Chivalrous Rake, Scandalous Lady

* * *

‘Please, sit down, you will feel calmer in a moment.’ Maura tried to gently ease Jemma down into the chair by the window in her bedchamber.

Her cousin resisted any such attempt to be seated or to be calm and continued to stamp a channel in the rug’s pile as back and forth across its width she went. Her face and manner betrayed her anguish, but failed to fully describe the maelstrom of conflicting emotions that kept her fists curling and uncurling at her sides. Her eyes were tightly closed to prevent tears of rage and mortification from again dribbling on to her cheeks.

‘How could he do this to me!’ Jemma gritted out for what seemed to be the hundredth time. ‘That my own kin should humiliate me in such a way is…is insufferable! Abominable!’

Maura’s hands were agitatedly twisting in front of her. Up until a short while ago she had maintained that there must be some mistake or misunderstanding. Her brother surely could not be guilty of such underhand behaviour. Of course, Theo had made no secret of the fact he wished to see his cousin Jemma wed before she got much older, or much poorer. But to go to such lengths as to try to arrange a match behind her back was indeed outrageous, as was his choice of prospective bridegrooms. Contacting spurned suitors from Jemma’s past was undeniably embarrassing for her.

In her brother’s defence Maura conceded that Theo had a point in thinking Jemma ought to pay more attention to getting herself a husband and children and less to squandering her time and money on charities for ruffians. Since Jemma had had her heart broken by her childhood sweetheart she’d shown no interest at all in a romantic involvement or a family of her own. ‘Perhaps my brother believed it all to be for your own good.’ Maura knew her loyalties were divided, so she decided she might as well side with her closest kin. ‘I expect he hoped to help you,’ she ventured diffidently, then shrank beneath Jemma’s violent green gaze.

‘Help me?’ Jemma ejected the phrase in a strangled gasp. ‘He wants to help himself, and well you know it. He’s so desperate to get his hands on what is mine that he is careless of making me appear the most ridiculous creature in the whole of London.’

A crimson stain spread from Maura’s neck to the roots of her mousy brown hair. It was well known in the family, and probably in wider circles, too, that upon marriage Jemma would forfeit her inheritance to the next male heir. Theo was the beneficiary and would take two properties and whatever else Jemma had left from John Bailey’s original bequest.

Niggling doubts over her brother’s motive had pricked at Maura’s consciousness as soon as she’d learned more about the sorry affair that afternoon. But she’d chased them away. Theo would never stoop to act in so mercenary a fashion. He had simply grown impatient and impulsive because Jemma refused to encourage any gentleman to court her.

‘I should not have run away.’ Jemma marched across the room to swiftly snatch at the door handle. She held on to it while attempting to steady her breathing and boost her courage. ‘I should go back downstairs now and tell Mr Speer that I had no hand in this. What will he say, do you think?’ Trepidation trembled her tone. ‘I cannot believe that Theo didn’t know of his recent engagement,’ she cried. ‘If by some chance he did miss seeing it gazetted, Mr Speer could have remedied his ignorance in a letter. He didn’t need to come in person to tell Theo what a fool he is. Oh, why is he here?’

‘I remember he was very much taken with you. Perhaps he has come to offer for you after all.’ Maura’s tone veered between disbelief and optimism.

‘Of course he has not!’ Jemma disabused her pop-eyed cousin in a croak. ‘He is going to marry Deborah Cleveland.’ Her cousin’s blunt suggestion had made Jemma’s heart leap to her throat. Maura had touched on a very raw nerve by forcing her to acknowledge an idea that had already wormed its way into her own mind.

A poignant yearning had gripped Jemma’s insides as soon as she’d heard the butler announce Theo’s visitor. What if he had come to agree to her guardian’s outrageous proposal? It was a thought that had refused to be ejected until the moment she’d caught a glimpse of him as she’d fled to the stairs.

Jemma cast her mind back to the terrifying sight of Marcus in the hallway. He had thankfully been too far away for her to properly read his expression, but every prowling pace he’d taken over the stone flags had impressed on her that he too was very angry indeed. Her stomach churned with the nauseating certainty that Marcus might believe, as had Philip Duncan, that Theo had been acting with her encouragement when he’d written those letters inviting gentlemen to renew their proposals to her. She’d had that awful information just an hour or so earlier, from the man himself.

