No Marriage of Convenience (17 page)

“Oh, do shut up, Allister,” Lady Delander told him, slapping away his outstretched hand. “Go sit over there. Next to Lord Ashlin,” she bade him, as if he were a lad of six, instead of twenty-and-six. “And you,” she said to Riley, “shall sit next to me.”

Mason watched, wondering if he wasn’t dreaming, as Lady Delander, the arbiter of fashion and manners, settled the most notorious woman in London down next to her and began fawning over her as if she were a Princess Royal.

“Now we must get you vouchers, my dear,” Lady Delander began. “And invitations to the right social events. Lord Ashlin, whatever were you thinking last night in not bringing your cousin to Mrs. Evans’s musicale?”

“Well, I…I just didn’t think she…” he began.

The Dowager shook her finger at him. “Oh, don’t bother with your excuses. I know exactly what you were about last night and why you came alone.” She turned to Riley. “Men! When you are my age, you’ll know all their tricks.” The Dowager snorted. “Look at Lord Ashlin, sitting over there playing quite the innocent, when he spent the entire evening wooing Miss Pindar.”

Miss Pindar
? Riley glanced over at Mason, trying to buoy the sinking feeling in her heart.

Why should she care if he’d spent his evening looking for a wife? He’d made his intentions to enter the Marriage Mart very clear.

So why had he lied to her and told her differently? Not that it really mattered to her.

Oh, but it did, much to her chagrin.

“You’d best not dally, Lord Ashlin,” Lady Delander lectured. “With Miss Pindar’s fortune, someone will carry her off to Gretna right under your nose if you don’t offer for her immediately.”

Mason mumbled something polite, but it wasn’t the denial Riley longed to hear. If only he’d tell the nosy old hen he had no desire to wed the impossibly rich and probably beautiful Miss Pindar.

“Though I must admit,” Lady Delander said, continuing her speech as if it were being delivered to the House of Lords, “I usually don’t condone marrying into the merchant class—it’s unseemly. But in Miss Pindar’s case, I would make an exception.”

Riley wondered what virtues the estimable Miss Pindar possessed to make even Lady Delander drop her rigid standards.

“Besides,” Lady Delander was saying, “I think you make a handsome couple. Almost as handsome a couple as Allister and your dear cousin.”

At first Riley was still too irritated over the lady’s revelation to register her comment, but then it sank in. Had the lady just referred to her and Lord Delander as a couple?

Eh, gads! She and Cousin Felicity’s plan had gone far better than they had hoped. They had thought that their story of her being orphaned and raised by Hindu natives might pique the Dowager’s interest in her, but exclude her as unfit material for a daughter-in-law.

Obviously the bouquet idea had been too much.

Aggie always said she liked to overplay the second act.

Now she had not only to remain in the woman’s good graces, but extricate herself from a marriage she didn’t want.

Before she could even come up with an inkling of how to do this, the Dowager started planning Riley’s upcoming Season.

“—It is imperative that you meet everyone. The vouchers I’ll secure tomorrow, and you’ll need to accompany me on my Tuesday and Thursday calls so I can introduce you to all the right hostesses. And don’t accept any invitations without my approval.”

At this boon, Riley shook her head. “I fear I cannot accept your kindness.”

“Whyever not?” the lady snapped, momentarily reverting to her usual crusty self.

“Because I am not here in London for my own cares, but to help my cousins prepare for their Season. I fear I haven’t the time for my own
pleasures
.”

She hoped Mason knew that comment was meant more for him than for their company.

Miss Pindar, indeed! Well, if he wanted someone to kiss, he could just take his pleasure with his eligible, rich nonpareil.

“Stuff and bother, girl,” Lady Delander declared. “I will have my way on this.”

Riley smiled and shook her head. “I was raised with the understanding that one repays one’s good fortune before seeking one’s own happiness. And Lord Ashlin has bestowed upon me a safe haven in these perilous times.”

