The duchess frowned in surprise. “Why is that?”
“I cannot find it in my heart to forgive him for the misery he has caused her.” Recalling again that he had let Elizabeth believe his home was a modest cottage in Scotland, she added, “And I cannot trust him.” Turning to Lucinda for reinforcement, Alex asked for her opinion.
Lucinda, who’d been apprised of Ian’s actions last night by Elizabeth, looked up from her needlework. “In the matter of Mr. Thornton,” she replied noncommittally, “I now prefer to withhold judgment.”
“I was not suggesting,” the dowager said, irritated with such unprecedented opposition, “that you should fall into his arms if he made you an offer. His behavior, excepting last night, has been completely reprehensible.” She broke off as Bentner appeared in the doorway, his expression one of distress and ire.
“Your uncle is here, Miss Elizabeth.”
“There is no damned need to announce me,” Julius informed him, striding down the hall to the morning room. “This is my house.” Elizabeth stood up, intending to go somewhere private to hear whatever distressing thing he was bound to tell her, just as Uncle Julius stopped cold in the doorway, flushing a little at the realization she had female guests. “Have you seen Thornton?” he asked her.
“Yes, why?”
“I must say I’m proud of the way you’ve obviously taken it. I was afraid you’d fly into the boughs over not being told. There’s a great deal of money involved here, and I’ll not have you turning missish so that he wants it back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Perhaps we ought to leave,” Alexandra suggested.
“There’s no need for privacy,” he said, tugging at his neckcloth, suddenly looking uncharacteristically apprehensive. “I’d as lief discuss this with Elizabeth in front of her friends. You are, I collect, her friends?”
Elizabeth had a horrible feeling that he was relying on her guests to keep her from making “a scene,” which is bow he described any sort of verbal opposition, no matter how quiet. “Shall we adjourn to the front drawing room?” he said in the tone of one issuing an instruction, not an invitation. “There’s more room.”
The duchess’s face turned icy at his impertinence and lack of taste, but then she glanced at Elizabeth, noting her sudden stillness and her alarmed expression, and she nodded curtly.
“There’s no point in rushing into the matter,” Julius said as he started down the hall, accompanied by the group that had been in the morning room. It wasn’t just the money that pleased Julius so much; it was the triumph he felt because, in dealing with a man as incredibly astute as Thornton was purported to be, Julius Cameron had emerged the absolute victor.
“I believe an introduction is in order, Elizabeth,” Julius said when they entered the drawing room.
Elizabeth automatically presented him to the duchess, her mind ringing with alarm over an unknown threat, and when her uncle said, “I’d like some tea before we get into this,” her alarm escalated to fear because he’d never partaken of anything since Bentner had put the purgative in his drink. He was stalling for time, she realized, to phrase his explanation; that alone meant it was news of the utmost import.
* * *
Oblivious to the park they were driving past on the way to Elizabeth’s address, Ian idly tapped his gloves against his knee. Twice, women he’d met last night waved at him and smiled, but he didn’t notice. His mind was occupied with the explanations he intended to make to Elizabeth. At all costs, she must not think he wanted to marry her out of pity or guilt, for Elizabeth was not only beautiful, she was proud; and her pride would make her oppose their betrothal. She was also courageous and stubborn, and if she discovered their betrothal was already an established fact, she sure as hell wasn’t going to like that either, and Ian couldn’t blame her. She had been the most sought-after beauty ever to hit the London scene two years ago; she was entitled to be courted properly.
No doubt she’d want to get a little of her own back by pretending she didn’t want him, but that was one thing that didn’t concern him. They had wanted each other from that first night in the garden. They had wanted each other every time they’d been together since then. She was innocence and courage; passion and shyness; fury and forgiveness. She was serene and regal in a ballroom; jaunty and skillful with a pistol in her hands; passionate and sweet in his arms. She was all of that, and much more.
And he loved her. If he was honest, he’d have to admit he had loved her from the moment she’d taken on a roomful of angry men in a card room—a young, golden princess, outnumbered by her subjects, dwarfed by their size, scornful of their attitude.
