Surrender To A Scoundrel (2 page)

She knelt beside her friend. “I’m so sorry, Penny.”

Penelope continued to weep inconsolably, while Evelyn fought to bury her own distress and pat the dirt down hard on top of it. She would
not
let herself give in to the idea that she was hurt by any of this. She would
not
. What just happened was no surprise. She knew what kind of boy he was and had warned Penelope about it beforehand. Martin was wild and dangerous. He was not worthy of anyone’s adulation.

She laid a comforting hand on Penelope’s shoulder.

“You tried to tell me,” Penelope sobbed, “but I
wouldn’t listen. I just wouldn’t hear it, but you were right all along. He
is
a scoundrel. A despicable, vile, loathsome cad! I hate him!”

She broke into another fit of sobs.

“You’ll be all right,” Evelyn said gently. “You’ll get over this.”

“Will I? How? I loved him, Evelyn! Loved him! He was the only man in the world for me, and now I’ll be brokenhearted for the rest of my life! Oh, I don’t want to live! I should drown myself in the river to night! Then maybe he’ll regret what he did to me.”

“You’re not going to drown yourself,” Evelyn said firmly. “He’s not worth it.”

Penelope hiccuped. “You’ve said that before, but you don’t understand, Evelyn. You don’t know what it feels like to be madly in love! You’re far too sensible. You have no idea what I’m going through!”

Evelyn gazed intently into her friend’s weepy eyes for a moment, saw the unabashed despair in them, and wanted to shout back at her with fury and inform her that yes, she did understand. More than Penelope could ever know.

But she did not shout those words because she knew that Penelope was right on one level. Evelyn was indeed sensible. Too sensible to ignore her firm prudence and allow herself to surrender completely to her emotions. And thank God for that. After to night, she would work even harder
to be prudent, because she could never again put herself in the path of such peril. She did not want to end up like Penelope, weeping her heart out over a rake like Martin who didn’t deserve her tears.

“No one could possibly know how devastated I am,” Penelope sobbed. “He doesn’t love me! Oh, why didn’t he love me? What’s wrong with me?”

Evelyn shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong with you. You’re a beautiful girl, and someone else is going to sweep you off your feet again before you know it.”

“No, I’ll never love again. I’ll enter a convent.”

Evelyn sighed and stood up, helping Penelope to her feet. “Come on, let’s get you home. You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.”

“I’ll never feel better. My life is over.”

But Evelyn knew her friend. She
would
get over this, and she would fall in love again, too, probably with the very next young man who flattered her. That was Penelope. She was openly passionate, she enjoyed attention, and the young men certainly enjoyed giving it to her.

Thankfully, Penelope found the strength to stand and walk, and Evelyn put an arm around her to lead her home.

D
uring the week that followed, Evelyn and Penelope waited anxiously for a shrill whistle to blow in their direction or for some official representative of the school to demand an appointment with their parents. But no such whistle blew, nor did they hear a word about a bedroom scandal at Eton. Though they supposed such scandalous happenings were quietly swept under the school carpets, especially when they involved the younger brother of a duke.

Hence, they spent the week doing nothing out of the ordinary—wandering in and out of local shops with their mothers, who had been friends since childhood. They sipped tea and ate scones
in Penelope’s garden, reading and going for leisurely walks along the riverbank before dinner.

Thankfully Penelope’s tears flowed less and less as the week pressed on, and by the end of it, she was regarding Lord Martin Langdon as the most despicable boy in Windsor, claiming she had no idea how
any
girl could consider him handsome, for his hair was always in disarray, and he was a rake of the worst order, destined for failure in every regard, not to mention that he had a most unattractive smile.

Evelyn knew very well that his smile was by far his best feature, nothing short of disarming to any female within a ten-yard radius, but naturally she did not argue the point with Penelope. She instead agreed wholeheartedly and assured her that she was quite right on every front. It seemed as if the whole scandalous affair had indeed blown over.

At the end of the week, however, when it came time for Evelyn and her mother to go home, she discovered with some alarm that the storm had not passed at all—for there she was, standing on the platform at the train station, barely five feet from Lord Martin Langdon himself.

Ten days had passed since she’d seen him in his bed, bare-chested and cursing at her, having just sat up beside a naked girl. Evelyn bit down on her lower lip and swallowed with difficulty.

