Alyssa Everett (12 page)

Chapter Eleven

Barbara

“You damned scoundrel!” my father roared at Ben, so angry his voice shook. “How dare you sneak in here and make free with my daughter!”

Ben began levelly. “I know how this must look, sir, but—”

Papa cut him off, his face livid. “You think you’re the cock of the walk, don’t you? Strutting about here as if you own the place. Well, I won’t have it. You can’t accuse my Helen of impropriety one day and then throw your leg over her sister the next!”

“Papa!” I gasped in shock.

Ben began again. “I assure you, Lord Leonard—”

Though I was behind him on the stairs and couldn’t see his face, the strain in his voice made it clear he was determined to impose some measure of calm on the scene.

Unfortunately, Papa would have none of it. “Don’t you assure me of anything! No doubt you thought you could pull the wool over my eyes, creeping about here on cat’s feet. Well, I’m not so easily fooled. I thought I heard someone up there with Barbara.” He stabbed an accusing finger in my direction. “And
you!
Just you wait until I get you alone, miss. You’re a disgrace to this family.”

“Papa, it isn’t what you think. Lord Beningbrough came here on behalf of his cousin, and he was only upstairs just now because—”

“I came to see Lady Barbara,” Ben said flatly, putting the lie to every word I’d just said, “and she’s completely innocent in this. She had no notion I would call here tonight, and she’s already ordered me out of the house. I can assure you on my honor as a gentleman, I’ve given you no cause to fear for her virtue.”

Papa’s face was purple. “You’re damned right you’ve given me no cause! I wouldn’t take your word if it was tied up in silver ribbons, but you’ll make an honest woman of her, that’s what you’ll do.”

“No,” I said, squeezing past Ben to face my father from the bottom of the staircase. “He will not! I don’t want to marry him any more than he wants to marry me.” I was ready to sink from shame and humiliation. What if Ben thought I’d engineered this entire scene expressly to force him into an offer?

Papa glowered at me. “This is none of your affair, Barbara.”

“Of course it’s my affair! You call him a liar with one breath, and with the next order us to wed?” Groping for an argument that might actually carry weight with him, I rushed on. “Just this evening, you said over dinner you wouldn’t
allow
one of us to marry him, because of what his father is. And nothing happened, Papa. If you would only calm down and let him leave quietly—”

Behind me now, Ben said frostily, “I quite agree with Lady Barbara. I know the duty due my position and my family, and it doesn’t include marrying your daughter simply because you refuse to accept my word I haven’t ruined her.”

I turned and cast an agonized glance at Ben—agonized both because it hurt to hear him starkly rejecting me out of hand, and because there was something painfully ironic in finally having someone stand up to my father on my behalf, only to have him sound colder and more disdainful than Papa ever had.

But perhaps Ben assumed this had been my plan all along—to ensnare him in a compromising scene. I could still remember his scornful pronouncement the first time we met.
Young ladies often pretend they’ve no interest in matrimony
,
simply to lure a bachelor into letting down his guard.

My father brushed me aside and took a threatening step up the stairs toward Ben. “You damned puppy! I ought to thrash you within an inch of your life.”

Ben didn’t even blink. “I shouldn’t advise you to try, Lord Leonard. You would excessively regret the attempt.”

The cool certainty in Ben’s voice sent a chill through me. My father was no featherweight, but neither was he any match for a Corinthian like Ben. “Papa, please just let him leave.”

He turned to glare down at me. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, miss? I blame your mother’s family. Since your grandmother Merton left you that money, you’ve been completely ungovernable. Did you think you could smuggle a lover into the house and I’d just allow him to go merrily on his way?”

“He isn’t my lov—”

“Is anything amiss, my lord?” came a voice from just behind us.

I spun around with mingled humiliation and gratitude to find Frye, back from his rounds, standing at the bottom of the stairs with a candle in his hand. Thank heavens someone had arrived to put an end to this dreadful ordeal. I gathered my wrapper tighter about me, shrinking further into the shadows so the bloodstains on my nightclothes wouldn’t be apparent.

“Nothing’s amiss,” Ben answered for my father. “I was just leaving.”

