Chapter One
London, Spring 1820
Lord Christopher Dashworth’s shoulders ached with the effort of keeping them relaxed. He forced himself to keep them down and not hunched around his ears, but the strain was considerable. The world still needed to see a debonair man about town, despite his world crumbling around him in front of an audience which appeared to number in the hundreds. Sweat beaded across his brow, but he resisted the urge to wipe it away; hopefully his dark hair would hide the sheen and, if it didn’t, the dim lamps of the conservatory might make it less obvious.
‘Lord Christopher will have to marry the girl.’ Mrs Meadway, one of the Ton’s biggest gossips, wobbled her chin in his direction, in case anyone was in doubt as to who he was and what this awful situation was descending into.
‘Oh no,’ said the girl in question, black curls swinging wildly as she shook her head. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’
He didn’t want to marry her either, but did she have to say no quite so fervently? He wasn’t that bad; some women found him delightful. In fact, he’d yet to meet a woman who didn’t, not counting the one in front of him now.
‘This whole situation is a misunderstanding,’ he tried, desperately, futilely. ‘I have never met this lady before and certainly have not had, or tried to have, a romantic tryst with her in this part of the house.
Mrs Meadway pulled herself up to her inconsiderable height. ‘What fustian you talk. Everyone knows what sort of man you are. To try and gammon this innocent lady into giving you her virtue. Well, indeed.’ She snapped open her fan and began to wave it vigorously in front of her face. Apparently, the thought of him corrupting innocents made her skin too hot to bear. ‘We all know of your reputation.’
The women arranged behind Mrs Meadway all nodded in agreement, like puppets on strings. He frowned at them; surely, they were multiplying. There hadn’t been this many women when the nightmare had started. Closing his eyes, he counted slowly to ten. When he opened them, the small dark-haired lady mired in this disaster with him was staring at him, her mouth agape. Her expression was clear; she thought him witless. Perhaps he was, because unless he came up with something soon, he was going to be engaged to this stranger. But really, it was absurd to think he would try to make love to a woman here. There were far too many windows for a start. He liked his liaisons to be conducted in private and, ideally, in comfort. This highly polished floor would be hell on his knees.
He was only twenty-two. He had his whole life ahead of him. A life in which he planned to enjoy himself, because time was fleeting and if you didn’t make every moment fun, then you were missing out. Both his parents had died young and so had one of his brothers and he had no intention of taking a single thing seriously because of it. Being saddled with a wife definitely counted as serious.
He opened his mouth to point out the ridiculousness of this situation but closed it again when no words were forthcoming. Sweat coated his forehead, dripped down his spine, collecting at hiswaistband. Abandoning his ploy to appear calm and rational, he ran a hand down his face, but the gesture didn’t magically produce a fully formed sentence from his brain.
‘My daughter,’ gasped someone from the back of the crowd, proving, if there’d been any doubt in his mind, that this was a staged event. There was no way this mother could see her child through the thick crowd.
‘Mama,’ whispered the stranger, her skin a milky white. ‘No, no, no, no.’
It was not a promising sign that they were back to that.
An older woman, beautifully dressed and with dark curls threaded with grey, pushed her way to the front and came to an abrupt stop when she saw the girl.
‘Oh,’ she said, visibly deflating. ‘Sophia.’ Her jaw worked a few times before her gaze turned to him. The widening of her eyes was the only indication that she had not expected him to be here either. ‘What is going on?’ Her voice was tremulous. He could almost feel sorry for her, except she must be in on the scheme.
‘Your daughter, Mrs Jacobs, has been compromised,’ announced Mrs Meadway.
‘My girl is an innocent.’ At least Mrs Jacobs had the decency to defend her daughter.
‘Nobody is suggesting otherwise.’ Behind Mrs Meadway, the other women were shaking their heads, almost like they were automatons bound to repeat her every move.
He noticed that not a single person rushed to protect his honour. Not one of them questioned whether he was the type of man who would entice an innocent young chit, barely out of the schoolroom, to a secluded corner of the house so that he could have his wicked way with her. An oversight that was grossly unfair. He might enjoy a secretrendezvous, albeit somewhere far more private than this, but he would never arrange one with an unmarried virgin.
‘This is a misunderstanding,’ he tried again. ‘I was looking for a water closet and…’
From the outraged gasps around him, he guessed he should not have mentioned bodily functions. Opposite him, the dark-haired woman rolled her eyes, unable to hide her contempt for his mutton-headedness. A flicker of irritation shot through him; at least he had made an attempt to get them out of this terrible situation. All she’d done was repeatedly say, ‘No.’
He folded his arms across his chest and fixed her with his bestI am descended from a long line of dukesglare. She raised her chin, obviously not receiving the message that she was meant to be cowed by his expression.
‘Mama,’ she said eventually, when it was clear he had not managed to get them out of this disaster. ‘Lord Christopher and I have never spoken. It is merely a coincidence we are in this part of the house together.’
Now that wasn’t quite true. They had spoken and it wasn’t a coincidence they were both here at the same time. But he admired her effort. It was better than anything he had managed so far. All they had said to one another in the scant few moments before discovery was, ‘You’re not the Duke of Glanmore’ – her and, ‘You’re not Marrisa Jacobs’ – him.
‘This man is trouble,’ said Mrs Meadway, pointing a fleshy finger in his direction.
He clenched his jaw to stop an angry retort escaping. Anything he said now would only make the situation worse, but it was galling to hold his tongue against yet another unfair statement. He was not, and had never been, badly behaved. Fine, so he didn’t have a perfectreputation, but he was hardly the first young buck to let loose or to enjoy the company of a woman. He had never broken the law, or at least he hoped not. He definitely had not left a string of broken hearts behind him and he had no by-blows running around London. People wanted to be around him because he was fun and if a night with him sometimes happened to go awry, then it wasn’t always his fault. After Sebastian’s death, Christopher had promised himself he would enjoy life to the hilt in case he also only had a limited time left on this Earth. Mrs Meadway and her judgemental companions be damned.
‘If he does not marry her, she will be ruined,’ said another woman, whom Christopher vaguely recognised.
‘She will be a pariah,’ said another.
‘She will be snubbed at every event.’
