“To pay your addresses…” Catherine grabbed the back of a chair to steady herself.
“Quite so, Miss Fenton.”
“What in God’s name would induce you to do such a thing?” Catherine demanded.
Ben smiled, that slow, wicked smile that made her weaken at the knees. “Two nights ago I compromised your reputation.”
Catherine remembered all too well. It was not something she would forget in a hurry. She pushed the memory firmly aside. This morning, she had promised herself, marked a new beginning. She was not going to let Ben Hawksmoor change that.
“And I told you,” she said, “that I would not dream of trying to entrap you into marriage, my lord.”
“I know.” Ben turned her letter over in his hands. “I fear that the boot is on the other foot, Miss Fenton. I am here to entrap you.”
Catherine stared at him. “Because of that night—” She stopped as a blinding wave of disillusionment hit her.
“Because of the money,” she whispered. “You did not know before that I am an heiress.”
She looked up into his face. There was the smallest shadow of something in his eyes. Was it shame? She doubted it. An adventurer like Ben Hawksmoor would not regret the good fortune that had dropped such a gift into his lap.
“You have heard that I have a fortune.” She managed to force the words out past the pain that was building in her throat. “And you are a man who values money above all else.”
“I am.” He looked at her very straight. “I would not lie to you, Miss Fenton, and pretend that I had proposed for any other reason.”
Fury and disenchantment ripped through Catherine. “You are an unprincipled fortune hunter,” she said bitterly.
Ben shrugged. “Is there any other sort?”
Catherine glared. “I will not marry you, sir. I will not wed a man who is an arrogant, opportunistic adventurer without a single shred of honor.”
She saw Ben wince. “Your opinion of me is lower than even I had imagined.”
“That is only the start,” Catherine said sweetly. “I have plenty more opinions should you wish to press your suit!”
Ben took a step toward her. “Then what is your opinion of the passion that was between us that night, Miss Fenton? Do you deny that you wanted me as much as I wanted you?” His hands bit into her shoulders suddenly. “You know full well that you respond to me,” he said softly, “or we would not be where we are now.”
Catherine was silent. She could not blame him for her seduction, not when she had so wholeheartedly compromised herself. But there was a heat and a dark desire in his eyes now that frightened her because it demanded a response from her. And she had no wish to prove him right. Not now, when he had shown himself clearly in his true colors as no more than an adventurer.
“You said it was a disappointing mistake,” he said. “I promise you that the reverse will be true when we do things properly. Or indeed improperly.”
“That is just male pride talking,” Catherine said. “You were offended because I insulted your prowess. I am sure the impulse to set matters right on that score will pass.”
She saw the corner of his mouth twitch in a smile and his hands gentled on her shoulders. “You do not know enough about men and sex to make that assumption, Kate.”
Her gaze flew to his. He had called her Kate again. It felt too intimate. It felt right to hear the name on his lips. It reminded her of that night in his bed. She struggled with the memories and managed to subdue her feelings.
“I may know little of such matters,” she said coolly, “but I do know that I have no desire to give you a second chance, nor to wed a man who wants my money first, my body second, and has no concern for my feelings at all.”
To her surprise, he just smiled. “Liar,” he said. “You want me, too.”
The pink color stung Catherine’s cheeks. “I do not!”
He leaned closer, his lips brushing her cheek, touching the corner of her mouth. “Admit it,” he whispered, his breath stirring her hair. “It is not just about the money.”
Before Catherine could respond, he kissed her, his tongue moving against her own with deliberate demand, deliberate possession. She felt the earth tilt beneath her feet and clung to him, unable to conceal her response.
“Make the deal, Catherine,” Ben said when he released her. “You are a nabob’s daughter. You understand about business.”
“No,” Catherine said. “There is precious little in such a deal to please me.”
“Is there not?”
He kissed her again. Her body flamed to life, the heat pooling low in her stomach. She knew she lied in denying him. There was pleasure here for her. There always had been. But it had been her downfall once and she was not going to let that happen again.
