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‘She came to cheat me out of what I deserve.’ Sir Nash’s voice cut the conversation like a slime-covered knife. As usual, his approach was as silent as his presence was unwelcome. He had removed his mask and was looking at her as if she should be surprised by his appearance, rather than expecting to find him.
‘Bowles.’ Did Mr Challenger grow larger as he greeted the other man? Or was it simply that he had stepped closer to her in protection? In any case, he looked no happier to see Sir Nash than she did.
‘Georgiana thinks that if she barters away her honour, I will take a disgust of her and retract my suit.’ The smile he turned on her was as odious as any he had given her in the past. ‘You did not suspect that I would be in the very room with you, bidding on that which you choose to squander.’
She opened her mouth to inform him that she had not just suspected, she had been sure of it, and then closed it again. The less he knew about her plan, the better. ‘You have no idea what I meant to do,’ she said with a contrary toss of her head.
‘Perhaps not. But I know what you have accomplished,’ he said, grinning in triumph. ‘By morning, I shall see that all of London knows what you have done here. And that includes my cousin and your father.’
What all of London thought of her did not matter, nor did she care about her stepmother. But she could not bear it if her father heard of this incident. It might kill what little feeling he still had for her. ‘What would it gain you to do such a terrible thing?’
‘I will have no reason to, if you do as your family wishes and accept my offer of marriage. Once the announcement is in The Times, we will never speak of this again.’
‘That will not be possible.’ Mr Challenger had been so quiet during their interchange that his interruption caused them both to jump.
Nash turned to him. ‘The matter is between the lady and myself, Challenger. Your opinion is not required.’
‘On the contrary.’ The other man smiled confidently and placed himself squarely between her and Sir Nash. ‘You are operating under several misapprehensions. The first is Miss Knight’s reason for attending the club tonight.’
At the dramatic pause that followed this, even Georgiana leaned in, eager to hear what was to come next.
‘Enlighten us,’ Nash said with a cold glare.
‘She was not here to barter her innocence to a stranger. She sold it to me.’ Then he turned to her with a smile that would melt the reservations of the most frigid virgin and pulled her into his arms, toying with a lock of her hair. ‘I told you it was unwise for us to play such games at Vitium et Virtus. As tantalising as I find this little trick you pulled tonight, it calls too much attention to our relationship.’
‘Your relationship.’ Sir Nash sounded as if he could not decide whether to be sceptical or annoyed. But George was far too preoccupied with the feeling of being pressed firmly into the body of Frederick Challenger to care what Sir Nash thought about it.
Mr Challenger broke the lustful gaze he had been giving her to frown at Sir Nash. ‘Our betrothal is, as yet, a secret from her family. But that makes our bond no less permanent.’
‘You?’ If Sir Nash’s response was incredulous, he was no more surprised than George herself.
‘Can you think of a better explanation for Miss Knight’s presence here?’ Though Mr Challenger delivered the question with a tone of dry sarcasm, it was far more likely that he was thinking the same thing to himself.
‘Well...’ Nash looked from one to the other of them, obviously not convinced.
‘It is not as if she came here to surprise you,’ Challenger said, dismissing her actual plan as impossible. And now that it had gone horribly wrong, it did seem ridiculous. But as long as her mistake did not end up forcing her into the arms of Nash Bowles, it would be an embarrassing success.
She gave not a word to confirm or deny. Instead she sighed and leaned into Mr Challenger’s body, nestling there as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be held by a virtual stranger. And it did feel rather nice. His embrace was neither too tight nor too loose and the breath that was ruffling her hair was pleasant.
Perhaps she had needed his protection. At the sight of them together, Sir Nash seemed to swell in his indignation like some disgusting sea creature. ‘You are playing a dangerous and foolhardy game, Miss Knight, if you think to partner with this man instead of me. Do you not know the reputation of the Challengers? Surely your father does not wish you to marry into such a rakehell family. And this man is the worst of the lot. Just look at where he is.’
