Somerville Farce (22 page)

The eloquent stream of curses that followed
this unfortunate direction of temper was abruptly cut off as he saw
Sir Roderick leave the house, the man’s dragging steps and downcast
head sending a thrill of hope slicing through Harry’s body with the
white-hot heat of a lightning bolt.

“She’s turned the jabbering magpie down!” he
announced to the empty room. “She had everything to gain and
nothing to lose, yet that wonderful minx has bloody well turned
Roddy down, bless his poor broken heart! Trixy does love me! She
must!”

He whirled about, making it halfway to the
door before he realized that it wouldn’t do to go haring off
downstairs until he could wipe the inane grin from his face. After
all, it wouldn’t be prudent to look too smug, or else Trixy—the
adorable sweetheart!—might feel the need to put him through a few
more hoops before giving in to the inevitable.

But wait a minute. Trixy had turned down Sir
Roderick’s suit. That didn’t mean she was ready to accept his, did
it? The thought gave Harry pause—but only a momentary one. He
didn’t know when he had decided that marriage to Trixy was the only
answer. Perhaps talk of the wedded state from two different
gentlemen this morning in his study had got his mind to thinking
along such lines.

But that was of no importance. All he really
needed to know was that nothing short of marriage to Trixy would
rescue him from the depths of despair such as he had been
experiencing from the moment Sir Roderick had entered the
study.

She was a blackmailer? Harry gave a toss of
his head as he checked his appearance in the mirror. What of it?
She could be a murderer, a thief, a spy—it didn’t matter! He didn’t
know why he loved her, he didn’t know when he had fallen in love
with her. All he knew, all he wanted to know, was when he could
have her to himself, away from twins and brothers and aunts and the
rest of the world.

He leaned forward, inspecting his chin for
any signs that his ill humor might have encouraged his valet to
rush his morning shave, giving himself yet another moment to
collect his thoughts.

“Harry?” called a small nervous voice from
the doorway behind him.

It was Trixy. Trixy, here, in his
bedchamber. Some benevolent god must be smiling on him. Harry’s
hand stilled in the action of smoothing his cravat and he slowly
turned to face her. “Trixy,” he said, amazing himself with the
level tone of his voice. “Is something wrong?”

She came more fully into the chamber,
closing the door to the hallway behind her. “Wrong?” she asked, her
gaze idly wandering over the furnishings, avoiding his. “Whatever
could be wrong?”

“Nothing, I suppose, although you must admit
it’s odd that you are here in my rooms.”

She shrugged her slim shoulders. “No odder
than having you in mine last night, I should think. We passed
beyond the conventions some time ago, Harry.”

Harry watched as she moved slowly about the
room, lifting a figurine to hold it to the light, straightening the
brocade runner that rested upon a nearby table, picking up a book
that had been lying open on its spine and reading the title.

She looked wonderful, the golden highlights
in her red hair glowing warmly as she passed through a shaft of
dusty late-morning sunlight streaming through the window onto the
carpet, the book still in her hand. She also, he noted with no
small satisfaction, appeared to be more than a little on edge. That
boded well for him, he was sure.

“Has there been any word from Helena and her
prancing master?” he asked randomly when the silence in the room
began to undermine his confidence.

She shook her head, and walked on, nearing
the bed before she belatedly saw her error and turned away. “But
you may be somewhat comforted to learn that Eugenie is well on her
way to becoming a much-beloved daughter-in-law to Mrs. Saltaire.
Salty just received a note from his mother summoning him home
immediately to share an intimate luncheon with her and ‘dearest
Eugenie.’ ”

Harry, who had been so sure of himself just
a few minutes previously, was curiously pleased by the chance to
talk of other things while his courage, formerly so strong, had
some time to rebuild itself. “Salty has offered to share his
country house with Helena and her Frenchman until they can settle
themselves—which probably means he will have the two of them and
their inevitable multitude of children underfoot forever—and he
even promised to provide half Helena’s allowance as well. It’s
amazing what love will do to a man’s common sense, isn’t it?”

