Shameless (43 page)

She looked at him with trouble in her eyes. Then, to his great surprise, she slipped from her seat to his, put her arms around his neck, and pressed her warm, soft lips to his cheek.

“It’s over,” she said softly. “You don’t need to ever think about it again.”

After that, he couldn’t help it. There was simply nothing else to do. He kissed her. The sweetness of her lips made him dizzy, and the soft warmth of her invited his hands. He pulled her onto his lap, leaned her back over his arm, and kissed her until he ached with wanting her; she was sighing and yielding and kissing him back with an abandon that set his blood to boiling and made him think that a closed carriage might not, after all, be such a bad place to continue his bride’s education. In fact, had it not been for a most inopportune banging on the roof—the coachman’s way of announcing an impending stop—he might have lost his head to the point of taking her right there in the carriage.

But the coachman did bang, and she pulled her mouth away from his, sitting up on his lap and blinking at him for a moment in the most adorable confusion. Leaning back against the squabs, grabbing hold of
his willpower with both hands against the effort it cost to let her go, he managed a lazy smile for her and had the pleasure of seeing her cheeks turn crimson.

Then the carriage started to slow, and she scrambled up off his lap and back to her seat, hastily trying to put her hair and dress to rights as she went.

Again he counseled himself to patience. Shortly they would have all the time in the world.

Along with dinner, which was carried to him in the coach while she went in to dine at the inn, which was busier than any they had stopped at so far, came the intelligence that they could shortly expect to reach London.

“Hugh sent a message on ahead, so Claire and Gabby will be expecting us,” Beth told him when the carriage was under way again. She was excited, happy at the prospect of being reunited with her sisters and being once more at home, while he was conscious of a most unfamiliar sensation. It took him a while to work it out, but finally he did: he was, he realized to his own disgust, increasingly nervous about what was to come. Meeting her sisters, reentering society, becoming part of the world again—the prospect made his gut tighten in a way it hadn’t done since he was a boy.

It was past nine o’clock and dark except for the occasional flaring street light that flashed past the crack in the curtains by the time the carriage wheels clattered onto London’s cobblestone streets. On the opposite seat, Beth peeped out the window, remarked on the sights they passed, and chattered blithely on about her sisters while he listened with half an ear. Absolutely fearless in the face of physical danger, so hardened to the prospect of pain or deprivation that he barely noticed either, he found he could not face this change in his circumstances with anything other than the most profound misgiving.

He was a creature of the dark, not the light.

“At least, I had not thought—I’m not entirely sure how it works, but Hugh has been kind enough to provide me with a considerable portion, and perhaps . . .”

That slightly disjointed statement, tacked onto some comment about how pleasant he would find it to live in Richmond House, caught his attention.

“We won’t need to rely on any funds from Richmond,” he said crisply, pulling himself together to focus on what she was saying to him. “Or to live in his house, either. I inherited a great deal of money from my mother, and I am Wychester’s heir as well.”

“Are you saying you’re rich?” Beth regarded him with open delight.

He had to laugh. “Are you glad of it?”

“Extremely. I’ve been poor, you know, and I don’t care for it a bit.”

He laughed again, and felt the better for it. Moments later, the carriage rocked to a stop. With Richmond and DeVane following as grimly as a pair of damned guards, they were ushered into the magnificence that was Richmond House, not through the front door but through the mews, and the back garden, and along a narrow corridor, up a set of back stairs, and into a grand hall until finally a stately butler—Graham, Beth called him as he welcomed her home—flung open the doors to a warmly lit saloon.

“They are here, Your Grace.”

“B
ETH!”

