by Liz Carlyle
“Oui? And what business is it of yours?”
He leaned into her. “Listen to me,” he rasped. “There is not a shred of honor in that man. You cannot bargain with him. Oh, he’ll marry you—and then by law, every penny you possess will be his—and you will be his—to do with as he pleases.”
She turned and set her back to the door, daring him. Looking him up and down as if she did not fear him—or Enders—in the least. The Black Queen. It was not what he was accustomed to.
Rothewell braced the other hand above her shoulder, effectively pinning her.
“It would appear you have me trapped, Lord Rothewell,” she said coolly. “What do you mean to do about it?”
He meant, apparently, to kiss her. Almost savagely, in fact, driving her head back against the wood, and opening his mouth over hers without hesitation. As if on instinct, she raised her hands to shove him away, but it was too late.
Rothewell deepened the kiss on a rush of sensation, allowing his weight to pin her against the door. He slanted his mouth over hers, forcing his way into the sweet, spicy depths of her mouth.
She fought him but an instant, then opened willingly, entwining her tongue with his in a tantalizing dance of pleasure. Again and again, he kissed her, and felt himself slip into the depths of something dark and uncertain. It was as if the heat of her body seared his. The swell of her breasts and belly. The taut muscles of her thighs. All of it pressed down his length, urging him toward a rash, hot madness.
In the gloom, her breath came fast and urgent. He was vaguely aware that she was kissing him back, and rather boldly; rising onto her toes, the crisp silk of her bodice crushing against the wool of his lapels.
So lost was he in the moment, Rothewell was scarcely aware that his hands had left the door and gone instead to her face, trembling. In the street beyond, a clatter arose; a mail coach, perhaps, moving fast. The racket sliced through the heat, returning Rothewell to the present. Almost reluctantly, he drew his tongue across her sharp, white teeth one last time, then lifted his face from hers, his gaze locked to hers, their nostrils flared wide.
She, too, was trembling. Ah, there was a fear in her now. But not, he thought, of him.
Mademoiselle Marchand licked her lips uncertainly. “Tell me, my lord,” she whispered, dropping her gaze to a point disconcertingly near his crotch. “Do you still wish me across your knee?”
There was bravado in her voice still, it was true. But like the hardened gambler he was, Rothewell began to scent panic. As the fog of lust slowly dissipated, he considered it, and let his arms drop. His gaze roamed over her beautiful, almost heart-shaped face, taking in her wide brown eyes and fine cheekbones.
“Tell me, my dear, how much longer do you have?” he murmured. “I think I hear the fatal sound of a ticking clock—and I don’t mean the one on your mantel-piece.”
For a moment, she hesitated. “Six weeks,” she finally whispered.
“Six weeks?” he echoed. “Why so little?”
Something like resignation sketched across her face. “I have had ten years,” she answered. “Ten years in which to find the—what do you call it? The knight in shining armor?”
“Something like that,” he agreed.
She flashed a bitter smile. “My grandfather decided this when I was very young. But I found the letters of the solicitor but recently—following my mother’s death.”
Rothewell looked at her, stunned. “Christ Jesus,” he whispered. “She did not tell you?”
Mademoiselle Marchand shook her head. She would not hold his gaze. “I was a fool,” she said softly. “A fool to think Valigny could help me. No decent family will receive him. He has wasted my precious time.”
“Very well.” Rothewell swallowed. “You have six weeks. And then what happens?”
She lifted her chin a fraction. “My twenty-eighth—how do you say it?—the anniversary of one’s birth?”
“Your birthday?” said Rothewell, incredulous. “You must be married by your twenty-eighth birthday?”
“To obtain so much as the first sou, oui, I must first marry by twenty-eight, and bear a child of my husband within two years.”
“And your father knows this?” Rothewell felt vaguely appalled. “He knows it, and he used you? To stake a card game?”
“Valigny, I fear, is without scruple,” she said emotionlessly. Her eyes were still upon him, dark and knowing. “But be assured, my lord, that I am going to marry. Otherwise, there is nothing for me. Nothing but Valigny’s generosity, which has never proven very reliable.”
