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“Don’t be an idiot,” Benedict said roughly, tossing his cigar down on the driveway and grinding it out savagely. “Bloody hell! All right, I will do it. But, by God, Jermyn, you better be right about this. Otherwise, Gideon will be lost.”
He turned without another word and strode back into the inn.
* * *
STILL FEELING CHEERED by the warm drink within her and by Mr. Sedgewick’s sympathy, Camilla turned to the almost Herculean task of setting her appearance to rights. She could well imagine what both her aunts would say if they saw her looking like this.
As soon as the maid brought in a pitcher of water and a basin, as well as rags and towels, she stripped off her filthy clothes and scrubbed away at the mud with a wet rag. When she had managed to rid herself of nearly all of the dirt, she put on clean undergarments from her trunk. As she dressed, she thought about the inevitable gossiping the servants of the inn would indulge in. No doubt by tomorrow it would be all over the village that Lady Camilla had arrived here last night looking like a hoyden, covered with mud and with a strange man in tow.
It would really be better, she realized, if that loathsome Benedict person did agree to pretend to be her fiancé. At least it would explain his presence in her carriage. If she told the real story, Aunt Lydia would go into near hysterics about the danger she had been exposed to, and Aunt Beryl would find it a golden opportunity to lecture her on her foolish, heedless ways and the danger into which they could lead her. It was enough to make her hope that Mr. Sedgewick would be able to talk Benedict into it.
Of course, it would be awful having to pretend for several days that she was in love with him and wanted to marry him—indeed, it was daunting to think of even having to be in his presence that long. She was quite sure they would have difficulty not getting into a roaring argument every few minutes. Mr. Benedict was, after all, the most irritating man she had ever met.
No one would expect them to bill and coo, of course; that was not the sort of behavior encouraged by people of her station in life. Even engaged couples were usually chaperoned and stayed a chaste distance from each other. There was none of the public hand-holding or kisses such as Camilla had seen the parlor maid, Lizzie, and the butcher’s son engage in. No, if there were a kiss or embrace exchanged, it was usually done in secret.
However, they would be expected to be together a lot of the time, and it would probably be thought odd if they did not take a few quiet walks alone together. She remembered the sort of warm glances that had been exchanged between her friend Henrietta and her fiancé, Malcolm. There had been something in Malcolm’s eyes when he looked at his future wife that even now, when she thought about it, made a faint flush rise in Camilla’s cheeks. He had not been crude, but seeing him, no one would have been mistaken as to his feelings for Henrietta. Even Camilla, the avowed opponent of marriage, had breathed a few wistful sighs over those looks.
It was that sort of signal—the whispers with heads close together, the sighs, the looks across a roomful of people—that let everyone know that a couple was in love, and an engaged couple who never indulged in such behavior would look a trifle odd.
Still, as long as the two of them maintained that they were engaged, who would have the nerve to dispute them? They might be labeled cold, and someone as suspicious as her aunt might wonder about them, but the sheer audacity of pretending to be engaged would be enough, she thought, to convince even that woman that they were telling the truth.
Sedgewick’s scheme made sense…in an outlandish sort of way. Once he talked Benedict out of his stubborn refusal, surely Benedict would see the advantages of being paid money for nothing more difficult than living in a nice house and pretending not to dislike her for a few days. And surely she could endure Benedict’s presence for the same length of time, knowing that it would ease her grandfather’s mind…not to mention put Aunt Beryl’s nose out of joint.
On that pleasurable reflection, she called in the maid, and the two of them tried to wash the mud out of her hair. It was no easy task to do in the parlor, with only a pitcher of water and a washbasin to work with. Camilla bent over the basin while the maid poured the pitcher of water carefully and slowly over her hair. It took four pitchers of water and much carrying and emptying of the basin before the water ran through it cleanly. Camilla did not even bother with trying to lather it with soap. She would take a good, soaking bath once she got home. For right now, all she needed was the semblance of cleanness. At least one could see that her hair was black now. So she wrung out her wet hair as soon as it was no longer caked with mud and knelt before the fire to brush out the tangles while the maid left the room to pour out the dirty water one last time.
She thought nothing of it a few moments later when the door opened again, for she assumed it was the maid, who had scurried in and out of the parlor several times already as she helped Camilla to clean up. However, when she heard the thud of boots upon the wooden floor, she swung around with a low cry.
