by Lucy Monroe
Lady Upworth nodded. “Yes, indeed. It will be a pleasure introducing you to society, my dear.”
Thea’s shocked gaze flew to her aunt. “You can’t be serious. Didn’t you hear what Drake said?” She sighed and shifted her gaze to her clenched fists in her lap. “It’s true, you know. I’m not a very proper sort of person at all. In fact, by some standards, I’m a little outrageous.”
Lady Upworth laughed again. “Nonsense. You are an original and a delight. I do believe you have found quite the champion in Mr. Drake as well.”
Thea’s hands fisted more tightly in her lap. “Now, I know you are jesting. He didn’t champion me, he pilloried me with his low opinion.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “I hold you in the highest regard.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “That is why you listed all my faults for my aunt like a hawker selling his wares?”
He rubbed her palm with his thumb, feeling pleasure at the slight touch. “I was warning her.”
“Warning her?” Thea’s voice rose until she was almost shouting. “I am not the plague that you need to warn my aunt about me.”
“Nay, you are a headstrong female who will find her place amongst the ton if you are protected and presented in the right fashion.”
“I don’t care about my bloody place in the ton.”
“Your aunt does.” He indicated the woman now watching them with avid fascination. “Ask her if it is important to her if you are accepted in all the best drawing rooms.”
Thea turned her now tortured gaze to her aunt. “Is it important to you?”
Lady Upworth smiled reassuringly. “Yes, it is. You needn’t worry. With the help of Drake’s family you will be launched with absolute success, I’m sure of it.”
Thea’s hand had turned in his and now clung tightly. “I’m not a ship.”
“No, dear. You are my precious niece and you will cause quite a stir in the ton.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t worry about introducing me. After all, I won’t be in England long and it seems like it will be quite a bit of work for you. I really don’t want any new clothes and I’m sure no one will even notice I am here.”
Drake couldn’t help it, he laughed.
She gave him a disgruntled look. “Are you laughing at me again, sir?” She turned to her aunt. “I’m sure gentlemen do not laugh at ladies, but Drake forgets that fact regularly.”
“Thea, you couldn’t go through the Season unnoticed if you tried. You are far too opinionated and willing to express those opinions for you to spend much time in London without making yourself known,” Drake said.
Lady Upworth added, “I thought you came for the Season.”
Drake wondered if Thea noticed the calculated gaze her aunt gave her when making the statement.
“I did.” Thea squirmed under her aunt’s steady regard. “I mean, that is, I came to spend the Season with you.”
“My dear, I would have great pleasure in launching you into society. You have spent far too long away from your rightful place. It is time you enjoyed the many privileges to which you were born.”
“It’s just all so different here. Back home, I was just me. Miss Thea. Here, I suppose they will want to call me Lady Thea and expect me to wear corsets even though they are bad for a lady’s respiration.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “Well, I won’t do it. I won’t. If I am to become a member of the ton, they will have to take me as I am. I am too old to fit the mold of humble debutante.”
He realized that Thea had experienced enough emotion for the time being. She was beginning to sound slightly hysterical and her aunt looked exhausted, but happy.
“We can discuss your debut later,” he said.
“But—“ Thea tried to interrupt.
“No one will force you to wear corsets,” he promised and stood. “Come. Your aunt is tired.”
Lady Upworth sighed and nodded. “My constitution is not what it used to be. Will you come again tomorrow? I should like to spend more time talking.” She fixed her niece with a discerning stare. “There are still many things to discuss.”
He wanted to know what those things were, but there would be time enough later to grill Thea about the things she had not yet told him. He sensed there were still important pieces of her life he did not understand.
“Yes.” Thea leaned down and kissed her aunt’s cheek. “I will come tomorrow. Rest now.”
Drake ushered her toward the door.
When they got there, he stopped her and turned back to Lady Upworth. “You should be aware that I intend to marry Thea.”
Lady Upworth snorted. “I may be old, young man, but I’m not blind.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I must find something to occupy my mind and time. Thea is wonderful, but she is not enough. Not when I lay in bed at night wishing for my son and longing for a husband who is both friend and love. How foolish I am to even long for such a thing. Men see marriage very differently from women. The yellow fever is coming. The islanders say that it comes every year and many die because of it. Oh, God, do not let me die. Make me strong for my daughter.
January 18, 1801 Journal of Anna Selwyn, Countess of Langley
Thea wanted to shake Drake.
Skewering him with her gaze, she sat ramrod straight in the curricle seat beside him. “How could you have said that?”
He flicked the horses’ reins and the vehicle picked up speed. “It’s the truth.”
She let her breath out in a hiss. “Your truth, but what about the fact that I have refused you?”
“I will convince you.”
His complacent assurance made her want to scream. “Sacré bleu. Your arrogance knows no bounds, sir.”
His shrug nearly pushed her over the edge of her control. “It is well matched by your stubbornness.”
“It isn’t stubbornness. I made a promise and I intend to keep it.”
“I would never expect you to do otherwise.”
