He looked sideways at her. “Not much gets by you, does it?” he said wryly. “And unfortunately, you are correct. I have no doubt Dolph Remdale would use my presence at the site of his dear uncle’s death to try to get me thrown into Old Bailey.”
His offhand compliment surprised and pleased her, but only for a moment. “Then the authorities should definitely be contacted.”
The marquis actually chuckled. “Un coup très palpable,” he said in perfect French. “A very palpable hit. You’ve wounded me with your wit.”
“I believe one is supposed to quote Shakespeare in his native language,” she noted stiffly. It irked her that he thought she might require the translation.
Dansbury pursed his lips, his eyes dancing now. “But Hamlet was Danish.”
He did know which play he was stealing from. Interesting, though it certainly didn’t leave her feeling any steadier. “Then why French?”
“I don’t speak Danish. I do speak a little Italian, if you would prefer me to quote from Romeo and Juliet.”
“Why would I wish that? I am not Juliet, and you, my lord, are certainly no Romeo.”
The marquis was wearing his innocent, seductive look again, but with Wenford’s corpse in the background, he was slightly easier to resist than he had been the last time he had waylaid her. “I suppose that would depend on whom you ask.”
“I don’t discuss you at all,” she lied.
He grinned, real amusement in his eyes, and glanced toward the window again. “Miss Benton, it’s still early. Why don’t we simply put Wenford in your coach, drive him home, and place him on his front step?”
“What? What if someone sees?” It was too scandalous to contemplate. Yet at the same time, it was the best idea she’d heard all morning.
“No one will see. Everyone’s at Billington’s, remember?” Dansbury studied her for a moment. “It will be our secret.”
Lilith abruptly understood why he was being so solicitous. “And I will be in your debt, yes?” she said slowly, meeting his eyes.
He didn’t show any sign of being remorseful at all. In fact, he smiled. “Yes, you will. And make no mistake, my lady—I intend to collect.” He looked down at his pocket watch, then glanced up at her from beneath his long, black lashes. “It is your choice, however.”
There seemed very little choice, to her. Wenford left on the floor and a scandal, or Wenford gone and no scandal, but a debt to a blackguard. And with her family’s, and her own, good name to consider. “I don’t seem to be in a position to bargain.”
Again he gave that sly, seductive smile. “No, you’re not.” He strode to the door and leaned out. “Bevins, Miss Benton requires the coach to be brought around front.” He glanced back at her. “You trust your head groom?”
The rogue of a moment ago was gone, replaced by an efficient, intelligent man who, for a wild moment, she wanted to believe in. “Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Milgrew.”
He turned away again. “Have Milgrew bring it himself.”
Dansbury hadn’t questioned her decision, hadn’t second-guessed her; he’d simply assumed she would have an answer and had followed it. That abruptly made her very uncomfortable. “So, is this how you captured William, as well?” she said, to have something to say. “Some sort of blackmail?”
He laughed as he leaned back against the couch. “No. William walked into my demonic clutches quite willingly.”
That stilled the comment she had been about to make regarding his demonic nature, so she clenched her hands together and cleared her throat “You returned the Wenford pin.”
Jack nodded. “Yes, to Dolph. Apparently, though, His Grace didn’t see fit to leave it in his nephew’s care.”
“He probably decided it would be safer from you that way,” she countered.
“If I’d wanted it I wouldn’t have given it back.”
That stopped her. “Then why did you bother taking it in the first place?”
“I won it, Miss Benton,” he corrected, faint humor touching his lips. “Because I could.” Dansbury shrugged. “And because the Remdales are a detestable lot of scabs, and I felt like causing them trouble.”
“You pulled me into it as well. I don’t know why you’ve decided to hound me, but I don’t appreciate it.”
“Come now,” he said, “it wasn’t hate at first sight between us, now, was it?”
“At…at first sight I had no idea what sort of scoundrel you were,” she admitted, flushing.
“A scoundrel?” he repeated, grinning. “Only yesterday I believe you called me a malignant Jack-a-dandy. You are beginning to warm to me, I think.”
