Chapter 9 #2
“It isn’t the money. We’re friends. Or something lost in the chasm in-between that I can’t for the life of me define.
I only know that I’m trailing after you like a hungry hound, desperate for attention.
But despite all that, despite my desire and my yearning, bloody hell if the blunt wouldn’t help.
” He shoved to his feet, getting irritated himself.
The viscountcy was not of his choosing, but he was trying to make the best of being saddled with it.
Stalking across the room in search of his trousers, he found them in a wad under the bed, next to one of his boots.
“Have you seen this place?” he groused, jamming a leg into his pants and hopping around trying to secure the other.
“My father left it in ruins. Left my family in ruins. My brother, Arthur, someday I’ll tell you about his trials and my desperate effort to keep him on the straight and narrow.
You want me to let Mrs. Walker’s tooth fall out?
The church roof to cave in? Oh, yes, they need a new one of those.
I’ve got not only this estate and every member of the staff under my jurisdiction, but an entire village to worry over. ”
A gust of sour amusement left her lips. She was dancing about herself to get into her rig, a harder task than his.
“Then find someone you don’t fancy in any way to marry.
You won’t have questions in your eyes when you look at them.
No woman wants to see those while in the midst of the act, my lord.
Advice for your next encounter.” She yanked her gown to her neck, the bodice gaping provocatively.
To him at least. She had no hope to secure the thing without his assistance.
“Don’t judge the decisions I’m making, and I won’t judge the ones you’re making.
The opera singer you engage in the new year will be your business and yours alone! ”
He found his shirt draped across the escritoire and tunneled his arm in the sleeve.
“How about this, sweetheart? You marry that pathetic example of baron manhood, but we continue to work together. We’ll negotiate on a desk design some smog-filled morn in the near future, then I’ll drag you upstairs for a quick tup.
Because I won’t be able to keep my damned hands off you if we’re ever, ever in the same room. ”
Franny unsuccessfully fiddled with the buttons at the nape of her neck, her furious words lost. Although her caustic tone was clear. Holding her gown closed, she snatched up her sketchpad and charcoal, searching the room for the rest of her attire.
Chance sighed through his teeth and pointed.
On the chair before the hearth. When he’d gone down for her art supplies, he’d found their clothing strewn about the house and collected everything in a tidy pile.
Even her hairpins. He didn’t want Mrs. Walker to find his cravat on the stairs and wonder what the hell had gone on the evening prior.
Although he wouldn’t be surprised if Franny’s shouts of ecstasy had traveled down the corridor and directly to her.
“Don’t go,” he blurted when she turned her back on him, realizing it was too late. Realizing they needed a bit of distance to think this through .
Last night was the most incredible of my life.
Nine words that whispered through his mind.
Nine words he couldn’t release .
So, with a lingering glance filled with everything he’d lived his life without thus far, Franny was gone.
Leaving her stockings and one slipper but taking part of his heart.
Franny hobbled down the hallway to her bedchamber, through narrows bands of light and shadow. The rosewood paneling shone from a recent polishing she’d asked Mrs. Walker to organize. She wasn’t going to cry, she thought and sniffled into the wadded coat pressed to her chest.
There was no need.
This wasn’t like that last time, with Gerald Humbard III. Son of one of her father’s business partners. Chance Allerton was turning her away out of panic, not callousness. The viscount was scared. She’d noted the emotion shimmering plainly in his cobalt eyes.
Only, she didn’t know if she had the strength to fight him.
Thank goodness, she didn’t encounter any of the pathetically modest staff currently employed at Rose Hill on her slog of shame. She opened her bedchamber door with a sigh that turned into a gasp the second she looked in the room.
Ada, mother of her heart, sat curled on the settee. A cup of tea in her hand, a wretched pout on her face. “Oh, my cheeky girl, have you flipped the wheels off the carriage this time.”
Franny closed the door with a dull click and let the clothing she held tumble to the threadbare carpet. There was no way in Hades she could hide from the one person who, aside from a wayward viscount coming to know her well, knew her best . “I did possibly accede to another dreadful impulse.”
“He won’t marry you,” Ada murmured and took a choked sip of tea.
Like England, something she loathed. “Although I’ve seen the way he gazes at you.
The way you gaze right back. Like two candles melting in the sun.
Both when you think no one else is looking.
But lust only creates trouble, dear heart.
Never solves any in my humble experience.
Your desire to sketch the man, don’t argue because I know the way your mind works, has tossed us in the drink this time.
” She grunted and tapped the teacup’s chipped rim against her teeth.
“I suppose we must thank the heavens he’s poor as a church mouse and can only employ three people who might have seen you.
If your father should hear of this, we’re doomed.
