The Lady Most Willing . . . (23 page)

Marilla gave the sofa a suspicious glance. “Your uncle is not in my good graces right now. He had the nerve to drag me from the dinner table and
lecture
me on nice behavior.”

Robin was frankly astonished because Taran was the last person to whom one would apply the definition of “nice behavior.”

“He was most unpleasant to me.”

“That’s because he is most unpleasant,” Robin said. “But what are you doing here, Miss Marilla? Looking for your sister?”

“Good heavens, no. She’s off somewhere in a snit,” Marilla said dismissively then smiled, sidling closer. “You aren’t offended by my concern for my reputation, are you? A lady is nothing without her reputation. Take Fiona—” She stopped suddenly, her hand once more flying to cover her mouth, feigning shock at her near indiscretion.

“Alas, tempting as that is, I must decline,” Robin said.

“Oh.” Marilla frowned, her hand falling away. “Oh! That was a very naughty thing to say, wasn’t it?”

“Again, my pardon.”

Marilla tapped his chest playfully, then let the tap become a caress, pleating his shirt’s placket between her fingers. “But then, you are a very, very naughty man, aren’t you?” Her fingers snuck beneath his buttons to find bare flesh beneath.

The poor thing was so obvious it was almost endearing. Almost. Clearly, Marilla must be doubting her ability to bring Byron to heel and was hedging her bets. He supposed he ought to be flattered she even considered him a possible matrimonial candidate.

“My dear Miss Chisholm,” he said, clasping her busy hand and pulling it away from his person, “ ‘naughty’ though I undoubtedly am, I am not so far gone to propriety that I would take advantage of you or in any manner
whatsoever
importune you.” He smiled to take the sting out of his next words. “Let alone compromise you.”

She had been in the process of working her free hand back beneath his shirt but now she froze, pouting. “You wouldn’t?”

Trying to maintain a grave countenance, he shook his head.

“
Why
not?
” she burst out, her expression clouding with vexation.

“Because then I would be obliged to wed you.”

“Well, yes. Of course,” she said, rolling her eyes. “That’s how this sort of thing works. What of it?”

Good God, had she an ounce of intelligence the girl would be terrifying. “You don’t want to marry me.”

“Well, not initially,” she admitted. “You weren’t my first choice. You haven’t any money and you aren’t even a real count, being only a
French
comte—and I must say I think it most shoddy that you go about letting decent people labor under the assumption that you
are
a real count, but I shall let that pass.”

“I appreciate your forbearance.”

She sniffed. “I mean, really, how could you be my or anyone’s first choice, especially since there’s both a real duke and a real earl available?”

“But of course, I couldn’t be.”

A sly look came into her round blue eyes. “But then I realized how much I would like being chatelaine of my very own castle, especially one I could redecorate to my very own liking. So . . . I have the money; you have the castle. And we are in Scotland. All we are in want of is a pair of witnesses.”

He took it back. Even without intelligence, she was terrifying.

“What can I possibly say? You honor me unduly.” And in truth, she did. He really ought to consider what was being offered. She was a better match than any to which he had the right to aspire. But then, he remembered with heartfelt relief, he had no aspirations. “Am I to take it neither Bretton nor Byron have come up to scratch?”

She eyed him, clearly considering whether to lie, but apparently decided that either he would not be gulled or it wasn’t worth her effort. “Yes. I mean no. Not yet.”

By God, he should marry her if only because such indiscriminate ambition surely deserved to be rewarded. Except . . . except . . .
Cecily
. What a fool he was. What a ridiculous, pathetic creature. He burst out laughing.

She scowled. “Are you laughing at
me
?”

“No. I am laughing at myself. Though I am flattered by your kind interest, I am afraid I cannot make you the sort of offer you want.”

At this, she drew back, and for a moment, Robin was afraid he was about to be slapped. It had happened a few times before under similar circumstances—young virgins with a fancy to taste some forbidden fruit—so he recognized the signs: her beautiful face grew thunderous; her brows snapped together; her lower lip thrust out. But then, abruptly, the anger vanished and she shrugged. She edged closer, her hands once more dancing up his chest. “How do you know?” she purred. “I may be more open to suggestions than you expect.”

