Mutual Consent (10 page)

“I believe that we frighten the lady, Hadwicke.” The Earl of Chatworth slid off the desk. “There is no need to concern yourself, my lady. I hardly think that the occasion shall ever arise where Simon and I must test each other’s mettle in such a way.”

“True. We respect one another’s skills too well,” said Hadwicke thoughtfully. He took up the countess’s hand and carried her fingers to his lips. Still holding her hand, he smiled down into her eyes. “I shall hope to see you again under more comfortable circumstances, Lady Chatworth. But I think, for now, that I must leave you to his lordship’s tender concern. I suspect that there is much that he would like to discuss with you.”

As Babs digested that. Lord Chatworth walked with his friend to the door and opened it for him.”I trust you to make my excuses, Simon.”

Hadwicke threw a bland glance at the lovely woman who had remained standing next to the desk. “I have only to mention a lady is to blame for your absence, Marcus. None shall put a question past that explanation,” he said. He watched curiously as swift color rose in the countess’s face. There was something to discover there, he thought. Then he turned and walked out the door.

Lord Chatworth closed the door. He looked at his wife, and he was surprised that he had labeled her thus. His brows snapped together in sudden irritation. He hardly needed to begin thinking of her as his responsibility. He walked over to her and took her arm. He was surprised and somewhat affronted that she withdrew from his touch. “I shall not eat you. At least, not now,” he said.

Babs gave a small laugh. She was impatient with herself. She had reacted to the abrupt and forbidding change in the earl’s expression. It was ridiculous to assume that his lordship was even remotely like her father, she thought. She took the hand that he held out to her so peremptorily and allowed him to guide her to the chair that Hadwicke had occupied before her.

Lord Chatworth chose to sit on the edge of the desk, facing her. “Well, my lady? What shall we do now?” he asked politely.

Barbara knew to what he referred. She was unconscious that she twisted her hands in her lap. She shook her head helplessly. “I hardly know, my lord.” She raised her eyes to him and he was surprised by the degree of misery in her regard. “I had hoped to be free of him, or nearly so, once we had wed. I never dreamed that he would connive to retain a hold over you. It makes it very difficult, doesn’t it?”

Lord Chatworth bit back an overhasty retort. After a short interval, he said instead, “Yes, but that is indisputedly my fault. I think for now we must set aside the fact and concentrate instead on how we may best deal with the possible consequences. Obviously your father wishes to retain some measure of control over us. I cannot think to what purpose or what that might entail.”

“But I believe I do,” said Babs in a low voice. She looked away from the earl as she carefully chose her words. “My father hungers for social recognition above all else, my lord. That is what he hoped to gain by marrying my mother and what he hoped to achieve by marrying me to you. He will demand from you an introduction into the
ton.”

Lord Chatworth understood from the shaking timbre of her voice the humiliation she suffered. He reached down to catch hold of her hands. She looked up at him, her eyes flying wide and startled. Without thinking about the consequences of his actions, he pulled her up from the chair and drew her toward him until she stood against his bent knee. “Babs, you need not flail yourself so,” he said quietly.

Her green eyes suddenly glittered with unshed tears. She turned her head away from him, a gesture that said as plainly as if she had spoken that she was ashamed of her own vulnerability.

Lord Chatworth’s mouth tightened. He could not have given coherence to his feelings, but the fact that she was not willing to use her tears to gain his sympathy did her no disservice in his eyes. His innate protectiveness for those weaker than himself was stirred. “Babs...” He let go of one of her hands so that he could bring her to him.

At the barest touch of his hand on her back, she flinched.

An instant later she had whisked herself away from him, coming at last to stand several steps across the study in apparent contemplation of the tides on a bookshelf. “Were there any other discrepancies in the prenuptial arrangements, my lord?” she asked breathlessly, without looking at him.

Lord Chatworth sat quite still. There was a chilly quality in his expression as he stared at her back. He had been served a rare set-down and it had not left a pleasant taste in his mouth. His pride was well and truly stung. But in all fairness he was forced to concede that she was perfectly within her rights to refuse his advances, however half-formed they might have been.

