By Love Undone (22 page)

“She didn’t!”

“I suppose it wasn’t her fault, for given her girth, she undoubtedly couldn’t get out of the way. But she ended up standing there in the middle of Hyde Park with Francis Henning hanging onto her bosom with both hands.”

The rest of luncheon went like that, with someone revealing an embarrassing piece of gossip about a mutual acquaintance, and everyone else laughing over it. For Maddie the barbs seemed a little too familiar to be amusing. At the same time, five years ago she hadn’t been all that different from Eloise and her friends. She had been a fool.

“Miss Willits?”

She looked up, surprised, as a dark-haired lady sat beside her: Beatrice Densen, she vaguely remembered, a refined lady several years older than Maddie, with a reputation—at least five years ago—for giving elegant salon parties. “Miss Densen,” she replied.

“Excuse me a moment, my dear,” Eloise said from her other side, and stood. “I need to see to the desserts.”

“Of course.”

“Miss Willits, if I may be so bold, I have always thought society treated you very cruelly,” Beatrice said, taking Maddie’s hand.

The abrupt intimacy left her feeling rather uneasy, but she smiled. At least someone was bothering to talk to her instead of simply staring, or worse yet, watching out of the corner of their eye. “Thank you.”

“My brother, Gaylord, and I were planning a quiet evening tonight. Could I entice you to join us? Gaylord is a fair whist player.”

Maddie smiled. Quin probably wouldn’t approve, because it wasn’t part of his carefully laid-out plan. “I would love to,” she answered.

Beatrice smiled back at her. “I will come around for you myself, at seven, then.”

“Thank you.”

At half past two, the Warefield coach clattered onto the Stokesleys’ short drive to bring her back to Bancroft House. Maddie looked at the red and yellow crest emblazoned on the carriage door in disgust. For someone trying to repair her reputation, Quin certainly had an odd way of going about it.

She’d heard the speculation, carefully out of Eloise’s hearing, over why the marquis might be staying with his parents rather than his own perfectly lovely Whiting House. And then she heard her own name as the possible reason.

Still, she decided as she climbed into Quin’s coach, at least they had all been kind and polite to her face. She hadn’t expected even that much courtesy from them. And she’d handled herself rather well. She hadn’t spilled any more than a few crumbs, which she had managed to hide beneath her skirts, and she’d been invited to a dinner. Altogether, she supposed she’d won some sort of victory.

When the coach entered the Bancroft House drive,
though, she changed her mind. Charles Dunfrey’s carriage stood there already, waiting. A flutter of nervousness quaked through her. Luncheon had been the easy part.

“Miss Willits, you have a caller,” the butler informed her.

“Yes. Thank you, Beeks,” she said, her fingers shaking as she removed her hat and shawl, handing them over to his care.

The butler nodded. “You will find him in the drawing room.” He hesitated. “Best of luck, Miss Maddie.”

She looked at him, surprised. “Thank you.”

Her heart pounding, Maddie slowly climbed the stairs. With each step she tried to convince herself that whatever Charles said or thought about her didn’t matter. He’d broken off their engagement, and she’d made a life for herself completely independent of him and her parents.

At the top of the stairs, she stopped. Quin stood in the doorway of the library, an open book resting in his hands. He glanced up at her, jade flashing beneath long, black lashes, and then went back to his reading.

“How was luncheon?” he said to the book as she passed by.

“No one called me any terrible names,” she returned.

“Did anyone speak to you?”

“It is none of your affair.”

“I think it is,” he said with more heat, lifting his head again to look at her.

“Then you are wrong.”

Before he could reply to that, she opened the drawing room door and stepped inside.

Charles stood as soon as she entered. He looked as uncomfortable as she felt, which actually left her a little more at ease. “Mr. Dunfrey,” she said, in as calm a voice as she could manage. “Good afternoon.”

“Must we begin with such formality?” he asked. “Please call me Charles.”

She nodded. “Very well…Charles. Shall I ring for tea?”

He looked at her for another moment, then visibly shook himself and motioned for her to take a seat. “Yes, please.”

