When the Marquess Met His Match (2 page)

Ignoring the girl’s protests, Belinda propelled her through the drawing-room doorway and down the corridor to the stairs. “Besides, I can’t introduce you to a man I haven’t yet met myself. That would not be proper.”

She paused near the top of the stairs, casting a quick glance down to the foyer below to reassure herself that Jervis had done his job, and Lord Trubridge was safely ensconced in the library. Satisfied, she started down the stairs, pulling a reluctant Rosalie with her. “And I can assure you, Rosalie, that he’s a man unworthy of your interest.”

“Oh, but how could he not be interesting, with such a history? Oh, please, please, let me meet him. I’ve never met anyone notorious.”

Belinda discerned that further excuses would be needed to make the girl lose her curiosity. “My dear girl, you expressed the wish to live in England,” she reminded her, as they started down the stairs. “Trubridge lives in Paris.”

“But does he have property here?”

“I believe he has a place in Kent,” she answered with reluctance. “Honey-Something. But I don’t believe he ever visits it. He certainly doesn’t live there.”

“But if he married, he might wish to.”

“I doubt it. He and his father are estranged and have been for years.”

“That could also change if he married, too.” Rosalie stopped at the bottom of the stairs, forcing Belinda to stop as well, and as she noted the girl’s mouth taking on an obstinate curve, she began to fear her own intransigence was making the marquess all the more appealing. Clearly, she needed to find something that would lessen his allure.

“I’ve heard . . .” Belinda paused, inventing quickly. “I’ve heard he’s become quite fat.” After all, she consoled herself, it
could
be true.

“Fat?”

“Absolutely corpulent.” Belinda once again began propelling the girl toward the front door. “And I know he drinks,” she added, as they crossed the foyer, “which has probably given him the gout by now. I daresay he smokes cigars as well, so his breath must be . . .” She broke off with a shudder. “Ugh.”

“You make him sound dreadful.”

“Well, he is getting on. Why, he must be over thirty, at least.”

If she’d hoped young Rosalie would think a man of thirty too old to be attractive, she was mistaken. “Oh, Auntie Belinda, thirty’s not so old. Why, you’re twenty-eight, and you could easily pass for a debutante.”

“What a lovely thing to say, darling. Thank you. But my point is that Trubridge is a man of dissolute habits, and when men like that reach a certain age, they become most unattractive.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” She looked less interested now, much to Belinda’s relief. “Oh, how very disappointing.”

“Well, dinner at Lord and Lady Melville’s tonight ought to brighten your spirits. Their second son, Roger, is quite good-looking, and delightful company.” She turned to the footman who had opened the door for them. “Samuel, please escort Miss Harlow to Thomas’s Hotel and see that she arrives safely.”

“Heavens,” Rosalie put in, “I don’t need an escort. Berkeley Square is just across the street. I don’t understand all this fuss about walking everywhere with a chaperone.”

“That’s because you’re American, darling. Things are very different here.” She kissed the girl’s cheek, pushed her gently out to the sidewalk, and turned to her footman. “Not just to the entrance to Berkeley Square, mind. Go with her all the way into Thomas’s Hotel.”

“Yes, my lady. She’ll not go amiss with me.”

“Thank you, Samuel.”

Her footman was most reliable, but despite that, Belinda watched from the doorway as Rosalie crossed Hay Hill and entered Berkeley Square. She was fiercely protective of the young American girls who sought her help, and when it came to safeguarding their reputations, she felt it was always best to err on the side of caution. This was particularly true of the Harlow girls, who were so much like family to her.

Jervis’s footsteps on the tiled floor of the foyer reminded her of her other visitor, and since Rosalie had now vanished from view, she came back inside. Meeting her butler’s inquiring gaze, she nodded, then as he went down the corridor to fetch the marquess, she ran up the stairs to the drawing room. She was able to settle herself on the settee with her tea and catch her breath before Jervis came through the doorway. “The Marquess of Trubridge,” he announced, and stood aside.

