No Marriage of Convenience (29 page)

Unwilling to wait any longer, she wrapped her legs around his hips, urging him to enter her.

He did, and with no barrier to stop him, no need to take it easy, he entered her in a single smooth stroke.

Riley let out a triumphant moan. “Oh, yes. Please, Mason.”

All her pent-up fears, her relief at having him back, her heartache over the last few weeks poured into her need for him. Her hips rocked at a frantic pace, urging him, daring him to keep up.

Mason understood her driving need. He’d thought of nothing else—of having Riley forever in his arms—for the last fortnight.

Now she was his, and he pressed into her, stroking her, wanting nothing more than to see the surprise that enveloped her as her release brought her over the edge.

When it did, her mouth sought his as she started to cry out. “Oh, Mason,” she gasped.

The quaking of her release pulled him along with her. A ragged cry tore from his lips, but the sound was drowned out by a huge cheer and a large round of applause from the audience overhead. The two of them shuddered together as the entire theatre rocked overhead with thunderous approval.

And as the hue and cry above began to lull, Mason looked down at her and said, “Never had that happen before.”

L
ord Cariston lurked about the edge of the crowd pouring from the Queen’s Gate Theatre, hating every one of their smiling, excited faces.

He’d been waiting around the theatre most of the afternoon and all through the performance, listening for the alarm to be raised over Riley’s demise.

But none had been forthcoming.

He’d seen McElliott enter the place about an hour before the curtain had gone up, but from the outside nothing had seemed amiss since then.

Though much to his delight, he’d also seen Ashlin frantically trying to get in.

“Say good-bye to her,” Stephen had whispered as he’d watched the other man disappear down the alleyway. “She would have been your ruin anyway.”

Yes, it was better for everyone that she die and be forgotten.

Now, all he needed was confirmation of her death, and he would go to Lady Marlowe’s house to console the old girl. He needed to stay in her good graces, for when she died, Stephen wanted to ensure that he was her sole beneficiary.

He hadn’t spent all these years toadying up to the old crow not to see his work come to fruition when she cocked up her toes.

He pulled his hat down lower over his brow, considering how he could find out what he needed to know.

Then, as luck would have it, he saw an old friend, Viscount Barnet, filtering through the throng, his toad of a wife a few steps ahead of him.

“Barnet,” Stephen called out. “Good to see you, man.”

“Cariston.” Barnet extended his hand. “Heard you’d gone to the country.”

Stephen cringed inwardly and silently cursed the idle tongues of the
ton
. “Nothing of the sort.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.”

“Barnet,” Lady Barnet called out. “Please hurry along. I want to get to Lady Marlowe’s presently. I can’t find my sister anywhere in this crush and I want to hear if she’s finished that book yet. Especially after tonight. Perhaps it will explain what happened.”

Barnet nodded to his wife and then turned back to Stephen. “I go to the theatre only when it is that Fontaine creature onstage, and what do you think, she doesn’t show up tonight.” Barnet blew out a steamy sigh. “But then, why am I telling you—you were inside, weren’t you?”

Stephen could barely contain his glee. Riley hadn’t appeared onstage—which could mean only one thing.

McElliott had killed the thieving bitch.

“Yes, quite a disappointment,” he managed to say.

Barnet leaned forward, his voice lowering to a confidential whisper. “Haven’t the vaguest notion who that gel who replaced her was, but she’s a tasty little bit. Might perk up my theatrical interests, if you know what I mean.” Barnet winked.

“My dear! We must be away or we will never get a
good spot at Lady Marlowe’s,” his wife complained.

“There now, Cariston, stay away from the parson’s mousetrap, or you’ll spend your life listening to mandates,” Barnet said as an aside. To his wife, he replied, “Yes, my love. We haven’t a moment to lose.” He bade a hasty farewell and started toward his carriage. Then he turned and asked, “Will I see you at this Marlowe madness later on? Promises to be a terrible crush.”

Stephen let himself smile. “Yes,” he told his friend. “Should be quite an entertaining evening.” As the Barnet carriage rolled away, Stephen said after him, “More interesting than you will ever know, you henpecked fool.”

Riley unfolded herself from Mason’s embrace. “We’d best get dressed. Our rescue will be coming any moment now.”

He grinned at her. “You could order them away and we could spend the night here.”

He kissed her anew and Riley felt her blood quicken once again.

“No,” she laughed. “You won’t persuade me so easily. My grandmother is expecting us, as are the girls.”

The girls!

