“Lord Stanton from Scotland. He’s new to town, and Mother thought it would be my best chance.” Amelia turned her head away from him and began to fiddle with the lace on her sleeves.
“And you?” he asked with sudden interest, his whole body suddenly taut with anticipation. “Do you want to meet him?”
“I did,” she whispered. “Now I’m not sure. Men find me…too direct.”
“Still,” Tavis hedged, “you need to go before your mother starts to worry.” He closed the distance between the two of them until they were once again face to face. “Because if you were mine and I couldn’t find you,” he said, his burr richening his already deep voice, “I’d tear the house and grounds apart until I had you in my arms again.”
“But I don’t want to say goodbye,” Amelia whispered. She swayed toward him, ensnared by his provocative words and enticing nearness.
He seemed to hesitate a moment, perhaps tempted by what he saw written on her face. Shaking his head, he turned to leave, but stopped and faced her again. “Then run away with me, Amelia.”
“Wh-what?” she stuttered, backing away from Tavis. She didn’t know which of them was more shocked. “We hardly know each other!”
“Many marriages begin on less,” Tavis persuaded, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I don’t even know who you are. You could be anybody!”
She turned her head to the side and closed her eyes, more tempted by his offer than she was willing to admit to herself. He was giving her a chance to leave behind the solitude and misery her curse had imposed on her from the age of eight. She could leave and start a new life away from London and the gossips of the ton. She could finally have a normal life. A husband. A home. A family of her own. She would no longer be the awkward spinster sister of the lovely Beatrice or the bane of her mother’s existence. She could be free…
What he is saying is crazy! Respectable gentlemen don’t go around offering marriage to near strangers.
Proper young women did not accept offers of marriage from near strangers, either. But, oh, how she was tempted nonetheless to accept and live a life where nobody knew about her curse.
“I could be anybody, ’tis true, lass.” Tavis grabbed her chin between his fingers, forcing her to look at him. “But I also could be somebody, Amelia. Somebody you could care for. Somebody you could marry.”
She jerked her head away and closed her eyes against the promise she saw on his face. Years of proper upbringing and the ensuing scandal if she eloped were the only things holding her back from saying yes.
Still he continued his pursuit, making her decision to stay strong and refuse him much harder. “Run away with me, Amelia mia,” he whispered, his face looming over hers. He dropped a kiss on her forehead, and she reveled in the hot, smooth feel of his skin pressed against her own. “Come away with me tonight and be my wife.”
Yes, Tavis, she wanted to scream. Yes, I will be your wife! But the image of her mother and father’s disappointed faces loomed large in her mind. She saw the nosey gossipers of the ton snubbing her family, and she saw her family’s worry. Most of all, she felt their shame as if it were her own. No, she could not do that to them, no matter how tempted she was.
Amelia shook her head and shuddered as if awakening from a dream. Regardless of her own desires, she could not risk everything for a man she had happened to meet outside her father’s stables. When she opened her mouth to explain all this, no words formed. Instead, her face crumpled and tears filled her eyes. Gathering the hems of her skirts, she ran from the clearing, away from Tavis and back to the safety and security of the beckoning house.
Chapter 7
Amelia entered the house and went to the card room to find her sister. Most of the dancers had quit the floor for dinner, so the ballroom was easier to navigate than earlier in the evening.
She entered the room with some haste, repeating, “Bea. Bea. Bea.” Spying her sister’s blonde head amidst the darker hues of the card dandies who surrounded her, Amelia interrupted her sister’s game.
“Bea,” she whispered. “I need to talk to you. Now.”
“Darling,” Bea said in her melodious voice, “can’t you see I’m in the middle of a game?” She gestured to the table and the surrounding players.
Amelia huffed out an impatient sigh before she glanced at her sister’s cards. “What are you playing?”
“Loo.” Bea rolled her eyes dramatically at the interested looks she and her sister were receiving from the other players.