‘He is in the same place as you,’ Georgiana pointed out quietly. ‘I see no difference.’
‘There is one and it is significant,’ Nash shot back. ‘I am but a patron here, but Frederick Challenger is one of the owners. He is the master of the revels tonight. If you do not wish to give yourself into the hands of a despoiler of innocents, then avoid him at all costs. There can be no greater one than he.’
‘Unlike some men, I do not take what is not freely given.’ The look he gave Nash told Georgiana quite clearly that, even amongst unrepentant sinners, there were some lines that could not be crossed.
‘Georgiana.’ Nash turned to her now, holding out a hand as if he could coax her back to his side. But the benign smile that accompanied the gesture was followed by a brief, downward gaze to stare at her body.
It was then that she remembered her state of undress and the fact that the original plan had not included removing her mask. This time, she made no effort to hide her shudder at his gaze.
Without waiting for a request, Mr Challenger stepped away from her and seized a cloth from a nearby table, tossing it about her shoulders, hiding her from view. Then with a manner as dire as death, he pointed a finger at Sir Nash. ‘In the future, you will refer to the woman at my side as Miss Knight. At least until such time as she does me the honour of becoming Mrs Challenger. Then, you will not speak to her at all.’
‘That day will never come,’ Nash said, almost shaking with rage. ‘I will talk to my cousin over this. We had an understanding.’
‘You do that,’ Mr Challenger said. ‘But one thing that you will not do is remain in this club a moment more. Collect your hat and be on your way, or I will have Snyder help you to the door.’ This was followed with the sort of cold, satisfied smile that assured everyone near that this was less a request than a threat.
‘This is not the end, Challenger. This is not the end.’ But it looked final enough to Georgiana. Sir Nash was backing towards the door as if afraid to take his eyes from the man next to her. Then, with a swish of the black cape that he wore, he was gone.
And once again, she was alone with Mr Frederick Challenger.
Chapter Three (#u81d63a4e-33fc-5f2c-bc93-c9972d28686e)
When he was sure Sir Nash was gone, he released his hold on her and his warm expression returned to disapproval. ‘Well?’
‘Thank you for making him go away,’ she said, her nerve failing her in the face of such a large, angry man.
‘Do not thank me. I did not do it for you,’ he said. ‘I cannot abide that fellow. He cannot seem to manage a visit here without doing something so foul that I have to turn him out. If you had a jot of sense you would not have come here, to risk falling into his clutches.’
In the face of this fresh condemnation, she felt as young and foolish as her stepmother thought her to be. Then, she remembered that Mr Challenger had spent the whole of their limited acquaintance thinking such things about her, with no basis in fact. ‘My behaviour was the result of desperation,’ she said firmly, looking him in the eye. ‘My father and stepmother are all but forcing me to marry Sir Nash and I find him repellent. I thought if there was some way I could prove to them how awful he was...’
‘So you came here to find him,’ Challenger said. ‘And just what did you mean to do once you had?’
She could not reveal the whole of her plan without announcing Ben’s part in it. If he lost his position because of her foolishness, how could she forgive herself? ‘I thought to scream for help,’ she said, wondering if it would have worked. ‘When someone came to my rescue, I would demand that he be a witness against Sir Nash to my father.’
‘Or you could have drawn a crowd and not a rescuer. You could have been ravished for sport by the very man you thought to entrap, while the worst of the ton looked on and laughed.’ His voice rose, as if he thought she was some underling who had to stand for his punishment. ‘Once he had what he wanted, you’d have had to beg for the honour of the marriage you did not want to keep from being cast into the gutter with the rest of the fallen women.’
‘Then what Nash said about you was true,’ she responded, raising her volume to match his. ‘If you own such a place and would have allowed that to happen, you are as bad, or worse, than any who come here.’
His mouth snapped shut, as though he could not figure out how to respond.
