By Love Undone (11 page)

“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” she sobbed, holding her hands over her face and weeping as she slammed open the door to the servants’ stairs and hurried up to her bedchamber.

She’d done it again. Even worse, this time she had known perfectly well what Quinlan’s intention was, and
she’d let him kiss her anyway. She’d even encouraged it! Everyone in London was right. She was stupid, fast, and loose.

Yelling began in the office downstairs, the words muffled, but the emotion behind them clear. First came Mr. Bancroft’s low, angry rumble, and then Quinlan’s sharper-voiced response. Maddie wiped her eyes and returned to the door. Everything had slipped out of control without anyone realizing it until it was too late. It had been an accident.

She took a deep breath and opened the door. An accident. Mr. Bancroft needed his nephew right now more than he needed her, and she would just explain that she’d been the stupid one and was completely at fault. She was ruined anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

Quin paced angrily before the window of his uncle’s office. “Look,” he snapped, “I’ll apologize for overstepping my bounds, if you want, but I won’t have you bellowing at me as if I were some idiotic schoolboy!”

Malcolm kept the wheelchair moving to face his nephew. “I’ll bellow at you in whatever manner I damned well please,” he growled. “By God, Quinlan, I thought better of you than that!”

Attempting to rein in his temper, Quin took a deep breath. “It was just a bloody kiss,” he grated, not mentioning that he’d been wanting to kiss her for days, or that he had hoped the kiss would be a prelude to something much more intimate. “And she didn’t exactly try to rum me away.”

“Quinlan—”

The marquis flung out his arm, furious and frustrated, half his thoughts still on how very good it had felt to have her in his arms, until his damned uncle had appeared and ruined everything. “You’re no good to her
now, anyway. Why not let someone else have a go at her?”

“
What?
You has—”

“Excuse me.”

Quin whipped around to face the doorway. Maddie stood there, white-faced, tears trailing down her cheeks. He blanched, hoping she hadn’t heard what he’d just said. God, he was an idiot. “Maddie, I didn’t—”

“I just wanted to say that it was a misunderstanding and an accident,” she said in a subdued voice, avoiding Quin’s gaze. “Lord Warefield is not to blame. I’m sorry, Mr. Bancroft. You deserve better.”

Malcolm, his face paling, wheeled forward. “Maddie, don’t—”

She turned around and disappeared.

“Damnation! Now you’ve done it, boy!” The resemblance between Malcolm and the Duke of Highbarrow suddenly became more obvious.

“I have not done anything. It was a kiss, Uncle.”

Malcolm glared at him for a long moment. “Close the door,” he finally commanded, in a more controlled voice.

Quinlan complied, but refused to take the seat his uncle indicated. “Now what?” he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Just who do you think she is?”

“What do you mean, who do I think she—”

“You think she’s my bedamned mistress, don’t you, Quinlan?”

Quin narrowed his eyes. Something was going on. “Well, what else was I supposed to think? A beautiful, intelligent woman, out here in the middle of Somerset, tending…you?”

“Tending an old cripple, you mean?”

“No.”

“Madeleine Willits is the oldest daughter of Viscount
Halverston,” Malcolm said, obviously reluctant to utter the words, “and she is not my mistress. Nor is she anyone else’s.”

Quin sat down. All the questions, all the intriguing hints he’d picked up about Maddie, and he’d never suspected she might be nobility. “What in Lucifer’s name is she doing here with you?”

“She was engaged, five years ago. Apparently one of her betrothed’s friends got drunk and kissed her, among other things. The wrong person saw it, and she was ruined.”

“Over a….” Quin sat back. “Over a kiss,” he said, half to himself. No wonder she’d looked so horrified.

“Yes. Maddie’s a bit…spirited, and according to her, she left London and her family rather than listen to their stupid accusations when she hadn’t done anything wrong.”

Quin gazed at his uncle for a moment. “And so, five years later, she’s become self-sufficient and found employment completely without references or assistance from her family or friends.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “Bloody remarkable.”

Malcolm sighed. “She is a remarkable young woman.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wasn’t my story to tell. I thought I knew who she was, but it still took her three years to tell me. And
I’m
not titled. Thank God.”

“So. What would you have me do, Uncle?”

The door opened. Maddie entered again, this time looking much more composed. And laden with two large valises.

