Chapter 14

First, Quinton would disembowel Pisspot. Then he’d wrap his entrails around the man’s neck like a cravat and—

“Do stop pacing, Lord Noble. It’s not conducive to coherent thought.” Lady Templeton couldn’t even see him, her focus trained entirely out the window.

Quinton did not stop pacing, and no matter which side of the room his legs led him to, his gaze remained trained on the door Lottie had disappeared through.

“Perhaps,” Lady Prudence said in the calm sort of tone one reserved for recalcitrant children, “you should leave, Mr. Bailey, Lord Norton. I do appreciate your worry. And your support. But it would be best if you were, ahem, not here.”

Lord Norton bowed and backed toward the door. “Yes. As you wish. I do not wish to intrude. I merely did not wish you to feel alone.”

Collective sighs rose from the assembled ladies as Lord Norton made his escape, leaving only Bailey, who rooted himself to the floor.

He snorted. “I won’t leave. There must be some way for me to help, Lady Prudence.”

Lady Prudence’s eye twitched. “I assure you, my lord, we are quite capable of managing the affair and wish only to be alone.”

Bailey crossed his arms.

Bloody hell. “I’ll fix this.” With a sigh, Quinton clapped his hand on his friend’s shoulder and dragged him from the room. He slammed the door and heard a screech of wood against wood. The crafty ladies lodging a chair against the door? He hoped so. “Look, Bailey.” He shoved him toward the entryway. “Know when you’re not needed. Don’t make a fool of yourself. You can’t possibly want to wed the chit. Didn’t know you were even interested.”

Bailey dug in his heels. “You’ve no idea what I’m interested in.”

“Am I going to have to bodily remove you from the residence?”

“You can’t.”

“I can, and what would Lady Prudence think of it?”

Bailey ripped out of Quinton’s grip. “I’ll leave.”

“Good.” Quinton clapped his hands as Bailey threw open the front door.

“I’ll be back.”

“I don’t bloody care. Just not today.” Now… where had Lottie gone?

Crash. The sound of something fragile hitting the wall. Smash. Another.

Quinton ran, threw open the door muffling the sounds of chaos.

Her back was too him, rigid and quivering, her hands hard fists at her sides. If her curls were perfectly coiled and smooth, if her gown was pristine and pastel, the woman, the soul beneath that thin veneer of propriety and perfection trembled.

He took a step toward her, no clue what he’d say. No idea what he’d do.

“Leave me.” Her voice echoed as she’d been possessed by a goddess with a voice vaster than the starry sky.

“I’d rather not.”

She whirled to face him, her complexion mottled red and white, her lovely lips lost to a thin line of sorrow leashed tightly beneath anger. “What good can you do me? What good can you do my sisters?”

Excellent questions. He couldn’t truly disembowel Pisspot. He couldn’t erase what had happened. He could not stop the whispers. The cuts. The ruination.

“Nothing. You can do nothing.” She whirled back around, her shoulders slumped. For only a moment. Then she threw them back and lifted an arm lightly to the side. “If I were a man, they’d clap me on the back, laugh. I’d receive a lecture, perhaps. Keep your reading proclivities secret, lad. But I’m not a man, so I am judged. Censured. Ruined.” A laugh, hard and bitter and brittle. “I do not worry for myself. But my sisters”—a sob as she clutched her hands to her chest, fell to her knees, hung her head low—“my sisters.” A howl rose from her, a scream of indignation, hurt, and rage, and two steps was all it took to bring him to her, to see him hit his knees beside her, one leg near her feet the other near her knees, his arm snaking round her shoulders.

She yanked away from him, almost growling, her golden curls falling, falling, in a torrent down her back. “I do not need your pity. It is my fault alone, and I alone should suffer.”

He held her tighter, let her push and fight against him until she was empty, drained, immobile, slumped against him, using his strength to remain upright. When her breathing slowed, he put his knuckle beneath her chin and nudged her face out of hiding where it had retreated against his chest. No tears there in her blue eyes.

“Have you cried all this time?” He lifted a brow.

“No, and I won’t. Not for myself.” A hitch at the end of her sentence. Not for herself she’d cry, but for others… yes.

He smoothed his thumb over her lips. “Settle down, Merriweather.”

Her anger returned, making stiff angles of her usually soft curves. Good.

“Stop the hysterics,” he commanded, “and look at me.”