Following a frosty confrontation with Lucy Duncan in the fabric warehouse, Lucy had been ashamed and repentant at having spread gossip about Jemma. However, she was adamant she had not told lies and had offered to take Jemma immediately to her brother so Philip might vouch for her honesty. At the lodging house they’d found Philip about to climb into his gig. Ushering them in to his lodging house hallway so they might be private, he’d rather sheepishly admitted that he had shown Graham Quick a note he’d received from Jemma’s guardian. Jemma had demanded he go and get it so she could see the revolting evidence, but Philip had said he’d already thrown it on the fire. As Jemma had turned to leave he’d found the grace to mumble he was sorry for mentioning the matter to Graham Quick. Moments later he’d diluted his apology by adding that the message had clearly implied it came with her full agreement.

Following that awful revelation there had been nothing Maura could say that would deter Jemma from immediately confronting Theo about what he’d done. At the Wyndhams’ town house in Hanover Square they’d found Theo looking very smug. Without a hint of remorse he’d told his enraged ward that he’d not only sent a letter to Philip Duncan, but to every one of the fellows he could bring to mind who was still unwed and had offered for Jemma in the past. In all, four letters had been sent. He’d even had the cheek to try to turn the tables on her and put her in the wrong. In a martyred tone he’d added that she’d put him to some considerable trouble by not dealing herself with the matter of getting off the shelf.

Before Jemma could properly express her disgust and outrage Mr Speer’s arrival had been announced by Manwell. That information had stunned Jemma into silence. A moment later she’d bolted with just one horrifying thought in her mind: she had discovered the identity of another recipient of her guardian’s scandalous letters.

‘Mr Speer has simply come to tell Theo what he thinks of him…and me…’ Jemma finally told Maura on a heavy sigh. ‘One cannot blame him for that.’ A moment later her spirit had again rallied. ‘I wish he had just discarded the stupid, stupid letter and forgotten all about it as Philip Duncan did.’

* * *

‘Ah…do come in, Speer. Glad to receive your message and your prompt visit, sir.’ Theodore Wyndham’s voice held a high note of confidence as he continued to nonchalantly pose against the high mantelpiece with an arm slung along its marble shelf.

Theo now appeared so indolent that it would have been hard to imagine a more docile individual. Never would one have guessed that just moments ago this gentleman had been simmering with temper whilst listening to his ward violently berate him for interfering in her life.

Jemma had discovered, sooner than Theo would have liked, his scheme to get her married before she completely ran through the Bailey inheritance. She’d turned up like a whirlwind, moments before Marcus Speer was due, making Theo fret that she might erupt in hysterics just as the fellow arrived. He’d been worrying needlessly. When his butler had announced Mr Speer’s presence in the hallway it was as though an invisible hand had dashed a bucket of water over her. She’d drawn a shuddering breath, taken on a ghastly pallor, then quietly fled from Theo’s study via the connecting door to the library as though the hounds of hell snapped at her heels.

Now, as Theo watched his very welcome visitor close the door, then begin to bear down on him with a startling speed and purpose, he surged upright and fiddled at the knot in his cravat. He could tell, before a conversation had passed between them, that he’d misjudged this man’s reaction to his bold suggestion. Speer’s swift steps cracked against the boards like percussion pistol shots and his expression looked lethal. Marcus’s refusal to return a greeting, or say anything at all, added to the air of menace emanating from him, and Theo strove not to betray by look or manner his alarm and disappointment.

So far he’d received just one reply; it had come from this gentleman and had been delivered just hours ago. From its few lines he’d only been able to glean that Marcus demanded an audience that very afternoon. Theo had been happy to grant him his wish and had, whilst pacing to and fro excitedly awaiting his arrival, persuaded himself that the fellow was eager because he still harboured a tenderesse for Jemma despite the fact that, in five years, she’d turned from a saucy minx in to a tiresome bluestocking.

Along with the rest of the ton, he’d seen gazetted Marcus Speer’s engagement to Deborah Cleveland. Theo had dismissed it as an irrelevance. His letters had been ready, and he’d despatched every last one. Now, with Speer within striking distance of him, he belatedly paid heed to two vital facts: the fellow had a far superior height and breadth to his own and was renowned as a talented pugilist and, secondly, Deborah Cleveland was, undoubtedly, younger, sweeter, and richer than was his cousin Jemma.

