by Regina Scott
“All of it, I fear. I was on my way to join you when Mr. Cunningham slipped through the doors first. You didn’t seem to notice me behind him.”
He sounded disappointed. Was it because of her lack of skill or her response to the other man?
“I thought he was you,” she explained.
“That much became evident quickly. But I was also under the impression that you wanted him to be me.”
Could he see her cheeks reddening? She turned to gaze out into the gardens below just in case. “Don’t be silly. That would be rude.”
He touched the bare skin at her shoulder with his gloved hand, sending a shiver through her. “Don’t you think we have enough secrets between us?”
She refused to look at him. “Oh, very well. Yes, I thought Mr. Cunningham a fine fellow, but it’s clear he’s as shallow and callow as most of the young men in London. Is that what you want to hear?”
He turned her to face him. “No. I want to hear why you’ve been so intent on discovering the identity of a centurion you happened upon at Lord Rottenford’s masquerade.”
He was determined to winkle out her last secret. But she had some winkling of her own to do.
“And I want to know why you decided to become an intelligence agent and who exactly you’re helping,” she countered. “Perhaps you’d agree to trade information.”
With his back to the moon, she could not be sure of his face. “I regret that I am not at liberty to confide my purpose. The security of the Empire and all that, you understand.”
“Then I regret that I cannot divulge my motives,” Ariadne replied. “The sanctity of my person and all that, you understand.”
He leaned closer. “You forget. I am skilled in all manner of persuasion.”
He was so close she could feel the warmth of him through the satin of her gown. “And you forget,” she murmured. “I am proof against your seduction.”
“Pity,” he said. Then he kissed her.
It truly was the most amazing thing. Like fireworks exploding in the night sky over the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, like her first sip of champagne with the bubbles rising inside her, like having penned the perfect line that she was sure would be whispered in awe for centuries. Her hands wrapped around his neck of their own accord, even as his hands braced her waist, anchoring her against him.
As if from a million miles away, she heard her father’s shocked voice. “Ariadne?”
Lord Hawksbury straightened. Beyond him, frozen in the light from the open doorway, stood her father. Though she could not see his face either, she could hear the frown in his voice. “What is the meaning of this?”
Lord Hawksbury released her and stepped away until the light caught his face. Odd that she hadn’t noticed the chill of the night until now. She was positively shivering.
He sketched a bow. “Lord Rollings, forgive me for not coming to you directly, but your daughter’s beauty and wit captured my heart, and I could not wait to seek your blessing lest some other gentleman steal her away.”
Her father glanced at her. “Are you speaking of Ariadne?”
She wanted to slip between the standards of the balustrade and escape her mortification. A shame she’d never fit.
“I am,” Lord Hawksbury assured him with a glance back at her as if to prove it. “I am delighted to report that she shares my feelings and has agreed to be my bride. With your kind permission, of course, my lord.”
Chapter Eight
What! Ariadne stared at him, finding words, even thought, impossible. Her father looked nearly as stunned. He recovered first.
“Of course. Certainly. I’m delighted at the prospect.” He took a step back. “I’ll just go find Lady Rollings. I know she will be over the moon . . . that is, tremendously pleased by this development.” Taking another step back, he nodded to Ariadne. “Congratulations, my dear. This is more than I’d hoped for you.”
She knew her smile was strained as he disappeared out the door. She marched up to Lord Hawksbury and slapped his arm.
“What was that? I never said I’d marry you. You never so much as asked!”
He winced as he followed her father to the door and closed it, blocking off the light once more. “And what did you want me to say to your father? ‘Pardon me, my lord. I’m merely an intelligence agent attempting to seduce your daughter into giving up her secrets’?”
Was that truly the best he could do on short notice? “I expect you to have a better answer than leg-shackling yourself to me. Do you engage yourself to every woman you kiss in the name of the King?”
“Certainly not! I don’t kiss most of the women I meet as an intelligence agent.”
