When the Marquess Met His Match (9 page)

“I shall take it.” As she put her gloved hand in his, she met his amused gaze with a meaningful one of her own. “But whenever I introduce you to a young lady, I’m not letting either of you out of my sight.”

He chuckled. “Fair enough. How do we begin this sort of thing?”

She pulled her gloved hand from his. “Call upon me tomorrow at two o’clock, and I shall interview you as I would any potential client.”

“Interview me?” He seemed surprised. “What on earth for? You know quite a bit about me already.”

“As you’ve pointed out, a lot of what I know doesn’t seem to be accurate. And I don’t know what sort of woman you would wish to marry. Do you prefer a quiet woman, or one who carries the conversation? Do you find women with brains attractive? Or does an intelligent woman intimidate you?”

That made him laugh. “I’ve only been intimidated by one woman in my life.”

“What woman is that? Your mother?”

“No. I don’t remember my mother. She died when I was a small boy. The only woman who has ever been able to intimidate me was Nana.”

“Nana?”

“My nanny. She weighed probably eighteen stone, could wield a knitting needle like a weapon, and always managed to know when I was lying. She was the kindest, most wonderful woman I’ve ever known.”

“Was?” Belinda echoed. “What happened to her?”

Not a muscle of his face moved, he continued to smile, but something she couldn’t quite pinpoint changed in his expression. It was as if he’d just donned a mask. “My father sacked her when I was eight.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But if I were to guess—” He broke off and looked away. “I think it was because I loved her too much.”

“But that’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” He looked at her again, his smile still in place.

She frowned, uneasy, not liking the strange, masklike quality of his smile. She wasn’t sure she wanted to pull back the mask and find the real man beneath.

“I already told you what I’m looking for,” he went on, and she forced herself to stop speculating about his deeper qualities. “It isn’t complicated. I need a wife with a dowry, I’d like one who is pleasant company, and I’d prefer one who is pretty.”

“And that’s all you require?”

He considered. “If she were American, or any other nationality than English, that would be good, too.”

“Other than English?” she echoed, not certain she’d heard him right.

He nodded, confirming that there was nothing wrong with her hearing. “And if she’s Roman Catholic, or Jewish, or Methodist, all the better. Any religion but Church of England.”

Belinda was beginning to feel as if she’d stepped through Alice’s looking glass, for there were things here she simply did not understand. “But your family is Church of England.”

“Yes,” he agreed with a chuckle. “Exactly so.”

She made a sound of impatience. “I am trying to determine what sort of woman would be the best match for you. Must you be so flippant?”

“Sorry.” He gave her a penitent look, but she greatly feared he wasn’t the least bit chastened. “But do you seriously think interviewing me will accomplish that objective?”

“I do have some degree of success at this,” she pointed out. “To assist you in finding the right spouse, I need to know more about you and what you enjoy. Do you like breeding roses, for example? Or composing poetry? Or hunting?”

“Are those the interests a gentleman of my position ought to pursue? If so, I fear mine shall not quite come up to snuff. Grafting roses takes far more patience than I possess, I think worrying about tercets and quatrains is just plain silly, and I hate riding to hounds. Why, the fox has almost no chance of getting away, which I’ve always found terribly unfair. There’s a requirement, if you like: a wife who doesn’t care for foxhunting.”

She shook her head, staring at him in disbelief. “You must expect very little from married life if you don’t even require some mutual interests with your spouse.”

“I try not to have expectations about anything, to be honest.” His amusement vanished, his expression hardened. “Nothing causes more pain, frustration, and disappointment than unfulfilled expectations.”

“That may be so, but it’s hardly helpful here,” she grumbled. “I need guidelines. What about her appearance? Are there certain physical traits you prefer? If you don’t like gardening or hunting, what are your interests and pastimes? What about your politics? What?” she added as he gave an unexpected laugh. “What is so amusing?”

“You make finding a wife sound like visiting the tailor. No, not this fabric. The wool’s a bit too coarse. No, that one’s too light and flimsy. And that one’s a horrid pattern. My politics, my pastimes . . . are any of those things important?”

Belinda decided at that moment that her task would be easier if she accepted that everything about this man was going to confound her notions and defy her conventions. “I take it you think these things are not important?”

He shrugged. “Not really, no. Until I’ve met her, any considerations other than the ones I’ve given you don’t matter.”

“How can you say that? Why would a potential bride’s personal attributes, interests, and character not matter?”

“I said they don’t matter
until I’ve met her
,” he corrected. “You could find dozens of women who meet all the qualifications I could possibly require and who possess all the attributes I would most prefer, but if I don’t feel something passionate when I look at her, if I don’t want to yank her into my arms and kiss her breathless and pull her clothes off, none of those requirements will mean a thing.”