‘For your information, he’d have married me no matter what had happened,’ she said, crestfallen. ‘I think he has debts. My stepmother speaks disapprovingly of his gambling even as she tries to arrange our marriage. He wants my father’s money as much as anything else he might get from me.’
‘I seriously doubt that.’ Mr Challenger gave another sweeping glance up and down her body, as though it was possible to see through the tablecloth that hid it.
After weeks of studiously ignoring her, she was unsure of what to make of his sudden interest. She did her best to disregard it despite the strange tingling she felt at the passage of his eyes. ‘Well, your interruption has prevented anything bad from happening tonight. If you will excuse me...’ She turned toward the door.
He gave a single, sharp laugh in response. ‘And now, you mean to go home as if nothing has changed.’
‘What else can I do?’ she said, trying to smooth the tablecloth into the semblance of a respectable garment.
‘Go on, then.’ He smiled, gesturing toward the door. ‘If you really think that is a good idea.’
His maddeningly smug tone raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She hated being lectured to like a foolish child. She hated it doubly so when she suspected that she deserved it. ‘All right, then. Say what you mean to. You are itching for the chance to scold me and I will not deny it to you. Why can’t I just go home? Do you still mean to ravish me?’ She had meant it as a joke, but once the words had passed her lips, they seemed to hang in the air between them on a cloud of musk.
‘You will go home, untouched,’ he said, in a reasonable tone that belied any knowledge of a change in the atmosphere. ‘But it will be quite impossible for either of us to pretend that this incident did not happen.’
‘Do you mean to tell my father?’ she asked in a small voice. The story would sound no better delivered by Mr Challenger than it would from Sir Nash.
‘I will not have to. Bowles will be there at first light to do it for me.’
Of course. He would come to press for an immediate approval of his suit. He would portray her as a wayward hoyden and himself as a rescuer from near disaster. ‘I have made it worse,’ she said, miserably.
‘Indeed,’ he said, not bothering to spare her feelings. ‘And dragged me into it as well. I will have to answer for our secret engagement and our sexual game playing in a club frequented by the more louche half of the ton.’
‘Oh, dear.’ She did not like the man, but she had never intended to include him in her personal problems. Then she remembered the conversation that had just occurred. ‘I did not ask you to lie for me.’
‘Nor did you denounce me when I did,’ he reminded her. ‘You were more than willing to hide in my shadow and allow me to take the blame for this debacle. Now you know what you must do to make it right.’
‘In truth, I do not.’ There was not a way forward that did not lead to disaster.
Mr Challenger dropped to his knee before her. ‘Miss Knight, would you do me the honour of accepting my offer of marriage?’
She had heard the phrase, ‘without a trace of irony’. This must be the opposite of it. The proposal was delivered without a trace of sincerity. And yet, he did not rise. He stared at her, grim-faced, awaiting an answer.
‘But, I do not want to marry you,’ she said, staring back at him incredulous.
‘Nor do I want to marry you.’ If possible, his expression became even more threatening. ‘But as you said before, if word of this gets out, I will be called to offer for you. I see no other way to save both of our reputations.’
‘Your reputation?’ Did men even have them? Of course they did. But she was sure that it did not mean the same thing as it did for girls.
‘If you do not marry me, I will be seen as the villain who threatened you, a seducer of innocents. Bowles, on the other hand, will be cast as your rescuer. In either case, your future is set. You will have to marry one of us to avoid ruin.’ The statement was followed by the audible grinding of teeth. ‘Please, my dear Miss Knight, allow me to be the lesser of two evils.’
The idea was insane. ‘But then, we would be married,’ she reminded him. ‘For ever,’ she added, when the first statement seemed to have no impact upon him.
‘That is the way it normally works,’ he agreed. ‘You must have understood the risk when you undertook this desperate mission. As I told you before, if you do not marry me, then you shall wed Bowles.’ He looked at her for the length of a breath, then added, ‘For ever.’