“Trump?” She studied the table with keen eyes and surmised her sister had this game won. As usual, Bea was toying with the other players much like a cat with a mouse before it swallowed the mouse whole. Bea was like that sometimes.
“Spades.” Bea’s eyes narrowed.
Amelia pulled out the top three trump cards of her sister’s hand and laid them on the table.
“Anyone have trump to beat that?” Amelia quizzed the befuddled card players at the table, some of them now muttering their irritation.
“Anyone?” she repeated. “Good.” Amelia scooped up Bea’s winnings, which were strewn across the table, and threw them into her sister’s tiny reticule. “Bea is done for now, boys.” Grabbing her sister by the hand, Amelia dragged Beatrice out of the card room and down the hallway, ignoring the muffled shouts of disgruntlement from the card room.
“Will you tell me what is going on?” Bea struggled in Amelia’s grasp and managed to successfully pull her hand from Amelia’s tight grip.
Beatrice stopped in the middle of the empty hallway, her eyes spitting blue fire at Amelia. It turned to surprise as she assessed Amelia’s appearance. Amelia patted her hair in a desperate attempt to secure it into some semblance of what it had been earlier that evening, before…she gulped. Before I met Tavis.
Walking away from him was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. She came alive in his presence and felt attractive when she was with him. Usually she was bored to tears with the men of the ton. Most were coerced by her father into talking to her, so they were boring, or thought they were doing her a favor by speaking with her. Or they are Bea’s discarded suitors seeking a way to gain favor once more with Queen Bea through me.
Over time she had come to believe she was a cold, unwanted spinster who was a mere shadow compared to the twin flames of her two brilliant sisters. She was too big and awkward next to them and too unconventional-looking to be called pretty.
When Tavis looked at her, Amelia forgot all that. Tavis liked the way she appeared. He said so, and for some reason she believed him. She felt beautiful and womanly, especially when she saw how he regarded her, like she was a glazed honey ham and he hadn’t eaten in years.
Aside from her physical reaction to him, which was strong, he was a true gentleman—thoughtful, solicitous, and kind. Barring his actions during their initial meeting, he behaved with far more decorum than she herself had. And he was content to be with her without asking millions of impolite questions. In their short time together, he appeared to be the perfect man, and she had walked away from it.
More like ran away from.
“If you were mine,” he had said in his deep voice.
Oh, if only I were his. But, most likely, he was a poor untitled second son with no prospects. Mother and Father would never agree to such a match.
Bea’s shrill voice demanded, “What happened to you? Look at your hair! It’s completely come undone.” Beatrice came forward and shooed Amelia’s fluttering hands out of the way. Smoothing the wayward strands together with her hands, Beatrice twisted her sister’s hair into a reasonably acceptable coiffure and pinned it with the remaining pins left in the tangled red masses of once stylish hair.
Circling Amelia with a critical eye, Beatrice assessed her costume. “Why are there wrinkles on your dress? And are those”—Beatrice paused as she looked at her sister in shocked amazement—“are those grass stains on the back of your gown? Amelia Jane Westby, what have you been up to?”
�
��Oh, Bea!” Amelia cried throwing herself into her sister’s arms. “I don’t know what to do!”
“There, there,” Bea soothed, a note of near panic in her cool, cultured voice.
Her tears somewhat quieted, Amelia straightened and caught a glimpse of a familiar pink shape bustling through the hallway.
“Clarisse,” Amelia warbled.
Clarisse put her arms around her distraught friend and glared at Beatrice. “What did you do to her?”
“Me? I didn’t do anything! This lunatic”—Bea jabbed a finger in Amelia’s direction—“attacked me at the tables, pulled me away from the middle of a card game, which I could have won by myself, thank you very much, and dragged me down the hall! Finding her disheveled, I did my best to help repair her hair and costume. And after all that, she throws herself into my arms and starts crying!” Bea ended her tirade on a huff.
“I heard about the ruckus you caused during the card game as I was going in to dinner, so I rushed out to find you two.” She squeezed Amelia in a comforting hug. “Are you going to tell us what happened, Mimi?”
