Lady Allerton's Wager. Nicola Cornick
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a moment before. ‘Your question comes a little late, my lord! Surely that is academic now.’ She took a step back and her silken skirts rustled. ‘My man of business will call on yours on the morrow. Goodnight, my lord!’
She turned to go, but Marcus caught her arm in a tight grip and spun her round to face him. He tore the mask from her face with impatient fingers. Without it she was even more striking than he had supposed. Her face was a pure oval, the smoky eyes set far apart beneath flyaway black brows, the nose small and straight, the sultry mouth that was not smiling now. She was breathing very quickly and he could tell that she was afraid. And that she was not the courtesan she pretended to be. For some reason that took all the anger out of him.
‘One of us is in the wrong place, I believe,’ he said slowly.
‘It is I,’ she said simply. ‘Did you truly believe me a Cyprian, my lord?’
Marcus started to laugh. He could not help himself. ‘Assuredly. Until I kissed you.’
That gave him the advantage. He saw the colour come up into her face and she tried to free herself from his grip. He stood back, letting her go with exaggerated courtesy. No, indeed, this was no courtesan, but even so he still wanted her. He had no idea whom she was, but he intended to find out.
‘You will honour your bet?’ she asked again.
Marcus grinned, folding his arms. ‘I will not.’
He saw the fury come into her eyes and held her gaze steadfastly with his own.
‘I will make you do so!’ she said.
‘How?’ Marcus shifted slightly. ‘Are you telling me that you would have honoured yours had I won? If so, I would press you to play me for the best of three!’
She blushed even harder at that but her mouth set in a stony line. ‘What I would have done is immaterial, my lord, since you lost. You claimed never to renege!’
Marcus shrugged. ‘I lied.’
‘A liar and a cheat,’ Beth said, in a tone that dripped contempt. ‘I repeat, my man of business will call upon yours on the morrow, my lord, and will expect you to have ready the title to Fairhaven to hand over.’
The study door closed behind her with a decided snap and Marcus heard the quick, angry tap of her footsteps receding across the marble hall. He picked the dice up casually in one hand and sat down in one of the chairs. A whimsical smile touched his lips. He could not believe that his judgement had been so faulty. To mistake a lady for a Cyprian, even given the circumstances…He had been thoroughly misled by his desire, like a youth in his salad days. Led by the nose—or some other part of his anatomy, perhaps. It had never happened to him before.
He tossed the dice absent-mindedly in his hand. So he had been richly deceived and for an intriguing reason. He wanted to know more about that. He wanted to know more of the lady. Damn it, he still wanted her. Marcus shifted uncomfortably in his chair. And he needed a drink. Urgently.
Justin found him in the refreshment room after he had already downed a glass of brandy in one swallow. Justin watched him take a refill and despatch it the same way, and raised his eyebrows.
‘Unlucky in love, Marcus?’
‘Unlucky in games of chance,’ Marcus said feelingly. He took Justin’s arm and drew him into the shelter of one of the pillars, away from prying gossips. ‘Justin, you know more of West Country genealogy than I! Tell me, does Kit Mostyn have a sister?’
Justin nodded. ‘He has a widowed younger sister, Charlotte. Allegedly a blonde beauty, but she lives retired so it is difficult to say with certainty.’
Marcus frowned. Beth had never been a blonde and she could scarcely be described as retiring. Perhaps she was Mostyn’s mistress after all. Yet something in him rebelled at such a thought.
‘What is all this about, Marcus?’ Justin was asking, looking puzzled. ‘I thought you were about to make a new conquest, old fellow, not indulge in a mystery play!’
‘So did I,’ Marcus said thoughtfully. His face lightened and he held up the glass. ‘Only find me the bottle and I will tell you the whole story!’
‘I cannot believe that you just did that, Beth.’
Christopher Mostyn sounded mild, but his cousin knew full well that he was angry. She had known him well enough and long enough to tell.
Beth sighed. ‘It was your idea to escort me there, Kit—’
‘I may have escorted you to the Cyprians’ Ball, but I did not expect you to behave like one!’
Now Kit’s voice sounded clipped, forbidding further discussion. Beth sighed again. Kit was head of the family and as such she supposed he had the right to censure her behaviour. The fact that he seldom did owed more to his easygoing nature than her obedience.
Beth rested her head back against the carriage’s soft cushions and closed her eyes. Truth to tell, she could not believe that she had behaved as she had. And she had only told Kit half the story, the half relating to the wager. She knew that if she had told Kit that Marcus Trevithick had kissed her, very likely he would have stormed back and challenged the Earl to a duel and matters would be immeasurably worse.
Beth opened her eyes again and stared out of the window. They were travelling through the streets of London at a decorous pace and the light from the lamps on the pavement skipped across the inside of the carriage in bars of gold and black. It hid her blushes and a very good thing too, for whenever she thought of Marcus Trevithick, she felt the telltale colour come into her face and the heat suffuse her entire body.
Not only had she overstepped the mark—by a long chalk—but she knew that she had been completely out of her depth with such a man. She had a lot of courage and, allied to her impulsive nature, she knew it could be her downfall. However, her nerve had almost deserted her in that secluded room. If he had won the bet…Beth shivered. Like as not he would have demanded his prize there and then on the card table or the floor…But he had not won. She took a deep, steadying breath.
Marcus Trevithick. Children of her family were taught to hate the Trevithicks from the moment they were born. There were tales told at the nursemaid’s knee—stories of treachery and evil. The Earls of Trevithick were jumped-up nobodies, whereas the Mostyns could trace their ancestry back to the Conquest and beyond. The Trevithicks had stolen the Mostyn estates during the Civil War and had wrested the island of Fairhaven from them only two generations back, taking the family treasure and the Sword of Saintonge into the bargain. No good had come to the Mostyns ever since—their fortunes had fallen whilst the Trevithicks had flourished like an evil weed.
Marcus Trevithick. Beth shivered again. She could not believe that he was evil, but he was certainly dangerous. He was also the most attractive man that she had ever met. Having been a child bride, her experience was necessarily small, but even so she was certain that he could stand comparison in any company.
The carriage drew up outside the house in Upper Grosvenor Street that she had rented for the little Season. Kit descended and helped her out with cold, studied politeness. He did not say a word as he escorted her up the steps and into the entrance hall. Beth bit her lip. She knew she was well and truly in disgrace.
Charlotte Cavendish, Kit’s sister, was sitting in the red drawing room, her netting resting on the cushion beside her. She was reading from Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield but cast the book aside with a smile as they came in. Like her brother, she was very fair with sparkling blue eyes, slender and tall. A scrap of lace was perched on her blonde curls as a concession to a widow’s cap.
‘There you are! I had almost given you up and gone to bed…’
Her smile faded as she looked from her brother’s stony face to Beth’s flushed one.
‘Oh, dear. What has happened?’
‘Ask your cousin,’ Kit said