He’d failed her. He’d led her into danger of the gravest kind. She probably thought he’d abandoned her back at Montford’s ball, too.
There was no time to dwell on that now. He needed to get Honey away from here. But how to do it when he had so many loose ends to tie up? He couldn’t trust Mason with Ridley or even Yarmouth, come to that.
But Yarmouth wasn’t finished. He smiled groggily at Gerald, who had looked on with his mouth opening and closing like a fish throughout. “Just out of curiosity, do you still wish to marry my daughter, Mason? You see, I’m inclined to look favorably on your suit. With or without the solution you promised me.”
He gave a dramatic shudder. “When I think of the profits that you’re letting slip through your fingers … You could be set up for life, man! You could support my daughter in grand style, never have to work again.”
Gerald pressed his lips together and didn’t deign to answer.
“You can give them your blessing before you stand trial,” said Davenport dryly.
“But you’ll have to tie the knot quickly,” continued Yarmouth as if Davenport hadn’t spoken. He made a moue expressive of distaste. “You see, Gerald, the stupid little bitch went and got herself with child.”
“What?”
Mason’s furious exclamation split his ears, but Davenport fixed his attention on Hilary. Her pale face had turned ashen. Her eyes seemed hollowed out, like a starving waif. Those golden-brown eyes turned in his direction with an expression so broken, he almost went to his knees.
“And of course Davenport won’t marry her,” Yarmouth added, malice dripping from his tone as he struggled to his feet. He still clutched his midriff, but his vigor was returning.
“The babe isn’t mine,” said Davenport, addressing neither Gerald nor Yarmouth but Hilary. “Honey, you must believe me.”
Gerald’s anguished voice rent the air. “She doesn’t believe you, and neither do I!”
Davenport heard the ominous click of a pistol being primed. His pistol, the one he’d left on Gerald’s desk. A glance confirmed it. Gerald pointed the gun at him.
“Put the pistol down, Gerald.” As he spoke, Davenport took three cautious steps to the side, but the pistol in Mason’s hand tracked his movements and he dared not try anything for fear of him pulling the trigger. “Honey, lie down flat on the floor.”
He didn’t look to see whether she obeyed him but kept his eyes on the weapon.
“Gerald,” said Davenport in a calm tone with a hint of warning in it. He swallowed hard.
His vaunted recklessness, the gaming, the women, none of that had been an act. When his life’s work had been stripped from him along with his reputation, he’d ridden hard and fast to the Devil and told himself he’d enjoyed every minute of it. The Earl of Davenport truly had not cared whether he lived or died.
Until he met Hilary deVere.
Now, as he faced the real prospect of death at the hands of a man he used to call a friend, life became a precious gift, indeed.
Honey. He must not die leaving things like this between them.
Struggling for calm, he said, “Gerald, you must believe me. The babe cannot be mine.”
“Well, of course you’d say that,” scoffed Yarmouth. “What man wouldn’t, staring down the barrel of his own pistol, eh?”
“Shut up! Shut up, both of you!” yelled Gerald, spittle flying. He was red in the face, and the hand that held the pistol in an inexpert grip trembled. A more dangerous man with a weapon than Ridley, in many ways.
“I’ll shut his mouth for you,” muttered Davenport.
“Allow me,” said a feminine voice so stripped of emotion that he barely recognized it as Hilary’s. She raised a heavy carved bookend and brought it down hard on Yarmouth’s head.
“Bravo,” said Davenport, when he’d recovered from the astonishment of seeing his dearest love brain his greatest enemy.
There was no opportunity to take advantage of the diversion, however. Gerald’s agonized rage had narrowed his focus to Davenport and Davenport alone. He would not be distracted.
It was a risk, but Davenport raised his gaze from the pistol to meet Gerald’s eye. Slowly, succinctly, he said, “Gerald, I give you my word as a gentleman, I never compromised Lady Maria. The child she is carrying is not mine.”
The absolute sincerity in his tone seemed to confuse Gerald. His chin quivered, but his hold on the pistol remained firm. “Why should I take your word about anything?”