“I see,” he murmured.
“So what is it to be, Rothewell?” she quietly continued. “Am I to marry you? Or must I take the licentious Lord Enders to my bed?”
Good Lord, she really meant to marry one of them? And the choice was to be his?
He looked again into her bottomless brown eyes. She was serious. Deadly serious.
Rothewell felt as if someone had just crushed the air from his lungs.
But Mademoiselle Marchand—Camille—was still looking at him, her expression oddly serene, her hands once more carefully folded. She was waiting. Waiting for his answer. He drew a deep breath, then let his gaze run over her once again. She was so beautiful she could almost have made the dead rise—almost—and there was no denying that despite all the emotion of this awful night, yes, he still desired her. The kiss had served only to fan the flame which had sprung to life the moment he’d laid eyes on her.
Well, he had begun this travesty, hadn’t he? He might as well finish it. God knew it would make little difference to him.
“Have you a maid?” he asked abruptly.
“Oui, bien sûr,” she said. “Why?”
Rothewell caught her almost roughly by the elbow. “Because we are going to find her,” he said grimly. “And then we are going to your bedchamber to pack your things.”
“In the middle of the night?” Her voice arched. “Why?”
“Yes. In the middle of the night.” He had opened the door and propelled her through it. “Because I’ll be damned if you will ever spend another under Valigny’s roof.”
Within the hour they were out of the house and Rothewell was helping Mademoiselle Marchand into his carriage. Her hand was warm and light in his own. He looked down to see her fingers, slender and neatly manicured. It was a capable-looking hand.
Since leaving her sitting room, he had moved as if in a dream, instructing Mademoiselle Marchand, barking orders at the servants, and holding Valigny deliberately at bay. And all the while, it felt as though he watched another man indelibly altering his life.
The maid turned out to be a thin, pale-faced girl who was terrified of Rothewell. As to Mademoiselle Marchand, her every gesture was calm, her expression unreadable. A very composed woman, he thought—unless she was being kissed senseless.
The footman called Tufton came down with the last bag and glanced at the carriage door with obvious concern. When he had lashed the bag to the back of the carriage, Rothewell stepped beneath the streetlamp, and thrust out his card.
“I am in Berkeley Square if you need me,” he murmured. “I will keep her safe from him. You may depend upon that much.”
The strain fell from Tufton’s face. “Thank you, my lord.” He tucked the card away and hastened back up the steps.
Rothewell looked up at his coachman. He was gravely reluctant to do what he knew he must, but his impetuous decision left him little choice. “To Hanover Street,” he ordered.
“To Hanover Street?” echoed the coachman.
“Yes, to Sharpe’s,” he said. “And be quick about it.”
The trip through London’s darkened streets was a relatively short one. At Lord Sharpe’s imposing town house, they were let in by the same cowering footman who had chased Rothewell down Hanover Street over a week earlier. They had obviously roused him from his cot, for his hair was badly askew and his shirttail half-out.
Rothewell made no explanation, but merely ordered the foot
man to put Mademoiselle Marchand and her maid in one of the guest rooms. He was not about to wake Pamela at such an hour. That done, he went into the front parlor, tossed his coat across the tea table, and glanced at the longcase clock by the door.
Half past three. Good Lord. He had lived an eternity in the last two hours. Accustomed to surviving on little sleep, Rothewell flung himself down in a nearby chair, threw his feet up onto his coat, and slipped into a state of numbness which was not quite sleep and not quite wakefulness. He did not rouse until the rattle of a servant cleaning a grate bestirred him sometime near dawn. He rose surprisingly free of the nausea and pain he had come to expect.
“Oh, dear!” said Pamela two hours later. She had come down wearing a loose-fitting morning dress striped with pink and cream, and was pacing before the hearth, her hem furling out with every turn. “Upstairs? The daughter of the Comte de Valigny, you say?”
“A rotter through and through, I know,” said Rothewell.
