She grimaced at herself. Such a hopeless goose! Even caught red-handed in a lie, with her world ready to crumble around her—even knowing what a scoundrel he was—she couldn’t help the familiar pull of him. The same one from six years ago which had gotten her into this mess in the first place. And if she wasn’t careful, her goose would be good and cooked before it was all over.
As they entered the old banqueting hall turned dining room that soared two stories high from its stone floors to the wooden beams above, he gave a friendly tap of his shoulder against hers. “Tell me the truth,” he cajoled. “Do you really want my help in finding a husband?”
“More than you realize,” she murmured honestly.
He asked bluntly, “Why?”
She certainly couldn’t tell him that! If he discovered her new plan before she was ready to share it, he might very well leave right now. And then where would she be? So she purposefully misunderstood his question and answered, “Can’t I call on an old friend when I need him?”
With his lips twitching at that blatant evasion, he led her around the table that could accommodate over fifty people to the four settings laid out for them at the far end near the fireplace, where Robert had already seated the viscountess.
“We were a lot of things, Belle,” Quinn admitted sotto voce, the deep sound falling through her like warm summer rain. “But we were never friends.”
Her mind filled with the memory of their kiss beneath the rose bower, the solidity of his body pressing against hers, the surprising softness of his warm lips…Fresh heat flashed through her. To think that her future now lay in this rascal’s hands— She hated that she’d sunk so low that she had to ask for help from him.
Yet there was something sweetly fitting that the man who broke her heart and made her swear off men and their insincere charms should now be the only one who could save her.
“I’ll explain everything later,” she murmured. “I promise.”
He slid her a disbelieving look, yet acquiesced. “All right. I’ll leave it alone.”
Relief poured through her. “Thank—”
“For now.”
He pulled out her chair for her. She shot him an aggravated grimace before slipping into her seat.
He leaned over her shoulder and warned, “But one way or another, I will get the truth from you. Even if I have to tie you up and torture you.”
Her breath caught in a silent gasp. Before her befuddled mind could come up with a proper response to that, he’d already moved away to take his own seat. She stared after him, but the infuriating pest didn’t so much as glance in her direction so she could give him the cutting glare he deserved.
Belle chewed her bottom lip and stared at him across the table as the footman carried in the first course. Oh, he was certainly not happy at finding himself coerced into helping her acquire a husband. From the trapped expression on his face as he turned to speak to Lady Ainsley, Belle suspected that he might not be any more receptive of the scheme she now turned over in her mind. But there was no other way to keep her home, not without the possibility of bringing down upon her head the same sort of miserable marriage her mother had.
Lady Ainsley was right. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and she could think of nothing more desperate than what she had in mind. Because she now knew what had to be done.
She needed to marry Quinton Carlisle.
* * *
Quinn’s eyes narrowed on Belle across the drawing room, where they’d gathered after dinner. What was really going on with the Bluebell?
Dinner had been pleasant enough, he supposed, except that he’d spent half of it wondering about Belle’s situation and the other half contemplating how much fun it might be to actually tie her up, given the glimpse of her he’d had at the pond.
His aunt’s announcement that Annabelle had to get married had stunned the daylights out of him. He’d heard of similar stipulations by members of the quality to force their children into doing their bidding, especially to second- or third-born children, who didn’t have the restraints of entailments and the pressures of continuing peerages that the heirs had. One way to ensure that sons and daughters married suitably and settled down into respectable adulthood was to control their purse strings.
But for Belle, it made no sense. That a proper gentleman from a respectable family would ever attach himself to her was highly unlikely, regardless of how sizable her dowry. Surely his uncle had realized that. What the late Lord Ainsley should have done was give her the property outright, to establish a home and living for her in case she remained unmarried.
What Uncle Charles had actually done, however, was force her into the very real possibility of falling prey to a fortune hunter. Which gave veracity to Aunt Agatha’s explanation for why she wanted him here.
But it didn’t begin to clarify everything.