As the new arrivals entered, two slender young women rose from chairs by the fire to fly toward Beth, who embraced both with a laughing fervor that left Neil in no doubt that he beheld her much-talked-about sisters. The raving beauty he had no trouble in identifying as Claire, who of course belonged to Richmond. The older sister, who possessed her own quiet loveliness, was Gabby, and belonged to DeVane. Two much older women, one a tall, mannish-looking battle-ax with a crown of iron gray braids who was undoubtedly a lady by birth, the other also tall but spare, with silvery hair confined primly at her nape and the look of an upper servant about her, were then hugged by Beth in turn. The resultant jumble of conversation amongst the women proved impossible to keep up with, and he did not try. Instead, he watched Beth and her sisters with idle appreciation for a trio of beauteous females while the chatter rose in volume until, as abruptly as the clap of a pair of hands, it stopped. Every female eye in the room then fastened on him as one.

Neil barely managed not to blanch.

“Beth, pray tell me I cannot have heard you correctly,” the battle-ax said in an unpleasantly piercing voice that matched the look she was giving him. “Even you cannot have done anything so shocking as to contract a Gretna Green marriage!”

“Well, I did,” Beth said, unrepentant, and came forward to slide a hand around his arm and draw him—most unwillingly, though he hoped he had more bottom than to let it show—into what he could only regard as the arena. With, of course, the quartet of more or less obviously appalled ladies cast as lions. “This is Neil Severin. The—the Marquis of Durham. Neil, this is my sister Claire, Duchess of Richmond, my sister Gabby, Mrs. DeVane, my aunt Augusta, Lady Salcombe, and our own dear Miss Twindlesham, who has taken care of Claire and me since our birth.”

It had been many years since he’d had cause to engage in the ordinary social conventions of his class, but as he found himself thus put on the spot, the way of it instantly came back to him. He stepped forward and, with a most insincere murmur of pleasure on his lips, shook hands all around.

“We owe you a great deal of thanks for your kindness to Beth,” Gabby said, and smiled at him, which made him realize that she had a deal more beauty than he had at first supposed.

“Oh, and for rescuing her,” Claire added, with a warmth in her eyes that put him in mind of Beth’s engaging twinkle. Neil thought that, save for Beth, he had never seen a more ravishing female. He would have shot a purely male congratulatory glance at the husband standing so protectively behind her, had the man been any other than Richmond, who was observing his discomfiture with a sardonic expression that awoke in Neil the quite unworthy desire to plant him a facer. DeVane, having embraced his wife, had retreated to stand near the fireplace, making it clear from his expression and posture that whatever occurred, his intention was to stay well out of it.

The battle-ax—Lady Salcombe—still glared at him. “Marquis or no—and from all I ever heard, Wychester’s heir has been dead these many years—a Gretna Green marriage will not do!” She transferred
that glare to Beth. “Your credit won’t stand any more scandal, as you certainly should know. And as for you”—that blistering look once more fell on Neil—“you should have known better than to have helped her to it! A fine bumble-bath this is! When word of this gets out, every door will be closed to you, Miss Sauce-mouth, and the pity of it is however well deserved such a catastrophe may be, we shall all be tainted by it!”

“The fault is entirely mine, Lady Salcombe.” Neil stepped gamely into the breach in an attempt to draw the lady’s fire from Beth.

“Of course it wasn’t.” Beth was having none of that. “It was my idea, and I had to talk him into it. Anyway, you have been after me to marry this age, Aunt Augusta.”

“Not at Gretna Green!”

“There is no sense repining over what can’t be helped.” Her voice as soothing as cool water on a burn, Gabby smiled at him. “We are just so thankful to have Beth restored to us that a scandal seems a small price to pay.”

“To you, maybe,” Aunt Augusta said in the bitterest of accents. “I have borne much from you gels, but this—” She broke off, an arrested expression on her face. “Well. I have just now hit on the most famous notion, and now know how we may all come about. You are not breeding, are you?”

Even Neil blinked at this piece of plain speaking, which was addressed to Beth.

“I’m surprised at you, Aunt, for asking such an improper question!” Beth answered with a pert wrinkle of her nose, then as her aunt frowned direly tacked on a quick “No, certainly not.”