It was Benedict who had entered the room, and he turned toward her now at the noise she made. For an instant they froze, staring at each other. Camilla was dressed in only her chemise and petticoats, not having wanted to get her dress wet while she washed and brushed out her hair. Her damp hair lay like a dark cloud over her shoulders and down her back, and her eyes were huge dark pools. Her skin was warmed by the golden glow of the firelight. Her breasts swelled up over the top of the chemise, and the lace-trimmed white cotton cupped the full globes. She made an entrancing picture there, curled in front of the fireplace, her ripe curves clothed in chaste white, her hair down like a child’s, thick and luxuriant, inviting his touch. She seemed at once innocent and sensual, a woman to stir desire.
A blush surged up Camilla’s throat into her face, and she raised her hands to her shoulders, covering her luscious breasts. “Sir!”
He stepped back, a little jerkily, as though pulling himself from a trance. “A thousand pardons, Miss Ferrand.” He made an elaborate bow, then added with great irony, “How fortunate that we are engaged, else your reputation would now be in shreds.”
“Then…you have agreed?”
“Yes, I have agreed to Sedgewick’s scheme, God help me.” He turned and strode to the door, where he looked back at her. “I am going up to Sedgewick’s room. He hopes to make me look the part of a gentleman. You had better lock this door if you don’t want any more unexpected guests.”
As soon as he left, Camilla darted to the door and turned the heavy key, as he had suggested. She turned back to the room, pressing her hands to her flaming cheeks to cool them. She thought of the look in the man’s dark eyes, the way they had run rapidly down her figure, and she shivered, once again feeling that odd quiver deep in her abdomen. For a moment she wavered, wondering if she should cry off from their agreement. There was something about this man that seemed dangerous.
But then she straightened her shoulders and marched across the room to the chair where her dress lay. She pulled it on and fastened the neat little row of buttons up the front. She would not let this ruffian scare her away from her purpose. She would pretend she was going to marry him, and she would do such an excellent job at it that no one would suspect the truth.
She wrapped her still-damp hair into a knot at the base of her skull and pinned it securely, then pulled on her gloves and tied a chip-straw hat on her head. It would hide her wet hair, and the cape in the post chaise would cover the wrinkles in her dress that came from being packed in a trunk. That ought to do in the dim light of candles. As late as it was, she hoped that Aunt Beryl would not even be up to see her enter the house.
She went to the door of the parlor and opened it. The public room beyond was empty now, except for Mr. Sedgewick, who turned and smiled at her. “Ah, splendid. Miss Ferrand.” He came forward to take her hand and raised it to her lips. “You are even lovelier than I had realized. It would be clear to anyone but your dragon of an aunt that if you are unmarried, it is entirely through your own choice.”
“What a pretty compliment.” She gave him a little curtsy.
“’Tis no less than the truth.” His gaze moved past her and fastened on the staircase beyond. “Here is your fiancé. And looking more the part, I must say.”
Camilla turned toward the stairs. It was all she could do to keep her mouth from dropping open. Gone was the rough-clothed, muddy lout of earlier in the evening, and in his place was a man who was every inch a gentleman. He had obviously bathed and shaved. His dark locks, still damp, had been ruthlessly combed into order. He was clean-shaven, and his cravat was starched and snowy-white, tied in a simple yet elegant fall. Though his breeches and coat were plain black and his waistcoat a conservative dark-figured one, they were undeniably expensive and well cut, and his boots were polished until they held a mirror gleam.
“Mr. Sedgewick,” Camilla breathed. “What have you wrought? But, surely, you cannot wish to give up your clothes.”
Sedgewick cast a look at Benedict, his eyes twinkling, and said, “Don’t give it another thought, dear lady. I was happy to do so.”
“I should think so,” Benedict put in sourly, effectively terminating any hope that he might have changed with his clothing, “considering that I—”
Sedgewick cut in. “Yes, yes, I know—you earned them. So you told me earlier.” He turned back toward Camilla. “Do you think he will do, Miss Ferrand?”
“Yes. Although I had not given anyone a hint that my fiancé had such a bearish personality.”
“Ah, well, ’tis something it would be quite natural to hide.”
“Let us go,” Benedict growled. “The man’s already taken down my portmanteau. Your portmanteau, I should say, Sedgewick.” He turned toward Camilla, hand out. “The money?”
“What?”
“I believe we had an agreement?”
“Oh! Well—” She cast a helpless glance toward Mr. Sedgewick. “What should I pay him?”