Another male figure appeared, moving past the butler and into the drawing room with the ease of a man who never had cause to doubt his welcome in a room where there were women. Belinda rose to her feet, studying him as he approached.

For Rosalie’s benefit, she had conjured the picture of an aging roué, but that picture was shattered by the man before her. He might have all the dissolute habits she’d enumerated, but one wouldn’t have known it to look at him. He was a big man, but there wasn’t an ounce of superfluous flesh on him, and every line of his tall, broad-shouldered frame exuded athleticism and strength, the perfect combination to make any woman feel protected and safe in his company. But Belinda knew such an impression was nothing but illusion. Trubridge’s reputation made him as safe as an untamed lion.

He had a lion’s beauty as well, the tawny, windblown beauty of that splendid animal. His eyes were hazel, with lights of gold and green in their brown depths. His hair, though cut short, was thick and slightly curly, and the gold-burnished locks shimmered in the lamplight of Belinda’s drawing room like the sun might shimmer on the Serengeti Plain. Suddenly, the dark, rainy English afternoon became one of exotic warmth and brilliant sunshine. Even Belinda, who knew full well how deceiving appearances could be, blinked a little in the face of such splendid masculinity.

He was clean-shaven, a rarity these days, but she could not fault the marquess for choosing to defy fashion. His lack of a beard allowed the lean planes of his face and the strong lines of his jaw to be displayed to perfect advantage. Why, she wondered in frustration, were the rakehells always so damnably handsome?

“Lady Featherstone.” He bowed to her. “What a pleasure to see you again.”

“Again?” Looking at him, she was more positive than ever they had never met, for as galling as it was to admit, Trubridge wasn’t the sort of man a woman was likely to forget. “I don’t believe we have ever been introduced, Lord Trubridge,” she said, hoping her words and her withering tone might remind him that he had already broken several social rules.

“Of course you don’t remember me.” He smiled, a disarming smile that was boyish enough to belie his reputation and seductive enough to reinforce it. “We were introduced at the wedding breakfast following your marriage to Lord Featherstone.”

Heavens, her wedding had been a decade ago. That might explain why she didn’t remember him, for she’d been barely eighteen on her wedding day, navigating her first foray through the maze of British society like a moth blundering in lamplight. Horribly self-conscious, head over heels in love with her new husband, and terrified she’d make some awful faux pas that would embarrass him, she’d been too nervous to remember much of anything that day, even a man like Trubridge. How extraordinary that he should remember her, but she supposed his talent for remembering women was another reason he was so successful at seducing them. “Of course,” she murmured at a loss for what else to say. “Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive. It was a long time ago, and we’ve not seen each other since, a fact which is clearly my loss. You look more radiant now than you did as a bride.”

“You flatter me.”
One of your greatest talents, I imagine,
she was tempted to add, but she bit back that rather acidic rejoinder. “Thank you.”

His smile faded to an earnest expression that seemed thoroughly genuine. “I was sorry to hear of your husband’s death. He seemed a very good chap.”

All men, she supposed, would share that opinion of Charles Featherstone. He’d been a terrible husband, but from the male point of view, he’d been a very good chap indeed, able to gamble, carouse, and drink with the best of them, until the night five years ago when he’d collapsed on top of his favorite mistress and died of heart failure at the age of thirty-six.

Belinda strove to maintain a neutral expression and keep hidden her distaste of her late husband and her lack of grief over his death. In England, showing too much emotion was considered bad form. “I appreciate your condolences,” she murmured. “But I take it you are not here to offer me similar sympathies about my brother-in-law?”

His mouth twitched a bit. “Fortunately not. Jack was hale and hearty the last time I saw him, which was only a few days ago at our apartments in Paris.”

“Quite so. I am not surprised, sir, that a man of your reputation would use such a ruse to obtain an interview, but I am baffled as to the reason for it. What is the purpose of this visit?”

