“But...” Jeremy began obstinately.
Alyssa cut off his protest. “If you love me at all, Jeremy, you will not want me to be humiliated by people’s saying I snatched a cub from his cradle. I could not bear it!” she cried, resorting to theatrics to drive home her point. She clutched her arms over the Empire bodice of her white muslin gown. “I should go into a decline from which I would never recover!”
Much alarmed by this passionate declaration, Jeremy quickly reassured his beloved that he would never do anything to cause her such unhappiness.
Carlyle did not follow Alyssa and his son, but remained behind in the small sitting-room. The anger that he had managed with difficulty to conceal from Jeremy was growing hotter by the moment as he came to grips with the unthinkable: that his lovely lady of the laburnum was his son’s dreadful Alyssa.
Stoking his temper was the intolerable feeling that he, as well as his son, had been unforgivably hoaxed by her. He had silently scoffed at Jeremy for permitting himself in his naïveté to be so deceived by a designing female, but he himself had been no less taken in by her. He had been as enchanted as his son. Until she had been revealed to Carlyle as Miss Raff, he had been certain that she was a pattern of propriety: virtuous and high-bred. Everything about her from her impeccable manners to her elegant voice and carriage proclaimed her quality. It boggled him that she could be the daughter and sister of those two wretched creatures who had accosted him the previous night at Vauxhall.
He owed his son an apology for thinking him a blind, naïve young fool for failing to see at a glance what his love was. Carlyle should have had more faith in Jeremy’s intelligence and discernment and less in his own. It both amazed and galled him that he could have been so mistaken about her.
He had sworn a score of years ago that no woman would ever again hoodwink or humiliate him, and none had until Miss Alyssa Raff. She had seemed so delightfully direct, without the flirtatious stratagems her sex so often employed, but, instead, she was a scheming strumpet seeking to ensnare his innocent cub in the parson’s mousetrap. Well, damn her, she would not succeed! He would stop her, no matter what. He would not permit her to hurt his son as he had once been hurt. She did not love Jeremy. She had admitted that: “No one has captured my heart.”
How wretched the heartless jade would make Jeremy if he married her. Beset by an overwhelming urge to destruction as a vent for his fury, the duke looked about the room for a suitable object for sacrifice. Fortunately for Mrs Hagar and the contents of her sitting-room, she displayed considerably more taste in furnishings than she did in her female friends, and the duke could find no piece sufficiently ugly to merit his smashing of it.
He had no such compunction, however, about what he would do to Miss Alyssa Raff.
Chapter 9
When Alyssa and Jeremy returned to the drawing-room, Jeremy was quickly drawn into a discussion with two other male guests about the most promising horseflesh at the next Newmarket races.
Seeing the Hagars nearby, Alyssa left Jeremy to assure them that she was certain that no matter how angry the duke was, he would not create a scene in front of his son. As she reassured them, they were joined by another couple, and Charlotte hastily changed the subject.
So preoccupied was Alyssa with thoughts of Carlyle that she heard scarcely a word of what was being said. Her head was pounding and her stomach turning queasily as she contemplated what he must think of her. If only she could get him alone again and explain to him what she was about. Glancing nervously about, she saw that he had not yet come into the drawing-room. Perhaps she could catch him in the hail before he did so and request a private word. She was too distressed to wonder why it seemed of such monumental importance that she explain herself to him.
Slipping unnoticed from the drawing-room, Alyssa, to her disappointment, found the hall empty. The duke must still be in the small sitting-room. She walked resolutely to its door, which was standing open, before her courage could fail her. Carlyle was staring into the unlit fireplace, his back to her.
With trembling knees, she advanced into the room and shut the door behind her. Hearing it, he turned. One look at the hard eyes, glittering with anger, and the equally harsh lines of his face told Alyssa that this would not be a pleasant confrontation.
