”
“That’s not what it looked like when I arrived. How far would you have gone with him?”
“It was just a kiss! Nothing more happened — nothing more will happen, if Alex comes to his senses.”
Prudence pulled her hair tight against her scalp with both hands. In her grief and anger, she looked like a Fury ready to render judgment. “It’s not just a kiss with you, Amelia. After all the years you’ve kept yourself guarded, a kiss means you truly feel something for him.”
Amelia shook her head, denying. “It could have happened to you instead, if you had been there instead of me. I thought if you met him tonight...”
“What, that lightning would strike me instead?” Prudence asked. “Lightning will never strike me again. I’m more likely to marry mad King George than I am to feel that attraction for someone else.”
Amelia squinted at Prudence. She had dropped her hair, but somewhere under it, there was a secretive look in her eyes that Amelia had never seen before. “‘Again?’ When did it strike you before?”
Prudence shook her head and pointed to the door. “Go, Amelia. I need to decide what I can tell Mother about my failure to make this match, and I cannot think when I want to slap you.”
“I am sorry, Prudence. I will find a way to make this up to you.”
“How? By hiring me as your governess?” Her laugh was bitter, so bitter that Amelia could taste it on her tongue. “I’ll thank you for not trying to help me ever again.”
She turned away and started slamming the drawers of her chifferobe open and shut, as though looking for answers. Amelia wanted to say something, anything, but what good would it do? Either Prudence needed more time for forgiveness — or forgiveness would never happen.
So she left, closing the door softly behind her before seeking out her own room next door. Through the wall, she heard Prudence’s angry rummaging stop. Prudence would be beyond her incandescent rage by morning. But the next phase, the cold, unforgiving phase, might never end.
Amelia’s eyes burned. She hitched herself up onto her bed, lay down, and stared at the ceiling. She didn’t want to wake her maid, not after Prudence’s declaration, but she needed Watkins to help her out of her gown. The endless row of buttons down the back wasn’t designed to be undone alone.
It didn’t matter. She was unlikely to sleep. She needed time to think, before sunrise, before facing Prudence, or her brother, or Malcolm, again.
Malcolm. Why didn’t she think of him as Carnach, or the earl, or “that dreadful man”? Something had happened between them that changed her. She stubbornly clung to calling it lightning even though Prudence had mocked her use of the phrase.
The ceiling above her bed was too dark to see. The curtains were closed against the moon and the wind, and the only light came from the embers of the banked fire opposite the bed. In the dark, alone, Amelia still couldn’t admit to herself what she knew to be true.
Malcolm’s touch enthralled her. His kiss left her weak-kneed and even weaker willed. But she wouldn’t examine why she felt that way, after a decade of closing herself off from the attentions of men. It was safer to say it was a brief flare of insanity and leave it at that.
She sat up to pull off her slippers, then slid off the high bed just long enough to remove the pins from her hair and turn the covers back. She no longer wanted to think. She wanted to sleep, to pretend that she would wake up in the morning and Malcolm — Carnach — wouldn’t be signing the settlements that would make her his.
Her dress would be hopelessly crushed, and she didn’t relish the notion of sleeping in her stays, but it was better than feigning serenity with her maid. Amelia crawled back into bed. If she didn’t wake up from this nightmare, she would need a plan.
As she curled on her side, she smiled grimly. Her mind already raced with alternatives. She excelled at plans. Her plan to put Prudence and Malcolm together had failed.
But Amelia Staunton never failed twice.
* * *
Drawing up the settlements was easy. Laughably easy, really. A solicitor would finish the formalities, but the negotiations were more civil than anything said in the library the previous night.
Malcolm hadn’t felt civil when his hands were running over Amelia’s body, or when his mouth devoured hers. And he certainly hadn’t felt civil when they were interrupted — or when that kiss turne
d into a proposal she seemed determined to evade.
But daylight required civility, and smearing a patina of respectability over the sordid reality of their engagement. Malcolm still didn’t feel civil, but he could fake it.
Salford sat on the other side of Malcolm’s desk, making notes in a ledger. If Malcolm achieved the political clout he wanted, he would need to accustom himself to odd backroom negotiations, the kind done with no witnesses and an undercurrent of threats.
There was nothing seedy about the Earl of Salford, though. He was reputedly a shrewd negotiator in the antiquities world. Malcolm suspected there were few people who ever claimed an advantage over him. He wasn’t the type to suffer fools or fall victim to a scam. So when Salford named a figure for Amelia’s dowry that would have set the fortune hunters salivating, Malcolm raised an eyebrow.
“That is more generous than I expected, under the circumstances,” Malcolm said.
Salford leaned back in his chair, utterly comfortable in Malcolm’s study despite the subject matter. “I want to see her settled happily.”
“She wasn’t happy last night.”
“Then you must convince her to be,” Salford said. “Give her time to become accustomed to a new routine, and Amelia can be comfortable anywhere.”
“Comfortable” didn’t mean “happy,” but Malcolm didn’t point that out. “What were you hinting at about Amelia’s past last night?”
Salford didn’t tense a single muscle, but his dark eyes sharpened. “Nothing. I was angry and spoke out of turn.”
“I can’t have a wife who will embarrass me,” Malcolm warned.
“She won’t. Nothing she’s done has been reproached. It’s the suitors around her who have been problematic. Really, I should thank you for taking her off the marriage mart so that I no longer have to entertain offers for her hand.”
Malcolm steepled his fingers under his chin. “That isn’t quite as safe as I would like.”
“Take her or leave her,” Salford said, his voice turning to ice. “But if you leave her, I’ll ruin you more comprehensively than any rumor could.”
