by Thea Devine
"Waintree," Coxe mumbled suddenly, groping for a door or a piece of furniture to lean on. "Got to offer—"
Dunstan leapt on it. "Nonsense. Listen, Nicholas my boy. This is not irreparable. Lucretia doesn't enter into it. We agreed the bitch is disposable. And Charlotte is obviously hot for revenge. It seems to me you could solve two problems with one solution."
"You are cracked, uncle."
"Ah, but you weren't with her tonight. It is a new and improved Emerlin, my boy, and I tell you, she is as brazen as any whore but her money and lineage are a damned sight more seductive. She was incredible. So think about it. Just think about it. You don't have to do anything tonight but pay the little twitch-tail off and
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somehow get her back to Lucretia's without anyone seeing her. Do it, Nicholas. This is not the moment for spur of the moment decisions."
"I hope," Annesley spoke up, "I hope you are finished prosing, Dunstan, because I'm ready for a hot hearty taste of what Nicholas has been sampling while we were wasting time with those drabs.”
He started for the bed and Nicholas moved directly in front of him.
"I think not, Max."
"Ah, Nick, we talked about a man's getting his hands deep into her pockets. What's the difference?"
"The difference is, she's Lucretia's protegιe, and Charlotte is going to make enough trouble—maybe even for you if you put your poker in the wrong fireplace."
"Oh God, I never even thought of that,"Annesley groaned. “She is a vicious piece. Damn—a man can’t get an evening with a discreet tart these days."
"But it's interesting,"Dunstan said. "There is one solution that makes it right for everyone: you save your whore's reputation and you effectively shut up the Emerlins and make a splendid match at the same time. Nick, it's made for you. Last year, I would have said no. If it were any other trollop—who cares. But this is a touchy one, what with her being involved with Lucretia. However, an offer for Charlotte would necessitate your getting rid of her altogether, but / don't think that would be a bad thing."
"Waintrue," Coxe muttered, sliding to the floor.
"Are we quite finished?" Nicholas said, having listened to this whole discourse without saying a word or moving a muscle.
"You know, Nick," Annesley interposed, "I don't care about the Emerlins. It's ridiculous to think she would expose herself to gossip and ruin you as well as me. Besides, she wasn't that good anyway. Or—" he amended, catching Dunstan's angry eye, "rather, she was fantastic, but my tastes are a little extreme. I like a feisty one, like—”
"Are you done?" Nicholas interrupted him before he enlarged on that theme.
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"Just think about it, Nick," Dunstan put in.
"I am thinking about it," Nicholas said impassively. "Now both of you take hold of Coxe and get him out of my bedroom, and I hope you remember it was your imprudence that caused this mess in the first place."
He slammed the door in their faces and turned to Jainee. "Now you—"
"Dear God, if anyone else calls me a thing, a you, a whore, I will attack him," Jainee said heatedly.
"I'm sure you will," Nicholas said calmly.
"Gentlemen—their games, their lewdness —it goes beyond comprehension . . ." she muttered angrily. "You are no different, my lord; you just choose to take your pleasure in private."
"And so do you," he retorted.
"I have never heard the like of what goes on behind closed doors when men play cards," she said indignantly. "It is inconceivable. It is—typical. A man thinks with his loins—it must be so. How could a man with any discrimination even think of exposing himself publicly with such a one as the cow-cud. It defies imagination—"
"Are you finished, my lady of the flimsy dresses and invisible undergarments? You cannot repair that dress. I will take it with me."
"What?"
"Yes . . . and your stockings and shoes and your cape. Just to insure you remain where I leave you, Diana. Just where you are right now, right in my bed."
"But— Lady Waynflete—"
"I am not taking you back to Lady Waynflete's house just yet. You will stay here. And you will speak to no one, and you will do nothing until I return."
"But I have no choice, my lord," she said viciously. "Unless I put on a pair of your breeches."
"Or these," he murmured, picking up the seductive satin ties and tossing them onto the bed. "Especially these."
She picked one up and defiantly wrapped it around her neck and around her sheet-shrouded breasts. "No different
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from my dress, my Lord; I believe I might pass."
"Oh, you might get three feet, Diana, but you certainly are welcome to try if it is so onerous to stay here for an hour or so. Please."
"I refuse to bow to your hallowed god of illusion, my lord. You can track over reality all you want and veil it with every manner of whole cloth, but you cannot disguise it, and that milk cow will do all she can to discredit us both."
"I am sure she will," Nicholas agreed calmly. "Your word you will stay here."
She sent him a simmering look.
"I will lock the door."
"I will jump out the window."
"That is foolish, even for you, Diana, although I suppose a goddess must feel she is indestructible."
She took a deep angry breath. "What are you going to do?"
"Repair the damage, of course. Seamlessly, I hope, and with whole cloth. Now, swear you will remain in bed until I return."
"I don't trust you," she said peevishly.
"Nor I you," Nicholas said stringently. "That should be enough to assure you that I will do my best to extricate you from this predicament."