She forced herself to conceal her anxiety, so intense it bordered on panic, beneath a polite mask and to assume her most regal posture, even though she felt as if her spine had turned to jelly. Her many verbal bouts with her grandfather had taught her the importance of maintaining a cool, dignified composure in the face of her foe, no matter how provoking he was or how frightened she was.
Carlyle said contemptuously, “So now I know your identity, Miss Raff—as in riffraff.”
Although much taken aback by his initial slash, she refused to be cowed, saying sweetly, “And you sound like Richard, as in Richard the Third.”
“History refuses to serve up to my memory the name of an ageing doxy who snatched a rich and titled husband from the cradle,” he snapped back.
A small gasp escaped her lips. Even the knowledge that, given the appearance of the situation, his stigmatisation of her was justified did not lessen the pain she felt. She plunged ahead in her determination to explain that although she had seemingly agreed to wed his son, she had no intention of doing so. “I can understand why you object to your son’s marrying at such a young age,” she began, “and, believe me, it is not my intention...”
She intended to say “to do so,” but he cut her off rudely. “I do not object to his marrying at his age. Naturally, I would prefer him to wait a few years before setting up housekeeping, but I would gladly give my permission for him to wed now if only he chose a suitable bride. My son has a domestic temperament, and I would like him happily settled. I object only to his choice of bride.”
“A suitable choice being one that would bring an excellent dowry and an excellent family connection to the union,” retorted Alyssa, whose romantic heart was affronted by such cold-blooded alliances. She cared enough about Jeremy to want something better than a loveless marriage for the amiable, good-hearted youth. “Never mind whether she and Jeremy will suit.”
The thick dark brows snapped together angrily. “I mind very much! My only thought is for my son’s happiness. I care naught for fortune or title so long as I am persuaded that she will make him happy.”
Alyssa, concealing her surprise that the duke cared more for his son’s domestic bliss than for the bride’s dowry and connection, observed tartly, “Jeremy thinks that we will be happy.”
Carlyle swept her with a look of such contempt that it seemed to burn the skin from her body. “You have ensnared him with your wiles. He is a fool not to see you for what you are—a scheming strumpet.”
A gasp escaped Alyssa’s lips in her outrage at what he had called her. But the flashing fury in her eyes only made him laugh, as though he were deliberately provoking her into losing her temper.
“So you don’t like hearing the truth about yourself,” he mocked. “Too bad, I always call a spade a spade—and a strumpet a strumpet.”
No one had ever before questioned either Alyssa’s breeding or her virtue, and she was livid. But her long experience in handling her unreasonable grandfather stood her in good stead now. She would not let Carlyle goad her into losing her temper. Choking down her anger, she said with cool hauteur, “Pray, what do you call yourself, since your own morals are notoriously black?”
His thick brows knit together in a murderous frown, but when he spoke it was with a coolness that matched her own. “My son’s morals, however, are beyond reproach, and he deserves better than you!”
The contempt in his voice stung her into saying, “I should make a magnificent wife.”
“Magnificent grief is what you would be to Jeremy!”
She controlled her temper with an iron will, saying tauntingly, “You mean you are not going to wish me happy?”
“I wish you to Jericho! Even if you were a lady
of quality and not a trollop from a disgustingly vulgar, low-bred family, your age would be a bar. I know what misery awaits a cub who is wed to a sophisticated woman much older than himself.”
Alyssa was so mortified and outraged by his unwarranted insults that her hand longed to slap his arrogant face. She was furious that he could not see at a glance what every other man of her acquaintance had: that she was a woman of propriety and a lady, not a strumpet or even a cyprian. For a moment Alyssa was speechless with humiliation, made all the more painful because for some inexplicable reason she yearned for admiration and respect from this infuriating man, who displayed only insulting contempt for her. With supreme effort, she managed to stop her twitching hand from impacting on his face and contented herself instead with saying coldly, “You know nothing of my family.”
“To the contrary, I had the displeasure of meeting your far from charming mother and your equally appalling sister at Vauxhall last night.”