Papa looked ready to explode, but what could he do? Announcing my disgrace to a servant would hardly improve matters. “What a shame you should have to go just now, Beningbrough.” His tone was menacing, and he kept his eyes fixed unwaveringly on Ben. “We’ll speak more of this soon, I promise you.”

“If you insist.” Ben sketched a stiff, barely perceptible bow, then stalked past me toward the front door.

“Good night, Lord Beningbrough,” I called after him miserably, the words both a show of compulsory politeness for Frye’s sake and a desperate plea for Ben’s understanding. No one could be more appalled than I was by my father’s low opinion of my virtue, or his insistence Ben owed me an offer of marriage.

To my dismay, however, Ben gave no sign of faith in my innocence. He stormed out without another word, or even so much as a backward glance.

Ben

Striding home, I almost wished footpads would attack me. At least then I’d have someone to hit.

I was so angry I could hardly see straight. So the Jeffords had decided over dinner I wasn’t good enough to marry into their precious family, had they? Amiable, slow-witted Teddy was accounted a desirable match, but they regarded me—the heir to a dukedom—as a
mésalliance
even for the sharp-tongued, nailed-to-the-shelf older daughter of the house.

Not that I’d intended to offer for Barbara. Not by a long shot. Admittedly, the possibility had flitted through my brain as we’d kissed, but it had been only a passing fancy and not a notion I’d entertained in any seriousness. What fellow wasn’t prone to wild ideas when he had a soft, yielding, beautiful woman in his arms? I’d only had to come back down to earth to remember how perfectly cutting and contemptuous she could be.

I wished I’d never gone to see her. I could’ve simply written out a reply to Barbara’s note, but inexplicably I’d got a maggot in my brain to discuss her suspicions with her in person. Even when I’d seen she was dressed for bed, I hadn’t had the good sense to head home. I’d started a wrestling match with her, I’d kissed her, I’d even bled on her—in short, I’d thrown all sense of caution and good sense to the wind. No wonder Lord Leonard had jumped to the wrong conclusion the instant he spotted us together.

Meanwhile I’d learned nothing useful about Sam Garvey’s death except that the killer was my cousin John’s height and he’d been peeping at Barbara. Somehow that last detail only added insult to injury. While I’d been kneed in the bollocks and discounted as potential marriage material, some felon had been watching her take off her clothes.

Well, I was washing my hands of the whole business. Let Lord Leonard get to the bottom of the blackmail and the break-ins and the attacks, if he was so good at catching strangers in his house. So far all I’d succeeded in doing was making my head hurt. Twice.

By the time I reached the front door of Ormesby House, my anger was beginning to fade, and a bruised and discouraged feeling was emerging to fill the void. The servants had already gone to bed, and, stepping inside, I closed the front door behind me as softly as I could, hoping my mother had likewise retired for the night. I was in no mood to suffer being fussed over and pelted with anxious questions.

Fortunately, there was no sign of her slight form and inquisitive face. I lit a candle from one of the wall sconces and started up the stairs to my rooms. Halfway up, I thought better of it and turned back. I would never be able to sleep in my present mood. Instead, I headed for the library, where my father kept a decanter of brandy near the door.

Once there, I set my candle on the little rosewood table, poured myself a generous measure and downed it in one gulp. Those things Barbara had said still nagged at me—that my father
seemed
unexceptionable, for instance, as if to imply the very opposite. If there was one thing I couldn’t abide, it was being sneered at. And she’d made no bones about refusing me when Lord Leonard demanded I offer for her.
I
don’t want to marry him any more than he wants to marry me
. Damn it, she didn’t even like the way I kissed.

I ought to go marching right back out into the night and offer a slip on the shoulder to one of the most practiced courtesans in all England, someone like Harriet Wilson or Maria Foote. That would show Barbara—
Too bad
,
my girl
,
you might not think I know what’s what
,
but that’s only because you’re a miserable spinster who couldn’t find her way around a real man if he drew you a map.
I’d take my new mistress on the strut, making sure she wore something eye-catching and vulgar, and buy her ices to lick at Gunter’s, directly across Berkeley Square from Barbara’s front door.

I tried to picture this tantalizing new ladybird, a willing beauty who combined all the charms of the many actresses, opera dancers and artists’ models I’d already bedded, but for some reason her face wouldn’t take shape. The harder I tried, the more taking on a new mistress simply to make a point seemed hollow and juvenile.