Unaccountably, his easy agreement disappointed her. “Then I cannot marry you.”
“Yes you can. I’m not your father and one day you will accept that fact.” He turned his head to briefly catch her gaze. “Your mother would have liked me.”
“My mother would have thought you were arrogant beyond belief.”
“Perhaps. But, she would have liked me.”
“How can you be so sure? You never even knew her.”
“Because I am a man of honor. It wasn’t your father’s strength that destroyed your family. It was his lack of integrity.”
She shot Drake a penetrating look. Could he know the full truth? The horror of her father’s final betrayal? No, surely not. “What do you mean?”
“Only a man lacking would be so certain his wife had none.”
She couldn’t fault his reasoning. If he were right and her father’s baseness was the true source of trouble in her parent’s marriage, then what did that say for her promise to her mother? No one could accuse Drake of being without honor. To her way of thinking, he had more than his share of that commodity. It was all so confusing. Life had been so much simpler before she discovered a thief in the company, before she had met Drake and sailed on his ship.
The embezzler had an awful lot to answer for.
She went for a different tack in her argument with Drake. “Well, if you have no thought for my feelings on the matter, consider what an upset you have probably given my aunt.”
He went stiff beside her, his hands tightening on the horse’s reins. “Are you worried she will not approve your marriage to a bastard? Are you ashamed of our association, Thea?”
Hot fury that made her earlier irritation pale into insignificance welled up in her.
She shouted at him, “Don’t ever call yourself that again.”
He drew the carriage up in front of his aunt’s townhouse, halting the horses. He turned to her, his face an impassive mask. “That’s what I am, Thea. You might as well accept it now.”
“No it is
not. You are not a bastard.” She gripped her parasol so tightly that she thought the handle might break. Better that than Drake’s neck. “You are the illegitimate son of a woman who by all accounts is both a lady and a wonderful mother. Your father is just plain too stupid to acknowledge you, but that doesn’t make you a bastard. Do not ever call yourself that name in my hearing again.”
She did not realize that her fervent speech had been overheard until a servant cleared his throat. He had come from the house to care for the horses.
Thea ignored him. “Well?”
Drake’s expression did not alter, but the heat in his eyes burned her. “If that is your wish.”
She nodded. “It is.”
Finally, he smiled. “Very well. Can we leave the curricle now? We are starting to draw attention.”
She looked around them and realized that he spoke the truth. Not only were they the object of interest for Lady Boyle’s footman, but also for a well-dressed couple in a passing carriage and a nanny with her charge. Had she embarrassed Drake with her outburst? If she had, he had only himself to blame. After all, she would not have been pushed past the point of reason had he not called himself such an atrocious name.
She made no move to leave the carriage. “I thought we were going to the London office of Merewether shipping when we finished at Lady Upworth’s.”
“You need some rest.” His eyes were softened with compassionate understanding. “It’s been an eventful afternoon.”
Emotion she did not wish to name filled her chest. She could not afford to weaken toward Drake now.
“I’m not so fainthearted.” Besides, she didn’t have time to waste. Uncle Ashby was at risk until they unmasked the thief. “Proceed to the office.”
His eyes widened at her peremptory tone.
She sighed. “Please.”
“Whatever my lady wishes.” He followed his sarcastic comment with immediate action, waving the footman back from the curricle. “Inform my aunt that we will be out this afternoon. We will return in time for tea.”
The footman nodded his understanding and stepped back as Drake set the horses in motion.
******
Something inside Drake had shifted and settled when Thea screamed at him like a fishwife for calling himself a bastard. She didn’t deny the circumstances of his birth, but she wouldn’t allow him to belittle himself because of them. The reason, he knew, was because those circumstances did not diminish his value in her sight. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She sat perfectly erect, as if she were still irritated by his comment.
She could not possibly know what her ready acceptance meant to him. The only people that had ever accepted him at face value his entire life had been his grandfather and his mother. Even the rest of his family defined him by his status as a bastard. His own aunt had felt compelled to warn Thea just what she was getting when she became entangled with him.
He wanted to kiss the stubborn, beautiful woman beside him until she melted against him and forgot what she was angry about. He needed to show her how much her belief in him mattered. He had given up on tender feelings after the debacle of his courtship of Deirdre, but he didn’t think lust alone encompassed his current feelings.
Although it was certainly an element. Images of her beautiful naked body stretched out on the narrow bed in his stateroom filled his head and he realized that he wanted to do much more than kiss her. He wanted to bury himself so deep inside her she wouldn’t know where she ended and he began. He wanted the right to sleep in her bed every night and rejoiced at the thought of planting a child in her womb.
Hard arousal pressed against the buttons of his fly. Bloody hell. She’d better decide to marry him soon. Not that she showed any signs of doing so. Damn, stubborn woman.
As his body responded to his thoughts, he began to wonder if waiting to make love to her again until they were married was the best course of action. It had seemed the most honorable line to take on the ship. Her refusal to consider marriage had convinced him to stay away from her, first out of anger because the thought that she considered him in the same league as her father still rankled, then in the hopes that she would miss what they had experienced and want it enough to risk marriage.