Alyssa’ s cheeks stained a bright red as she remembered with acute embarrassment her distaff relatives’ shockingly vulgar dress and appearance as they had departed for Vauxhall. They had looked exactly like what Carlyle had taken them to be. She felt suddenly faint and wondered if her earlier boast to him that she would never need smelling-salts had not been premature. In a voice barely above a whisper, she asked, “How did you come to meet them?”
“Your mama accosted me on the mistaken assumption that we were about to become related.”
“So that is how you learned of the betrothal,” Alyssa murmured weakly. As she considered how the haughty, impeccable duke must have felt when two such vulgar, garishly dressed women descended upon him with their shocking revelation about his son, she could almost feel sorry for him. Alyssa wondered what he had said to her mama. Whatever it was, she was certain that it was responsible for Mrs Raff’s and Rosina’s bad humour today. Closing her eyes, she wished that the floor beneath her feet might open up so that she could join her heart, which was still down in the vicinity of the Hagars’ cellar. It was a long moment before she could bring herself to open her eyes again. When she did, she saw Carlyle studying her curiously.
“Don’t tell me that Fanny—as your brass-faced mama assured me I must call her—did not tell you of our conversation?”
The distaste in his voice angered Alyssa all the more because she knew it was justified. Plucking up her sadly bruised spirit, she managed to answer with freezing bravado, “It must have slipped Mama’s mind that she met you.”
His bark of sarcastic laughter grated on her ears. “Don’t try to hoax me, you little jade. That vulgar creature was preening herself like an overdressed peacock at the honour of being seen conversing with me.”
The fact that he was undoubtedly correct added to Alyssa’s embarrassment and to her overtaxed temper. “Your consequence is showing, Your Grace!”
“You’ll see a great deal more of it, you fortune-hunting harpy, if you do not immediately reject my son’s offer.”
It crossed Alyssa’s mind that Carlyle was attempting to goad her into behaving like the screaming shrew he thought her to be. Although she would not accommodate him on that score, she was so angry now that any thought of attempting to placate him was gone. How dared he brand her so unjustly without even permitting her to explain her side of the story? Her mind was a chaos of tumultuous and contradictory emotions that left her determined to have retribution from him for his cruel conduct toward her, while somehow simultaneously demonstrating to him how badly he had misjudged both her character and her quality.
Several scenarios on how she might accomplish that flashed through her mind. In one that particularly appealed to her, she would elope to Gretna Green with Jeremy and prove, through her devotion to him, that she was an exemplary wife. But she discarded this scheme, realising that both she and Jeremy would be the losers in it.
No, the only possible way that she could punish Carlyle was to make him continue to think that she intended to marry his son and that she was even worse than he thought her to be. Nothing else would touch him. Although she had no intention of marrying the marquess, she was no longer willing to confess that to his father, as she had originally intended. So long as she maintained the fiction that she would wed Jeremy, she would keep the insulting, overbearing duke squirming like a worm on a fishing-hook. Meanwhile, she would secretly make certain that Jeremy developed an aversion to her.
In the end, the haughty, contemptuous duke would see how wrong he had been in his cruel judgment of her. Indeed, she thought bitterly, the only insult that he had not paid her was to offer her money to buy her off from the betrothal, and she observed coldly, “I am surprised, Your Grace, given your aversion to me as a daughter-in-law, that you have not offered me a sum that would make it worth my while to reject your son.”
She drew back in surprise, not untouched by fear, at the dramatic effect her words had on him. It was as if she had touched a flaming torch to dried grass. His eyes blazed with fury, his hands twitched convulsively, and he swore with a fluency and a vocabulary so varied that Alyssa was both amazed and stunned. It took all the pluck that she possessed not to cower and flee before such towering rage.
When finally he curbed his profanity, he said in a voice still seething with anger, “Good God, your mama and sister, who are the boldest trollops I have yet seen, pale in comparison to you!” His furious eyes raked her. “I do not pay extortionists.”
