The Lure of a Rake (18 page)

Not that she wished to. For even with the narrowing of her father’s eyes and the rage flashing in their depths, an unholy fury licked away at her senses. “He is seventy if he is a day, and you’d marry me off to mitigate a scandal?” She continued, not allowing him the opportunity to speak. “I am no longer the scared child you sent away, blindly obedient.” She jutted her chin. “I did nothing wrong and will not rush off and marry an old lord to appease you.” Or anyone. The decisions she made would be strictly with her own happiness and future in mind. No one else’s.

The leather groaned in protest as her father leaned forward. “You would reject his offer?” Shock coated his words. “When I’ve already assured him you would be agreeable to the match?” His mottled cheeks and furious eyes hinted at the thin thread of control he possessed.

Genevieve drew in a steadying breath and swallowed down a string of curses. Neither of her parents had appreciated or welcomed shows of spirit or temper. It was one of the reasons they’d so favored Gillian. Mayhap her father could be reasoned with. “I am…” Nauseous. “
Grateful
for the earl’s offer, however, we would not suit.” The least reason of which had to do with the fact that he was the same age as her own father and more to do with the domineering tendencies he’d exhibited with his daughters at their family’s picnics over the years. Those young women, nearly her age, were shadows of people and that is what she would become if she bound herself to that old lord.

“You would not suit?” Her father slashed the air with his hand. “You’ll have a title and respectability. What more do you require than that?”

There was a finality there that fanned her annoyance. Happiness be damned, he’d base his assurances on nothing more than his expectations that his daughters were both broodmares there to be auctioned off to the most respectable and highest bidder. She narrowed her eyes. “You did not even speak to me about what I wished—?”

His patience snapped in the form of a furious fist pounding the surface. “What you wish?” The papers leapt with the force of his movements and she jumped in time to them. “What you wish was forfeited five years ago, Genevieve.”

She continued, tenacious. “Allow me the funds you’ve settled on me when I reach my majority. I will leave you and Mother and you’ll not have to be constantly reminded of me.” And more, she could be free of him.

“The whispers will remain,” he shot back. “Nor would I be so imprudent as to give a young chit who has demonstrated such ill-judgment time and time again access to a single farthing.” The finality in his words reached up to his eyes and spoke of a man who’d run out of patience. Whether she was truly to blame or not, mattered not at all. It only mattered how it affected his name.

She set her jaw. “I am not marrying him.”

Her quiet pronouncement echoed around the office with the same force as if she’d screamed it from her lungs.

“Very well,” her father said, sitting back in his chair. He picked up his pen and proceeded to scribble onto the pages of his ledger.

Befuddlement creased her brow. “Very well?” Surely he’d not capitulate so easily? As long as she remembered, the Marquess of Ellsworth had been wholly unyielding and certainly never one to show weakness before his daughters.

“I cannot allow two of my daughters to remain without a single prospect.” Her father didn’t deign to pick his head up, but devoted his attention to the book before him. “I expect Tremaine will prefer your sister, anyway.”

A loud buzzing filled her ears. “What?” her question came as though down a long hall. Surely he’d not said… Surely she’d imagined…?

The marquess briefly glanced up. “The truth is, Tremaine never truly wanted you,” he said, raking an icy stare over her. Did he believe to hurt her with that admission? “He asked for your sister, but I expected she could make an advantageous match of her own. Where you…?” He gave his head a shake and diverted his attention to that page.

She shot to her feet. “No,” she gasped and again planted her hands on his desk. “What manner of father are you?” She’d sooner see her father dead than allow him to marry off her sister to that doddering lord.

He scoffed and at last looked up. “I’m not in a mood for your displays of emotion. One of you will marry.”

Moments ago, she’d lied to herself. There was someone whose happiness she’d put before her own—Gillian. His threat hung on the air between them. And she wanted to lash out at him. To spit in his face, and then send him and his prospective match to the devil where he could burn for being a faithless sire.