They were both silent as a footman entered with a tea tray, then vanished again through the open door. Maddie dearly hoped that Quin was not still standing in the library doorway, where he would be able to hear clearly everything that was said. But even if he was, she didn’t dare close the door. Here, she most especially needed to behave with propriety. Unnecessary and pointless as she had decided Charles’s apology would be, she wanted to prove to him that he had been wrong about her.

“I cannot get over how beautiful you’ve become,” he said into the silence, and she jumped. “And you were a rose among thorns before.”

“Thank you. You haven’t changed, I don’t think.”

He chuckled. “You are very kind, my dear.”

The mantel clock softly chimed the hour, while Maddie sipped her too hot tea and tried desperately to think of something to say. “I heard that you married,” she finally ventured.

“Yes, yes. Patricia Giles. She was several years older than you, I believe. From a good family, though.”

“I was sorry to learn of her passing.”

Charles nodded. “Thank you. You have a good heart, Maddie. I don’t know if I could be so generous, were our positions reversed.” He bowed his dark head for a moment. “Maddie, I broke with Spenser the night you…I…I saw the two of you. He—”

“Charles, I—”

“No, please,” he cut across her interruption. “Let me say this. He wrote me several months ago, confessing
that he’d been drinking and that his attentions to you had been unwelcome.”

Maddie looked at him for a long moment, a thousand thoughts tumbling through her mind. “So you know the truth.”

“Yes. Actually, I think I realized it quite a long time ago. When I first saw the two of you, I was so angry…jealous and hurt, I think. I wanted to be the only man you’d ever kissed.”

An image of Quin jumped into her head. His warm lips, the light in his eyes when he looked into hers…“I wanted that as well, Charles. But that is an impossibility, and I will not dwell on it.”

He sat forward, taking the teacup and saucer from her hands, and grasping her fingers. “I do not want you to dwell on it,” he said earnestly, holding her eyes. “You have suffered, away from your family and friends, for five years. And not because of your own actions, but because of mine.”

“Charles….”

He knelt at her feet. “Maddie, do you think, with your generous heart, that you might perhaps—not right away, of course—but do you think eventually you might be able to forgive me?”

She’d dreamed of this, in the first few months after she’d fled London—dreamed of everyone who’d been so awful to her, coming and begging on their hands and knees for her forgiveness. And even five years later, it still felt quite…satisfying. “Yes, Charles. I think I might be able to forgive you.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Maddie.”

“I—damn it!”

Maddie jumped again, pulling her hands free while Charles swiftly stood. Rafael stumbled into the drawing room with none of his usual grace.

“Rafe, what—”

“Beg pardon, Maddie. Tripped, or something.” He turned his attention to Charles. “I say, you’re Dunfrey, aren’t you?” Rafe strode forward and clasped her former betrothed’s hand. “Rafael Bancroft.”

Charles looked at him somewhat warily as he retrieved his hand. “I’m pleased to finally meet you, Captain. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

“Only the good parts are true.” Rafe grinned and winked at Maddie. “That your barouche out front?”

“Yes, yes it is. I hope—”

“Fine pair of bays you have there. Wouldn’t be interested in selling ‘em, would you?”

“My—well—I really hadn’t thought about it.”

Rafe clapped him on the back, leading him toward the door. “Well, think about it, Dunfrey. I might be willing to part with as much as a hundred quid for the pair, if they’re sound.”

“A hundred….” Charles looked over his shoulder at Maddie, who sat watching the men’s departure with a mixture of relief, disbelief, and amusement. “Maddie—Miss Willits—might I call on you again?”

“Yes, you may.”

They disappeared down the hallway. Maddie took a deep breath, and sinking back in the well-cushioned chair, slowly let it out again and closed her eyes. Charles Dunfrey still liked her. Handsome, witty Charles Dunfrey had apologized, and he wished to call on her again.

“The rat’s gone, is he?”

Maddie opened one eye to regard the tall, lean figure in the doorway. “As if you didn’t know.”

“And what do you mean by that, pray tell?” Quin folded his arms across his chest.

The other eye opened as well. “You practically threw poor Rafe in here on his head.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Well, I really don’t care, one way or the other. Miss
Densen invited me to dinner with her and her brother.” She stood.

“Having dinner with the Densens is not part of the plan,” he said, straightening to block her exit from the room.