“Then this is what we will do. We will say nothing to anyone about any marriage. You must know, miss, that your sisters have given it out that you have taken to your bed with the influenza, from which you have supposedly been suffering most dreadfully. Rumors have certainly been flying to the contrary, but when you arise from your sickbed to rejoin the world, I am confident that we can put them to rest. Durham—if that is indeed who you are, sir!—must pretend to be
an old friend of Richmond’s, newly returned from foreign parts, who has just arrived to stay with him for a while. As far as the outside world is concerned, you two will meet, fall in love under the eyes of the ton, and be married by special license at the end of the Season. No word of Gretna Green need ever get out at all.”

Lady Salcombe looked triumphantly around.

“How romantic everyone will think it!” Claire was the first to speak, though her eyes slid with some worry in them to Beth.

“It will serve, I think.” Gabby’s response was slower as she, too, looked at Beth. “Unless you dislike the scheme, of course, Beth.”

“I must say, I think Lady Salcombe has hit on the very thing, Miss Beth,” Miss Twindlesham said with more enthusiasm. “‘Tis better than owning to a Gretna Green marriage, I’ll be bound.”

“Why, I think so, too.” Beth gave her aunt an approving nod. “I must say, I wasn’t looking forward to the scandal, but I saw no way around it. How very knacky you are, Aunt Augusta!” As the old lady permitted herself a small smile, Beth’s gaze shifted to Neil. “You don’t object to the scheme, do you?”

“I know nothing of the matter,” he said. “You must do as you see fit.”

With those unwary words, his life was turned upside down.

By everyone save Richmond and, to a lesser extent, DeVane, both of whom clearly remained suspicious of him and seemed to take turns following him around, he was from that moment on treated as a friend of Richmond’s and a house guest in town for what remained of the Season. He had his own apartment in Richmond House as far from Beth’s as it was possible to get (he suspected that was deliberate), and was most bluntly told by Lady Salcombe that she had no wish to have the whole scheme undermined by servants’ gossip or a pregnancy, and so he would oblige her by staying out of her niece’s bedroom until the official wedding, which would, after all, take place in just a few weeks, so it was to be hoped he could contain himself. As Beth, having also been taken roundly to task by her aunt, agreed to the stricture, and he had no real objection to waiting since the
ultimate outcome could not be in doubt, he was content to use that time to get his affairs in order and do his possible to fit into Beth’s world.

Although he had been raised in accordance with his rank, he had never lived the life of a gentleman of the ton. It was, he discovered as he was introduced to it under the somewhat jaundiced wings of Richmond and DeVane, who seemed to be helpless to resist their wives’ directives even though they were clearly unenthusiastic about the chore they had been set to perform, an exhausting and complicated business, and he could discover in himself no great liking for it. But, since it was, in fact, better than being hunted, as he recently had been, or even dead, he persevered, and shortly found himself in possession of such an extensive wardrobe that he was embarrassed to own it, a number of horses, including a perfectly matched pair of sweet-goers designed to draw his new curricle, and a valet. His man of business—he had one of those, too—was looking for a town house, with every expectation (so he said) of achieving a happy result within a short period of time, as well as a butler and other servants, possibly a dozen in all, to staff it. Three maids—Mary, Peg, and Alyce, to be precise, and mighty gleeful they were about it, too—already had been personally engaged by Beth. Having discovered on the morning after his and Beth’s arrival at Richmond House that the gaggle of gooseberries had been given houseroom in the servants’ quarters until such time as other provision could be made for them, Beth had been in her element, securing a position in a most superior milliner’s shop for Dolly, finding work in an apothecary for Nan, and dispatching Jane to be the companion of a dear old lady who lived near Gabby’s country home of Morningtide. Mary still called him “yer worship”—though with more respect in her voice now that she had learned he was a genuine marquis and would be her employer—whenever she encountered him, but as neither she nor the others knew anything of his past beyond his rescue of them from Trelawney Castle, about which they had all agreed most fervently to say nothing, and because Beth desired it, he raised no objection to what Beth described to him happily as just the thing for them, and
resigned himself to having them as a more or less permanent fixture in this new chapter of his existence.