She did, her eyes sparking pools of blue.

“We’ll show them, Merriweather. Every bloody gossip who thinks they can muddy your name or cut your sister.” Energy and purpose pounded through his veins. “We’ll show them you’re not to be ignored or discarded.” One palm on her cheek and the other wound around her shoulders, they leaned toward one another. God, she was strong, raving when she had every right to melt, ready to burn the world down when she could pour herself into grief, and no one would judge her for it.

Not Lottie, strong and defiant. Magnificent.

He tightened his arms, seeing only one way forward as the anger in her gaze flashed into curiosity.

“We’ll marry, Merriweather.”

If he’d held a soft female body with lightning striking across every inch of her skin before, now he held a statue, cold and confused, her curiosity blinking out, giving way to something darker—doubt.

She tried to rip from his hold.

He held her tighter, crushed her body to his.

“Do not tease me. It’s hateful.”

“I do not tease.”

“How could you not?” She wriggled, flattened her palms against his chest, and pushed. “You! Of course, you tease, you—”

He kissed her, not soft and seeking as he’d kissed her in the woods. But hard, bending her neck back, moving his palm to cup the back of her head, and devouring her, taking what he’d wanted, the only thing he’d wanted, for six damn years. Her—filling every one of his senses. The smell of her, the taste, the velvet of her skin. The perfection of her little gasp. He kissed her until she clutched him to her, doubting, pushing palms transformed into desperate, clinging fists. Then her lips moved against his, sweet and needy, and he parted them, tasting the cavern of her mouth, swallowing her little gasp. He trailed his lips down her jaw.

“Don’t answer me yet, Merriweather. Try my kiss out first. See if you like it, then give your response. I’d not deny you a sampling.”

Her hands made chains on the back of his neck as she let her head drop back on her neck so he could scatter kisses along the perfect length of it. When his lips reached the delicate swell of her bosom, he tasted the salt of her skin, drawing his tongue along the skin rubbed pink by the edge of her low-cut bodice.

“If you’ll still not have me after this,” he said, “I’ve not done my job.”

Her breaths became heavy, heady pants, and she lifted her head. Her blue eyes meeting his gaze were fogged with lust, and she yanked him down so that the sides of their noses rested side by side, and her lips brushed his as she spoke.

“I’ll have you, Chance. I’ll have you.”

He kissed her again, pulled her belly to his, and dragged her to her feet, needing the entire lush length of her flush against his hardening body. Lip to lip, sipping and drowning, he walked her backward until the back of her legs hit a small couch. She fell onto it, never falling away from his body as he floated down with her, hitting his knees before her like a knight pledging his protection.

That’s what he was doing.

He tore away from the kiss, holding her face in both hands. “I will protect you.”

Between breaths, she said, “I believe you.”

A feeling unlike any he’d ever encountered before tore through him, sliced him clean in two, and he held to her tighter, pressing their foreheads together, a feeble attempt to keep himself from falling apart. He wanted to pledge not just his protection…

He wanted to pledge his soul.

He should heed the warning bells ringing against his skull and run.

She nudged him with her nose and took his lips once more, her fingers stroking the back of his neck, her skin heating beneath his touch. She asked for much without words, and he wanted to give it all to her.

Doubt pricked needles along his spine and put distance between their bodies, tore their lips apart with a breath of hesitancy.

She licked her lips. “You do not have to… sacrifice yourself to save me. I can save myself. Somehow. I’ll figure it out.”

He should abandon this fool plan, solidify his hesitancy into a wall of distance. Unclimbable, safe. But all he could manage to say was, “Use those lovely lips for something other than talking, Merriweather, and kiss me.”

And when she did this time, a laugh in her throat as she tugged him upward to join her on the couch, his heart, long sleeping, blinked awake and found itself exactly where it had been when it had closed its eyes and given way to slumber—in Lady Charlotte Merriweather’s hands.

Damn. He pulled away and found her smiling. No wonder. The kiss had tasted different. Of sunshine instead of salt. He traced his knuckles down the side of her face.

“Well, Merriweather, what’s it to be? Do I pass your examination? Will we wed?”

“You would do this for me?”

“Let me protect you.” The only thing he could say, and it wasn’t exactly the right thing, the thing she wanted to hear, because her hands pulled away, folded in her lap.

She took a shaky breath, nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I think I’ll allow that.”