“You’re just angry because perhaps you’re not quite so necessary anymore, Warefield,” she shot back at him, shoving against his hard chest with her palm and stalking past him.

Quin looked after her, his eyes narrowed. “‘Not quite so necessary,’” he mimicked darkly. “Ungrateful chit.”

“Q
uin, I have to admit, your little project is marvelous.” Eloise hid the words behind her fine ivory fan. “There’s nothing like a diversion to liven up the Season. And you were right, of course: Maddie is actually quite nice, if a bit quiet.”

“‘Quiet?’” Grateful for the darkened opera house, Quin lifted an eyebrow in keen curiosity. “How so?”

“Well, perhaps ‘quiet’ isn’t precisely the right word. But you really can’t blame her for being reserved. I would be a bit timid myself, not knowing how anyone would react to my presence. I practically had to tie Lady Anne Jeffries to a chair to convince her not to cut poor Madeleine and actually leave the luncheon.”

“Maddie seemed to think it went fairly well,” Quin said in a low voice. At least the opera below was fairly energetic, so no one was likely to overhear the conversation. “She spoke of a dinner invitation this evening.” Actually, she’d thrown it in his face, but he didn’t care to go into that.

“Yes. I advised her against it, but I think she was just grateful to have been invited.”

Quin straightened. “What do you mean, you ‘advised
her against it’? Miss Densen is a good friend of yours, is she not?”

“Beatrice is, yes—if a little…eccentric. But I would not vouch for Gaylord and his cronies. They—”

“‘They’?” Quin repeated sharply, suddenly and absurdly alarmed. “Maddie said it was to be a private dinner, with just the Densens.”

Eloise rapped him on the arm with her fan. “You need to spend more time in London.”

“So enlighten me.”

She sighed. “Gaylord has been holding mixed-gender card parties at his home for better than a year. They began quite modestly—I even attended one myself. But lately—well, very few virtuous ladies attend any longer.” She shrugged. “As I said, I tried discreetly to warn her. But Maddie’s…obstinate nature is what got her into such trouble before, no doubt.”

Densen’s mansion was only ten minutes or so from the opera house. Quin stood. “I should go get her.”

“Don’t you dare leave me here to go chasing after Maddie Willits,” Eloise protested. “You’ve already gone far beyond settling any debt. And
I
have listened to enough rumors about why the Bancrofts have been so helpful and generous to a little social insignificant like her.”

Slowly Quin retook his seat. “I beg your pardon?” he murmured angrily, even though she was clearly correct.

She reached out to put a hand on his arm. “It’s what everyone is saying, Quin. I wanted you to hear it. Don’t be blinded by your wish to do a good deed.”

“I’m not blinded by anything,” he returned firmly, if not absolutely truthfully.

She sat back and looked at him. “Very well. I am only concerned. Your first duty is to your family.”

Angrier still at her censure, he took a breath, flexing
his shoulders to try to release some of the tension. “I am aware of that, Eloise.”

“We must remain friends, Quin,” Eloise said. “I know you are fond of Maddie—you’ve always taken pity on poor, lost creatures. I only ask that you keep your obligation to help her in perspective.”

She was right—again—and he still didn’t like hearing it. He still wanted to rush off and rescue Maddie from her own poor judgment. As Eloise had said, though, Maddie’s obstinacy in going her own way had likely caused all her troubles in the first place. And he had his own troubles—obligations—to take care of.

“Eloise, might I escort you to Bond Street tomorrow?” he said, by way of answer. “I believe we have something of mutual interest to discuss.”

She smiled. “It would be my pleasure, Quin.”

Assuming a stolidly stone-faced expression, Maddie stepped past Beeks into Bancroft House’s main hallway. They knew only that she’d gone to dinner with the Densens. There was no need for anyone to hear anything further, nor any explanation as to why it had taken her so long to return to her temporary haven. Especially Quin: she’d never hear the end of it if he learned that she’d been to a raucous card party and practically had to bribe the butler to find her a hack so she could leave.

“How was dinner?”

Maddie jumped and whipped around to see Quin exiting the darkened morning room, his expression tense and angry.

“What were you doing in there?”

“Reading,” he said shortly. “How was dinner?”

