No Marriage of Convenience (3 page)

Mason glanced back at the woman, who’d stopped a few feet in front of his desk.

She inclined her head politely. Her perfume, an enticing concoction, wafted toward him.

Try as he could to discern her expression, he found most of her features were artfully hidden under the wide brim of her hat. He could see her face was made up, but
where other women might use such devices to hide flaws, he could see her layers only attempted to hide the perfection beneath.

The powders and paints did little to conceal the fullness of her lips, the gentle curve of her cheeks and finally the mysterious languid pools of her green eyes as she stole a glance at him.

Before he could stutter out a greeting, she turned to her companion and held out her hand. The man bowed and with great precision and ceremony drew a familiar-looking blue packet of papers from within his tunic and handed them to his mistress.

Mason knew exactly what that meant. Those blue papers could only be one thing—warrants of collection.

He’d obviously underestimated the local creditors.

They’d taken to hiring women to dun their more recalcitrant debtors.

He was loath to confess it but he should be congratulating them. She was enough to entice a man to give her anything and everything he possessed.

Her companion came to stand behind her, his legs spread in a wide stance, his posture like a rod of iron, his arms crossed over his chest.

One hand, Mason noted, rested idly on the hilt of his blade. Apparently if she failed, her warrior friend added his own form of persuasion to the transaction.

He turned his attention back to the intriguing woman before him and tried to put on the blandest expression he could muster.

“Uh, will you have a seat?” he asked, waving at a chair. The lady smiled toward Cousin Felicity, who, Mason noted wryly, had reclaimed her place on the settee and was searching frantically through her embroidery basket.

More than likely looking for her spectacles, he wagered silently.

“Thank you,” the lady murmured, as she perched on the edge of the chair.

Mason sat as well, relieved to have the support of Freddie’s solid and expensive furniture.

She shifted slightly, and raised her head, the plumes in her hat fluttering back and forth above the brim as she revealed her emerald gaze to him.

A shade of green so clear, Mason knew he would never forget it.

Like the verdant blush of the Christ Church meadow on an April morning, like a—

He stopped himself from waxing any further into poetics. Why, he never indulged in such fanciful thoughts and he could only cringe at what had possessed him now—probably the last vestiges of Freddie’s unwanted influence haunting the room.

Then again, perhaps he should have listened to Frederick a little more often. His brother would have known what to say…

Though that innate knowledge of witty forte, Mason reminded himself, was what had gotten the Ashlins in this predicament in the first place.

He resorted to cool indifference. “May I help you?”

The lady smiled, a winsome pretty gesture that almost unraveled Mason’s resolve.

“Why, yes,” she said. “Though I have a rather personal matter to discuss with you, my lord and you alone.” She inclined her head ever so slightly toward Cousin Felicity.

A personal matter
.

Those three words tossed all his musings aside in an icy dash of reality.

Oh, she was a bill collector, of a sort. More likely, she
had come for the rents owing on her town house and her unpaid millinery bills. Just like the others.

The angelic lady could be nothing less than another of his brother’s mistresses. Yet even as he came to this logical conclusion, he still couldn’t help shake the notion that there was something very different about this one, something almost too fine for the fickle vagaries of high priced prostitution.

“Whatever you have to say, can be said in front of me. There are no secrets in this house,” Cousin Felicity piped in, as she continued searching for her spectacles.

Mason knew there was no evicting his cousin now. She might love a trip to the dressmaker’s, but there was nothing like a good piece of gossip to make Cousin Felicity’s day.

He nodded for the young woman to continue. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to enlighten his dewy-eyed cousin as to how her faultless Frederick dallied away the Ashlin fortune.

“It has come to my attention that there is a matter of an unpaid debt between us,” the woman began.

Mason shook his head. “A debt? I certainly doubt that. We’ve never met.”

“You are the Earl of Ashlin, are you not?”

He nodded, thinking her voice held a magical quality, drifting through the room like notes from Pan’s flute, striking the chords of his unsettled soul.

Poetics again? Gad sakes!