Belinda stared at him, an image flashing across her mind of him with his face buried against some woman’s neck, his arms around her, and his hands unlacing the stays at her back.

Her throat went dry.

“Is something wrong, Lady Featherstone? You look quite flushed all of a sudden.”

The amusement in his voice shattered the picture in her mind like a rock thrown at a mirror, and she strove to recover her poise. “I’m quite well. I’m still a bit warm from the dancing, that’s all. And if I am to assist you,” she added with some asperity, “I would ask you to refrain from these lurid descriptions of your animal passions. It’s most unseemly.”

That got a genuine smile from him. “I already told you passion was important to me. Call it a pastime if it makes you feel better.”

“Such a criterion is hardly help—”

She stopped, for the perfect way to handle this entire situation suddenly entered her head, a way that would not only give him what he wanted and get him out of her hair, and at the same time save the worthy young ladies of London from life with a fortune-hunting rakehell.

“Lady Featherstone?” he prompted in the wake of her sudden silence. “Is something wrong? Have I shocked you beyond speech?”

Belinda gave up on discerning his preferences. “Not at all,” she said, returning her attention to him even as her brain worked furiously. “Far be it from me to make my task more difficult than it needs to be.”

She watched his eyes narrow a fraction in suspicion, and it took everything she had to keep her expression bland and innocent. “You are prepared to be so open-minded,” she said with a shrug, “this ought to be the easiest match I’ve ever brought about. Meet me at Claridge’s on Friday at five o’clock for tea. There, I shall introduce you to a girl I believe just might meet your exact requirements.”

With that, she decided to depart before he could ask any questions, and she turned to walk back toward the ballroom, but his voice stopped her before she’d taken three steps.

“Belinda?”

She turned and looked at him over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“There is one thing I’d like to clarify.” He paused a moment, then went on, “Despite what’s been said of me, and what you think of me, I am not like Charles Featherstone. I wish you could believe that.”

“I’m not the one you have to convince, Lord Trubridge. And you’ll have every chance to demonstrate to your future wife that I’ve been mistaken about your character. That’s what those tedious courtship rituals are for.”

He groaned in protest, and Belinda smiled as she walked away. Now that Rosalie was safe, she was going to enjoy this.

Chapter 7

“W
hy, I think England is just the greatest country in the world. Daddy insisted on seeing Parliament, and Big Ben, and the Tower of London, and the British Museum. I thought all of that was a
teeny
bit dull, of course, but the shopping has been heavenly. Daddy’s bought me so many pretty things in Bond Street, I don’t see how I’ll ever get to wear them all.”

Nicholas sat in the tearoom of Claridge’s Hotel, staring into the stunning face of Miss Carlotta Jackson of Baltimore, and all he could conclude was that God had a perverse sense of humor to fashion such a lovely shell for such an empty interior. Her conversation, unceasing, inane, and wholly self-absorbed, had been flowing over him for half an hour now. He was quite dazed in consequence.

“The ladies here are so elegant,” she went on. “A bit standoffish, but that’s just the way it is here, isn’t it? But everyone’s been so kind to me. Lady Montcrieffe having me at her ball, and Lady Featherstone inviting me to tea today. It’s so much better here than it was in New York. It was awful there. I was so unhappy.” She sighed. “I do hate being unhappy.”

The fact that everyone hated that didn’t seem to have ever entered her head. She smiled at him, a very pretty smile that didn’t stir anything in him except the desire to run for his life. “You’d want me to be happy, wouldn’t you, my lord?”

He refrained from asking if she could be happy somewhere out of his earshot. “In a perfect world,” he said instead, “everyone would be happy.”

Those lovely, cornflower blue eyes opened wide. “Oh, but I wasn’t thinking of everyone. I was thinking of me.”

“I daresay,” he murmured. “What a surprise.”

That little jibe sailed right over her empty head. “Living in England would make me happy.” She blinked at him, her dark brown lashes fluttering like butterfly wings, and he wondered why some women thought such a talent made them more attractive. “Why, I should just adore living here forever, my lord. Don’t you think I would?”

“Absolutely,” he said with fervor. “No doubt, you’ll love England as much as I love Paris.”

She blinked again, this time in discomfiture. “Oh,” she said, and a blissful silence followed. Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

“Of course, Paris is lovely, too,” she said. “We went there over the winter. That’s where Worth is, you know. And it was so exciting. He sure does know everything about clothes, and he was so nice to me that I bought tons of dresses from him. He’s just the cat’s whiskers, isn’t he?”