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The moment he closed the door behind him, she leapt out of bed and reached for the doorknob—and heard the ominous click of a key turning in the lock.
She felt a fine seething rage envelop her as she paced to the window, naked, oblivious to the light and whether anyone could see her.
He was there, the misbegotten son of a—she could not think of a word low enough to describe him as she watched him mount his horse, speak a word to Trenholm and gallop away into the night.
And the shadows moved behind him.
Her heart pounded wildly. The shadows moved . . . someone— something on foot, running swiftly and gone a moment later beyond the lights from the house.
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Her heart felt like it would leap out of her chest.
She imagined it . . .
It was late; she was all emotional with the events of the evening. Southam was making her crazy.
She scurried away from the window and into the safety of the bed. Covers were for hiding, she thought frantically, for pulling up over one's head and shutting out the world. What else could she do now while Southam was off who knew where, and that milk person was probably already fueling the fire that she had been so eager to ignite.
She hated inactivity. She hated leaving the decision about what to do in his hands.
She couldn't sleep.
She felt exhausted.
She would just put her head down for a moment and calm the thudding of her heart. And she would not think about the shadows or the recriminations . . .
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She slept.
But it could not have been for more than a half hour, an hour at the most, because before she knew it, someone was shaking her awake, and none too gently either.
She opened her eyes groggily to find Southam by her bedside.
"Well, even a goddess must sleep," he observed prosaically. "I expected you to be fully awake, plotting and planning your next conquest."
"I wish I were all-seeing and all-knowing," she said waspishly, annoyed that he had pulled her out of a deep and very satisfying . dream, "because I never would have walked out of the house yesterday and we would have avoided this tangle."
"Then you will be reassured that I have taken steps to un
tangle this dilemma," he said as he arose and moved across the room. He wanted to be as far from her as possible now. And he wanted to look his fill of her incandescent beauty in the midst of his disheveled bed.
There was just no hiding all they had done there earlier in the
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evening, no toning down her vibrant sensuality and the flush of satiety in her face.
She looked like a nymph, rising from the frothy backwash of the sea. She looked fragile and she looked indomitable, and he didn't know quite how he was going to let her leave his bed.
"I am not reassured yet," she said pointedly, folding her arms across her chest.
"It is very simple, Diana. You will marry me."
That shocked her; the very words sent her senses reeling. He was mad, he had to be.
"Are you deranged? I thought you had agreed to the solution of milking the cow."
"I did no such thing, Diana. I merely said I would think about it. About thirty seconds' worth during that morass of inanity that Annesley inflicted on me. It is really quite simple—if it is legal, there cannot be a scandal. Lucretia is protected, you are. . . well, let us say I will have you where I can keep an eye on you. Charlotte cannot touch you; I do not have to ever think about offering for her and Dunstan will be unhappy for about a month. On the whole, a quite elegant solution, I think."
It wasn't elegant at all—it was rag-bag solution, pieced together by a man who was desperate to save a friend's stature among her peers; it had nothing to do with his wants or needs, or hers.
"Men have married for less cogent reasons," Nicholas said. "Did you not forecast a love affair and a probable marriage?*'
"Did I?" She was startled that he remembered.
"And I called it a fairy tale; I think rather that everything you have ever said to me is a fairy tale, Diana, but that is neither here nor there right now. What is to the point is that Lucretia awaits you downstairs, with a minister. I have obtained a special license and we will be married from this house today, with Lucretia as our witness."
She shook her head: she could not yet comprehend that he meant what he said. There were so many things to consider . . . the blood . . . Dunstan ... his motives, her own if she were to acquiesce.
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"I swore on the grave of my adoptive mother that I would protect Lucretia if her taking you in would cause a scandal," Nicholas said quietly. "I would never cause her any grief, but if word gets around that her unknown protegιe was caught in my bed, her honor and credibility will be stripped away from her before the sun rises. But if she can say that we were married this day and that she witnessed the ceremony, then the burden devolves on us to provide the proof and corroborate the truth of the matter. No one is going to ask what time we were married, Diana. Neither will Lucretia offer the information. It suffices that this day, the day that my alleged friends broke into my house and found us, this day we were married by special license."
Her head was spinning. He was marrying her to cover for Lucretia Waynflete's bad judgment. No, to cover himself, really, for foisting her on Lucretia. She could not put it all together, what it would mean if she agreed to this most foolhardy plan. He truly should have offered for the milk cow. She would be the perfect society matron.
Dear lord—nothing made sense. If she agreed, it put paid to Edythe Winslowe's blackmail, it put her beyond the reach of Dunstan's threats, it gave her time and the wherewithal to continue her search for her half-brother; it gave her Southam and his mercurial passion forever.
Had he said adoptive mother? She couldn't quite sort through it all—she had missed some of it, surely not something as important as that—adoptive mother, he had sworn something . . . and she, she had forecast a probable marriage: how wicked the cards were. Or perhaps how wicked was she.
"Lucretia is waiting with an appropriate dress for you," Nicholas said. "It will answer, Diana, and perhaps far better than doing nothing because I never would have offered for Charlotte Emerlin. Once was enough. Twice makes me look like a fool."