“For the same reason many bachelors visit you, of course.”

“I hope you don’t mean that the way it sounds.”

He smiled again, a grin that was wide, rueful, and utterly devastating to the feminine heart. “Lady Featherstone, I want you to find me a wife.”

Chapter 2

N
icholas’s first thought upon seeing Belinda Featherstone was to curse both her husband and her father for their penchant for heavy gambling. If Charles Featherstone hadn’t loved cards and racehorses to an obsessive degree, and if Jeremiah Hamilton hadn’t staked and lost his entire fortune on America’s Wall Street, the solution to Nicholas’s problems might have been standing right in front of him, for Belinda Featherstone was one of the loveliest women he’d ever seen.

He hadn’t expected that.

He’d been twenty years old when he’d attended her wedding breakfast, a decade had passed since then, and he remembered little of the event. Despite his words to the contrary this afternoon, they had never been introduced, but he hadn’t wanted to waste time arranging a formal introduction. That day ten years ago, he’d only glimpsed her from across the room, and his recollection of her appearance that day was vague—a painfully thin girl swathed in too many yards of silk illusion and too many strands of diamonds. He hadn’t seen her since, for he spent little time in England, and when he was here, he had never happened to run across her. Lady Featherstone’s social circle was far too respectable for the likes of him.

In deciding to bring his matrimonial situation to her, Nicholas hadn’t given any thought to what her appearance would be like now, but had he done so, he’d probably have envisioned nothing more than an older version of the unremarkable bride he’d glimpsed ten years earlier. Such an assumption, he saw now, would have been utterly wrong, for time had transformed the gawky girl of his memory into a beautiful woman, a fact Jack had somehow failed to mention during the past decade.

Large eyes in a heart-shaped face stared back at him, eyes of clear, sky blue surrounded by a thick fringe of sooty lashes. Irish eyes. Another thing about her he hadn’t expected.

Once again, Nicholas’s mind flashed backward, nine years instead of ten, to a different dark-haired, blue-eyed girl with Irish eyes, and his heart twisted, just a bit, in his chest. For a moment, he felt as if he were twenty-one again, filled with dreams and ideals and all the claptrap that only young love could inspire.

He shoved the feeling aside. This was no Irish hillside, he was no longer a callow youth, and his dreams and ideals, like his love, had turned to dust a long time ago.

Despite a superficial resemblance in coloring, this woman was nothing like Kathleen. Her black hair was not a riot of corkscrew curls blowing loose in the wind off the Irish Sea. Instead, it was sleek and straight and caught back in an elegant, complicated chignon that had clearly been fashioned by a lady’s maid. Her dress was a tea gown of soft, slate blue cashmere, not a coarse and serviceable linsey-woolsey covered by an apron. And though her house was small and modestly furnished, it was nothing like the thatched-roof cottages of County Kildare. Besides, he knew Lady Featherstone to be filled to her fingertips with scruples and rectitude, two qualities Kathleen Shaughnessy had never possessed.

In fact, Lady Featherstone had one of the most pristine reputations in London, and though that would definitely benefit him in his quest, at this moment it seemed a pity, for her mouth was full, dark pink and eminently kissable, with an unmistakable sensuality that her philandering husband had clearly not appreciated.

He took a glance down her figure, noting that the stick-thin frame of the girl swathed in tulle had given way to a figure of much more luscious proportions. Even her loosely fitted tea gown could not hide the round fullness of her breasts and the undulating curve of her hips. No, he decided, as his gaze traveled slowly back up her body, there was nothing gawky about Lady Featherstone anymore.

He paused at her throat, appreciating the bare skin exposed by the open, lace-edged vee of her gown for a moment before he returned his gaze to her face, and when he looked again into her eyes, heat flooded through his body, the unmistakable heat of desire. For him to be aroused by a woman certainly wasn’t an uncommon thing, and black hair and blue eyes were a combination to which he was particularly susceptible, but given the reason he was here, any desire he might feel for Belinda Featherstone was damned inconvenient.

