At the sound of the heavy knob turning, he cursed under his breath. She was coming in, damn it!
To stop Maria before she ruined everything, he grabbed her about the waist, hauled her against him, and sealed his mouth to hers.
At first she seemed too stunned to do anything. When after a moment, he felt her trying to draw back from him, he caught her behind the neck in an iron grip.
“Oh,” Gran said in a stiff voice. “Beg pardon.”
Dimly he heard the door close and footsteps retreating, but before he could let Maria go, a searing pain shot through his groin, making him see stars. Blast her, the woman had kneed him in the ballocks!
As he doubled over, fighting to keep from passing out, she snapped, “That was for making me look like a whore, too!”
When she turned for the door, he choked out, “Wait!”
“Why should I?” she said, heading inexorably forward. “You’ve done nothing but insult and humiliate me before your family.”
Still reeling, he presented his only ace in the hole, “If you return to town,” he called after her, “what will you do about your Nathan?”
That halted her, thank God.
He forced himself to straighten, though the room spun a little. “You still need my help, you know.”
Slowly, she faced him. “So far you haven’t demonstrated any genuine intent to offer help,” she said icily.
“But I will.” He gulped down air, struggling for mastery over his pain. “Tomorrow we’ll return to town and hire a runner. I know one who’s very adept. You can tell him everything you’ve learned so far about your fiancés disappearance, and I’ll make sure he pursues it.”
“And in exchange, all I have to do is pretend to be a whore?”
He grimaced. Christ, she felt strongly about this. He should have known that any woman who would thrust a sword at him wouldn’t be easily bullied.
“No.”
“No, what?” she demanded.
“You needn’t pretend to be a whore. Just don’t leave. This can still work.”
“I don’t see how,” she shot back. “You’ve already said we met in a brothel. Telling them we’re thieves is no better. I won’t have them thinking that we’re about to steal you blind.”
“I’ll come up with some story, don’t worry,” he clipped out.
“Something else to make me sound like a low, grasping schemer?”
“No” She had him cornered, and she knew it. “Trust me, your background alone is enough to alarm Gran. She pretends not to mind it right now, but she won’t let it go on. Just stay. I’ll make it right, I swear.
We’ll stay tonight. Then I’ll see.”
Thank God. He nodded, then moved rather stiffly to her side.
She hesitated. “I’m sorry I had to be so…firm.”
“Liar,” he grumbled. “You’re not the least bit sorry.”
A faint smile touched her lips. “All right, so I’m not.”
He offered her his arm. “Where did you learn that, anyway?”
“One of my older male cousins showed me what to do if some man ever tried anything.”
At least her zealousness in protecting herself would keep him from letting his attraction to her run away with him. Any woman who was willing to do that to a man was trouble, and he wasn’t about to give her a second crack at the family jewels.
You won’t try to kiss me again?”
“Given your method for handling that problem? No. I don’t particularly like pain.
Outside the room they found his family standing in the Great Hall, discussing something in heated whispers as Freddy nervously paced the other end.
Oliver cleared his throat, and they all jumped. “My fiancée has made it clear that she doesn’t appreciate my attempt at a joke.”
“Oliver enjoys shocking people,” Maria said calmly. When he looked at her, surprised that she had noticed, she arched one eyebrow at him. “I’m sure you know that about him by now. I find it a great flaw in his character.”
She seemed to consider many things as flaws in his character. Not that he could blame her.
Gran glanced from Maria to him. “So the two of you didn’t meet in a brothel?”
“We did,” he said, “but only because poor Freddy got lost and wandered into one by mistake. I was trying to determine what he was looking for when Maria rushed in, mad with worry over where he might have gone off to. With two such Americans lost in the wicked city, hopelessly innocent of its dangers, I felt compelled to help them. I’ve been squiring them about town the last week. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”
She cast him a sugary and thoroughly false smile. “Oh, yes, dearest. And you were a very informative guide, too.”
Jarret arched one eyebrow. “Astonishing that after finding you in a brothel, Oliver, Miss Butterfield wasn’t put off of marrying you.”
“I ought to have been,” Maria said. “But he swore those days were behind him when he pledged his undying love to me on bended knee.”
When Gabriel and Jarret barely managed to stifle their laughter, Oliver gritted his teeth. Bended knee, indeed. She was determined to prick his pride at every opportunity. She probably felt he deserved it. He could only pray that Gran backed down from the right before he had to bring the chit around any of his friends, or Maria would have them taunting him unmercifully for the next decade.
“I’m afraid, my dear,” he said tersely, “that my brothers have trouble envisioning me bending a knee to anyone.”
