The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (42 page)

It comforted Mutter no end that the Earl was taking this so well. Taking a chance himself, he informed Kevin of the Special License in his possession these many months in the assumption his lordship would see the wisdom of complying with the marriage. "There's always divorce, my lord," he offered in the way of comfort. "Deuced difficult to obtain, certainly, but not impossible."

"Hmm," Kevin replied, his eyes on the door his bride-to-be had disappeared through moments earlier, "barring one of us doesn't murder the other one first." He stood up and tossed his cheroot into the stone-cold, bare fireplace. Straightening his waistcoat and pulling down his cuffs, he turned to the lawyer and ordered affably, "Go home, Mutter, and come back at eight tonight with the license and a parson. As Shakespeare once said, 'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.' I think it was murder that the character speaking those lines had in mind. Mutter, do you see an omen in that?"

Kevin didn't allow himself a smile until the lawyer, looking harassed, had quit the room. "Now there goes a man who, alas, will never know the difference between ignorance and stupidity."

Running one hand carefully across his smooth forehead, he pushed back the stubborn lock of hair that insisted upon forcing its will to go its own way on him before picking up his cane and tucking it under his arm.

"The Bard wrote something else," he commented to the room at large as he went, "something that should serve as a sufficient spur in the inevitable, inescapable encounter, which I now bravely go forth to face. 'That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man, if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.' Dear Will, you had such faith in your fellows; but you spoke of a woman. I can only wonder, base creature that I am—does it take more or less of a man to talk round a green young girl? If I win her, am I a mammoth among men or a colossus among cads? And do I, even in my straitened circumstances, have the right to use this girl to ease my situation and that of everyone on this estate?"

He swung down his cane and delivered himself a sharp rap on the leg. "Now you try to rationalize your reasons for behaving like the lowest sort of villain? Shame on you, Kevin Rawlings, shame."

The cane once more tucked under his arm, he walked purposely down the corridor, turning in the direction he believed the girl had taken. He set off confidently, a small smile on his face. "You're a wicked, wicked, nasty man, Kevin Rawlings," he chuckled softly. "You could at least have the decency to try not to enjoy yourself quite so much!

Kevin had been correct in his assumption. He found the girl quite easily, hidden out in a small back room he had sat himself in earlier that day to contemplate his future. It was a depressing room, but not quite so oppressive as the Long Library, which wasn't much of an endorsement. But at least there was only one clock in the room.

There were no drapes at the three long windows, and the sun tried its best to brighten the interior with all the sunlight that could succeed in penetrating the age-old layers of grime on the panes. It wasn't having much luck.

In the midst of one patch of this muted brilliance stood the girl who had recently tried to pass herself off as a man-mad hussy. Her atrocious gown was now straight on her shoulders, and all the buttons still on the gown were slipped modestly through their buttonholes. There was not, however, much improvement in the riot of disgustingly disheveled-looking hair that, even tangled and matted as it was, nearly reached to her waist, its mixed colors of red and gold turning into a lurid cloak of blazing orange fire about her head.

Titian used just such a shade in his paintings, Kevin could only muse: perhaps once that rat's nest is washed and brushed it will look more like Titian's dream than his nightmare. He shrugged, not blaming himself for his small hope. After all, he knew it was only natural to search for some compensation in this farce he was being forced star in with the unfortunately named Eugenia Fortune.

He inspected the remainder of the girl, at least all that he could catalog with her back turned to him. Remembering the glimpse he'd had of Eugenia's small, sadly uninspiring bosom, Kevin decided his bride would never need fear his passion for her body would one day overpower him to the point he would take her regardless of her wishes in the matter.

She did have a fairly nice derrière, he admitted ruefully, the small of her back being slightly concave before sloping gently outward into tight, firm buttocks and the promise of slim, straight legs.
Face it, old boy
, he mocked himself,
if she was dumb as a red brick, as ugly as a hedgehog, and twice as fat as Mutter, you'd still wed her. You have no choice, much as you'd like to make yourself believe you would whistle the entire business, lands, fortune, and hidden treasure down the wind if the marriage were altogether aesthetically repugnant. You're many things, but in this instance, you can't afford to be a gentleman.

