The Heir and the Spare (15 page)

“You didn’t keep that promise, did you?” he asked.

“No,” she said coldly.

In the ballroom, Phillip went through the motions of polite chatter with his guests. He thought of the expense of this evening, and he thought of Miss Highhart. He wondered what had become of her. He thought that perhaps she was in the ladies’ retiring room tending to an injury due to her clumsiness.

“I don’t see her,” Phillip said to Parkhurst. “Where is she?”

“Miss Highhart?” Parkhurst questioned rather loudly. He must have been drinking. Besides the wine with dinner, Phillip did not dare imbibe a drop of alcohol, though he very badly wanted to.

“Keep your voice down,” Phillip snapped. “And of course I’m asking after Miss Highhart.”

“I heard she retired for the evening. Headache or something.”

“What about the other one? Have you seen him? Heard anything?” Phillip asked.

“Nah. He hates you as much as you hate him. He probably left.” That burned. It was wrong. He hated his twin more. He would not be second best at that, too.

“I’m going to her chamber,” Phillip said, a plan forming in his mind. “Come up in twenty minutes with some gossipy wench.”

“Who?”

“Christ, Parkhurst, just figure something out.”

Three pairs of eyes were looking at the large clock in the ballroom. All of them noted that it was approaching midnight. Marksmith thought he might see if Lord Devon was in need of anything—a drink, perhaps. Lady Palmerston had noticed Phillip slip out a moment ago. Lady Stillmore had noticed Parkhurst frequently glancing at the clock while engaging Lady Sheffield in conversation. The chaperones nodded at each other, wordlessly communicating their fears and plans. No mere men would outsmart such seasoned schemers.

Meg did not knock on the door; she never did. She just quietly slipped in to check on Miss Emilia. She had been out of sorts earlier this evening, and the questions about the twin brother, and her apparent intentions to find him, had Meg worried. She thought it best to check on her. She also brought a book from the library, hoping that might keep Emilia occupied.

The room was dimly lit, but one glance at the bed showed that it was empty. Her heart stopped in her throat when she saw him, standing by the window, and turning to look at her. It was Lord Huntley, and he did not seem pleased to see her.

“Where is your mistress?” he demanded, keeping his voice quiet.

“I . . . I . . . I do not know. My lord.” Meg dipped into a curtsey and started inching back toward the door, pressing up against it and clutching the book to her chest.

“Oh, don’t even think about leaving,” he said with a laugh that was not at all friendly.

Phillip could not have the maid running off and alerting anyone that he was in a young woman’s bedchamber. At least not yet. Emilia would surely return soon, from wherever she was. Then he would devise some way to compromise her, and this little maid could help spread the word. For once, servant’s gossip would work in his favor.

Marksmith quietly made his way down the third floor hallway. He could tell by the light that the door was open. He heard voices, too. He stopped, naturally. But he did not change direction. He remained in the shadows and listened.

“You’re not going to apologize, are you?” He recognized Miss Highhart’s voice. There was an edge to her voice that he couldn’t quite identify. Anger, perhaps, coupled with hurt.

“For what? No, I’m not sorry I caught you when you fell. You would have been hurt. No, I am not sorry that I kissed you. We both enjoyed it. Now you want to ask me if I’m sorry that I left. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have, I grant you that. I am
very
sorry that you are risking your reputation and your future by being here.”

“I would like an apology,” she said, her voice rising, “for risking my reputation and my future by deliberately misleading me. For playing me like a pawn in your war with your brother. From my experience, you are both exactly the same—the lying, the manipulation, the careless attitude to another person’s feelings. You both deserve each other.”

Marksmith stepped aside as Miss Highhart fled the room and stormed right past him. If she had noticed his presence, she gave no indication.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, Lord Devon,” Marksmith said, taking note of Devon’s state of dress. “But I came to see if you wished for anything.”

“A drink,” he said, leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes.

“If I may be so bold . . .” Marksmith started.

“Go on. Seems to be the thing to do tonight.”