Why indeed? Davenport fell silent. Hadn’t he taken pride in renouncing all claim to the title of gentleman?
“Because I do,” said Hilary quietly, moving to stand next to him.
“Dammit, Honey, get down,” he said. “You’re making yourself a target.”
Then he registered the meaning of those three words she’d uttered. Did she truly believe him? Or did she simply say that to calm Gerald?
Either way, she ignored his order, homing in on the man with the pistol. “In fact, Mr. Mason, I know Lord Davenport is not the father of Lady Maria’s child, for she told me so herself.”
“You? She told you?” demanded Gerald. “But—”
“Yes,” said Honey, lying through her teeth. A slight tremor in her speech betrayed her fear, but that was the only sign of discomposure she showed. “If you don’t believe me, why not ask her yourself?”
She let that sink in, then went on in that precise schoolmistress voice of hers that he knew so well. “And I do not mean to criticize, sir, but the gentlemanly code would forbid that you shoot an unarmed man in cold blood. After all, solving this kind of dispute is what affairs of honor are for, are they not? You should rather request Davenport’s seconds to wait on yours. Moreover…”
She rattled on in the same instructive tone for so long that Davenport thought his eyes might cross if he weren’t so terrified on her behalf.
It seemed to have the same stultifying effect on Gerald, for he passed a trembling hand over his face, as if tried beyond endurance. Even with a pistol in his hand, he was too polite to contradict or interrupt a lady.
“Of course, if you still wish to shoot Lord Davenport, I’ll stand aside,” continued Honey amenably. “But if you’ve decided to be sensible, perhaps you might oblige me by releasing the hammer on that lovely pistol. Yes, that’s it,” she said encouragingly as Gerald numbly complied with her request. “My dear Mr. Mason, I do believe you ought to sit down. You look a trifle faint.”
As competently as if she’d handled firearms all her life—which, knowing her upbringing, perhaps she had—Honey removed the pistol from Gerald’s now-slackened grasp and expertly released the hammer. She handed the weapon to Davenport without so much as glancing at him.
Only when Gerald finally slumped into his desk chair again did she sink to her knees on the floor, her chest heaving as shudders of relief racked her body.
Before Davenport could recover from the fourteen heart attacks he’d suffered while Hilary talked Gerald into submission, Beckenham strode in, his usually precise appearance somewhat the worse for wear.
“Where the hell have you been?” demanded Davenport. “You were supposed to watch the bastard.”
Beckenham’s brow was creased with worry. “I saw him go into Montford House, but he didn’t come out again, and I’d no reason to suspect what he was up to until the boy gave me your message and I went in search of both him and Miss deVere. Yarmouth must have smuggled her out through the back garden. It took me a great deal of time to pick up the trail.”
He glanced around. “I got here as quickly as I— Miss deVere!” He crossed to Honey, who was still on her knees, shivering.
Struggling out of his coat, Beckenham knelt beside her and put it around her shoulders. As Davenport should have done. As he would have done if Beckenham hadn’t got there first.
The warmth seemed to thaw Honey from her shocked state. She turned her face into his big, dependable shoulder and wept.
Watching them, Davenport felt as if someone had stabbed him re
peatedly in the stomach and ripped his entrails out for good measure.
“Gerald!” Lady Maria Shand stumbled onto the scene.
“What the Devil’s she doing here?” said Davenport, snapping out of his piteous abstraction.
Beckenham shrugged. “I passed her on the stairs.”
“Oh, Gerald, my darling! You are wounded. How can this be?”
Lady Maria hurried over to her injured swain. Gerald had started to protest that he wasn’t badly hurt, but he seemed to think better of it as her delicate hands fluttered over him and her blue eyes gazed earnestly into his.
Davenport watched Hilary deVere seek safety in the shelter of his cousin’s arms. A great hole gaped inside him. It burned with cold intensity, like frostbite.
“Honey,” he said in a voice that barely scraped through his vocal cords. “I need to talk to you, away from here. Let’s go down.”