Nicholas didn’t answer, she didn’t notice, and as she twittered on happily about herself and her clothes and her jewels and her pet canary, Bibi, he ate cucumber sandwiches and drank tea and murmured something every once in a while in response to the unceasing monologue, and all he could think was that if he were to live with a woman as vacuous as this for more than half a day, he’d have to shoot himself in the head. What could Belinda have been thinking?

He glanced sideways to where she was sitting across the tea table. Though she was turned toward the girl’s mother—who seemed to have the same predisposition as her daughter to rattle on endlessly about nothing—Belinda was also looking sideways, watching him from beneath the brim of an absurdly plumed straw bonnet. The moment their eyes met, she pressed her lips together to hide a smile and returned her attention to the mother, giving him the answer to his question. She forced him to endure another half hour, however, before she reminded Miss Jackson and her mother of a dressmaking appointment in New Bond Street, causing the two Americans to depart in a rush and leaving him able to confront Belinda on the subject of his first potential bride to be.

“You chose that girl on purpose.”

Her eyes, the color of sky rather than cornflowers, opened wide. “Why, my lord,” she chirped, pressing a hand innocently to the ruffled jabot of her bodice, “I don’t know what on earth you mean. It would make me so happy to find you a wife. Don’t you want me to be happy?”

“For God’s sake, Belinda, don’t imitate Miss Jackson, not even in fun. That girl has the brains of a gnat.”

“She isn’t the most intelligent heiress in London, that’s true, but what difference does that make to you?”

“What difference does it make?” he echoed. “What sort of question is that?”

“A perfectly valid one.” She opened the handbag on her lap and pulled out a pocket-sized black notebook. “Since you were so opposed to meeting with me for a thorough interview, I was forced to make do with the preferences you did give me.”

She opened the book and flipped through several pages before she found the one she wanted. “Rich and pretty,” she read. “Must be willing to accept marriage based on material considerations. Sizable marriage settlement is required. Love is not. American preferred . . . no Church of England, no foxhunting . . . hmm . . .”

She paused a moment, studying the page, then looked up. “I didn’t note that intelligence was a consideration for you. Did I miss it in our conversation the other night?”

“I didn’t think I had to specify that my future wife have a brain,” he muttered, chagrined that he hadn’t seen this coming. “I thought it would be obvious. What man wants a stupid wife?”

“Many men do,” she assured him. “An intelligent girl upsets their vanity.”

“Perhaps, but I’m not one of those men. I could never spend the rest of my life with a mindless chatterbox like Carlotta Jackson or I should go mad as a hatter. But then, you knew that already, I suspect.” He paused to tug at his cuffs and straighten his tie. “Now I hope you will stop wasting my time and yours by introducing me to henwits and find me some suitable candidates.”

“I don’t see how I was supposed to know intelligence was so important to you,” she grumbled as she set the little notebook on the table, reached into her handbag again, and retrieved a pencil. “Intelligence required,” she murmured, scribbling as she spoke. “No chatterboxes or henwits.”

She stopped writing and looked up, frowning at him. “You might have told me this at the ball. It would have spared Miss Jackson any false hopes.”

“If Miss Jackson harbors any hope after only one hour of tea, then she has a vivid imagination. I did nothing to encourage her. A man can hardly encourage a girl’s hopes when he can’t get a word in.”

She sighed as she tucked her notebook and pencil back in her handbag and pulled out her gloves. “I fear that you encourage women simply by looking at them.”

“I shall take that as a compliment.”

She gave him a wry look as she began to put on her gloves. “I must have said it wrong.”

He leaned closer, unable to resist flirting with her. “What about you?” he asked, smiling. “Do I encourage you when I look at you?”

“Be still, my fluttering heart,” she said in a dull monotone. “Oh, Nicholas. Oh, Nicholas.”

“You’re cruel, Belinda. So cruel and so lovely.” He propped his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand. “Is it really true you’ve no money?”

She frowned, staring down at her hand and studying her glove as if she feared there might be a spot on the pristine white kid. “Jack told you about my finances, I suppose?”

“That there was none of your dowry left? Yes. When Featherstone died, the attorney had to tell Jack there was no money to support the estate. Deuced frustrating since Jack had no say in how the money was spent.”

Apparently satisfied she’d been mistaken about her glove, she looked up, but her face was devoid of expression. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for Jack?”

“No.” He straightened with a sigh. “Belinda, that’s not what I meant. I appreciate that if anyone knows what it’s like to feel helpless while your inheritance is spent heedlessly into oblivion, it’s you. I only meant that it’s a pity when a man has inherited the title and the estate, but has not inherited the income to keep it up.”

“Knowing Jack, do you think that would have made any difference?”

