A Most Scandalous Proposal

by Ashlyn Macnamara

  Damn that bloody idiot Clivesden for spoiling the most perfect moment of his life.

  “Papa, you cannot fight a duel over this. I will not have it.”

  “I most certainly can,” he replied. “I’ll not stand for a man saying such things about you. Most especially when you were perfectly correct to lay the blame on me.”

  Julia’s face crumpled, and she took a step toward her father, only the bed blocked the way. “I never asked for this outcome.”

  “Get yourself dressed. Both of you.” St. Claire’s voice hardened as he addressed Benedict as well. “Any discussion can wait for the ride back to Town.”

  St. Claire then stalked from the chamber, Upperton in his wake. Julia waited until the door closed behind them before saying anything further. “You have to do something to stop this.”

  Crossing to the clothespress, Benedict reached for his shirt. “Whether you like it or not, a duel was probably the inevitable outcome of today. I expected he’d challenge me.”

  She let out a whimper but just as quickly cut the sound off.

  “You could not possibly have imagined Clivesden would stand aside and wish us well. Not when—”

  He clamped his mouth shut. Damn, he’d nearly blurted the truth. Hoping to cover the moment, he pulled on his trousers.

  “Not when what?”

  In the midst of tucking in his shirttails, he paused. “No matter. I want to know why you said to him what you did.”

  She stopped in the midst of shaking out several yards of pale blue muslin. “Said what?”

  “When he called you—” His throat constricted with anger. God, he couldn’t even bring himself to repeat it. “When he called you a whore. I’d have strangled him for that alone, but you agreed with it. And you blame your father?”

  She looked down at the pile of fabric, and twisted it in her hands. “Papa sold me to settle a debt. Apparently, I’m worth five thousand pounds.”

  “Five thousand?” The exact amount of the bet. His mind whirled. Had Clivesden suspected St. Claire might never pay him back and sought to recoup the loss through the wager at White’s? Such assuredness, such confidence, such utter arrogance. “Five thousand?”

  “I know. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Five thousand.” He couldn’t fathom it. “The same as—” Damn it, he’d done it again. Blast him and his mouth.

  “Same as?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “No, it’s not nothing.” She accompanied her words with a slashing gesture. “It cannot be nothing. I want to know why, of all the eligible ladies of the ton, he settled on me. You know something. It isn’t right you’ve kept it from me.”

  “Didn’t he answer that question when he proposed?” He stared hard, silently pleading with her not to make him repeat any of that vile proposal. It ought to stick in her memory more, at any rate. She’d been a party to the scene.

  “There’s got to be more to it than that. Why’s he so dashed relentless about the whole thing? He could have any chit he wants without lifting a finger. He could have had my sister, for goodness’ sake.”

  Benedict’s fingers fumbled with his cravat. Blasted thing. He’d never got the hang of tying it properly without help. “I think he saw you as a challenge. He could’ve had any number of chits, as you say, but so could most of the other men of the ton. I think he wants to be able to claim he’s landed the one woman they cannot have.”

  “Contrary idiots, the lot of you.” She pressed her lips into a line and stepped into another of Henrietta Upperton’s ruffled confections. Wordlessly, she presented her back, while holding her hair in a pile on her head.

  After a moment’s confusion, he realized she wanted help with her buttons. His fingers trembled as he pulled the sides of her bodice together and fastened one tiny clasp after the next. His knuckles grazed the warmth of her skin that penetrated the negligible barrier of her chemise. The memory of that skin’s softness tingled through him.

  He gritted his teeth and thrust the images aside. As much as he’d love to tear off this gown and take her back to bed, now was not the time with her father and his closest friend waiting on the other side of the door.

  “You know,” she said as he fastened the final closure, “I do not believe you ever told me how you knew that idiot would pursue me in the first place.”

  He stepped back. “Oh, I’m sure I must have.” A blatant lie. He never wanted her to find out she’d been the subject of a wager at White’s.