“So,” Ben said, when he let her go, “say you will wed me. It will not be a poor bargain—for either of us.”
“No,” Catherine said. “I will not wed you simply because some…some accident of attraction creates this feeling between us. I’ll wager it is my fortune that tempts you even more than I do!”
There was a spark of humor deep in Ben’s eyes. “Both tempt me equally, Miss Fenton.” He drove his hands into his jacket pockets and the humor died from his face. “Miss Fenton, I do not think that you understand.” There was a thread of steel in his voice now. “When I said that this was a case of entrapment…” He shrugged elegantly. “What can I say? If you do not agree to the match, I shall tell everyone that I have seduced you. You will be ruined.”
Catherine stared into his hazel eyes. “Lord Hawksmoor,” she said, “you are an unmitigated scoundrel.”
“Agreed, Miss Fenton.”
Catherine squared her shoulders. She walked away from him. “Lord Hawksmoor, in your rush to the altar, you have perhaps not taken sufficient time to learn of my family,” she said. She gestured toward the picture of her grandfather.
“That is Mad Jack McNaish,” she said. “He was my grandfather. He was a legendary nabob. He taught me the value of everything, not just money.” She leaned her hands on the desk and looked at him. “To understand me, you need to know about Mad Jack, Lord Hawksmoor. He and my mother were the only people ever to teach me about love.” She paused for a moment. Even though she had sworn never to tell Ben her feelings for him, she wanted there to be absolute truth between them now so that there could never, ever be any more misunderstandings.
“I thought I loved you,” she said. It was hard to get the words out but she forced herself to do it. “I told you before that I allowed you to seduce me because I went too far and did not know how to stop. That was true, but the reason it happened was because I thought I was in love with you. That was my mistake, and a bad one.”
Ben made an involuntary move toward her and she shook her head sharply, warning him to keep his distance.
“I will never marry unless it is for love,” she said. “The fortune that you covet now was amassed by my grandfather for my future welfare and not to satisfy the greed of an unprincipled rogue.”
There was a silence. “I am sorry,” Ben said. “I am sorry that I cannot give you what you want—”
“Do not be,” Catherine said. She, too, felt regret, regret that he could be so honest and yet not be the man she wanted him to be.
“As I said, it was my mistake,” she said bleakly. “But you can see now why I would never entrust myself—or my money—to a self-confessed fortune hunter.”
Ben smiled, the laughter lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. “From what I have heard of him, Miss Fenton, Mad Jack McNaish was just another such adventurer as I. He might well have approved of me.”
Catherine paused. There was some truth in that. She knew that her grandfather would have far preferred Ben’s outspoken honesty to Withers’s slimy half-truths and deceptions. Even so, she would not accept him. She could not and still be true to her own principles. Her instinct told her to seek the comfort of his arms. She would find passion and excitement an
d all the things she had discovered that she craved. But her mind told her that such things were worthless without love.
She shook her head.
“You mistake, Lord Hawksmoor, if you think that my grandfather would have entertained your suit for a moment,” she said. “What do you really think he would have done if he knew you had seduced me and then tried to force me to marry you?”
“He would have called me out,” Ben said, without hesitation.
“Precisely,” Catherine said. She smiled. “Not for nothing am I his granddaughter. Name your seconds, Lord Hawksmoor. I challenge you to a duel.”
“YOU CANNOT DO THAT.” Ben had responded before he even thought about it. Challenge him to a duel to defend her good name? It was unthinkable. He could not believe that she genuinely meant it.
He saw Catherine stiffen her spine and her chin came up.
“Why can I not challenge you?” She arched her brows at him. “Because I am a female?”
“No.” He admired the spark of fury in her brown eyes. It called to everything that was primitive and masculine within him and made him want to sweep her into his arms there and then. Ben shifted a little, keeping his hands firmly at his sides. He was beginning to get the measure of Miss Catherine Fenton now. There was no doubt that he had underestimated her. He thought that if he touched her now, she would probably hit him with the poker.