“Utter nonsense,” Lady Delander said. She stared at Riley for a moment and then added a “harumph.” When Riley shook her head again, the lady’s thick frown creased even deeper into her florid face. “Well, you are a deter
mined thing, so we will just see that Lord Ashlin’s nieces are presented posthaste.” The lady turned to her brother. “George, have your secretary send around a new invitation to your masquerade for Lord Ashlin, and include his nieces and dear cousin here.”

Riley drew a quick breath. The Everton masquerade? She’d never hoped to see the girls invited there. Riley knew, from the reports of it that filled the papers every year, it was considered the opening gala to the Season.

The invitations were very select, and a young lady invited to it was assured of being invited everywhere in the weeks to follow.

“We accept your kind invitation,” Riley said quickly.

“On the contrary, Cousin,” Mason said. “I am afraid we must decline.”

“Decline! Are you mad?” the Dowager asked.

For once, Riley agreed with Lady Delander.

“Mason, refusing the Everton masquerade just isn’t done,” Cousin Felicity told him, smiling at the Duke and nudging Mason with her knee.

“Yes,” Riley added. “If the Duke is so kind as to extend invitations at this late date, we would be remiss to refuse.”

Mason shook his head. “I am afraid we must.”

She knew only too well that stubborn set to his jaw. That same face of stone had been the one that wouldn’t listen to her protests of moving out of the theatre. But this time, Riley couldn’t see one good reason for Mason’s refusal. The Everton masquerade would ensure the girls’ success.

Then it hit her: he didn’t want
her
there.

He didn’t want to be responsible for allowing the notorious Aphrodite to be mixing with the
ton
, or even perhaps rubbing shoulders with his cherished and chaste Miss Pindar.

Her jealousy got the better of her. “Won’t Miss Pindar be there, Your Grace?” she asked.

Lord Delander’s uncle nodded. “Yes, Miss Pindar and her mother are on the guest list and will most decidedly be there.”

Riley smiled as pleasantly as she could muster. If Miss Pindar was going to be there, then so was she.

If Mason intended to marry this woman, then Riley wanted to take her measure—see what the
ton
considered the perfect young lady. She told herself it was research to aid in her lessons for the girls. Yes, just research.

Ignoring Mason’s glower, she smiled at the Duke and for a moment Del’s uncle’s gaze lingered on Riley longer than made her feel comfortable.

Questions, confusion, and then shock flickered in his eyes as he studied her.

But before she could make heads or tails of whether the Duke had recognized her, Riley was distracted by another inquiry from the Dowager.

“How many of them are there?” she asked Riley.

“How many what?” Riley asked.

“Well, sisters. How many girls did Caro and Freddie have?”

“Three,” she told her.

“Harumph,” the woman snorted, and turned her glare on Mason, as if this vast number of nieces was somehow his doing. “No wonder Caro and that rapscallion brother of yours kept them hidden away at Sanborn Abbey. ’Twould beggar any man to have three girls out in society—let alone considering your own poor finances.” She shook her head. “No wonder you’re after Miss Pindar’s hand.”

“I am hardly pursuing Miss Pindar,” Mason protested,
though to Riley’s ears his efforts sounded half-hearted at best.

“So you say,” Lady Delander sniffed.

Once again, Riley found herself in the vexing position of agreeing with the old dragon.

“Y
ou can’t decline the Duke’s invitation,” Riley said, following doggedly at Mason’s heels as he retreated to his study. Now that Lady Delander and her entourage had left, she was free to speak her mind. “Think of what this could mean for the girls!”

He spun around so quickly that she slammed right into his chest—that muscled wall of Ashlin strength Riley had no right to covet—not since Lady Delander had all but spilled the beans over his courtship with Miss Dahlia Pindar.

Still, she couldn’t help but put her hands upon his jacket to steady herself. Her fingers retraced the path they’d taken last night and her imagination only too happily recalled where that course had taken them.

She looked up and saw in his eyes a hint of the same fire she’d tasted last night.