“I’m not sure.” He frowned at Benedict. “What do you usually get for such a thing?”
“I have never done such a thing.” Benedict thought for a moment. “I’d say a hundred quid.”
“A hundred pounds!” Camilla exclaimed.
“Benedict! I say!”
Benedict raised one amused eyebrow. “A man’s got to live, hasn’t he?”
“But that’s more than a servant would make in…in years!” Camilla protested.
“Ah, but you couldn’t take a servant in to meet your family, now, could you?”
“It is only a few days’ work.”
“It’s not the time, though, is it? It’s my keeping our little secret. I’ll take fifty pounds, and not a penny less.”
“Oh, all right. I have money in my reticule in the chaise. But I haven’t that much there. The rest of my money is in my trunk….” Her voice trailed off as she thought about the fact that she would be alone in the dark night with this man. What was to stop him from knocking her over the head and taking all her money? Certainly not her coachman, whom he had already rendered unconscious once tonight.
Her face must have given away her thoughts, for Benedict grinned evilly. Mr. Sedgewick hastily put in, “Don’t worry, he would not dare take your money and run. Remember, I will have seen the two of you drive off, and if anything should happen to you, he would be hunted down immediately.”
“Of course. Thank you.” Camilla smiled at Sedgewick, who smiled graciously back, then turned to give Benedict a scowl.
Sedgewick escorted them out of the inn, and the innkeeper hurried out to see her off, too. “There now, my lady, I’ve replaced that fool of a driver of yours, and I’m sending a boy with a lantern, too, to light the way. Don’t you and your man worry a bit.” He leaned forward, grinning, and whispered, “’Twill make your grandfather happy to have you marrying, my lady, and there’s no doubt about it. A fine strapping gentleman, too, if I may say so. We’d been wondering a bit why he and that other one were hanging about, but now I see that he was only waiting for you to arrive.”
“Thank you, Saltings.” Camilla felt a twinge of guilt. She hated deceiving people, and she realized that this was only the next of many times in the chain leading from the lie she had told her grandfather.
Sedgewick handed her up into the carriage, and Benedict climbed in after her, sitting down on the seat across from her. Sedgewick closed the carriage door, and with a sharp cry from the driver and a slap of the reins, they started forward.
Camilla looked at the stranger across from her and wondered what she had gotten herself into.
CHAPTER FOUR
CAMILLA PICKED UP her reticule and dug into it, finding the roll of banknotes she had stuck there earlier. Carefully she counted out twenty-five one-pound notes and handed them across the carriage to Benedict.
“Why, thank ’e, my lady,” he told her, again affecting a thick lower-class brogue and tugging at his forelock like a peasant.
“It is only half the money,” Camilla said crisply, refusing to let him draw her into irritation. “You will get the other half when you have finished your role.”
“Afraid I might run off as soon as we get there?” he asked in his normal voice, the usual sardonic smile playing about his lips. “I suppose that would be rather embarrassing.”
Camilla ignored his words. “What are you?” she asked. “An actor? A sharp?”
“You surprise me. An Earl’s granddaughter, so familiar with gambling cant?”
“I’ve heard enough of sharps and flats and the sort of gambling dens that innocents are drawn into. They use well-spoken apparent gentlemen, don’t they, to lure the young men in?”
“So I have heard.”
“You are not one of them?”
He shook his head. “I thought we had established that I was a common thief.”
“I am not aware that we had established anything about you,” she responded coldly. “The only thing that I am certain of is that I do not trust you.”
“No doubt you are a wise woman.” Again his dark eyes glinted with amusement. “But, then, a trustworthy man would hardly suit your purpose, would he?”
Camilla looked at him, nonplussed by his words. He was right. A scrupulously honest man would never have agreed to such a charade as this. The fact did not reflect well on her, she realized, since she was engaged in the same deception as he—worse, really, since it was her own family that she was deceiving.
She looked away from him, doubt sweeping over her for the first time. The warmth that the rum punch had brought her had gradually melted away, and there was a small, insistent throbbing at the base of her skull that betokened the beginnings of a headache. Had she really been inebriated, as this man had claimed earlier? Had she made a foolish, drunken decision that she would regret tomorrow morning?
She cast a sideways glance at him, wondering what she was doing, bringing a thief right into her family’s home. Was she simply being weak, deceiving her grandfather this way? Was she doing all this merely for the sake of her pride? Doubts assailed her.
