Her nose twitched, assailed by the stench of alcohol. Straightening, she pursed her mouth in disapproval. “You stink like a brewery.” She pressed the back of her hand to her nose at the offensive smell.

Slowly, he sat up, sliding his Hessian boots to the floor with a heavy sigh. “Lady, you are one royal pain in the ass.” He dropped his head into his hands, rumpled the dark, soft-looking locks and spoke without looking at her. “As to our agreement, I’ve changed my mind. Sending you away to cause further mischief is not nearly as satisfying as marrying you off to someone. Then you become his problem. Not mine.”

Her hands clenched at her sides. “I’d rather be sent away.”

“Indeed?”

The complete apathy of his tone indicated he cared little for her desires, and she wondered a bit desperately what had caused him to change his mind in the course of one night.

“I would prefer to remain unwed,” she continued. “I’ll as good as disappear. I give you my word on it. You need never be burdened with me again. It would be just as final as my marrying.”

He lifted his head from his hands to look at her through bloodshot eyes. “Your word does not amount to much in my estimation.”

She ignored the affront to her honor. It was to be expected, even deserved. Still, she had to try to persuade him.

“Surely arranging a Season is a great deal of inconvenience for you. You don’t need that aggravation.”

The corners of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “How kind of you to look out for my sensibilities.

You are a true altruist. But to rid myself of you permanently is worth a few months of inconvenience.” He once again dropped his head into his palms. “If you’re going to drive some man mad, it should at least be your husband. He has the legal right to beat you.”

She inhaled, groping for patience. “I realize I don’t deserve your trust.” Meredith swallowed past the pride sticking in her throat, moving on to say, “But I have no reason to further trouble you—”

“You never did to begin with.” His voice sounded weary, contemptuous. “You are the worst kind of liar. You justify your actions. If you see a need, your arrogance precludes you from ever considering that there may be an alternative aside from your scheming and manipulations.”

Heat climbed up her throat to her cheeks. Was she as selfish as all that? Had her deceit been so unforgivable? No. She refused to believe it. He simply did not understand her motives. She had been desperate and afraid and concerned for the lives of others, not just her herself.

 But you did want a baby, a small voice in the back of her mind reminded. She ignored that voice to focus on her current battle for freedom. Later, she could examine whether she was as selfish as he claimed.

“And what of you? You have no qualms about sitting back, snapping your fingers and commanding me to marry. This is why I lied to begin with. I feared you would barge in here like some tyrant and start ordering my life to suit yourself with no consideration for me and those depending upon me.” She stamped her foot on the carpet. “I don’t want to marry. But that is of no consequence to you, is it? It’s about what is easiest for you.” Breathless, she waited, watching him closely, praying he would reconsider.

“You will marry.” He shrugged, apparently unmoved by her outburst.

One look at his rigid expression, the inflexible set of his jaw, and she knew there would be no changing his mind.

“Take comfort,” he said, the flippant quality of his voice grating her already frayed nerves. “You are only subject to my tyranny until that blessed event. So make the best of your choice. As you say, it is your life.” He rose to his feet, stopping and clutching his head as though dizzy before striding from the library.

She hugged herself, terror filling her at the prospect of marrying again. Her heart couldn’t take another rejection like Edmund’s. Then and there she resolved to use her head and not her heart.

There would be no illusions this time around and little in the way of expectations. She would pick a sensible, boring man. And her heart would be safe.

Chapter 13

 A brief inconvenience. Nick sourly recalled Miss Eleanor’s words as he stood in the pouring rain on the steps of the Derring’s Mayfair mansion. The butler regarded him as if he were a bug to be scraped from the bottom of his shoe, not bothering to invite him inside the foyer.

“Your card, sir?” the butler intoned for the second time, his haughty accents even more disdainful than when he first asked. “I already told you. I don’t have a card—” “Then I am sorry, sir,” the butler cut in, his icy regard indicating he was anything but apologetic. “No one gains entrance without a card. And if you should acquire a card and Her Grace agrees to see you—”

The butler sniffed disdainfully, the fellow’s eyes raking him with great skepticism at this possibility. “Her Grace receives only on Tuesdays and Thursdays from two to four.”

Nick raised his voice against the rain’s increasing volume. “How about I just tell you my name, and you can pretend you’re reading it off a card.”

“I am sorry, sir—”

Nick’s patience snapped. “What’s your name?”

“My name?” The butler blinked. Had no one seeking entrance to Her Grace’s lofty residence ever inquired his name before? “Finch, sir.”

“Well, Finch, I’m Nick Caulfield. Remember it, because I’m the one who owns the house you’re standing in and everything else Lady Derring’s grandson has gambled away. Now, unless you want me for your new employer instead of Lady D, you’ll grant me an audience with her ladyship, and we’ll see what she can do to salvage the fine mess her grandson has made of the family’s fortune… or should I say lack of fortune?”