“How can you refuse?” she repeated, not sure she was asking the same question.

“I must,” he said, not sounding all that convincing. He looked down at her and for a moment she thought he was going to…

Gads, couldn’t she think of anything but kissing when she was around him?

She pushed off from him and steadied herself, her hands finally coming to rest on her hips. A pox and bother on his distracting hide.

“I am refusing the Duke’s invitation because of the girls,” he said, his gaze going over her shoulder to the stairwell behind them.

Riley glanced in that direction as well and saw the last flash of muslin as the girls hurried out of sight.

“Come in here,” he said, hauling her by the elbow into his study and closing the door behind them. “Don’t you see they can’t attend?”

She yanked herself free of his grasp. “Not when what you mean to say is that
I
can’t attend. Well if my presence is so offensive, then I will decline the Duke’s invitation and you take the girls.”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “Not want you there? Whatever gave you that foolish notion? I would well imagine that if you went you’d set the entire establishment on their collective ears.”

Riley turned a shocked and suspicious gaze on him. Had he just given her a compliment?

Just then he took off his spectacles and began wiping them clean. As he glanced at her, she saw the rake, not the scholar, and wondered which man she preferred.

Both, she realized. Both intrigued her; both mystified her.

“I imagine,” he said, “if you worked the same magic on the
ton
as you did today on Lady Delander, you’d steal the heart of every man between the ages of fourteen and ninety-four.”

Riley resisted the urge to preen under his high praise. Hadn’t she heard such flattering words before from so
many others? Yet it tugged at her heart that Mason thought her so beguiling and left her wanting to ask but one question: would that collection of stolen hearts include his?

Setting aside that foolish desire, she redirected their conversation back to the real matter at hand. “At least consider taking the girls,” she urged him.

Mason shuddered. “How can I trust that they will behave? Lord help me, they are hellions. Can you say your lessons are helping?”

Lessons?
she wanted to ask. What lessons? Lessons with the girls consisted of two hours of them hurling insults at her while she resisted hurling a candlestick back at them. Still the Everton masquerade would ensure their success—and get her off the hook with Mason, if only she could get them to see that as well.

“What if they did behave?” she offered.

“Would you stake your reputation on Bea making it through an evening without consigning something or someone to hell?”

Riley laughed. “I haven’t a reputation to worry about.”

“Consider yourself lucky in that regard.” He glanced at her again, that odd look on his face as if he were puzzling some knotty dilemma. “A reputation can be a hindrance to live by.”

She wondered at this odd confession as he strode over to his desk. A mountain of notes covered the top. Riley heard a quiet, desperate sigh slip from him as he eyed the very plain evidence of his financial distress.

“So will you accept?” Riley asked.

He shook his head. “I can’t. Just don’t tell the girls about the Duke’s invitation. I can well imagine the anarchy I’d have in this house if they found out I refused them the perfect entrée into society.”

Upstairs in the room directly over their uncle’s study, Bea and Maggie strained to get their ears closer to the crack in the floorboards. They’d spent nearly an hour like this in the room next to the salon struggling and waiting to hear Lady Delander make mincemeat of Madame Fontaine.

Much to their chagrin, the lady had been entranced.

How would they ever be rid of their unwanted tutor if she continued to make conquests right and left? Including their uncle.

“What is he saying?” Louisa demanded.

Bea waved her off. “Shut up,” she whispered. “I can’t hear a thing with you yapping away.”

“Then let me listen,” she said. Dropping to the floor, Louisa also stuck her ear to the opening in the glistening hardwood. “Sounds like a bunch of gibberish.”

“Shhh,” Maggie hissed. “He’s deciding whether or not we get to go.”

All three girls held their breath.

When they heard their uncle’s final verdict, they lifted their heads from the floor and stared at each other, eye to eye.

Bea uttered a salty phrase that only went that much further to confirm everything their uncle had just said.