  “No, you didn’t.” She turned to face him. “I distinctly recall you telling me Ludlowe had set his sights on me, but never where that information came from.”

  An expectant pause ensued. He blinked. She blinked back and folded her arms. With a growl, he raked a hand through his hair. Think, man. But no plausible explanation sprang to mind. In another moment, she’d probably tap her foot.

  Fine then. “He wagered five thousand pounds on you.”

  “He what?”

  Benedict nodded. “Five thousand pounds that you’d become the next Countess of Clivesden. I did not realize the full import until he told us he was in line for the earldom.”

  Her lips disappeared ominously into her mouth. “I dearly, dearly hope you had the decency not to sign on that wager.”

  “Of course I didn’t sign. What do you take me for?”

  “Someone who hangs about the likes of George Upperton.”

  Heat crept up the back of Benedict’s neck, and he suppressed an urge to tug at his collar. Thank God, he’d never managed to knot his cravat. “Upperton may have, er, signed on that wager.”

  Julia clapped her palm over her mouth. Then her ruffled bosom gave a mighty heave as she drew in air. Several stitches protested the movement with loud pops.

  Benedict held up a hand, hoping it would be sufficient to impede the impending explosion—or prevent her from marching into the next room and confronting the man himself. “I said may have. I haven’t seen the evidence for myself. I’m only going on a few things he’s said.”

  “I should think those are the sorts of suspicions you’d want to verify.” Her tone was as glacial as yesterday’s wind—and today’s, no doubt.

  “Right. We might do that now.”

  Her glare unwavering, she crossed her arms. The way she was glowering, he’d be fortunate if she allowed him to seduce her again sometime within the next decade. For that matter, Upperton might well worry about his own possibilities for future progeny. Lucky thing he was in the next room.

  He heaved a sigh. “Yes, well, pack your things. And then we’ll see about getting this sorted.”

  BENEDICT was wrong. They didn’t get the question sorted, not in the cottage and not halfway through the journey back. Not when a silence reigned in the carriage, so weighty it dulled the clop of the horses’ hooves on the road and the clatter of the wheels.

  “Bloody great idiot,” Benedict grumbled.

  Upperton raised his brows.

  “I will not refer to him by his title. I find the one I’ve bestowed on him preferable.” Benedict tried to catch Julia’s eye, but she refused to meet his gaze. Let him try to wheedle a smile out of her. She was not about to play his games. Let him stew.

  “Oh, quite.” Upperton stared out the window for a moment. “I say, I’m sorry for this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I reckon if he found you so quickly, it’s my fault. Thought I slipped out of Town on the sly.”

  “I suppose it was too much to hope he’d lose time checking the routes to Scotland,” Benedict said.

  Next to her on the squabs, Papa held himself rigid, his presence more substantial than ever before in her life. He preferred to ignore his daughters in favor of more masculine companions, companions who drank with him and wagered. Companions who fleeced him until he was willing to sell his own children to extract himself from debt.

  “You didn’t think we’d know who to watch?” His outburst sounded unnaturally loud in the tense air. “The pai
r of you, thick as thieves. And don’t think for a moment you’re square with me, young man. Just because you’ve agreed to step into this duel, doesn’t mean we don’t have business of our own to take care of.”

  At the mention of the duel, Julia drummed her fingers against her reticule and bit down on her tongue. She would not say a word. No indeed. She was not speaking to any of them. Foolish men, resolving their differences with violence, if not with fists then at twenty paces. Next thing she knew, Papa would challenge Benedict.

  “Who is more reprehensible, sir, the man who anticipates his wedding night or the man who sells his own daughter for five thousand?” Benedict pronounced each syllable with a careful, clipped precision, as if he were reporting to a superior officer.

  Papa twisted his glove between stubby fingers—the same glove he’d used to strike Clivesden and which he’d yet to put back on. “Wedding night?”