“Everything else was as it should be. The bridal settlement was perfectly within bounds. As for the fortune that your father settled on you upon our marriage, it is quite respectable,” he said.

He was startled and irritated to hear the edge in his own voice. It surely did not matter one way or the other whether the lady he had married did not wish for him to touch her. He had not tied the knot for that reason, after all. His practiced eyes raked her trim figure as she turned toward him, and he thought that it would not be entirely unpleasant to make of theirs a real marriage. Indeed, after the blow that he had suffered to his ego, he was quite amenable to the notion of initiating his wife into the art of dalliance and seduction.

“My fortune—my lord, that is the answer!” Babs did not heed the earl’s oddly forbidding expression as her enthusiasm carried her back across the room to him. She saw the frowning incomprehension in his eyes and she said impatiently, “Marcus, do you not understand? You may redeem your vowels and whatever else you owed to my father with the fortune that he has settled on me.”

Incredulity entered his eyes. “I think not, my dear,” said Lord Chatworth shortly. “That is quite out of the question.”

Babs was astonished by the spasm of distaste that had crossed his face. “But I don’t understand! That fortune by law passed into your hands upon our marriage. It is there for the using, my lord.”

Lord Chatworth smiled, but it was the mocking twist of his lips that she so detested. “Obviously your education regarding a gentleman’s honor has been deficient, my dear. I could not take what belongs to you and use it for this purpose.”

“My God, Marcus! You could be free.”

“Could I indeed, my lady! When every day I shall have your face to remind me that I had stooped to stealing in order to be rid of Cribbage. Thank you, but no! I prefer not to place myself in the same category as your less-than-estimable parent,” he said bitingly.

There was a short silence during which she regarded him with a blank look in her eyes. He had the most startling conviction that he had deeply wounded her. Finally she drew herself up, her chin rising proudly, and he could not any longer divine her feelings behind the cool expression she assumed.

“Forgive my lamentable ignorance, my lord. I did not precisely understand the matter. You have certainly enlightened me. I shall not again forget my place,” she said. She turned away to walk swiftly toward the door.

In one stride Marcus reached her. He did not forget how she had stiffened when he had touched her, especially when he saw that she flinched at his sudden proximity. He did not touch her, therefore, but merely addressed her. “Do not come on the high ropes with me, Babs. It doesn’t become you,’’ he said measuredly. He saw the spark of anger in her green eyes, and he was glad of it, for the fear that always seemed to spring into the depths of her eyes when he dared approach her vanished with its appearance.

“You are insufferable, my lord,” Babs exclaimed. “It is you who has been less than kind and you think nothing of baiting me at every turn. How dare you try to intimidate me when I-”

“Try to intimidate you? My dear girl, if you were any more frightened of me, I dare swear that you would faint dead away from sheer terror,” said Lord Chatworth in derision.

‘“I am not frightened of you.”

“Oh, no? Shall we test for the truth of it, Babs?” With one hand Lord Chatworth caught her chin. As he had anticipated, she made an instinctive move to retreat. But now she stood quite still and he was impressed by her self-control. He smiled down into her furious green eyes.

Babs defied him with her returning stare.

The challenge was unmistakable. He could sense the tension in her and he wondered how much of her own mistress she actually was. He had seen so many conflicting sides of her: when she had come to meet with him, he had detected suppressed desperation; when they had dined together, he had dismissed her as dull-witted and inane; when he had accused her of base betrayal, she had determinedly brought him to realize her innocence; when she had been at her most vulnerable, she had nevertheless recognized and drawn back from his advances.

He had never encountered a more complex woman. Nor one that showed herself to be such a challenge to his own pride.

He could hardly recall a time when he had not been pursued by the fairer sex, whether it was for the sake of his face and physical attributes, or for his position and wealth. It scarcely mattered when he had begun to pursue and conquer on his own account; he had long since taken for granted that he need not exert himself unduly to have practically any woman he desired. His reputation was that of a confirmed rake, and he had never experienced any wish to alter it.