"And yet you have not even asked me," Jainee said, thinking that here he was ordering everything and not even considering her wishes whether she had them or not. She didn't, but this was such a havey-cavey way to go about it.
"I don't make pretty speeches," Nicholas said. "You under-
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stand the practicality of the arrangement. And time is passing."
Jainee felt like stamping her foot. The fool did not want to tidy it up any more than the actual event, she thought resentfully. An arrangement. Nothing to do with fanciful things like the fortune cards and perhaps his warring feelings about her. Oh no, not Southam. Preserve the stone-face. Get on with the business.
"What is in it for me then?" she asked, spitefully she thought, but he deserved it, really he did.
He gave her a quirky smile. "I will forgive your debt. I will send Lucretia to you."
But of course his room was the last place Lucretia wanted to go. She thought he was mad too.
He leaned over the balcony railing and signalled to Trenholm who went to fetch her from the parlor where she was keeping company with the minister.
"I can’t tell you how I feel about this," she whispered fiercely as she passed him on the stairs. "I would rather endure the scandal."
"I would not,” Nicholas said succinctly and turned his back to her. But after all, she had said much the same thing on finding him mysteriously in her room in the dead of night, demanding that she dress and come back to Berkeley Square with him.
"You have gone round the bend, Nicholas. Your mother would be appalled," she grumbled as she groped her way around her room for a candle and dressing gown. "What is to do that you had to rouse me at this ungodly hour and however did you gain entrance to the house without Blexter admitting you. What is going on here?"
His explanation was quick and concise and neatly omitted how he had gotten into her house, but it didn't matter, because she fixed her attention directly onto Dunstan's reasonable suggestion and nothing else, not even the fact that Charlotte and two other ladies had been with Dunstan and Annesley.
"Dunstan's solution makes sense, Nicholas. It solves everything. Charlotte is only after attention from you anyway. You don't have to love the girl. You just have to get an heir with her and then you can go your own way. What is so difficult about that? If you really want to protect me from this shameful
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episode."
"Charlotte bores me to tears; Miss Bowman does not. The end effect is the same, except I wind up with the woman with whom I was in bed. Perhaps Dunstan should marry Charlotte since they seemed so cozy with each other last night."
Lucretia froze. "Never say such a thing, Nicholas. They were not. Dunstan played cards all night and had just a bit much to drink. His suggestion is eminently sensible. I won't be a party to this nonsense after all."
"The only person Charlotte has ever wanted is me," Nicholas said curtly. "She retrenched a year ago and mother Gertrude took over and made her into a trollop of the first water, and while her excesses seemed to enchant Coxe and Annesley, they arouse nothing in me but extreme dislike. And guilt, I might add, for the shabby way I was forced to treat her the brief months we were engaged. But that is not enough to make me to offer for her to save the situation. And once I am wed to Miss Bowman, nothing you can do will alter things. I would much rather you bear witness and lend us your countenance. But—you must do as your conscience dictates."
Her expression softened just a little. "I can bear a little scandal, Nicholas."
"Not over a stranger whom I coerced you into sponsoring. No, you would not soon recover from that, whereas I would not be tainted at all. They would say it was just like a beautiful woman to gull an ascetic like me. But Lucretia should have known better. They will say that you should have seen through her the moment you met."
"Yes," Lucretia said thoughtfully, "indeed they will."
"So, like it or not, Lucretia, let us take the
brush and paint the thing over with whitewash and let them say whatever they will."
"I do not like it," Lucretia said roundly, "but I will do it."
And she was doing it; she laboriously reached the top of the steps, with Trenholm but a moment behind bearing a trunk with a suitable dress and accompaniments for Miss Bowman to wear.
He smiled sardonically at the thought that the goddess might open the door stark naked—but she was cleverer than that, he
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was sure of it.
He made his way to the parlor to join the minister, a man he had known since his youth, a man of discretion and no little understanding of the impetuousness of a lover. And he was prepared, for a handsome remuneration, to defend the marriage to all comers, whatever their motives. He and Southam understood each other perfectly.
It was a matter of several moments while the Reverend Maynard filled out some forms and obtained as much information about his intended bride as Nicholas knew—which, he realized, was not much.
He himself had changed into formal clothing for the wedding and he had commandeered Trenholm as both the caterer for a celebratory repast after the ceremony, and a witness.
And he had taken great care that no one else would be involved, not friends, acquaintances or even servants, barring his most excellent and discreet butler.
He wondered what Lucretia was doing up in the bedroom with Diana. More than that, he was drowning with curiosity about what she was saying.
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"I detest the scurrilous way Nicholas has chosen to remedy this situation," Lady Waynflete was saying for perhaps the second or third time, and to herself while she draped the folds of Jainee's dress around her slippers and helped her hook and lace up the back.
But Jainee had had enough of that. Lady Waynflete was a most grudging maid, resentful of having to do the thing, fretful because she was aiding in what was essentially an elopement by special license, and positively enraged that Nicholas had chosen to marry her.