No doubt sensing trouble, Beeks flashed her a sympathetic look and fled downstairs into the kitchen. Maddie put her hands on her hips. “Reading, in the dark? You were spying on me, waiting for me to come back.”

“Do you really think I have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for you?”

“Apparently not.” Maddie flounced past him, heading up the stairs to her bedchamber.

He followed right behind her. “At least tell me whether you enjoyed Gaylord Densen’s company.”

A flush reddened her cheeks. “He’s very amusing.”

A hand snaked around her waist and jerked her sideways with surprising strength. Trying to keep from falling over, Maddie grabbed onto Quin’s shoulder and arm as he half-dragged her into the drawing room.

“What in the world are you doing?” she demanded, staggering away from him.

Quin closed and locked the door, then turned to face her. He leaned back against the sturdy oak frame. “We are going to have a little chat.”

“More of your stupid rules? How can you possibly have thought up still more of them?”

“Practice.”

“I’m very tired. I’d like to go to bed.”

“Without telling me about Gaylord Densen’s little card party?”

Maddie snapped her mouth shut, any thought of confessing that she’d been misled about the nature of the evening’s engagement vanishing. He had no right to act so superior. “What do you wish to know about it, then, my lord?”

He stepped closer to her. “Why didn’t you listen to Eloise’s advice about going there? She warned you about it.”

“She did no such….” Maddie looked at him, then walked over to the writing desk under the window to give herself a moment to think. She couldn’t possibly tell Quin; he’d never believe her. “I don’t know,” she said instead.

“You don’t know?”

“Oh, leave me alone.”

She tried to push him out of the way, but he didn’t budge. Instead, he grabbed her hands and pulled her up against his chest. “You are too bright for me to believe that you don’t know why you would attend a card party with a herd of disrespectables. Do you really want that badly to leave here? Or was everyone correct about you encouraging Spenser?”

Her heart wrenched. “How dare you?” she spat, jerking free of his strong grip and stalking back across the room.

“A little less witty tonight, aren’t you, dear? Exhausted, no doubt.”

When she turned to glare at him, his jade eyes glittered with anger. But fury wasn’t the only expression that touched his face. He desired her. He wanted her—and whatever tremors of need and want that triggered in her own soul, it abruptly made several things quite clear. “That’s why you dragged me to London in the first place, isn’t it?”

His expression darkened further. “What are you talking about?”

“When you kissed me at Langley—you as much as said you wanted me to be your mistress. You still do. You think I really
did
encourage Spenser—so why would I have any objection to the great, grand Marquis of Warefield’s attentions?”

He strode toward her, then with obvious effort stopped himself, clenching his fists. “That is absolutely not true, and you know it, Maddie.”

“Then why am I here?”

Quin glared at her. “Because Uncle Malcolm asked me to bring you here—and because I behaved poorly and wanted to make amends for it.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really.” He jabbed a finger at her. “The least
damned thing you could do is cooperate a little. For God’s sake, would it kill you to admit that you’re grateful to me?”

She pounced on the word. “Grateful? Grateful? For what? For being able to have stupid, drunken men try to grab my breasts and make idiotic jokes about me?”

“What in damnation are they supposed to think, when you attend gatherings like that? If you behave like a slut, they’ll treat you like one!”

The vase was in Maddie’s hands almost before she realized she’d snatched it up. With a furious hiss, she dashed the contents into his face. “Self-righteous ass!”

Water dripping down his finely chiseled nose, Quin grabbed her arm. Maddie, more furious than she could ever remember being, wrenched free of his grip. With a loud rip her delicate sleeve tore off in his hand. He glared at it in shock, then flung it to the ground and advanced on her again. “Lightskirt!”

“Oh, now you’ve hurt me,” she taunted, and kicked him in the knee. “Tearing a dress you paid for—you beast!”

“Ow, damn it! That’s right—I own almost everything you have on.” He yanked off her other sleeve as she gasped in outrage. “And I get nothing in return. You probably gave more to Gaylord and his cronies tonight for fun!”

She grabbed up a porcelain miniature and hurled it at him. “Bastard! You said you didn’t
want
anything in return!”

The diminutive Caesar hit his shoulder and fell to the carpet in a hundred pieces. Quin grabbed the room’s second vase, and a cascade of cold water and daisies doused Maddie. “I don’t anymore!”