‘For ever,’ she repeated. It sounded so final. Eventually, she had known she would have to marry someone. She’d just never imagined it would be to a man who had never been willing to give her the time of day, much less a proposal. But marriage to Nash would be every bit as final and infinitely more horrifying.
Mr Challenger gave an impatient huff, as if it had never occurred to him that the woman he offered for would not accept him without question. ‘I do not like the idea any better than you do. But if we are reasonable about the business, we need have very little to do with each other, once we are married.’
‘And that is what you consider a proper match,’ she said. Even at their worst, her father and Marietta had a better union than that.
He continued, oblivious to her criticism. ‘I am a second son. It is not as if I am required to produce an heir. I did not intend to marry. I have no interest in tying myself to a single woman until death. But as long as you do not get in the way of my life, I see no reason why I should not. And it will prevent my sister-in-law from trying to match me up with someone in the future.’ Now he was smiling at this small advantage.
‘I am glad you are warming to the idea,’ she said. He had no right to be happy about a reversal of fortune that would leave her shackled to an annoying stranger.
‘We will get a special licence and be married by week’s end. After a brief period of celebration, you may retire to my country home, free of the attentions of Bowles.’
And now, he was organising her life. ‘I have not said yes,’ she reminded him.
‘It would be foolish to say no,’ he replied.
Perhaps so. But she wanted to say it, all the same.
That was not true. She wanted to shout the word directly into his smug face. She had disliked him from the first moment she’d seen him. Or the second moment, at least. When she had looked across the room at him that first time, she had thought him handsome, heroic, and sophisticated. Then, Marietta had ruined it and he’d proved he was also arrogant, snobbish, and dictatorial.
‘If you do refuse me, there is always Nash Bowles,’ he reminded her again in that mockingly reasonable voice she might be hearing every day for the rest of her life, since she could think of no other way out of this mess than the one he had presented to her.
‘Nothing would be as bad as marrying Sir Nash,’ she agreed. ‘Not even marrying you.’ She could not resist adding the final riposte and was pleased to see the flash of annoyance in his eyes.
‘You are no gift, either,’ he said, not bothering with courtesy. ‘But if you will promise to leave me alone afterward, I am willing to do the right thing and save you.’
He spoke as if she was a gnat to be waved away, or an annoying child who needed to be sent back to the nursery. ‘I am willing to accept,’ she said, holding her head high and giving him a cold look that would tell him he was twice as bothersome as she could ever be. ‘If you will swear to leave me alone as well.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Do not worry yourself, Miss Knight. I have no intention of disturbing your privacy.’ There was a significance in his tone that she did not fully understand. It was as if her request had actually hurt him in some way that all her other insults had not.
She gave him what she hoped was a worldly smile, that he might think she had intended what had just changed between them. But, in truth, she did not. It probably had something to do with the things he’d threatened her with when he’d rescued her, if one could even call that a rescue.
Did married people ravish each other? That did not sound right. She could not imagine her father and stepmother ever did. And she was quite sure she did not want to ravish Mr Challenger.
There were paintings on the walls of this very room that showed scenes similar to those on Sir Nash’s snuffbox. But they had to be exaggerations. There were far too many satyrs involved and she seriously doubted that the men of London were actually hiding cloven hooves inside their boots.
Her future husband had turned his back on her speculating and walked to a corner of the room to pull on a bell rope. He did not turn back to her as they waited for the arrival of the servant he’d summoned, leaving her nothing more than silence and a view of his rigid spine and squared shoulders. If he would only relax, just a little, she’d have admired the masculinity of his frame. But at the moment he looked less like an embodiment of strength and more like a man who had just been caned and was braced to take the next blow without flinching.
By the time a maid appeared, the rigidness he displayed had passed to George like an infection. If they did not find some way to manage with each other, when the time came to marry, they would look more like waxworks than human beings.
