Chapter Two

I n London, Lady Eloise soon realized that Jen had been raised to be a lady. Then the stones she had brought away in the lamp proved to be uncut gems. "You are a lady and wealthy," Lady Eloise declared. "We shall find you a chaperone, and you shall enter Society. Why not?"

Jen had grown up on her mother's stories of Society balls, and something in her must have believed them, even as she doubted, for she was thrilled to attend her first. It looked to an observer exactly like Mammi's stories. And an observer was what Jen was, at the first ball and each that followed.

No one asked her to dance. No one spoke to her except for Mrs. Bartley, the distant cousin of Aunt Eloise hired to be her chaperone. No one acknowledged her when she spoke, or in any way indicated they were aware she existed and was present.

One night, unable to sleep after yet another dismal and disappointing evening, she stomped downstairs. The library might have a book to distract her, and better yet, she knew there was brandy in a decanter on the sideboard.

It wasn't fair. Jen could have bought most of the other guests a dozen times over with the money from the stones she'd bundled into the lamp—they turned out to be uncut gems of a very high quality. But because she lacked august bloodlines—or any discernable family at all—she was invisible, except to men who were so obviously fortune hunters that she did not need Mrs. Bartley to warn her not to encourage them.

Frome was at the ball again tonight, which was somehow worse than all the rest. Repellent, miserable, squint-nosed worm!

Except only one of those words was true. Frome was even more handsome in evening dress than he was dressed for riding, and when he smiled—as he did to everyone, except Jen—he was utterly compelling.

He had charm, too. Jen had seen him applying it with a ladle to men and women alike, and they all adored him, from the newest debutante to the oldest dowager—from the youngest cub fresh on the town to the elderly uncles. Again, everyone except Jen.

Miserable numb-brain.

The library was in darkness except for a glow from behind the fire-guard and a shielded candle almost guttering inside its protective cover. Jen used the flame from her lamp to light the candles on the mantlepiece and then on the sideboard. She turned one of the waiting glasses up the right way and poured a finger of brandy. Then, with the lamp in one hand and the brandy in the other, she turned to the bookshelves.

She jumped when a voice spoke from the corner near the guttering candle. "Be careful with that lamp near the books."

Frome.

Her simmering anger at the man made her voice sharp. "See to your own candle, Lord Frome, and I shall see to my lamp."

Frome moved into the candlelight to glare at her. Why did the man have to be so Dag bland gorgeous? Even when frowning? Even when she was furious with him? Even when he had removed his coat and waistcoat so the neat darns on his shirt showed how hard he was trying to fool the ton into thinking that all was well with his estates?

Which wasn't the point, and Jen tried hard never to lie to herself. It wasn't the darns that had her attention, but all the hard muscle shifting under the shirt. To give the devil his due, Frome had apparently been working alongside his tenants ever since his brother died and left a reeking pottle of mess for Frome to inherit. Or so Lady Eloise claimed.

He spread his arms, his own brandy glass dangling from one hand. "Like what you see, do you, Miss Ward?"

She did, but she wasn't going to tell Frome that. "You think a lot of yourself, do you not, Lord Frome?" she asked.

"Not particularly. But I do think I belong here, and you do not."

"You have made that perfectly clear," Jen agreed. "However, in this house, your grandmother's is the opinion that counts." But not outside this house. Lady Eloise Ainsworth was Frome's mother's mother and the daughter of an earl. But she was also the widow of Henry Ainsworth the merchant. In the wider world, she was not nearly as important as a dozen twit-brained crows who happened to have married people with titles.

Frome, who possessed a title and plenty of charm besides, had more influence than any of them. Jen's indignation frothed up and overflowed. "Outside of this house, you have made certain I will not be accepted. Can you not be satisfied with that, instead of attacking me at every turn?"

By the look of affront on Frome's face, he had not expected the attack. "I have never said a word against you."

"Hah!" As if he did not know perfectly well what he had done. Jen would spell it out so he would see that she knew, too. "What conclusion did you expect people to draw when you, the darling of the ton, refuse to dance or even talk with the girl your grandmother is sponsoring? When you stay away from the few entertainments to which I am invited? When, if you cannot avoid being in the same room with me, you ignore me as if I do not exist? I never stood a chance."

She couldn't say anything else, for the hurt had bubbled up and was leaking from her eyes. She turned her back on him, facing the bookshelves, though she could not see them through the tears.

*

Oh damn. The little witch was in tears. Worth—he had been given the first name Ainsworth after his grandfather but had always been called Worth—was embarrassed enough at Miss Ward's accusations without that. What could he say? He had been avoiding her, but not for the reasons she thought. She consumed his mind and fueled some very specific dreams that led him to wonder whether she would consent to becoming his mistress.

Not that he could ask her. Not while she was a guest of his grandmother. And she was correct about him attacking her, too. He had to hold her at arm's length somehow.

After all, who was she? Some relative or accomplice of the men who had kidnapped his grandmother—the authorities in Bristol had failed to run them to ground. She claimed to be the daughter of the sadly simple lady who had been with her and Grandmother when he found them, but the lady did not make the same claim. Most days, she thought Miss Ward was her sister or her maid, and some days, she did not recognize her supposed daughter at all.