To her horror, she realised that he had misinterpreted her words and thought that she was asking to be bought off. She started to correct his mistaken impression, then stopped. The worse he thought her, the more he would rage at the thought that she might succeed in trapping his son into marriage.
Her silence seemed to spur his anger out of control, and he snapped, “Since you are so anxious for money, however, I will offer you another kind of arrangement, a carte blanche with myself.”
She stared at him in open-mouthed shock, unable to believe her ears. Never before in her life had a man made her a dishonourable offer. To have one come from a man whose regard she had coveted was more than she could bear. A dull red flush spread over her body from the heat of her embarrassment, and she longed to retreat to her bed and cry the night away.
The duke’s penetrating eyes reflected surprise and a flash of confusion at her odd reaction, but her pride refused to permit her to confess how much he had wounded her. Exerting an iron self-control, she said in a cold voice, tinged with sarcasm, “I am astonished that you would offer such a poor creature as myself a carte blanche. I fear I am hardly up to your usual exalted standards.”
“No, you are not,” he said flatly, turning her sarcasm into a setdown of herself. “But I might possibly find you amusing for a time.”
The condescension in his tone set her teeth on edge, and she said tauntingly, “But only think, my lord duke, how it would lower your consequence to be seen with me. All London would be talking.”
“No, it would not, because we would not be here,” he contradicted bluntly. He gave her a calculating look that chilled her to the bone. “You will enjoy travelling abroad in the first stare of elegance. Would you like to see Venice?”
“I have seen Venice, and I find the romance of the canals there much over-rated,” she snapped. So he thought her so far beneath him that he would not even be seen in England with her, did he? She would make him pay for his insults! Although she was raging, she managed an outward show of calm. “I fear that your generous offer does not tempt me, Your Grace. Having also been to a number of other foreign cities, including Rome, Paris and Vienna, I prefer London.”
His thick dark brows snapped gloweringly together. “Under whose protection were you travelling?”
“Lord Eliot’s.”
“Good God!” exclaimed the duke, profoundly shocked. “He is old enough to be your grandfather!”
She stared at him in outrage. “He is...” She broke off hastily. Let him think the worst of her. It would make him fume all the more until
such time as it pleased her to have him learn the truth.
“He is what?” Carlyle demanded harshly.
She improvised hastily. “He is a finer man than you will ever be.”
He laughed contemptuously. “That irascible old goat! What an exciting lover he must have been. Is that why you have gone from a man with one foot in the grave to a cub with one still in the cradle?”
Her face aflame, she was goaded into retorting. “I infinitely prefer your son to you!”
For an instant, there glittered in his eyes such blazing emotion that it was all she could do to keep from turning and fleeing. “Do you, now?” he jeered.
Without warning, he seized her in his arms and was kissing her with an expertise that proved to her how utterly untrue her previous statement had been.
At first, she fought to free herself, but his arms easily held her helpless in his iron grip. For a slender man, he was exceedingly strong. Then, as the unexpected pleasure of his kiss overwhelmed her, she ceased struggling against what she discovered to her surprise she both liked and wanted very much. As her resistance subsided, he relaxed his hold on her arms, and they crept around him without her realising what she was doing. Their embrace and kiss became mutual.
• When at last he drew away, she felt bereft. His kiss had stoked a strange, aching longing within her for she knew not what. So pleasurable was the kiss that she did not even think of protesting his conduct. Alyssa feared that her confusion and inchoate questions were mirrored in her eyes because when he looked into them, he drew his breath in sharply. His On eyes softened and his face was puzzled.
For a moment, there was golden silence between them. Then his face hardened, and he said mockingly, “Better reconsider my offer. You will find me a more skilful lover than my son.”
She froze at his careless contempt for her. “As well you should be with all your vast experience at seducing women,” she retorted. “But I am persuaded that the skill of a fickle man pales beside the love of a faithful one. Do you think that I would mock Jeremy for his inexperience?”
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