Not that his feelings seemed to matter much anyway, he thought in amusement, watching as those stunning blue eyes narrowed. It was clear the stirrings in his body had been perceived and were definitely not reciprocated, nor even welcomed.

Ah, well, he supposed that was for the best. There were widows happy to set aside the propriety that had been required of them during marriage, but to his knowledge, Lady Featherstone had never been one of those. Besides, he knew that these days she was a woman of modest means, and thanks to his father’s latest attempts to bring him to heel, Nicholas could no longer afford to become entangled with women who didn’t have money.

“This is a most unexpected surprise, Lord Trubridge.”

Her voice brought him out of his reverie, and with regret, he put aside any lustful thoughts about her and reminded himself of the purpose that had brought him here. “A surprise perhaps, but a pleasant one, I hope?”

She made no reply beyond an insincere little smile that made him regret he’d asked the question. Despite her admission of surprise at his presence here, her face displayed no curiosity, and as silence once again fell between them, Nicholas began to feel deuced awkward.

Perhaps it was conceited of him to expect more favorable reactions than this from the fair sex, but if so, he was being duly punished for his conceit. The disdain that emanated from her was palpable.

But then, he didn’t often encounter women like Lady Featherstone nowadays. No doubt, she felt honor-bound to disapprove of a man like him as a matter of course. The women with whom he usually associated were much more forgiving. And he supposed his rather cavalier way of gaining entrance to her drawing room hadn’t helped matters, but he’d seen no other way to manage an interview after her initial refusal to see him. After all, it wasn’t as if they were invited to the same parties.

Still, he was here now, she knew the purpose of his visit, and the only civil thing to do was to invite him to sit down. He waited, but she issued no such invitation, and as the silence lengthened with the only sound the tick of the clock on the wall, it became clear he would have to take the lead. He gave a slight cough. “Might we sit?”

“If we must.”

Not at all an encouraging reply, but the best he was going to get, it seemed. He gestured to the celadon green settee behind her with an inquiring glance. She hesitated, as if trying to find a way to avoid settling in for a conversation, but at last, she resumed her seat, perched on the edge as if waiting for the first possible excuse to stand again and show him the door.

In light of that, Nicholas felt that a delicate, more tactful approach to his situation might do less to offend her. “Lady Featherstone,” he began as he took the chintz chair opposite her, “my thirtieth birthday was four days ago.”

“Congratulations.”

The dryness of that perfunctory reply was not lost on him, but he persevered. “When a man turns thirty, he is often forced to consider his future in ways he would not have done earlier in life. I am at that crossroads.”

“I see.” She cast a pointed glance at the clock and began drumming her fingers against her knee.

“Hence my decision,” he continued valiantly, “that it is time for me to marry.”

She leaned back, folded her arms, and eyed him with skepticism. “From what I hear, you are not the marrying sort.”

“Jack told you that, I suppose.”

“No, but it would hardly be necessary for him to do so. Your reputation precedes you, sir.”

Having spent a great deal of time and effort bolstering that reputation for reasons of his own, he couldn’t find cause to regret it now. Still, though a few days ago Nicholas would have been happy for a matchmaker to deem him as an unsuitable candidate for matrimony, everything was different now.

“I have not been inclined to marriage, that is true,” he said, “but I have come to a change of heart on the subject.”

“Indeed?” One delicate black brow arched upward. “A mere birthday and a bit of circumspection have been sufficient to motivate this . . . change of heart?”

Nicholas threw tact to the winds. “Lady Featherstone, I realize custom dictates delicacy in discussions such as this, but I’ve never been much good at beating about the bush. Might we speak frankly?”

Without waiting for an answer, he spread his arms and admitted the truth. “Four days ago, my father, the Duke of Landsdowne, cut off my trust fund. I am forced to the marriage state by circumstance.”

