“There is much to consider.” Bella winced at the memory of her coming-out Season. So many gowns and fittings and decisions to be made. So much hope and a mountain of expectations.
“You have a great deal of experience, so I trust you to guide me.” Her smiled faltered as soon as the words were out. “Oh, I didn’t mean . . .”
“It’s all right. Nothing you said is incorrect. I’ve had four Seasons, attended more balls than I can count, and was in London recently enough to remember what’s in fashion.”
“Wonderful.” Lady Margaret clasped her hands and held them under her chin. She smiled and her eyes were much like her brother’s, glinting with an eagerness that verged on mischief. “There is so much left to do. Would you join me for lunch next week? We could begin planning, if that suits you.”
“Meg, perhaps you two can make arrangements another time,” Rhys interrupted. His words were like a chill breeze when everything had been sunny a moment before.
Meg’s face fell as she looked from her brother to Bella and back again. “Of course. I burst in and interrupted your conversation.” She offered a sheepish smile and turned toward her brother. “I only came to remind you that we’re due at the vicarage at noon. You do recall we agreed to visit?”
“I didn’t,” Rhys admitted. “But I appreciate the reminder.”
Meg seemed to sense the dismissal in his tone and offered Bella a tiny nod and a smile before heading toward the study door. “I’ll be in the drawing room if you wish to speak before you depart.”
Bella couldn’t help but turn her gaze on Rhys. His answer would determine everything, and yet she could see he didn’t have one. Or that he knew she wouldn’t like the one he planned to offer.
“If not, I’ll send a note,” Bella assured the girl.
“A note would be lovely,” Meg told her. A moment later, she slipped out of the room and pulled the door shut.
“I don’t honestly know how to avoid disappointing her,” Rhys said after his sister departed. “I have no desire to disappoint you again either, but I cannot agree to this scheme.”
“Please.” Bella had rarely pleaded with him for anything. He’d always given her help freely, but she couldn’t remember a time she ever needed his cooperation this much. “We could start looking at the accounts right now.” Bella strode to the desk and picked up one of the leather-bound ledgers, hugging it to her chest. “If we start directly, I could be through half of this one by teatime.”
She wasn’t at all certain she could manage the feat, but she was more than willing to try.
Rhys shook his head in that stubborn way of his. “I wish I could make you understand. Inviting me to dinner one evening to put off a couple of pompous noblemen is worlds different from telling everyone you’ve agreed to marry me.”
“You’re the Duke of Claremont, for heaven’s sake. Many will say I’ve caught the most eligible bachelor in England.”
“You mean the most incorrigible bachelor in England. I have few merits, Bella. I’m known as a man of terrible morals. A rogue and a reprobate. I can’t even argue with those claims.”
Bella wanted to argue with them. At least the bit about him having few merits. Whatever he’d become, she believed a few things were still true. Rhys had always been loyal and he’d always been kind.
“You have a much different reputation,” he continued. “You’re known as—”
“Cold.”
“Clever,” he insisted. “And no one would believe you’re silly enough to choose me.”
Suddenly his handsome face looked weary and his jaw tightened. There was no sign of the easy smile he usually wore. His gaze flickered over her face, tracing the curve of her cheeks, pausing on her lips, then dipping low to stare at her necklace. Her bodice buttoned all the way to her neck, but she’d lifted the daisy pendant out, as she often did.
“I’m sorry. You’ll never know how much.”
“Then there’s nothing more to say.” She’d heard the pain in his tone, but all she could feel was her own anger. “Good luck with your ledgers.”
She was nearly to the door before he spoke again. “And what of Meg?”
Bella gazed at him over her shoulder, staring at his cravat, too angry to look him in the eyes. “There are others to advise her. Lady Bembridge or the Dowager Viscountess Cartwright.”
He let out a sound of disgust. “They’re petty, judgmental women who look down on my family despite rank.”
“Please tell Meg I’m sorry.” Bella sighed.
Thinking of Meg reminded her of all the nervousness she’d felt before her first Season. She would have liked to help the girl.
“If you’re not willing to help me, I’ll be departing for Greece. I won’t be here to assist either of you.” She looked at him and a potent wave of tenderness filled her, confused her. She was angry with him, and yet she could never stop caring. “Good-bye, Rhys.”
Bella’s parting words echoed in his mind after she’d gone and Rhys sank into the chair behind his father’s desk. He pushed at the ledgers until he’d created open space on the desk, lifted his booted feet onto the blotter, leaned back in the chair, and covered his eyes with his hand.
God, he needed a drink. Several of them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even midday and he didn’t want Meg to find him sloshed at such an hour.
He heard her footsteps outside the door. He knew she’d be watching for Bella’s departure and come to collect him for their visit to the vicar soon after.
She entered so quickly the door cracked against the wall.
“What have you done?”
“The list is long, little sister. How much time do you have?”
Meg sighed. Rhys scrubbed a hand over his face before meeting her irritated gaze.
“I’m referring to Miss Prescott. She stormed out the front door without a word, and she looked upset.”
