Chapter 19

"I will go right to the heart of the matter," Andrew said. "Sarah's father, Sir Jonathan, wanted me to marry his daughter."

Miss Martin nodded, but didn't speak.

"He offered to pay off my sizeable debts, but that was not what piqued my interest. Sir Jonathan also possesses a third share in a valuable stud. The stallion in question is magnificent and, quite frankly, beyond price. I was sorely tempted." He smiled at her thinning lips. "You are thinking it is mercenary to contemplate marriage for stud rights?"

"Mercenary, not to mention slightly ironic."

Andrew's jaw sagged and he gave a startled laugh. "What a naughty thing to say! I highly approve of such comments, by the way."

Her cheeks flooded with color. "It is mercenary, but that isn't unusual among our class, is it?" she asked, evidently choosing to ignore his teasing. "Her father wanted you for your connections and the possibility that his daughter would be a duchess, so I suppose it would have been a good bargain on both sides."

"For me it would have been. And for Sir Jonathan and his wife and their family." He gave her a sardonic look. "It would have been an excellent bargain for everyone but Sarah."

Stacia frowned. "Why wouldn't—"

"Because Sarah was already in love with another man, but he was somebody her father did not approve of: a humble farmer."

"Mr. Leary," she said.

"Just so. In the weeks that I courted her I was increasingly aware that she was less than enthusiastic about my pursuit." He smirked at her. "Other than you, Miss Martin, I've met very few women who have, er, spurned my attentions. I know it sounds arrogant, but—"

"It might be arrogant, but it is also the truth. I saw it with my own eyes." Her look of irritated disgust told Andrew just how she felt about that. "So," she went on, "that is how you knew she was in love with somebody else? Because she didn't want you?"

"I guessed her interest might lie somewhere else, but I wasn't sure until she told me so."

Miss Martin's eyebrows arched. "It is difficult to imagine initiating such a conversation."

Andrew chuckled. "Fear is a great motivator."

"Fear?"

"Yes. Fear that I might actually propose."

"And would you have?"

It was Andrew's turn to raise his eyebrows.

***

Stacia bit her lip. "I'm sorry, that was rather—"

He waved aside her apology. "Honestly? I am not sure what I would have done. Sarah is a charming, interesting woman, so it would not have been a hardship. It would have made my cousin very happy, which might have convinced him to release my inheritance a few years early. And then there was the added incentive of King's Falcon—the stud," he explained at her querying look. "She said her father would not sanction the match with her farmer because of his hope that I would marry her. I confessed that I had no interest marrying a woman who was in love with another man." A pained look flickered briefly across his handsome face, but he shrugged it aside and said, "When I gave her my word that I would not propose—and that I'd find a subtle way to discourage her father's interest—she told me something else, something that made her situation dire, indeed."

"She was with ch-child." Her stammering irked her, and she cleared her throat and said more firmly, "It was the farmer's child."

"Not only that, but she was several months along. Even if her father did find another candidate to replace me, her condition was soon going to become obvious." He gave her a wry smile. "And then she asked me for a favor. Can you guess what it was?"

"She asked you to help her make sure that nobody else would marry her—to destroy her reputation. And so you sacrificed your reputation so she could marry the man she loved." Stacia chewed the inside of her cheek as she remembered the disgust she'd subjected him to. "I'm sorry, my lord."

He gave a bark of laughter. "Oh, don't make me a hero, Miss Martin. I am fairly certain that her father would have relented about her choice of husband when he discovered the truth. I did not save her, I just put an end to her father's plans sooner rather than later."

Stacia shook her head. "It is far more likely that he would have found a man willing to marry her and accept another man's child. How valuable is Sir Jonathan's stud right?"

He blinked. "Er—"

"I know you said it was priceless but humor me and put a price on it."

He looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, "A conservative estimate is five thousand pounds, but it might be as high as a hundred thousand."

" A hundred thousand pounds ! For a horse!"

"Not for the horse; for the stud fees and for any colts. He's a young stallion and has already produced two Ascot winners, and he has years ahead of him."

Stacia was flabbergasted by the astronomical sum and had to force herself to return to her point. "And you don't think the promise of even ten thousand pounds would tempt plenty of unscrupulous men with titles and little else other than debts to their name?"

"Perhaps."