“William told you,” she gasped, furious at her brother.
“Oh, he tells me all sorts of things,” the marquis returned.
Lilith flushed again. “I shall have to begin asking him for your secrets,” she retorted, though it seemed a rather weak response.
Evidently he agreed, for he chuckled. “I have none. My dark side is on display for the world to shudder at.”
Despite the bold words, she didn’t believe him for a moment. “If you have no secrets, then tell me why you fear Dolph Remdale’s anger.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t fear Dolph Remdale’s bloody anything. We had a disagreement the other day. That’s all.”
“And he wants you thrown in prison because of a disagreement?” she pushed, interested to see him lose his cool veneer of cynicism.
“He wants me thrown in prison because I threw a bowl of marmalade in his face at the conclusion of our discussion.”
“That would make me rather angry, as well.” She was surprised that Dolph Remdale hadn’t immediately demanded that the marquis make amends. Despite the duke’s description, Mr. Remdale had never seemed terribly dim-witted to her. Some five or six years older than Dansbury, he was quite pleasant featured, and he certainly had rosy prospects. She glanced at the duke. Especially now.
“Wondering if you’d like to marry into the family, after all?” Dansbury asked. She looked up sharply to find the cynical mask firmly back in place. “How very calculating of you. My congratulations.”
“You buffoon,” she growled, and stalked over to the window to watch for Milgrew.
“Hm. That hardly seems fair, considering the kind advice I was about to give you.” He stepped over beside her.
He was baiting her; she knew it, but still she was unable to resist. “And what kind advice was that?” The marquis shrugged. “Just that you might wish to change your clothes before we proceed any further.”
“Change my…” Lilith trailed off, abruptly flushing and looking down to see her shift clearly exposed beneath her ripped bodice. She’d been half naked while she’d argued about propriety with Dansbury, and he’d never said anything! Well, he’d certainly taken his time about it, anyway. “Excuse me for a moment.”
He sketched a bow. “Of course. His Grace and I don’t mind waiting.”
With a deep frown, Lilith slipped out through the library door and rushed upstairs. She swiftly pulled off her gown and slipped on a patterned peach muslin. Her hair was a shambles as well, and she quickly rearranged it. In just a few moments she rejoined the marquis.
He still stood looking out the window, his dark hair curling a little where it touched his collar. After a moment he turned to look at her.
“Very nice,” he approved with a smile. “Now—is Bevins stiff as he seems?”
It took Lilith a moment to turn her thoughts from the marquis’s second compliment of the morning. Bevins wouldn’t like any of this, but she didn’t think he’d say anything if she asked him not to. Her father would not look kindly upon whoever carried this tale to him. “Yes, but I think he’ll do.”
If the situation hadn’t been so dreadful, Lilith would have laughed at Bevins’ expression as Dansbury beckoned him into the room. “My word,” the butler said faintly.
The marquis motioned him toward Wenford’s feet. “If you pl
ease, Bevins.”
The butler eyed him dubiously. “I don’t believe this is at all the thing,” he protested indignantly, turning to Lilith.
“We must get him out of here,” she explained, as calmly as she could. “There really is no choice.”
“Don’t want Miss Benton ruined,” Dansbury seconded helpfully.
Bevins looked down at the duke again. “Oh, very well,” he grumbled.
Dansbury squatted to reach under Wenford’s arms. “Sorry, old boy,” he grunted, lifting.
They maneuvered the body through the door and down the hallway, while Lilith rushed ahead of them to pull open the front door. The coach stood waiting at the front of the house, Milgrew in the driver’s seat. The groom jumped to the ground and hurried to assist the two men as they struggled down the shallow steps. “Holy Saint Mary,” he exclaimed in his thick Scots brogue, grabbing onto the duke’s coat and helping them heave Wenford up onto the floor of the coach.
Most of the drive was obscured by rhododendron bushes and maple trees, so it was doubtful that anyone had seen them. Lilith kept her attention on Dansbury as the marquis gracefully clambered up into the coach to haul the duke the rest of the way inside while Milgrew maneuvered him from the ground.
