No Place for a Dame (3 page)

Strand turned his gaze to her. “Tell me, Sophia, and consider carefully, my dear, before you answer because I will not ask a second time: Do you think there’s any chance at all of you ‘comin’ round’ as your father so quaintly put it? Because I will still have you, if you do.”

God, how she wanted to say yes! She wanted the jewels, the houses, the title, the fawning of her friends, the envy of her enemies, the power, the privilege, the license, and everything that came with being the marchioness of Strand. But… She stared at the creature.

The girl had crawled out of the shadows on all fours and was now stretched out flat on her belly, her face half covered with the matted hair, her mouth ajar, a little line of drool oozing from the corner. Sophia’s stomach seized into knots and her gorge rose thick in her throat. No. She choked back a sob of rage. She
couldn’t
. She glared impotently at Strand. “I hate you!”

“Ah, well, there you have it,” Strand said, sinking down in his chair and giving Malcolm an apologetic smile. “I hope this doesn’t cast a pall on the rest of your stay. I’m sure we can all rub along together pleasantly enough. And now that you know about… her”—he glanced down at the girl, his silvery blue eyes glittering strangely—“well, I won’t have to keep such a tight vigil, will I? She’s harmless. Mostly. Still and all, I’d keep the doors latched at night. You never know where she might show up.”

Dear God. “No. No! I insist we leave here at once. Tonight!”

“Tonight? But the darkness, the cold,” Strand objected in a monotone. “Surely you’d be more comfortable—”

“I won’t be
comfortable
until I am far away from here. And her. I
insist
we leave at once.”

“Well, Travers? Can this be done, say, within the hour?”

“I am certain we can accommodate the young lady’s wishes.”

Strand looked at Malcolm. “Sir, I fully realize that no restitution can possibly compensate for such an outrageous machination. Nonetheless, my man of business will be in touch.”

At the hint that money might be forthcoming, the dusky purple receded from her father’s face. “One should hope,” he huffed. “Really, Strand, ’twas a foul bit of business you meant to deal us.”

“I agree. The situation is deplorable.”

“Luckily, I am a man of honor. You can be sure no one will hear of… of any of this”—he glanced down at the girl lying on the floor tracing the cracks around a flagstone—“from my lips
or
Sophia’s. Which ought to make you
doubly
grateful, since I don’t doubt eventually you’ll offer for some other poor, unsuspecting girl.”

“Not only a man of honor, but of subtlety,” Strand said. “I cannot think how I will ever be able to express my gratitude. Luckily, between you and my man of business, I am confident you will find a way.

“Now, Travers, if you will escort Mr. and Miss North back to their rooms and then inform the stable master to have the carriage readied?” He raised an elegant brow in Sophia’s direction. “That is, unless you’ve changed your mind about dining? Cod, I believe.”

He was sophisticated and brilliant, beautiful and wicked, and she hated him in that moment more than she had ever hated anything in her life. Hated him with the virulence of a woman who’d held a future of munificence and prestige within the palm of her hand and knew she would never see its like again.

“Damn you, Strand!”

“Likely already been taken care of, my dear.”

With a muffled cry, she edged past the girl and fled, Malcolm and Travers following close behind.

Strand remained seated, his gaze moving to the disheveled figure at his feet. As the sound of footsteps receded, the girl raised her dirty face and listened intently a few more seconds before springing lightly to her feet. She glanced at the mantle clock perched above the hearth.

“Drat,” Avery Quinn said. “Twelve minutes. I bet Travers a quid she’d bolt in under five.”

Chapter Three

K
indly remove that monstrosity from your head,” Strand said.

Avery pulled the antique wig off, sending her own auburn locks spilling down her back.

Strand did not
sound
angry, but it had been four years since she had seen him and she’d never presumed to know his thoughts. The times he’d visited Killylea, first from Eton and later from Oxford, he’d seemed more like some young god descending from Olympus then a son returning home for a visit.

She’d heard about Giles Dalton long before she’d ever seen him. The servants’ hall had been filled with tales about the strapping, handsome heir to Killylea. He was golden and gifted, amiable and charismatic, privileged in every aspect by countenance, station, and wealth. The term “to the manor born” might have been coined for him.

Even at ten years of age she had decided that no one could possibly live up to such fanfare.

Except he had.

She’d been eleven and hanging over the tower parapet the first time she’d seen Giles, having been alerted to his impending arrival by the
flurry of activity below stairs. He’d left behind the carriage conveying his things from Eton, choosing to arrive on horseback ahead of his custodians.

The morning sun had burnished his golden head as he rode up the lane, lithe and graceful, his face alive with the pleasure of homecoming, his gaze traveling with pride over Killylea’s ancient facade. He must have felt her gaze for he’d looked up and spotted her. She’d frozen, red-faced at having been caught spying, and scowled down at him because she hated feeling awkward. Then he’d compounded the injury by winking at her.
Winking.

It had been Avery’s first experience with masculine charm and it proved a disconcerting one. She could not explain it—it was ineluctable, mysterious, and confusing—and even at such a tender age she had distrusted anything she could not explain. It also irritated her. He wore the unassailable certainty of his own consequence with as little self-consciousness as another man wears shoes and used his magnetism as easily as another breathed, and she’d despised herself for falling prey to it after just one wink just like everyone else, because she was
not
like everyone else.

She never had been.

She never could be.

By eleven years of age, she had not only reconciled herself to that knowledge, but in some small way had even begun to take pride in it. And to have it so blatantly demonstrated that she was made of the same base stuff as everyone else… well, it hadn’t seemed fair to be so rudely made aware that, in this instance at least, she was not so very special. She was, in fact, just one of a crowd of acolytes surrounding Giles Dalton’s altar.