* * *

‘How do I look?’ Jemma asked breathlessly as she pulled her coat this way and that to straighten it. Her hands next darted to her abundant locks to try to bring some order to the ruffled chestnut waves. ‘Am I presentable? Are my cheeks stained with tears?’ Jemma was of above average height for a young woman and of necessity dipped her head to gaze at her reflection in the glass on the dressing chest. Watery jade eyes were rapidly blinked to clear them and briskly she rubbed at her complexion with her fingertips to erase any sign that she’d been crying. Her appearance had suffered during the past hours due to her acute distress. But now, having conquered the worst of her shock, and brought her wrath under control—for the time being, she certainly had not finished with Theo!—she was ready to set another gentleman straight on the matter of her guardian’s shocking plot, and her lack of a part in it.

‘I don’t think you should do that!’ Maura whispered with a throb of foreboding. To her mind Jemma was still in a stupor over it all and not thinking straight. Having listened, drop-jawed, to Jemma’s determination to loiter somewhere outside in Hanover Square in order to ambush Mr Speer as he left the house, Maura could only foresee such an action bringing more trouble down on her cousin’s head. She could sympathise with Jemma’s need to immediately set the record straight, but such a highly irregular scene was bound to be spotted by a chinwag who later would gleefully pass on what they’d witnessed.

Graham Quick had no doubt already passed on in the gentlemen’s clubs what Philip Duncan had told him. Soon those fellows’ wives would know too that negotiations were underway to get Miss Jemma Bailey a husband. If it was reported that Jemma had accosted a gentleman known to have once offered for her, and one who had recently become engaged to another lady, her name would be mud. The Clevelands were an important and popular family at the heart of the ton. Jemma would be labelled a shameless hussy who was trying to steal Deborah’s fiancé. She would be cut dead by everyone, and her disgrace would haunt her for very many years.

‘If you think waiting quietly outside to state my case the greater risk to the Bailey name than making a scene within these walls I shall simply go back to Theo’s study and say what I must now. It will be a nasty argument with your brother, I promise you. If Theo is made to look a fool in front of his visitor, so be it. He deserves all that is coming to him.’

‘No! You must not do that! It would never do to act so disrespectfully.’ Maura gulped in panic. ‘Theo is your guardian…your family, after all.’

‘Indeed he is,’ Jemma agreed bitterly. ‘Yet he has shown me no respect or consideration in acting so sly and underhand.’

Now that Theo had started scheming to arrange a marriage of convenience for Jemma it would be wise to leave it to him alone to finish it, so Maura thought. People would consider it an appropriate duty for a guardian to try to arrange his ward’s future security by marrying her off, especially when the woman in question had her début a good few years behind her. Maura relayed that advice to Jemma, then let out a doleful sigh when it simply caused her cousin to frown and violently shake her head.

‘Oh, you’re too late,’ Maura cried joyfully, interrupting her cousin who had been ready to quit the room. Maura had been standing close to the window and, twitching the curtain aside, she peeked at the top of a dark glossy head and impressively broad shoulders as Marcus swiftly descended the stone steps and strode off.

‘He is gone already?’ Jemma cried in disappointment. She darted to the window and craned her neck to check for herself that her quarry was on the move.

Maura’s sigh of relief that the immediate threat was removed only fired Jemma’s determination to impress on Marcus the truth. Now that she felt more composed, she regretted having let shock and humiliation cow her. She ought to have stayed in Theo’s study instead of scampering away like a frightened little girl. She’d had more courage at seventeen, she inwardly scolded. Then she’d brazenly borne the brunt of her papa’s chastisement, and the disapproval of the ton. She’d deserved both, too, for she’d believed her heart, her loyalty, belonged to another man when she’d flirted outrageously with Marcus during that heady Season when she’d made her début. She had led him on, taken everything he had offered as her friend and suitor, and now, older and wiser, she felt thoroughly ashamed of her selfish behaviour.