“Oh, no!” she said, rising to her feet. “Louisa! We have to stop her. Now that the play is over, she and Roderick will be off to Scotland.” She caught up her chemise and gown and tugged them on. She prodded Mason with her toe. “Get dressed. You have to stop them.”

“Perhaps I should call young Roderick out—you know, demand satisfaction, fight a duel for the family honor.”

“Oh, honor be damned,” she shot back. “Just stop them.”

“And what if someone had stopped your parents?” he asked. “I wouldn’t be here now, looking at the woman I
intend to spend the rest of my life with. Beside, I think Roderick is entirely suitable for Louisa.”

“How can you say that?” Riley asked. “You specifically told me you wanted your nieces to marry eligible young men. Roderick is penniless and an actor, and a baseborn, ill-bred, conniving—”

Mason slid his finger over her lips and stopped the sputtering complaints. “—Imposter,” he finished for her.

“Yes, an imposter,” Riley agreed. “He’s the worst kind of fraud.”

Mason put his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “Truly, for he is hardly baseborn or penniless.”

Riley studied him for a moment. “What do you know that you haven’t been telling me?”

“Roderick Northard isn’t the man you think he is.”

“And that would be?”

“Do you remember a few weeks back, when Cousin Felicity was reading in the paper about the Duke of Walford’s missing relation and how there were plans to drag the river for his body?”

Riley nodded.

“They should have been dragging Brydge Street instead. Your leading man is the Duke’s heir.”

She shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because he asked me not to. When I discovered the truth, I confronted him and demanded an explanation.”

Outside, the footsteps of stagehands drifted closer. Riley cocked a brow at Mason’s state of undress and he quickly pulled on his breeches and continued getting dressed, even as he finished telling his story.

“Your Roderick Northard is more commonly known as Roderick Northard Benton, Viscount Hurley. His father and grandfather have been after him to settle down and marry the Marquess of Rowden’s daughter, which he re
fused to do. His relations, thinking to starve him into submission, cut him off. So when he saw your advertisement for actors, he applied.”

Riley still couldn’t believe it. “But the stage? If he thought his relations were going to cut him off for not marrying that girl, what did he think they would do when they found out he’d taken to the stage?”

“Actually he hoped they would,” Mason said. “At the very least, Lord Rowden would refuse to have his daughter married to someone who’d worked—and on the stage, no less.”

She laughed at this. “That explains his ability to play Geoffroi, the embroiled and embittered royal son so well—’tis hardly a stretch for him.” Riley still had one last question to ask. “Does Louisa know?”

Mason shook his head. “She’ll probably be furious when she finds out. She thinks she is creating the perfect Ashlin scandal, and while tongues will wag, it will hardly be the mismatch she thinks she is making.”

“So she’ll be a Viscountess?”

Mason smiled. “And eventually a Duchess. Hurley is heir to the Walford duchy. Though it may be years before he ever takes his great-grandfather’s title—the Bentons are notoriously long-lived—in time, Louisa may well be the Duchess of Walford.”

“She will be furious,” Riley agreed. “I think she had plans for a long career on the stage.”

“She’ll have a long career, that is for certain, but it will be on a different stage,” Mason said.

Riley still had some concerns. “Will his family accept her?” This was a question near and dear to Riley’s heart. For if the
tonniest
of the
ton
would accept Louisa with her brief appearance on the stage and her scandalous re
lations, might Mason be able to find it in his heart to take that leap as well?

“They may be a little aghast at first, but she’s an Ashlin and our families have always been on very good terms.”

The stagehands were close, and Riley almost wished they would never open the door, for what would happen when they did?

As if in answer to her unspoken questions, he folded her into his embrace and said, “You too have a long career ahead of you, Madame—one that begins tonight. I think we need to get you to your grandmother’s so you can meet your adoring public.” He grinned at her and she wondered for a moment at his odd choice of words, but when his lips bore down on hers, she was lost again in a distracting maze of passion.

They kissed like that until the door swung open.

“Riley!” exclaimed one of the hands.

Mason and Riley pulled apart and she grinned at the men standing in the doorway.

“We wondered where you got to,” one of them said. “But Mr. Pettibone wouldn’t hear of holding up the curtain to go find you. Glad to see you safe and sound.”

In the back of the group, one of the cheekier fellows let out a wolfish whistle, while a few of them chuckled at the sight of their noble patron and leading lady leaving the prop room in such a state of
dishabille
.

“Do you think they know?” Riley asked Mason as they climbed the stairs to the theatre. “Do you think they could tell that we’d…”

He plucked a few loose feathers out of the back of her hair. “Whyever would they think something like that?”