  Benedict flushed a dull red. “In spite of the way things appeared this morning, my intentions are honorable.”

  Papa made an incoherent sound in his throat, halfway between a harrumph and a growl.

  “I can prove it.” Benedict nudged Upperton. “Can’t I?”

  Upperton tore his gaze away from the passing scenery. “What?”

  “Do you have it?”

  “Right here.” Upperton patted his breast. “Didn’t realize the Archbishop would come through quite so quickly.”

  “Have what?” Blast. The words popped out before she could stop them. Useless words, for she knew very well what Benedict would have procured from the Archbishop.

  “There was no time before we had to leave Town,” Benedict said, “so I asked Upperton to get me a special license.”

  Julia studied her nails. “Looks as if his trip has been a total loss all round then. Perhaps I shall marry Clivesden, after all.”

  Upperton broke into a violent fit of coughing, while Benedict fixed her with a frightening glare. She suspected he’d used that look to cow junior officers.

  “Don’t even joke about that.” His words came low and lethal, undercutting Upperton’s hacking. A frisson passed down her spine. “Not after—”

  He cut his thought short when Upperton’s coughing came to an abrupt halt. A tense silence fell as Benedict held her gaze, his blue eyes eloquent with rage and confusion. Julia suspected, but for the color, they mirrored her own.

  “You will not be able to extract yourself from this marriage,” Papa pronounced. “You’ve determined that by your own actions.”

  She could make no reply in her defense on that count. Word would get out. If not by the time they returned to Town, then certainly the duel would raise a veritable gale of on-dits.

  The duel. Why had Papa seen fit to challenge Clivesden over the truth, all over some antiquated notion of honor? No matter the outcome, nothing good could result from the duel. Papa might well carry the blood of another man on his hands for the rest of his life, and that was at best. At worst, he’d die himself.

  As if he’d guessed the tenor of her thoughts, Papa leaned forward, hands folded between his knees, and launched into a discussion of the details: weapons, location, ideal conditions.

  Julia pressed her lips together and gazed out the window. Poplar trees lined the road. Interesting trees, poplars. Interesting enough, at least, to distract her from a diatribe against masculine idiocy that might rival a fishwife had she lent it voice.

  At last, she could stand it no longer. “Papa, have you ever even shot a pistol?”

  He settled back, and readjusted his spectacles. “Of course I have.”

  “Oh?”

  “I dueled Cheltenham over your mother.”

  Julia blinked at her father as if seeing him for the first time. She studied the lines at the corners of his eyes, his furrowed forehead, and, in her mind, willed those marks away. She imagined a less fleshy version of his face and a head covered by more than a mere fringe of hair. She pictured him less as a friar who enjoyed his own ale rather too much and more as a man, still youthful, still full of hope for the future. She’d never before had occasion to think of him as ever being Benedict’s age, but he must have been, once.

  “You and Cheltenham.”

  “Shockingly enough, yes. I cannot abide certain words.”

  His tone left Julia with no doubt what those words were. “He called Mama …” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  “Yes, when he jilted her. Someone had to defend her honor.” Papa spoke with finality, as if those few words sufficed to explain what must have been quite a scandal at the time. Then he expelled a great sigh that seemed to deflate him. “I couldn’t give her what she wanted most. Only Cheltenham could have done that. So I’ve tried to make up for it by giving her everything else.”

  Everything else—a town house in Mayfair, ball gowns, parties, season after season for his daughters, titled sons-in-law.

  “At least I’ll see you settled,” he went on, almost to himself. “That devil’s bargain I made with Clivesden was just a last, desperate effort. And now it’s failed. I’ve failed her. Whatever becomes of me, you’ll make sure you look after your mama.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “AND WHERE do you think you’re off to at such an hour?”

  At his sister’s stentorian tones, Rufus released the brass handle to the front door, and turned on his heel. Damn it. He’d nearly made it to safety. “I am expected at the St. Claires’ to escort Miss Sophia to the theater.”

