“Contrived?” Canting his head at a museful angle, Colton debated her use of that particular word and the charge she laid to him. “I don’t think I’ve ever deliberately contrived enthusiasm for a lady in all my life, certainly not one who appeals to me. If they happen not to, I simply dismiss myself from their presence. At the moment, Adriana, I’m looking forward to becoming better acquainted with you in the weeks to come. If you feel a need to warn our parents, perhaps you should advise them not to take too much stock in what they see until the day I actually propose. Considering the circumstances that bind us together for the present time, that seems the simplest solution, one that will not hinder me overmuch.”
Adriana’s heart sank. Already she could foresee the disaster looming ahead of her in the months to come. What defense had an innocent virgin against a man adeptly skilled in the art of seducing women?
The guests smilingly opened a path for the couple, allowing them to move through their midst. As they did so, old acquaintances greeted Colton with enthusiastic pats on the back, hearty handshakes, or humorous quips spoken from afar by those unable to breech the crowd. The resulting laughter caused Adriana to cringe, requiring her to lean closer to her own friends to hear their whispered comments lauding the handsomeness of the swain at her side.
The enthusiasm evoked from acquaintances and friends did much to reinforce the jeer that snidely twisted the apprentice’s lips as the couple approached the door where he had stationed himself. Seeing his hopes dissipating before his very eyes, Roger had decided he’d have to try to halt his lordship’s possession of the lady by his own physical endeavors. It didn’t matter that the marquess was an experienced soldier, or that he was taller, stronger, and skillfully adept with his fists. Roger was desperate. It was either dispense with Colton Wyndham or see his aspirations fade into oblivion.
Here at the central door of the ballroom was where he would begin his efforts to dislodge the retired colonel from the heart of the maid. A strategic placement of a chair and his splayed-leg stance beside it came nigh to forming a barricade for the two. Whether it would prove impenetrable remained to be seen.
Contemplating the hindrance threatening their departure from the room, Colton had to wonder if he’d soon be involved in another altercation with the apprentice. If such a confrontation came about, he promised himself he’d give the lad an even harsher lesson than he had before. Perhaps it would serve the whelp his just due if he beat some truth into that dense brain of his, for Roger did indeed seem slow at grasping the facts. The truth of the matter was that the lady was not his and would never be.
Adriana’s steps faltered as she neared the door. She turned slightly to peer up at Colton, but the pressure of the manly hand resting on the small of her back urged her gently forward.
“No need to fear, Adriana,” Colton murmured. “If Roger insists on settling this matter with violence, I shall invite him outside. There’ll be less chance of our disrupting the festivities out there.”
Sneering in contempt as Adriana sought to move around the barrier he had placed to prevent their departure, Roger stepped forward to block her path. “Well, it certainly has become obvious tonight that you don’t have the fortitude to declare your independence and have now capitulated to the late Lord Randwulf’s plans to marry you off to his son. I thought you were made of sterner stuff, but I realize I was mistaken. I should never have let myself believe there was any hope for me, not when there was a title of marchioness dangling before your fine nose. You make me sorry I ever hoped you’d be different.” Turning his lips as if repulsed by what he saw, he swept his gaze down the length of her, yet his heart ached most dreadfully as he feigned disgust, for she was absolutely the most ravishing creature he had ever seen in his life. With her fine, porcelain skin, silkily lashed dark eyes, and softly curving mouth, she put to shame all the painted doxies he had ever sampled in London. “You’re just like every female who has ever been born, ambitious for a title and prestige—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Elston,” Colton interrupted curtly. “You’re making much ado about a matter the lady had no hand in devising. I sought her out for reasons of my own. If you have some claim upon her that restricts her from dancing with anyone but you, I wasn’t aware of it. Nor do I know of any constraints that require your permission ere I approach her.” Elevating a dark brow, he probed caustically, “Do you have such a claim upon the lady?”
