Chapter 4 #3
‘I am a quiet person, sir, and will give you no trouble. I am also organised and well able to manage a household, for I have been helping my brother since my older sisters left Knightswood. I understand you are looking for a wife to assist with Huntingly Manor, and, to that end, I respectfully suggest one Fairfax is as good as another, is it not?’
His Lordship gave another bark of laughter, although it was marginally less certain, as he reached for a half-filled goblet.
He eyed her intently, before tipping its contents back, affording Josephine a full view of his muscular neck and chest through his barely buttoned shirt.
She swallowed and averted her eyes. She’d witnessed most of her brothers in a state of undress at some point or another, mostly through banned swimming outings to Knightswood’s lake when she and her latest novel were chief sentry, but this was different.
For some inexplicable reason, his half-dressed person made her feel oddly breathless, as though she was wearing one of Sophie’s pelisses after a large breakfast.
‘Take off your glasses?’ he asked in a curious tone, replacing his goblet.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Josephine blinked, feeling her flush reach down her neck. ‘I assure you, sir, I can see little without them, and you would not wish me at any disadvantage because I am not familiar with your home.’
She was already regretting so much, but to agree to be inspected, like some sort of bottled specimen, was a stretch even for her. Defiantly, she pushed them further up her nose, which was precisely the moment he began to move around the foot of the table, and across the flagstone floor towards her.
‘I am not asking you to navigate my home without them,’ he returned as she watched his progress in horror. ‘I am simply asking permission to see your face without them.’
He paused directly in front of her and, for the first time, Josephine wondered if she’d been an utter fool.
To come here alone, without bringing one of Phoebe’s maids or even the kindly coach driver, was misguided to say the least. She’d been so intent on saving Matilda that she hadn’t paused to consider herself at all, and now she’d never felt more vulnerable.
‘You make an interesting proposition, Miss Fairfax,’ he murmured, ‘so let us understand one another completely. I am well used to people judging me by what they see, or hear, and rarely looking further. But if I am to consider your offer properly,’ he paused with a glinting smile, ‘I would like to see you without your armour.’
Josephine caught her breath as she stared up into Lord Huntingly’s dark eyes, feeling her blood pound as though she was atop a tor in a moorland storm.
‘Sir,’ she replied, by now certain she had made a grave misjudgement. ‘Your request is not … seemly, given our brief acquaintance.’
‘Seemly?’ he quizzed in an amused tone. ‘But I thought we’d dispensed with all the usual formalities?
Perhaps then, it would be more gentlemanly if I levelled the field a little?
’ In a heartbeat, Lord Huntingly pulled his open-necked shirt over his head and reclined back against the breakfast table, wearing only his breeches and boots.
Josephine flushed flame-red as she had little choice but to face his honey-toned chest and tangible warmth. She pressed back into the mantle behind her, wondering if the poker was within reach.
‘So now, Miss Fairfax, you may observe at your leisure the gentleman to whom you are making an offer.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘It is a somewhat terrifying sight, is it not, a form that is less than perfect? Feel free to leave when you have looked your fill, for I will not stand in your way.’
Josephine inhaled as she glanced across his chest, tracked by long white scars, towards his left arm.
She swallowed. The newspaper had described the duel as a bloody affair, but his arm, while usable, was corded in the thickest welt of angry scarring she’d ever seen.
He looked truly battle-worn, and she tried not to conjure the moment the injuries had occurred, or the fate of his opponent.
‘I beg to differ, sir,’ she replied in a steady voice.
‘I do not look for perfection, and I consider a person without scars is one who has barely lived. It is our blemishes and imperfections that define us, not the opposite.’ Then, before she could change her mind, she reached up to remove her spectacles and look straight at the semi-clad lord.
Instantly, the background of the room disappeared into a blur of shapes and colours, as was usual with her sight condition, but His Lordship’s face remained clear.
She lifted her chin, and waited for his inevitable disappointment or indifference, but his expression only seemed to soften.
She took a deep breath. ‘I may not be my sister’s equal in appearance or temperament, my lord, but as neither of these things were specifically detailed, I assumed they were less important than my name…
And, unless your opponent was murdered in cold blood, it will take more than a few battle scars to scare me,’ she added, replacing her spectacles.
There was a moment’s silence while Lord Huntingly regarded Josephine, his eyes never leaving her face, before he pulled his shirt back over his head.
‘You are deceptive, Miss Fairfax,’ he drawled.
‘I had you pegged as a bluestocking do-gooder, but now…’ He frowned as he shook out the sleeves of his shirt and buttoned the neck more respectably.
‘Tell me,’ he began, his tone gentler than before.
‘What’s prompted this course of action? Is my reputation so very ghastly among the Fairfaxes? ’
‘No, not at all,’ Josephine replied carefully, ‘and the idea was mine alone. But, in truth, there’s little that can be said or done to induce Matilda to marry you willingly – and I am quite certain that even the knowledge that she is promised could make her run to the ends of the earth.’
At this, the bemused Huntingly gave a shout of laughter. ‘Good Lord! And so you’re the sacrificial lamb? I’m not sure I think much of the rest of your sisters for letting you face the fire alone, or did you draw lots?’ he enquired, visibly shaking with mirth.
‘Well, no.’ Josephine frowned, concerned that any gentleman should find his own terrible reputation quite so amusing.
‘No one else knows I’m here, and I would be in awful trouble if they did.
I offer myself in Matilda’s place because…
’ Her voice trailed off as she stared at his gleaming eyes, noticing a fiery ring of amber around his irises for the first time.
What did they indicate? A passionate nature that could kill a man and disappear for years, before confronting a lone female with the scars of his misadventures?
The faded newspaper report of a murderous lord, who disappeared abroad after a bloody duel, reached through her thoughts. It was followed swiftly by a vision of the thorn-choked fountain on his front lawn, and she closed her eyes to suppress a shiver.
‘I offer myself because I am not like Matilda, or expected to make a match at all,’ she forced calmly, ‘so if it’s just the name you’re after, you might as well have me!’
She pushed her chin in the air defiantly but was conscious her chest felt tighter than it had in a long while, that this was the moment to which she’d been building, that he could still say no and it would all have been for nothing.
There was a protracted pause when she thought he might laugh again, but instead he only regarded her quizzically.
‘Well then, Miss…’
‘Josephine,’ she supplied quietly.
‘Well then, Miss Josephine Fairfax, you intrigue me and, as “nothing on this earth will induce Matilda to marry” me, I say we throw our lots in together and make the most of it.’ He held up a hand as Josephine tried to interject.
‘I may not yet have had the pleasure of meeting your sister,’ he added, amber sparking in his eyes, ‘but you make a very strong point, and your selflessness in offering to take her place when faced with such a monstrous predicament … pleases me. In short, Miss Josephine Fairfax, I accept.’