Riley decided a serious attempt at teaching the girls was in order. If she was to get herself out of Mason’s control, she needed to see these girls take the Everton masquerade by storm—but she hadn’t any idea how to reach the trio of miscreants.

She still thought she’d have better luck dressing up a bunch of badgers and passing them off as the late Earl’s daughters.

With Mason out for the afternoon, Riley girded herself for battle. But instead of the usual feisty and impertinent students she’d been expecting, the trio listened listlessly to her discussion on the use of a fan and how to make a stylish entrance.

Running out of ideas, she resorted to reading from the little book Aggie had slipped into her reticule before she’d moved out of the theatre.

“A lady always appears in society,” she read aloud, “with a modest demeanor and a calm, serene countenance, leaving all who bear witness to her aspect no doubt that she is a vessel of purity.” Riley paused in her recitation and flipped over the book to see who had written this drivel.

A Graceful Distinction
, the title proclaimed. By an unnamed “lady of grace and upstanding character.”

“Bloody hell, what the devil does that mean?” Bea asked.

For once, Riley found the girl’s bellicose outburst a welcome change from the unnerving quiet that had ruled the afternoon.

“It means you might as well consign yourself to a long spinsterhood raising cats in some moldy cottage, dear sister,” Louisa purred from her seat in the corner. The little minx went back to paging through her fashion magazine.

“I know what it means,” Maggie suggested.

Bea snorted, “As if.”

“Yes, Maggie, what does it mean?” Riley urged the girl to answer, hopeful that this uncharacteristic assistance was a sign that one of the sisters perhaps was even listening to her.

“It means Beatrice hasn’t a chance of ever becoming Lady Delander.” Maggie and Louisa both laughed.

Beatrice, however, flew from her post by the window
and lit into her sister like a sailor in a tavern brawl.

Riley stared open-mouthed at this unbelievable display.

“You take that back, you clumsy little bi—” Bea swore, as she caught Maggie around the neck with her arm and pinned her to the floor.

“Lady Delander, Lady Delander,” Maggie chanted unrepentantly, fighting back like a wildcat.

Closing her eyes, Riley counted to ten. Suddenly a life of putting on puppet shows at country fairs and sheep sales for crowds of gaping yokels didn’t look so bad after all.

“Do something,” Riley ordered Louisa.

The girl set aside her magazine and sighed. Not bothering to rise from her chaise, Louisa spared a glance at her sisters. “Bea, you’d better make sure there is room for two in that cottage of yours.” When this didn’t do anything but incite the fighting sisters further, Louisa shrugged.

Riley ground her teeth. Standing beside the girls, she stomped her foot. “Stop this,” she told them. “Immediately.”

“Not until she takes it back,” Bea shot back. She continued to shake and rattle her sister.

“You’d better listen to the next Lady Delander,” Maggie taunted, elbowing Bea in the stomach.

Riley looked around the room and spotted the large vase of flowers Lord Delander had left for her the day before. Snatching it up, she upended it above Bea and Maggie, sending a shower of water and roses over the pair.

They fell apart, sputtering and cursing.

Well, mostly Bea. “Why, you—”

Riley held the vase at hand. “Don’t tempt me, Lady Beatrice. I would be more than happy to dash this over your spoilt, impertinent head.”

“You can’t call her that,” Maggie said, rising to her sister’s defense. “How dare you! You aren’t even a lady.”

The ludicrous irony of Maggie’s indignation left Riley speechless. Then all she could do was laugh. Laugh until she sat down to steady herself and wipe the tears from her eyes.

Even Louisa got up from her perch and joined her sisters to stare at their unwanted teacher. “I believe she’s gone mad.”

Finally Riley got to a point where she could speak again. “Mad? It’s a wonder I haven’t been carted away, after spending the last few afternoons with you three. Look at you!” She pointed at the large mirror over the fireplace which reflected most of the room. “Take a good look and tell me if you can see any ladies in there.” She got up and stood behind them. “And don’t count Cousin Felicity.”

The girls glowered back at her.