She had loved him, too; it was the only explanation for everything that had happened the weekend they met and the three days they were together in Scotland. The only difference was that Elizabeth didn’t have the advantage of Ian’s years and experience, or of his upbringing. She was a young, sheltered English girl who thought the strongest emotion two people could or should feel for one another was “a lasting attachment.”
She didn’t know, could not yet comprehend, that love was a gift that had been given to them in a torchlit garden the moment they met. A smile touched his lips as he thought of her in the garden the night they met; she could challenge a roomful of men, but in the garden, when she was flirting with him, she’d been so nervous that she’d rubbed her palms against her knees. That memory was one of the sweetest.
Ian smiled in amused self-mockery. In every other facet of his life he was coolly practical; where Elizabeth was concerned he was alternately blind and reactionary or, like now, positively besotted. On his way here this morning he’d stopped at London’s most fashionable jeweler and made purchases that had left the proprietor, Mr. Phineas Weatherborne, caught somewhere between ecstasy and disbelief, bowing Ian out the front door. In fact, there was a betrothal ring in Ian’s pocket, but he’d only taken it with him because he didn’t think it needed to be sized. He would not put it on Elizabeth’s finger until she was prepared to admit she loved him, or at least that she wanted to marry him. His own parents had loved one another unashamedly and without reservation. He wanted nothing less from Elizabeth, which, he thought wryly, was a little odd, given the fact that he hadn’t expected or truly wanted the same thing from Christina.
The only problem that didn’t concern him was Elizabeth’s reaction to discovering that she was already betrothed to him, or worse, that he’d been made to pay to get her. There was no reason for her to know the former yet, and no reason for her ever to know the latter. He had specifically warned her uncle that he would deal with both those matters himself.
All the houses on Promenade Street were white with ornamental wrought-iron gates at the front. Although they were not nearly so imposing as the mansions on Upper Brook Street, it was a pretty street, with fashionable women in pastel bonnets and gowns strolling by on the arms of impeccably dressed men.
As Ian’s driver pulled his grays to a stop before the Cameron house, Ian noticed the two carriages already waiting in the street in front of him, but he paid no heed to the rented hack behind him. Irritably contemplating the impending confrontation with Elizabeth’s insolent butler, he was walking up the front steps when Duncan’s voice called his name, and he turned in surprise.
“I arrived this morning,” Duncan explained, turning to look askance at two dandies who were mincing down the street, garbed in wasp-waisted coats and chin-high shirt points dripping with fobs and seals. “Your butler informed me you were here. I thought—that is, I wondered how things were going.”
“And since my butler didn’t know,” Ian concluded with amused irritation, “you decided to call on Elizabeth and see if you could discover for yourself?”
“Something like that,” the vicar said calmly. “Elizabeth regards me as a friend, I think. And so I planned to call on her and, if you weren’t here, to put in a good word for you.”
“Only one?” Ian said mildly.
The
vicar did not back down; he rarely did, particularly in matters of morality or justice. “Given your treatment of her, I was hard pressed to think of one. How did matters turn out with your grandfather?”
“Well enough,” Ian said, his mind on meeting with Elizabeth. “He’s here in London.”
“And?”
“And,” Ian said sardonically, “you may now address me as ‘my lord.’ ”
“I’ve come here,” Duncan persisted implacably, “to address you as ‘the bridegroom.’ ”
A flash of annoyance crossed Ian’s tanned features. “You never stop pressing, do you? I’ve managed my own life for thirty years, Duncan. I think I can do it now.”
Duncan had the grace to look slightly abashed. “You’re right, of course. Shall I leave?”
Ian considered the benefits of Duncan’s soothing presence and reluctantly shook his head. “No. In fact, since you’re here,” he continued as they neared the top step, “you may as well be the one to announce us to the butler. I can’t get past him.”
Duncan lifted the knocker while bestowing a mocking glance on Ian. “You can’t get past the butler, and you think you’re managing very well without me?”
