Chapter 4
This time, Christian thought, he was actually going to kill her.
He urged his horse forward into another circle around the easternmost corner of St. James’s Park. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning. She was either late or already dead in a ditch somewhere, and truly, the emotion that tangled in his chest at the latter thought was disturbing.
He did not even like her. She was forward and provocative. Her missives were peremptory. She was ludicrously young.
At some point during their correspondence, he’d started to look up her age in Debrett’s and then—briefly concerned that his edition was so old that she would not even be in it—he’d slammed the thing closed before he got to W for the Earl of Warren.
Seven minutes later, by his pocket watch, he’d cracked and checked anyway.
She was thirteen years younger than he was. And why he had immediately done that mental arithmetic, he was not prepared to contemplate.
When there had been a three-day gap between her letters, he had—
No. No. He had not missed them.
There was no connection between the absence of Matilda’s letters and his inexplicable reentrance into London society. He had not been to a ton social event—other than Denham’s rout—in nearly a decade. He could not say why he had suddenly decided to accept an invitation to a dinner party.
He had not hoped she would be there. He had not looked for her. He had not.
She hadn’t been there anyway. Only her twin, Margo, dressed in pink and twice as freckled as Matilda, laughing uproariously with a handful of young bucks Christian was too old to recognize.
Though the twins looked similar, he had known at once that the one at the party wasn’t Matilda. Matilda was cooler, quieter. Her smile—when she smiled—would be earned. It would be a gift.
Good God, he was losing his mind. He needed to go back to Bamburgh.
That would be the very next thing he would do, after he found Matilda in St. James’s Park, murdered her, and then saw her safely back to her house in Mayfair.
When he finally caught sight of her red hair in the moonlight, relief and indignation blossomed inside him in equal measure. He swung down from his horse and left it placidly nibbling grass as he stalked toward her.
“You are late,” he bit out. “And reckless and probably deranged.”
She was wearing a heavy cloak, her fingers wrapped up in the wool as she held it closed in front of her. “I beg your pardon?” Her voice was low, almost husky. A night voice.
Despite himself, he reached out and caught her shoulder, tugging her off the path and behind a stand of trees where they would be invisible to any curious passersby. He did not want her reputation to be further damaged, because he was a sap-skulled block.
“This is the most incomprehensible place and time to meet,” he said. “It is late. It is dark. You gave me practically no direction. I might have ridden around looking for you half the night whilst you were set upon by footpads and left for dead.”
“And would you have come, had I suggested we meet on Regent Street for tea?”
“Of course not, you daft woman. I—”
And then suddenly it came clear to him. She had proposed this dangerous location, this absurd hour, to provoke him into meeting with her. To make him turn up, entirely against his will, out of concern for her welfare.
He did not know if he was more disturbed or more impressed by her cunning.
She untangled her fingers from her cloak and gestured behind her. “You need not have worried about me. I brought two grooms and a footman. I do appreciate your concern.”
Disturbed. Definitely more disturbed.
“What,” he ground out, “did you need to discuss that you could not write about in a letter?”
For the first time, she looked hesitant. She bit her lip, as she had done at Denham’s party.
Christian forced himself not to look at her mouth.
“I have a solution for your sister,” she said. “A female oil painter who is willing to come live with you in Northumberland until Bea’s debut next spring.”
He had not wanted to soften toward her. His grudge against her had been rather comforting. But her fixation on helping Bea was at once ridiculous and—
Rather likable, if he were forced to concede the truth. He liked how determined she was to fix things, even as part of him resented her involvement in the first place.
“I am listening,” he said, “though I imagine there is a catch. Who is it? Some brothel-owning friend of yours, perhaps? A murderer I will have to break out of Newgate before I can employ her?”
“It’s, er—” She looked faintly agonized. “Me.”
“No.”
The word was out of his mouth before he had even properly absorbed her words.
After he had time to absorb them, he managed to say no again, only more loudly and with more force behind it.