To be fair, most days the lady did not know who Grandmother was, either. Nobody could doubt that Mrs. Ward was a lady born and bred, if fallen on hard times. The calluses on her hands supported Miss Ward's claim that Mrs. Ward's skills in embroidery had supported the pair until Miss Ward was old enough to earn money herself.

Furthermore, both Wards shared the same blue-green eyes with a slight tilt to them and the same brown hair with coppery highlights.

Dash it. She was surreptitiously wiping those lovely eyes. If she had made a display of them, he would think it all a show, but… No. Probably he would not. He had seen her front up to a ballroom of harpies out to tear the flesh from any scandal she might represent, and do so without a tear or a tremor. Miss Ward might be a liar, a fraud, and—for all he knew—a thief. But she was not a manipulator.

Worth knew manipulators. He had been ignored in favor of his brother for most of his life, then pursued doggedly by the very harpies who'd dismissed Miss Ward.

"Is there something in my behavior that gives you cause to think I shall embarrass you or Lady Eloise?" Miss Ward asked him, her voice hitching, as if she was suppressing a sob.

The truth was that there was nothing. She had told Grandmother that she had modeled herself on Mrs. Ward since she'd been a tiny child and that Mrs. Ward had scolded her if she failed to walk, eat, sit, speak, or otherwise behave like a lady.

"You know there is not," Worth admitted, with more truculence in his voice than he intended.

"Then you want me to fail because you do not like me." Miss Ward sounded sad, and her voice hitched again.

He wanted to deny the accusation, but he did not want to explain that he was endeavoring to ignore his attraction to her.

"I apologize," he said, instead. "I did not mean to give people the wrong impression." On an inspiration, he explained, "You are living in my grandmother's house and so am I. I thought to protect your reputation." For if he let his true feelings for her show, everyone who saw them would assume he was bedding her.

She turned around at last and glared at him. "Do not think to lie to me, Lord Frome. I might not be of your class, but I am not an idiot."

There was not a lot of Worth could say to that since Miss Ward was in the right and he was in the wrong. Besides, her eyelashes still glistened with the remnants of her tears. Also, the candles on the mantlepiece shone behind her, and in their light, he could see the shadowy outline of her figure through the fine linen of her night-rail and wrap.

He shifted to ease the sudden constriction in his trousers and turned his gaze upward. "I will speak to you at the next ball. How is that?"

Miss Ward started to nod then stopped and looked thoughtful. "I wonder if we might negotiate something better than that. May I be frank, my lord?"

Worth inclined his head and flung out his unoccupied hand with the palm up. He took a sip of his brandy while his lovely nemesis frowned in thought.

"I will pay you two thousand pounds to bring me into fashion," she declared.

Worth choked on his brandy. "I beg your pardon?"

Miss Ward moved to sit in one of the fireside chairs. "You are fashionable and popular. You have, perhaps inadvertently, used that against me. I am unfashionable, unpopular, and unknown, but I am very rich. Think of it as an exchange of favors, if you will. Something of which I have plenty—money, in return for something of which you have plenty—social approval."

Worth did not appreciate the "perhaps." It had damned well been inadvertent. He had worked so hard at not looking in Miss Ward's direction, that he had missed seeing how she was being treated. Worse—he was remembering and reinterpreting some of the comments of the least pleasant-natured of Society's eligibles. And his responses.

"Is Miss Ward a member of your family, my lord? A poor relation, perhaps?" Lady Laura Pincheck had asked, and he had replied, "No relation to me at all, Lady Laura. She is a distant connection of my grandmother." Dear heavens. He had as good as fed her to the hyenas.

"Master Ainsworth," said his long-dead governess in the back of his mind, "you have not acted the part of a gentleman." It was her sternest reproach, and always brought him, at least metaphorically, to his knees.

"I will do my best," he decided. "Keep your money, though, Miss Ward."

"It is not ill-gotten, Lord Frome," she replied, looking anxious. "I expect your grandmother has told you how it came about, and it is the truth. I came across a double handful of pretty stones several years ago and collected them into a lamp I found in the tunnels. I brought them away with me when we escaped the kidnappers, thinking they might be worth something. I had no idea they were gems, and valuable ones at that. But your grandmother was wiser than I, and insisted on them being assessed by her jeweler."

The law might hold that the stones belonged to the property owner, but Worth was not inclined to dispute her ownership. Especially since the property belonged to Edgar Barton, whom Miss Ward called uncle . Mind you, she also claimed that the deceased Freddie Ward, Barton's half-brother, was not really her father. Edgar Ward was Grandmother's kidnapper and had completely disappeared from Bristol. If Miss Ward's story about discovering the stones was true—and Worth had to admit he believed her—then he'd far rather she have them than Barton.

"I do not want to be paid to do the right thing," Worth insisted. Though two thousand pounds was just what he needed to pay enough of the mortgage on the most at-risk estate to have a chance of keeping the bailiffs from his door. "Why did you suggest two thousand?" he asked.

It was an idle question until Miss Ward blushed.