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She made her voice light. ‘Do not be absurd. You’ve no wish to marry me! Goodness! To think you would propose out of some obligation. You need not play the gentleman with me, Sloane.’
Her words wounded him. She saw it in his eyes. For a moment she wished he would strike her. The pain might distract from the wrenching ache inside her. But she knew he was too much a true gentleman to do so.
She picked up her stockings and balled them in her hands, putting her bare feet into her dancing slippers. He shrugged into his coat and ran a brush through his hair. Morgana put hers in a quick plait.
‘I will see you to the back entrance of your house. If we are careful, no one outside will notice you.’
It was a gentlemanly thing to do. He could have just opened the door and pushed her out.
‘Thank you,’ she said, failing to maintain her bright-sounding speech.
He did not appear to notice. He opened the bedchamber door and walked her down the stairs. She managed to put one foot in front of the other, although all she truly wanted to do was sink into a puddle of despair. On a table in the hall was her gold domino, folded neatly. He put it around her shoulders and pulled the hood up over her head. His touch was like a smithy’s tongs hot from the forge.
When they walked out of the door and through the gap in the garden wall, they did not speak. The silence spread through her like some wasting disease.
She had given him the means of retaining his hard-won respectability. She had given him a clear path to offer for a respectable wife—her cousin. But she’d hurt him. Not with her refusal of marriage. A man soon got over such a blow to pride. No, she’d treated him as if he were not a gentleman. That made her no better than his father. And it made her feel sick inside.
The door to her house was unlocked. He opened it for her and she stepped inside. She turned quickly to bid him goodbye, but he had already withdrawn. He did not look back.
The man wore a vendor’s apparel and carried a sack of brushes on his shoulder. He’d wandered around Culross Street since dawn, finally discovering a way to slip through the mews to a shrouded place where he could spy on Cyprian Sloane’s townhouse. Instinct told him to watch the back of the house. Instinct, and lack of success witnessing anything of consequence from the front.
It was too bad he could not watch the house next to Sloane’s where he’d briefly spied the pretty girls through the window. Sloane’s place was as quiet as a church cemetery.
Just as he was about to leave, Sloane’s door opened. There was the man himself, a woman with him. He walked her over to the other house and she entered it.
What an arrangement, thought the man with envy. Some men have all the luck.
Morgana paused when reaching the door to the library. It was open a crack, and she could hear the girls’ voices and the reedy laughter of her grandmother, who undoubtedly found everything to be very lovely. Oh, to have her grandmother’s forgetfulness, to live in a present that was perpetually lovely. How much easier life would be. How much less painful.
The voices were not sounding happy, however. Katy’s shrill tones rose above the others. ‘We need Miss Hart! She will know what to do.’
Morgana glanced down at her hand, still holding her stockings. She stuffed them into a pocket inside her domino and stuffed her numbing despair along with them.
She opened the door. ‘I am here.’
Katy leapt up from her chair. ‘Gracious, Miss Hart!’ She looked her up and down. ‘Did you have a nice night?’
Lucy and Rose stared at her, and Miss Moore, seated near her grandmother, gave her a kind, knowing smile.
It felt as if someone had ripped off all her clothes in a public square, but she realised it was not making love to Sloane that made her feel exposed. It was the ache in her heart.
She tried for a vague smile. ‘A lady does not speak of such matters, Katy.’
Katy laughed. ‘Harriette Wilson had no trouble speaking about it.’
Morgana gave her a candid look. ‘But Miss Wilson is not a lady.’
Was it too late to convince them that they could be ladies? Oh, not ladies of the ton, perhaps, but respectable women who deserved men who loved them and who would never walk away?
Lucy stood up. Her face looked drawn. ‘Miss Hart, we must tell you about Mary.’
If something had happened to Mary while she was making love to Sloane. ‘What of Mary?’
‘It is nothing bad,’ assured Rose.
Lucy gave an imploring glance to Miss Moore.
Miss Moore beamed at Morgana. ‘It seems our Mary has run off to Gretna Green with Mr Duprey.’
‘That cowhanded sapskull…’ Katy shook her head ‘… how could she?’
Tears sprang to Morgana’s eyes. She walked over to Miss Moore. ‘Is it really so?’
Miss Moore handed her a letter. Mary wrote that she was sorry to disappoint Morgana, but Mr Duprey had proposed to her at the masquerade, promising to save her from such unpleasantness and give her a good home. He did not have a big fortune, she added, but Mary looked forward to making little economies to make his life pleasant. The letter then went on for a whole page, heaping praises upon Mr Duprey.
When Morgana finished she clasped the letter to her chest.
‘That slow-top could have purchased a special license here in London.’ Katy shook her head in disgust.
‘Gretna Green is romantic, is it not, Miss Hart?’ Rose directed her beautiful green eyes on Morgana. ‘It is good that she marries, is it not?’