Mr Challenger turned and addressed the maid with military stiffness. ‘Rose, take Miss Knight to the dressing rooms and find her clothing appropriate for a lady. Then see to it that Snyder gets her out of the club and away before anyone knows of her presence here.’
The girl gave a quick curtsy of assent.
Mr Challenger turned back to her with a smooth half pivot. ‘I will call on your father in the morning. Once I have his assent, I will take care of the licence and the matter will be settled in no time.’ Even though they were only in the presence of a servant, he offered a deep bow. It had none of the irony that his earlier proposal had held. But there was a mechanical quality to the movement that made her think of the tin man who appeared on the hour out of their mantel clock back home. ‘Until I see you again, Miss Knight.’
‘Mr Challenger.’ She imagined herself as the tin girl that came out of the other side of the clock to meet him, offering the same perfectly controlled curtsy. But as she dipped, she lost her grip on the tablecloth she was still wearing and revealed far too much leg than was proper.
Frederick Challenger’s control slipped in response. A quick flick of the eyes downward was followed by a glance heavenward and a tight grimace of disapproval.
Before he could unbend enough to complain aloud, she gathered the cloth close about her again and hurried out of the room after the maid.
Chapter Four (#u81d63a4e-33fc-5f2c-bc93-c9972d28686e)
‘She is late.’ Fred checked his watch for what seemed like the hundredth time and glanced towards the closed front doors of the church and the empty pews that should have contained the bride’s family. Only the presence of his two oldest friends prevented him from leaving the chancel and hunting the woman down.
‘Only by five minutes,’ Oliver Gregory’s sympathetic smile flashed in the dimness of the church, seeming even brighter against the darkness of his skin.
The five minutes before a battle felt like a lifetime, as if the mind was trying to savour what might be the last moments of life. Perhaps the same was true today, as he bid farewell to his freedom.
Whether it was five minutes or five years, it did not make Georgiana Knight’s behaviour any less annoying. ‘She has had nineteen years to prepare for her wedding day. You would think she would be early. Punctuality is vital in any operation.’
‘Perhaps in the army,’ Jacob Huntington said, as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. The ducal ring of Westmoor, which had recently fallen to him, glinted in the light shining through the stained-glass windows of the chapel. He seemed to feel the weight of it and lowered his hand to twist it on his finger as if it gave him discomfort to wear it. Then he spoke. ‘You have sisters, do you not? You must have learned by now that women play hob with timetables.’
‘That does not mean I have to like it,’ Fred said gruffly. He did not have to like any of this. Not the wedding, nor the bride, nor the sudden upending of his life. Nor did he appreciate being forced to buy breakfast for people he took pains to avoid at any other time. He glanced at his own family, gathered on the other side of the church like storm clouds on the horizon.
It was a tiring proposition at the best of times to see them all together in the same place. The Challenger family motto was incautus futuri and they seemed to take pleasure in living up to it. Careless of the future and heedless of consequences, his parents and siblings were prone to excesses, affairs, and embarrassments in public, and arguments and grudges in private. Alone and in pairs, they were bad. En masse their bad judgement magnified to astounding proportions.
Perhaps it was good that the Knights had not yet arrived, so he might deal with a few of the problems unwitnessed. His sister-in-law, Caroline, was waving at him, the lace handkerchief in her hand fluttering like the wings of a trapped bird. Without so much as a smile he turned from her, offering the sort of deliberate cut that he had once given to the woman he was about to marry. Perhaps, some day, he could explain to Georgiana the reasons for his behaviour. But it would not be at the front of a church on his wedding day. Fred meant to treat the ceremony with the respect it deserved. If war broke out amongst the Challengers, the first shot would not be fired by the groom.
But it seemed his older brother had no such qualms. Since Fred had refused to come to their pew, Francis had abandoned his wife and was pushing past his friends to speak with him. Fred readied for the handshake he was about to receive and the words of filial advice that were in no way necessary.