I cannot do this…
Except, meeting her father’s ruthless stare confirmed his resolve—he’d see one of his daughters married. “Please do not do this.” She curled her toes into the soles of her slippers. “Send me back to Grandfather,” she beseeched, hating that she’d been reduced to a desperate, pleading girl, as much as she hated the world in which women’s happiness mattered not at all amidst their cruel, contrived Society. “Gillian will find a proper husband. A man worthy of her.”

Her father stared at her for a long while, saying nothing, and hope stirred in her breast; hope that he’d let her go and she could carry on sketching and gardening without fear of recrimination or worry over what anyone said. But then, he sank back in his seat once more. “You’ll not be able to remain hidden with your miserable grandfather forever.” Miserable. The earl, even with his gruff edge, was warmer and more of a father than this man had ever been.

“But—”

“Tremaine will arrive later today to formally request your hand. Do I have your acceptance?”

Tell him no.
Tell him he can go to the devil…
She pressed her eyes closed. Ultimately, would Gillian have the same strength to reject their father’s efforts? A slow, painful acceptance settled around her belly.

When she’d been a small girl, she’d been tiptoeing back and forth over a fallen branch that extended out into her father’s lake. In one faulty misstep, she’d tumbled into the frigid water. Pulled down by her skirts, the water had muted her cries so all she heard was the panicky hum of silence and her own muffled screams. She’d fought her skirts, to scrabble her way back to the surface, choking and gasping until she’d grabbed that rough trunk and pulled herself back to safety. Her chest heaved in the same desperate rhythm of that long ago day.

“You may go,” Father said and dragged his ledgers forward.

There was a finality to his dismissal that numbed her. For if she wed Lord Tremaine, her spirit would die. She would become a lady to breed him babes and adorn his arm as a proper societal matron and the light would go out until all that remained was a shadow of a person…like her mother.

With stiff movements, Genevieve stood. “You may go to hell,” she seethed and took an unholy glee in the way he sputtered.

When she’d stepped out into the hall and had the safety of a closed door panel between them, Genevieve tore down the corridor. She raced so quickly through the halls, her lungs strained from the pace she’d set. Distance between herself and the future had laid before her, she collapsed against the wall. Her chest rose and fell and she borrowed support.

In all her reservations of returning to London, she’d been riddled with anxiety about being the focus of Society’s attentions. Never, had she anticipated…this. This absolute and total disregard for her wishes, and hopes, and dreams harkened to feudal times where daughters were chattel. A bitter-sounding laugh bubbled past her lips. But then, isn’t that what women ultimately were? Their interests and desires mattered not, but rather the wealth attached to their name. Gentlemen wanted docile, biddable wives to give them babes while they carried on as they pleased.

She pressed her eyes closed as her breathing settled into a calm, even rhythm. Given her father’s determination, nothing short of a miracle would prevent him from going forward with binding her to Lord Tremaine and Genevieve had long ago given up on—

“There you are, my lady.” The faintly out-of-breath tones of her father’s normally unflappable butler brought her eyes flying open. “You’ve a visitor.” She cocked her head. At this hour? No fashionable visits were made at this time. “Your maid has been searching for you. I’ve asked the gentleman to await you in the Blue Parlor—”

Her heart sank to her toes. “A visitor,” she repeated, her voice blank. As the butler spoke, her thoughts rolled together. The earl would come and put his formal offer to her and her father would expect nothing but her acceptance.
I cannot do this. I cannot…

“My lady?”

She blinked slowly. With the butler staring perplexedly at her, she turned and marched onward to the Blue Parlor. She reached the edge of the doorway and nausea roiled in her belly. To steady her trembling fingers, she smoothed them down the front of her gray skirts. Yes, nothing short of a miracle would save her now. Schooling her features, Genevieve stepped inside. “Lord Tr…” Her greeting trailed off, as her gaze landed on a tall, broadly powerful, well-muscled gentleman who was most assuredly
not
the aging earl. “You,” she blurted.

Standing at the empty hearth, with his hands clasped at his back, Cedric, the Marquess of St. Albans, turned slowly. The patently rakish, and more than slightly charming, grin on his lips kick-started her heart. “Me.” He winged up a golden eyebrow. “Were you expecting another?” All the trepidation and horror at her father’s goals for her momentarily lifted. And for whatever reason that Cedric found his way in her home now, she would be eternally grateful in ways he’d never know or understand for the distraction he presented from the hellish situation her father would impose.

