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"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash you clean of your sins? Come now, Will. After you'd got all my hopes up, you might as well tell me why I'm to be disappointed. Besides, I've beat you fair and square, and you owe me a forfeit."
The marquess bent a withering look upon his sister which she met with perfect equanimity, being immune to the devastating force of his personality. Knowing that she'd plague him until she was satisfied and fully aware that fabrications would be a waste of breath, he gave in and told her. Not everything, but enough to make her understand. When he was done, she gave a little whistle of surprise that made him wince. Plague take her! When would she ever learn to behave like a lady?
"Egad, Will," she cried. "You gave up because you thought she was too much for you to handle?"
"I thought the effort required was excessive," he replied dampeningly. "I don't want a wife who requires so much managing."
"Or one who might manage you is more like it. Lud, you're a greater fool even than I thought, to give up such a jewel for so paltry a reason. But it's just as well, I suppose. It's obvious you never intended to mend your ways on her account, and that would leave me to comfort her while you were out leaping from one poxy bed to the next. Well then, I suppose I should be thankful Basil opened up your eyes, if he spared me that unpleasant duty. Obliging of him, wasn't it?"
Her brother made no reply. He found his sister exceedingly tiresome today. He gave her one last cold, haughty stare and exited from the room.
"Yes, very obliging," Jess muttered to herself as she played absently with a billiard ball. "And what, I wonder, makes him such a philanthropist all of a sudden? Wretched, interfering beast."
***
"Egad, Maria," said Harry Deverell, as he strolled with his wife along the very same sheltered path two couples had trod several days before. "You haven't any scruples, have you? Half the servants spying for you, the other half spying for Clementina—and then to wring family secrets from Jess after using her brother so unconscionably. Really, my lady."
"But my love, when I saw her out in the garden stomping back and forth in such a temper, I was so afraid she'd catch her gown against the rose bushes and shred it to pieces. I only asked her if she was feeling poorly from the heat when immediately she launched into a perfectly exhausting catalog of her brother's flaws of character. Then, quite on her own—for really, I never prodded her in the least—she told me what Will had told her."
"So Basil frightened him off, did he? Well, I must say your confidence in the wretch proves to have been very well placed. Randolph, Will, even the great debt—all dispatched in less than a week. Amazingly efficient, isn't he, once he sets his mind to something? No wonder Henry Latham speaks so highly of him."
"Yes, dear. But it's the setting his mind in the first place that's so fatiguing. So obstinate, you know."
"Ah, well. He's used to doing just as he pleases. When you think what a way he has with the ladies—why, they're mere clay in his hands—it's no surprise he can't bring himself to settle on one."
Lady Deverell sighed in sorrowful agreement. "Ah, yes. You charming wretches. It is such great sport for you to play fast and loose with our tender feminine hearts"
"Yes, madam. Great sport indeed. Speaking of which, is this the romantic site you told me of? The scene of stolen interludes, jealous hearts, tears, and I don't know what else?"
They had, in fact, reached the site of recent highly charged events—the place, in short, where Lord Arden had attempted to compromise his Intended. Lord Deverell, having been obliquely accused of certain sporting instincts and furthermore seeing that the place was altogether satisfactory in every respect, determined to live up to the accusation and swept his wife into his arms. That vulnerable creature being, as she'd hinted, no proof against such wicked masculine wiles, gave herself with a low chuckle over to the conqueror.
Chapter Eighteen
If anyone deserved a good night's sleep, it was himself. Yet Mr. Trevelyan was strangely reluctant to take himself to bed. He took another turn in the garden, and then another, but the cool fragrance of the country night did not soothe him. It had, after an hour's aimless pacing, only brought back vividly another garden far away and another night many weeks ago...and a pair of startled green eyes, searching his face.
He'd felt those eyes reproachfully upon him today and had been quite unable to meet them. He should have told her. It had been unkind—at the least—to leave her in the dark. But to see her arrive at that inn on Will's arm...well, in a matter of minutes, Basil had gone from jealous rage to guilt and back again. Yet, he'd been very high-handed with her—the more so because he knew he was to blame. Had he confided in her before he left, she could easily have found a way to put Will off.