Declining to rise to that bait, Ian remained silent. The door opened a moment later, and the butler looked politely from Duncan, who began to give his name, to Ian. To Duncan’s startled disbelief, the door came crashing forward in his face. An instant before it banged into its frame Ian twisted, slamming his shoulder into it and sending the butler flying backward into the hall and ricocheting off the wall. In a low, savage voice he said, “Tell your mistress I’m here, or I’ll find her myself and tell her.”
With a glance of furious outrage the older man considered Ian’s superior size and powerful frame, then turned and started reluctantly for a room ahead and to the left, where muted voices could be heard.
Duncan eyed Ian with one gray eyebrow lifted and said sardonically, “Very clever of you to ingratiate yourself so well with Elizabeth’s servants.”
The group in the drawing room reacted with diverse emotions to Bentner’s announcement that “Thornton is here and forced his way into the house.” The dowager duchess looked fascinated, Julius looked both relieved and dismayed, Alexandra looked wary, and Elizabeth, who was still preoccupied with her uncle’s unstated purpose for his visit, looked nonplussed. Only Lucinda showed no expression at all, but she laid her needlework aside and lifted her face attentively toward the doorway.
“Show him in here, Bentner,” her uncle said, his voice unnaturally loud in the emotionally charged silence.
Elizabeth felt a shock at seeing Duncan walk into the room beside Ian, and a greater one when Ian ignored everyone else and came directly to her, his gaze searching her face. “I trust you’re suffering no ill effects from the ordeal last night?” he said in a gentle tone as he took her hand and lifted her fingertips to his lips.
Elizabeth thought he looked breathtakingly handsome in a coat and waistcoat of rust superfine that set off his wide shoulders, biscuit trousers that hugged his long legs, and a cream silk shirt that emphasized the tan of his face and throat. “Very well, thank you,” she answered, trying to ignore the warmth tingling up her arm as he kept her hand for a long moment before he reluctantly released it and allowed her to handle the introductions.
Despite her grave concern over her uncle, Elizabeth chuckled inwardly as she introduced Duncan. Everyone exhibited the same stunned reaction she had when she’d discovered Ian Thornton’s uncle was a cleric. Her uncle gaped, Alex stared, and the dowager duchess glowered at Ian in disbelief as Duncan politely bent over her hand. “Am I to understand, Kensington,” she demanded of Ian, “that you are related to a man of the cloth?”
Ian’s reply was a mocking bow and a sardonic lift of his brows, but Duncan, who was desperate to put a light face on things, tried ineffectually to joke about it. “The news always has a peculiar effect on people,” he told her.
“One needn’t think too hard to discover why,” she replied gruffly.
Ian opened his mouth to give the outrageous harridan a richly deserved setdown, but Julius Cameron’s presence was worrying him; a moment later it was infuriating him as the man strode to the center of the room and said in a bluff voice, “Now that we’re all together, there’s no reason to dissemble. Bentner, bring champagne. Elizabeth, congratulations. I trust you’ll conduct yourself properly as a wife and not spend the man out of what money he has left.”
In the deafening silence no one moved, except it seemed to Elizabeth that the entire room was beginning to move. “What?” she breathed finally.
“You’re betrothed.”
Anger rose up like flames licking inside her, spreading up her limbs. “Really?” she said in a voice of deadly calm, thinking of Sir Francis and John Marchman. “To whom?”
To her disbelief, Uncle Julius turned expectantly to Ian, who was looking at him with murder in his eyes. “To me,” he clipped, his icy gaze still on her uncle.
“It’s final,” Julius warned her, and then, because he assumed she’d be as pleased as he to discover she had monetary value, he added, “He paid a fortune for the privilege. I didn’t have to give him a shilling.” Elizabeth, who had no idea the two men had ever met before, looked at Ian in wild confusion and mounting anger. “What does he mean?” she demanded in a strangled whisper.
“He means,” Ian began tautly, unable to believe all his romantic plans were being demolished, “we are betrothed. The papers have been signed.”
“Why, you—you arrogant, overbearing”—She choked back the tears that were cutting off her voice—“you couldn’t even be bothered to ask me?”