"Instead of leaving her future happiness to chance, you, a war hero"—Stacia held up her hand when he shook his head and opened his mouth, likely to demur. "No, do not try and gainsay that. You are a war hero and you made yourself an object of contempt to decent people all to help a woman you barely knew."

He laughed. " An object of contempt . You should be a novelist, Miss Martin. You have a way with words."

"Do you deny that you've been treated badly in Society?"

"Oh, sometimes by the highest of sticklers." He gave a dismissive wave, as if the calumny of his peers was nothing. "But it did not bother me. Besides, helping Sarah was not my only—or even strongest—motivation." The amusement bled from his face.

"Dare I ask what that was?"

His jaw flexed. "I did it because I knew it would infuriate Chatham."

Stacia had no response to that. What did it even mean?

He pushed to his feet and turned to the fire, jabbing at it with the poker.

Stacia stared at his broad back and the tense set of his shoulders. She wanted to know more—who wouldn't—but she had already pushed enough on this subject. And he was right: it had not been his secret to share and yet Lady Kathryn and Stacia had essentially forced his confession. Or at least he'd believed that he needed to tell her the truth as they would soon be married.

She wanted to tell him that her reputation among the ton was not important enough to merit a sacrifice on his part like marriage. But that was a lie. As a woman who worked for a living, her reputation was of paramount importance.

However, as difficult as such a scandal would make her life, she still had no intention of marrying him.

He would press her on the subject—she had grown up with aristocratic men and knew their code of honor—but she would resist him.

Sure you will.

Stacia chose to ignore the taunt. Instead, she changed the subject. "How long do you think we will be here?" Once she'd given life to the words another thought struck her, one that should have been her first question. "And why are we here? It must be an accident."

He hung up the poker and slowly turned to her. "An accident?" he repeated, clearly befuddled.

Stacia felt like an idiot. "I don't mean that all this "—she gestured to the food and blankets—"is an accident, I just wonder if somebody else was setting up a—a—"

"Seduction?" he suggested, looking amused by her sputtering.

"Yes. What if we just bumbled up here and then somebody saw the open door and closed it without thinking?"

"Who?"

"I don't know. A servant?"

He cocked his head at her.

"I know, I know—that sounds thin."

" Very thin. Transparent, in fact." He finished his ale and then lifted the jug in her direction.

She shook her head. "No, thank you.

He poured another glass, took a drink, and said, "It was Lady Kathryn."

" Lady Kathryn ! Why on earth would you think this is her doing?"

He turned toward the fire, which was now blazing, and red and gold light danced over his perfect features.

"You must have a reason for thinking that," she prodded.

"I know it is her. I made a wager with her."

"You made a wager that she could lock us in a priest's hole?" she shrieked.

He winced. "Of course not."

"Then what , pray?"

"Evidently—and I only have her word for this as I do not recall any of it—she once told me she would never marry. I, er, allegedly, laughed at her and told her that she would marry before I did." He shrugged. "To her way of thinking, we made a wager."

"That's—that's…" She shook her head. "What in the world is wrong with the two of you? Are you both twelve ?"

His jaws clenched. "As I've already said, I have no recollection of the conversation."

"But you believe she did this?"

"Yes. Although why she has suddenly decided to take action now, I do not know." His blue gaze flickered around the room, as if there might be reasons lurking in the dark corners. "I am joining Chatham at his house in London and she could have tormented me all Season long—which is a pastime she enjoys—so, why now ? And why—" He broke off as his eyes settled on Stacia and slowly narrowed. He cocked his head, opened his mouth, and then closed it, still staring.

Stacia just knew what he'd been about to ask: why had Lady Kathryn chosen her .

Oh God. What if he guessed the truth?

***

Miss Martin was suddenly as silent as the grave. Andrew suspected she was fuming over the fact that his idiocy had led to her downfall: marriage to him . He could not blame her; he would not want to marry him, either. Even without the pall of Sarah's ruin hanging over his head, he was no bargain. At least not to a woman who saw through his appearance to the less than impressive man beneath.

She was right. What had he been thinking about to wager about such a matter with Kathryn? He knew how suggestible and unpredictable—no, volatile —the girl could be.

To be perfectly honest, he sometimes enjoyed her wild, somewhat unhinged, behavior a great deal. He suspected she was exactly what his younger sister would have been like if his mother and the infant she'd been carrying hadn't died in that carriage accident.

