Mary Balogh

by A Counterfeit Betrothal; The Notorious Rake

  “Ma’am?” The viscount made his best bow to her before noticing either her frown or the fact that Lord Edmond Waite stood silently in the shadows.

  “Ah,” Lord Edmond said. “The eternal triangle.”

  The viscount turned sharply in his direction, and his eyes narrowed. “Lady Mornington,” he said, “is Lord Edmond Waite an invited guest?”

  “I send out no invitations for these evenings,” she said.

  “Do you want him here?” he asked.

  She did not reply.

  “Waite,” the viscount said, “you may leave under your own power or you may choose to be thrown out. It is all the same to me, though I think perhaps I would prefer the latter. Which is it to be?”

  “The second, if you wish to have your nose flattened in line with the rest of your face,” Lord Edmond said coolly. “I was unaware that this is your house, Goodrich. I wish for a word with Lady Mornington. I am awaiting her answer.”

  “Her answer is no,” the viscount said. “You have five seconds to take yourself off.”

  “Mary?” Lord Edmond spoke quietly and unhurriedly.

  “I shall talk with him for a minute, my lord,” she said. “I thank you for your concern, but I am in my own house and quite safe.” She looked at Lord Edmond all the while she spoke.

  “Perhaps I should stay with you to make sure of that,” the viscount said, and Lord Edmond smiled into Mary’s eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said, “but that will not be necessary.”

  “Scurry out of range of my fists while you still may,” Lord Edmond said.

  “And that will not be necessary, either,” she said firmly. “There will be no violence or talk of violence in my home, gentlemen. Lord Goodrich, you will find several people gathered in the salon already. Lord Edmond, will you step this way, please?”

  She led him across the hallway and into what must be a morning room. There was an escritoire against one window, its surface strewn with papers, several books carelessly scattered on tables, and an embroidery frame with a mound of many-colored silks on the arm of the chair before which it stood. It was clearly a room that was lived in. A feminine and cozy room.

  She turned to face him as he closed the door quietly behind his back. “What is the meaning of this?” She held up his card in one hand.

  “That if you were from home this time I would be obliged to kidnap you?” he said. “I hoped that it would provoke exactly what it has provoked. I hoped that you would admit me.”

  “To my salon?” she said. “You know you need no invitation there, my lord. You would not have been turned away. Though of course you would have been unwelcome.”

  “Mary,” he said, “you do not know how you wound me. I am human. I have feelings.”

  She laughed shortly. “Well, bless my soul,” she said, “and so do I.”

  “I have given up gaming and drinking and whoring,” he said. “They have had no attraction for me in the past week. I took a girl to the room where I took you, Mary, and could do nothing with her except send her home with a handsome fee clutched in her hand. I could not lay her on the bed where you had lain and do with her the things I did with you.”

  She flushed. He watched her swallow. “The great reformation,” she said. “Thirty years or more of debauchery wiped out in one week of abstemious living, and now you are worthy to take me as a mistress. Am I to fall into your arms?”

  “If you wish,” he said. “I would be surprised, but I would close them about you fast enough.”

  She laughed again. “Get out,” she said, “and stop wasting my time. I have guests to entertain.”

  “Not quite thirty years,” he said. “But a goodly number, I will admit. A week has been more than an eternity. More than a week. Will you give me a chance, Mary?”

  “A chance?” She laughed incredulously. “A chance for what?”

  He shrugged. “A chance to show you that you will not have a drunken womanizer for a lover,” he said. “A chance to show you that there is more to me than you know?”

  She closed her eyes. “I cannot believe this is happening,” she said. “You try to convince me that a miraculous transformation has happened in your life, and yet you can scribble on the back of your card that you will kidnap me if I will not speak with you, and you threaten Lord Goodrich, who would protect me, with violence?”

  “He was the first to offer to throw me out,” he said.

  “Because he knew you were uninvited and unwelcome,” she said. “Because he cares for me.”

  “You are sleeping with him?” he asked.

  Her eyes widened and her flush returned. “Get out of here,” she hissed at him.

  “I will kill him if you are,” he said.

  She clamped her teeth together, grasped one side of her gown, and moved sharply around him toward the door. But he set one hand on her arm and whirled her around to face him. And he set his mouth to hers, releasing his hold on her for a moment—a moment during which she might have broken away but did not—in order to encircle her with his arms and draw her against him.

  She kissed him back with fierce passion for a few seconds and then gradually went limp in his arms. She was crying when he lifted his head, and shaking with sobs.

  “I hate you,” she said when she could. “And I am so afraid of you. I no longer know what to do, I am so afraid.”

  He drew her against him and held her there with arms like steel bands.

  “Why?” he asked. “Because I want you? Because I have killed? Because you want me?”

  “Because you will not take no for an answer,” she said. “Because nothing I say or do will persuade you that I want nothing to do with you. Because I am afraid I will never be free of you.”

  “And because part of you does not want to be?” he said. “Give in to it, Mary. Come to bed with me. Be my mistress. Let me prove to you that I am no monster and that what happened between us less than three weeks ago was merely the prelude to a glorious liaison.”