The Marlowe residence, as predicted, was a terrible crush. By the time Mason and Riley had made it to her
grandmother’s house, it was nearly midnight.

They probably would have arrived earlier if Riley hadn’t insisted on going upstairs to change and fix her hair—and Mason hadn’t insisted on going along to help.

“How will we ever find Bea and Maggie?” she asked, standing on her tiptoes at the entrance of the ballroom and straining to see over the sea of plumes and fancy headdresses.

“I think I see your grandmother across the room, but I don’t see the girls anywhere,” Mason said. “Perhaps they are dancing.”

“Could be,” Riley commented. “Before I venture in there, I am going to go upstairs and get the necklace my grandmother said she wanted me to wear. She told me where it would be if I got here late.”

Mason pecked a kiss on her forehead. “Get your treasures and I’ll keep an eye out for your cousin.”

“Do you really think he would dare come here?”

“Not if he knows what is good for him. By now his house has been searched, and if he was home, he’s in custody, but if not—” Mason glanced up the stairs. “Maybe I should come with you—”

She shook her head. “Go find the girls. I’ll be up and back before you’ll get ten feet in this throng.”

Riley dashed up the stairs and into her grandmother’s bedchamber. The room was mostly cast in shadows, with only a single taper burning atop the bureau. The drawer where her grandmother kept her jewels was open and the rifled cases were scattered about the floor.

Taking a step further into the room, she nearly tripped over an upended decanter amongst the litter, which explained why the room stank of brandy. Then, to her horror, her cousin stepped out from behind the curtains, a pistol in one hand and a shocked look on his face.

“Riley!” he said, his words slurred with drunkenness. “You’re supposed to be—”

“Dead? Yes, Stephen,” she said as pleasantly as she could muster. “I so hate to disappoint you, but I am hopelessly alive—and I plan to stay that way.”

Stephen didn’t even try to deny his part in the attempts on her life. The liquor had obviously provided him with a false sense of bravado. “But I saw McElliott…and I heard that you were unable to go onstage…and I thought…”

Riley shook her head. “You were wrong. As you were to think you wouldn’t be discovered in all this.” She glanced down at the damage about her feet. “I suppose you thought to make your escape with still more of the Marlowe fortune.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t ruined everything. This is all your fault!” he snarled, the pistol waving dangerously in his hand. “You and that do-good Ashlin. He’s set the law on me, and for no reason. I’m being hounded like some criminal.”

Riley was past the point of caring that the man held a gun on her. The cad actually had the audacity to blame all this on her?

“No reason?” she sputtered. “You hired a man to kill me. Not once, but twice. I think that does make one a criminal in the eyes of the law.”

Stephen’s bloodshot eyes narrowed. “McElliott—I should have known. He was probably in this with Ashlin the entire time.” He cursed roundly. “I should have had Nutley kill you months ago, before Ashlin ever set eyes on you. My father always said the world was better without you Marlowe bitches in it.”

“Your father? What has he to do with this?” Though she knew what Mason had told her, she wanted to hear it
from Stephen, and in his befuddled and brandy-fueled courage, she suspected he’d tell the entire story.

“Yes,” Stephen said, his chest puffing up. He paced a few steps and began to tell the entire horrible truth. “We were broke—he’d invested heavily in the war with the Colonies, and then lost everything else in a foolish plantation venture. We were ruined, so he plotted to kill your mother and thus gain the Marlowe titles and properties.”

“But your father failed, just as you have.”

Stephen’s lip curled. “I haven’t failed, not yet.” He waved the gun at her before continuing his confession.

“My father never thought the likes of Geoffrey Stoppard man enough to fight back—so when he did, the brigands hired to kill everyone in the carriage fled like a pack of cowards. Though it was disappointing your mother still lived; without the marriage papers
and
pregnant, she was as good as dead.” Stephen fished inside his jacket and pulled free a pack of yellowed and wrinkled pages. “My father was a sentimental fool. He saved these as a memento, even when he knew your grandmother searched high and low for them.”

Stephen held the papers out to the edge of the candle flame. “I intended to burn these the moment I heard you were dead, but now is as good a time as any.”

“No,” Riley cried out, seeing her family’s title and properties lost forever in this senseless act.

He smiled at her and then pulled the papers away just before they would have ignited. “Perhaps you are right. As long as I possess them, they are of value—to you and me. I suppose you might pay quite a pretty penny for them? If not tonight, then someday.” He tucked them back in his coat.