Pointlessly Rhys wondered if Bella was more upset with him this morning than she’d been that day at her garden party. He suspected both days were a pinnacle of disappointment.
He’d failed her. Again.
“She asked something of me that I couldn’t give her.”
Meg narrowed her gaze at him. “There was a time you would have done anything for Arabella Prescott.”
“I did do something. Saying no was the best thing I could have done for her.” Rhys pushed his chair back, stood, and started pacing again. He’d had enough sitting still in the last weeks in Essex to last him a bloody lifetime. “Believe me, I wanted to say yes.”
“I don’t understand.” Meg perched her hands on her hips. Never a good sign. It meant he wasn’t going to escape this conversation without answering a dozen questions. “Explain.”
He grabbed the foil from the top of his father’s desk as he made a circuit around the room. He whipped it sharply through the air as he approached the window. “Sometimes the best we can do for someone is to not give them what they want.”
“That would only make sense if she asked for something outrageous.”
“Yes.”
“She’s known as one of the most proper young ladies in the county. I can’t believe she’d ask for anything improper.” Meg’s tone turned dubious and her brows lifted in curiosity. “Did she?”
“She needs a husband.”
He couldn’t resist turning to see his sister’s reaction to that, and he wasn’t disappointed. Meg’s big blue eyes widened at the same moment her mouth dropped open.
“Marriage? She wishes to marry you?”
“No, that would be ludicrous.” He let out a bitter chuckle. “It’s complicated.”
“She’s famous for not wishing to marry anyone. Which seems strange,” Meg said softly.
“She wishes to please Lord and Lady Yardley.”
“But marriage would please them, and the right one might make her happy too.” Meg bit her lip as if she’d given too much away.
He tried not to think about how eager Meg was to marry, how vulnerable she’d be
to fortune hunters on the marriage mart. He wished she had even an ounce of Bella’s hesitance about wedlock. It was why he’d been so keen on her advising Meg.
“Someday I’m sure she’ll find a suitor that . . .” He paused, hating the taste of those words on his lips. “Suits her,” he finished.
He tried to imagine the kind of nobleman who could deserve Bella and came up with nothing. She was a uniquely smart, maddeningly stubborn woman and it would take a man of far more intelligence and patience than he could imagine to make her happy.
“I take it she won’t be coming back to visit if you don’t assist her.” Meg’s worried tone spiked his own anxiety.
“I’ll send a note to the Duchess of Tremayne. She’s quite the popular hostess during the Season.”
Meg wrapped a finger around a ribbon fluttering down from a bow at the front of her dress. “She’s never had a Season herself though, has she?”
“No.” Tremayne’s wife was lovely and capable and could manage a household with an efficiency that verged on frightening, but she had been born the daughter of a land steward and never had a formal coming-out.
“Perhaps Miss Prescott, Bella, would still be willing to speak to me.” She cast him a look tinged with accusation. “Unless she’s too angry with you to have anything to do with our family.”
“Her parents will be traveling to the Continent and she will most likely accompany them.”
“When does she depart?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think she’d accept an invitation to luncheon before she leaves?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps—”
“No more questions, Meg.” He winced at her shocked expression. He rarely snapped at her. “I promise your Season will be a success. We’ll find you some well-meaning lady who will shepherd you through the entire nonsensical round of balls and visits and parlor games.”
She tsked irritably. “Preferably one who doesn’t refer to it as nonsense.”
“Preferably.” He tried a grin and as always, she gave one in reply. Eventually. “Now go prepare for our visit to the vicarage and I’ll do the same.”
Rather than depart, she stared at him. “Are you certain?”
Rhys tipped his head. “Certain of?”
“Your refusal.” She stepped toward him, hands out as if beseeching him. “She was once your dearest friend and then you parted ways but now you seem to have made amends. Why fall out again?”
Rhys strode to the study door. “Questions are closed for today. Except for whatever the vicar plans to ask. And I’ll let you do the answering.” He opened the door and gestured into the hallway. “Shall we depart?”
“Couldn’t you help her? Whatever it is. She came to you, Rhys, rather than anyone else.”
Without realizing it, he’d gripped the door handle so hard his knuckles began to ache.
Meg was right. Bella had come to him. And he’d failed her. Again.
“When do we meet the vicar?”
Meg’s whole face brightened. “A little less than an hour.”
“I should be back in time.”
“You’re going to help her?”
He still had doubts. He still feared what trouble their connection might cause her. But the impulse to help her was too insistent for him to ignore. Bella needed him and despite all the reasons he should leave her to her own devices, he couldn’t.
“I’m going to do my best.”
Chapter Eleven
Bella stomped so hard through the field grass that her teeth rattled whenever her boot landed on a stony patch. She didn’t care. She was already clenching her teeth and clutching her hands into fists, and the stomping was doing wonders for working out her frustration.
Infuriating man. What had ever possessed her to believe Rhys would help?
She wasn’t asking for much. A few days of pretense. Perhaps a few weeks. Afterward, they could go back to being barely acquainted again. He could return to London and be a ne’er-do-well and she could focus on her book.
