And once again, she was alone with Mr Frederick Challenger.
CHAPTER THREE
When he was sure Sir Nash was gone, he released his hold on her and his warm expression returned to disapproval. ‘Well?’
‘Thank you for making him go away,’ she said, her nerve failing her in the face of such a large, angry man.
‘Do not thank me. I did not do it for you,’ he said. ‘I cannot abide that fellow. He cannot seem to manage a visit here without doing something so foul that I have to turn him out. If you had a jot of sense you would not have come here, to risk falling into his clutches.’
In the face of this fresh condemnation, she felt as young and foolish as her stepmother thought her to be. Then, she remembered that Mr Challenger had spent the whole of their limited acquaintance thinking such things about her, with no basis in fact. ‘My behaviour was the result of desperation,’ she said firmly, looking him in the eye. ‘My father and stepmother are all but forcing me to marry Sir Nash and I find him repellent. I thought if there was some way I could prove to them how awful he was…’
‘So you came here to find him,’ Challenger said. ‘And just what did you mean to do once you had?’
She could not reveal the whole of her plan without announcing Ben’s part in it. If he lost his position because of her foolishness, how could she forgive herself? ‘I thought to scream for help,’ she said, wondering if it would have worked. ‘When someone came to my rescue, I would demand that he be a witness against Sir Nash to my father.’
‘Or you could have drawn a crowd and not a rescuer. You could have been ravished for sport by the very man you thought to entrap, while the worst of thetonlooked on and laughed.’ His voice rose, as if he thought she was some underling who had to stand for his punishment. ‘Once he had what he wanted, you’d have had to beg for the honour of the marriage you did not want to keep from being cast into the gutter with the rest of the fallen women.’
‘Then what Nash said about you was true,’ she responded, raising her volume to match his. ‘If you own such a place and would have allowed that to happen, you are as bad, or worse, than any who come here.’
His mouth snapped shut, as though he could not figure out how to respond.
‘For your information, he’d have married me no matter what had happened,’ she said, crestfallen. ‘I think he has debts. My stepmother speaks disapprovingly of his gambling even as she tries to arrange our marriage. He wants my father’s money as much as anything else he might get from me.’
‘I seriously doubt that.’ Mr Challenger gave another sweeping glance up and down her body, as though it was possible to see through the tablecloth that hid it.
After weeks of studiously ignoring her, she was unsure of what to make of his sudden interest. She did her best to disregard it despite the strange tingling she felt at the passage of his eyes. ‘Well, your interruption has prevented anything bad from happening tonight. If you will excuse me…’ She turned toward the door.
He gave a single, sharp laugh in response. ‘And now, you mean to go home as if nothing has changed.’
‘What else can I do?’ she said, trying to smooth the tablecloth into the semblance of a respectable garment.
‘Go on, then.’ He smiled, gesturing toward the door. ‘If you really think that is a good idea.’
His maddeningly smug tone raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She hated being lectured to like a foolish child. She hated it doubly so when she suspected that she deserved it. ‘All right, then. Say what you mean to. You are itching for the chance to scold me and I will not deny it to you. Why can’t I just go home? Do you still mean to ravish me?’ She had meant it as a joke, but once the words had passed her lips, they seemed to hang in the air between them on a cloud of musk.
‘You will go home, untouched,’ he said, in a reasonable tone that belied any knowledge of a change in the atmosphere. ‘But it will be quite impossible for either of us to pretend that this incident did not happen.’
‘Do you mean to tell my father?’ she asked in a small voice. The story would sound no better delivered by Mr Challenger than it would from Sir Nash.
‘I will not have to. Bowles will be there at first light to do it for me.’
Of course. He would come to press for an immediate approval of his suit. He would portray her as a wayward hoyden and himself as a rescuer from near disaster. ‘I have made it worse,’ she said, miserably.
‘Indeed,’ he said, not bothering to spare her feelings. ‘And dragged me into it as well. I will have to answer for our secret engagement and our sexual game playing in a club frequented by the more louche half of theton.’
‘Oh, dear.’ She did not like the man, but she had never intended to include him in her personal problems. Then she remembered the conversation that had just occurred. ‘I did not ask you to lie for me.’
‘Nor did you denounce me when I did,’ he reminded her. ‘You were more than willing to hide in my shadow and allow me to take the blame for this debacle. Now you know what you must do to make it right.’
‘In truth, I do not.’ There was not a way forward that did not lead to disaster.
Mr Challenger dropped to his knee before her. ‘Miss Knight, would you do me the honour of accepting my offer of marriage?’
She had heard the phrase, ‘without a trace of irony’. This must be the opposite of it. The proposal was delivered without a trace of sincerity. And yet, he did not rise. He stared at her, grim-faced, awaiting an answer.
‘But, I do not want to marry you,’ she said, staring back at him incredulous.
‘Nor do I want to marry you.’ If possible, his expression became even more threatening. ‘But as you said before, if word of this gets out, I will be called to offer for you. I see no other way to save both of our reputations.’
