Desired. Nicola Cornick
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you think me high-handed.” His smile stole her breath, something that happened so rarely to her that for a moment Tess wondered if the tightness in her chest meant that she was ailing. The charm of handsome men generally left her utterly cold.
Rothbury leaned back against the library doors, arms crossed, broad shoulders resting against the panels, another barrier to her escape.
“I am at your service,” he murmured, “whenever you are ready to acquaint me with this business proposition you have.”
Tess’s throat dried. “I wanted …” She groped for the words that had scattered like petals in the breeze. “That is, I thought …”
One dark brow rose quizzically as Rothbury surveyed her confusion.
“I came here—” Gracious, she had lost all her town bronze. This would never do.
“I came here to ask you to marry me,” she finished, with all the finesse of a tongue-tied schoolgirl. “In name only, that is. I wish for a marriage of convenience.”
Mortified, she stood pinned to the spot whilst a burning blush seemed to creep up from her toes to engulf her entire body. It was difficult to see how matters could have gone more painfully awry. She had wanted to be so cool, so composed. She had wanted to be herself, Teresa, Dowager Marchioness of Darent, poised and self-assured. Instead, this man had taken all her confidence and turned it inside out. She should have known not to engage in this dangerous game of using Rothbury for his name and his protection, because any moment now he would call her bluff, accuse her of sedition and very likely have her thrown in the Tower of London.
Rothbury was silent for a very long moment. Finally, when Tess was about to stammer an apology and climb out of the window in her desperation to escape, his shoulders came away from the door and he started to move towards her. Panic gripped her by the throat as he drew closer to her. There was something about his physical presence that was so powerful, so authoritative, that it made her supremely uncomfortable. She did not feel threatened by him in the same way as she had by Brokeby, with that terrible fear that had made her skin crawl. Rothbury, she knew instinctively, was not a man who would ever hurt a woman. Even so his physical proximity filled her with unease.
Rothbury took her chin in his hand and turned her face to the faint light that penetrated the room from the long windows. Tess tried to remain still beneath his touch although the impulse to break away from him was strong. No one touched her. Ever.
“An extraordinary suggestion,” he murmured. “A marriage in name only. Why would you wish for that?” He allowed his hand to fall and Tess felt the relief swamp her, heady as wine, enough to turn her dizzy for a brief moment. Rothbury took a step away from her and then turned sharply back on his heel.
“It was not a rhetorical question,” he said.
Tess jumped. “Oh!” Her mind was a blank. Why had she not anticipated that Rothbury might ask that question—and a great many more difficult questions besides? She had hurried off to proposition him without laying the groundwork first. She should have realised that he was not the kind of man, like Darent before him, to accept such an arrangement without debate.
Rothbury was still watching her with one eyebrow raised in an odiously quizzical manner. And her mind was still blanker than a blank canvas.
“No doubt you will share your reasons with me before too long,” he said, still in the same gentle drawl. “Meanwhile, I have another question. This may seem impertinent, Lady Darent—vulgar, even—but I have to ask it.” He smiled. “What exactly is in this for me?”
OWEN HAD HAD A VERY entertaining ten minutes, possibly one of the most unexpected and interesting ten minutes that he had experienced in his entire life. He had received a number of marriage proposals over the course of his thirty-two years. Some had been from enterprising courtesans on the make, others from respectable young ladies seeking to escape the tedium of life in the schoolroom. One had been from a fabulously wealthy princess wanting to run away from an arranged marriage to a fellow royal. None had been as brazen as this proposal of a marriage of convenience from so notorious a widow who collected husbands with a similar reckless abandon to which King Henry VIII had gathered and shed his wives.
Owen had never imagined himself as anyone’s fourth husband. Until ten minutes before, the idea of marriage had been the last thing on his mind. And marriage to Teresa Darent, of all people … It was an absurd notion.
It was a fascinating notion.
What interested him in this moment was why Tess was asking. He had a very strong suspicion that she was playing a game of bluff and double bluff with him; she knew he suspected her of being Jupiter so she had come to defuse the threat he presented to her. Marriage was a hell of a way to do it. He admired her tactics. It was a daring move, risky but brilliant, demonstrating a breathtaking audacity. The decision he had to make was whether he was prepared to play her game, and all Owen’s gambling instincts told him to engage. He had been an adventurer all his life even if he now had the respectable cloak of a viscount’s title and fortune.
Owen had not expressed his doubts about Lady Darent and her role as Jupiter when he had met Lord Sidmouth that morning to discuss the events of the political meeting and riot. He was not sure what had held him silent; lack of evidence perhaps, the fact that he still only half believed it himself, or even a powerful feeling of protectiveness that made him want to defend Teresa Darent rather than condemn her. This last was as inexplicable as it was disturbing. He had no sympathy with the radical cause and he thought Jupiter no more than a dangerous criminal intent on destroying law and order. Yet still he had kept silent; something had held him back.
He was not the only man investigating the Jupiter Club, however. Sidmouth had plenty of men at his disposal—infiltrators, informers and spies as well as his formal investigators. Owen knew it could be only a matter of time before Jupiter was unmasked and the club destroyed. Tess would guess that too. So here she was, seeking protection.
“Most men would see marriage to me as a prize in itself and not ask for more.” Tess’s answer to his question was full of disdain. Her chin had come up. Owen repressed a smile. Ten generations of Fenner family pride was in those words. She made him feel as though he had committed a faux pas in even questioning her. Perhaps her previous three husbands had snapped her up before she had finished making the offer. Owen had heard that she had proposed to each and every one of them, that approaching her chosen prey was Tess Darent’s style, whether she had selected a man to be her husband or her lover. She did not wait to be asked. She was the one who did the hunting.
That was the gossip. The truth, Owen thought, was probably a deal more complicated. He was already coming to the conclusion that Teresa Darent was in almost all particulars the opposite of how she appeared.
At the moment, for example, he could tell that she was ill at ease. He sensed the nervousness that beat inside her, a fear that she was making strenuous efforts to hide behind a flawless facade. She had chosen to stand a good distance away from him, by the long windows that looked out across the terrace to the neat garden with its clipped box hedges and yew. The autumn day had taken a long time to brighten that morning and now the grey light was behind Tess, concealing as much as it revealed. Owen could not see her expression at all. She stood straight and still, like a pale flame in a dress of yellow silk that made her the only bright thing in a dull room. The gown should have clashed with the russet of her hair, so cunningly arranged beneath the matching bonnet, and yet it did not. Instead it was a breathtaking contrast, framing her face like a halo of fire. Each item of clothing she had chosen had been for obvious effect, and it worked. Owen knew nothing about fashion and cared less. He had an innate taste and wore his clothes with the sort of careless elegance that his valet deplored. Tess Darent, he thought, deployed her wardrobe like a weapon. She knew the value of appearance and the way it could give you protection as well as confidence.
He walked towards her very slowly, very purposefully, his footsteps ringing on the bare wooden boards of the library floor. There were no deep rugs or carpets here to soften the austerity of the room. Rothbury House had been woefully neglected under his cousin Peregrine, who had been widowed for years and had seldom