Viscount Tinsdale dropped his quizzing glass—and his mouth. He stared at his ordinarily sweet-natured, biddable daughter as if she had suddenly grown two heads. “Demme, Harcourt, this is all your doing,” he said turning his baleful gaze on the object of his derision.
“He’s right, Caleb. This whole, dreadful mess is your fault.” Lady Ursula dabbed at her brimming eyes with a soggy handkerchief. “How could I have been so taken in by your charms as to believe I had come to care for a man who was blackmailing my poor son?”
“Devil take it, Ursula, nobody told me the earl was promised,” Harcourt grumbled. “I was just looking to acquire my daughter a title the easiest way possible.”
“And a fine mess you’ve made of things trying to climb above your station.” Viscount Tinsdale stared down his nose at the offending cit, his expression that of a man who had just taken a whiff of something unspeakably foul. “This is a prime example of why we of the old gentry oppose the infiltration into our ranks of bourgeois commoners.”
“Why you overstuffed little pipsqueak!” Harcourt half rose from his chair with an obvious intent to throttle the little viscount. But Tristan, who heretofore had merely sat back and watched the proceedings, reached across the table and restrained him with a hand on his arm and a few brief but expressive words, which earned him scathing looks from both combatants.
“Elizabeth, Sarah, we are leaving!” the viscount declared haughtily.
Lady Tinsdale pushed back her chair and stood up, her usually placid eyes blazing and two bright spots of color highlighting her pale cheeks. “You may leave if you wish, Horatio, but I stand with my daughter. I have lived with your selfish, tight-fisted ways for thirty years, but I can live with them no longer. Harcourt’s methods may be unscrupulous and his judgment faulty, but a least he had his daughter’s welfare at heart; you put the acquisition of a few Rembrandts and Vandykes above the happiness of your only child. For that, I cannot forgive you.”
Viscount Tinsdale’s eyes fairly popped from his head. “Elizabeth!” he gasped. “Have you lost all sense of propriety, to speak to your lord in such a manner?”
“I have lost nothing, Horatio, except my respect for you.” Lady Tinsdale’s expression remained defiant, though her lips trembled noticeably. “And while you are out and about making your expensive acquisitions, you’d best look into acquiring yourself a mistress, for I fear I have developed an excruciating headache which will prohibit my according you any…privileges at any time in the foreseeable future.”
Before Maddy’s eyes, Viscount Tinsdale wilted like a flower deprived of its source of sunshine and water, and she recalled Caro’s claim that despite his selfish ways, he loved his wife and daughter dearly. “What is it you want of me Elizabeth?” he asked with obvious resignation.
Lady Tinsdale’s expression soften a fraction. “I want you to help the earl out of the financial problems he inherited from his ne’er-do-well father so Sarah and he can marry.”
“And how, pray, am I supposed to do that when Harcourt holds all the notes?”
As if the viscount’s peevish question were the one she’d been waiting for, Lady Ursula dried her tears and rose to her feet. “I believe Mr. Harcourt is going to destroy those dreadful notes, my lord,” she said her voice deceptively calm. “For if he doesn’t, he will find that he, too, will be deprived of certain unnamed privileges which he has been enjoying recently.” She glared at the recipient of said privileges. “And as my late, unlamented husband was wont to say when he held a winning hand, ‘on that I stand pat’.”
“Why, Mama, surely you’re not implying…” Carolyn blushed furiously. “I knew you were fond of Mr. Harcourt, but it never occurred to me you were…I mean, you’re much too prim and proper to…”
“Don’t be a ninny, Carolyn. I’m not that prim and proper.” Lady Ursula leveled her gaze on the big man sitting beside her. “So, Caleb, what are you going to about those notes Madelaine is waving under your nose?”
“This is blackmail,” he said indignantly, then had the grace to flush when he met Maddy’s knowing gaze.
“Some might call it that,” Lady Ursula said. “I prefer the term ‘tit for tat’.”
Maddy watched her father glance around the table, a bemused expression on his handsome age-weathered face. Every woman was standing; every man seated. He scowled. “Devil take it, madam, between you and my scapegrace daughter, you leave me little choice.” Reaching across the table, he snatched the documents from Maddy’s hands, dropped them into the silver centerpiece, and lighted them up with a candle from one of the candelabra.
