Heiress Without a Cause (2 page)

But Amelia, with her blonde hair, blue eyes, silver tongue, willowy figure, and substantial fortune, was always in demand. She had also developed a reputation as “the Unconquered,” which led each year’s crop of bachelors to worship at her altar in hopes of being the one to win her.

Amelia didn’t like the attention. She would rather be at the family estate in Lancashire, writing novels. But she didn’t deny her popularity either. It was easier for all of them to evade suspicion if they appeared in the ton as they should, and so Amelia attended these parties as though she lived for them. There were times — like when she wanted to dance — that Madeleine almost hated her for her popularity, even though she would never admit it.

Unfortunately, this was one of those times. Madeleine steeled herself for the moment when she would watch Rothwell lead Amelia away. She tried to relax, to remember that she was in the midst of a different adventure — to tell herself he was just an arrogant rake and forget that she had spied something else lurking beneath his façade. She might never dance with Rothwell, but withering away from boredom did not have to be her fate.

The crowd thinned in front of them. Rothwell emerged like a predator stalking out of the forest. His clothing civilized him, and he still looked amused, but there was a primal intensity in his eyes that Madeleine had not seen when he entered the ballroom. He seemed to be on a mission, determined to make quick work of whatever he had come to accomplish.

Sophronia stepped forward and conducted the necessary introductions. Rothwell bowed to all of them — a spare, elegant move that had not suffered from his rustication.

Then Sophronia made a heart-stopping gesture toward Madeleine. “She’s the one you need, Rothwell. Do get on with it.”

His deep blue eyes hadn’t left her since they were introduced, but until Sophronia’s comment, Madeleine had pretended otherwise. She finally stopped staring at his cravat and dragged her gaze up to his face.

That insufferable smile was back. “Will you do me the honor of this dance, Lady Madeleine?”

He was already reaching for her, not waiting to hear her acceptance. The waltz reached for her too, and she longed to twirl around the dance floor...

...but not with someone who took her obedience for granted. She was
tired
of being a dull, well-behaved spinster. She had vowed that this season would be different — and so far, it was, even if Amelia and Prudence were the only ones who knew of her rebellion.

So despite her desire to dance, and the deeper desire to know the secrets hiding behind his smile, she looked coolly at his hand before meeting his gaze with a direct one of her own. “I do not dance with rakes, your grace.”

He stared at her, stunned, and dropped his hand to his side. Some part of her screamed, demanded her to take back the insult and beg for a dance. It was a lie anyway — or rather, she would happily dance with rakes if they ever thought to ask her.

She waited for him to become a glowering version of a man scorned — but a genuine smile replaced his affected grin.

“You are correct, Aunt Sophronia. Lady Madeleine will do well enough.”

Sophronia humphed. “I did not bring my nephew over here so he could ruin you, young lady. But he has a proposition for you that I strongly desire you to accept.”

The dowager duchess was one of Madeleine’s favorite older matrons, even though she was a known battle-axe. Madeleine unbent just enough to look at Rothwell again. “What proposition would you like me to consider, your grace?”

“Please, call me Ferguson,” he said. “Are you sure you would not like to discuss this while dancing? I shan’t bite, I assure you.”

Prudence nudged her. The duchess fixed her with a glare. Only Amelia left her alone, too shocked to know what to recommend.

Madeleine sighed and took his hand, letting him lead her to the floor. The guests they passed examined them with undisguised curiosity. With her hand firmly in Rothwell’s grasp, she was attracting more notice in these five minutes than she had in the last five years.

She wanted to curse, but she held her tongue. Her secret activities over the past two weeks depended on maintaining her usual anonymity. The duke’s unexpected notice of her would not help her cause.

He pulled her into the waltz and they settled into the rhythm of the dance. The caricatures of him that were so popular a decade earlier often mentioned his “hellfire” hair, but it was darker than she had expected, almost brown, with just enough warmth in it to look like a dying ember. With her hand resting lightly on his shoulder, she could feel the firm muscle beneath his jacket — as though he was used to manual labor, not endless games of whist. And her right hand, clasped by his left, was sensitive enough that she could feel his calluses even through her glove. She knew a few men whose pursuit of the hunt left them well muscled, but she had never met a duke who had the body of a... laborer? Warrior?

