Betina Krahn (36 page)

Another round of whispers and murmurs produced frowns and shakes of heads, where she was used to seeing smiles and nods. “But
marriage
, Toni,” Hermione went on, speaking for the group. “It’s what you’ve always believed in
and worked to uphold. And now, with this fearful scandal raging, you will need protection. And you have always said that marriage is a woman’s best protection … that marriage and home are a woman’s rightful place.”

Antonia gripped the edge of her chair with cold hands. “That may be true, marriage may be most women’s place. But it’s not my place, that much is clear.”

The sound of those words coming from her mouth shocked not only her aunt and her ladies, it shocked her as well. She who had always championed marriage and believed it was the only real locus of power and protection a woman could have in this world, now found the thought of marriage for herself—especially to a man who had betrayed and hurt her—intolerable.

“But, Toni, you have to marry his lordship.” Hermione looked to the others, reading their agreement in their eyes.

“You’ve been … compromised,” Prudence said, looking genuinely disturbed.

“You have to think of your good name,” Eleanor added anxiously.

“You have to think of the future,” Florence contributed.

“An’ of the baby,” Gertrude put in, raising eyebrows. “If there be one.”

“You see? It’s the only decent thing to do,” Pollyanna proclaimed, crossing her arms emphatically.

“No, I don’t see,” Antonia said in disbelief, pushing to her feet. “After what Remington Carr did to me, how can you even suggest that I submit to a marriage with him? He’s ruthless and callous, treacherous, devious, and unpredictable. He cares for nothing but his bachelor cronies and his precious gentlemanly ‘honor.’ He’s the worst of the lot—the archbachelor of all times. I was wrong to go to him, it’s true, but I won’t be forced into a disastrous marriage to pay for it.”

“I don’t believe you have a choice, Toni,” Hermione
said, with genuine alarm at the apparent depth of Antonia’s conviction.

“No choice? But of course I have a choice. No one can force me to suffer a lifetime of bondage in a hateful marriage because of one night’s indiscre—”

She halted and her color drained. She looked from face to alarmed face, feeling the devastating insight dawning:
other people had been forced
. The truth rained down on her long-denied conscience like hot coals:
she was the one who had forced them
!

She rushed from the drawing room and then from the house into the lamplit street, desperate to escape her thoughts and the responsibility she bore for sentencing numbers of bachelors and widows to a lifetime of marriage—for the real or apparent sin of just one night together. But their faces and the memory of their compromising situations raced with her, flashing before her eyes, one after another, after another.

There they sat, half-naked, shocked, humiliated, desperate … trapped. And heaven help her, she had taken a vengeful pleasure in watching those men squirm and wheedle and ultimately concede to her righteous demands. With stunning clarity she now understood that what had happened to her had sprung from seeds she herself had sown. Her “victims” had turned her own strategy on her, with devastating results.

She now knew what it was like to sit naked in a bed, under the sneers and judgmental stares of strangers—vulnerable and drenched with shame. And she knew one additional horror: what it was like to be betrayed into that humiliation by the one to whom she had opened her most private self, by the one she wanted with all her heart.

For the first time she thought of what the marriages she had “arranged” were like now. On the surface—in the streets, over dinner tables, and in the eyes of society—they
seemed to be normal, respectable, even amicable couples. But in the privacy of their homes, in the darkness of their beds at night, were their marriages anything more than cold, face-saving contracts? Was there any caring left between them? Any trust or affection?

Were the women she had matched still grateful, or were they now bitter at having been levered into marriage with an unwilling groom? If marriage wasn’t right for her, then what about her protégées? She stumbled over a loose brick and almost fell as the possibility descended on her:
what if she had sentenced them to lives of misery
?

Marriage, which had always seemed to offer women security and protection, now seemed like a trap—one she had vengefully sprung on both men and women.

