A wave of self-loathing swept over him. Had it come to this? Would he compete with molesters, drunks, and diseased fortune hunters for a woman who’d no doubt had little say in the sordid auctioning of her person? Was he willing to mortgage what remained of his dignity for an heir?
A footman cleared away his untouched soup and three more servants appeared behind him, each bearing heaping platters of delicacies. Adam hadn’t attended a large ton dinner since service à la russe had become fashionable. He decided the process was fatiguing. He signaled another footman to replenish his Madeira.
His eyes wandered over the other dinner guests—none of whom would meet his gaze—as he pondered the woman beside him and the unexpected effect she’d had on him. She was the last thing he’d thought to find tonight. Her beautiful face and delectable figure weren’t all, or even most, of what he found fascinating. It was her sea-green eyes, which overflowed with curiosity, humor, and sheer life.
Adam realized his gaze had drifted back to her perfect profile. She moved with such grace that even the simple process of putting food into her shapely pink mouth looked like an act of Eastern deviance. With her looks and her father’s money she should have no problem finding a decent spouse, and yet the duke had assembled the worst men society had to offer.
She must have done something truly heinous.
Adam’s lips twisted bitterly; coming from him that was a richly ironic conclusion. What if the only thing she was guilty of was being an object of gossip? Who knew better than he how easily the ton judged, sentenced, and punished its members without any evidence?
She turned her green catlike eyes his way and caught him staring. She lifted one flame-colored eyebrow, a slight, mocking smile on her face.
Adam deliberately mirrored her action, amused as she tried—and failed—to suppress a smile. Once it started, it just kept growing, displaying white, even teeth and a tiny crescent-shaped dimple at the corner of her mouth.
“What are your plans after the Season is over?” he asked with careful politeness, determined to behave himself for the remainder of the meal.
“We are to retire to our family seat.” She might have smiled at him, but the reserve in her voice told him she’d not forgiven him quite yet. She glanced at the platter the footman held beside her and her lips compressed in a moue of distaste before she helped herself to a portion.
“You do not care for saumon en gelée?” he asked, amused.
“It is not what I am accustomed to.”
“Oh? What are you accustomed to?”
She wrinkled her nose and gave the gelatinous food a poke with her fork. “I am hungry for something that is not bland like infant food.”
“Such as?”
Her eyes glazed and her lips curled into a sensual smile that sent his blood rushing south.
What is this? He took a deep drink of wine.
She sighed heavily and the action did distracting things to her bodice. Not to mention Adam’s groin.
“I have been dreaming of dates.”
“Dates?” he repeated, certain he’d misheard.
“Dates.” Her eyes narrowed to sultry, emerald slits. “Sweet and plump and hot.” The tip of her pink tongue darted out and Adam’s heart stuttered. “They are firm and sticky and explode at the slightest pressure from my tongue, filling my mouth with their tangy heat.”
Adam’s fork clattered against his plate.
She raised a hand to her throat, her fingers lightly caressing and her lips parted. “I yearn for couscous, so drenched in oil it slides down my throat.”
Good Lord. Adam swallowed audibly while an erection of alarming proportions strained against the placket of his breeches as if it were trying to thrust its way through the thick wooden tabletop. He shifted in his chair and winced before looking up.
Her eyes were open and her expression was no longer sultry, but amused. Whatever she saw on his face made her grin.
The treacherous little minx. She’d made him as hard as iron with nothing more than talk of food. Grudging admiration vied with his rampant arousal and almost made him smile—but he repressed it.
“Tell me, my lady, where did you learn to appreciate such things?” he asked, pleased to hear his voice gave no sign of the commotion beneath the table.
She speared a piece of the fish that had disgusted her only a moment earlier, popped it into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed, a wicked twist to her lips.
“Why, during my time in a Maltese convent, Lord Exley.”
Adam’s control slipped and his mouth curved into an answering smile. This dinner had been worth attending, after all.
* * *
Lord Exley’s smile came and went more quickly than a shooting star. He raised a corner of snowy linen to his mouth. When it came away, his expression was once again impassive.
“How fascinating. Tell me, how did you come to find yourself in a convent—in Malta, of all places?”
Mia ate another bite, making a show of savoring her food—as if even gelatinous fish was more interesting than a conversation with him. “Were you aware my family is Catholic?”
“I was not.”
“Do you know much about Catholicism, Lord Exley?”
“Have you returned to England to proselytize, my lady?”
Mia smiled at his arch look. “I’m afraid my proselytizing days are behind me, my lord.”
“What a pity,” he murmured. “You were saying?”
“My mother was a very devout Catholic and it was her dearest wish that I attend the same convent school that she had, a very old establishment just outside Rome.” That much of her story, at least, was the truth.
“My parents put me and my old nurse—who was accompanying me in the capacity of companion—on a ship that never reached Rome. We were harried by corsairs almost immediately upon entering the Mediterranean.” Here was where the true story ended and her father’s carefully crafted tale began. “Our captain did the best he could for his passengers and took us to the island of Malta. There was a small convent on the island which offered safe port to those unwilling to venture off the island and risk the possibility of capture by corsairs. My nurse made arrangements for me to remain while she boarded the next vessel for England, to bring back help.”