Earlier, when the girl had been talking, try as she might to sound uneducated and common, he had discerned a quality in her speech that told him she would not have to be taught to speak like a newborn babe, from the beginning. A bath, scrubbed hands and face (would those freckles he'd noticed then be even more painfully visible?), and a decent gown just might work wonders. He didn't expect a miracle, but at least she was still young, clay-like as it were, and malleable under his sculpting hands.

Well, he decided, taking a deep breath, the war cannot begin until the opening salvo, the scene in the Long Library being considered only a feeling out of the strength of the enemy.

He took another few steps into the room, the muted sunlight dancing over his shining hair, sparkling jacket buttons, and mirror-bright Hessians. "Eugenia?" he inquired calmly. "I'm your distant cousin, Kevin Rawlings. I don't believe we've met during any of my prior visits to The Hall, but I am assured you're aware that I'm the new Earl."

There was no answer from the girl standing at the window. Not by the slightest movement did she betray she had heard him. "Eugenia," he repeated, his voice quite unruffled by her show of rudeness.

Without turning around, the girl at last acknowledged his presence. "My name is Gilly. Do not call me Eugenia. Not ever."

"Gilly? Really? My, my, however did you come by that name? Your mother's pet name for you as a child? Perhaps you resembled a little gillyflower—or even mayhap a brilliantly colored goldfish in the ornamental pond?" His words were robbed of their sting by his bland tone. Still, Gilly could think of nothing more pleasant than to feed the man to an entire school of "brilliantly colored" fishes, one agonizing inch at a time.

"Gilly is a shortening of my second name, Giselle," she informed him wearily. "It was the best of a bad bunch and I took it. Eugenia is no name for a servant."

Wandering in a seemingly aimless way around the room, Kevin very quickly ended up standing face to face with Eugenia, catching her in a slight jump of surprise. "Gilly Rawlings," he seemed to muse out loud. "Yes, I guess it might have suited you when you were a child. But you're a woman grown now, Eugenia, or so nearly so as not to make much difference. It's time to put away childish names. I shall call you Eugenia." He softened these words with a smile that could charm the birds out of the trees.

He might not have bothered. "I'm Gilly
Fortune
, remember? Rawlings is a name I neither deserve nor covet," she gritted out, eying him coldly. "And you may call me Eugenia until your silvered tongue falls out. I shall not answer."

Loathe to reach an impasse so soon, and over something so unimportant, Kevin changed his tactics. "Agreed," he said, grinning as engagingly as he knew how, holding out his hand in friendship. "I'll call you Gilly."

She lowered her long dark lashes over her huge, innocent, round blue eyes and stared at his hand as if it was a poisonous adder she had come across in the fields—and was considering spiting with her knife. Turning away and walking to the opposite end of the room, she replied crushingly, "You will not. You do not have my permission to call me by the name my friends use."

Swallowing hard on a desire to ring the mulish chit's scrawny neck, thus destroying any hope he had of winning her over with his fatal charms, Kevin crooned back, "You've put me at a loss now, child. What then shall I call you?"

"You may call me Miss Fortune. Sylvester gifted me with that surname, just another one of his little jokes, but for the first time it seems quite apt." She spun around to face him, the naked hatred in her eyes looking out of place, almost alien, in those huge blue pools. "I am a misfortune for you, aren't I,
Cousin
Kevin?"

This was not going well. It wasn't going well at all. Not only was she standing toe to toe with one of the best verbal duelists in the British Isles, she was making him feel small and venal and guilty into the bargain.

"I'll call you by any name you wish," Kevin put in quickly, as it looked as if she were on the verge of flight. "Only please believe me—I
do
want to be your friend."

Gilly struck a pose reminiscent of her performance in the Long Library. "Oh, how droll, how very droll," she said with utter disdain. "The Earl wishes to befriend the bastard kitchen wench. How wonderfully condescending of you, my lord." She looked him up and down and then gave a less than genteel snort of laughter. "Well you can just go straight to the devil, Kevin, old sport!"