“Exactly my point. How old are you, Bea? Twenty, I’d guess. And how old will the other girls be for their first Season?”

Bea’s jaw worked back and forth. “Sixteen,” she finally mumbled.

“Yes, sixteen.” Riley handed her and Maggie towels from the tea tray. “And how have you spent the past four years improving yourself so as to stand out amongst them? Very ineffectively, as evidenced by this vulgar brawl. Personally, I doubt your skill in cursing and bear baiting will get you into Almack’s.

“What are you going to do when your uncle gets married?” she asked them, realizing she finally had their attention. “Even now he is looking for a bride. How happy do you think the new mistress of this house is going to
be at having you three underfoot, caterwauling and bickering all the time?”

“But this is our home,” Maggie protested.

“It won’t be for long,” Riley told her.

“She’s right,” Cousin Felicity said, rising from her chair and coming to their side. “Gracious sakes, there’s no guarantee the next Lady Ashlin will be as generous.” The lady pulled out her handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “If it hadn’t been for your grandmother taking me in, I don’t know where I would have gone.”

“But Uncle would never—” Louisa started to say.

“You don’t know that,” Cousin Felicity told her. “It may not be his decision. When a man marries, the house becomes his wife’s domain. And consider this: your uncle will not be making the love match your parents shared. He must wed for money, and that could bring any kind of lady into our midst.”

Maggie gulped. “Oh, my. Dahlia and her mother.”

Bea flopped down on the sofa. “We’re in for it.”

“Not necessarily,” Riley told them. “While your uncle is out hunting for a bride, you can find husbands. You aren’t trapped in this house. Only if you let yourselves be.”

Louisa shook her head. “There isn’t a chance of that happening. Not now, what with Uncle refusing the Duke’s invitation.”

“Louisa!” Bea said.

“You know about the masquerade?” Riley asked, circling the trio.

Maggie shuffled her feet. “We might have heard something of it in passing.”

Bea punched her tattletale sister in the arm.

Riley sighed, but decided not to pursue the subject of eavesdropping until another time.

“Madame is right,” Louisa said. “Look at us. We haven’t anything but our mourning that fits—and black is hardly a good color on any of us.”

Nodding in agreement, Bea added, “A Season is expensive. That’s why we never got ours in the first place.” Her sisters turned and looked at her. She shrugged. “I heard Mother and Father discussing it. They had to choose between their pursuits and bringing us out. So they kept us out at Sanborn Abbey.”

Riley glanced over at Cousin Felicity, who nodded silently at this comment.

“So I suppose it is useless even to bother,” Maggie said, the bitterness in her young voice piercing Riley’s heart.

“I hardly think so,” Riley told them. “Look at me. I’ve been proposed to hundreds of times, by many eligible and likely young men. I’m hardly the perfect prospect for a bride, so there is hope for anyone if I can interest a man.”

“Yes, that is all well and good, but we can hardly go out in these,” Bea said, holding out her waterlogged skirt. The hemline rose above her ankles and it appeared to have been mended—and badly, at that—several times. “This was my best dress. Without clothes, I haven’t a chance of catching Del’s—” Bea’s mouth snapped shut for a moment. “Anyone’s attention,” she finished hastily.

Riley smiled and took her by the hand. Really, when she wasn’t swearing and cursing, Beatrice had a nice voice, as well as a pretty smile. Perhaps there was hope for her yet.

Bea let out a long sigh. “Oh, go ahead. You can laugh at me, just like Louisa and Maggie. I suppose I deserve it. Cousin Felicity always says we will reap what we sow. Well, you can say I’m harvesting a bumper crop.” She turned her back to Riley.

“Bea, I have no plans of laughing at you.” And while
the chances of Beatrice, with her outrageous manners and her rather colorful choice of language, catching the Viscount’s eye might be slim, maybe the girl still had a chance.

Bea swung around and demanded, “Why didn’t you accept his offer to go for a ride in the park?”