Quin stood quickly, dismay tightening his chest. “Miss Willits.”

“Excuse me again. I only wanted to say good-bye to Mr. Bancroft.”

“I’d have you do what’s right,” Malcolm snapped, glaring at Quin.

“Do what’s….” Quin closed his mouth, stunned out of any remaining composure. “You mean,
marry
her?”

“Absolutely not!” Maddie dumped her bags onto the floor, her face a mask of hurt and wounded fury. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Now, Maddie, that’s—”

“I’m already ruined, Mr. Bancroft,” she interrupted hotly. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Then why are you leaving?” he barked at her.

She faltered, looking at her employer. Quin studied her face, fascinated at the play of emotions across her sensitive features. There was more to her than he’d begun to imagine. If not for Eloise—or his father—the idea of marrying Madeleine Willits wouldn’t have been all that preposterous. Or, surprisingly, all that unwelcome.

“Maddie,” he said softly, and her eyes darted in his direction, “it was my fault. Not yours.” He hesitated, holding her gaze. “And I’m engaged already. Or just about. Otherwise….”

“I can take responsibility for my own stupidity, thank you very much,” she said stiffly. “And you’re a noble already. You don’t need to pretend to be possessed of the quality.”

Quin narrowed his eyes. Marriage to the spitfire might not have been preposterous, but it would have been dangerous. “I don’t believe
you
have the right to question
my
nobil—”

“Please!” Malcolm bellowed.

Quin started and looked in his uncle’s direction. He’d forgotten the older man’s presence. From Maddie’s reaction, she had as well.

“Thank you,” Malcolm resumed, in a more even tone. “I am quite aware of your…arrangement with Eloise, Quinlan. I had something else in mind.”

“Something else? What?” Maddie asked suspiciously.

“I’ve actually been considering this for several days now.” Malcolm faced his nephew. “If you and the rest of the titled Bancrofts were to reintroduce Maddie to society, it could—”

“No!” Maddie gasped, paling.

“—It could undo the harm done to her reputation and enable her to secure a husband,” he continued, undaunted. He looked over at her again. “It would set your life back the way it was before the scandal, my dear.”

“Absolutely not!” she returned at high volume. “I am
never
going back to London. And certainly not with
him!
”

Quin smiled wryly. Apparently he’d broken the truce. “You liked me for a moment, I believe.”

“You agree, then, Quinlan? Your ill behavior could turn this into something positive.”

“It was
my
ill behavior, blast it!” Maddie argued. “Don’t try to solve my problems. Please! Just let me leave in peace.”

Quin frowned. His Grace would be beyond furious, but Malcolm was correct. Whatever Maddie might think, and whatever insanity had overcome him in the garden—and since he’d set eyes on her—he considered himself to be a man of honor. “I agree.”

She turned on him. “It is not your decision.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I believe it is.”

Maddie stomped her foot. “This is absurd! I am leaving!”

Quin strode forward and lifted her luggage before she could. “Yes, you are. I’ll have to inform my father. We need to leave for Highbarrow Castle immediately.” He
turned to his uncle, plans and strategy already forming in his mind, and surprising elation running through him. Apparently, he and Maddie Willits weren’t quite finished with one another yet, after all. “I’ll go see John Ramsey and arrange to have him supervise the remainder of the irrigation work. The planting will be finished today.”

Maddie grabbed for the bags, but he evaded her easily. “Give those to me at once!” she shouted.

“Maddie, listen to Quinlan. It’s for the best.”

“Do you always solve your problems by running away?” Quin said, taunting her. “I hadn’t thought you a coward.”

“I am not a coward!”

Malcolm lifted a hand to his forehead and sank back in his chair. Concerned, Quin dropped the valises and came forward. “Uncle?”

Maddie pushed him out of the way and knelt in front of her employer. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, putting her hands on his knee and looking earnestly at Malcolm’s face. “It’s all right. Just take a deep breath.”

“Stop arguing. Please,” Malcolm muttered, rubbing at his temple.

“We have. Shh. You must be calm.”

Maddie lowered her head, and Malcolm caught Quin’s eye. Then he winked. Quin gaped at him for a moment, torn between astonishment and amusement at the old man’s duplicity, and then he bent to take Maddie’s shoulders. “We’ll do as he says,” he murmured. “It will be all right.”