Although sound reasoning, it didn’t appear to be working. She acted as if she couldn’t remember the way her body responded to his. Perhaps she couldn’t. He could think of numerous ways to remind her, ways that would give them both satisfaction. How better to convince her that marriage to him was the right choice than with her own womanly passion? He would show her that the afternoon in his cabin was just the beginning of what they could experience together as man and wife.
She would be forced to realize that she belonged to him.
Thea’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “Do not think that your lamentable tendency to refer to yourself in such inappropriate terms has made me forget your words to my aunt.”
“She deserved to know my intentions.”
“That’s ridiculous. Your intentions are neither here nor there as far as my aunt is concerned.”
She truly was naïve about the ways of the ton. “Do you remember my aunt’s reaction to me visiting you aboard ship?”
“Yes, but that was a temporary aberration. Look at how calmly she reacted to finding us kissing in the hall.”
His aunt’s so called calm reaction was the result of him telling her he had every intention of marrying Thea before The Golden Dragon had ever sailed into port. She knew once he made up his mind, he let nothing stand in his way. Not even stubborn women with independent natures and not enough sense.
“The gossip that will undoubtedly start to circulate once she begins to introduce you to society will cause a reaction in your aunt similar to the one mine had on the ship. In other words, she won’t take it calmly at all. I didn’t want her to worry, so I told her my intentions were honorable.”
After all, she had leave to doubt it. He was his father’s son. As much as he would like to forget that fact, society never would.
Thea stirred next to him and placed her hand on his arm.
She gave it a gentle squeeze. “That’s very thoughtful of you, but don’t you think she’ll be disappointed when we don’t marry?”
He had no intention of disappointing her aunt, or himself. “Don’t worry. She’s more likely to be relieved in the meantime.”
A huge breath of air escaped from between Thea’s lips. “I wish everyone would give up this idea of introducing me to society. It’s just complicating everything and is bound to take time away from my investigation. Can you imagine the hours I’ll have to waste shopping for new clothes?”
Thea made shopping for clothes sound like a fate worse than death. “Come, don’t you think you will enjoy the time with your aunt? Besides, I have yet to meet a lady who wasn’t interested in her wardrobe.”
He saw her take her lower lip between her teeth out of the corner of his eye. He wanted to stop the carriage and cover that little lip with his own. Then he would trail kisses down her neck. She would make sexy little noises in the back of her throat. He would touch her breasts, first through the fabric of her gown and then peeling the fabric away.
His already hard body began to ache. He almost missed her answer to his statement.
“I suppose I will enjoy the time with my aunt. I like Lady Boyle as well, but I’m not particularly interested in gowns and fripperies and I am not at all interested in being presented to the ton.”
“You heard your aunt. It’s important to her.”
“She wants me to take my rightful place in society, but that won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Because I haven’t been raised to it, for one thing. The girl I might have been does not exist in the woman I am.”
“You do not have to be anything different than you are to charm society. Look how well you have charmed me.”
She did not smile as he expected.
Instead, her face took on a very
serious expression. “I have not charmed you. I seduced you. There’s a difference.”
Following upon his earlier thoughts, like it did, her comment caused no small reaction in him. His body tightened while his mind grappled with the problem of a spirited female that actually believed she had seduced him. It wouldn’t be a problem if she didn’t sound so chagrined by the fact.
“You didn’t seduce me.”
“Of course I did. You did not want to make love to me, but I begged you.”
The last place he wanted to engage in a discussion of this nature was sitting in an open curricle, his hands firmly engaged with the ribbons. “Perhaps we could discuss that afternoon another time.”
She tapped the parasol his aunt had insisted she bring against her boot. She had argued that England didn’t have enough sun for a woman to have to worry about her complexion. Understandably, the argument had gone nowhere with his aunt.
“We don’t need to discuss it at all. I was merely pointing out that I didn’t charm you per se and that I’m unlikely to charm the ton.”
“Nevertheless, you will allow my aunt and Lady Upworth to present you.”
“I don’t want to.” She sounded like a small child defying her parent.
But Thea was a mature and intelligent woman. There had to be more to this than her concern for Merewether or her fear of not fitting in with society. From what he could tell, Thea wasn’t truly afraid of anything. “Why?”
She fidgeted with her parasol handle. “I don’t want to meet my father. I don’t want to claim him, but I will not spend my time in England lying to protect him either.”
“Don’t you think it may be time to meet him? To make your peace with him?”
“How can you ask that after what he did to my mother? To me?”
The outrage in her voice washed over him and he hesitated to argue the point further, but his wife would have to have her place in society. It would be important to his mother and grandfather, and therefore to him.
“Well, didn’t your mother do something similar? After all, she took you from your father and never allowed him the pleasure of seeing his daughter grow into womanhood. Perhaps you will find that he is not such a monster after all.”