Roger glowered back in sullen resentment, knowing the nobleman was the only one who had any entitlement to the beauty. The contract Lord Sedgwick had laid out for his son had guaranteed him a right no other man could dissolve, yet Roger refused to concede that point, allowing his sulking silence to convey his unyielding objection to what he considered a grave injustice, if to no one but himself.
“I thought not.” Bestowing a succinct smile on the younger man, Colton drew Adriana’s arm through his with a deliberateness the apprentice could not easily overlook. “I believe the lady has something to say to you, Mr. Elston. If you’ll kindly remove yourself to the library, we shall follow.”
Adriana lifted her gaze to Colton, prompting him to lower his head near hers. “Perhaps it would be better if I spoke to Roger in private.”
Colton shook his head. As desperate as the apprentice was to have her, he wouldn’t put it past the man to force her against her will in hopes of bringing about a marriage, though he seriously doubted her father would tolerate such abuse without killing the man. In any case, he had no intention of allowing the apprentice such an opportunity. “That wouldn’t be wise, my dear. There’s no guarantee that Mr. Elston wouldn’t try to harm you.”
“Harm her?” Roger repeated incredulously, as if he had never once thought of taking the lady by force. “My lord, let me assure you that you’re the only one I’d really like to harm!”
The gray eyes chilled as they lifted to meet the blazing green eyes. “You made that apparent the first day we met, sir, but you obviously haven’t taken to heart the lesson I gave you then. Would you like to try again? I’d even allow you to throw the first punch. Who knows? Perhaps you’d be luckier this time.”
Roger twisted his thin lips in a derisive sneer. “As much as I’d enjoy beating you to a pulp, I must decline your invitation.”
“Too bad.” Colton smiled blandly. “Perhaps we could have settled the matter once and for all, because you do seem foolishly bent on making a nuisance of yourself. However, if you should reconsider, you’ll find me with the lady.”
The green orbs flared at the nobleman’s taunt. Having already received a harsh demonstration of the nobleman’s capabilities, Roger didn’t care to get into another physical confrontation with the man, since he had not fared well during the first one, but he just couldn’t hold his resentment in check and lashed out in derision in another area. “Not everybody likes to bow and scrape before aristocrats. As for myself, I find such a task loathsome.”
“Not every aristocrat is as forbearing as Lady Adriana. As for myself,” Colton countered acidly, “I have no intention of letting some blustering, wet-behind-the-ears popinjay mar this occasion. I rather suspect Lord Standish wouldn’t be as tolerant of your despicable manners as his daughter has been. If you wish to join us, the lady and I will be in the library. Otherwise, Mr. Elston, you may take your leave forthwith.”
This time the pale green eyes flashed with fire as the marquess’s insults nettled an area that had become most sensitive in recent years, his boyish looks. Yet Roger dared not make much ado over the man’s statements, for fear the lady would also come to think of him more as a youth than a man. “What? Have you now assumed authority here that you can bid guests to come or go?”
A crisp twitch of Colton’s lip sufficed as a sneer. “Being a close, intimate friend of the family, I believe I’m well within my right to oust a troublemaker from the premises. And you, sir, have definitely made yourself out to be one.”
“You’re not lord here,” Roger snarled in guttural tones. “You’re me
rely a guest . . . just as I am, and you have no right to order anyone to leave.”
Colton laughed chidingly. “If you’d care for me to summon Lord Standish, I shall do so. Considering your penchant for causing trouble, I have no doubt the result will be the same.”
Roger opened his mouth to retort, but the nobleman swept past him, realizing they had aroused the curiosity of a considerable number of guests who were now craning their necks in an effort to see what was taking place at the entrance to the ballroom. Roger gaped after the couple for one long, astounded moment and then, glancing quickly about, noticed that several women were eyeing him furtively as they whispered to each other behind their fans. Beyond them stood men of wealth and lofty circumstance, who were not above scowling in haughty disapproval as they peered down their long noses at him.