  Mariah advanced, heels thudding dully on the parquet of the vestibule. “Nonsense! You shall do no such thing.”

  He raised a brow. What good was a title if he let his sister bully him? God only knew he’d let her get away with it often enough when they were children. Mariah had always taken her role as the eldest to mean she decided the course of his life, even when that extended to such banalities as the disposition of his tin soldiers. “And what, pray tell, is your objection to the theater?”

  “None whatsoever. Only you’ve no chaperone but me, and I have a decided objection to your alliance with that family.”

  “Do you really? And since when? As I recall, you stood by knowing I had to offer for Miss St. Claire.”

  Mariah’s graying curls swayed about her sagging cheeks. “Had I realized the potential for scandal, I would have objected more vehemently from the beginning. As things now stand, you’d besmirch your title by marrying into that family.”

  He slapped his gloves against his palm. “As things stand now? What has changed?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  Slap! Any more of this and the first act would have started by the time they reached Drury Lane. “Listening to gossip again?”

  “The younger sister has run off. Does that mean nothing to you?”

  “Yes, I was aware.”

  “Aware?”

  “Naturally. Miss St. Claire has been worried sick over her sister’s disappearance.” He knew as much firsthand. He’d spent yesterday evening at the St. Claire town house, lending Sophia his shoulder, while they waited for her father to return with news. As of very late last night, he hadn’t. “I was hoping an outing might provide a distraction.”

  The loose skin at Mariah’s neck trembled with rage. “You knew of this scandal and you did nothing? You did not even see fit to inform me.”

  “Looks as if I did not have to, did I? It seems you’ve found out all on your own. I’d congratulate you on your adeptness at listening to the latest on-dit, but I’m afraid I’m running rather late.”

  “And it means nothing to you that the sister’s tossed her betrothed aside to run off with some former cavalry officer? What’s more, they were caught.”

  Rufus studied his sister. That last bit came as a surprise. He’d already worked out the rest of it on his own. Granted, the bit about being caught might not actually be true. That young shrew they’d run into might have spread all manner of rumor. On the other hand, St. Claire may well have returned to Town. “Well, that’s a charmin
g piece of news. Now, if you don’t mind, I really must be off.”

  “You cannot continue with this engagement.”

  “I can, and I most certainly will. Even if I no longer wished to pursue a marriage with Miss St. Claire, a gentleman does not cry off.”

  She advanced another step. “A gentleman can arrange matters so a lady cries off. But she’d never dream of it, would she? She had no hope of landing a title, in spite of her looks. Come to think of it, how can you be certain she really fainted that night at the Posselthwaites’?”

  With a sigh, Rufus pulled his gloves on. “I plan to spend an evening at the theater with a young lady who, no matter what her background, I’ve decided suits me most ideally as a wife. To put things plainly, I do not give a tinker’s damn what the ton thinks of the match, as I plan to retire to my estates as soon as the vows are said. If my connection to her family is an embarrassment to you, that is no problem of mine.”

  Mariah’s quivering turned into an outright tremor. “I shall make it your problem if you cannot choose a more suitable young lady.”

  “Then you shall no longer be welcome on my estate.”

  “You cannot expect me to spend the summers in Town with no society to speak of.”

  He cast a glance about the vestibule. All imported Italian marble and gilt wallpaper, the entryway announced its inhabitants’ impeccable breeding. The town house had belonged to the late Lord Wexford, and had not been included in the entail. Mariah had never borne her husband an heir, and his holdings had passed to a distant cousin. If she wanted to escape the heat and grime of summer in London, she was beholden to her brother and whatever invitations she could manage.

  Rufus jerked a leather glove over his hand. “As I see things, you have two alternatives. Tolerate my choice of spouse and, above all, treat her with respect or seek yourself a new husband.”

  “What? At my age?”

  He allowed himself a smile. She was in her early forties, endowed with no particular beauty and likely barren. “A husband might do something to improve your temper.”