He needed to get back to Oxford as soon as possible before he found himself composing bad sonnets and dressing himself like one of those self-styled idiotic Romantics.

She folded her hands in her lap and shifted once again, another delicate breeze of perfume floating toward him, creating havoc with his senses. He struggled to keep his mind on the matter at hand, but her fragrance did nothing
except fuel his earlier musings of her clad only in a chemise.

And if she had been his brother’s mistress, she’d probably spent most of her time in a lot less.

She let out a pretty little sigh. “I recently learned you are having…well, how does one put it? Some difficulties. So I’ve come to repay part of the money I owe you.”

“
You owe me
?” Mason wasn’t quite sure he had heard the woman correctly. He was either still asleep or going stark raving mad like the eighth Earl of Ashlin. As far as he knew, beautiful women didn’t just arrive in one’s study claiming to owe one money.

“Well, I cannot pay it back all at once, but I do have a partial payment.” With an artful grace, she drew out a pouch from within her lace-trimmed décolletage and offered it to him.

Later Mason told himself that it was the lure of sudden wealth that made him bound to his feet and hastily walk around his desk toward her outstretched hand.

This Ashlin would never admit that what truly pulled him toward her was a wrenching desire to fill his senses with the closeness of her intoxicating scent. Nor would he admit how his fingers itched to hold the velvet purse still warm from its hiding spot between her perfectly shaped breasts.

But then, Mason was still working on this new family image, and honesty could come later.

“Thank you,” he said, as he took the offered bounty. The bag weighed heavily in his hand, and from the feeling, he knew it contained good English gold.

Enough to give him some respite from Frederick’s creditors, until out of the corner of his eye he saw Cousin Felicity furiously shaking her head.

She was right, he realized, it wasn’t good to appear too
eager. He paused and chastised himself silently.

He had more business sense than that. At least he’d had a measure of it before this lady had entered his study.

What kind of man was he becoming, when he was willing to take money from his brother’s ex-mistress?

Ignoring the enticing warmth in his hand and the mountain of notes behind him, Mason handed the pouch back to the woman.

“I can’t accept this. Whatever
understanding
you had with my brother, it ended with his death. It is not my place to interfere with his liaisons,” Mason stated, returning to the relative safety of his desk.

The woman looked first at him and then to his cousin. Confusion fluttered over her partially concealed features, and for a moment, Mason thought she was about to cry.

Lord, not more tears
, he thought. Cousin Felicity’s daily deluges were bad enough.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

“My lord, I think you are
very
mistaken.” Her tone held an icy edge, her words firm. “I don’t know anything about liaisons with your brother. The moment I learned of your difficulties, I came straightaway. This debt is one I fully intend to repay.” Standing up, she walked over to the desk and deposited the pouch, as luck would have it, on top of the more pressing bills.

During her speech, Mason noticed something odd about her voice, something which had escaped him earlier. She spoke each word with deliberate diction. Hardly the purring tones of a mistress in search of a new source of income.

They sat in silence once again, until Cousin Felicity spoke up. “My dear girl, when was the last time you were with Lord Ashlin?”

Mason could have sworn Frederick’s mistress blushed
like a virgin beneath her layers of powder at his cousin’s indecent inquiry.

“My lady, I’ve never met Lord Ashlin. That is, until now.” The woman smiled politely at Mason.

If she had never met Frederick, then she had never been his mistress…and if she’d never been his mistress that meant…Mason cleared his throat as he tried to brush aside his errant thoughts.

It meant nothing!

“If we have never met, and you never knew my brother, Freddie, I’m unsure how you can owe me money.”

The lady opened her packet of papers, and pulled out a document. “Perhaps this will refresh your recollection.”

Mason quickly scanned the paper, which she’d laid before him, recognizing the contract instantly.

A partnership agreement with R. Fontaine. Frederick had lent this woman an immeasurable sum to finance a new play at the Queen’s Gate Theatre.

“You are the Fontaine mentioned here?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Madame Fontaine, at your service.”