Pamela stopped and frowned. “Lie down with dogs, Kieran, get up with fleas!” An overused proverb was as close to criticism as the countess ever came.
He lifted both hands. “I am not fooling myself, Pamela,” he replied. “I know what is said of me. Valigny and I have been drinking and gambling and whor—well, other unmentionable things—together for months now. None of this looks good for her.”
Pamela crossed the room, and sat down in the chair adjacent. “We mustn’t judge the girl by her relations, for none of us, I think, would wish to suffer that,” she said dryly, bending forward to refresh his coffee. “Nor perhaps should we judge you from your friends.”
“Valigny has never been a friend,” he said tightly. “As to being judged, we both know that it is done. That’s why I brought her here.”
“And not to Xanthia?” murmured Lady Sharpe. “I did wonder at it.”
Rothewell flashed a wry smile. He did not like asking favors. “You are like the driven snow in this town, my dear,” he said. “And Mademoiselle Marchand can ill afford to rub elbows with anything less. Of course her name will be irreparably blackened if I put her up in Berkeley Square.”
“Quite so, quite so!” she agreed, springing from her chair again. “Well! What can be done? One must hope her mother has been forgotten.”
Rothewell laughed harshly. “What, by the ton?” he asked. “They love gossip rather too well for that, my dear.”
“Yes, I daresay you are right.” She had set a finger to her cheek and was tapping it thoughtfully. “And this card game business, Kieran. Really, it is beyond the pale.”
He set his jaw grimly. “Do you think I don’t know that, Pamela?” he answered. “Seen in the light of day, yes, I regret it. If I had it to do over again, I would put a stop to the whole business.”
Lady Sharpe’s smile was muted. “Well, in a way, you did,” she remarked. “You have got the poor girl away from him, at the very least. But that lurid tale about the card game must never be heard of again, my dear. The girl will be utterly ruined.”
Rothewell clenched and unclenched his fists. He was more than a little ashamed of his role in this debacle. “Look, Pamela,” he said awkwardly. “This was a foolish notion. I shouldn’t have barged in here.”
Lady Sharpe waved her hand for him to hush. She began to pace again, her delicate blond eyebrows drawn together. Rothewell dropped his gaze and stared into the sobering black depths of his coffee.
What on earth had possessed him to load Mademoiselle Marchand into his carriage in the middle of the night? Why had he fallen in with her mad scheme? He had thought merely to do the woman a favor, with little inconvenience to himself. But life was never so simple as one thought it. That was a lesson he ought to have learned the first time he had asked a woman to entwine her fate with his.
He looked up to see Pamela pacing toward him. “Let me meet the girl,” she finally said. “I shall think of something quite clever, Kieran, I assure you. Something to explain why she is staying here. But what, pray, do you mean to do with the chit in the long term?”
“Well, as to that—” Rothewell paused and eyed her over the rim of his coffee cup. “Well, as to that, I very much fear, Pamela, that I really do mean to marry her.”
Lady Sharpe froze in her tracks. For once in her life, she was utterly and completely speechless.
Rothewell seized the moment. Amidst a good deal of stuttering and stammering on his cousin’s part, he made the vaguest of explanations, thanked her again profusely, then bolted for the door.
It was time to go home, he thought as he dashed down the steps. Time to go home and write the Comte de Valigny a bank draft for his twenty-five thousand pounds. Then at least one part of this travesty would be over. The bastard would have his money—and whatever happened afterward would be none of his damned business.
Camille sat perfectly still in a chair by the window, looking down at the morning traffic in Mayfair. She had risen at dawn to wash her face and pin up her hair, for there had been no hope of sleep. Then she had sat down to await her fate—and here she remained; a stranger in a strange house, forgotten, perhaps. But what did a few more hours, or a few more months, matter? Had she not spent the whole of her life awaiting the pleasure of another?
Eventually, she assumed, Lord Rothewell would return. If he did not, Camille was fully prepared to take matters into her own hands. One could not wait on—or even depend upon—a man for very long. That much she had learned from her mother’s mistakes. At least Rothewell had had the audacity to admit he was not to be trusted. That, she supposed, spoke well of him.
