by Mary Balogh
The
Incurable Matchmaker
by
Mary Balogh
UNEQUAL CONTEST
He kissed her.
And she kissed him. It was the embarrassment of the moment that caused it—the heat she had been feeling, and the anger, and the throbbing of all her pulses. It was not her. It was not her normal sensible self.
"You have forgotten something," he said in that low bedroom voice, his eyes on her lips.
"Forgotten?"
"That you were going to slap my face if ever I tried to kiss you again," he said.
Diana had thought it would be child's play to deal with the desires of the notorious Marquess of Kenwood. But she had not expected to have to defeat her own. . . .
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raised and educated in Wales, MARY BALOGH now lives in Kipling, Saskatchewan, Canada, with
her husband', Robert, and her children, Jacqueline, Christopher, and Sian. She is a high school English teacher.
* * *
1
"You are not at the Cholmondley ball, Jack?"
The Marquess of Kenwood eyed his questioner steadily. Since he was sitting in the lounge of White's Club, well into his cups, his boots crossed at the ankles on the table in front of him, surrounded by
a large group of similarly idle gentlemen, it seemed perfectly obvious to him that he was not at the Cholmondley ball.
"No," he said.
The newcomer sniggered. "Afraid old Cholmondley might find you closeted somewhere with his wife,"
he said, "and cut up nasty?"
The marquess raised a quizzing glass to his eye. Not that he saw the other with any great clarity even with its aid. Having spent a rare and thoroughly congenial evening at the club with male companions in order to celebrate the birthday of one of them, he was, he freely admitted to himself, at least three parts foxed. Three parts out of four, that was.
"Lady Cholmondley?" he said. "She must be all of three weeks in my past, Hartley. Where y' been?
To the Orient and back?"
"There have been five or six since then,'' another gentleman said—the one who had loosened his neckcloth and slung it up onto one shoulder for greater comfort. "Molly Haines. Annette what's-her-name. That little dancer." He counted them off on his fingers and frowned in concentration. "The one with the orange curls."
"Sally Strange," someone else said.
The Marquess of Kenwood raised his half-empty brandy glass to his eye and squinted through the liquid. Pretty colors.
"How d'you do it, Jack?" one inebriated and portly member asked enviously.
"What?" someone else said in the bored accents of a true aristocrat. "You don't know how to do it, Maurice? And you in your thirtieth year?"
Poor Maurice became the instant victim of a loud burst of bawdy guffaws.
"No, really," he persisted. "There can't be a libertine in all England to rival Jack."
No one appeared to object to Maurice's choice of word. It was clearly an enviable thing to be a notorious libertine.
The marquess regarded his boots modestly and took another sizeable swallow from his glass. "Can I help it if I was born irresistible to the fair sex?" he asked of no one in particular. He yawned until his jaws cracked. "Women! They're the only thing that makes life worth living." His words sounded strange to his own ears. They were rolling themselves together around his tongue.
"I daresay there ain't a female in all England who could resist Jack if he set his mind to having her," Maurice said admiringly, addressing the company at large.
The Queen of England, the marquess thought dully, wondering if his boots really had moved farther away. But they couldn't have—his feet were still attached to them. It was a long time since he had been this foxed. He was going to suffer in the morning. And Carter was going to poker up and look disdainfully along that sharp nose of his. A pox on all valets. An arrogant breed.
"Oh, come now," Elwood Rittsman said. He sounded damnably sober. "No female? That Is a little hard to believe. Even Kenwood must suffer failure on occasion."
The marquess raised his quizzing glass again and finally found Rittsman through it. He seemed to recall that he had always detested the man. Big and brawny enough to be a prize pugilist, Rittsman nevertheless was sneaky in the ring. He had a habit of dancing around his opponent, just out of range of any really bruising fist, until he could do something to distract the other's attention. Then he used his own left—a punishing and unfair blow. The marquess knew. He had suffered an enlarged and painful nose not a year ago in just that way.
"No female," he said with theatrical clarity, working his tongue carefully around the words.
''Oh, I say.'' Someone, even at this late hour, had a voice of enthusiasm. "Do I smell a wager?"
The word was like an instant tonic to the flagging energies and clouded brains of a dozen late-night revelers. Everyone came happily alive. A few gentlemen who had not even been part of the group strolled over from other corners of the room. A wager—any wager—was the very lifeblood of the gentlemen's clubs, the one diversion that could revitalize even the most jaded of temperaments.
A wager? Who was wagering about what for what? Devil take it—Lord Kenwood lowered his quizzing glass and looked ruefully at the inch of brandy left in his glass—but he was drunk. Not foxed. Not in his cups. Drunk, pure and simple. But that wager had to do with him. And that snake, Rittsman.
"A wager," he told his glass firmly, nodding his head.
"A wager," Rittsman said coolly.
Someone snapped his fingers and sent a waiter running for the betting book, quill pens, and inkwell.