“There,” he declared as the flames licked the edges of the epergne. “I’ve done my part and more for the House of Rand, if you add the cost of this bonfire to all the money I’ve poured into this townhouse and that mausoleum you call Winterhaven. Now, let’s see how much blunt the skinflint viscount is willing to part with.”
“I suppose I could manage to advance sufficient funds to see the Rand estates back on a paying basis,” the viscount said grudgingly.
Between the laughing and crying and chattering that followed the viscount’s statement—and the frantic efforts of Frobisher and the footmen to keep the conflagration from setting the table on fire—general pandemonium reigned for the next few minutes.
Maddy was hugged and kissed and thanked with heartfelt sincerity, first by Lady Tinsdale, then by Lady Sarah and the earl once they had stopped gazing into each other’s eyes long enough to do so. Viscount Tinsdale was not so appreciative. He mumbled something about foreigners corrupting the thinking of decent Englishwomen and promptly departed with the other three to make plans for his daughter’s future.
Maddy smiled sentimentally as she watched them go. The earl really was a sweet man and he deserved the kind of loyal, loving wife Lady Sarah would make him.
“So, daughter, you’ve had your way after all,” her father said, giving her an affectionate thump on her back, “and though it’s cost me dearly, I’ve no regrets. If I’d not embarked on my scheme to make you a countess, I’d never have won the heart and hand of a fine woman like Lady Ursula.”
Maddy smiled up at him. “She is truly a lovely lady, and I wish you nothing but happiness, Papa.”
“And I you daughter. You’re a clever one for sure; too clever for your own good, to my way of thinking. I hope, for your sake, this lucky bastard you’re so fond of is brave enough to take a managing woman like you to wife. For there’s not many as would do so.”
He leaned forward, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and whispered in her ear, “If by chance he should balk at the leg shackles, you have my permission to remind him you bring an impressive dowry to the marriage bed.”
So saying, he gathered Lady Ursula on one arm and Caro on the other and departed the dining room. A few minutes later the servants followed suit, carrying the still smoking epergne with them.
The moment Maddy had both prayed for and dreaded had finally arrived. She was alone with Tristan at last. Suddenly, all her bravado evaporated like a puff of smoke in a windstorm.
Except for that one brief moment when he’d kept her father from attacking Viscount Tinsdale, Tristan had remained so detached from the drama she’d initiated, one might think it in no way affected him. Even when she’d won her point and the other men had come forward to declare their undying love for the ladies of their choice, he had silently retreated to the shadowy window recess at the far end of the room.
Was her father right? Had she frightened him off with her managing ways?
As if to corroborate her suspicion, he stepped from the shadows, his right hand raised to his forehead in a crisp military salute. “Well done, Madame General. Wellington himself couldn’t have rallied his troops around him more effectively. Though in winning the battle, you may well have dealt your own fortunes a death blow.”
Maddy tensed, uncertain of his meaning. “I am not normally a managing kind of woman,” she protested, trying to read his expression. “I only did
what had to be done to stop my father from standing in the way of true love.”
“With his infernal managing.” Tristan sighed deeply. “I’m firmly convinced it’s a family trait. I am also convinced that had you decided to try your hand at managing the French army, Bonaparte would even now be occupying Mad King George’s throne.”
Maddy felt her temper flare. How dare he ridicule her after all the trouble she had gone to for him. “And, of course, it goes without saying, you do not want a managing wife.”
“There may be worse fates, but offhand I cannot think of one,” Tristan said matter-of-factly.
“Well, that is that then.” Maddy’s heart lay like a heavy stone in her breast. “I suppose if I really had my mind set on marrying you, I could promise I’d never try to manage you,” she ventured hesitantly.
“Why not promise to make the Thames flow backward? You’d have a better chance of that being believed.” Tristan shook his head sadly. “I know you, Maddy Harcourt. You are a deucedly clever and devious woman. I shudder to think how many times you’ve maneuvered me into doing something I swore I would never do just in the same way you brought your father and Viscount Tinsdale to their knees tonight. With a few well-chosen words.”
“I had a great deal of help in accomplishing my objective,” Maddy declared indignantly. “Have you forgotten the other women played a part as well?”