How Mia wished that were true.
The last time she’d seen her beloved nurse’s face was when the corsairs had laughingly passed the older woman from man to man and then cut off her head when she wouldn’t stop crying. The memory of that day was like a leering imp from a Bosch painting: it hovered at the edges of her mind, waiting to leap out at her when she least expected.
Mia looked away from the marquess’s razor-sharp gaze. “I didn’t learn until I returned home that her ship never reached England. As a result, nobody knew where I was—until recently.”
They ate in silence for a while.
“How old were you?” he finally asked.
“I passed my fourteenth birthday onboard the ship.”
“And you remained in the convent all these years?” For the first time, she heard skepticism in his voice. Mia couldn’t blame him. Her father’s tale was less than believable.
“Yes, until a few months ago.”
He studied the blood-red liquid in the cut-crystal glass before asking his next question. “You faced no problems when the French seized control of the island?”
Mia paused, her own glass halfway to her mouth. The French had controlled Malta? She grimaced and drank deeply to hide her confusion. She had repeated the stupid story to dozens of people in the past weeks, none of whom could have located Malta on a map, much less recite its political history. None except the man beside her.
Mia gave a mental shrug. It was time to diverge from her father’s fairy tale and script one of her own. “I am fluent in Italian and French, so it was not difficult to pass myself off as the daughter of a poor but devout family from Turin.”
“I see. What about when we took control of the island in 1800? Why did
you not seek help getting back to England at that time?”
Mia almost laughed. Will it never end?
“It was a turbulent time and only a very few of His Majesty’s men remained behind. Most of the ones I saw were of the lower orders, men who were more likely to sell or ransom a duke’s daughter than help her.”
“So you hid in the convent for seventeen years?”
“I did not need to hide once I joined the sisters.”
His eyes widened. “You became a nun.” It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t fourteen rather young for that type of thing?”
Nuns were, of course, yet another subject Mia knew nothing about.
“Oh, not at all. There were dozens younger than me.” She took another drink before plunging deeper into the conversational quicksand. “Dear Sister Genevieve was only thirteen when she entered the convent. You could say we became closer than real sisters. How I miss her.” She sighed heavily to add veracity.
A muscle twitched at the corner of his unsmiling mouth. “It sounds ... idyllic. How could you bear to leave such a rewarding situation?”
A footman appeared beside her with something that resembled boiled fowl in a pasty-looking cream sauce. Mia’s mind raced while she served herself. The marquess was the only person to have probed past the surface of the ridiculous story. What else could she tell him?
She absently cut a small piece of food and put it in her mouth. It was not as wretched as it looked. She chewed, swallowed, and took a sip of wine. And then inspiration struck.
“Crocodiles,” she said.
The marquess’s fork and knife hovered above his plate. “I beg your pardon?”
“I ultimately left because of crocodiles. We went to the jungle in the interior of the island to tend to the lepers, as we did every year. This year, tragedy struck. Our barge capsized and many in our order were eaten by crocodiles before they could make it across the river to shore.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Even dear Sister Genevieve.”
He chewed for what seemed like a long time before swallowing. “I wasn’t aware Malta had any jungles. Or crocodiles.”
Drat, drat, drat. “I’m afraid you have been misinformed, Lord Exley. The island is infested with them. Crocodiles, that is, not jungles.”
He raised his linen to his lips and coughed.
“Mia, my dear?” Chambers laid his soggy hand on her shoulder.
Mia gritted her teeth. “One moment.”
The marquess was still dabbing his lips, his shoulders shaking slightly.
She leaned toward him. “Are you quite all right, my lord?”
He coughed one last time, his unusual eyes watering. “Just a piece of pepper,” he said hoarsely.
“Mia?” Chambers’s voice went up half an octave.
“Will you excuse me, my lord?”
“By all means,” he said, lifting his napkin and covering his mouth just as another coughing spell struck.
* * *
Adam had begun to worry he might choke to death. He’d not been so amused in ... well, not in a long time and certainly never at a tedious ton function.
He watched from the corner of his watering eye as she giggled and flirted with the self-important Chambers. The corpulent man preened and puffed up like the randy old rooster he was. Had Adam looked as fatuous as she’d spun her outrageous story to him?
He grimaced. Probably.
He ate his food, sipped his wine, and watched as she worked her magic on the other man. She was like a chameleon. She discerned what a man liked and then gave him exactly that. It was unnerving. What was the real woman like? And why did he even care?
He glanced down the table at Carlisle, the only peer in a decade to voluntarily consider Adam as a son-in-law. The Duke of Carlisle looked up just then and met his eyes, lifting his glass a fraction of an inch before taking a drink.
Adam ignored the gesture and turned back to Carlisle’s daughter. She was nodding and simpering while Chambers, the ass, maundered on about a horse.