Someone took command of the situation—Bedard, the marquess saw when he looked up and yawned loudly.
"We have to decide upon a female," Bedard said.
"For what?" someone else asked. "What is Jack to do with her? Kiss her? Elope with her? Marry her?"
"I'm not marrying anyone," the marquess said firmly, rousing himself. ''If I have t'marry her, there's no wager.''
"Bed her, of course," Rittsman said impatiently.
Rittsman was doubtless the only sober man present, the marquess thought, with the uncomfortable feeling that he was at a decided disadvantage. Exactly what was he in the process of doing? But no matter. Life was confoundedly dull these days with only a parcel of young misses cavorting around for the Season, looking for husbands. He had no interest in young misses.
A lengthy and lively discussion ensued on who the fortunate female was to be whom the Marquess of Kenwood was to seduce. He was relieved to hear the chivalrous voice of one of his friends immediately declare that they must on no account choose any young virgin of the ton. Mrs. Mackenzie was rejected because she was too easy—and indeed she was. The marquess had been fending off her advances for two years or more. After hearing her name, he lost interest in the discussion for a while, finding a spot on his boots vastly more fascinating. Carter would look at him accusingly when he saw it, as if he had deliberately stepped into a puddle of mud. He could recall doing no such thing.
"She has to be available," someone was saying, objecting to the name of a lady who had sailed for America two weeks before. "But she has to be someone who is not at all easy."
That was when Ernie woke up. Not that Ernie, Lord Crensford, had been sleeping exactly. But if he himself was drunk, the marquess thought, fixing his eyes on his young relative, then Ernie might be said to have all but drowned in alcohol. His eyes were fixed and glazed, his face as white as parchment. Lord Kenwood winced mentally when he imagined the size of Ernie's headache the next day.
"Diana," he said. "Nob'dy c'd ever sh'duce Diana."
There was a polite pause in the conversation, a
tribute befitting the resurrection of one who had appeared quite dead only a moment before.
"Diana?" the Honorable Lester Houndsleigh said. "You mean Diana Ingram, Ernie? Teddy's Diana?"
Lord Crensford nodded gravely. "Un'shaibble virtue," he said, and forgot to stop nodding.
"I say," someone else said, "that ain't the Miss Diana Winters who married your brother, is it, Ernie?"
Lord Crensford continued to nod.
Miss Diana Winters? There was an awed buzz in the room.
Everyone remembered Miss Diana Winters, that most exquisitely beautiful young lady who had taken the ton by storm five Seasons before—and who had disappointed a score of hopeful hearts and more score of less hopeful ones at the end of that Season by marrying the Reverend Edward Ingram, youngest son of the Earl and Countess of Rotherham and going off with him to a country parsonage somewhere.
Everyone also remembered how remote and aloof she had been, how impossible it had been to charm her, to lure her into anything that she did not wish to do. And she had never seemed to wish to do anything that would take her alone into any man's company. Some people had dubbed her an ice maiden, but she had been too beautiful to ignore, too lovely not to sigh over.
Something like a collective sigh passed around the lounge at White's.
The Marquess of Kenwood did not know who Miss Diana Winters was. Or rather, he did know who she was. She was Teddy Ingram's wife. His widow, rather. Teddy had died more than a year before. But he had never met her, even though he was somehow related to the Ingrams. It was not a close relationship, though his mother would have been able to tell him exactly what it was. It involved some seconds or thirds and a few removes, he seemed to remember.
He had been in Scotland that summer—with that delectable little actress, whose name and face eluded his memory for the moment. He had missed the Season and the family wedding.
"Shall we agree to Mrs. Diana Ingram, then?" the cool voice of Rittsman was asking him.
"Oh, I shay." Lord Crensford was rubbing his unshaven chin with one hand. "Not Diana. Reshpect'ble female, y'know. M'shishter-'n-law. Teddy's widow, y'know." He ended his protest by belching.
"Mrs. Diana Ingram," the marquess agreed with a nod. "But how am I supposed to meet her? Never seen her in my life."
Lord Crensford hiccuped. "Going t'Roth'rum Hall next week," he said. "P'pa's birthday. Everybody going. Whole fam'ly. Cousins. Aunts." He waved an expansive hand. "Ever'buddy."
"It is time I renewed my acquaintance with my relatives, the earl and countess, your parents," the Marquess of Kenwood said, his voice sounding quite sober to his ears in comparison to Ernie's efforts. "Are you going too, Ernie? I'll come with you."
"Eh?" Lord Crensford said. "I'm going? 'F course I'm going, Jack. Desh'n—dec'nt of you t'say you'll come with me. Lester's coming too."
Ah, yes, the marquess thought, Lester Houndsleigh was quite a close relative. He and Ernie were second cousins.
"It is settled, then," he said, emptying his glass in one gulp.