Amelia stopped her crying, realizing she had been acting crazily. Taking the handkerchief Clarisse offered her, Amelia wiped her eyes and announced, “We need to find some place private where we can talk.”
Amelia saw Beatrice and Clarisse share a look, but they both nodded in agreement. “Come on,” Bea said, grabbing Amelia’s hand. “I know just the place.”
****
“…and then he asked me to dance in the moonlight.” Both women listened to Amelia in rapt attention as she described her encounter with Tavis McGuire by the stables. Sheltered by the cool, comforting walls of the wine cellar, Amelia didn’t hesitate to describe the feelings Tavis had aroused in her, his comforting embrace, and her attempt to kiss him.
“What happened next?” Clarisse asked.
Amelia started to fiddle with the folds in her skirt. She turned her head to the side and avoided looking at either her sister or her friend. She mumbled something under her breath, hoping in vain that they didn’t hear what she said.
“What?!” shrieked Bea. “He asked you to run away with him?”
“Bloody hell, Bea! I forgot you have ears like a cat.”
“He asked you to run away with him?” Clarisse squeaked, too shocked by Amelia’s revelation to censure her friend for her bad language. “Did he say why?”
“Since he asked me to be his wife, I assume it was to marry him.”
Bea rose from her chair and began to pace. “You mean to tell me a man you just met asked you to marry him…and you left him?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Amelia asked in some confusion. “Had I left with him, I would have caused a terrible scandal, not to mention we had just met, Bea.”
“You should have at least tried to kiss him again,” Bea replied. “At least, I would have kissed him in spite of his rules. Silly man.” Bea snorted. “As if gentlemen ever concern themselves with the rules when a pretty woman asks for a kiss.”
“He didn’t seem to be interested,” Amelia muttered under her breath, tugging at the sleeves of her gown.
“Not interested?” Clarisse asked. “If what you say is true, the man obviously wanted to kiss you.” She nodded sagely, her large sausage curls bouncing up and down.
“I agree,” Bea said. “And I definitely would have stayed to see what could have happened.”
“Maybe after kissing him you would have known if you should run away with him or not,” Clarisse concurred.
“You seem to be missing the point, ladies. I don’t know who he is. He never told me what he was doing in the stables in the first place.” She sniffled and threw up her hands. “For all I know, he could be a groomsman, or a…a wandering minstrel, or a gypsy.”
“Don’t even joke about that, Amelia!” Bea warned.
Amelia cringed and hung her head. The bundle of red curls Bea had pinned up straggled down again to cover Amelia’s face. “I’m sorry, Bea.”
There was a tense silence for a moment, during which Clarisse cleared her throat and interceded, ticking off the items the ladies knew for sure about the mysterious Mr. McGuire. “I think we can agree Mr. McGuire was raised a gentleman, based on Amelia’s descriptions of his dress, his manner of speaking, and his general gentlemanly behaviors.” She looked at both sisters, her head swiveling back and forth between the two silent women. “Agreed?”
“Agreed,” they mumbled.
“Now, concerning some of Mr. McGuire’s phrasings and references throughout your conversation. It would seem he is not a native of England. Perhaps Scotland?”
“I would concur,” Amelia said. With a blush she added, “It also sounded as if he had a slight burr.” Amelia remembered those times she had heard his burr come out, the deep rumble in his chest which made her hot and achy.
Bea questioned, “When did that occur?”
“When he held me in his arms in the stables, and while we were dancing under the stars.” A knowing look entered Bea’s eyes. She glanced at Clarisse, and the two women shared another undecipherable glance. Amelia was really getting tired of those looks. She wished they would say what they were thinking and stop with all this secretive nonsense. She hated being kept in the dark about matters, especially when those matters concerned her.
“Did nothing else unusual happen when the two of you were together?” Bea persisted.
Amelia could tell she had an idea regarding Mr. McGuire, possibly his identity, but she wanted all the information before hazarding a guess.