Dragging his gaze from his prey with an effort, Ian turned to Elizabeth, and his heart wrenched at the way she was looking at him. “Why don’t we go somewhere private where we can discuss this?” he said gently, walking forward and taking her elbow.
She twisted free, scorched by his touch. “Oh, no!” she exploded, her body shaking with wrath. “Why guard my sensibilities now? You’ve made a laughingstock of me since the day I set eyes on you. Why stop now?”
“Elizabeth,” Duncan put in gently, “Ian is only trying to do the right thing by you, now that he realizes what a sad state you—”
“Shut up, Duncan!” Ian commanded furiously, but it was too late; Elizabeth’s eyes had widened with horror at being pitied.
“And just what sort of ‘sad state,’ ” she demanded, her magnificent eyes shining with tears of humiliation and wrath, “do you think I’m in?”
Ian caught her elbow. “Come with me, or I’ll carry you out of here.”
He meant it, and Elizabeth jerked her elbow free, but she nodded. “By all means,” she said furiously.
Shoving open the door of the first room he came to, Ian drew Elizabeth inside and closed it behind them. She walked to the center of the little salon and whirled on him, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “You monster!” she hissed. “How dare you pity me!”
It was exactly the conclusion Ian knew she’d draw, and exactly the reaction he would have expected from the proud beauty who’d let him believe in Scotland that her life was a frivolous social whirl, her home a virtual palace. Hoping to diffuse some of her anger, he tried to divert her with a logical debate over her choice of words. “There’s a great difference between regretting one’s actions and pitying the person who suffered for them.”
“Don’t you dare play word games with me!” she said, her voice trembling with fury.
Inwardly, Ian smiled with pride at her perspicacity; even in a state of shock, Elizabeth knew when she was being gulled. “I apologize,” he conceded quietly. He walked forward, and Elizabeth retreated until her back touched a chair, then she held her ground, glaring at him. “Nothing but the truth will do in a situation like this,” he agreed, putting his hands on her rigid shoulders. Knowing she’d laugh in his face if he tried to convince her now that he loved her, he told her something she should
believe: “The truth is that I want you. I have always wanted you, and you know that.”
“I hate that word,” she burst out, trying unsuccessfully to break free of his grasp.
“I don’t think you know what it means.”
“I know you say it every time you force yourself on me.”
“And every time I do, you melt in my arms.”
“I will not marry you,” Elizabeth said furiously, mentally circling for some way out. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you.”
“But you do want me,” he told her with a knowing smile.
“Stop saying that, damn you! I want an old husband, I told you that,” she cried, mindlessly saying anything she could think of to put him off. “I want my life to be mine. I told you that, too. And you came dashing to England and—and bought me.” That brought her up short, and her eyes began to blaze.
“No,” he stated firmly, though it was splitting hairs, “I made a settlement on your uncle.”
The tears she’d been fighting valiantly to hide began to spill over her lashes. “I am not a pauper,” she cried. “I am not a p-pauper,” she repeated, her voice choking with tears. “I have—bad—a dowry, damn you. And if you were so stu-stupid you let him swindle you out of it, it serves you right!”
Ian was torn between laughing, kissing her, and murdering her heartless uncle.
“How dare you make bargains I didn’t agree to?” she blazed while tears spilled from her wondrous eyes. “I’m not a piece of chattel, no matter what my uncle thi-thinks. I’d have found some way out of marrying Belhaven. I would have,” she cried fiercely. “I would have found a way to keep Havenhurst myself without my uncle. You had no right, no right to bargain with my uncle. You’re no better than Belhaven!”
“You’re right,” Ian admitted grimly, longing to draw her into his arms and absorb some of her pain, and then it hit him—a possible way to neutralize some of her humiliation and opposition. Recalling how proud she’d been of her own bargaining ability with tradesmen when she’d spoken of it in Scotland, he tried to enlist her participation now. “As you said, you’re perfectly capable of bargaining for yourself.” Coaxingly, he said, “Will you bargain with me, Elizabeth?”