“How dreadful for you,” she murmured. “And on your birthday, too.”

“It’s more than dreadful, Lady Featherstone. It’s damnable. To my mind, no one should be forced to marry for material reasons. But I have no choice. My income comes from a trust bequeathed to me by the terms of my mother’s will. She died when I was a boy, but unbeknownst to me, my father had somehow managed to persuade her to add a codicil just before her death that made him sole trustee of that income. I was unaware of that codicil until four days ago, when Landsdowne’s attorney wrote to inform me of it and to tell me that the duke has chosen to cut me off.”

“Ah, so it is a change in your pocketbook, not a change in your heart, that has brought about these reflections regarding your future?”

He stirred in his chair, feeling suddenly defensive. “The former has induced the latter,” he said. “Bachelorhood is no longer an option for me, which is why I have come to you.”

She frowned. “I’m not certain I comprehend your meaning. What have I to do with whom you marry?”

“Lady Featherstone, everyone in society knows you arrange these things.”

She unfolded her arms and leaned forward, her gaze skewering him like an icicle. “By ‘arranging things,’ what you mean is that you want me to find you a wife rich enough to provide you with the income your father has cut off?”

Nicholas studied her hostile countenance, and he wondered how this woman could possibly make a living as a marriage broker when she seemed so resentful of the concept. “Well, that is what you
do
, isn’t it?” he asked. “You bring wealthy girls of no background over here from America and pair them with eligible peers in need of money.”

She stiffened, seeming to take offense at this assessment of her profession.

“You needn’t poker up so, Lady Featherstone. You have carved out for yourself an ingenious role in society, and a very necessary one in light of our beastly agricultural depression. I would imagine many a peerage has been rescued from disaster due to your efforts.”

She lifted her chin a notch. “I facilitate the introduction of various American acquaintances into British society, hoping that in my small way, I can help to smooth their path. Whether or not such introductions have the happy result of matrimony is not within my control.”

“Is matrimony ever a happy result?” he quipped without thinking, but the moment the light, careless words were out of his mouth, her cool gaze became absolutely frosty, and Nicholas reminded himself that making light of marriage to a marriage broker was probably not a good idea. “I must marry. I have no other choice if I am to have an income.”

“You have an estate.”

“Lady Featherstone, you must know that land rents are not always enough to cover the costs of running an estate these days. Between the sale of the barley, wheat, and hops grown at Honeywood, the land rents, and the lease of the house, I am able to pay the operating expenses, but there is nothing left over for me to live on.”

She shrugged, seeming wholly unsympathetic. “I don’t suppose you could try earning your living?”

“Obtain employment, you mean? Careful, Lady Featherstone. You’re showing your American blood when you suggest things like that. You know the son of a duke isn’t supposed to peg away at a job. It’s not done.”

“And you care so much what people think of you.”

He smiled in the face of her sarcasm. “Actually, I don’t give a tinker’s damn,” he confessed with cheer. “And as to finding employment, I’m open to suggestions.” He forced a laugh. “But what on earth would anyone hire a man like me to do?”

She tilted her head, studying him. “I can’t think of a thing.”

Strangely, that hurt. He didn’t even know her, and yet, her words bruised him deep down inside, in that place where dreams and ideals had once existed, a place that was empty now. Still, he didn’t show that her words had cut, for Landsdowne had given him a lifetime of training in how not to show pain. His smile did not falter. “Quite so,” he said. “And even if I were able to obtain some sort of job, it would hardly be one sufficient to support me.”

“Given your hedonistic way of life, I should imagine not.”

She made him sound quite depraved. “Lady Featherstone, I realize that my past is somewhat . . . checkered, but surely that alone does not make me an undesirable
parti
. I am a marquess, after all, and the only son of a duke.”

“And do you not think persuading your father to reinstate your income would be a more honorable course?”