Morgana smiled through her tears. ‘It is wonderful for her!’ She would miss the shy, gentle girl. Her loss was Mr Duprey’s gain—and Mary’s salvation.
Morgana thought of Sloane. ‘It is wonderful for her,’ she repeated. ‘Well done, Mary.’
Chapter Seventeen
Sloane’s horse was waiting for him when he tore back into the house. Elliot stood in the hall and the butler hovered in a doorway.
It was Elliot who handed him his hat and gloves. The look of compassion on the young man’s face nearly jolted him out of the towering rage that consumed him.
Morgana.
He grabbed his hat and gloves and thundered out the door, snatching the reins of his horse from the groom, and mounting in one easy motion. He fleetingly considered detouring into Hyde Park to ride off the storm inside him, but even a hell-for-leather gallop down Rotten Row would not suffice. He must simply wrest control back, push down the pain that kept shooting up through the anger.
Morgana.
He could not think straight. He felt as if she’d pushed him off a very high cliff. Hitting the ground, he had met with pain too intense to bear. She had refused him. Said she’d toyed with him. Accused him of being no gentleman.
His head told him not to believe a word of it. Morgana, a courtesan? Nonsense.
Did she concoct that story as an excuse to refuse his offer of marriage? She had wanted their lovemaking as much as he, but only when he’d mentioned marriage did she repeat her outrageous story. Sloane’s insides felt as if a dozen sabres had slashed him to ribbons and his head whirled with the suspicion that she wanted him to be the rake, not the gentleman. She craved the excitement, not the man. Sloane had gone through plenty of women like that, who’d made love to him so they could say they’d been seduced by the dark and dangerous Cyprian Sloane.
Sloane thought Morgana different. He could not have so thoroughly misjudged her when his skill at judging character had always been razor-sharp.
He turned a corner and, nearly colliding with a slow-moving coal wagon, reined in his steed and tried to pull himself together.
He had one thing clear is his head. If she carried his child, she would marry him, even if he had to drag her to the altar to do it. No child of his would ever be burdened by questions of paternity.
Sloane kept his horse apace with the curricles, carriages and wagons in the streets while he tried to push Morgana out of his mind. The immediate task was to confront his father. Ironic that the job at hand was defending the good name of the woman who merely craved his bad one.
He finally turned down the Mayfair street where his father resided, not precisely calm but at least resolved. Sloane pulled his horse to a halt in front of his father’s townhouse. Calling for a footman to see to the horse, he waited in the hall while another servant fetched David. His nephew did not keep him waiting and quickly drew him aside.
‘I am glad you are here.’ David wrung his hands. ‘They have not yet sent the message to the papers. There is still time to change their minds, though I am not sure what you can do to convince them.’
Sloane frowned. ‘Do you know when the Earl and your father conceived this plan?’
‘I do not know when the idea first occurred to them.’ David gave him an earnest glance. ‘I think it was right after Lady Cowdlin’s dinner party—’
Where Rawley had seen them both, Sloane thought.
‘—but they discussed it last night after our evening meal. I looked for you at the musicale, but you were not there. So I sent the message first thing this morning.’
Last night? Before the masquerade. No spy saw Morgana enter his house. Sloane expelled a relieved breath.
David’s expression suddenly changed into one of ill-disguised pain. ‘My father heard your offer for Lady Hannah’s hand would be imminent. Grandfather had words with Lord Cowdlin yesterday. You must know the Cowdlin family and our own have been close for many years—years you were absent. Grandfather does not wish you to marry into the family—’
A muscle contracted in Sloane’s cheek. Sloane had been ready to ruin Hannah’s life, just as his father now aspired to ruin Morgana’s. The similarity between himself and the Earl of Dorton sickened him.
David paced back and forth. ‘Grandfather ought not stand in the way of your happiness. I… I cannot fathom it.’
Sloane gazed at his nephew, who suddenly looked as young as the much-beloved toddler he’d envied so many years ago. He had nearly forgotten David and Hannah’s tragic love affair.
‘David, I am not making Lady Hannah an offer. I will not marry her.’
Instead of looking joyous, David’s face flashed with panic. ‘You cannot mean.’ His face turned white. ‘But what will happen to her? I confess, I could at least rest easy knowing she would be under your protection. Who will Cowdlin try to sell her to next?’
Sloane put a firm hand on his nephew’s shoulder to still these dramatics. ‘To you, nephew.’
David’s mouth dropped open.
Sloane almost smiled. ‘But you and I must play a careful game, if we are to win this hand. We have little time to plan…’
A few minutes later Sloane and David were admitted to his father’s library, where both the Earl and Rawley gloated.
‘What brings you to this house, Cyprian?’ the Earl asked with a smirk.
Sloane advanced upon him as if a man possessed. ‘I will brook no interference from you in my plans, sir. You have no control over me or who I marry.’