But of course there were still other tedious details to settle. How long should he be given to accomplish his task of seduction? Seduction, Rittsman called it. Rubbish, of course. He had never in his life had to seduce any female. Indeed, he sometimes found one in his bed whom he had not strictly invited there. Not that he had ever turned a female out of his bed, of course, invited or uninvited.
"Two weeks," he said.
Rittsman snorted.
They settled on one month.
"What proof will I have?" Rittsman asked.
The marquess fixed him with a bleary eye. "What proof d'you want?" he said. "D'you want to stand at the foot of the bed?"
Someone—Maurice, he thought—indignantly declared that since Jack was a gentleman, his word must be trusted. Everyone else agreed, and Rittsman had no choice but to do so too.
"What are the stakes to be?" someone else asked.
"Five hundred pounds," Rittsman said.
"A thousand pounds," the marquess said recklessly and simultaneously.
They settled on five hundred guineas.
And at last there seemed to be no other detail to settle. The wager was duly written into the betting book and signed by the principals and two witnesses, and the marquess reeled his way home to bed. He left behind him a large group of gentlemen eagerly placing their own bets. Most of them bet—and heavily too—on the marquess.
Lord Crensford was looking pale and confused, and continued to mumble that they must choose, another female.
The Marquess of Kenwood, sinking into his pillows less than an hour later and closing his eyes so that he would not have to look into the dignified and sour face of his valet, wondered exactly what it was he had done at White's. Something suitably mad, he supposed, considering the fact that he did not often get drunk and so had little experience in avoiding rash actions when he did. He would sleep for a while. Perhaps it would all go away by the morning. Perhaps he would wake up sane and sober and headache-free.
Some chance!
Teddy Ingram. Thin and bookish and serious he had been when Lord Kenwood had known him. What the deuce could he expect the widow to be like?
This was a house party to be looked forward to, indeed. Perhaps he should fill up the china bowl on the washstand with water, plunge his head in, and forget to pull it out again.
He groaned and turned gingerly onto his side. He would swear off liquor from this moment on. Never again. He would never again touch a drop of the stuff. Devil's brew.
* * *
Mrs. Diana Ingram had a headache even before she went to bed. She dreaded having headaches. They did not come often, but when they did, they did not know when to leave again.
"Put off your journey for a few more days, dear," her mother suggested, rubbing her cold hands before she retired to her room for the night. "The earl's birthday is not for another two weeks, after all."
Diana sighed. "You do not know how you tempt me, Mama," she said. "But I must go tomorrow. If I put it off for a week, I will merely have to go through all this again. And Bridget has my trunk all packed."
"I don't like it anyway, love." Her father peered at her over the top of his book and over the top of his spectacles. "You going all that way with only Bridget for company."
"But I will be leaving early in the morning, Papa, so that I might complete the journey in one day,"
Diana said. "And you know very well that if we should encounter any unfortunate highwaymen, Jimmy and Henry up on the box will frighten them away—Jimmy with his colorful language and Henry with those bushy eyebrows." She made an effort to smile.
"And Bridget with her shrieks," Sir Godfrey Winters agreed reluctantly. "One would have thought there was a whole army of mice in the pantry yesterday instead of just one. That woman must have been blessed at birth with a double set of lungs."
"I hate the thought of your going away, dear," Lady Winters said, squeezing her daughter's hands. "But perhaps the best thing for you at the moment is to be in company again. You have been very dull here in the last year."
"But it has been so peaceful," Diana said with a sigh, "and very much what I have needed. I can only just begin to think of Teddy without being in danger of becoming a watering pot. How can I possibly start looking about me for a new husband?"
Her father lowered his book. "You must assert yourself, love," he said. "It seems queer to me, anyway, that the countess would write to tell you that she is going to find you a husband among her houseguests or in the neighborhood when Ingram was her own son. You would think she would dread the time when you remarry."
"But the Countess of Rotherham has always been an incurable matchmaker, dear," his wife reminded him.
"Well, anyway—" Sir Godfrey removed his spectacles—
"you don't have to marry anyone you don't fancy, Diana. The countess cannot force you. And you know you will always have a home here with Mama and me. Besides, you proved once before that you have a mind of your own
. No one expected you to marry Ingram—ourselves included— when you had so many gentlemen of rank and fortune dangling after you. But you did marry him, and I have to admit now that you made a good choice. A decent man, Ingram. Too bad he didn't look after himself better when he caught that chill."
Diana's eyes filled with tears, and Lady Winters looked reproachfully at her husband.
"You are right, Papa," Diana said, getting to her feet. "I do not have to accept any of the suitors my mother-in-law chooses for me. And perhaps she will change her mind. Or perhaps there will be no one eligible there. It is a family party, after all."
She crossed the room to kiss him on the cheek and turned to hug her mother. But the headache persisted as she climbed the stairs to her bed. And it was not helped by the concern of Bridget, who tiptoed about her room but forgot not to slam doors and drawers, and who whispered but forgot to stop doing so.