“Dueling is illegal,” he pointed out.
Catherine snapped her fingers dismissively and swept away from him with a soft swish of silk. “No one observes that,” she said over her shoulder. “Why, only last week Lord Granville challenged Lord Belk. And you of all people—” he could hear the derision in her voice “—are hardly going to respect the law.”
There was a silence. Ben thrust a hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “I refuse,” he said.
“You refuse my challenge?” Catherine had stopped beneath the portrait of Jack McNaish and had turned to face him. The resemblance between her and the picture was striking; the strong, determined planes of the face, the cool calculation in the dark eyes.
“You cannot do that in all honor,” she said.
“Catherine…” Ben spread his hands in a pleading gesture. He could not believe she was doing this. “I understand that you are angry with me,” he said, “but this is folly. I am a crack shot. I don’t want to hurt you.”
He saw her smile. “Whereas I would take pleasure in hurting you very much, Lord Hawksmoor. That probably gives me the edge.”
Ben rubbed his brow. “Catherine—”
Her jaw set hard. “Name your seconds, Lord Hawksmoor, or I shall have it said in every club in London that you are too much of a coward to take my challenge.”
Ben reached her side in one stride and grabbed her by the upper arms. “Catherine, this is madness. Even if I were to meet you, I would delope. I could not fire on a woman.”
He could feel the tension in the body beneath his hands. She held herself very stiff and straight away from him. There was no chance that he could persuade her now with caresses and soft words. He admired her for it even as it frustrated him. Oh yes, he had underestimated Miss Catherine Fenton and now he was paying the price. He had thought he could persuade her into marriage with the threat to her reputation, or seduce her with the passion that he knew they could conjure between them. But she was too principled for that. He began to see that he did not really know her at all.
“It would be very foolish of you to delope, Lord Hawksmoor,” she said, “for then I would shoot you in cold blood.” She laughed. “Have I offended your male pride? Challenged by a mere woman! How will you live it down?”
Ben shook her. “Catherine, you would be creating the greatest scandal, dragging your own name through the mud, ruining your own reputation—”
Her eyes flashed defiance. “Is that not what you would be doing, my lord, if you stoop to your blackmail?”
“There need be no blackmail and no scandal if you agree to accept my hand in marriage,” Ben argued. “Devil take it, Catherine, withdraw the challenge!”
“I shall not,” Catherine said, “unless you withdraw the insult of your threat to compromise me.”
Ben stared down into her eyes. He found he wanted her even more now than he had at the start of their interview. He wanted to crush that soft mouth, now set in such uncompromisingly firm lines, beneath his own. He wanted to take her back to his bed, where she belonged, and take her until they were both exhausted. He felt a primitive possessiveness he had never experienced before. It drove him and he knew he would have no peace until he could claim her again.
“I will not withdraw my offer,” he said. “I want to wed you and I will ruin your reputation if that is what it takes to achieve our marriage.”
She bit out each word of her reply. “Very well. Then you will answer to me for that insult at a time and place of my choosing. I give you one week, Lord Hawksmoor. You will meet me at Harington Heath at dawn, seven nights from now or I shall have you denounced as a coward.”
Ben released her. They stared at each other for what seemed an eternity. Then he nodded.
“Very well,” he said. “I accept.”
SAM HAWKSMOOR’S HORSE PICKED its way through giant snowdrifts on the Twickenham Road. It had been snowing for the best part of two days and Sam had been unable to leave London to check how Paris and her maid were faring. On the third day, the sky had cleared and a brisk, cold wind had sprung up, so sharp that Sam now felt as though he were frozen in his saddle. He thought of Gideon’s drafty old farmhouse, currently housing a most unexpected and secret tenant, and hoped to goodness that he would not arrive to discover that the most famous courtesan in London had frozen to death in his absence. That would create a wonderful news story, but not the sort that Ben would want to see in the papers.