She affected a look of wide-eyed shock. “Have they no idea what a romantic you are? I’ll have to show them the sonnets you wrote praising my beauty. I believe I left them in my redingote pocket.” The teasing wench actually looked back toward the entrance. “I could go fetch them if you like.”
“Not now,” he said, torn between a powerful urge to laugh and an equally powerful urge to strangle her. “It’s time for dinner, and I’m starved.”
“So am I,” Freddy put in. At a frown from Maria, he mumbled, “Not that it matters, mind you.”
“Of course it matters,” Gran said graciously. “We don’t like our guests to be uncomfortable. Come along then, Mr. Dunse. You may take me in to dinner, since my grandson is otherwise occupied.”
As they trooped toward the dining room, Oliver bent his head to whisper, “I see you’re enjoying making me out to be a besotted idiot.”
A minxish smile tipped up her fetching lips. “Oh, yes. It’s great fun.”
“Then my explanation of how you ended up in a brothel met with your approval?”
“It’ll do for now.” She cast him a glance from beneath her long lashes. “You’re by no means out of the woods yet, sir.”
But I will be by the time the night is over. No matter what it took, he would get her to stay and do this, so help him God.
You poor dear. I can hardly endure it when my brothers are staying at the town house. They’re always causing some trouble or another.”
“Oh, yes, and you never cause any trouble,” Oliver teased. “Never mind the shooting match where you brought three men to blows over whose rifle you should deign to use. Or the spectacle you made of yourself when you dressed as a man to enter a match. Or-“
“You can shoot a rifle, Lady Celia?” Maria leaned forward. “How did you learn? I’ve always wanted to myself, but Papa and my cousins refused to show me how a rifle works. Could you teach me?”
“No!” Oliver and Freddy said in unison. Then Oliver added, “Absolutely not.”
Lord Gabriel leaned close. “I’d be happy to teach you, Miss Butterfield.”
“Stay out of this, Gabe,” Oliver growled. “Bad enough you taught Celia. Maria already has enough weapons at her disposal.”
His grandmother arched one eyebrow. “Pray tell, what sort of weapons do you mean?”
Oliver paused, then gave a lazy smile. “Why, her beauty, of course. That weapon is devastating enough.”
“It won’t stop a scoundrel from manhandling a woman,” Lady Minerva put in.
“As if you know anything about that,” Lord Jarret pointed out. “Just because the heroines in your books get manhandled with nauseating regularity doesn’t mean the average woman does.
Good God, Miss Butterfield,” Lord Jarret said. “Don’t tell me you read Minerva’s Gothic horrors.”
“They’re not Gothic horrors!” Maria protested. “They’re wonderful books! And yes, I’ve read every single one, more than once.”
“Well, that explains a few things,” Oliver remarked. “I suppose I have my sister to thank for turning a sword on me at the brothel.”
Lord Gabriel laughed. “You took a sword to old Oliver? Oh, God, that’s rich!”
Lord Jarret sipped some wine. “At least the mystery of the ‘weapons at her disposal’ is now solved.”
“He was misbehaving,” Maria said, with a warning glance for Oliver. Did he want them to know everything, for pity’s sake? “He left me no choice.”
“Oh, Maria’s always doing things like that,” Freddy said through a mouth full of eel. “That’s why we won’t teach her to shoot. She always goes off half-cocked.”
Maria thrust out her chin. “A woman has to stand up for herself.”
“Hear, hear!” Lady Celia raised her goblet of wine to Maria. “Don’t mind these clod-pates. What can you expect from a group of men? They would prefer we let them run roughshod over us.”
“No, we wouldn’t,” Lord Gabriel protested. “I like a woman with a little fire. Of course, I can’t speak for Oliver-“
“I assure you, I rarely feel the need to run roughshod over a woman,” Oliver drawled. An arch smile touched his lips as his gaze locked with Maria’s. “I’ve kissed one or two when they weren’t prepared for it, but every man does that.”
Lady Minerva snorted. “Yes, and most of them get slapped, but not you, I expect. Even when you misbehave, you have a talent for turning ladies up sweet. How else would you go from having a sword thrust at you to gaining Miss Butterfield’s consent to be your bride-eh, Miss Butterfield?”
Maria didn’t answer. Something was nagging at the back of her brain-a vaguely familiar line from one of Lady Minerva’s books: “He had a talent for turning ladies up sweet, which both thrilled and alarmed her.”
“Heavens alive.” She stared at Oliver. “You’re the Marquess of Rockton!”