“No,” Amelia said, reviewing her interactions with Tavis. “Well,” she amended, “he did seem overly concerned with the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“After we finished dancing, he said it was midnight and time for me to go inside.” Amelia worried her lower lip with her teeth. “He also said someone was probably looking for me, almost like he knew I had an appointment to keep at midnight.”
Jumping up, Amelia swore, “Blast and damn!” Both Bea and Clarisse snapped their heads up from their quiet conversation. “I’m supposed to be meeting Lord Stanton right now. Mother is going to have my head!”
Amelia raced to the wine cellar door, but before she opened it Bea stopped her and pulled her back.
“Clarisse and I think you should do it,” Bea announced.
Amelia looked in confusion at her sister and her best friend. “Do what?”
“Run away with Mr. McGuire,” they said in unison.
Of all the advice she expected to receive, running away with a near perfect stranger was not one of them. She staggered over to the chair she had vacated and sank into it. “What? The scandal…”
Clarisse sat next to her and gave her a reassuring smile. She seemed to hesitate for a moment about what to say, but after looking at Bea, she said, “We think, based on what you have said, Mr. McGuire is a gentleman and what he proposed was an earnest offer of marriage.”
“You don’t think anyone else will ever offer for me, do you? You think my best chance for marriage is with a complete stranger.”
“No, Amelia.” Clarisse rushed to reassure her. “You obviously are attracted to Mr. McGuire, and from what you said of him, he is interested in you, and many marriages have started with less.”
Amelia snorted. “That’s what Tavis said, too.”
Bea moved to Amelia’s other side and took both of her hands. “Mimi,” she said in all seriousness, “I want you to listen to me.” Amelia studied her sister’s face and couldn’t recall the last time she had seen her sister so somber.
“You’re scaring me, Bea,” Amelia whispered. She started to worry about what her sister could possibly say to her. Clarisse squeezed her shoulder and nodded in encouragement at both Amelia and Bea.
“Promise me you’ll keep an open mind.” Bea took a deep breath and said, “Amelia, since you came out three years ago, I’ve watched you live your life as a spectator on the sidelines, looking out from the shadows at what c
ould be. It’s as if you are too afraid to come out into the light for fear of getting burned.”
Amelia started. Bea used the same words she herself had used in thinking of her feelings toward Tavis. She had likened his charisma to the sun, bright and warm and a little bit frightening.
Bea squeezed Amelia’s hands. “You gave up on life when it didn’t give you what you expected, and you’ve withdrawn into yourself, disguising your sweetness and goodness with a shield of bitterness and cruelty.”
Amelia’s eyes filled with tears at her sister’s words. Everything she said was true. Amelia had spent the years since her debut waiting and watching from the sidelines. She hadn’t taken charge of her life because, after the first rejections she received from the ton, the idea of opening herself up to further hurt was too much to bear. So she had hidden herself behind a mask of cool indifference, using her curse as an excuse to push people away.
“I know the curse has held you back; it has for all three of us, but I learned a long time ago the curse has power over you only for as long as you allow it, Mimi.” Amelia watched tears run down her sister’s face and felt wetness dampen her own cheeks. Grabbing hold of Amelia’s shoulders, Bea enveloped her sister in a tight hug. “It’s time to live your life,” Bea whispered into Amelia’s ears.
For endless moments, Amelia took comfort in her sister’s embrace. She gave her sister one final squeeze, wiped her eyes, and announced, “I’ll do it. I’ll run away with Tavis.”
Bea smiled serenely, and behind her, Clarisse squealed in excitement. Amelia gulped and prayed she was making the right choice.
Chapter 8
This night could not possibly get any worse. There had been the shock of discovering Lady Amelia was none other than Lady Amelia Westby, the daughter he was being blackmailed into meeting and possibly marrying, meanwhile needing to seduce her and use her to uncover her father’s secrets for his friend in the government. At first, he had not known who Lady Amelia was, never having met her before, but as soon as she said she had come out to visit her horse in her father’s stable, he knew.
Little White Lies Page 6