He could tell she wanted to deny him, but she had never been a coward. She moved ahead of him, out the door.
A brave woman, his Honey. Facing down a man with a pistol. That took courage of no mean order. He was still furious with her for doing it, but he couldn’t help but worship her at the same time.
He loved her. The blinding simplicity of this fact nearly made him miss his footing on the stairs. He’d had to face near death, both hers and his own, to realize it, but now that he had, he needed to make her his.
He led her downstairs to a disused parlor and lit a candle there with hands that were not quite steady.
After all that had occurred, he wasn’t certain she’d forgive him. She’d told him she loved him but that seemed a lifetime ago.
He hesitated, not knowing where to begin. Afraid to begin, if the truth were known. What he started she might finish, annihilate him with a word.
A resolve solidified within him. He wouldn’t let her deny him. Not now. Not when he’d finally woken to his own stupidity. What he wanted was clear now, no longer colored or obscured by the past.
He wanted to be with Hilary deVere forever.
The longing to hold her swept over him, but she stood by the window, her arms crossed in an attitude of self-containment. He couldn’t quite stomach the prospect of her rejecting any physical overtures he might make.
He forced himself to say the words. “I love you, Honey. Will you be my wife?”
The flimsy curtains fluttered around her in the breeze. Moonlight streamed in, adding silvery highlights to her golden hair.
She didn’t speak for many moments. His heart seemed to have migrated to his throat and it beat so hard, he wondered she couldn’t hear it.
The silence stretched until he said, “Honey, please answer me. Will you be my wife?”
She opened her lips and he braced for the blow. “I’m afraid I cannot marry you, my lord.”
He’d expected her answer, but that didn’t lessen the pain of hearing it. “Why not? I know I did something or said something wrong back there in the music room, but if you’ll just listen to me—”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid I cannot marry you because you are not good enough for me.”
Was that all? “Well, of course I’m not good enough for you. Ask any of my family. Ask Becks up there. But I love you, damn it, Honey. And you said that you loved me.”
She tilted her head to the side. “I don’t think you do love me, you know, Davenport. Though I give you full credit for retrieving the slip you made back there in the music room.”
“Slip?” Now he was confused.
“You thought you could make all right with Lady Maria. What you forgot was that even if the silly female could be brought to keep her mouth shut about our … liaison, she is not the only one who knows of it. After tonight, everyone will expect you to do the right thing, make an honest woman of me. The only way to save my reputation is to sacrifice your freedom. And you’ll do it, won’t you, Davenport? Because here’s the secret I know about you.” She lowered her voice to whisper. “You’re no true scoundrel at all.”
She’d put pieces of the puzzle together. They fitted, but they didn’t show the true picture. “It’s not like that.”
Her eyes were bright with tears, but her voice remained steady. “I saw how you looked when I told you I loved you, Jonathon. It wasn’t the expression of a man in love who had just discovered his feelings were returned.”
That piece of truth rammed him in the gut like a fist. He stared at her, knowing the situation was fast careering out of his control, powerless to stop it. “I hadn’t realized then. I didn’t know—”
“You told me I needn’t marry you. Those were your words before you ran after Lady Maria to shut her mouth so we would not be forced to wed. I find it difficult—impossible, really—to believe your sentiments can have altered so greatly in the space of a few hours.”
“But they have, damn it! Or at least, they haven’t changed, I just didn’t recognize them until now. Honey, you needed to have the choice. I didn’t want you committed to something you might later regret. That’s why I needed to keep Lady Maria quiet.”
“Really?” He was making such an abysmal mess of this, her skeptical expression held a tinge of pity. “I’d told you I loved you only minutes before. It seems to me that you were the one whose precious freedom was at issue. You were terrified of committing yourself. That’s why you wouldn’t even try to procure vouchers for Almack’s, isn’t it?”
“Oh, now I’ve heard everything. What has Almack’s got to do with us?”
She jabbed a finger at him. “You claim you don’t remember being banned. As if it doesn’t matter. As if having those doors closed to you is so insignificant it slipped your mind.”