“Shall we marry quickly and douse the flames of your scandal with another? Or shall we act the perfectly proper pair and wait until the banns are read?”

“Wait.” She bit her lip, squeezed her eyes tightly closed. “No.” They popped open and found him, blazing with decision. “We marry soon. And big. It must be a bit of an exhibition. Our story must be loud enough to drown out the other voices.”

“As you wish, Merriweather.” He shouldn’t, but he kissed the tip of her nose, the high bump of her cheek bone, the tip of her chin. These kisses somehow sweeter and more troubling than the others for how perfect they felt. “As it pleases you.” He needed distance, needed fire, needed steel. “But later, when we are alone and man and wife, it will be as I wish. Do you understand?”

She swallowed, nodded, and he kissed her once more, hard and fast and demanding and damning. Damning him. Not her. Never her.

Dream or nightmare? Lottie could not decide. As Quinton left her to find Samuel, and she rejoined the other women with numb legs, the rest of her body vibrating, she vacillated. She would marry Quinton. Dream, that, one she’d had often and despaired of just as regularly. But he’d offered out of duress, and she’d accepted because it remained the only light in a bleak situation with no clear solution.

Marrying Quinton, a solution? She almost laughed. Instead, she pressed her fingers to her lips where his had so recently rested, tasted. It had felt like desire, like adoration, like a promise. A promise of protection, yes. That alone. She held on to that because it at least offered some stability and pushed through into the drawing room.

“Lottie.” Prudence rushed toward her, grabbed her elbows, squeezed them tight. “Are you well?”

Lottie nodded. “Where has everyone gone?” The room was empty but for Prudence.

“Home, I assume. Off, at least. There’s… there’s not much we can do. Not much they can do but distance themselves.”

“Lottie! Pru!” Her twin sisters, Isabela and Imogen, tumbled into the room, arms linked, blonde curls bobbing, voices raised as one. “I just returned. The gossip is all over the place.”

Isabela scrunched up her nose. “You don’t want to hear what they’re saying. Horrid. As if being in possession of a book means you’re no better than a—”

“Please do not finish that sentence,” Lottie said. “None of that matters. I’ve a solution.”

Her sisters came to stand before her in a straight line, heads tilted at various angles, waiting.

“Well?” Prudence prodded.

“What is it?” Isabella bounced on her toes.

Imogen waited patiently, head tilted to one side.

“I’m marrying Lord Noble.” Lottie said it with as much confidence as she could muster.

Her sisters melted in different directions, reaching for chairs and couches and sinking low, mouths hanging open.

“You jest,” Prudence said.

Lottie shook her head.

“How?” Isabella demanded.

No need to get into those details. “It’s a perfect solution. An unexpected wedding to set tongues wagging. It will give gossips something to talk about other than that cursed book.” She looked to Isabella, who lived on gossip as well as she lived on air. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s daft.” Imogen drummed her fingers against the couch cushions, scowled. “This is not a fairy story where the prince can ride in and save the day.”

“I think it might work,” her twin said. “Lord Noble marrying Lady Charlotte. An unlikely match. And if he puts it about that he does not care about the book or—better—that it is his, there’s a chance of escaping only a little singed. Your parties might not be quite the crushes you desire. Or”—she shrugged—“the scandal will make them even more crowded.”

“Oh, yes,” Prudence said, “deny the book’s very existence.” She sat up straight, popping a palm over her mouth. “Oh no! What is that? I’ve never seen anything like it! A… book you say? About what?” She screeched the last word, then fell backward into her chair, the back of one hand against her forehead as if in a swoon.

“See,” said Imogen, “you do not even need Lord Noble. Simply deny everything.”

Would he consider that? Once the panic of the moment calmed?

Lottie waved her hands. “No, no. I must marry Quinton.”

“You must explain what’s going on!” Samuel’s voice boomed into the room before he did, carried on long legs taking dangerously snappy strides.

Quinton followed quickly on Samuel’s heels, irritation ticking in his jaw. “I’ve already explained everything, Clearford. Leave your sister alone.”

Samuel whirled to face his friend. “I don’t trust you. You have been courting other women. You have never showed a bit of interest in Lottie, and you—”

“Have you been outside this damn house since yesterday’s excursion to the park?” Quinton demanded.

“I hardly see how that signifies.”

“There’s gossip about your sister, and I’m offering to silence it. Muffle it a little at least.”