His uncle put his fingers under Maddie’s chin so she had to look up at him. “Make me a promise, my dear. Do as Quinlan and his family say, just until you can be presented again at Almack’s. If they accept you there, you will have no troubles anywhere in London.”

“Mr. Bancroft,” she pleaded, tears welling again in her gray eyes.

“After that, if you still don’t wish to remain with your family and your friends, you may return to Langley.”

She looked over her shoulder at Quin. Attempting to ignore the queer mix of anticipation and compassion she seemed to be stirring in him, he kept a solemn expression on his face and nodded. “I would like the chance to redeem myself. And to help you, if I may.”

Maddie shut her eyes for a long moment. “All right. Just until Almack’s.”

“I just don’t understand how you could simply hire someone from Harthgrove and expect them to be able to care for your uncle,” Maddie snapped.

“I did not ‘just hire’ someone. Both Malcolm and your squire highly recommended him.”

“John Ramsey is not
my
squire. And I don’t care who recommended that man. It’s
my
duty to care for Mr. Bancroft.”

Maddie sat back in the carriage, attempting to ignore both the pretty wooded country outside and the handsome, annoying man seated opposite her. She should never have given in—and in any case, she should never have agreed to travel to Highbarrow Castle alone with him. Well, alone except for a second coach carrying their luggage, two drivers, his valet, and two footmen.

He’d called her a coward again, though, and then he’d flung her argument back in her face when she’d protested. If she was already ruined, what did it matter how she got to Highbarrow? Now, three days later, she could answer that it mattered a great deal, because she couldn’t stop thinking about the stupid kiss, and how it had melted like fire along her veins.

“Miss Willits, for the eight thousand, nine hundred and thirty-second time, Uncle Malcolm will do quite well without you. He said so himself. Please, let it be. Whining about it will certainly not make me turn the
coach around and take you back, or believe me, I would have done it already.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “I am not whining.”

He glanced out the window, the fourth time he’d done so over the last ten minutes, and then looked at her again. “You know, if I wasn’t in dire fear of the consequences, I’d say I liked it better when you were fawning.”

Maddie sniffed. “No doubt you did. I’m surprised you even noticed anything was out of the ordinary.”

“You are hardly of the ordinary,” he returned.

He’d been doing that to her for the past three days, giving her offhand compliments that could just as easily be taken as insults. He hadn’t tried to kiss her again, and in fact had made it clear that he was doing what he saw as his duty, to compensate her for an unfortunate mistake. She tried to see it the same way, but dismissing the embrace—and her reaction to it—as a simple mistaken moment of madness took more effort than she expected.

When he glanced outside yet again, the butterflies which had begun dancing in her stomach turned into very large crows. Quinlan cleared his throat. “Well, have a look.”

Taking a steadying breath, Maddie leaned forward. Immediately she saw why Highbarrow Castle was always referred to by its full title. She’d grown up at Halverston Hall, but it was nothing like this. Gray spires rose into the blue sky from an immense estate sprawled in the center of a vast clearing. A birch and oak forest bordered the grounds on three sides, with a glassy lake behind.

“It’s…very nice,” she offered, swallowing her sudden nervousness.

Unexpectedly, the marquis chuckled. “Don’t let His
Grace hear you say that. He wouldn’t appreciate a four-hundred-and-thirty-eight-year-old symbol of Saxon resilience being called ‘nice.’”

“Oh, I know,” she said absently, continuing to gaze at the gray stones of Highbarrow Castle. It was beyond magnificent, by its very design meant to be overpowering and intimidating. But she did not intend to be intimidated. “Mr. Bancroft told me all about the duke.”

He looked sideways at her. “Wonderful.”

It took twenty more minutes for the coach to pass through the wooded glade, up the gradual slope, around the winding way, and across the moat bridge up to the front drive of Highbarrow Castle. Fleetingly she wondered what lay in the dark, still waters that flowed from the lake in a ring around the grounds.

Though she’d never seen him so much as ruffled before, she thought Quinlan seemed rather edgy. For once she couldn’t blame him. She’d heard enough about the Duke of Highbarrow to know that he would not take the news of her arrival well. Not that she felt sorry for the marquis. She’d tried to leave, and he and Mr. Bancroft had insisted she stay. This was because of their stubbornness, not hers.