After a time she looked up to discover she was on St. James Street, mere steps from the Bentick Hotel, the scene of a number of her marriage traps. She stood on the walkway outside, staring up at the windows of the room, thinking of Daphne Elderston, Rosamund Garvey, Margaret Stevenson, Alice Butterfield, Elizabeth Audley, and Camille Adams—her Bentick Hotel brides. The sight of their faces on their wedding days rose into her mind: bright, nervous, and filled with expectation. What expressions did they wear now? Contentment or bitterness? Serenity or anger?

She had to know.

The doorman of the Bentick was good enough to summon her a cab. The minute she returned home, she went straight to her rooms and closeted herself with pen and paper. And before the last candles had been snuffed for the night at Paxton House, there were thirteen letters lying on the entry-hall table, awaiting the morning post.

The last thing Antonia might have expected the next morning was to receive a call from Lady Constance Ellingson.
But when she responded to Hoskins’s announcement, there Constance stood, in the drawing room, dressed in impeccable morning-call attire: white gloves, a stylish, figured-silk dress, and a perky tilt-brimmed hat trimmed in peacock feathers. Grateful for a diversion from the tension in the house, Antonia greeted her warmly and would have rung for coffee, but Constance prevented her.

“No, truly. This is not quite a social call. Is there someplace we may speak candidly?” She glanced around the empty drawing room and settled a frown on the open doors.

“Why, yes.” Antonia closed the doors to the entry hall and instantly found herself being pulled to the settee. “What is it? What has happened?”

“That, my dear, is something I should be asking you. You’ve touched off quite a storm.” Constance lowered her voice to a whisper. “There are ruts in my doorstep from foot traffic—everyone seems to think I have all the particulars since you made that unthinkable wager at my soiree. Half of London has paid me a call in these last two days”—she fixed a passionately expectant look on Antonia and announced—“including the Earl of Landon.”

“The earl?” Antonia found herself edging back as her guest leaned forward.

“Remington Carr presented himself on my doorstep yesterday evening. And you’ll never guess what he wanted.”

Antonia didn’t trust herself to speak and shook her head to indicate she hadn’t a clue.

“He called on me about the party I was to give Saturday. You remember—the soiree where you were to report the results of the Woman Wager? He suggested—and I quite agreed—that after the other night, carrying on with the soiree is out of the question. Then he asked me to function as his ‘second’ and call upon you.”

“His
second
? Good Lord—he’s challenging me to a duel?” she said.

“No.” Constance winced. “He is insisting that you make good your half of the wager.”

“What?” Antonia blinked, unable to take it in.

“You do remember, surely,” Constance prompted, then repeated it for her. “You agreed that if you didn’t change his mind about women’s work in a fortnight, that you would do men’s work for the same length of time.”

“The scurrilous wretch,” Antonia said in a disbelieving whisper. Her eyes widened. “The unthinkable deceit of that man! I
did
change his mind—he told me so. He ceded me that cursed wager!”

“He did?” Constance looked puzzled. “When? Where? I thought you agreed you would announce the results at my party.”

“Here, in my house, not three days ago,” she declared furiously. “We were upstairs, in—” She jerked her pointing finger down, hiding that hand in the other, and wishing she could hide the rest of her, as well, from Constance’s avid stare.

“Did anyone else hear him say it?” Constance asked, hanging on her every word. “Do you have witnesses?”

Antonia turned slightly on the settee to avoid Constance’s curiosity. “No. I didn’t think witnesses would be necessary—I assumed that the earl was a man of honor and decency. But then, this is not the first time I’ve been proved wrong on that account.” She struggled internally for a moment. “It’s nothing short of blackmail. God knows what he intends, but if he thinks he can force me to—” She glanced at Constance’s tense and eager form and left the settee to pace. “I’ll not do it. You may go straight back to him and tell him so.”

Constance pursed her lips, seeming momentarily at a loss. “Well, he anticipated some resistance. He instructed
me to tell you that he is prepared to go to the papers with the story, if you refuse to honor your part of the wager.”

The story? Which story? Antonia’s head reeled. About her matchmaking? The revenge plot gone awry? What happened and didn’t happen in his bed? Or the fact that he had gallantly offered her his name as “protection” and she refused it? Dearest heaven, she had never guessed he could be so ruthless.