The present circumstances hardly gave him cause to regret otherwise. On the contrary, he thought, he had the opportunity to deliver a salutory lesson to a lady whose ignorance of his reputation had led to the insult of his pride.

Lord Chatworth did not take his eyes from his wife’s face. He slowly bent his head to brush his lips across hers. The sensation was pleasing, her mouth soft and pliable, her breath sweat and warm.

He caught her mouth more closely. He could feel the tenseness in her body just by the way she held herself, but it scarcely mattered when he found himself able to kiss her without reproof. He broke free of the pleasant exercise to trace her jawline with tiny kisses. His lips touched the sensitive area behind her ear and he lingered. Beneath his mouth, he felt her shiver. He whispered, “Are you not frightened, Babs?”

“No!” There was a breathless catch in her voice.

Lord Chatworth smiled to himself, that peculiar smile that had been bequeathed him. Half-hooded, his eyes glimmered with a rousing desire. He straightened to capture her mouth again, this time allowing himself to show her some measure of his banked passion. Her lips parted under his insistence and he deepened the kiss, savoring the clean taste of her mouth.

His hands came up to cradle her against him. Still he did nothing more than to draw her closer. She remained stiff in his arms, one of her hands awkwardly pushing against his chest while the other had latched onto the arm that he had placed about her small waist.

At last he let her go, though every part of him had become reluctant to do so. But it was not his intention to seduce her entirely. Not yet, at any rate. His glance dwelled on her parted lips and the breath that came too quickly from between them. It had been a very pleasurable experiment, and one that he intended to pursue in future. He did not believe that she would prove a reluctant participant, he thought complacently.

His gaze lifted to her eyes, where he expected to find uncertainty and dawning passion. Instead, he was startled by the blaze of sheer anger in those green depths. He was not given time to digest the meaning of it, however, for suddenly his head was rocked to one side by a stinging blow.

Lord Chatworth stared at her in stupefaction. One side of his face burned with the imprint of her palm. In the seconds before he had recovered, she had already flown to the door of the study.

She regarded him with complete contempt. “I am not frightened of you. I believe that I have sufficiently proven it, do you not think so, Marcus?” With that she twisted the knob and sailed out of the study.

She sped upstairs to her rooms. When she got to her bedroom, she pulled the bell for her maid and, upon the woman’s entrance, asked her help in putting on her walking dress. Within a few short minutes, Babs returned downstairs and walked out the front door in the company of her maid. She had asked that a carriage be brought up to wait on her pleasure, and now she directed the driver to the shops in Mayfair.

She settled back and with a quelling stare at her maid gave the woman notice that she was not in the mood for idle conversation. She badly needed time to think, but she had not felt safe to do so in her bedroom. Foremost in her mind while she had changed had been the uncertainty of whether the earl would follow her. But she had escaped the house without that confrontation and she could breathe easier for a time.

She had lied when she had told the earl that he did not frighten her. But the major portion of her fright was not rooted in his attempt to disconcert and seduce her, which was what had saved her from making a complete fool of herself. She had recognized that he meant to press the issue, and she had gambled that he would not guess the real reason behind her uneasiness whenever she was with him. He had not, which had been proven by his chosen method to overcome her defiance.

Babs thought she had come off from the encounter fairly well, and certainly the earl would think twice before he again trespassed the bounds of their agreement. She bit her lip, worrying at it with her neat white teeth. At least, she hoped that he would do so. She knew so little about gentlemen in general. She had already discovered some differences between her father and the Earl of Chatworth. It would be wonderful indeed if the earl could be relied upon and trusted.

However, she would not hold her breath, she thought with the faintest of smiles. Lord Chatworth was undeniably attractive. If she was completely truthful with herself, she had slapped him as much for his arrogance as her own stupid vulnerability to his experienced charm. And as much as she would prefer to forget it, his lordship was indeed very practiced.