And with that, she lifted herself up on her tiptoes and planted a kiss full on his lips.

She took Robin so by surprise that for a moment he did not react. Part of him was appalled at her boldness, a greater part of him was amused at his being appalled by her boldness, but the greatest part of all felt only a sort of reluctant sympathy for her. And so, because at heart Robin had a kind nature, he carefully, with chastely closed lips, returned her kiss and then, before she could deepen it, set her gently aside. “And that, my dear, is that.”

“But . . . but
why
?”

“Because I have never fancied myself a consolation prize,” he said, still gentle.

“Oh . . . ballocks!” Marilla said, and with a huff of annoyance, turned and stomped angrily out of the library.

Casually, Robin retrieved the glass of port he’d set down when she’d entered. He refilled, saying as he did so, “You can get up off the floor now, Uncle.”

“Nae, I canna,” came a querulous reply from the vicinity of the sofa. “I be felled by amazement. You had an heiress right there in your arms and you turned her aside. I may die of pure horror.”

“Don’t make promises you have no intention of keeping.”

Taran’s grizzled head popped up over the back of the sofa behind which he’d thrown himself upon Marilla’s arrival. “Are you out of yer bleedin’ mind, lad? She’s got a fortune and she’s the prettiest one amongst the lot of them and she’s hot-blooded. True, she’s a hellion, but a strong man could tame her. And, most important of all, she wants you.” His tone held a hint of jealousy. “You best take what’s freely offered.”

“She doesn’t want me; she wants a castle.”

“Same thing.” With a click and rattle of knee joints, Taran hauled himself upright. “Besides, ye got no choices left.”

“Really?” Robin drawled. “How is that?”

“Well, the duke is offered for Catriona Burns, and Oakley has himself all in a lather over Fiona Chisholm, and I know you ain’t man enough to encroach on your cousin’s claim.”

“And here I’d thought of it as being honorable all these years,” Robin murmured.

“Da ye no have an ounce of Scottish blood in yer veins? A Ferguson takes what he wants no matter what the law says.”

“Ah,” Robin said, nodding sagely. “Suddenly, all the abrupt termini on the family tree make sense. They were decorating another tree entirely. The Tyburn tree.”

“Ach,” Taran spat in disgust.

“But you said I have no other choice,” Robin said, returning to the prior subject. “What of Lady Cecily?” He was gratified by how indifferent he sounded.

“No hope there. Not anymore,” Taran snapped.

“And why is that?”

“Because no woman with an ounce of pride would have you after witnessing Marilla rubbing all over you like a tabby in heat.”

Robin checked. “What do you mean?”

“Lady Cecily was out in the hall just now. She was aboot to come in but then she saw the two of you locked together at the lips. Stopped her dead in her tracks, it did. No great loss if you ask me. In spite of her great dower.”

“Taran—” Robin’s voice held a note of warning few had ever heard.

“Oh, she be pretty enough,” Taran admitted, unfazed, “but prissy. She jerked back like the pair of you were naked and on the floor.”

Robin took a breath and squared his shoulders. What matter? As Marilla had so succinctly pointed out, he was a very, very bad man, and if Lady Cecily hadn’t known it before, she did now.

Very calmly, very carefully, he lifted his drink and in one long, slow draught drained the glass.

Chapter 19

L
ady Cecily Tarleton was not only lovely, well connected and due to have an unimaginably large sum settled on her upon her marriage, but she respected her elders and never put herself forward. And if some people thought her a bit of a cipher, and others opined her too good to be true, and a few old tabbies purred that a statue had more animation, they were deemed to be jealous sorts. The vast majority of society mamas considered Lady Cecily to have all the makings of a perfect daughter-in-law.

Which made the fact that she was not yet
anyone’s
daughter-in-law extremely vexing.

What on earth was wrong with Maycott? Why did he not approve some fellow’s suit and get on with it?