The Earl tossed Rawley, the real son, a smug expression. ‘You, Cyprian, are nothing to me; therefore, you have no say in what I do.’
The barb, so predictable, did not even sting. Sloane shot back at him. ‘Come now. You have some lunatic plan to send lies to the newspapers, to spread gossip about me throughout the ton. I will stop you. I will not be deterred from marrying Lady Hannah. You have met your match in me, sir. I have money enough to destroy you, and the skill to succeed. Think what a public suit for defamation would cost you, both in reputation and in fortune.’
‘But I would ruin you first,’ cried his father, rising to his feet. ‘A clandestine affair will do the trick, I think. Rawley’s brilliant idea! Cowdlin would refuse you his daughter in a minute, if he thought you were rooting with his wife’s niece.’
Sloane’s fingers curled into fists at this coarse reference to Morgana.
David interceded. ‘Grandfather, you must think of Miss Hart. This would ruin her, too. And I think it unlikely that Cowdlin can refuse Uncle Cyprian, no matter what gossip prevails. He needs the money. He needs a rich husband for his daughter.’
The Earl swung around to his grandson. ‘Are you speaking to me, boy? Do you dare?’ He pointed his cane at David. ‘You brought this—this person here? You informed him of my plans? You betray your own flesh and blood. Do not think I will forget it.’
Rawley jumped to his feet. ‘Father, I beg you. David is my son—’
But David, Sloane noticed with pride, did not waver. He remained steadfast in the face of his grandfather’s anger. He addressed his grandfather in a low, calm tone. ‘Did you expect me to stand by and watch a lady’s reputation ruined? Honour prevents me from allowing you to use her so shabbily. It is very poorly done, Grandfather. You make me ashamed.’
‘Oh, bravo, nephew.’ Sloane made his voice drip with sarcasm, but in his heart he meant every word. ‘Gentlemanly sentiments, I am sure. Too bad you have no fortune or you might wed the Lady Hannah yourself. What chivalry that would be.’
David, still making Sloane proud, twisted around to him in admirable fury. ‘I would marry her, too, sir, if I could save her from being sold to you. Do not mistake me, I sent for you only to preserve Miss Hart’s reputation, to convince my father and grandfather that there is no affair between you and the lady.’
‘Ha!’ Sloane laughed. ‘The only sin she is guilty of is living in the house next to mine, but that is none of my concern. Oh, I could have her if I wanted, I am sure. Remember, I have enough wealth to get whatever I want.’ He turned back to his father. ‘What I most desire is to rub your nose in my success, dear Father. At every ton event, I will be there. When you stand in the House of Lords, I will be in the Commons. When you meet your cronies at White’s, I will be in the midst of them. You cannot ignore me, sir. I intend to be wherever you turn.’
The Earl’s face flushed with rage. The hand clutching the knob of his cane turned white and the man trembled all over.
‘Father?’ Rawley said worriedly.
David stood his ground bravely, still looking defiantly righteous.
Sloane took it all in and suddenly realised how little what his father did mattered to him.
At the gaming table, Sloane often threw in his cards when there was no other way to come out ahead. Now he mentally tossed in his cards. The wager he made with himself, to gain back respectability and throw it in his father’s face, no longer mattered. Nothing mattered but Morgana.
He dealt himself a new hand, one he would win at all costs. He would see Morgana safe—safe as his wife.
He turned his gaze on David, so young and valiant. David also wagered his future on a chance to win the woman he loved.
In a moment they both would win.
The Earl slowly eased his grip on his cane. His complexion returned to its normal sallow colour. A malevolent grin creased his wrinkled cheeks. He used his cane to point to Sloane.
‘You will not win this one, Cyprian. No respectable wife for you.’ He leaned on his stick again and turned to his grandson. ‘I will release your fortune, boy. I can do with it as I choose. Do you want your money?’
David inclined his head, as if reluctant to admit it.
The Earl grinned. ‘You may have it on one condition. Marry the Cowdlin chit and your fortune is yours.’
David levelled his grandfather a steely look. ‘No, sir. Another condition must prevail. Agree not to defame Miss Hart’s name, and I will do as you request.’
Well done, David. Sloane applauded inside.
The Earl gave a trifling wave of the hand. ‘As you wish. There is no need as long as Cyprian is cut out.’
Rawley finally caught up. ‘You’ll give David his fortune?’ He broke into a happy grin. ‘I cannot complain of that.’
Sloane could barely keep from laughing, but, instead, he pretended to protest. ‘See here, you cannot do this,’
His father bared his teeth. ‘I can and I will!’
Sloane swore at his father and made other protests and threats just to convince his father he’d been severely injured. For his exit, he picked up a decanter of brandy from one of the tables and sent it crashing into the cold fireplace, then he stalked out of the room.