Bevins wiped distastefully at his hands and turned back to the house. Abruptly he froze, his complexion going pale. “Miss Benton?”
“What is it?” she asked in alarm.
“Your father.” He hurriedly straightened his coat and neckcloth.
As Lilith turned, the other Hamble coach appeared at the foot of the drive, and she had to squelch the sudden desire to flee. Fainting was a greatly underappreciated art, she decided, wishing she had mastered it.
“Well, we can’t have this,” the marquis commented, his tone as calm as if he had been discussing the weather. He sat down in the coach and yanked the door shut.
Her father stepped down from his carriage and strode forward, barely contained anger in every line of his body. “What the devil is going on?” he scowled, glaring at the occupant of the coach. Lilith didn’t care to contemplate what his expression would be once he discovered there were two occupants.
“Jack, thought you were riding to Bristol this morning.” William grinned, helping Aunt Eugenia down from the coach and coming forward.
The marquis reached out to shake his hand, but made no move to release the door handle he held shut with the other. He smiled lazily. “I stayed out a bit later than I realized, and now I seem to have misplaced my mount,” he drawled. “Poor Benedick, I hope he finds his way home.”
“Blind drunk at ten in the morning, is what you are,” her father said scathingly.
For just a moment Dansbury’s expression changed, and then he favored them with a lopsided grin. “I would hope all that effort didn’t go to waste,” he agreed. “Anyway, I ended up here, and Miss Benton offered me a ride home.” He glanced at her. “To get rid of me, I do think.”
The viscount gestured impatiently at Milgrew. “Get him out of here.”
“Aye, milord,” the groom responded, and climbed back up onto the driver’s perch.
Lilith could only stare, amazed, as the marquis sat back and in a slurring voice called for Milgrew to be off. He gave a sterling performance as a drunk, and she didn’t know what to make of the story he’d concocted. He’d told Bevins he’d come to Benton House looking for a glove. Just before he passed out of sight, Dansbury nodded at her, and she came back to herself with a start.
“How was Billington’s?” she asked, smiling sweetly and linking her arm through her aunt’s.
“Everyone was there,” Eugenia returned, “but Stephen insisted it was too crowded and that we should leave.”
Her father glanced up the drive again, then shrugged, the affronted anger slowly leaving his face. “Far too many people were allowed to attend this year. I didn’t get a chance to say more than two words to Billington.” He turned on William, his expression darkening. “Now that blackguard is coming here when you’re not even home. I told you I want you to have nothing further to do with him.”
“But he’s a good sort, Father, really,” William protested. “Slap up to the echo. I’m learning everything from him and his cronies.”
“That is precisely what I am afraid of.”
As Lilith looked after the vanished coach, she reflected that she was rather worried herself. She had just placed her honor in the hands of a gamester and rakehell. And Dansbury would collect on the debt she owed him. He had warned her. She took a deep breath, her heart fluttering nervously.
He would try to collect.
Chapter 6
The Duke of Wenford had a damned lot of nerve. “It’s a bloody good thing you’re dead,” Jack growled at Geoffrey Remdale’s remains, “or I’d have sent you to Jericho myself.” He nudged his silent companion with the toe of his boot, turning the pallid face with its lifeless, staring eyes toward the opposite seat. Then he sighed and sat back to watch Mayfair roll by outside.
After going to the effort of discovering that Lilith Benton would be at home alone, and then convincing her stuffy butler that he actually had a legitimate reason for stopping by, Jack had not expected someone else to have beaten him to her. And he certainly hadn’t expected it to be Wenford.
The anger that had hit him at the sight of Old Hatchet Face sprawled on top of Lilith, like a wrinkled old rutting ox, still surprised him. Whatever her reputation for coolness, he hadn’t expected to find her lifting her heels for a duchy. He’d been severely disappointed in her. And then she’d asked for his assistance, and he’d suddenly become Galahad in shining armor.