  “You see what I mean?” she said, and she was crying noisily again against his cravat.

  He held her to him, rocking her until she was quiet.

  “Give me one small chance,” he said. “Come out with me tomorrow. There is a garden party at Richmond. Lady Eleanor Varley’s—my aunt. There is no one more respectable in England. The only less-than-respectable thing she ever did was continue to associate with me when … well, after I had killed my brother and mother. She was the only one—the only one.” He set his cheek against the top of her head and inhaled deeply. “Come with me there, Mary.”

  She did not answer for a long while. But finally she lifted her head and looked up at him with reddened eyes. “Yes, I will,” she said so that his arms tightened about her again. “On one condition.”

  “What?” he said.

  “That after tomorrow,” she said, “if I still feel as I do now—and I warn you that nothing on this earth can change my mind—you will accept my rejection and leave me alone.”

  He considered. “I don’t think I can do that, Mary,” he said.

  “Then I will not come,” she said.

  He stared into her eyes for a long moment. “Very well,” he said at last. “I promise.”

  He watched her eyes light up in triumph and swallowed against what felt like a lump in his throat.

  “I shall come for you soon after luncheon,” he said.

  “Yes.” She smiled at him. “I shall be ready.”

  “And eager for the end of the day and the end of an affair that was never quite an affair,” he said.

  “Yes.” She continued to smile.

  He dropped his arms to his sides. He felt rather as if every part of his body was made of lead. Including his heart. What had he promised? What had he done? He set one hand on the knob of the door and paused to look back at her.

  “I would bathe my eyes with cold water before returning to the salon if I were you,” he said.

  She was still smiling. “Yes,” she sai
d.

  “Good night, Mary,” he said.

  “Good night, my lord.”

  He left the room, leaving the door open behind him.

  7

  IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY. OF COURSE, MARY thought, it would have to be. It was just too much to hope that anything would happen to put a stop to Lady Eleanor Varley’s garden party. The sun was shining from a cloudless sky. And it was hot without being oppressively so, she discovered during a late-morning visit to the library.

  She would really rather be doing anything today but what she was preparing to do, but she cheered herself with the thought that it was for the last time. Once the day was over, then so would be all the unpleasant train of events that had begun with the thunderstorm at Vauxhall—if he was anything at all of a gentleman, of course. If he kept his promise. Strangely, the night before she had not considered that perhaps he had promised only because promises meant nothing to him. She had believed him.

  Penelope had been disturbed. Lord Goodrich must have told her that Lord Edmond had come to the house and that she was talking privately with him.

  “Mary,” she had said, “he has a tendre for you. Are you quite sure you do not return his regard? Oh, please say that you do not. You can only end up being hurt.”

  “I have no tendre for him,” Mary had said firmly. “And he has promised, Penny, that after tomorrow he will leave me alone.”

  But her friend had looked unconvinced. “It would be better to call on Lord Goodrich’s protection,” she had said. “Or better still, to betroth yourself to him. Lord Edmond Waite would not be able to argue with that. Though, of course, betrothals mean very little to him, either.”

  But she could not betroth herself to a man who had not asked her, Mary thought.

  The viscount had been vexed. “You should give me leave to give the man a good horsewhipping, Lady Mornington,” he had said when she had finally returned to the salon after a lengthy visit to her room to bathe her eyes. “He does not deserve the dignity of a challenge to a duel. And you need not have allowed him to bully you into a private tête-à-tête.”

  “Thank you,” she had said, “but I was not bullied.”

  “You have what?” he had said when she told him about the garden party. “You have agreed to allow him to escort you? I can only express my deepest disapproval, ma’am.”

  But her chin had gone up at that. “I would remind you, my lord,” she had said, “that I am free to do as I wish.”

  He had taken her hand in his then, regardless of the groups of guests gathered in the salon. “My apologies,” he had said. “I speak only out of concern for you, ma’am. I can see that Waite has been pressing his attentions on you and that as a lady you have found it difficult to discourage him in a manner that would convince him. Allow me to protect you. Send word that you have a prior engagement with me for tomorrow that you had forgotten about. And let me stay with you tonight in case he comes back.”

  Oh, no. Not that. Was that all Viscount Goodrich wanted of her, too? She must seem fair game both to him and to Lord Edmond Waite—and perhaps to others, she supposed. She was a widow and a woman who had apparently taken a lover for several years after her husband’s death. For the first time she was feeling sorry that she and Marcus had done nothing to dispel the rumors about them, but had chosen to laugh at them instead. But she was not a woman of easy virtue. They would have to realize that—all of them. And yet, she had thought uneasily, she was a woman who had spent a night in the vulgar love nest of a notorious libertine—with no coercion at all.

  “Thank you,” she had said, “but I have accepted Lord Edmond’s invitation, and I have no fears for my safety.”

  He had released her hand and they had both turned to mingle with the guests.

  Mary had chosen a bright yellow dress for the garden party. She had even had her maid take it out of her wardrobe and iron it. But she changed her mind at the last moment and dressed in her blue sprigged muslin. He had said that she looked better in pale colors, she thought unwillingly. That had nothing to do with her change of heart, of course. It was just that she had always wondered if yellow was her color. She had a suspicion that perhaps it made her complexion look sallow.