Trixy’s head came up, and the book—a dull
tome recounting the founding of Rome that he had given up on a week
ago—snapped shut. “Which do you believe comes first, then,
Harry—love for a woman, or the loss of a man’s common sense? Or is
one necessary to the other? And if a man must first lose his common
sense, how can he be sure what he feels for the woman is really
love, and not infatuation, or attraction, or even lust?”

“You’re upset,” he said, wincing at his own
understatement. He looked deeply into her eyes, seeing that they
held a great pain. “It’s Roddy, isn’t it? You turned him down.”

Trixy’s eyes flashed green ice and he knew
he had blundered again. “Yes, I turned him down—which probably has
shocked you, since you were so sure I’d marry him in order to gain
myself a wealthy husband—but no, it’s not Roddy that has me upset.
It’s you, Harry—you big idiot!” And with that said, she turned to
leave the room.

“Wait a minute!” Harry commanded, grabbing
her upper arm, which earned him another searing look. He let go of
her arm as if her skin gave off an unbearable heat and, inclining
his head slightly, murmured, “I’m sorry, Trixy. Let me rephrase
that. Please... stay a moment. We have to talk.”

Trixy nodded, not saying anything, for she
could not trust her voice, and stood waiting for him to speak. She
had come to his chambers only to tell him about Eugenie and to
inform him, because he had been the one to give his permission for
the match, that she had turned down Sir Roderick’s plea for her
hand. No, that wasn’t quite true, and she knew it.

She had boldly come here to this man’s
private rooms to watch his face while she told him she had turned
down Sir Roderick. She had to watch, she had to know how the news
would affect him, if it affected him at all. His response—or, as it
pained her to realize, the lack of it—had put her on the brink of
tears and she wanted nothing more than to retire to her room and
weep.

“What do you want to talk about, Harry?” she
asked when he made no move to speak, but just stood there, his hand
still outstretched, looking down at her with a most strange,
unreadable expression on his face. “I’m not supposed to be in here,
and Lady Amelia may be looking for me.”

Harry continued to stare at her, struggling
to find the right words, but her proximity—especially when he had
just thought he’d lost her—was doing strange things to him. Talk?
They had no need of talk. She was here. He was here. They were
together, where they belonged. And this time he wasn’t going to let
her get away.

His hand reached out to clasp her waist, and
he pulled her to him, having decided to let his actions speak for
him once again. Their lips met in an explosion of mutual passion
that had them clinging tightly to each other so that they could
maintain their physical if not their mental balance.

For neither of them was thinking clearly.
They were reacting to the moment, and to the hunger for each other,
which had been denied when Lacy had interrupted them last night in
Trixy’s room and had doubled in force, then redoubled, with each
hour that had passed since then.

It was Harry who ended the kiss,
reluctantly, and all but gasping for breath. He whispered hoarsely
into Trixy’s ear, “Marry me, sweetings. Please.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, her
face turned away from his as her fingertips curled into his upper
arms. Now she knew what she wanted to know—had hoped to learn—for
all the good it would do her.

“I can’t, Harry,” she said quietly, her
voice catching on a sob. “That... that’s why I came to see you in
private—to tell you that I can’t marry you. And to tell you that
I’ll be leaving as soon as Eugenie can be settled.”

Harry frowned in confusion. “You... you knew
I’d ask you to marry me? How?” He didn’t even bother addressing her
notion of leaving him, for he wasn’t going to allow any such
thing.

She bit her bottom lip for a moment, then
told him, “Roddy told me, of course. When I refused his suit, he
told me how you had acted when he asked if he could propose to me.
He said he had thought the same thing once or twice before and
dismissed it, but now it was as plain to him as the nose on
Prinny’s face that you wanted me for yourself. But I have to admit
it—until this moment I wasn’t really convinced you wanted to marry
me. I... I just knew you wanted me.”