Of course, his own plans for Lilith were a far cry from Wenford’s. His plan of seducing her into bed left her an out, if she managed to resist him. If she didn’t—well, that would be her own poor choice, wouldn’t it? After all, it was his game, and his rules, so naturally they favored him.
Which did not explain why he was currently taking the risk of being caught carting the corpse of a member of the peerage about London. And—more to the point—a member of the peerage with whom he was well known to have a longstanding disagreement. With his tattered reputation, marquis or not, it would be nearly enough to get him jailed.
Difficult as it was for him to believe of himself, apparently whatever temporary sentiments of chivalry Miss Benton had awakened in him were real. Of course, it could merely have been his eye for opportunity, deciding that putting Lilith in his debt was to his advantage. But whatever had roused this fleeting propriety, he needed to get Wenford safely planted somewhere to be found.
He couldn’t say he was the least bit sorry to see the old boy gone. Politically, Wenford was hopelessly backward, and his absence from the House of Lords would be a relief. It was a pity, though, that his death would elevate Dolph Remdale to the dukedom. The conceited fool was already insufferable enough. Jack thoughtfully studied Wenford’s profile again. Dear Randolph needed something to take him down a notch.
Milgrew knocked the handle of his whip against the door. “We’re here, milord,” he called down from his perch.
Jack regarded the Remdale manor through the trees that obscured the drive, then leaned his head out the window. “Milgrew, take the street around to the west side of the house.” He gave a slow smile. “I have a better idea.”
“Aye?” the Scot queried, leaning down to look at him and raising an eyebrow.
“Aye.”
Waves of excited conversation buzzed through the Rochmont ballroom as Lilith and her family entered, and she steeled herself for what would follow. Word of the duke’s death must have circulated around the ton by now, and she dreaded having to face everyone’s speculation with pretended ignorance. She had practiced an expression of sorrow tinted with knowing regret all afternoon: after all, the Duke of Wenford had been quite elderly, and given to fits of near apoplexy…
“Lil, have you heard?”
Penelope Stratford tugged her arm, leading her across the floor to their
waiting circle of friends. Lilith was glad to part from her father; he’d been glum and short-tempered all afternoon, and nothing she’d attempted had cheered him up in the least. “Heard what?” she asked, hoping the curiosity in her voice didn’t sound forced.
“Only the most shocking thing—there, you see? I told you that you looked splendid in gold. And you said it wouldn’t do.”
Pen looked admiringly at the golden silk gown with the puffy lace sleeves Madame Belieu’s shop had delivered earlier in the day. Lilith had thought it a trifle much, but at the last moment had become too fainthearted to don the emerald dress. Her father would never approve of it.
“What shocking thing?”
“Oh, yes.” Pen leaned closer, covering her giggles with one hand. “The widow Mrs. Devereaux eloped last night to Gretna Green with Raymond Beecher.”
“Oh, that’s dread—What?” Lilith stared at her friend. “But Mrs. Devereaux is ten years older than Mr. Beecher.”
“And when the earl, his father, found out, he disowned Raymond on the spot,” Jeremy Giggins finished, grinning as the two young ladies reached their group. “Beecher never had a pound of sense.”
“And now he has no pounds at all,” Lionel Hendrick continued. He took Lilith’s hand and brought it to his lips. “Good evening, Miss Benton. You are stunning.”
Lilith curtsied. “Thank you, my lord.”
Her suitors seemed to have established a hierarchy of sorts, and no one contested the earl as he led her out onto the polished floor for the first waltz of the evening. Lilith wondered if he would be the one her father chose, now that Wenford was gone. He stood an inch or so taller than Dansbury, and unlike the dark-haired marquis’s, his light brown hair was cut in the very latest style. Nance was certainly pleasant enough to gaze upon, but as he stepped on her toe and murmured an apology, it occurred to her that she really knew very little about him—or about any of her other suitors. She knew more about the Marquis of Dansbury—little as she liked the information—than practically every other man she had encountered in London.
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