She was not perfectly sure just what she’d got herself into with Rothewell—but she knew very well what she’d got herself out of. Her fate at Lord Rothewell’s hands could hardly be worse than the last three months she’d spent with Valigny. Certainly it would not be permanent. A quick marriage, and with a little luck, the blessing of a child to love. And then, at long last, she would be free. Free of her mother. Valigny. And, of course, Lord Rothewell. She would be glad indeed to see the back of him. His dark, glittering eyes, short temper, and hard questions would endear the man to no one.
She looked down and realized her hands were clenched again. With well-practiced will, she forced them to relax. Matters could be worse. There might even be a sliver of kindness in Rothewell. Of course she might well be mistaken. It was a risk she had weighed before leaping.
The other man—Lord Enders—oh, his type she knew well. He was nothing but a rutting pig—and a depraved one at that. She had not needed Lord Rothewell’s counsel in that regard, for she had spent too much time in Paris, surrounded by her mother’s coterie of desperate, over-painted friends, and the débauchés who courted them.
Just then, she heard Emily stirring on the bed behind her. She turned to see the maid lift her hand to block a shaft of early-morning sun as she sat up. “Beg pardon, miss,” she managed. “I didn’t mean to lie abed so late.”
“It’s quite all right, Emily.” Camille returned to her vigil at the window. “You had no rest last night.”
“Nor did you, miss,” she answered.
Camille listened to the sounds of the maid dressing behind her. Emily doubtless wondered what was to become of them, and Camille had no good answers. At last, however, she turned round to watch the girl. “You mustn’t worry, Emily,” she said. “I am sure this will all work out.”
“Yes, miss.” Emily had begun to fold their nightclothes. “I’m sure you know best.”
Camille suppressed a hysterical laugh. “We must hope so,” she answered. “Of course, I would like to keep you on, Emily, whether I marry or not.”
But she had to marry. She must.
Death had finally relieved her of the burden which had hung over her these last few years, and she had awakened from her mother’s long illness as if from a dark dream, only to realize her life was empty. The awful truth was that she longed for far more than financial independence. She yearned for a child—a yearning which had only grown more
acute with every passing year until it was like the pain of a knife’s blade pricking at her heart.
And just when she had believed it would never be possible, that she must endure the pain with her arms empty—she had found her grandfather’s letter. His eccentric bequest had laid open a path—but she now realized that that meant a marriage to Lord Rothewell, or to someone like him.
Oh, she could return to Limousin with her tail between her legs, sell what was left of her mother’s jewelry, and perhaps survive for a time. But she was almost twenty-eight years old and no longer content with mere survival. And to return to her old life in France as a poor relation, clinging to the bedraggled hems of an ignominious family? No. No, it did not bear thinking about. She had seized this opportunity with her bare hands, and the only thing left to do was dig in her nails.
At that thought, she exhaled on a shuddering sigh. Her hands began to clench again, and the sense of hopelessness which had followed her from Paris began to edge nearer. Lord Rothewell really was her last hope. Despite her brash threat last night, Camille had been terrified of Lord Enders. So she had played upon that tiny sliver of decency she thought she’d glimpsed in Rothewell’s eyes.
But perhaps the joke was on her. Perhaps Rothewell was worse. There was a darkness about the man of a sort she’d never seen before. Not evil. Not simple dissolution. No, it was a darkness of the soul, and it hung about him like a shroud.
At that, Camille did laugh. Emily looked at her strangely.
Yes, she really had lost her mind, Camille decided. She was becoming fanciful, and worse, melodramatic. Just a few steps further along that path, and she would turn into her mother.
Just then, there was a light knock at the door. Emily opened it. A footman stood rigidly at attention. The Countess of Sharpe desired Camille’s company. Doubtless the lady was thrilled to hear that the illegitimate child of London’s most disreputable scoundrel had been installed in one of her guest rooms whilst she slept.