Whatever Annabelle was hiding, he would discover it eventually. And she knew that, too, based on the way she’d kept her distance ever since they’d gone through after dinner. As if she couldn’t trust herself near him. Even now, she played at the pianoforte on the far side of the room, pretending to ignore him and missing half the notes in her lack of concentration.
The butler slid open the double doors, and a footman carried a coffee tray inside. He set it on the sideboard and retreated from the room.
“Ah, the coffee’s arrived,” Aunt Agatha commented as she picked up a discarded ace in the card game she’d taken up with Robert. “All of you help yourselves. We don’t stand on formalities in the evenings here at Glenarvon.”
Ferguson’s heavy sigh said otherwise, but the butler dutifully arranged the coffee for service, then stood to the side and waited to pour cups.
Belle rose from the pianoforte and crossed the room to request a coffee.
And so did Quinn. As Ferguson reached for the coffeepot, he stepped up beside her. “Belle.”
Her pink lips parted in a peculiar mix of nervousness and awareness that reminded him for a moment of a hare who knew it had stumbled into a snare but couldn’t flee for falling deeper into the trap. She stared straight ahead, unwilling to look at him. Which made him only more determined to discover the truth.
Ferguson finished pouring and held out her cup.
As she turned to walk away, Quinn took her elbow and stopped her, forcing her to remain at his side unless she wanted to cause a scene. She tensed with a shallow gasp, and he felt that soft breath shiver through her beneath his fingertips.
“A coffee for me, too, Ferguson,” he requested, although he didn’t have a taste for it tonight. But it gave him a good excuse to remain at her side.
The butler nodded and reached to pour a second cup.
“The truth now, Belle,” he pressed. “Why do you really want my help?”
She hesitated, and for a moment, he suspected she might tell him. But her eyes flicked with uncertainty at the butler. “I cannot say right now,” she answered quietly. “There are too many ears in the room who might overhear.”
Ferguson bristled at the comment, caught in his eavesdropping. Quinn thought he heard a soft humph sound beneath the butler’s breath.
“You can’t avoid me for long,” he warned. “I deserve answers.”
“I told you—”
“You’ve told me practically nothing.” He took the proffered coffee from Ferguson, who turned away with a sniff of pique and politely put several feet between them. “Except enough to raise my suspicions.”
She scowled. “Now you’re just being dogged.”
He let that insult slide, knowing she wanted to make him angry enough that he’d leave her alone. Not a chance. He hadn’t believed one word of that sentimental cock and bull story she gave earlier about wanting the help of an old friend.
“I plan on hounding you until you give in and tell me the truth,” he warned. With a self-assured grin playing at his lips, he added as rakishly as possible just to goad her, “And I always get my way with women.”
&
nbsp; “Not with this one,” she replied haughtily and pulled her elbow away, but not before her cheeks pinked. Shaking her head, she muttered beneath her breath, “I had absolutely nothing to do with bringing you here. That was all your aunt’s doing.” Then she paused, her lips parting in soft hesitation, as if considering what to say, how much to divulge…“But I do have an idea for how to get us out of this mess.”
Interesting. He leaned in closer—
“Come join us, you two,” Agatha called out, interrupting them. “We need more hands to play at whist.”
“Of course.” Belle smiled at his aunt as if she and Quinn were discussing nothing more important than the evening’s weather. But as she turned to join the game, she paused to briefly rest her hand on his arm and lowered her voice. “Meet me in the library at midnight.”
A midnight meeting in a room only a bluestocking would pick. Not the kind of midnight assignation with a woman he usually found intriguing, but the Bluebell had pricked his interest. In more ways than one.
And he couldn’t resist teasing her about it. “A midnight tryst?” He faked astonishment. “Why, Belle, I’m shocked at you.”
For a heartbeat, she froze, astounded at his insinuation. “It isn’t like that at all!”