That ought to have been gratifying, but he ran a hand along his strong chin as if even now thinking up another tactic. “Never fear. I won’t hold you to it. But it is a good plan. The French spy I’ve been seeking must have been wondering why you’ve been following me. This engagement will prove that it was simply romance, not intrigue. Just play along for the next few weeks, and then jilt me.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “What man wants to court a lady who cannot keep her word?”
“They won’t blame you. One look at my family, and they’ll know exactly why you refused to marry me.”
He made the comment lightly, but pain simmered under the words. The realization was like cold water on the fire of her temper. What had she and the others missed about his family that made him an unpresentable suitor? She did not think he would answer if she asked, but she made a note to herself to dig deeper into Debrett’s. If only she had her journal to make a note instead!
He seemed to assume she’d agreed to the plan, for he was already reaching for the door latch again. She wasn’t ready to let him go just yet.
“Why only a few weeks?” she asked, moving toward him. “What do you have planned?”
“Nothing that need concern you.” He returned to her side. “I hate to leave you now, but it’s best if I inform my father before the gossip reaches him.” He reached out to touch her arm. “Will you be all right?”
Now he wondered about the consequences? Perhaps quick thinking made him a better intelligence agent, but she still felt it wiser to consider the potential ramifications before acting.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “I’ve been dealing with my mother for years.”
He started to move away. She caught his hand. “But you are not to disappear again! I know your name now, my lord. I can learn your direction. As your supposed betrothed, I have some rights.”
In the moonlight she could see him frown as if he hadn’t considered that either. “Such as?”
“You will call on me tomorrow,” she informed him, dropping his hand. “We will determine what is most suitable to maintain the ruse, my reputation, and your . . . vocation. I shall expect you at two.”
He inclined his head. “Your servant, madam.” He stalked to the door and let himself out.
My word! She drew in a deep breath of the cool night air and clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. She was betrothed. Well, not really, but still. What would her mother say when she learned of it? What would Daphne and her friends say?
She didn’t have to wait long to find out. She had barely stepped back between the potted palms when her sister pounced on her.
“What happened?” she demanded, looking Ariadne up and down as if inspecting her for cuts and bruises. “I saw Father’s face as he left the balcony. He looked as if he’d just jumped the biggest fence of his life and wasn’t sure how his horse had managed to land on the other side.”
She knew how he felt--delight and dismay mingling. “I found my centurion.”
“And?” Priscilla asked, joining them with a swish of her creamy skirts. “I refuse to believe it was Mr. Cunningham.”
“I thought I saw someone follow him, but I couldn’t be certain,” Emily added, coming along as well.
“You did,” Ariadne confirmed, “although I didn’t notice him a
t first in the darkness. And it wasn’t Archibald Stump.”
Daphne wrinkled her nose. “Well, it can’t have been Freddie Pulsipher, for I can see him standing just there near the window. Or did you notice him through the glass and recognize him?”
“Girls.” Lady Rollings glided into their midst, hands clasped properly before her rich gown. “Your father just gave me the news, Ariadne. It seems congratulations are in order.”
“Congratulations?” Daphne interrupted, glancing between Ariadne and their mother.
Ariadne swallowed. “Yes. I have agreed to marry Lord Hawksbury.”
In any other circumstance, she might have been amused by their reactions. Priscilla straightened, golden lashes fluttering in rapid blinks as if she simply could not imagine such a thing. Emily’s mouth actually dropped open.
Daphne frowned. “Who?”
“Jason Sinclair, Lord Hawksbury,” their mother intoned as if she were a footman announcing the fellow at a fancy dress ball. “Heir to the Marquess of Winthrop, with income of more than twenty thousand pounds per annum from his mother and his own estate outside London. As he is eighteen months shy of reaching his majority, I had not realized he was seeking a bride.”