This time she was innocent of any wrongdoing, yet she had crumpled and cravenly run away instead of immediately mounting her defence and protesting against the injury done her. She should have stayed and made her scheming guardian admit that he’d acted without her knowledge or consent. She should have made it clear that she had no intention of entering a marriage of convenience with any man, no matter how convenient it might be for Theo that she did so.

With Maura’s groan of dismay echoing in her ears Jemma impulsively darted to the door. Within a moment she was down the stairs and out in to the street, heedless of Manwell’s dropping jaw as she sailed past him in a whirl of chestnut curls and swirling blue skirts.

Once on the pavement she squinted against the sunlight. She pivoted on the spot, hurried many yards one way, all the time looking here and there, then retraced her steps and rushed in the opposite direction. She paused on the corner and looked about. Of Marcus there was no sign, and he would be easy to distinguish amongst the strollers out enjoying the spring sunshine. With his lofty height and devilishly dark good looks he was an outstanding specimen of a man.

* * *

Marcus watched from the opposite side of the street as Jemma searched for him. And he knew it was he she was after as she flew hither and thither. She was retracing her steps along the pavement towards the Wyndhams’ house and he wondered if she would mount the steps and go in again. His mouth twisted cynically as he wondered whether Theo Wyndham had, as a last resort, sent her out to try to lure him back. She passed the Wyndhams’ door and kept to a slow pace, her head lowered as though she was both disappointed and distracted by her own thoughts. His narrowed silver eyes kept her in their sights as he moved a little away from the parasol his mistress seemed intent on twirling over them both whilst they stood beside her barouche.

‘Will you come with me to the theatre tonight?’ Lady Pauline Vaux repeated. A delightful dimple appeared in one cheek as she tilted her head to give Marcus a persuasive smile.

‘I’m afraid I can’t. My uncle is now mortally ill. I await some bad news from his physician,’ Marcus told her.

He made to hand her back into her transport, but it seemed Lady Vaux was not yet ready to say farewell to her lover. She murmured her sympathy at knowing that the Earl of Gresham was on his deathbed. The fact that Marcus was soon to become an aristocrat, and a good deal richer, was neither here nor there to her. He’d made it plain at the start of the liaison that he’d never marry her, so there was no status to share, no future son to groom to be worthy of his earldom. As for the rest, Marcus was already rich and powerful enough to satisfy any young impoverished widow’s yen for a pampered life.

Earlier that afternoon Pauline had been visiting her friend, Cressida Forbes, who lived on the edge of Hanover Square. Having quit her friend’s company after a delightful episode taking tea and sharing gossip, she’d travelled just yards when she’d clapped eyes on Marcus striding along and instructed her driver to stop the barouche. Having beckoned him, but failed to persuade him to get up with her, she’d alighted to delay his departure and try to charm him in to escorting her to the theatre. But he’d seemed too stern and preoccupied to talk or tell her much about his reason for being in the vicinity. Once or twice Pauline had glanced about to see what had taken his interest for it seemed something was causing him to stare off in to the distance.

‘I shall come and see you soon,’ Marcus cut in to Pauline’s musing, making her dimple her thanks at him. Taking his mistress’s arm, he guided her firmly towards the barouche and helped her alight. He raised a hand in salute as the conveyance pulled off steadily into the traffic. Then his eyes swooped to the willowy female figure, some way off now. Crossing the road, he started after her.

Chapter Three

A strange sensation prickled at Jemma’s nape, making her absently scuff her fingers over it. She half-turned, sure she was being fanciful in imagining someone was following her. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a tall male figure, darkly dressed. Her heart vaulted to her throat, and she came to a spontaneous halt before twisting fully about. In petrified silence she stared at Marcus Speer as he continued his lazy powerful pursuit of her. Instinctively she wheeled about and hastened on. The next instant she was inwardly berating herself for having so obviously betrayed her fright at the sight of him. Beneath her aching ribs her heart continued thudding erratically, making her softly suck in air. Slowly she brought some order to the chaotic thoughts whirling in her head, and her pace became less frantic.

A short while ago she had wanted to find him, had flown from Theo’s house like a wild hoyden to look for him in the street. Now he was deliberately…temptingly…within reach. An awful suspicion occurred to her that he might have observed her fruitless efforts to ambush him in Hanover Square. He was close enough for her to have read his expression. It was mortifying to acknowledge that he’d every right to that slanting, sardonic smile. By touting her about to any fellow who’d take her as a wife, Theo had made her seem weak and risible. She’d not helped disperse that perception by cravenly turning tail not once but twice this afternoon in Marcus Speer’s presence.