When Ben had first told him what he required him to do with regard to Paris, Sam had refused point blank.
“No,” he said. “No, no, no. Not Paris. She frightens me.”
Ben had laughed and told him that Paris was easy to manage when one knew how and that Sam would have to be firm with her, but that, Sam thought, was easy to say. He would rather deal with a basket of scorpions than with Paris de Moine. On the night that he had escorted Paris and her maid to Saltcoats, she had refused even to acknowledge him.
“Don’t look at me, don’t speak to me,” she had said, before turning away from him and spending the rest of the journey in silence.
Sam turned down the lane that led to the farm. The most recent tenant farmer had left a month ago and Gideon had not yet installed a new one. Sam shuddered to think what Gideon would say if he found out that his detested cousin Ben was housing his mistress at the farmhouse. Sam sighed, wishing that Ben would not play such dangerous games.
There was no one about. The fields were a blank, white snowscape. Sam relaxed a little. At least no one was likely to find Paris in such a benighted spot and Gideon would not be making any unexpected trips out of the city when the weather was so inclement. The horse’s hooves crunched on the deep snow. Heavy overhanging branches scattered little shards of ice on the track. Then the trees opened up and he was at the entrance to Saltcoats drive.
The house was set well back from the road with stables and a walled garden to the side. Sam rode up the drive, tied his horse to the mounting block and unlatched the gate leading to the gardens and stables. Then he stopped and stared.
There was someone—or something—out in the garden. After one astounded second, Sam identified the creature as human, although it was rolling in the snow rather like a dog desperately trying to rid itself of fleas. Back and forth the creature rolled, making a strange squeaking noise and sending the snow flying in all directions. Then it stood up and Sam realized with the biggest shock of his entire life, that it was Lady Paris de Moine. She was entirely naked.
Sam stared at Paris. Her body was stung pink with blotchy red patches and snow melting all over her. She looked…Sam swallo
wed. She looked quite ridiculous. The most sought-after courtesan in the kingdom had ice stuck in her hair—in all her body hair—and looked like a madwoman from Bedlam.
Then Paris reached for the robe that was draped on the nearest branch and said crossly, “What are you gawping at?”
Sam found his voice. “What on earth are you doing?”
Paris looked even crosser. “The spots itch. This is the only way I can scratch them. Don’t just stand there,” she added. “Stable your horse and bring the food in.”
Sam did as he was told. In the stables he found that the wood he had been expecting to chop was already cut and neatly stacked ready for use. He filled a basket and took it inside with him, wondering whether Edna had been resorting to manual labor or whether Paris already had some poor unsuspecting local farmer under her thumb. The house was warm with a good fire burning in the parlor. Paris had disappeared upstairs and Sam took the saddlebags with their food and wine into the kitchen. It was a huge room with a long table and worn stone flagged floor. There was a pan of vegetable broth bubbling on the stove and a half-plucked chicken on the slab.
“Paris wrung its neck,” Edna said cheerfully, in answer to Sam’s question. “She was feeling blue-deviled and we needed to eat. We were not sure when you would be able to get through to us because of the snow. The rest of the brood are safe in the shed,” she added.
Paris came in then. She was wearing a simple high-necked gown and had her startlingly pretty fair hair tied back in a bow. Her face had several large chickenpox spots on it. She scowled at Sam.
“Still staring, I see,” she said.
“I haven’t seen you without your makeup before,” Sam said. “You look nice,” he added foolishly and waited for Paris’s wrath to descend on his head.
Strangely, though, she said nothing at all. Sam thought he saw Edna hide a smile as she bent over the vegetable pot.
“I brought wine,” he rushed on. “And meat and cheese.”
“There is some very good elderberry wine in the pantry,” Paris said, giving him the cool blue stare that conversely made him feel very hot.
Lord of Scandal Page 18