Not that there were all that many opportunities thereafter to feel the unwilling fascination Giles held for her. She and the future marquess spent little time together. Why would the future marquess of Strand and his father’s accidental protégé, the gamekeeper’s daughter, spend time together? Oh, there’d been a few meals made uncomfortable by the obvious strain between Giles and his father and the sullen demeanor she seemed incapable of shedding whenever she was around him, but other than that, she tried to avoid him.

No. That was not true. She tried to avoid him
seeing
her. She found plenty of opportunity to overhear him in conversation, to study him
from a discreet distance, to… well, spy on him. She’d been a girl; he’d been a godlike adolescent. Of course, she’d been fascinated.

When Giles
had
spoken to her, he had always been unfailingly polite or lightly teasing, the same way he treated any of the servants. But the manner in which the housekeeper, Mrs. Bedling, pinked up at his blandishments and Avery’s own father puffed his chest out at Giles’s compliments only made Avery all the more keenly aware that he stooped to conquer. So, of course, when he did speak to her, she’d gone out of her way to be a little beast in order to make him see
her
, not just another in the ranks of servants on which he’d polished his address.

She’d been, truth be told, awful, and Giles Dalton, Marquess of Strand, had no reason to feel magnanimous towards her. Which is why now she must rely on the hope that, like his father, Strand always paid his debts.

“You are going to have to face me eventually,” he said.

She took a quick, steadying breath and turned, struck anew by how much the years had changed him. Gone was the bright, devil-may-care young godling and in his stead was a man whose golden beauty seemed fire wrought rather than light given.

It was not simply the lines bracketing his mouth or the bruised flesh beneath his eyes. An assessing gleam had subverted what had once been a candid, open gaze and tension had taken up residence in the set of his jaw and shoulders. He looked brooding and wicked, a touch of cruelty in the curl of his lip and the angle of brows. What had happened to him…?

She banished her curiosity. Whatever had happened to him, she would never know. Nor did she need to. Once he’d helped her achieve her goal, there would never be another reason for him to speak to her again.

If
he helped her.

“Face you? You make it sound as if I were reluctant to do so.” She hoped she sounded braver than she felt. She lifted the hem of the grubby night rail, dipped it into the water glass sitting on the table, and began wiping the grime from her cheeks.

“My mistake.” He sounded amused. “Where did you get that rag you’re wearing? And please do not tell me it ever belonged to any relative of mine, dead or alive. I refuse to believe any of my forebears would have ever fallen so low.”

This was new, too, this over-arch tone, the languid sardonicism.

“Mrs. Bedling made it up out of an old bed netting.” The thought reminded her to clear the other servants of any complicity. “She had no idea what I meant to do with it. And none of the other servants had anything to do with this evening’s, er, entertainment, either.”

“
What
other servants?” he asked dryly. “The place seems deserted. And why is it so dark? Has the staff been pilfering candles?”

“No. Of course not. Mr. Travers let everyone have the week off because, well, we just thought that the scene played better with less light. And, mind you, Mr. Travers wasn’t a willing coconspirator.”

“Blackmailed him, did you?” He showed not the slightest outrage at the suggestion.

“No! No. I begged.”

At that, his brows shot up. “Avery Quinn?
Beg?
The girl I remember would have walked across burning coals before asking for help, let alone begging for it.”

“The woman that girl became knows better.”

He gave her a quick, unreadable glance. “Does she? Pity.” His gaze had softened but then he shifted on his chair, as if physically divesting himself of whatever emotion had prompted the words. “Did you ever worry that you were overplaying your role with all the dirt and such?”

“No.” She’d finished wiping her face and moved on to her hands. “Not really. The plan was either going to work or not, though I concede it occurred to me that any discerning individual would be bound to wonder why the sister of a marquess, demented or not, should be allowed to wander about unwashed and unkempt.”

“Lucky for you that the Norths are not known for their discernment.”

“Exactly!” She pounced on his words. “How could you actually offer to marry such a—” She paused to scratch behind her ear. Her eyes flew wide. “Good heavens. I believe there were
fleas
in that wig. Which makes you
doubly
indebted to me for saving you from having to marry that vile girl.”

“
Saving
me?” For the first time that evening, he looked taken off guard. “Is that what this was about?”

“Yes.”

An odd expression crossed his face. “How touching. But did you ever consider I might not
want
saving?”

It was her turn to be taken aback. In point of fact, she hadn’t. But she wasn’t about to admit it. She would lose whatever higher moral ground she had. “She was using you. Manipulating you.”

“I daresay, but those sins are hardly unique to Sophia. Certainly others have fared similarly. Some by my own hand, as it happens. Including her.” His gray eyes had darkened. “As they say, turnabout is fair play.”

“No,” she insisted. “You could never marry her. Not once you knew what she was like. Not once you knew her feelings about ‘freaks and aberrations.’ God help any child of hers that did not meet her standard of perfection. Like Louis.”

Giles’s older brother had spent his brief life at Killylea cocooned from the world and, more specifically, the cruelties of people like Sophia. He had been born short in stature, a dwarf, and had also suffered from a weakness of the heart. Though he had died a full year before Avery and her father had arrived, he had been still mourned as the loss of a good and gentle soul.

Soon after her stepson Louis’s death, Giles’s mother, the second marchioness, had gone to Italy, taking Giles’s sister, Julia, with her. Giles, already at Eton, had asked to stay in England. If he had ever felt abandoned by his mother, he had never evinced it. He loved Killylea. His pride in his heritage and his home were obvious. But that had changed soon after Giles’s eighteenth birthday when he had gone to London and discovered how gratifying it was to be fawned over and celebrated. Or so it seemed. Why else would someone appear so changed?