Because he wasn’t. He was only three years older than her sixteen years. Most titled gentlemen did not begin their bride hunt until they were at least five and twenty.
“How exactly did you meet?” her mother asked.
How to answer that? She could make up some proper introduction, but her mother could easily confirm that for a lie.
Priscilla must have seen the panic on her face, for she stepped in smoothly. “At Lord Rottenford’s masquerade. They had a fascinating conversation overlooking the ballroom.”
“And they’ve met at Hyde Park since,” Emily put in.
“And Hatchard’s,” Ariadne added, remembering.
“Where was I in all this?” Daphne demanded. “Why was I not informed?”
Ariadne cringed, but her mother touched Daphne’s arm. “Now, then. I know we all expected you to make the first match as the eldest, but your time will come.” She glanced at Ariadne. “Indeed, your sister’s fame may well propel you further into Society. This betrothal is a considerable coupe.”
Oh, but there would be a price to pay when her mother learned the truth. For now, Ariadne put on a smile and accepted her mother’s well-wishes. There had been many times over the years when she’d hoped for a word of praise, when she’d written a poignant poem or crafted a chronicle she felt worthwhile. It hurt now to hear that praise finally given and know it was undeserved.
*
Sinclair stood in the doorway of his family’s town house off St. James’s. His father sat in his study, as he often did in the evenings at this time, in an armchair of Moroccan leather, slippered feet up on a tufted hassock, long fingers turning the crystal goblet to set the brandy inside to swirling. The deep amber of the liquid glinted in the light of the fire nearby.
None of Lord Winthrop’s friends dared approach him anymore. His ability to slay an opponent with a word was as legendary as his temper. Once he’d even dueled with a Prime Minister over some imagined slight. But those days were far behind him. The wrapping on his foot was testimony to the gout that plagued him, as was the twist of his mouth that spoke of the pain inside.
Squaring his shoulders, Sinclair moved into the room. His father glanced up at him as he came to stand on the ruby-colored carpet, and it struck Sinclair once more how unlike his father he was, in every way, from coloring to build to disposition.
“And here is my heir,” his father drawled, raising the glass as if in toast. “Have you nothing better to do than to visit an old man?”
His father had waited until reaching his forty-fifth year to wed, making him more than sixty now. Sinclair’s birth had greatly disappointed the distant cousin who had been the heir presumptive until then.
“I wanted you to be the first to know,” Sinclair told him. “I am betrothed.”
“To Miss Ariadne Courdebas, Rollings’s youngest,” his father replied, hitching his velvet banyan closer. “Yes, so I understand.”
The servants could not have heard and gossiped so quickly. There simply hadn’t been time. Sinclair’s hands fisted at his sides. “You had me followed again.”
“You are imagining things,” his father replied, pausing to take a sip of his brandy. “I am simply well informed.”
By his goggle-eyed personal secretary Reston Symthe, no doubt. A pasty-faced fellow with a limp handshake, Symthe had risen from apparent obscurity to sit at Lord Winthrop’s right hand and keep up his correspondence. From what Sinclair had seen, the man’s one goal in life was to ingratiate himself to Sinclair’s father, perhaps in hopes of a rich bequest on Lord Winthrop’s death.
“You have no reason to spy on me,” Sinclair challenged. “Have I ever embarrassed you? Disappointed you in the least way?”
His father elbowed himself higher in the chair, as if trying to tower over Sinclair as he once had. “You lack understanding. I sold my pride to birth you, boy. I’m not about to let you run off and get yourself killed fighting a French madman.”
It was the same argument they’d been having for three years, ever since at sixteen he’d begged a commission in the Hussars so he could help his friends who were going off to fight.
“It was your choice to marry my mother and the wealth she brought into this family,” Sinclair grit out. “It is my choice what to do with my life.”
His father leveled a finger at him. “Not until you reach your majority. And neither can you marry now without my consent.” He leaned back in the chair, setting the goblet on the table at his elbow. “And I do not consent.”