She understood his aversion to wedlock, but was he so terrified that he couldn’t even agree to pretense for a few weeks?
“Bella.”
She was so lost in her thoughts, the single shouted word seemed unconnected to her. But then he shouted again, louder, more desperately. And that made her jerk to a stop. Rhys was far enough away that she could ignore him and it would be believable she hadn’t heard him at all.
She started off again, stomping less and picking up her pace. She’d gone to him and pleaded with him. That was enough of the Duke of Claremont for one day.
“Bella, please wait.”
It was the please that made her stop. But she couldn’t bring herself to turn to face him. She took in deep gulps of air, willing her pulse to steady and her anger to subside. When he was close enough for her to hear the sound of his footsteps sweeping through the tall grass, she turned her head.
He was striding toward her, his blond hair tousled by the breeze and his black greatcoat billowing out behind him. As usual, he’d dispensed with his cravat and his shirt lay open at his throat, revealing the muscles of his neck and a dusting of darker hair at the base of his throat. He marched toward her with such determination it made her take a step back in retreat.
“I thought you’d decided against my scheme,” Bella called when he was close enough she didn’t need to shout.
“I think we should settle this the way we used to.” Barely slowing his stride, he reached down and plucked one of the wild daisies dancing among the field grass. “I have a decider at the ready, as you see.”
What she could see was how his embroidered dove gray waistcoat hugged his broad chest so tightly the fabric strained against the buttons’ hold.
She tried not to stare at his chest, but it was nearly impossible to meet his gaze. Her emotions tipped and tumbled inside her. Perhaps he’d changed his mind. A sweet ribbon of relief started at her throat and ran all the way down to her toes.
But she was afraid to trust any of it. “You’ll tell my parents we wish to marry?”
“We’ll soon find out,” he said as he stopped an arm’s length away from her. He was breathing hard. The chill in the air had brought blood to his cheeks, a glint to his eyes. Sunlight lit them with a vibrant glow. “You first,” he told her, lifting the daisy between them.
“We’re not children anymore.” And she couldn’t risk her future and her parents’ choices on the whimsy of a flower.
“All right, I’ll go first.” He plucked one petal.
Bella sighed and yanked another free.
He smiled as if she’d just offered him a compliment and pulled a second time. She did too. They continued on until only a single petal remained. One for her to pluck.
When she hesitated, his gaze grew serious. “Looks as if I’ll be telling your parents I wish to marry you.”
His agreement was precisely what she wanted to hear. Yet for the first time in all this scheming a warning bell sounded in her mind.
Perhaps she wanted this too much.
“That look of worry tells me you understand the pitfalls of this arrangement.”
“Pitfalls?” Bella swallowed hard. She very much doubted he understood what she was thinking.
“We must make others believe we’re sincere and yet we ourselves must not become . . .” He looked at her as if he expected her to finish the sentence for him, as they’d often done in the past. When she didn’t, he added, “Entangled.”
“Entangled?”
He chuckled. “The first rule is that you mustn’t simply repeat every final word I say as a question.”
Bella crossed her arms. “And the second rule?”
“We probably shouldn’t do this in front of others.” He waved a hand between them. “Bickering.”
“We’re discussing.” In tight irritated tones, she had to admit. “Not arguing.”
“Let’s do it in private from now on. Nothing travels fas
ter than gossip, and we wish those observing to believe we are enamored and in accord.”
“Is there a third rule?”
He looked at her so long she wondered if he’d forgotten the question, then finally said, “You shouldn’t defend me.”
“Will there be a need?” Had the man been called out by some angry husband in London?
“Bella,” he said slowly, carefully, “I haven’t been a good man of late, and when the talkative ladies of London society hear that I’m to wed a very upright young lady . . . There will be talk. You will likely learn more about me than you ever wished to.” He swallowed as if there were something bitter on his tongue. “I don’t want you to become caught up in that when we’re among London society. So let them say what they will and never mind any of it.”
“You needn’t worry about me.”
“If you’re my fiancée, that will be my job.”
Bella rolled her eyes. Twenty minutes ago the man couldn’t fathom assisting her and now he was taking all of it far too seriously. “I won’t be your fiancée in truth.”
“Others must believe that you are and your connection with me, as you know from Lord Hammersley, may cause you trouble. Do you have any rules?”
As Bella stared at him, her gaze fell to his lips. Always. They were beautifully shaped, full and forever flickering into a grin or a smirk. She had a good excuse to look at them when he spoke but she found herself looking when she shouldn’t.
“No kissing,” she blurted.
He arched a brow. “Very well. No kissing, it is. Anything else?”
“No promises either of us cannot keep.”
Both of his brows winged high at that.
“We will be clear with each other,” he said in a low earnest tone. “Honest, in all matters.” He stepped close enough for his greatcoat to rustle against her skirt. He shocked her by reaching out and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, then letting his fingers linger there, a warm soft weight against her skin. “I won’t fail you this time.”
Goodness how were they going to do this if he could unsettle her with the brush of his fingers?
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