Their voices rose high and bounced about the walls. The twins stood, inching slowly toward the door.

“Stay,” Samuel barked. They sat, arm in arm, and Samuel pinned Lottie with a gaze sharper than his knives. “What’s he talking about?”

Their brother was never supposed to know. But they could no longer keep the books, the library, a secret from him. She took a breath, her last deep one before everything she’d hidden for five years spilled from between her lips.

“I put a book in Lottie’s reticule,” Quinton said. “A joke. I meant for her to find it later, at home, but it fell out in the park yesterday, and Pissp… Phillipspots saw.”

“A book?” Samuel’s eyes narrowed, and his hands twitched. “What kind of book, Noble?”

“Don’t skewer me, Clearford. Hands away from the knives.”

Ridiculous. She’d been asked a question, but she’d not said a single word yet. She pushed between her brother and her betrothed. Betrothed? So odd to think, yet… so thrilling. No matter the circumstances. They shifted to continue glaring at one another over her shoulder.

“Samuel, Quinton is trying to help, but he’s not telling the—”

Quinton’s hands rested on her shoulders, and he spun her to face him. “Quinton is trying to help.” He lifted a brow. “So let him.”

Let him take the credit? Because he could and survive. But she could not. She nodded and swallowed her pride. No other choice.

Quinton spoke to Samuel over her head. “We’ve had a… flirtation. I took it too far.”

Slowly she faced her brother once more.

His furrowed brow spoke of confusion, worry. “Is this true, Lottie?”

“Yes. I’ve been courting him.” Quinton produced a gurgling sound, but she didn’t spare him a glance. “And using your Guide, Samuel. I must say I find it flawed. In the end, it’s a tease gone wrong that finds me betrothed and not any advice from your book.”

“Are you marrying him, Lottie?” Samuel asked. “Truly?”

“Do you dislike it? Truly?”

Quinton stood beside her, and it felt like they were a team, facing this first smaller challenge before they walked into the world together to face a much greater one. His fingers brushed against the back of her arm, reassuring.

Samuel sighed. “It’s unexpected. I had no idea.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes.” Harder to say than she’d thought it would be. Because it was not for the reasons she wanted.

Quinton’s hand found hers, squeezed, lifted it, and kissed her knuckles. A shiver, a bolt of energy streaking through her.

“Yes.” The single word much stronger now. “This is what I want.”

Quinton smirked. The Noble Smirk—and pinned on Samuel. “Well, Clearford. Do we have your approval?”

Samuel growled and stormed toward the door. “Yes. I see no other option. But.” In the doorway, he faced his three other, silent sisters. “You three marry next. And no scandals this time. Neither Lottie nor Annie married who they were supposed to.” He scratched his head. “It’s as if none of you are actually doing as you should. I cannot do all the work to get you wed. In fact.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve heard lately of a matchmaker. From Edinburgh. I think I’ll write to request her help.” He left, and the quality of the silence rippling in his wake was rather… stunned.

“Does he mean it?” Isabella asked.

“A matchmaker?” Imogen stared up at the ceiling as if the said individual could be found up there.

“Surely not.” Prudence snorted.

The three turned toward Lottie and Quinton, stood, and ambled closer. They gathered round Quinton tightly, a tiny pride of lionesses with sharp teeth and claws. Quinton tugged at this cravat, looking to Lottie for help. She stepped to the side. Let the lions have him.

“You’re going to marry Lottie, then?” Prudence asked.

“Ah, yes. I am,” Quinton answered.

“And you’re going to take care of this scandal?” Isabella asked.

“I’ll do my best.”

“See that you do.” Imogen showed her teeth, and then the twins followed Prudence out of the room, and Lottie and Quinton were alone.

“I don’t remember them being quite as terrifying as they are,” Quinton said.

“You never paid them much attention. The twins are only six years younger than me, but they are a full decade younger than you.”

“You never seemed much younger than me.”

“I have always been precocious.”

He snorted.

She laughed.

And as naturally as a vine twining round a trellis, his arm snaked around her waist, pulled her close enough to steal her breath. Or for her to give it willingly in a kiss that surprised her, unbalanced her, so she had to wrap her arms around his neck to remain standing. Leaning. Against him, allowing herself to accept his help, thrilling at the notion that they would soon be partners instead of adversaries. They would silence the gossip and reclaim her sisters’ futures. Together.