This time his father’s bark held no bite. “I don’t care,” Sinclair told him. “I offered for her because her father caught us kissing. We have no intentions of marrying.”
“Indeed.” His father eyed him. “I want to meet her.”
Fire licked through Sinclair. “I’ll not have you bully her.”
His father’s smile hitched up. “You’ll not have, eh? Must be true love.” His smile vanished as he shifted against the pain. “You’d better choose a proper bride, boy. I’ll thank you not to darken my good name by marrying beneath you.”
“Why not?” Sinclair countered. “You obviously think you did.”
Those graying brows came thundering down. “Watch your tone. You forget. I know where the MacDougalls live.”
He never forgot. His father’s threats were the reason he hadn’t seen his maternal grandparents the MacDougalls for nearly ten years. “Leave them out of this,” he said. “I have done all you asked in their regard.”
“Perhaps,” his father said, eyes glittering brighter than the brandy. “You just see that you have your girl here tomorrow evening. I intend to quiz Miss Courdebas until I uncover all her secrets. If she’s hiding something from you, you’ll thank me for my intervention.”
Chapter Nine
Ariadne would never have guessed that all it took to be popular was for one gentleman to show interest. But she could not deny that she had suddenly come to the notice of Society. For one thing, a dozen invitations to balls and routs and Venetian breakfasts lay waiting on her mother’s desk for response, most addressed to her mother and Lord Hawksbury’s bride-to-be (“As if I have no standing of my own,” she’d complained to Emily). For another, the number of callers knocking at their door had doubled.
And they were all male.
So she had the singular sensation of sitting on the brocaded, tasseled sofa of their mother’s elaborate saffron-colored withdrawing room, surrounded by suitors. None seemed the least daunted by the fact that she was once more gowned in insipid white muslin, at her mother’s insistence. To a man, they sang her virtues and lamented the fact that Lord Hawksbury had declared himself first. She’d been trying to determine how to dissuade a fellow whose name she had not caught from petting her hand as if it were a kitten when she sighted Em
ily in the doorway.
“Oh, look,” she said, rising and forcing them all to their feet as well, “there’s my dear friend. Excuse me.”
“But I haven’t read you a poem yet,” a gangly young man protested from where he’d perched on the hassock across from her. She didn’t have the heart to tell him he was holding the poetry book upside down.
She wended her way between the other gentlemen, who stood in groups in their navy or green coats and fawn trousers, conversing with each other or with Daphne and her mother, ensconced on chairs by the velvet-draped windows. Every fellow eyed her as if ready to rush in the moment she smiled in his direction.
“Save me,” she told Emily, grabbing her arm and hanging on so hard she set the silk fringe bordering her friend’s dark blue gown to trembling.
“Certainly,” Emily murmured, glancing around at the many callers with raised brow. “I had no idea you and Daphne were so popular.”
“We aren’t,” Ariadne assured her. “Promenade with me. It’s the only way we’ll ever have a moment’s peace. And whatever you do, do not meet their gazes. You’ll only encourage them.”
They set off about the room, the gentlemen making way for them with nods and engaging smiles. She tried to pretend they were trees, their voices no more than a summer’s breeze. Far more real was her sister, looking daggers at her from across the room.
“In all truth, I don’t know what’s worse, having to fend off these fellows or watching her be miserable,” Ariadne confided.
“Have you told her, then?” Emily murmured, folding her wool skirts a little closer as one of Ariadne’s admirers nearly collided with them.
“No,” Ariadne admitted, lowering her voice to prevent the gentleman or her mother from hearing. “I can’t very well explain the situation without admitting Lord Hawksbury’s true calling.”
“For by admitting it, you end it,” Emily pointed out. “And in the process most likely earn his everlasting enmity.”
Ariadne sighed, detouring around a particularly eager quartet of fellows. “This is all too much like keeping the secret of Lord Snedley’s identity.”