The buzz of conjectures making their way around the ballroom soon drew Gyles’s attention to the apprentice, the only culprit in sight. Although Roger felt the weight of the elder’s questioning perusal, he refused to yield him so much as a glance. Ignored or not, Gyles took matters into his own hands and signaled to the musicians. Once again a lilting melody drifted through the room, and as his guests began to dance, Gyles begged leave from those with whom he had been conversing.
Colton drew Adriana to one of a pair of settees that resided near a diamond-paned oriel in the library. He had no doubt that during the day the location and comfort of the furnishings would prove advantageous for reading. At the moment, however, it was a place where one could easily view the myriad stars twinkling in the night sky.
“Roger won’t let my challenge go unanswered, Adriana. I have every confidence that he’ll be here forthwith,” he stated with conviction. “And if I know your father, he should be making an appearance fairly soon himself.”
“There won’t be any serious trouble, will there?” she asked, blaming herself for the way Roger was acting. If she had allowed her father to turn the apprentice away from their door on his first visit, or anytime thereafter, none of this would have been happening.
“Nothing your father and I can’t handle,” the marquess reassured her. “No need for you to fret.”
Colton hadn’t been in the Suttons’ library since he had left home, and as he began to stroll about the room, old memories, vividly refreshed by the familiar surroundings, came winging back. Countless shelves with books tucked in every available space lined nearly every wall from floor to ceiling and were interspersed with various portraits, landscapes, and framed sketches from bygone eras. The exception and only change he could discern in the library was a large, fairly recent portrait of the four Sutton ladies hanging in a place of honor on the wall behind Lord Gyles’s massive desk. The artist had captured Adriana in all her regal beauty standing beside her mother’s chair. On the opposite side of their parent were her older sisters, Melora sitting on a bench in front and Jaclyn standing slightly behind her. Although the two pale-haired, blue-eyed women were beautiful in their own right, in his opinion Adriana, with her tall, sublime form, dark tresses, and beautiful eyes, was far more exotic than her sisters.
Colton smiled as he recalled the days of their youth. While growing up, Adriana had been pitied by a goodly number of acquaintances and relatives who hadn’t possessed the same keenly perceptive foresight as his father. Distant kin had considered the girl something of a blemish on an otherwise handsome family. Colton had to admit that he hadn’t seen much hope for her himself, but he was now deeply obliged that his parent had refused Jaclyn and Melora as a replacement for one whose looks could have easily put to shame so-called goddesses of ancient lore.
Other reasons made him just as grateful for his sire’s intuitiveness. He now towered over the diminutive pair, but that wasn’t the only disadvantage to their size. As a newborn, he had been fairly large, and so might his own offspring be. Of the three, he gave Adriana the best chance of bringing a child of his into the world without suffering undue trauma. It was just another practical reason to consider very carefully and from every aspect the choice his father had made for him so long ago.
Roger stalked into the library, prompting Colton to calmly return to the end of the settee where Adriana had taken a seat. Folding one wrist atop the other behind his back, he faced his adversary in the manner of one carefully biding his time before a battle.
Roger curled his lips in derision beneath the unflinching gray eyes and sardonically cocked a brow as he considered the man’s protective stance, but it was Adriana’s casual acceptance of her intended’s sheltering presence that cruelly wrenched his heart. It was as if she already belonged to the man.
Of a sudden, Roger wondered why he had even come to the library. It had been obvious in the ballroom that the lady was committed to the pact her father and Sedgwick Wyndham had signed years ago. Although Lord Gyles had bound her to the contract before she had been old enough to determine her own mind, the culprit had really been Sedgwick. Had he not been the one who had first conceived of the nuptial agreement and then had persuaded the others of its merits? Lord Standish and Adriana had merely been pawns in his little game.
Still, whatever the intensity of loathing Roger had once felt toward Lord Sedgwick, he was now convinced that his hatred for the son had quadrupled in comparison. He could wish the nobleman no less than the same fatal fate as his sire.