“So the beast finally shows his fangs,” she said, visibly shaken. She closed her eyes briefly to compose herself, then took a deep breath. “I refuse to give in to such coercion. I won’t do it.”

“Antonia, dear.” Constance hurried to her chair and knelt beside it, taking hold of her hands. “I don’t think you have a choice. If you refuse and he goes to the newspapers—You’ve narrowly escaped a fatal blow to your reputation, as it is. Only the fact that the story was printed in that scurrilous
Gaflinger’s
gives you any hope at all. Prolonging the scandal by allowing him to resurrect this wager and publicly declare you’ve defaulted on it could have devastating consequences.”

It was the second time in as many days that Antonia had been told she had no choice, and the opinion did not sit any better with her now than it had the night before. It wasn’t enough for Remington that he had romanced and seduced and betrayed her, she realized. Now he was determined to bend her to his male pride and “honor,” regardless of the consequences.

“Despicable man,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’ve held my head up this far. I’ll just go on doing it. Besides, who is to say that wretched
Gaflinger’s
didn’t just make it all up?”

“Antonia, please.” Constance appraised the stubbornness in her face and began to worry. “
Gaflinger’s
may be a vile, sensational rag—but a lot of people read it, all the
same. And if Remington Carr begins giving interviews, the rest of London’s newspapers will be gouging and elbowing each other for the chance to print whatever he says. You saw what they did with the idea of an earl doing women’s work. You can bet they’re all green with envy at
Gaflinger’s
over this last story and are itching for an exclusive themselves. And none of them are above embellishing a bit, here and there. You could find yourself without a decent social acquaintance or financial contact in all of London.” She squeezed Antonia’s hands and engaged her eyes.

“Antonia, I have only your interests at heart when I say
go
… get it over with. Settle whatever has to be settled between you and the earl, once and for all.” With a look of genuine concern she held out a card bearing the earl’s business address.

Antonia felt her stomach contract. Settle it? She had been foolish enough to think she had already done that. She took the card and stared at it as if trying to set both it and its sender aflame. She would go and settle it, all right. And when she was done, Remington Carr would know he had indeed tangled with a
dragon
.

The City, London’s financial district, was bustling the next morning. The massive stone columns and soaring brick and granite walls of the banks, exchanges, and brokerages loomed over the narrow streets and cast long shadows over the less pretentious blocks of homes, shops, markets, and pubs squeezed between them. The streets were thick with carriages and cabs picking their way along through the hordes of clerks, brokers, and civil servants hurrying to and from their offices. Vendor calls, newsies crying out stock prices on street corners, the creaks of lorries, and the droning thuds of building construction filled the air. All
around were the sights and sounds of the lifeblood of the nation: commerce.

Antonia watched it all from the window of her cab, feeling some part wonder, some part anxiety. She had never visited the financial district before; her banker, broker, and solicitors always called on her at home to conduct business, as they were wont to do for their more genteel or lucrative clientele. As she studied the pedestrians hurrying along, she was struck by the number of top hats and similarly cut dark suit coats in the crowd—an angularity and colorlessness unrelieved by bright silks, lively patterns, and curved lines. This was a world of men, those stark lines and somber tones said. And that visual declaration brought Antonia to the edge of her nerves.

“Not exactly neutral ground,” she muttered. “It will be like walking right into the lion’s den.”

Aunt Hermione, seated beside her, reached over to squeeze her hand reassuringly. “You will do fine, Toni dear.”

“I intend to give him a sizable piece of my mind,” she said irritably.

“Of course you do.”

“I’ll show him that I won’t be intimidated or coerced.”

“Absolutely.”

“And you’re not to let me out of your sight,” Antonia said, betraying the dread she felt at the prospect of seeing him again.

She had scarcely slept the night before, thinking of what she would say to him and trying hard not to think of or remember anything else about him. It simply hurt too much. When she told her ladies about Remington’s demands, they were shocked that he was behaving in so reprehensible a manner. When she mentioned taking a chaperon, they thought it seemed prudent and suggested Aunt Hermione accompany her.