“The train is late as usual,” her mother said,
checking her timepiece and taking a step forward to peer down the tracks. “Perhaps we should have had your father send the coach.”

Evelyn could not reply. She was too unnerved by the presence of Lord Martin beside her. Did he even know she was one of the intruders that night? And good Lord, was he staring at her? Or was she imagining it because she was completely obsessed with being caught?

She continued to stand on the platform, looking straight ahead while her heart hammered noisily in her chest, until she couldn’t take the stress of it any longer. She had to know if he was looking at her, so she discreetly turned her gaze in his direction.

To her utter horror, he
was
staring at her, squinting irritably with pure venom in his eyes.

Evelyn sucked in a quick breath and looked the other way. Good God, he
did
know.

“This is becoming ridiculous,” her mother said, checking her timepiece again and tapping her booted toe on the ground. “Stay here with the bags, dear. I’m going to ask the guard how much longer it will be.”

Before Evelyn could voice a protest, her mother was heading back into the station, leaving her completely alone on the platform.

Well, not completely alone. She was standing next to Lord Martin.

Evelyn wet her lips. Her heart raced madly as
she struggled to act casual. Could he see her chest heaving?

Then he did the unthinkable. He spoke.

“Well, well, well,” he slowly said, rocking back on his heels. “If it isn’t Miss Evelyn Foster.”

She felt her eyebrows fly up in shock. She hadn’t thought he’d known her name—because he never seemed to remember it—and he’d certainly never addressed her before or acknowledged an acquaintance, much less given her the slightest notion that he even knew she existed.

“Do you have any idea what havoc you caused?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder toward the station door, watching for her mother.

Evelyn fought to hide her unease and somehow managed to return his dry but heated gaze. “Havoc
I
caused? It’s
my
fault, is it, that you had a woman in your bed? Pardon me, but I beg to differ.”

She could hardly believe she was engaging in such an improper conversation. And with Lord Martin, no less.

His blue eyes—with their impossibly long, black lashes—narrowed. “It’s your fault I was
caught
, Miss Foster.”

All at once, the anxiety she was feeling turned to anger, because she hadn’t even wanted to be sneaking into his dormitory in the first place, and everything was
his
fault for being such a habitual
flirt and leading Penelope Steeves to believe he was in love with her!

Evelyn couldn’t contain herself. With all her many frustrations boiling up to the surface, she faced Lord Martin and narrowed her own gaze from under her thick spectacles. “I do beg your pardon, sir, but when a gentleman like you behaves inappropriately—leading an impressionable young lady to believe there is some genuine affection between you—that gentleman must accept the consequences of his actions.”

Martin gazed at her for a long, heated moment, then appeared almost amused, but not quite, for there was a perceptible bitterness about him when he scoffed.

“I beg
your
pardon, Miss Foster, but your friend has a head on her shoulders that is in working order, does she not? You and she both should have known it was unwise to sneak into a male dormitory, where women are strictly prohibited.”

Evelyn glared at him. “And what of the woman in your bed, sir? Where was
her
head?”

His mouth curled up in a patronizing grin. “
I don’t think you’d want to know.
”

Evelyn sucked in a breath. She didn’t know what he was implying exactly, but was quite sure it was beyond scandalous.

But heaven forbid he should think her frazzled by the remark, so she raised her chin, squared
her shoulders, and pretended she was unruffled. Though she had no idea what to say.

Martin clenched his jaw and faced forward again, evidently also at a loss for words.

They stood in silence for a few seconds, while Evelyn wallowed in her anger, for what right did he have to blame her for
his
indiscretion? He’d had a woman and a bottle of rum in his room during supper hour, for pity’s sake!

Evelyn checked over her shoulder to see if her mother would soon be returning, but she was still inside the station, chatting leisurely with a woman in a large hat.

As the seconds ticked by, the tension on the platform seemed to grow heavier than lead. She could feel it throbbing all around her, and before she knew what she was about, she was breaking the silence again and asking a question rather hesitantly. “What havoc was there, exactly, after you were caught?”

She shouldn’t have asked it, but she wanted to know if he had revealed her and Penelope’s involvement.

Because God forbid her father should get wind of it. She was enough of a nuisance to him as it was.