Whatever he was, he was too elemental for a ballroom, despite his perfectly tailored clothes.

He turned his attention to her with a brilliant smile that was equal parts alluring and dangerous. It was a smile designed to melt, to seduce, to turn a woman’s legs to jelly.

Even though she knew his flattery for what it was, it still worked.

“So will you call me Ferguson, or shall I languish in despair without your favor?”

“I’ve no doubt you will find any number of women who will call you Ferguson.”

He expertly navigated her around a slower couple. She began to feel that intoxicating, breathless wonder that only happened when dancing with a perfect match. “And is that a comment on the morals of your fellow debutantes, or an aspersion on my character?”

She laughed despite herself. “Both, your grace.”

He smiled again, but this time it looked natural — almost like he was enjoying himself with her. “I confess that I’ve little use for propriety, Lady Madeleine. Perhaps I can call you Lady Mad? You could drive me mad if I gave you the chance.”

It was the same harmless flirtation that couples participated in all over the ballrooms of the ton. But it rarely happened to her. So it was with just the slightest hint of suspicion that she said, “I trust you will think otherwise when you have been out in society for a few weeks.”

The duke rolled his eyes. “I could have been in London for years, but I chose to remain in Scotland. Do you think I am unaware of London’s dubious charms?”

From the path he cut the last time he was in town, she suspected he knew all of London’s charms quite well. The reminder of the rake he was — and the duke he had become — pulled her out of their banter. “What is it you want from me, your grace?”

“Sophronia said you wouldn’t suffer fools. It is why she recommended that I approach you with my delicate request.”

He couldn’t want to marry her, but she couldn’t think of anything else a man might ask a proper young woman, particularly not in public. She nodded at him to continue, holding her breath...

“Would you be willing to chaperone my sisters?”

She missed a step. A marriage proposal might have actually been preferable, even from a man she had never met.

He steadied her without losing the tempo of the waltz. “My twin sisters are already one and twenty, and they should have come out years ago. Unfortunately, our family tends to lose someone every season, and they’ve been in mourning for ages. Sophronia said they could benefit from someone younger than her to shepherd them, and Ellie...”

He broke off abruptly. Ellie was his sister, the widowed marchioness of Folkestone — and her reputation was not what one would desire in a chaperone.

“Why me, though? Surely you have other connections.”

“Yes, but none I can stand above an hour. Too much moralizing. And you’ve surely heard the rumors — according to Sophronia, half the ton thinks we’re mad.”

She colored slightly, but he didn’t notice her guilty look. “You, on the other hand — my aunt says you’ve a perfect reputation and impeccable intuition, which would do much to help the twins debut successfully despite the family’s current reputation. But she also said you have felt poorly for the past few weeks, so if you prefer not to chaperone my sisters, I understand.”

The duchess’s concern was misplaced. If she knew why Madeleine was “sick,” she would cut her without a second thought.

Then Madeleine realized the full implication of what she was being asked to do. She suddenly, quite unexpectedly, felt like crying. If the dowager duchess of Harwich, one of the foremost etiquette experts in the ton, thought Madeleine could chaperone two unmarried girls, it meant Madeleine was so firmly on the shelf that no one expected her to ever come off it.

Even though it was true, it still hurt.

She wanted to say no, if only to deny the implication that she was unmarriageable. But if her less than perfect behavior ever came to light, she would need powerful allies to see her through the storm. There was no stronger ally than Sophronia — and if Madeleine chaperoned the duke’s sisters, he would have a vested interest in making sure her reputation stayed secure.

“Very well,” she said. “I would be honored to chaperone your sisters.”

Their waltz ended shortly thereafter. She was desperate to leave the man who thought her only value was as a chaperone, but she still felt a pang of regret. Rothwell was an excellent partner, even if he was a rake. She tried to remind herself that he had learned those steps and that heart-melting smile with a whole regiment of other ladies before her, but that didn’t make him any less entertaining.