He knew she wanted to speak to him so he was presenting himself to her on a plate, taunting her to swallow her pride and approach him. Indignation ignited fire in her veins, strengthening her composure. She put up her chin, took a deep breath and, confident her blush was fading, pivoted about. Purposely she marched towards him and halted just in front of him. She flicked up her face to boldly meet his gaze. Immediately her eyes darted aside. She hadn’t been prepared for the overwhelming effect being this close to him had on her. Silver eyes that looked forbidding yet achingly familiar had been ruthlessly watching her mouth making the first words she had uttered to him in almost five years emerge in a strangled gasp.

‘Why are you following me?’

‘Why were you looking for me?’

‘I was not!’ The spontaneous lie sent a fresh burst of betraying blood to stain her skin, and her eyes to swerve back to glance on his.

‘Were you not?’ he drily enquired.

‘You were just at my cousin’s house,’ she rushed on, hoping to cover her confusion.

‘So were you.’

‘Surely you arrived in a carriage? Why are you not in it instead of dogging my footsteps?’ She recalled attack was said to be the best form of defence and certainly it seemed to be boosting her confidence and courage.

‘As you were spying on me and saw me arrive, Miss Bailey, I suspect you know I arrived on foot in Hanover Square.’

‘I was not spying on you, sir. And I certainly was not awaiting your arrival,’ Jemma fumed in righteous anger.

‘What a happy coincidence then that we both were within your guardian’s house when I told him, amongst other things, that I won’t marry you,’ Marcus drawled. ‘I imagine he passed that message on, and that’s why you were outside searching for me to try to change my mind.’ An insolent grey gaze slipped over her lush figure. ‘I’m intrigued to know how you intended to persuade me to do that.’ His voice was sultry with amusement, his eyes darkening dangerously behind long, concealing lashes. ‘If you use the right approach, Miss Bailey, I might hear you out.’

A fiery blush raged from Jemma’s throat to her hairline. She’d winced on hearing his scornful rejection; now she visibly flinched for a second time. How dare he mock her so! Any thoughts she’d had of offering her apologies for Theo’s despicable behaviour were expelled from her mind. This hateful brute now owed her an apology for speaking to her, looking at her as though she were some dockside wench!

‘I think I must put you straight on several things, sir,’ she finally blurted in a suffocated voice. Her fingers formed fists and were held rigidly quivering at her sides. ‘Firstly, indeed it was a coincidence that we were at the Wyndhams together, but a happy one…never! Secondly, I’ve not received any report from my cousin of the outcome of your visit. I do not require one, for it is neither here nor there what you said to him. Theo has had the disgraceful impertinence to attempt to meddle in my life, but I will not allow him to do so. I shall decide if and when I marry.’ Jemma drew a deep breath and threw back her head to slam her eyes on his impaling steely gaze. ‘I was at his home just now to impress on him that fact and for no other reason that concerns you. Secondly,’ she uttered on a shuddering breath.

‘Thirdly…’ Marcus corrected softly.

‘What…?’

‘I’ve heard your second point,’ he reminded her with studied solemnity. ‘You weren’t aware of the outcome of my visit…’

‘Umm…oh…yes…thirdly…’ Jemma stuttered. ‘Thirdly…’ she resumed in a muted tone, the wind temporarily sucked out of her sails. A darting glance at his cynical expression soon had her temper again simmering. ‘Thirdly,’ she snapped icily, ‘there is nothing of which I care to persuade you except perhaps this: I find your arrogant assumption that I wanted to extricate a marriage proposal from you most unpleasant. I believed I had already made it clear some years ago that I had rejected you as a husband. Nothing has happened since to change my mind. Good day, sir.’ Jemma had managed just one triumphant pace away from him when a firm grip on her wrist arrested her, spinning her neatly around.

‘Are you sure nothing has changed your mind?’ he taunted softly. ‘Wyndham seemed quite taken with the notion of having a Countess in the family. He implied the idea appealed to you, too, now you’re slightly less immature.’