“Something wrong, Ben?” asked my father from his desk by the windows.

I started. It hadn’t occurred to me he might still be working at this hour, and with a candle of my own before me, I hadn’t noticed the light burning on the other side of the room. I set down my glass and turned to face him. “I didn’t realize you were in here, sir.”

He gestured toward the brandy decanter. “It’s not like you to drink alone. Or is that a new habit you’ve acquired?”

Though I had no objection to enjoying an after-dinner port or raising a glass while out with friends, ordinarily I wasn’t one to drown my sorrows in solitary drink. “No, sir. I just...it’s been a trying night.”

“
Tonight
has been a trying night?” He lifted one eyebrow. “Only last night, your cousin confessed to killing a man. What’s happened now?”

“Well, I...” I hesitated. I never unburdened myself to others. Friends came to me when they needed aid or advice, not the other way around.

But my father was regarding me expectantly, and there was no denying he could be an absolute oyster with secrets. I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to confide in him. “I’ve landed in something of a fix with Lady Barbara Jeffords.”

He stiffened. “Ben! A gentleman’s daughter? If that’s the case, you’ve no choice but to—”

“Not that kind of a fix!” I said quickly. “I haven’t got the girl in a family way. I’ve barely laid a finger on her.”

“Oh.” My father sat back with a sigh of relief. “For a moment there, I thought you meant...well, you know what I thought.”

Of course he would jump to the most sordid possible conclusion. “That’s essentially the problem. I’ve just come from Leonard House, where Lord Leonard is laboring under a similar misapprehension.”

There was silence before my father sighed again. “Why don’t you start at the beginning. Is Lady Barbara in trouble or isn’t she?”

“She isn’t. Not the kind of trouble you mean. She’s a perfectly respectable girl. But her father caught us together—”

“Caught you? I thought you said you hadn’t laid a finger on her. What exactly did he catch you doing?”

“I said I’d
barely
laid a finger on her,” I corrected him scrupulously, striving to recover the moral high ground. “I kissed her. Once.” Unfortunately, at that moment a vivid memory hit me of lying atop Barbara in bed, our tongues twining as I fondled her breast. It may have been only one instance, but it had hardly been an innocent kiss.

I hoped I hadn’t broken into a telltale flush. But whatever the look on my face, my father had clearly caught a whiff of guilt in the air. “Ben, this is no light matter. It’s one thing to sow your oats with the muslin company, but I won’t have you trifling with young ladies.”

“I wasn’t trifling with her!” I didn’t know what galled me more, the imputation I’d been careless of Barbara’s virtue, or that my father of all people should presume to lecture me on propriety. “It wasn’t an assignation. I simply went to talk with her about the footman’s death. I’ve no idea what witless impulse made me kiss her, but she ordered me out of the house soon afterward.”

“Then what were you doing when Lord Leonard caught you?”

“Only sneaking down the stairs together.” I swallowed. “But Lady Barbara was dressed for bed, and it looked worse than it was. Now her father expects me to either marry her or meet him.”

“In a duel?”

No
,
in a privy
, I nearly answered, sick to death of this interminable evening. “Yes, sir, I believe that’s the general idea.”

My father frowned.

“Naturally, I refused to be forced into offering for her. No one even saw us together except Lord Leonard, and it’s not as if I’ve actually ruined the girl.” Besides, I had no intention of allying myself with a family who considered mine beneath them—especially since I couldn’t even say with certainty they were wrong. My first thought upon seeing my father tonight had been to wonder why he wasn’t out with his so-called protégé, the landscape gardener. Yet here he was, working diligently on Parliamentary business. Just how many nights did he spend at home, anyway?

“So what
do
you plan to do?” my father asked.

“To begin with, I mean to make sure I never see Lady Barbara again.” It was how she wanted it, I felt sure. That scene on the stairs had been unpleasant for both of us, to say nothing of the way I’d lost my temper with her earlier—and, oh yes, there was also her withering opinion of the way I kissed. Better to simply cut off all contact with her now, before I made an even greater fool of myself. “Lord Leonard is twice my age. Once he’s calmed down, I trust he’ll recognize how unfitting it would be to call me out.”