When he left her with the other spinsters, she sank into her chair. She looked around, half unseeing, resisting the desire to bury her face in her hands. Everything in the room, from the wallpaper to the door handles, had been added in the last few months. She wiped her hands on her skirt, even though she couldn’t do anything about the clammy feeling under her gloves. Her dress, her cap, her slippers, even her undergarments were all new. But she felt like something old and broken accidentally left in the remade room, waiting for a chambermaid to notice and sweep her away.

Twenty-eight shouldn’t have felt old, but now she knew for certain that it was.

How perfectly depressing. At least she had one final night of adventure ahead of her, even though no one could ever know about her daring. One last night to enjoy who she might have been — before she resumed the life she had neither chosen nor found a way to escape.

The following night, as he walked through Seven Dials with a few of his old acquaintances, Ferguson stepped around a suspicious amber puddle seeping into the cracks between the cobblestones. London was still recognizable after a decade away. There were more townhouses springing up in Mayfair, better lighting on the main thoroughfares, and other supposed improvements.

But it was still a cesspool.

And the upper classes of British society drained into it every season, just as they had for centuries. It did not matter how long one stayed away — inevitably, a man of his class would be sucked back into its depths.

A duke might be expected to confine his entertainments to the fashionable clubs of Mayfair, but Ferguson couldn’t stand another moment there. Seven Dials could be dangerous, particularly at night, but the overflow of crowds from nearby Covent Garden mitigated the risk. During his quick, carefully planned career as a rake ten years earlier, he had seen everything London offered, from the boudoirs of the most exclusive Cyprians to the lowest gaming dens in the rookeries of St. Giles — Seven Dials could not shock him.

Ferguson needed to visit London at least once — it was his duty to make sure his sisters were settled. But there was nothing else to keep him here. He was occasionally bored in Scotland, but his career as a rake had burned bridges he didn’t care to rebuild. Once his sisters found husbands, he would return to Scotland and forget his father’s title.

At least Lady Madeleine had agreed to chaperone them. There was a moment after he asked her when she looked like she was going to bolt — but she acquiesced in the end.

It was too bad she was a virgin. She wasn’t his usual type — medium height, brown hair, a passable figure wrapped in muslin rather than silk. She had smallish breasts, perfectly suited to her narrow waist, but nothing like the bounty of his past mistresses.

But then, he hadn’t liked many of the women he dallied with then, using them to shock the ton rather than please himself. He thought he might like Madeleine, if only because she had a sense of humor hidden somewhere under that spinster’s cap. And there was something about her vivid green eyes that hinted at wildness — true desire, not the calculated wiles of a hardened jade.

Even though he couldn’t risk compromising one such as her, she had invaded his dreams the night before — and there, she was anything but innocent.

“I say, Ferguson, you might have chosen a better venue than this,” Lord Marsham said as his heel sank into a muddy pile of indeterminate origin.

“After Scotland, any entertainment is welcome, my friend,” Ferguson replied, voice dripping with carefully maintained ennui.

The other two men with them chuckled. He didn’t remember their names, nor did he care to, but he knew their faces from a decade ago despite the toll taken by their drinking. None of his past acquaintances knew he had sought out his exile, and he didn’t intend to enlighten them. Not that enlightenment was possible for these men. They were hardened gamblers and inveterate rakes, speeding through life with one hand on the whip and the other hand on the bottle.

But it was either spend time with them or sit alone at Rothwell House. His more respectable peers might not accept him unless it was clear he had changed his ways, and he refused to grovel for their company. So he returned to the fastest circles — they would accept anyone with the blunt necessary to meet their stakes. He could survive a month with them, especially since the solitude of Scotland waited for him at the end of it.

“Come along, gentlemen. If the address is correct, we’re almost there.”

Their destination was Legrand’s Theatre, part of a tract of property his duchy owned in central London. One of his estate managers suggested that he inspect the theatre; the
Hamlet
staged there, and particularly the actress who starred in it, had an excellent reputation with the lower classes and might enable them to raise the rents. Ferguson didn’t care about the funds, but he needed to escape the house. The twins had taken their meals in their room ever since he arrived, and Ellie did not respond to his notes. If he stayed alone in Rothwell House a moment longer, he would go just as mad as everyone expected him to.