It never occurred to anyone that Maycott was not at the bottom of the mystery and that the unfailingly demure Lady Cecily was neither so demure nor so tractable as they assumed, and that she had been encouraged since birth to follow her heart. When it came to choosing a husband, she’d been told to wait for “someone special,” and when she’d asked how she would know who that was, had been assured by her mother that “when you meet him, you will know.”

Unfortunately, the only sort of men she attracted were somber, dignified fellows who mistakenly thought they’d found in her a matching gravitas, and after three seasons, Lady Cecily had begun to fear she would never meet the man her mother had promised she would know on sight, and end up a spinster. With this specter in the forefront of her mind, this past season Lady Cecily had decided to put aside dreams of heated kisses, easy laughter, and passionate nights and concentrate on achieving more realistic goals: a nursery full of beloved children, and earnest conversations with a . . . a really very nice man.

So she’d told her father to give his consent to the man he liked best of those who’d asked for her hand. At which point, her father had whisked her and the rest of the family off to Scotland, where, away from the distractions of London, she could “make your own drat choice.”

Which is how Cecily came to be standing in Bellemere’s newly refurbished ballroom when a group of large, gray-bearded men clad in none-too-clean kilts burst in and tossed her and some other young ladies over their shoulders and carried them off to the appreciative applause of the other guests, who’d assumed it was all part of the entertainment.

Though Cecily well knew being kidnapped had not been part of the entertainment, she had not been particularly frightened. First, because one of her fellow kidnappees, Catriona Burns, obviously knew the men and had declared them harmless; second, because the Duke of Bretton was soon discovered to be sharing their—or rather his—well-sprung carriage; and finally, because upon their arrival at Finovair Castle, a scandalously handsome man with a head of loose black curls and a wicked smile had taken her hand and looked down at her with beautiful, black-lashed, laughing eyes, and she had realized,
Mama was right
.

For in that moment, an odd welling had arisen from deep within Lady Cecily’s heart alongside a bone-deep sense of rightness, of finally having arrived at a destination she hadn’t even known she’d been journeying toward. So it was that Lady Cecily Tarleton, the dutiful, proper daughter of the Earl of Maycott, recognized with absolute certainty that she’d found in Robin, Comte de Rocheforte, unapologetic scoundrel, self-proclaimed pauper, the scandalous Prince of Rakes, the man she would marry.

She’d known who he was and all about his reputation, of course. He had been pointed out to her on the streets of London. It didn’t matter. The only question was what she was to do about it.

It was a question that had her hourly more anxious, especially since Robin had spent the last two days as conspicuous in his absence as, well, Marilla was conspicuous in her availability. In point of fact, his determined nonappearance was beginning to substantially threaten her plan to marry him. Which is what she planned to do, because having finally found love, she saw no reason to relinquish it.

However, she couldn’t just tell him that she loved him. Since birth, it had been deeply ingrained in her that a lady
waited
for a gentleman to notice her and then commence his courtship. That wasn’t going to work here. Time was of the essence. Soon the storm would end, the passes clear, and her father arrive.

So when Robin had once more failed to appear for dinner, she’d gone looking for him and now stood in a dark hall outside the castle library, her cheeks scalding and tears welling in her eyes. It had taken all her self-control to keep from stomping back into the library, shoving Marilla Chisholm out of Robin’s arms, and taking her place.

Only one thing had kept her from doing so: what if Robin did not
want
her to take Marilla’s place?

She had no reason to believe he did. She had nothing on which to base her certainty that he felt this . . . this
connection
, too, other than the way he’d looked at her outside Byron’s carriage, the profound awareness that had penetrated his amusement and left him, for one telling instant, looking staggered and vulnerable.

She edged away from the doorway and began walking, her thoughts floundering between hope and despair. She didn’t note the direction her feet took until she heard a masculine voice hailing her.

“Lady Cecily. Are you all right?”

She turned to find Lord Oakley striding toward her. He looked anything but pleased to see her.

“Did you take a wrong turn? Are you lost?”

“Pardon?” She glanced about and realized that in her distraction she’d wandered into a part of the castle she didn’t recognize. The hallway was unlit and uncarpeted and chilly. “I may be.”

“You must be near frozen,” he said.