Turning back to the door, he laid a hand upon the knob and pushed the barrier toward the jamb. He had no idea what the next moments would bring; he only knew it would not be the end of it, by any means.
“Lord Standish will likely be joining us,” Colton announced, halting the man.
Smirking in derision as he faced the retired colonel, Roger allowed his insult to carry forth without the issuance of a single word. If his adversary needed the elder’s support, then obviously the one who could confront the two of them without assistance was the better man, was he not?
Undismayed by the venomous disdain visible in the glowering green eyes, Colton offered the man a bland smile. He had faced the dangers of battle too many times to be overly concerned about the abhorrence of one who, by his own words, had never known what it was to confront an enemy on a well-bloodied battlefield. “Let’s just say that Lord Gyles will be an impartial witness should I again be forced to correct your manners, sir.”
Roger turned his lips in a caustic sneer at the marquess’s unwavering inclination to treat him like an errant youth. That fact nettled his hackles as no other insult came close to doing.
Stalking stiff-legged across the room to the settee where Adriana had ensconced herself, he felt his vitals roil in deepening resentment as Lord Randwulf settled a hand upon the lady’s shoulder, as if to reassure her that he wouldn’t let any harm come to her. To see his adversary’s fingers casually resting upon the creamy bare skin fanned the flames of Roger’s resentment and jealousy to an agonizing degree. What other man had been allowed to touch her hand, much less some meager part of her body?
In spite of the time and distance that had once separated the lady and her intended, the two now seemed of one accord, as if Colton Wyndham were already her husband. It was just another reason for the rowelling vexation Roger was now experiencing. Feeling totally stymied by Adriana’s willingness to accept the marquess as her future betrothed, he heaped a full measure of scorn upon her. “Let me spare you the trouble of making an announcement that has become all too obvious tonight, my lady. You’re going to yield yourself to the late Lord Randwulf’s dictates and enter into courtship with his son.”
Her dainty chin lifted at his scathing tone. “Perhaps you did indeed hope I would ignore the contract my parents signed, Roger, but that has never been my intent.”
A loud clearing of the throat announced the entrance of Lord Standish, who peered at his daughter to affirm her safety. “Everything all right here?”
“Not altogether, Papa,” Adriana replied in a voice that was noticeably strained. Not since Colton’s return had she felt so much tension. “I was just about t
o explain to Roger that I must ask him not to visit Wakefield Manor again after tonight or to follow me about to other places.”
Roger twisted his lips in sardonic revulsion. “You must pardon me for ever thinking you had a mind of your own, my lady. Why, you’re just as spineless as all the other women I’ve ever known.”
A prickling along her nape and a stirring of her temper reaffirmed within Adriana’s mind that she was not as cowardly or weak-willed as Roger suggested. He had definitely been successful in raising her hackles. “Roger, I’m afraid as far back as a year ago you erred in thinking that we could be anything more than casual acquaintances. ‘Twas apparent from the very beginning that you wanted something more from me, something I never had any intention of offering you. At the very best, you were nothing more than a distant friend, someone who took it upon himself to follow me about and even intruded when he had not been invited. I should’ve told you months ago that your efforts to see me would avail you nothing. You’ve known for some time now that I’ve been pledged to another from my youth, and yet you continued to visit me as if that would never come to fruition. I tell you now that nothing you could’ve said or done would’ve ever changed that.”
Roger glared back at her through gathering tears. “You couldn’t even tell me! You let me go on hoping like some poor, blind fool!”
Adriana was repulsed by his whining complaint. “I never once led you to believe that it could be otherwise, Roger. I had obligations to my family . . . and to others. I tried to tell you earlier tonight that I couldn’t see you again because your jealousy and aspirations had made it impossible for us to continue on as friends, but you refused to listen, so it’s down to this. . . .”
“Tonight!” he barked. “You’d have been kinder had you told me a year ago, before I ever reasoned in my heart that I would do anything to have you! Why did you let me go on believing there was some hope?”