Mercy, her stepmother’s staff had even cleared out her rooms during their London stay. Her bags were in a pile near the manor’s main door, her bedchamber as soulless and ‘pristine’ as if she’d never spent an hour within her own walls, much less having slept there for all the years of her life.
They expected her to go with Sir Hartle to Rosedale Hall, to stay there to await her pending marriage to him.
Now she knew the real reason for attending the Merrivales’ ball.
Lady Clarice needed her gone so her minions could do her dirty work.
Well, she wasn’t going to play along.
Nor would she leave willingly. Leastways she wasn’t going to Sir Hartle’s Tudor pile, glorious or otherwise.
She might love old and crumbling, even quaint and ancient. But not when it came to men.
She certainly didn’t want a falling-apart and creaky husband.
“Enough.” Her stepmother’s tone held ice. Her eyes were even frostier. “I will not order your things taken back to your rooms. You will accompany Sir Hartle to his home now, this day, and you shall remain there until you become his wife. That will be soon, and thereafter you will bear his children there.”
Melissa inhaled deeply, desperation rising. “Even if I wished to marry Sir Hartle, I couldn’t. I am not a virgin.”
Lady Clarice’s eyes widened.
Her three daughters giggled.
Sir Hartle leaned forward and smiled. “That is not a problem at all, my dear,” he said, his rattling-leaves voice overly loud in the silent room. “At my age, a virgin is more a nuisance than a pleasure.”
Sitting back, he chuckled, a sound more terrible than his voice. “Indeed, I prefer lusty, experienced women.”
Melissa stared at him, feeling as if the drawing room’s green-and-gold patterned carpet had opened beneath her. How startling that she was still standing firm and tall, hadn’t plunged into a deep, dark pit. The hell that awaited desperation-driven liars.
She was most certainly pure.
Mercy, she’d never even been kissed.
And however could she have known her aged suitor did not want a virgin?
Feeling ill, she drew another long, spine-strengthening breath and threw caution to the wind, no longer caring what came of her boldness.
“Even so, Sir Hartle, but I must warn you that I may well be in a certain condition.” She clasped her hands before her and forced a smile. “You would not be the father.”
There.
She’d just proved her earlier conclusion.
Desperation topped all other emotions.
It was also about to earn her the wrath of her stepmother for Lady Clarice’s eyes were narrowing to slits as she left Sir Hartle’s chair and came to stand toe-to-toe before Melissa.
“I do not believe you,” she said, her tone icy as she gripped Melissa’s wrist. “You are lying.”
~*~
“Nae, she isn’t,” a deep, very Scottish voice asserted from the door.
“Lucian!” Melissa broke free of her stepmother’s grasp to turn and see him stride into the drawing room.
Despite his sudden, unannounced appearance, he commanded an air of authority that made the room his, as if he were about to address guests to his own home in distant Scotland. More than that, he caused brows to fly upward and jaws to drop because he was attired as a Highlander of old, right down to the enormous and deadly-looking long sword strapped to his kilted hip.
Melissa’s heart tumbled. “Lucian, you’re here…”