As often as Andrew complained about Kathryn, he had to admit she'd made his life more amusing since moving back to Chatham Park.

The last months had been…difficult. Not because of anything Sylvester had said or done. Not even because of Sylvester's mother, who was certainly a brutal bitch and strove to make everyone around her suffer.

No, it was none of that.

It sounded like madness to articulate it, but without Sylvester to hate, Andrew had been forced to focus on himself for the first time in eleven years. What he had seen—a rootless, irresponsible clod with nothing but shame to show for over a decade of living—had horrified him. And depressed him.

"I daresay I was simply convenient," Miss Martin suddenly said.

" Hmm ?"

"I said that Lady Kathryn chose me because I am the only unmarried female staying at the house over the age of one-and-twenty." She gave a stiff huff of laughter.

Andrew studied her bowed head; he knew why Kathryn had chosen Miss Martin. And it wasn't because she was the only choice, either. The youngest Bellamy sister might be green when it came to life and love, but she had recognized Andrew's interest in Miss Martin like a falcon spotting an unfortunate rodent that had popped its head out of a hole.

His memory might be shoddy, but it worked well enough to recall at least some of Kathryn's mocking comments from the past few months. Every time he'd been forced to attend some function or other with Sylvester, Hyacinth, and Kathryn—and there had been far, far too many for his liking—Kathryn had taunted him about the matchmaking mamas who threw their daughters at him even though he was poor, disgraced, and an unlikely candidate for the dukedom now that Chatham had a pregnant wife.

It was lamentable but true that a great many women didn't seem to care what Andrew had done or how poor his prospects were; they simply could not resist a handsome face.

While it was undeniable that he had used Selina Bellamy last Season to get back at Sylvester—believing his cousin was in love with her—he really had empathized with the beautiful woman, who had understood more than anyone he'd ever met how tedious it was to be so physically appealing to members of the opposite sex that people lost their wits.

It had been a bloody relief to spend time with a woman who knew exactly how tiresome, not to mention insulting, such attention felt. As if Andrew's shell was all there was to him. Once his looks were gone—and he would grow old and wrinkly just like anyone else, provided he didn't die first—did that mean there was nothing left of him that was of any interest?

Selina also knew how complaining about her beauty would only irritate those around her. It hadn't surprised him at all that she had eventually fallen in love with a man who had no idea what she looked like. A man who'd fallen in love with her rather than her appearance.

Andrew had tried to explain the problem to Sylvester years ago—long before they had fallen out over Mariah—and his cousin had scoffed. "Poor, poor, Drew! So popular with the ladies that they flock to him like pigeons."

"And that's what you'd like—to be swarmed by pigeons?" he had retorted.

But his cousin had only laughed.

Selina, Kathryn, Hyacinth—and now Miss Martin—were among the very few women not fooled by his face. All four had seen past his appearance to the wreck of a man beneath.

Miss Martin was staring at him, waiting for his response.

"Kathryn chose you because you hate me and that gives her no end of amusement," he said, only partly lying.

"I do not hate you."

"Fine, not hate , but dislike. Certainly, you are not swayed by my looks." He shrugged, uninterested in parsing the finer points of exactly how she despised him. "Unfortunately for you, Lady Kathryn has chosen a husband for you whom she believes you cannot respect." He gave an unamused bark of laughter. "Have you displeased her in some way to earn such treatment?" Andrew did not wait for an answer. "Disregard that question. It doesn't matter why she engineered this. It irritates me to spend time discussing the willful chit. We are left to deal with the repercussions." Which meant marriage, but he wasn't going to bring that up again, not after the look of loathing she'd given him the first time he'd mentioned it. There would be ample time to discuss the subject later, when Kathryn decided to release them.

"You never answered my question about how long she will leave us here?" Miss Martin asked quietly.

He shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"What is in those trunks?" she asked.

He stood and opened the lid on the first one. "Toiletries, candles, and—" Andrew dropped to his haunches and opened a very familiar red leather case. He laughed. The nerve of the girl!

"What is it?" Miss Martin asked.

"My spectacles."

"You wear glasses?"

He cut her a sideways look. "Yes."

"I have never seen you wear them."

"And you shan't today, either." Andrew turned back to the trunk and pawed through the rest of the contents.