  He came earlier than she had expected, though she was ready. The afternoon had scarcely begun. She slid her feet into her blue slippers, tied the blue ribbons of her straw bonnet with the cornflower-trimmed brim, and drew on her gloves. She was pleased with the effect when she glanced at herself in the mirror.

  He seemed pleased, too. His eyes moved over her in open appraisal as she descended the stairs. It was not a gentlemanly thing to do, but she no longer expected him to behave like a gentleman.

  “You look lovely, Mary,” he said, reaching out a hand for hers as she stepped down onto the bottom stair. “Like a delicate flower.”

  “Thank you,” she said, placing her hand in his. They looked rather as if they had coordinated their appearances, she thought. He wore a coat of blue superfine over buff-colored pantaloons and shining white-topped Hessians. She felt almost like returning the compliment. Despite his rather narrow face, with its prominent nose and thin lips, he was a handsome man. And his blue eyes, though too pale, were a distinguishing feature. They were compelling.

  “You are ready?” he said. “I feared perhaps I was early. But I thought we might arrive before the masses so that you may talk with my aunt at some leisure. Do you know her? I believe you will deal famously together.”

  “I know her by sight,” she said. “We have never met.”

  Lady Eleanor Varley was a high stickler, known for her strong opinions and forthright manner. Mary had not known that she was Lord Edmond’s aunt—and one who had not cut him from her acquaintance despite anything. Perhaps she was not such a high stickler after all.

  He had brought an open barouche. It was perfect for the weather. It was also very public. She was to be displayed to view, it seemed, as she had been in the park more than two weeks before.

  “It is a beautiful day,” she said as the barouche moved away from Portman Place.

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “My aunt doubtless put in a special order for just this weather. But if I have only one day with you, Mary—half a day—I do not intend to spend it talking about the weather.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. Where was he taking her?

  He seemed to read her thoughts. “And no, I do not mean that I am intending to tumble you in some conveniently secluded spot,” he said. “I do not believe my aunt sports such places on her grounds. And I have not given clandestine orders to my coachman to take us to my, ah, second residence.”

  “It is as well,” she said. “I would create a very loud scene.”

  “And it would not serve my purpose anyway,” he said. “I have half a day in which to persuade you that perhaps I am worth getting to know after all.”

  She turned her head away and watched the buildings on the opposite side of the street.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he said. “Was your marriage to Mornington really a love match? Why did you decide to follow the drum? Why were there no children? Am I being impertinent?”

  Of course he was. But at least he had made it possible for the long drive to Richmond to be made with comparative ease. It would have been a difficult task to fill up the time with small talk.

  “It was a love match,” she said, “although he was twelve years older than I. I went with him to Spain because I was a realist, I suppose. I was not an adventurer and I hate discomfort, both of which facts make it strange that I went. But I knew and accepted that he was likely to be killed before the wars ended, perhaps well before. And I was unwilling to marry him, enjoy a brief honeymoon with him, and then see him go, knowing that perhaps I would never see him again. So I went. And I am glad I did. We had only two years together. But they were good years despite the discomforts.”

  “But there were no children,” he said.

  “If I had been with child,” she said, “Lawrence wou
ld have sent me home. As it was, he felt guilty about the life I was subjected to. He wanted children. We both did. But I would not have any until the wars ended. Afterward I was sorry.” She looked down at her gloved hands. “There was a spell after his death—six weeks—when I thought that, after all, perhaps I was to have his child. But it was not so. I really knew him to be dead then. I knew it was the end.”

  “I am sorry,” he said.

  “Why should you be?” She raised her head. “You were not responsible for either his death or my false hopes.”

  “I am sorry that you suffered,” he said. “Suffering can kill. Not always physically. But it can kill dreams and it can deaden hope and the will to live.”

  She looked up at him in some surprise. He described it so well, just as if he knew.

  “You have never wanted to marry and have children since?” he asked.

  The conversation was becoming very personal. She could hardly believe that she was talking thus with Lord Edmond Waite of all people. But then, why not with him? No other gentleman of her acquaintance would be so unmannerly as to ask her such questions.

  “Not for a long time,” she said. “It somehow seemed disloyal to Lawrence to think of marrying someone else—as if I had not cared. And I began another life and made new friends. I have had little chance to be lonely.”

  She could feel him looking at her. He sat relaxed across one corner of the seat, one foot propped on the seat opposite.

  “I suppose I should tell you something about my life in return,” he said. “The trouble is that there is very little to tell, Mary. Very little that would impress you, anyway. I had a happy childhood.”

  “Did you?” She turned her head to look fully at him. It was hard to picture him as an innocent child. He was smiling at her rather mockingly.

  “We were three boys,” he said. “How could we not have been happy? Of course, I was the youngest and might have been at the mercy of the other two. But Dick—he was the middle one, the one I killed—was so sweet-natured that I was never harassed. He would shame Wallace out of bothering me just by looking reproachfully at him. Dick was everyone’s favorite, and no one ever resented him for it.”