“Being a gentleman is not a competition. Not with Phillip, nor with anyone else. You have the capacity to be a good man. You might consider acting accordingly.”

Lady Palmerston did not bother to knock on the door to her niece’s bedchamber. She turned the knob on the door and pushed. It would not open. Someone or something was forcing it shut.

She gave the door another good shove. It swung wide open, slamming into the wall. Meg had apparently been up against the door and had been thrown into Huntley’s grasp.

“Just as I expected,” she said briskly. “Do explain, Huntley, what you are doing in my niece’s bedchamber. I do, naturally, have an idea. But for once in my life, I would love to be proven wrong.”

Phillip glared at her, and his expression darkened when he noticed others gathering in the hall behind her. Parkhurst had just now arrived, bringing Lady Sheffield with him. Lady Stillmore had followed as well. Since the hour was late, some guests were on their way to retiring, but decided to wrangle one last bit of entertainment for the evening.

“Where is she?” Lady Palmerston barked, taking a step toward him. She was a tall woman, but he was taller. Still, she managed to make him the slightest bit nervous.

“I have no idea, I assure you,” he said collecting himself. “But she is your responsibility, and you seem to have failed her, Madame.” The rage of his own failure pulsed through his veins and leaked into his voice. It just wasn’t fair.

Lady Palmerston turned her attention to the maid. “Tell me what happened,” she demanded.

“You are going to take the word of a servant over my own?” Phillip asked incredulously.

“Your reputation precedes you, Huntley. I can only think of one reason why you would be in my niece’s room at this hour. Or even at all.” By now every guest, even the musicians hired for the evening, had crowded into the hallway to watch the scene unfold before them.

They would not watch his downfall, his mortification at the hands of some gossipy old widow. They would not. He lied through his teeth without the slightest twinge of his conscience. “I am, quite simply, concerned for my betrothed. I learned she had not been feeling well.”

The crowd collectively gasped.

“Bah!” Lady Palmerston shouted. The crowd fell silent once more. “Obviously you are distraught that she rejected your proposal. She did have feelings for you, you know. But upon your admittance that you would be unable to consummate the union, she decided she would rather be a mother than a duchess,” she said, with a feigned smile of sympathy and pity. That, too, was a lie uttered with a clean conscience. But Lady Palmerston rationalized that the scoundrel needed to be taken down. And he was not going to take her niece along with him.

The crowd gasped again. They whispered and stared. Some laughed.

Phillip turned purple.

Emilia had been frozen at the top of the stairs for the whole scene. She saw nothing, but heard everything. She was afraid that if she walked down the stairs, she would have to explain where she had been. And that, she was quite certain, would be disastrous.

“Miss Highhart,” someone whispered behind her. She turned to see the butler. “Come with me,” he said.

“Promise you won’t tell, please,” she said quietly.

“You have my word.” She followed the butler down the servant’s stairs to the first floor. All the while, he whispered instructions to her. “I will have found you in the library, and I shall escort you to your chamber. You must act shocked and question what is going on.”

“Oh, Marksmith, how can I ever thank you?”

“Think nothing of it, Miss Highhart. You are far more than Phillip deserves, if I may be so bold to say so. As for Devon, things were never as easy for him as for his brother. Be patient with him.”

They entered the library through a second set of doors that she had never noticed before. Unfortunately, the room was not empty. The fire was dying, but one could discern the form of a couple embracing.

“Oh!” a woman’s voice cried out.

“Damn,” a man growled.

“Annabelle?”

“Emilia?”

“What is going on?” George asked.

“There is no time to explain,” Emilia said, as Marksmith backed out of the room discreetly. “I was in the library reading when you found me. As far as you both know, I’ve been here ever since I retired after dinner. I’m tired and you are escorting me to my room.”

Annabelle and George nodded. Emilia did not tell them about the crowd in the hall, since their genuinely shocked expressions would be necessary.

Phillip was completely disgusted. Everything, absolutely everything, was slipping out of his grasp. He had truly lost his heiress and his twin had returned. It occurred to him that this might be no coincidence, that the two of them might be together at this very moment. He glared at them all.