Finch held silent a long moment, the steady beat of rain the only sound. Even with rain sluicing down his face and obscuring his vision, Nick suffered the butler’s intent regard without blinking.

At last Finch stood aside. “May I take your coat, sir?”

“Thank you.” He stepped into the expansive foyer and shrugged out of his coat, wiping ineffectually at his face with his hands in an effort to dry it.

“Follow me, please.”

He followed the butler to the drawing room, leaving puddles in his wake on the Italian marble floor.

“Her ladyship shall be with you momentarily.” Finch closed the doors behind him with a click.

Nick strode to the fire and extended his hands to its warmth. A small noise prompted him to glance over his shoulder. The tall doors were still closed and an empty room stared back.

Delicate furniture of pastel shades crowded the room, save for a single oversized chair with a fat cushion— undoubtedly reserved for guests of substantial girth. Numerous figurines stared at him in silence from various surfaces. Shrugging, he turned back to the fire.

“Who are you?” a voice asked so softly that he could have imagined it.

He whirled back around, wondering if he had in fact imagined the question when he did not immediately see anyone.

“I asked who you are.” This time the whisper took on an imperious tone.

His eyes landed on a wide pair of bespectacled eyes peering over the top of the pianoforte. It was a girl, no more than sixteen and quite plain, dressed in a gown an atrocious shade of daffodil yellow. Her midnight dark hair made the bright yellow of her gown all the more blinding. The dress possessed too many flounces and ruffles for her slight frame. He suspected the flounces on the bodice were an attempt to disguise a flat chest.

“Nicholas Caulfield.”

“I’ve never heard of you,” she replied, rising until she stood behind the pianoforte and no longer crouched.

“No surprise.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Why are you hiding?”

“I’m hiding from Mr. Humphrey.”

“Who is Mr. Humphrey?” he inquired, his voice lowering in a whisper to match hers.

“My dance instructor, but he is simply beastly.” Her hands fluttered about her in distress. “He raps my knuckles as if I were a child when I miss a step.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“A bit old to have your knuckles rapped, I should think.” He folded his hands together behind his back.

“My sentiments precisely.” She nodded, her spectacles slipping down the bridge of her slim nose. “But I am to have my come out this year, so my dance lessons have increased to three times a week instead of once. Not that it shall implant the amount of grace needed to satisfy my grandmother.” She sighed, then eyed him speculatively. “I know all gentlemen of my grandmother’s acquaintance, especially the young ones. Grandmother sees to that. You’re in her drawing room, therefore I should know of you.”

“I’m not the type of man she would introduce to you.”

“Then you’re probably the type of gentleman I want to meet.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “What’s your name?”

“Portia. But please be quiet.” She wagged a finger over her lips a bit desperately. “I don’t want them to find me.”

“Forgive me.” He smiled at the precocious girl.

“What business is it you have with my grandmother?”

Nosy too, he noted. “I’m afraid that is private.”

She gave a world-weary sigh. “Then I’m certain it has to do with Bertram.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The only thing that could be considered private is that my brother has ruined the family fortune, but then everyone knows, so that isn’t really private, is it?” She cocked her head.

“You’re quite the clever girl,” Nick mused, nodding his head approvingly.

“Yes, my greatest flaw, or so my grandmother tells me.” She suddenly smiled, revealing a pair of dimples that made her appear almost pretty. “It is also open knowledge that the family is counting on me to nab a rich husband to save us.”

“Quite a burden to bear,” he murmured.

“Indeed, especially since my looks are not to be counted upon, or so Grandmother tells me. And, as you said, I’m clever.” Another sigh. Yet despite the sigh, he sensed she did not despair over her lack of beauty, only the disappointment it caused her grandmother.

“And what is wrong with being clever?”

“It’s not a trait gentlemen care for in a wife, or so Grandmother tells me.”

“Tell me something. Do most of your sentences end with ‘or so Grandmother tells me’?”

The girl laughed, but quickly slapped a hand over her mouth to suppress the noise. Through parted fingers, she whispered, “Clearly you have not made my grandmother’s acquaintance. You will understand once you do. Most people regard her as something of a tyrant.”

“Ah, then it’s no wonder you refer to her so deferentially.” He nodded in sympathy.

The girl indicated her agreement with a solemn nod of her own.

“More than good looks can attract a gentleman.” He felt compelled to encourage the gangly girl.

“Really good-looking people always say that,” she retorted with a good deal of cheek for one of such tender years.

Before he could respond to that piquant remark, the door opened. Portia ducked back behind the pianoforte just as her grandmother grandly entered the room.

The dowager duchess did not so much as glance at him until she settled on a chaise. Then, with both hands knotted about the top of her silver-headed cane, she leveled an icy glare on him, her wide nostrils flaring. “What’s this I hear? You presume to claim ownership of this house, man?”

“Point in fact, I do.” He patted his waistcoat. “I have vouchers from your grandson if you would care to see them.”