She shrieked and flung pillows from the long couch at him. “Liar! I can’t even imagine how dull your life must be—no wonder you keep me about!”

“That little error will be remedied tomorrow. And my life is perfectly happy without you in it!” he yelled, throwing a pillow into her face.

She hurled it back at him. “Ha! So that’s why I’m all you talk about with your mother and brother—because
you’re
so
exciting
.”

“Hoyden!”

He grabbed for her again and she spun away, but her skirt came to a sudden stop without her. Ripping free of its stitches, it tangled around her legs and sent her tumbling against the writing desk. Her hair, drenched and coming down from its clips, hung in her face. She swiped it out of the way and spied the brass letter opener engraved with His Grace’s initials. “You arrogant, stuffy—” She lifted the letter opener and swung her arm at him.

One of his waistcoat buttons flew off, the threads neatly slashed in two.

“That
is
why you want me about,” she panted, her heart beating so furiously she thought it must explode. He backed away warily, looking for an opportunity to grab her weapon away from her. “Because you are so very
dull
.”

“I am
not
dull.”

Slash
went another button to the floor. “Dull!”

He stopped when his back came up against a bookcase.

“Dull!” Through her fury, an odd, fluttering tingle began along her nerves, making her hand shake.

His eyes met hers, his anger deepening into something else entirely. “Damned nuisance,” he growled.

The last button came free and rolled beneath the couch. “
Dull
,” she breathed.

Quin grabbed her chin in his fingers and tilted her face up; his mouth closed roughly over hers. He pried
the letter opener from her hand and flung it into the corner.

Maddie’s pulse raced as her frustrated outrage swept into an equally fierce, wanting desire. She pressed herself against him, pulling his coat and then the buttonless waistcoat from his shoulders. She twined her fingers into his damp honey-colored hair and kissed him hungrily, matching his angry passion with her own.

He took the few threads of dress remaining around her shoulders and ripped them in two. His strength was a little frightening, yet wonderfully exhilarating. “Maddie,” he murmured hotly, turning them so that she was the one pinned hard against the bookcase.

She couldn’t stop kissing him. She didn’t
want
to stop kissing him, and touching him. Her dress was nothing but a tattered rag hanging about her waist until he tore it free and dropped it to the carpet, leaving only her thin, flimsy shift covering her.

He pulled his fine lawn shirt free of his breeches, trailing his mouth along her jawline. What they were doing, she knew distantly in the part of her brain that remained sane, was very, very wrong. And she didn’t care. All that mattered was that he didn’t stop.

Maddie moved his hands out of the way and tugged the wet shirt over his head. She moaned as his lips found the hollow of her throat, and her fast-beating pulse. Her heart fluttered wildly as he pushed the one remaining strap of the shift from her shoulders, and kissed the bare skin it revealed.

“Oh, God,” she murmured, gasping for another unsteady breath as the shift slid down her body to the floor.

He pushed her harder against the bookcase, as though trying to bring them still closer together. Quin covered her mouth with his again, as if to stifle any protest she might make. His hands slipped from her shoulders and
down to her breasts, and she drew another ragged breath at his intimate touch.

Maddie ran her hands down his hard, smooth chest, and the muscles jumped beneath his skin. He captured one of her hands and lowered it to the fastenings of his breeches. She could feel his hard, growing arousal, and with rumbling, unsteady fingers undid the fastenings and freed him from confinement.

Twisting, Quin half pushed and half carried her down to the floor. His hot, hungry mouth immediately sought her breasts, and she tangled her hands in his hair and arched against him as her nipples hardened at the caress of his tongue. He must be insane, to want her—and to want her in his parents’ own drawing room—and she must be equally mad to encourage him.

His hands swept down her flat belly to her rounded hips, squeezing and kneading her buttocks and pulling her against him. Quin’s mouth claimed hers again as he stretched the long, lean length of his body atop hers. His skin against hers was warm and intimate, and when his knee nudged hers apart, she arched her hips again, feeling his throbbing manhood brushing against her thigh.

Moaning as his mouth teased hers open, their tongues caressing, Maddie slid her arms around his strong, muscular shoulders, holding him against her. “Quin,” she whispered breathlessly.