When he grinned at her, her shoulders slumped in irritation. She blew out an aggravated breath, knowing she’d risen to the bait exactly as he’d wanted.
“Someday, Quinton Carlisle,” she seethed, “you’re going to regret all the childish torment you’ve done to me over the years.”
Not as long as he could glimpse the fire he raised inside her. Like now. It was simply too delicious to avoid. “Perhaps,” he agreed, then walked away to join the card game, chuckling low as her blazing eyes followed after him. He murmured to himself, “But today is not that day.”
“Annabelle,” Aunt Agatha called out to her, “we need you.”
He had to give her credit as she plastered a carefree smile on her face and slid onto the chair at his elbow, partnering with Aunt Agatha against the two brothers and appearing for all the world as if nothing untoward had passed between them. Still, he placed his coffee safely out of her reach just in case she decided to fling it at him.
Ah, the Bluebell! Always so unpredictable and challenging, always so much fun to fluster and tease. And so much more interesting than those society ladies he associated with in London.
Robert dealt the cards, and as the tricks played out and trumps were taken, they fell into easy conversation. Aunt Agatha asked for details about Sebastian and Miranda’s wedding, right down to what kinds of cakes were served at the breakfast. She guffawed loudly when Quinn described how Edward and Kate Westover’s daughter Faith, who had been the flower girl, hit little Stephen Crenshaw, the ring bearer, over the head with her petal basket.
“The boy was born a marquess.” Aunt Agatha laughed. “Best he get used to abuse while he’s young. Especially that which involves irate females and flowers— Don’t trump my ace again, dear.”
“Apologies.” Belle bit her lip and frowned at her cards, as if she wasn’t certain which ones she still held in her hand. Her mind clearly wasn’t in the game.
“I’m a great fan of flowers and women myself,” Quinton murmured lazily as he counted the point in his and Robert’s favor on the marker.
Belle’s gaze slid sideways at the private innuendo, narrowing murderously on him. But his comment went right over the heads of Aunt Agatha and Robert, who paid it no mind.
Agatha shuffled the cards and dealt out the next hand. “And how is Elizabeth?”
Quinn frowned and answered quietly, “Mother’s much better now.”
But for the past two years, she’d been through hell. Richard Carlisle’s unexpected death had nearly taken her, too, in her grief.
No, it was more than mere grief. It was an inconsolable anguish that devoured her from the inside out, such pain and desolation that she’d barely survived it. In those first black weeks after his father died, Quinn had sat at her bedside and held her hand for days at a stretch, begging her to drink some water or broth, to eat anything in order to keep up her strength. Instead, she’d wasted away, until Dr. Brandon called him and his siblings together to tell them that he now worried that she might also perish.
So Quinn returned to her bedside and begged her again, this time not to die. Not to leave him and the family alone without her.
She’d heard him through her grief, and slowly, she’d recovered. Eventually, she’d moved out of her mourning and returned to society, going so far this past season as to sponsor Miranda Hodgkins and help with the wedding when his brother Sebastian fell in love with the girl. But even now she wasn’t nearly the same vivacious and energetic woman she’d once been. A light had dulled in her with Father’s death, one Quinn wasn’t certain would ever shine as brightly again.
“I was worried about her,” Aunt Agatha murmured. “I regret that I wasn’t able to go to her during her mourning, but it was so close on the heels of my own dear Ainsley…” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t look up from her cards, but Quinn could see the glistening of tears in her eyes, and his heart tugged for her. His aunt was another widow whose loss of a husband had nearly ended her, as well.
And that was why he planned on remaining a bachelor. What good could come of marriage? All the marriages he knew were either ones made as advantageous matches for acquiring property or position, in which both spouses grew to detest each other—if they’d ever liked each other in the first place—or love matches. But in the end those were just as bad, if not worse. Because love always ended. Always. And nothing was left but grief.
Marriage might be fine for other people, those like his sister and brother, who needed their spouses the way flowers needed water to bloom. But not for him. He’d never let himself need a woman that much, or ever let a woman need him so much that she’d come to grief over him.