For the first time in a very long while, Adam was intrigued by another human being. He had come here tonight out of curiosity, rather than any serious search for his next wife. He’d stopped thinking about remarrying years ago, when it became apparent that not even the most desperate man would give his daughter to the Murderous Marquess.
And then Euphemia Marlington had looked at him openly and frankly—without judgment or fear—and his tight control had slipped a little. Adam stared at her beautiful profile, his mind seething with unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and unwanted feelings.
Just what had she done that her father was willing to barter her to a man everyone believed had killed not one, but two, wives?
More importantly, how far was Adam willing to go to find out?
Chapter Five
Chambers kept Mia trapped all the way through the dessert course, ensuring she did not get another chance to speak with Lord Exley. She had hoped to have a word with him after the men returned from their port, but Cian appeared and hurriedly whisked her off to the receiving line. Almost as if he wished to keep her away from the intriguing marquess.
Mia stood between her father and Cian and greeted hundreds of expensively garbed and elegantly coiffed strangers. In between smiling at guests and murmuring greetings, Mia watched the ever-growing crowd that filled the enormous ballroom. The Marquess of Exley was never difficult to find. Wherever he stood he was surrounded by several feet of empty space. She had never seen anything quite like it.
The only person who approached him was Viscount Danforth, an attractive man who was perhaps ten years Exley’s junior. Each man was a perfect example of male beauty, one sunny and fair, the other dark and brooding. The young lord’s presence appeared to have a humanizing effect on Exley, whose expression of contempt softened while the two chatted.
By the time their father released Mia and Cian from their duties, she was vibrating with excitement at the prospect of her first dance.
“Mia, I must speak to you for a moment,” Cian murmured, taking her arm and pulling her into a small alcove before she reached the dance floor. He glanced around nervously. “I wanted to tell you about Exley.”
“Yes?” she prodded when he paused.
“The thing is—” Again he stopped, his brow furrowed.
Amusement vied with exasperation as Mia waited for him to finish. “Yes? Tell me, what is the thing?”
His next words came out in a rush. “There is no reason you should endure the slight of a man like Exley offering for you.”
His words surprised a laugh out of her. “He hasn’t offered for me, Cian.”
“He will.”
Mia blinked. Just what did her brother know that she didn’t?
“Look.” Cian frowned, as though he was agonizing over something and how to say it. “The truth is, you needn’t take any of the horrors Father has thrown at you—Maugham, Chambers, none of them. I will not let him force you into an unhappy marriage. I give you my word on that.” He swallowed, as if recalling whom he was speaking of defying.
Mia took his hand and squeezed it. “I am flattered by your concern for me, Cian. But I’m well able to take care of myself.” She glanced toward the dance floor, where couples were beginning to assemble for the first set. “Come, we must take our places to open the ball.”
“I think you should—” Cian stopped, his eyes on something outside the alcove.
The hum of voices died and Mia saw Exley walking toward them. The slim marquess split the crowd like a ship’s prow parted water, leaving trails of gawking, whispering, pointing men and women in his wake.
He stopped in front of Mia and held out a hand, his expression bland. “I believe this set is mine, my lady.”
The dance offered few opportunities to speak to one’s partner, which turned out to be just as well. Mia focused her attention on the steps, an action made difficult by the oddly heated sensation the marquess’s gloved hand provoked each ti
me they touched.
“For a man who does not attend many balls, you certainly dance well,” Mia said as they came together in formation.
A tiny smile softened his stern mouth. “You are too kind, my lady. Your own dancing is shockingly—”
The figure split just then. Mia shot him a dangerous glare, aware he’d timed his words to coincide with the long break.
His eyes were hooded when they next approached to interlace. He leaned toward her and spoke one soft word: “Proper.”
Mia’s laughter drew startled glances from those around them and a mocking look from her partner. She could almost forgive him for his wretched comment at dinner. Almost.
By the end of the set she was more than a little heated, both by the dance and his proximity.
“May I fetch you a glass of champagne?” he asked, leading her toward a small sofa near the French doors.
“That would be lovely.”
She watched his fine shoulders cleave a path through the milling guests while she fanned her heated face. Mia had spent a good deal of time reading other people’s faces. The harem had been more dangerous than shark-infested waters and her survival, and that of her son, had often depended on her ability to see beneath the surface. Tonight, her skills were failing her. The marquess was entirely unreadable—something she found both intriguing and arousing. Was the man looking for a wife, or wasn’t he?
“Mia!” a voice hissed behind her, making her jump. She turned to find her brother, partly hidden by a giant potted palm.
“What the devil are you doing back there, Cian?”
His eyes fixed on something over her shoulder. “Hurry, Mia, before he returns.” He held out his hand, as if she might take it and leap over the settee. “Come away with me now.”
Mia scowled. “Cian—”
“Hurry, he is coming back.”
Mia turned her back on his foolishness. The marquess was walking toward her with two glasses. She raised her fan to her face. “You should leave now, Cian.”
“I am trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need protection. Now, please go.”
The palm fronds rustled. “Mia, dammit.”
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