She was disruptive. She was outrageous. Bea would be terrified of her. Hell, he was slightly afraid of her, with her mocking letters that smelled faintly of flowers, and the way her teeth cut into the plump curve of her bottom lip.
She had him attending parties and looking forward to the post, and he needed to put an entire country’s worth of miles between himself and his bizarre temptation to spend more time in her presence.
“I realize this may be slightly untoward,” she said.
“Slightly?” He did not know whether to shake her or sprint away. “You are the unwed sister of an earl, not a professional artist.”
“To that point,” she said, “I am in fact a professional artist.”
Her delicate rendering of his cock flashed through his mind, and he experienced a confusing welter of emotions.
Outrage. He was fairly sure at least one of them was outrage.
Matilda winced at the expression on his face. “I suppose I should not have brought that up.”
“Perhaps not.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Putting the issue of your credentials aside, the situation is impossible. Even were I open to the idea—which I am not—you could not live at my estate without doing irreparable damage to your reputation—”
“I told you, I have no reputation to speak of—”
“You are unmarried,” he snapped, “and I am a well-known sexual deviant. You may think you have no reputation, but I assure you, you have no idea what you are about. After several months at my estate in Northumberland, you would never be received in society again.” He knew what that felt like and somehow he did not want it for this cool-voiced, absurdly fearless woman.
“We need not advertise my presence there,” she countered. “My brother is in Wales, and I can put it about that I’ve joined him at our estate there.”
“And what of your brother? I don’t know Warren but I imagine he would cavil at your sudden disappearance.”
“I’ve thought of that,” she said. “I have a plan to deal with Spencer and Margo, without telling them about the engravings.”
“Lady Matilda,” he said, “the answer is no.”
Her infuriating lower lip tugged into an expression that, on another woman, Christian would have called a pout. “You are being needlessly obstinate. This is a good idea. I am talented and classically trained. I am a woman. I am willing.”
Something pulled taut inside him at her sweet little mouth forming the words woman and willing. “I do not care if you are the most celebrated female painter in the country. This is not about your bloody artistic abilities.”
“It’s not about me at all! It’s about your sister, and how I can put this situation to rights, if only you will let me!”
“Why?” It did not make sense—her persistence, her fixation on repairing the situation. “If, as you’ve told me, you did not intend to put me in your illustrations in the first place, then none of this is your fault. Why do you care so much?”
He did not know what he expected her to say. That she was a good person, perhaps. That she cared about injustices done to young women whose family reputations preceded them. That she sympathized with a fellow female artist interested in a medium that society did permit ladies to indulge in.
He did not expect her to fix her eyes upon him, her face pale and set, and say firmly, “Because I did draw you. Intentionally.”
Matilda looked up at the Marquess of Ashford’s forbidding face and wondered faintly why she could not contain herself in his presence.
She had intended to provoke him into meeting with her. She’d known he would object to her plan—despite how eminently logical it was!—and she’d hoped that she could assuage his concerns through conversation.
She would show him, she’d thought to herself, how reasonable she could be. She would not argue with him, merely present her ideas and overcome any opposition through gentle persuasion.
But then he’d appeared, and dragged her off the path, and he was so—so—
So growly. So stern and dictatorial.
She was perverse! Whenever he spoke, she wanted to do the exact opposite of what he told her to do, and when he said no in that devastating autocratic way of his, she loved it. She wanted to tease him until he said it again, wanted to fray his control until he turned her over his knee.
It was all mixed-up inside her, her regret over the engravings, her attraction to his person, the push-and-pull of resistance and submission that she craved.
She wanted to persuade him to take her to Northumberland.
She wanted to tutor his sister in oil painting and—perhaps—encourage young Bea not to fear London society.
If her years as one of the Halifax Hellions had taught Matilda anything, it was that gossip only had power over you if you permitted it to do so, and that the perception of others only mattered if you truly cared about what those people thought.
Her last seven years in society had involved a great deal of frivolity, but this—this could be something more.
She could do something good with Beatrice de Bord. Something worthwhile.