Besides, there was no room in his life for marriage anyway, now that his future was settled in America, where he looked forward to years of long days and hard work to prove himself successful.
“Miranda helped a great deal with Mother’s mourning,” Quinn said thoughtfully. And thank God she had.
“Especially when she married Seb,” Robert interjected. “Mother’s in heaven now that she’s got two of her children happily married off.”
“And giving her grandchildren,” Quinn added.
“Which takes the pressure away from us.” Robert grinned.
“For a while anyway.” He slid his brother an amused glance across the table. “Because she’s hoping for another wedding by next summer.”
“Oh?” Belle glanced up at Quinn, with a stricken look almost as panicked as the one Robert shot him. “You’re not…are you, Quinton?”
“Not me, but Robert,” he informed them, much to Agatha’s delight and Robert’s chagrin. And to Belle’s visible relief as she slumped back against her chair. Odd. “He’s been courting a general’s daughter in London. A lovely girl named Diana Morgan, who has a penchant for growing roses.” Because he wanted to see the fire spark inside Belle again, and divert this conversation from weddings, he added, “If I remember correctly, Annabelle, you also had a fondness for roses.”
Belle’s mouth fell open at that private tease. She darted a panicked glance at Lady Ainsley, but the viscountess noticed nothing untoward. Then she jutted her chin into the air and gave a haughty little sniff. “I suppose I used to when I was younger…and extremely foolish.”
Instead of being piqued as she wanted, he gave her a grin, which only caused her to simmer in her seat.
“You’ve trumped my ace again,” Agatha sighed with exasperation.
“Apologies,” Belle mumbled, this time unable stop a pretty little blush that pinked her skin all the way up from the back of her neck to her cheeks.
Sweet Lucifer, he was beginning to like that blush.
Unable to say what it was for certain about Annabelle that pricked his puckish nature, but o
nly that he couldn’t resist, he murmured, “In my experience, roses can be quite beguiling.”
She shot him a quelling look. “Roses are a menace. They might seem all sweet and charming from a distance.” Belle laid down the knave of hearts to take the trick and ignored the puzzled expressions on Agatha’s and Robert’s faces at the peculiar turn of conversation. And that she’d distractedly claimed a trick won by Robert’s king. “But beneath their pretty exterior exists nothing but thorns.”
Lady Ainsley looked at her peculiarly. “But you spent all last spring putting in a rose border along the south terrace.”
A caught expression flashed across Belle’s face. Quinn felt a sharp stab of guilt for teasing her.
She drew a calming breath. “Not all flowers are bad, though, I suppose,” she acquiesced. “Lilies, poppies, daisies—”
“Bluebells?” he asked innocently, taking a sip of coffee to hide his grin. Apparently, that stab of guilt hadn’t been so insurmountable after all.
She froze for a single beat. Then, more calmly than he expected, she slowly laid down her cards and rose to her feet. “I regret that I am tired and have a headache,” she announced. “A very large, very pestering headache.”
When Quinn opened his mouth to respond, she sliced her gaze sideways at him and narrowed her eyes to slits. He wisely closed it again.
“If you all will excuse me, I need to retire. Good evening.” She nodded at Lady Ainsley and Robert, then glared at him. “Quinton.”
She walked stiffly out of the drawing room, holding her head up in an imperial posture, surely learned over the years from his aunt.
“What on earth…?” Agatha commented as she laid down her cards, the game over. Then she arched a brow at Quinn with an expression somewhere between amusement and accusation.
“Apparently, she was very tired,” he murmured with a touch of remorse. Already, he missed her company. Without her presence, the room seemed inexplicably empty.
Except that as Belle had walked from the room, he’d seen the fire in her that he’d come to crave. He would never deny himself a chance to see that, along with that telltale blush that stained her cheeks. A blush whose deeper meaning he was very much beginning to understand.
When the Scoundrel Sins Page 5