“What is going on?” Emilia cried out from the back of the crowd, hoping that her acting skills were up to the charade.

“Where have you been?” everyone demanded at once.

“Oh my,” Annabelle said under her breath.

“Miss Stillmore and I found her in the library. She said she was tired from reading and asked us to escort her upstairs,” George said, in a tone that simply expected everyone to believe it without question. It seemed to work, for there was a deflated sigh from the crowd. After all, Emilia had often been seen going in and out of the library. They had all remarked on her bluestocking tendencies. It was, to everyone’s utter dismay, a perfectly reasonable explanation for her absence.

Parkhurst, however, noticed the maid still standing about.

“If Miss Highhart was in the library, why is a maid bringing a book to her room?” he pointed out.

All eyes turned to the maid, who was clutching a book to her chest.

“I asked her to bring it to my chamber for me,” Emilia said as calmly as she could. “When Miss Stillmore and Lord Winsworth found me in the library, I put it aside. Knowing I would be retiring soon, I rang for my maid from the library and asked her to take the book and prepare my chamber.”

The crowd made their disappointment known. Just when it had gotten interesting again.

“Obviously,” Lady Palmerston started, the strength of her voice commanding the crowd to silence, “there has been a misunderstanding of epic proportions. I suggest we all retire for the evening, as we have likely exhausted all possibilities for drama.”

Phillip strode out of the room. “I do hope I have kept you all suitably entertained,” he said, forcing his voice to be smooth, and punctuating it all with a short bow, as if to suggest the entire scene was a staged event solely for their amusement. Walking away, he shot a sharp look over his shoulder at Parkhurst, reminding him to follow. It took Parkhurst a minute to extricate himself from the grasp of Lady Sheffield, but soon enough, he was trotting after Phillip.

The other guests departed in a flurry of gossip. Only a small group remained in the hall. The chaperones and their young girls stared in silence at George.

“Thank you,” Emilia said.

“Think nothing of it,” he replied. “Good night, ladies.”

And then the ladies clustered into Emilia’s bedchamber. Lady Palmerston turned to her niece. “Now, you, young lady, have some explaining to do. Where were you?”

Emilia cringed. She did not want to lie to her aunt after she had just risked her own reputation to save hers. But she couldn’t quite admit the truth—that she was arguing with the other twin, alone, upstairs in his bedchamber. Lady Palmerston would march up there and Emilia would find herself married before dawn, which would not mesh well with her plans to never see or speak to Devon again.

“Can we talk in the morning? I am quite exhausted,” Emilia said. “It has been a very long day.”

“We have a long ride back to London tomorrow. Emilia, I will expect a full explanation, preferably an interesting one. In the meantime, I myself am quite exhausted.”

“That was quite a show you put on,” Lady Stillmore said.

“It pleases me immensely that you were present to bear witness to my triumph,” Lady Palmerston replied.

Later that night, after all had gone to bed, Emilia found she could not sleep. Knowing better than to leave her chamber, she opened the window and leaned out. Another guest apparently had a window open as well, since Emilia could hear snoring from a nearby room.

She could not decide which twin was worse. Phillip was clearly just after her fortune, but so were many other men. She had just made it easy for him.

Or rather the other one, Devon had been the one to make it easy for his twin. He was the one who had kissed her so thoroughly as to send her into a blind haze that lasted for weeks. He was the one who made her feel so aware of every nerve in her body. He made her heart beat faster, made her head spin, made her feel alive in a way that she had never imagined. And she had become addicted to the feeling.

She could still see him sitting there. His bare chest. And then those rich brown eyes really looked at her. Phillip had the same eyes, but his gaze always seemed partially focused on something else. And Devon’s mouth—how could such awful words and sweet kisses be born from the same place?

Thinking over it now, she couldn’t recall if her heart did speed up in his presence tonight. She couldn’t recall feeling wonderfully overwhelmed. And absolutely worst of all was that she missed the feeling.