"You choose not to wear them because you are vain."

He ignored the comment, only looking up when she laughed. Yet again he was taken by how different she appeared with a genuine smile rather than the prim pursing of lips that usually passed for a smile. "I'm so pleased you find my visual deficiency amusing."

"I am not laughing because you need to wear them. I am laughing because your vanity won't allow you to."

Andrew closed the trunk before moving to the second one, which held a folding chessboard, spillikins, several packs of cards, a faro board, and a half dozen books.

"What is in that one?"

"Games and books." He looked up and smiled grimly. "You asked how long I think she will keep us here? I'm guessing the answer to that is exactly as long as she likes."

Three hours later…

Stacia eased the fourth-to-last stick from the pile without disturbing the other three, and then quickly picked up the remaining ones.

"Congratulations. You won. Again," Lord Shelton said sourly. "May we play something else, now?"

She grinned. "Are you pouting, my lord?"

He snorted.

The winner got to choose the next game and Stacia had won five games in a row. First they had played three games of chess and now two games of spillikins.

"You choose the next game," she said, putting the sticks back into the fancy lacquer case.

"No, no, you won, so you choose. Those are the rules we agreed on. I am no shirker."

He was definitely sulking, and Stacia knew she should not find it so adorable, but…how could she not? This big, strong, gorgeous man was pouting like a toddler because she had beaten him five times running. Stacia wasn't a great chess player—or even a very good one—but Lord Shelton was truly abysmal. He made one headlong, ill-conceived move after the other, losing pieces left and right to no effect.

He was slightly better at spillikins, but still too impatient.

"Do you want to do something else, my lord?"

He suddenly looked alert. "Like what?"

For some reason, Stacia's face heated. "I don't know. Take a nap?"

"A nap?" His handsome face screwed up into an expression of horror, as if she'd suggested they plait each other's hair. "Just how old do you think I am that I'd need a nap in the middle of the day?"

Stacia pulled her lips between her teeth, struggling not to laugh.

"Oh, that amuses you, does it?"

"Since you've brought it up, how old are you?"

"How old do you think I am?" he shot back.

She tilted her head to the side and pretended to study him. Stacia knew how old he was, of course—she knew almost all there was to know about the man. At least all the public information that had been bandied about. Now was her chance to get her own back for that drab little dab comment.

"Not much over forty," she said after a long moment, during which time his frown had deepened.

His eyebrows nearly launched off his forehead. " Forty ?"

Stacia was biting her tongue so hard it was almost bleeding. "Nine-and-thirty?" she asked in a choked voice.

"I am four- and-thirty," he said frostily. "How old are you?"

"It is rude to ask a lady her age."

"Perhaps that's the case when the lady is older. But you cannot be much more than twenty."

"So, what is next," she asked, ignoring his fishing.

"I don't care," he said petulantly.

"Do you want to read for a while?" She knew the answer to that question even before she'd asked. After all, she'd watched him that first evening in the drawing room, when he'd held a book as if he had never held one before, not turning a page the entire time.

He glanced at the stack of books he'd removed from the trunk and scowled. "No, thank you."

Yet again, Stacia had to smother a laugh. Lady Kathryn—if that is truly who'd done this—had included four gothic novels from the Minerva Press and two books that Stacia had already read and adored: Sense and Sensibility and Emma , both written by "a Lady."

"Have you read any of these books?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

He scoffed. "No."

"And yet you are already condemning them."

"They are romantic novels—melodramas."

Stacia smiled.

"Why are you smiling like that?"

"I get to decide what we do next, and I choose to read Emma . Out loud."

"Just one minute! That is not a game."

"I already asked you what you wanted to do, and you said it was my choice."

He bared his teeth.

"Don't worry; I have an excellent reading voice, honed by years of reading aloud to my employers."

Lord Shelton groaned and flung himself back in his chair, resting his forearm over his eyes like a damsel in distress. "Go on, then. Commence the torture."

"At least you are approaching this with an open mind," she said dryly.

He dropped his arm and crossed both over his chest, his expression that of a martyr being lashed to a bundle of kindling.

Struggling not to laugh, she picked up the handsome red leather tooled edition, turned to Volume I, Chapter I, and began reading.