Cousin Felicity, who’d finally found her spectacles, promptly dropped them at this introduction, groping about the floor in a very unladylike fashion until she’d located them at the Saracen’s feet. Hastily, she shoved the lenses up on the bridge of her button nose and stared at the woman and her servant as if they were a pair of new curiosities bound for the Royal Zoo.

Mason tried to ignore his cousin’s gaping and turned his attention back to his guest. “And you say
I
lent you this money?”

“Yes. Don’t you remember? I know it may not seem a great amount to a man of your means and generosity, but the circumstances and conditions of the agreement must at least stand out.”

Mason returned to his review of the document.

“Are you truly Madame Fontaine?” Cousin Felicity asked excitedly.

“Yes, my lady.”

“And is that Hashim?”

The woman smiled again. “Yes, this is my servant, Hashim.”

“You played Helen in
Love’s Fancy
!” Cousin Felicity had gotten to her feet and stood before the woman, peering unabashedly into her face. “No wonder I didn’t recognize you! You don’t look anything in person like you do on stage—why it is amazing—you are even more beautiful than when you played Confite in
The Lost Minuet
. Mason, we’re famous! Madame Fontaine is here! In our study. Is it true you slept with the Prince and his entire regiment of Guards in one evening?”

“Cousin Felicity!” Mason found himself shouting, as he jumped to his feet. “Where are your manners?”

Madame Fontaine glanced over her shoulder at her servant as if to give him a signal not to silence Cousin Felicity with one stroke of his deadly blade for her incredible tactlessness.

“I’m afraid that rumor is slightly exaggerated,” the lady demurred.

His cousin appeared visibly disappointed.

“Felicity, apologize this instant to our guest,” he told her.

“But you don’t understand,” Cousin Felicity said. She turned to Madame Fontaine, and began apologetically, “He’s been in
Oxford
.” She made it sound like he’d been living in some Hottentot village in the darkest reaches of Africa, instead of at the intellectual center of England. Before he could stop her, Felicity rushed over to the lady’s
servant. “Is it true your tongue was torn from your mouth by the Pasha of Cairo himself?”

For the first time since the man had entered the room, Mason detected a hint of emotion in Hashim’s grim features. His obsidian eyes glittered with what could have only been described as amusement.

“Oh, is it true?” Cousin Felicity asked again.

Hashim opened his mouth and answered Cousin Felicity’s question by allowing her a look past his lips.

For about two seconds Cousin Felicity peered into the giant man’s mouth, then let out a bloodcurdling scream and promptly collapsed in a dead faint into Hashim’s arms.

Mason fell back into his seat and wondered how his day could get any worse.

Madame Fontaine, or Riley, as her friends called her, fanned the prostrate woman with her handkerchief, praying the Earl’s cousin would recover from her fright. Hashim had deposited his victim on a red velvet settee, while Lord Ashlin poured the lady a drink from the nearby tray of spirits.

As she continued her fanning, Riley hoped this little interlude distracted Lord Ashlin from looking too closely at the fine print on their contract.

That was exactly why she’d trussed herself up in this damned dress—to keep his lordship too busy to do anything other than ogle her—for it certainly wasn’t comfortable being crammed into some infernal corset. And to make matters worse, she was sure she was going to catch her death with the amount of skin she had exposed.

But Aggie, her long-time partner, had assured her she looked divinely distracting.

All she knew was that it took a lot less to divert the
tradesmen to whom she owed money, so this costume should have guaranteed the Earl’s attention would be beguiled into less of a financial direction.

He was an Ashlin, after all. Certainly not the dashing man about town Aggie had described, but then again, Aggie hadn’t told her their former indulgent patron was dead.

She stole another glance at him. There was something different about this man—something Riley wasn’t too sure of—a feeling that left her unsettled.

“Fashionable” was a description the man would never earn—for he wore his golden brown hair in an old-fashioned queue like some Colonial merchantman. His clothing, a dark coat and plain white shirt and cravat, befitted a local printer, not the Earl of Ashlin.