Avoiding his question, she slipped further into the room. “I am sorry,” she murmured. “I did not expect…” She bit off those additionally revealing words. She’d been closeted away in the country for so long she’d ceased to be the young lady to masterfully handle exchanges. Drawing in a deep breath, she shoved aside apologies for who she was. “I am surprised to see you here,” she admitted with an honesty that deepened his grin and set off a dangerously familiar fluttering in her belly, momentarily obliterating the horrifying intentions her father had for her.

He took another step closer and waggled his eyebrows. “A good surprised, Genevieve?”

She’d wager there was no other kind where this dangerously skillful rake was concerned. “Indeed,” she conceded with a smile of her own.

For, when Cedric, the Marquess of St. Albans, was around, she ceased to be the sorrowful, lonely creature she’d been all these years. She recalled how to smile, laugh, and talk again. Genevieve knew not why or how he elicited those carefree feelings inside her, better suiting the naïve girl she’d once been.

She only knew—she enjoyed it.

C
edric really should be focused on the business that had forced him out of bed and into a respectable home at this ungodly hour. Yet, Genevieve Farendale had a smile to rival the song of a siren at sea, and as she settled her willowy frame into the King Louis XIV chair beside him, he froze, fixed on the sharp angles of her face, accentuated by the tightly drawn back strawberry blonde tresses. Desire ran through him. For with the passionate embraces they’d shared, he’d had a glimpse of those strands loose about her shoulders and was riveted with the possibility of seeing them fanned upon his pillow.

He took the seat nearest hers. And all of a sudden, a marriage of convenience presented more enticing for altogether different possibilities; ones that had nothing to do with the properties he’d acquire and freedom from his father’s machinations.

At his scrutiny, a pretty blush stained her cheeks. “What is it?” She patted that hideous chignon.

How very honest she was. That reminder drew him back to the reason for his visit. A woman who did not skirt or dance about words and inquiries was a perfectly practical creature who’d see the benefit of his offer.

Cedric stretched his legs out before him and hooked them at the ankles. “You were expecting another,” he observed, studying her through hooded lashes.

A sea of emotions paraded across her face; none of which he could sort out. She cast a hopeful look to the door. Alas, her maid, God love the woman, remained perfectly absent. When Genevieve returned her attention to him, she spoke hesitantly. “Yes.” She paused. “No.” Four endearing creases marred her brow. “Does it matter?” she turned a question, instead.

Carefully, Cedric tugged off one glove and then the other. He beat them together. “Yes, I rather believe it does.” It mattered for the plans he had for them together and not because of the pebble in his belly at the prospect of a suitor come to call. “Who is he?” he drawled, infusing a deliberate boredom into that inquiry, even as tension gripped him.

The lady’s smile slipped. Did she take umbrage with his bold questioning or that affected boredom? “I would rather not discuss him,” she said softly, glancing down at her folded hands.

The ladies he associated with, really no ladies at all, but bold, wicked creatures, would have, no doubt, taken his question as one borne of jealousy and delighted in goading him for it. With her truthful response, Genevieve was a manner of woman he did not have any experience in dealing with, and searching through his years of experience in enticing a lady, came up…empty.

Cedric dropped his half-grin, and uncrossed his ankles and sat upright. “Very well, then. Shall we discuss Aumere?” He asked the question that had dogged his thoughts from the moment she’d fled the countess’ dining table, until now.

Her lips twisted in a smile that was more a grimace than anything. “And I’d rather discuss him even less.”

This pressing need to know redoubled at her vague non-response. He folded his arms at his chest and continued to stare. “Did the gentleman offend you in some way?” Tension thrummed through his veins.

With a total lack of artifice, she dropped her chin into her hand. “Why should it matter to you?” she asked instead with a soft curiosity in her tone.

He shrugged. “It shouldn’t,” he said honestly and the lady stiffened. “Yet, it does.”