Stacia had been reading for less than a minute and had just uttered the line, " How was she to bear the change?—It was true that her friend was going only half a mile from them—"

"Good lord!" Lord Shelton shouted. "Is this entire book about this annoying chit?"

Stacia held up the book so he could read the gold embossed title.

He muttered something that did not sound complimentary. "If Weston knows what is good for him, he will pack up his new wife and move to the Outer Hebrides."

Stacia laughed.

He dropped his head against the chair back. "Go ahead. I won't interrupt again."

But over the next forty-five minutes Shelton interrupted no fewer than eleven times.

"Mr. Elton was the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young farmer out of Harriet's head. She thought it would be an excellent match—"

Shelton suddenly leapt up from his chair and darted toward her. "God save me from matchmaking women." He plucked the book from Stacia's hands before she knew what he was doing and shoved it under a pile of extra blankets. "No, more. Please, I beg of you, Miss Martin, I cannot endure another word, or I will run amok. No. More."

Stacia laughed. "Are you perhaps not exaggerating a little?"

"Absolutely not. I am underaggerating."

"That's not a word."

"It should be."

"As you capitulated, I suppose that means that I won again?"

"Yes, yes. You won again. Anything to end the agony." His gaze flickered over the now scattered books, games, and cards. "How about Piquet?" he suggested with a hopeful look.

"I am dreadful at it."

"Excellent!" he rubbed his hands together and reached for the cards.

"It is still my choice," she said in a sing-song tone that she knew was annoying.

He growled but dropped the cards. "Well?"

"Let's play Dictionary."

His forehead wrinkled. "How does one play with a dictionary? Does one kick it? Throw it?"

"You don't know how to—" Stacia noticed the slight twitch of his lips. "You are teasing me."

"Yes, I am. I'm not utterly uncouth. I've heard of the game although I've never actually played it." He frowned. "When people played it at school there were always more than two."

"It is easy enough to play with two. One person writes down the real definition and then makes up two false ones to confuse the person guessing. If the person guessing selects the correct one, they get a point. If not, then the person who wrote the definitions gets the point."

He heaved the sigh of a man who'd been pushed almost beyond endurance. "Very well. Who goes first?"

"You may guess first—so I will write the definitions."

Stacia chose a page in the dictionary at random and then closed her eyes and pointed at the page. She opened her eyes, lifted her finger, and said, "The word is indumentum. "

***

Forty-five minutes later…

"You won. Again !" Lord Shelton seethed.

Not only had Stacia won, but the score had been 10 to 2. Lord Shelton's invented definitions had been some of the worst she had ever heard. Also some of the most hilarious.

For the word plaud his two invented definitions had been: a burr in a horse's tail and a horse that is very slow. When he'd had the word maugre he'd made up: the holes in stirrup leather and a breed of pony used in the mountains of Portugal. It had gone on and on. Every single definition he'd invented had had something to do with horses.

"May I have those?" Stacia asked, gesturing to the pile of papers that held his scribbled definitions.

He scooped them up and was about to hand them over but then frowned suspiciously and pulled his hand back. "Why do you want them?"

"I thought I might save them."

"For what?"

"I just w-w-wanted to—to—" Once she started laughing, she could not stop. Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she tipped onto her side on the settee.

Shelton's face appeared above hers, his big body caging her. "I think you are mocking me, Miss Martin."

Stacia rolled her head from side to side. "No—n-no," she gasped in between snorts and chuckles.

"You found my definitions lacking, did you?"

She was laughing too hard to speak, so she shook her head again.

"You are a fibber." His eyes narrowed and then his gaze moved to her mouth. His nostrils flared slightly and then he looked up again, his pupils suddenly huge and black.

Stacia's laughter turned to ragged breathing, her heart thudding loudly, each beat distinct and powerful.

"You look like an entirely different person when you smile and laugh, Miss Martin."

"Everybody does," she said in a breathless voice.

"True. But everybody doesn't look as bewitching as you do."

A whimper slipped from her parted lips.

"I'm going to kiss you. If you don't want me to, now would be the time to say no. "

Stacia did not move, breathe, or make a sound—nothing that could be construed as no. Instead, she prayed more fervently than she had ever prayed in her life. Kiss me. Please, please, please…

Lord Shelton's handsome face flexed into an expression of pleased astonishment. And then his mouth lowered over hers.