She made it almost to the door before a viselike grip trapped her just above her elbow and whirled her around decidedly ungently. In his uncharacteristic kindheartedness Kevin had made a near-fatal mistake. He had allowed his tactics to be guided by Gilly's needs, not his. The irresistible Kevin Rawlings, the man who was the secret dream of every London debutante, had always made it a rule not to worry about the finer feelings of any female. It was his cool detached attitude more so even than his good looks that had never failed to intrigue the ladies, even when he was still pockets-to-let Kevin Rawlings.

In the circles in which he traveled, both the very high and the very low, there was no need for kindness. The ladies required no coddling because they were either worldly-wise courtesans, racy society matrons, or well-protected, cherished daughters. Within these groups he found all the feminine companionship he needed, and he had always made it a point to studiously avoid unprotected innocents like Eugenia Fortune.

If Gilly had only been an innocent in the established understanding of the term—an unfledged duckling so to speak—his tactics of flattery and an offer of friendship would have been readily accepted. But Gilly Fortune was a curious mixture of
naïveté
and centuries-old wisdom, mixed together in hodgepodge fashion and stuffed inside a somehow tough yet tender exterior.

In short, although unaccustomed to the brand of flattery he had tried on her, she had seen straight through his smoke screen until he found himself dancing while she called the tune.

Well, enough of that. There would be no more guilt induced mollycoddling of Miss Fortune. Gad, what a ghastly name!

And so, before Gilly could really take in what was happening, she was propelled over to an ancient heart-backed sofa and pushed unceremoniously into it, an action that raised a cloud of dust that nearly enveloped her small frame.

As the dust finally cleared, she looked up at her tormentor. With words hovering on her lips no lady of breeding would dream of uttering, she was immediately struck dumb by the face looming down at her. Gone was the insinuating smile. Gone was the twinkle in the blue velvet eyes. Gone was the amiable expression, the pleasant mask Society had taken in with such affection.

In its place were a mouth that was no more than a thin-lipped slash, eyes like two chips of hard ice that slowed the blood in her veins, and a stranger's face—a face that belonged to a warrior, or a king.

"I would strongly advise you to remain seated, and to listen to what I have to say," the stranger purred softly, menacingly.

Gilly was no shrinking violet. She could not afford to be and still survive. But she was not stupid either. She knew when she was out-gunned. She ceased her struggles and subsided against the lumpy cushions. Stopping just short of total surrender, she dared to say stiffly, "Very well then. Get on with it," and refrained from rubbing her sore arm when it was at last freed from Kevin's bruising hold.

In short, pithy sentences, Kevin outlined Sylvester Rawlings's will, ending with the suggestion that a marriage between them—entirely legal, and not a sham—was the only solution he could envision.

Gilly didn't agree, and was not hesitant, or tactful, in saying so. "If you had a single ounce of pride, you would reject such a Will out of hand," she told him scornfully.

"Pride is a prop for prigs and a sop for fools," Kevin returned testily. "Besides, I cannot afford the emotion."

"Well, I haven't the least expectation of complying with Sylvester's warped plans. Why should I saddle myself with a frivolous popinjay who would marry anyone, even a by-blow—or worse, even an Earl's by-blow—for monetary gain? Frankly," she said on a reluctant gurgle of laughter, "I believe it would be hard to decide just who the biggest loser would be in such a marriage. You, sir, appeal as little to me as I do to you. Oh, just think on it a minute, Cuz," she blurted irrepressively, "between the servant-bastard and the society-buffoon, which is the poorer prize?"

The Earl had been courteously inspecting his nails while allowing Gilly to vent her pent-up hostility. Only when she at last seemed to have shot her bolt did he speak again. "Which is the poorer prize? I've been saddled with a mewling foundling brat, a rag-tag near barbarian. Frankly, you obnoxious infant, I'm appalled at the very thought of wedding you, especially when comparing you to the women I'm accustomed to meeting in Society."

Seating himself in a chair directly across from Gilly, he continued: "Suffice it to say, brat, that ours will not be a marriage of two hearts that wish to beat as one. If there were any way in which we could avoid this marriage, I would be equally as eager to exercise it as you. So it will sadden you to know that even I, who am somewhat respected for my mind and am, in addition, at the moment a very desperate man, can see only this one way to salvation. With just a few moments of reflection, I'm convinced you will come to the same conclusion, for you're not a stupid girl. We could at least," he offered, "have a marriage of two minds that think as one concerning this estate and the people on it."