Harry took out his handkerchief and handed
it to Trixy so that she could wipe her streaming eyes. “You’re
remembering my brutish proposition, aren’t you? I could kick myself
every time I think of how arrogant that was, and how much I hurt
you. But that was when I thought of you as nothing more than a
desirable but devious blackmailer. Now it’s different. Now I love
you, Trixy.”

Trixy reached out to trace her fingertips
down the clean line of Harry’s jaw. “No, Harry, I don’t think so.
The only reason I’m here at all is that I tried to blackmail you. I
foisted Myles Somerville’s dullard daughters on you, causing you no
end of expense and trouble, and demanded payment from you to keep
me silent about Willie’s kidnap scheme. Willie has told me of your
feelings about right and wrong. You’d remember that in time,
whenever we argued, which would probably be often. You’d grow to
hate me in the end.”

Harry felt a flash of righteous anger slam
through him and pushed her hand away. “What sort of villain do you
think I am, woman, that I would ever do anything so base, so
crass?”

Trixy put out a hand to touch him. “Harry,
please—”

“No!” he exploded, losing his temper—most
probably owing to a combination of his injured feelings, his
unsated desire, and his lack of sleep. “Why don’t you just tell the
truth, Trixy, and not try to fob me off with lame excuses? You
don’t love me. You may want me, but you don’t love me. Tell me,
when you leave, will you still be going to the cottage you’ll rent
with the allowance you’ve demanded from me? You do still intend to
accept the cottage and allowance I once denied you and then offered
back again with both hands—not that I shall ever be invited to
visit you there.”

Trixy, her stubborn chin thrust out,
countered, “Would it make you happier if I rejected the money and
was forced to sleep beneath the hedgerows? It’s a strange sort of
love you bear me, your grace.”

Trixy was dying inside, but she
wouldn’t—couldn’t—let Harry see that. She loved him so much that
she thought her heart would break, but she couldn’t marry him, and
for exactly the reasons she had given him. Perhaps he honestly
believed he could live with the thought that his wife was a common
blackmailer, but she knew that she couldn’t.

All she could do now was brazen it out, keep
him angry with her and, much as it pained her, take advantage of
his “allowance” so that she could get as far from London as a
stagecoach would take her. Once she was settled, she would find
employment and repay him, but for now she did need the money. Myles
Somerville hadn’t paid her in months, and she had used her last
quarter’s wages to help feed the twins.

But Harry couldn’t know any of this. He
could only look at her, see the resolution in her green eyes, and
take it for greed. “You stupid woman,” he said condemningly,
turning away from her. “You could have had it all, been my duchess,
but you would prefer to cavort shamelessly with Roddy and me, yet
maintain your independence, while still planning to bleed me dry
with your blackmail. Very well, madam, have it your way. All in
all, I’d say you’ve earned it!”

“Oh, Harry,” Trixy said on a sob, reaching
out to him, but he had already turned away, and she restrained
herself, knowing it was better this way. She would see out the
Season, until Eugenie and Helena were safely settled, and then be
on her way. It was the only solution.

She was nearing the door when it burst open,
slamming back against the wall. Willie raced into the room panting
and looking as if he had just run a very long race. “Trixy! What
are you doing in here? Is that proper? I don’t think that’s proper.
Oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter. Harry, you’ll never guess!”

Harry rubbed a hand across his weary,
somewhat moist eyes. “No, William, I’m quite convinced that I
won’t. My guesses have been rather wide of the mark lately.”

“Well, never mind, Harry, that’s all right,
since you’d never guess anyway, and this is just too important to
wait. It’s Somerville, Harry. Andy and I just saw him at the bottom
of Bond Street, strutting about just like he belonged there. Are
you going to go down there and call him out? I’ll be your second,
Harry, if you’ll let me.”

“Harry...” Trixy began as the duke’s spine
straightened and he started for the door at a near- run. “Harry,
no—don’t do this!”

But Harry wasn’t listening. He was in just
the proper sort of careless, murderous mood to confront Myles
Somerville, and damn the consequences!