“Hah! Think you I was fooled by the performances of such timid creatures? They were simply marionettes speaking your words with their voice. No, my dear, it was very apparent who had orchestrated the plot of tonight’s little drama.” Tristan’s knowing smile made her long to brain him in the same way she had the young Royalist who had taunted her so cruelly.
“Papa predicted you would balk at marrying me,” Maddy said bitterly. “He said you find the idea of marrying a managing woman too frightening by half. Fool that I was, I refused to believe you such a coward.”
“Your father was wrong as usual.” An indefinable expression that looked almost like amusement flickered momentarily in Tristan’s unusual eyes. “For, it does not frighten me, my dear; it positively terrifies me. I do not believe I have ever before fully appreciated the awesome power of a determined female—even one who was, for practical purposes, cutting her own throat.”
He walked to the table, poured himself a glass of wine from a cut-glass carafe, and studied the shimmering, golden contents in the light of a candle. “The plain truth is, Maddy, no man in his right mind would consider marrying a woman like you.”
Maddy’s spirits dropped to somewhere between her ankles and the soles of her slippers. “Not even a man who loved me?”
“Ah, well, now that’s a horse of a different color, isn’t it?” He took a swallow of wine, set the glass on the table, and moved toward her. “The poor sod suffering from that affliction would already be a candidate for Bedlam, so we could scarcely expect him to act rationally.”
He stood close now. So close, she could feel the heat of his strong, lithe body, smell the lemony scent of his freshly starched cravat. Did she just imagine it, or was that laughter glinting in the rakehell’s eyes? By all that was holy, if he had simply been teasing her all this while…
“What are you saying?” she asked, her heart thumping so loudly in her breast, she felt certain he could hear it.
“I’m saying I suspect you of being a practitioner of the art of witchcraft, Maddy Harcourt, for I have most certainly been bewitched since a particular moonlit night at a French gristmill. Nothing else could explain the fact that I long to marry a woman with the figure of a boy and the tongue of a wasp—a woman who is so foolish as to maneuver herself out of inheriting one of the largest fortunes in England by marrying a nameless bastard.”
Maddy felt as if the weight of the world had suddenly been lifted from her shoulders. “Oh, Tristan,” she marveled, “is it true? You want me even without my fortune?”
He drew her into his arms. “I want you, little witch. Only you. Without so much as the slippers on your feet or the dress on your back.” He nuzzled her neck. “Especially without the dress on your back.”
Maddy felt a hot flush suffuse her cheeks at the thought of the untold pleasures his wicked, provocative words portended. She snuggled against him and raised her arms to encircle the strong column of his neck. Tenderly, he kissed the tip of her nose, the curve of her cheeks, the sensitive flesh of her earlobe until, frustrated beyond belief, she pursed her lips, mutely begging him to once again claim them in a searing kiss.
He didn’t. Instead, he raised his head to search her face with anxious eyes. “Understand me, Maddy, I can provide for you, but not in the lavish manner of your father. I believe I have a future in England’s diplomatic corps, but in the beginning my salary as an embassy attaché will be but a pittance.”
“I understand. We shall survive very nicely. I am a good housekeeper and an excellent cook,” Maddy declared, making a snap decision to withhold until later the information that her father still intended to provide her with a generous dowry. Until much later. Sometime after she had Tristan’s ring on her finger.
It was not that she meant to deceive him. Heaven forbid! But the dear fellow seemed so inordinately please with the thought that he would be the breadwinner of the family, she could not bring herself to tell him that she was bringing a fortune to their union after all.
It had something to do with his honor, she felt certain. He put great store in honor.
She strongly suspected it also gave him a feeling of control. If there was one thing she’d learned from living with her grandfather, it was that men like to think they were in control.
“Now that we have that settled, my love, do you think you could kiss me?” she asked, smiling meekly up at him. “For if you do not, I fear I shall be forced to collect the kiss you still owe me.” She sighed dramatically. “And since that outstanding debt appears to be my only fortune at present, I’d rather not spend it just yet.”
With a joyful chuckle, he complied with her request at once with a tender, yet demanding passion that claimed her as his forever…just exactly as she’d known he would.
The Misguided Matchmaker Page 24