“What?” he asked in a smooth, oily voice. “Having second thoughts, my lady? Wondering if your course is less than honorable? Or is it doubt about letting a thief have access to the treasures of Chevington Park? Perhaps you should have thought of that earlier, before you invited the viper into your bosom, so to speak.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Camilla said boldly, managing to keep the tremor out of her voice. “Even you would not be so stupid as to steal something, when it would be so obvious who had done it. When I could identify you.”
“As what? Mr. Lassiter, was it?”
Her eyes flew to his, startled.
“That’s right,” he went on. “You don’t even know my name, do you?”
“But…is it not Benedict?”
“Aye…my first name.”
“Your first name! But I thought Mr. Sedgewick meant your last name. What is your surname, then?”
“Why, Lassiter—what else?”
She merely looked at him, wide-eyed, momentarily bereft of words.
Suddenly, startling her even further, he reached across the carriage and grabbed her, pulling her across the carriage and into his lap. One arm went around her shoulders, the other around her waist, pinning her arms very effectively to her sides.
“What are you— Stop it! Let go of me at once!”
“You seem to have forgotten one other little thing in your rush to fool your family. A fiancé, you know, has certain expectations.”
He bent, and his lips fastened on hers. They were hard, almost bruising, pressing into her soft lips with an insistent force. Camilla gasped in surprise, and he seized the opportunity to slip his tongue inside, amazing her even more. She had been kissed only once or twice, and then only by gentlemanly beaux overcome by a moment of ardor. But she had never felt anything like this. His mouth seemed to feed on hers, hungry and urgent, demanding that she give in to him.
Just as suddenly as he had begun, he stopped, raising his head and gazing down at Camilla for a long moment. His face was flushed, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and there was a glitter to his dark eyes. Camilla stared back, mesmerized, for once unable even to speak. She thought for an instant that he was about to kiss her again, but then he abruptly set her back on the seat across from him.
“Remember that,” he told her darkly, “the next time you decide to pretend some man is about to become your husband.”
Anger flooded Camilla, wiping away her astonishment, as well as the stab of fear she had felt a moment earlier. “How dare you!”
“I dare anything,” he returned flatly. “Do you think I care that you are a supposed lady, or that your family is respected? You know nothing about me, least of all my character. You were a fool to agree to this.”
“Then perhaps I should end it right now!” Camilla’s cheeks flamed with color. “Why don’t we stop, and you can get out and walk back to the inn?”
“Oh, no, my lady, we made a bargain, and I intend to see it through to the bitter end. Are you planning to renege on it?”
Camilla drew herself up proudly. “I never go back on my word. But don’t get the idea that you can claim any fiancé’s rights. I am paying you good money, and if that is not enough for you, then I suggest you leave right now. For you are not going to get anything else.” Her fierce gaze would have melted iron.
Her words seemed to amuse him, more than anything else, for he only smiled faintly and murmured, “You don’t scare easily, do you?”
“Is that what you were trying to do? Frighten me?” She gazed at him in perplexity. “To what purpose?”
“’Tis better not to go into a situation blind.”
“So you were testing me?” Her mouth twisted with exasperation. “Well, I can promise you, Mr…. whatever your name is…that if there is a weak link in this plan, it is not I.” She looked at him pointedly. He returned her gaze without expression, and after a moment, she drew herself up in her most prim, governess-like manner and said, “I believe it would be best if, instead of indulging in juvenile tests, we settled down to make certain of our story. Now, your last name is Lassiter, as you have said. I think that we could use your own name, Benedict, as your first name. That way, if I slip and say it, it won’t seem odd. I have never spoken of you as anything but Mr. Lassiter in my letters home, so they don’t know what your given name is.”
He nodded agreement. “Tell me, where do I live? How do I spend my time?”
“You live in Bath. Your parents have a small estate in the Cotswolds. You are a gentleman of leisure, and you write.”
“I what?” His expression turned pained. “I hope you don’t mean poetry.”
“Oh, no. You are a very scholarly gentleman. You are interested in ancient history, particularly the Romans. You have written several articles, and are working on a book.”
“Good Gad, you mean I will be expected to converse on the subject?”
“Oh, no,” she assured him airily. “Grandpapa generally dislikes scholarly subjects. I just thought it sounded like an admirable thing to be interested in.”
He grimaced and went on, “All right. Now, what else should I know about this paragon?”