I’ll be living with my brother and his horrid wife before spring.
Do you know what they’re going to make me do with their children? ”
Franny crossed to her vanity. The reflection displayed in the gilded mirror was a creature she didn’t recognize. Rosy cheeks. Swollen lips. Eyes alight with feminine power. And, oh God, her hair. She tugged her hand through tangled strands that would have impressed Medusa. “He asked, actually.”
In his roundabout, tiptoe fashion.
Franny knew it was absurd—but Chance Allerton’s carefully veiled vulnerability made her want to pitch herself over the cliff into love with him. Foolish girl.
Ada’s cup hit the table with a click. “He did what ?”
Franny turned, clutching her gaping bodice. Plunking her bottom on the vanity’s marble edge, she shrugged. “It was half-hearted. Hasty. Not insincere so much as rummaging for a solution to a tangle he’s found himself mired in. Like a pig stuck in mud. It wasn’t pretty or romantic.”
“You said yes, of course.” At Franny’s silence, Ada’s face paled and she slumped, head dropping to her hands.
“A viscount who looks at you like he wants to eat you in one bite and go back for seconds. A man, a genuine one, obstinate and arrogant, but a man . When the lout your father has lined up is a boy. Please, dear girl, please tell me you said yes.”
Franny shook her head. She wasn’t selling herself to Viscount Remington. Baron Hillsdale, yes, fine . Baroness of naught, signed, sealed, and delivered. She’d never expected to have a choice . Her father had told her bluntly from the time she’d begun to attract masculine attention that she didn’t.
But she would not, could not, start a life with a man who didn’t want her when she suspected she was in love with him .
“You still plan to marry Hillsdale? After this ?” She gestured to Franny’s disastrous state.
A furious fire, unusual for her, sparked deep in Franny’s belly. Like any woman, she could be a force when jammed into a corner. “We’re purchasing each other. My money will be all Hillsdale’s got any say over. The rest is mine to govern. I’ll take my control where I can.”
“As if life works that way.” Ada released a scathing huff through her fingers. “What about the girl? If you decide to skip outta here before daybreak, which I think you should. What about that poor child?”
Franny pinched the bridge of her nose, tears stinging her eyes. Kat .
“You could take her to Hampton Hall until the new year. Mrs. Streeter invited us because she knew this silly farce of yours was going to blow like a faulty kettle. Her husband’s estate is a twenty-minute carriage ride away.
Inherited of a sort from Streeter’s father, a viscount who didn’t acknowledge him until the ancient sot was drawing his last. Unusual set of circumstances for a part-Romani bastard.
Society can’t decide whether to accept the man or not, and then he goes and marries an earl’s daughter, making it an impossible situation.
The English are a confounding lot. I swear to the ground they are. ”
“Lord Remington will come after me if I take Kat.”
Ada lifted her head, her gaze narrowing in contemplation.
Franny knew that look well, too well. The cleverness behind it had helped her avoid more than one scrape in her lifetime.
“Not if we make it seem like it’s a holiday invite you’d already accepted.
A confused set of missives. Won’t be the first time he’s read about a woman’s departure on a sheet of foolscap shoved beneath his door. ”
Franny pushed off the vanity, almost losing hold of her gaping gown. “I’m not setting up a race for the viscount to run like my prize mount. This isn’t Epsom.”
Ada beamed, smug and decided. Dusted her hands together as if she’d made a decision.
“All’s fair in love, isn’t it? This lonely pile made even lonelier without women and children.
A man thinks he wants his peace until he has it.
The scorching glances the lord of the manor has been giving you could be close to love if you’d kick him across the ravine and into it.
That you figured it out sooner can’t be held against him. Men are senseless creatures.”
Franny took a turn about the chamber, swiping her fingers across layers of dust on shelves, cracks in aged wallpaper, rips in an Aubusson rug that had once cost a fortune.
Rose Hill made her want to weep. She would’ve happily sunk every penny of her dowry into the care and management of this estate, fallen in love with it right along with its owner. Become a mother to Kat.
The fact that she could so easily picture a life with them in this very house was unnerving.
Like most men, Chance Allerton was a ninnyhammer when it came to affairs of the heart.
Franny dragged her bare toe across a ripple in the carpet, glancing to the window and the shades of blue and pink coloring a dawning horizon.
A little push wasn’t deceitful if the man in question was racing in that direction anyway, was it?
He could love her back. He’d stared into her eyes while he trembled, his broad body curving protectively around hers. His release frenzied… but his gaze calm. Sure. Adoring .
“I’ll do it,” Franny said, never considering that those were the exact words she’d spoken to Hildy Streeter to get her into this mess.