She hardly realized she’d said it aloud until his brothers and sisters laughed.
A pained look crossed Oliver’s face. “Don’t remind me.”
Sparing a glare for his sister, Oliver muttered, “You have no idea how my friends revel in the fact that my sister made me a villain in her novel.”
“They only revel because she made them into heroes,” Lord Jarret pointed out, eyes twinkling. “Foxmoor got quite a big head over it, and Kirkwood’s been strutting around ever since the last one came out. He loved that he got to trounce you.”
“That’s because he knows he couldn’t trounce me in real life,” Oliver remarked. “Though he keeps suggesting we should have a ‘rapier duel’ to prove whether he could.”
Maria stared at them agape. “Do you mean that the Viscount Churchgrove is real? And Foxmoor…great heavens, that’s Wolfplain!”
“Yes.” Oliver rolled his eyes. “Churchgrove is my friend, the Viscount Kirkwood, and Wolfplain is another friend, the Duke of Foxmoor. Apparently Minerva has trouble coming up with original characters.”
“You know perfectly well that I only used a version of their names,” Lady Minerva said smoothly. “The characters are my own.”
“Except for you, Oliver,” Lord Jarret remarked. “You’re clearly Rockton.
Rockton is no more Oliver than Churchgrove is Lord Kirkwood,” Lady Minerva said stoutly.
“Then why did you steal my name for him?” Oliver asked.
“It’s not quite your name, old chap,” Lord Gabriel said. “And you know perfectly well that Minerva likes to tweak your nose from time to time.”
“Stop calling me ‘old,’ blast it,” Oliver grumbled. “I’m not some doddering fool.”
“How old are you, anyway?” Maria asked him, amused by his vanity.
“Thirty-five.” Mrs. Plumtree had said little until now, but apparently the conversation had piqued her interest. “That’s long past the age when a man should marry, don’t you think, Miss Butterfield?”
Aware of Oliver’s gaze on her, Maria chose her words carefully. “I suppose it depends on the man. Papa didn’t marry until he was nearly that age. He was too busy fighting in the Revolutionary War to court anyone.”
When the blood drained from Mrs. Plumtree’s face, Oliver’s eyes held a glint of triumph. “Ah, yes, the Revolutionary War. Did I forget to mention, Gran, that Mr. Butterfield was a soldier in the Continental Marines?”
The table got very quiet. Lady Minerva focused on eating her soup. Lady Celia took several sips of wine, one after another, and Lord Jarret stared into his soup bowl as if it contained the secret to life. The only real sound punctuating the silence was Lord Gabriel’s muttered “bloody hell.”
Clearly, there was some undercurrent here that Maria didn’t understand. Oliver was watching his grandmother again like a wolf about to pounce, and Mrs. Plumtree was clearly contemplating which weapon would best hold the wolf at bay.
“Uncle Adam was a hero,” Freddy put in, oblivious as usual to undercurrents of any kind. “At the Battle of Princeton, he held off ten of the British until help could arrive. It was just him and his bayonet, slashing and stabbing-“
“Freddy,” Maria chided under her breath, “our hosts are British, remember?
And she had thought Oliver insulting! At least now she knew where he got it from. Heavens alive, what a family!
She almost felt sorry for him, having a grandmother that condescending. No wonder he had thought his plan would work.
But I’m not the only one to question your methods, am I? I gather that Miss Butterfield took issue with them as well.”
He snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.”
His saucebox of a sister broke into a grin. “Ooh, what did she do while you were in that room alone? Do tell!”
“Not a chance. I don’t need her teaching you any new tricks.”
“You’re no fun at all,” she complained. “Well, I’m sure you deserved whatever she did. And that’s my point: I rather like her. So it doesn’t seem fair for her to be put in a situation where she could be-“
“Ruined by a scoundrel like me,” he finished for her.
“Compromised,” she corrected.
I merely don't like drafts, or servants falling and breaking their ankles, making them incapable of serving me."
"I understand completely." Her gaze held a decided glint of mischief. “You are, after all, an unrepentant and thoroughly irresponsible rogue.”
“Something it would behoove you not to forget,” he growled, unnerved by her refusal to take him seriously.
“How can I forget it when you work so hard to remind us of it?”
“Damn it, Minerva-“
“I know, I know. You’re my scary big brother, and all that.” She waggled her fingers. “I’m off to bed. Don’t get into too much trouble before morning.”
As she sauntered out laughing, he couldn’t prevent the smile tugging at his lips. God help any man who tried to make Minerva submit to his will. She would eat him alive and lick her fingers afterward.
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