“It did,” he protested.
“I don’t believe you. You are a coward, my lord. Afraid to fight for what is most important. Worst of all, you are afraid to love.”
He eyed her warily and wondered if her recent brush with death had turned her into some sort of goddess with powers beyond mortal ken and no hint of mercy in her soul.
She went on, remorseless. “Your colleagues in the scientific world shunning you, the Almack’s patronesses barring their doors against you. Your own cousins taking you into the country and dumping you in a barn. All of that mattered to you, Davenport, or you wouldn’t have committed such ridiculous excesses until now. You deny the hurt because you’re too proud to admit you need these people. You need society. You need your family. You need your work.” She took a deep, unsteady breath. “You need me.”
“Honey, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I love you. I need you. You have to marry me.”
“No, Davenport,” she said gently. “You are simply trying to make the best of a bad bargain. And I won’t let you.”
“That’s not it at all.” He took a long, unsteady breath and attempted to make order and sense of the roiling mass of feelings inside him. For someone so adept at employing words to charm and beguile, he’d never been good at using them to express deep emotion. They were so new and raw and tender, these emotions, it caused him physical pain to strip away all the flippancy that he’d used to protect himself all these years.
But he would do it for her.
He swallowed hard. In a voice deepened with passion and hoarse with desperation, he said, “Honey, you are my sun. You’re the heat that warms me and nurtures all the good things inside me, the light that drives out my darkness. I was lost, aimless, spinning into oblivion until I met you. You pulled me into orbit around you. In serving you, protecting you, striving to be worthy of you, in loving you, I’ve found my true path.”
He searched her face for some sign that she understood, but her eyes—those glorious, gold-flecked eyes—did not relent. They simply filled with tears.
“You must not say those things,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut as if to block out his words. Tears slid down her cheeks. “I simply cannot…”
She shook her head vehemently, catching her lip between her teeth. She opened her eyes again. “It is t
oo late for this, Jonathon. Far too late.”
“No! No, it can’t be.” Davenport strode forward, intending to pull her into his arms. Something he ought to have done immediately. She could never resist him physically, and he wasn’t above taking unfair advantage of that fact.
She warded him off with a sharp wave of her hand. “Don’t! Don’t touch me, I can’t bear it.” In a tone of near despair, she cried, “Oh, why can’t you just let me go?”
He’d reached for her, but now he let his hands fall by his sides. He felt as if he’d been gutted like a fish. He’d laid open his insides for her inspection and she’d spurned them without hesitation. Pain, jagged as a fisherman’s blade, cut through him. He took a ragged breath and realized there was nothing left for him to say.
Beckenham chose that moment to poke his head into the room, causing Honey to turn her back, wiping surreptitiously at her eyes with the back of her hand. “If you want to take Miss deVere home, Davenport, I can clear up here.”
When a tense silence greeted him, Beckenham’s dark gaze flicked from one of them to the other. “Oh. Sorry.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’ll go.”
“That’s quite all right, Lord Beckenham,” said Honey, turning with a brilliant smile and only the slightest hint of dampness on her cheeks. “I’d like you to take me home, if you would be so good. Lord Davenport must attend to his business here.”
Beckenham cocked an eyebrow at Davenport for confirmation.
After a long pause, Davenport nodded. It was his responsibility to see that Yarmouth and Ridley got their comeuppance.
More important, he needed to stop digging a bigger hole for himself with Honey. He needed to find a way to convince her he was in earnest. He had to convince her. The alternative was unthinkable. He’d just discovered he couldn’t possibly live without Hilary deVere.
“I’ll send Lydgate over with the magistrate,” said Beckenham, offering his arm to Honey. “Yarmouth won’t stand trial, of course, but Xavier is already working on the problem of what to do with him, I believe.”
Adding clairvoyance to his other alarming qualities, Davenport thought. He watched with agonized frustration as his Honey smiled at his dependable cousin. Thanking him for his kindness, she tucked her hand into Beckenham’s arm and left.
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