“Probably not,” he was forced to concede. “But it will make a difference with me.”

“Will it?” She studied him for a moment, her head tilted a bit to one side. “What happened to your face?”

“My face?” The abrupt change of subject took him back a bit. But then he remembered Denys’s fist slamming into his cheek, and he laughed. “Oh, that. It’s nothing.”

“I’d hardly call a black eye nothing. Did you engage in a tavern brawl? Or a dispute over cards, perhaps?”

“Neither, actually,” he said with breezy disregard. “It was a fight over a woman, if you must know. A cancan dancer. I only mention her occupation,” he added as she gave a disapproving sniff, “in case you were wondering who she was.”

“I wasn’t, but I should advise you to invent a more tactful way of fielding any questions from ladies on the subject. A fight over a cancan dancer would hardly commend you as a possible husband.”

“It won’t matter if you keep introducing me to women as dim-witted as Carlotta Jackson. I doubt she even noticed my black eye, much less spared a moment to contemplate how I got it.”

Her lips curved up a bit at the corners. “That’s probably true, I admit. But as I said, you didn’t tell me you wanted an intelligent woman. And, my point—if we can return to it—is that even as you speak of how you would be more responsible than Jack, I am looking at evidence to the contrary on your own face. It’s hard to believe that a man is sincere about changing his life and being a better man when only a few days before he’d engaged in fisticuffs over a cancan dancer.”

“Belinda, the two are hardly the same thing!”

“No? I don’t see much difference.”

“Well, the business with the dancer actually happened three years ago, and the man who hit me the other day was Lord Somerton, one of my best friends.”

One of her black brows lifted in skepticism. “Your best friend struck you because of something that happened three years ago?”

Nicholas decided not to explain since his only defense was that at the time he’d spirited off Denys’s cancan dancer, he’d been in an advanced state of intoxication. That was not the sort of explanation likely to raise him in Belinda’s estimation, so it was best to keep mum.

“Never mind,” she said in the wake of his silence. “I don’t want to know anything about it. But I warn you that whomever you marry, you won’t be allowed to spend her money on cancan dancers, and you will be forced to spend a good portion of it on your estate.”

“If that’s what she wants, it’s quite all right with me,” he said agreeably. “Though any girl with sense won’t want us to live at Honeywood, I won’t cut up rough about improving the place.”

“Just so you understand it won’t be all beer and skittles for you just because you’re marrying a girl with money. I intend to tie your future wife’s dowry up as tightly as possible in the marriage settlement.”

“But you and I could negotiate the terms,” he murmured, and leaned over the table, giving her what he hoped was his most charming smile. “Couldn’t we?”

She didn’t seem impressed. “If you’ve got any absurd notions going on in your head that you can wheedle me into letting you off the hook, rid yourself of them at once. I intend to make sure you’ll be on a strict allowance.”

“I’ve no doubt of it, but that doesn’t stop me from having notions.” He slid his gaze down over what he could see of her luscious body. The tea table prevented him from seeing the rest, but his imagination was happy to complete the picture. Just that, just one moment of letting his imaginings about her take hold, and arousal began flowing through his body. “At least,” he added, as his gaze moved back up to her face, “not about you.”

She looked away, a hint of pink washing into her cheeks, and he felt a spark of hope that she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she might wish to pretend, but when she looked at him again, her expression was as cool as ever. “Are you, or are you not, trying to improve my opinion of you?”

“I am, but not if that means I can’t think delicious things about you. Perhaps it makes me a cad, Belinda, but I’m not willing to make that particular sacrifice.”

The color in her cheeks deepened, and she stirred in her chair. “Really, Trubridge,” she said, frowning with disapproval even as her fingers lifted to touch the side of her neck, “this sort of flirtation is quite inappropriate.”

Her attempt to chastise him was utterly ruined by the breathless quality of her voice, but he decided not to push his luck by pointing that out. It was satisfaction enough to know she felt at least a little of what he was feeling. “I know,” he answered her with a sigh of mock regret. “But I can’t help myself.”

“Try.” She snapped her handbag shut, shoved back her chair, and stood up. “Now that I know you want an intelligent girl, we can get on. Come to the National Gallery on Wednesday afternoon at two o’clock. The Dutch painters’ exhibit. There, I shall introduce you to Miss Geraldine Hunt, a girl who is as pretty as Carlotta Jackson and of far greater intelligence.”

“Oh, very well,” he said as he also rose to his feet, “but it’s a bit of a burn to my masculine pride that you can push me into the arms of other women without even a smidgen of regret.” He bowed and started to turn away, but her voice stopped him.

“Trubridge? You can’t leave yet.”