He looked at her and spoke with scorn. “I had to explain myself to the headmaster, who was unimpressed with me, to say the least, but that is nothing new. Today I am officially suspended from
school and will be forced to go and stay with my aunt in Exeter, and every day she will remind me that I am doomed to a life of complete and utter failure.” He squinted contemptuously down the tracks. “I’ll be counting the days until the school will take me back.
If
they take me back.”

“You’re not going home?” Evelyn asked. “To your brother? The duke?”

Lord Martin gave her a snide look and shook his head. “My brother prefers to let other people put me on the straight and narrow.”

Evelyn felt a stab of pity for him suddenly, for he appeared without support of any kind, and she had heard some rumors about his home, Wentworth Castle, being a rather dark and dismal place. But then she reminded herself that he had brought all this on himself. He made his own decisions to misbehave.

“Maybe you need to put
yourself
there,” she told him flatly.

Lord Martin grimaced, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “You are very self-righteous, aren’t you, Miss Foster?”

“And you, sir, are very rude.” She had never been so outspoken in her life.

He looked in the other direction, shaking his head dismissively, as if Evelyn were a complete dunderhead who knew nothing about the ways of the world.

She squeezed her reticule. It always hurt to feel
completely unappealing to young men, to say nothing of how it felt when the young man in question was Lord Martin. There were moments when she remembered how grateful she had been to him six years ago when he pulled her out of the freezing water and onto the ice. He had been only eleven years old, and she had thought him the greatest hero in the world. But now…

He was hardly a hero today. He was bitter and rebellious and didn’t seem to care about anything but his own selfish and irresponsible pleasures. He had sunk very low, and it was, in a word, heartbreaking, to see the hero of her childhood dreams waste the courage and gallantry she had seen in him that day on the lake.

He turned to her for one final word. “Don’t worry, Miss Foster, I didn’t expose you or your friend. I told the headmaster I had no idea who you were, and he seemed to believe me. He thinks he’s looking for a couple of boys.”

Evelyn squeezed her reticule in her hands again and felt rather sheepish all of a sudden. “Well, I suppose I should thank you for that, at least.”

He did not meet her gaze, and spoke with a cool reserve. “No need.”

Just then, Evelyn heard her mother’s heels clicking across the platform. “We shouldn’t have to wait too much longer,” she said, then pointed down the tracks. “Oh look, here it comes now.”

Evelyn leaned forward to see the steam train
approaching from a distance. Martin did not look her way again. He bent and picked up his bag, then strolled in the other direction.

A short time later, they were boarding the first-class carriages, of which there were two, thankfully. Evelyn was not surprised when Martin chose the one behind hers.

As soon as they were seated, her mother leaned close and said, “Wasn’t that Lord Martin Langdon, the Duke of Wentworth’s brother?”

Evelyn gazed out the window and tried to sound blasé. “Was it? I didn’t notice.”

“You didn’t notice, Evelyn?” her mother replied. “Surely you recognized him. He saved your life once, darling.”

Evelyn suspected her mother could see straight through her mask of indifference, but she retained it nonetheless. “Well, if it was him, he didn’t recognize me. It was a long time ago. I doubt he even remembers it.”

“Honestly, Evelyn. How could anyone forget pulling a little girl out of a frozen lake?”

Evelyn shrugged. “Well, maybe he does remember it. He just doesn’t know it was
me
.”

And something about that made her feel strangely lonesome.

Meanwhile, in the first-class carriage directly behind Evelyn’s, Martin was closing his eyes and tipping his head back on the upholstered seat,
wondering if that fall through the ice years ago was the reason Miss Foster had ice water in her veins.

Honestly, she was the most uptight, frosty, prudish girl he had ever met, always acting as if she didn’t know him, when she must remember that he had saved her life. How could she forget? Bloody hell, he hated the way she always looked down her nose at him, if she even bothered to meet his gaze at all. It didn’t matter what he said or did, she never said hello to him or gave him the slightest smile.

Not that it mattered, he told himself. Miss Foster could go strolling on a dozen more frozen lakes with thin ice if she was so inclined. He certainly wouldn’t try to stop her, because thanks to her and her foolish friend—what was her name? Penelope something?—he was going to have to spend the rest of the month bored out of his skull in Exeter, with an aunt who would constantly remind him that he was doomed to a life of failure.