But no. He'd been all in a dither then, too—because she'd proved, once and for all, how helplessly besotted he was, and because she'd laughed at him just when he was on the brink of confessing it.
He turned and made his way back to the house. Another long, lonely night then. Only this time he'd better think, and to the point. He'd have to speak to her tomorrow. "And say what, you great ass?" queried a mocking voice in the back of his head. "What do you think she'll believe now?"
***
Alexandra sat up and pounded her pillow, though her anger was hardly the pillow's fault. It was, however, an inanimate object upon which she might vent her frustrations with impunity—though it would have been ever so much more satisfactory to be pounding upon Mr. Trevelyan's head and tearing out his tawny hair by the clumpfuls.
For the tenth or twentieth time since she'd retired for the night, she flung herself back down upon the bed and closed her eyes. And for the tenth or twentieth time she cursed the day she'd met him.
The fact was that, like a great many other people whose prayers the gods have answered, Miss Ashmore was wishing she'd worded her orisons more carefully. True, being in love with the man, she must be overjoyed that he'd returned safe and sound. The problem was that, in returning not only unscathed but unchanged and therefore unimproved, he made her feel like an idiot. Virtually everything she'd thought and done from the minute she'd met him had been wrong. She'd driven herself distracted, trying to manipulate her father and Will by turns and had succeeded only in twisting herself deeper into a quagmire. From which Basil had, with hardly a second's thought, extricated her. A snap of his fingers and Randolph, Papa, George Burnham, and Will were all disposed of simultaneously.
There she'd been, plotting and worrying by day, worrying and weeping by night—a prodigious waste of energy. She was a fool. Her brains must have rotted away in the sultry Mediterranean climate.
Look at her prowling about the house and grounds all day today by herself, hoping like a sentimental goose that he'd come to her. Then what? Fall to his knees declaring that he did it all because he loved her? And in some treacly way straight out of a fairy tale, swear always to be faithful because now he'd found his one, his only, his true love at last.
Faithful, indeed. It was all a game to him, to play with others' lives. Hadn't Aunt Clem said it? It was a matter of pride with him to succeed completely in whatever he undertook, "particularly if it is something devious." All of this meant no more to him than what he'd done when he was abroad. Why confide in her? Why bother even to talk to her? She was only another of his pawns. Now he'd tied up all the loose ends he'd be gone again. Back to London and his usual dissipations.
If only he could go out of her life as well. But she was going to London herself in another two days, where she'd have to endure a Little Season, catching glimpses of him now and then at some party or other, watching him dance and flirt and reduce
other ladies to inbecility. Doubtless she'd hear as well of much worse, for the gossips of London were indefatigable. No matter was too small for their prying eyes and malicious tongues.
That sort of thing she didn't need to witness or be told of. She was already jealous of the hundreds of young women she imagined in his arms because, fool that she was, she wanted him all to herself. How she'd missed him! But when she felt the tears starting in her eyes, she quickly took herself in hand. She would not weep another instant over him.
The clock in the hall struck one. Good grief! Nearly two hours she'd lain here making herself mad. Enough. If she couldn't sleep, at least she could read. There was always the interminable Clarissa, and she had finally got to the last volume. As she was getting up, about to light the candle on her bedstand, she remembered that she'd left the book downstairs in the library last evening. Well, no help for it then. She must either go down and get it or stay here and madden herself all night.
She crawled out of bed, pulled on her dressing gown, stubbed her toe on a footstool, and stumbled against the bedpost, but eventually got out of the room. Quietly and very cautiously—not wanting any more bruises—she made her way downstairs and groped along the hall. Having narrowly missed collision with the heavy table that stood by the library door, she found the door handle and opened the door.
Light. There was light in the room, and it was occupied. A single candle burned in a silver holder upon an elegant mahogany table. The soft candlelight bathed the room in a dreamlike, golden glow, and lounging at his ease on the great leather sofa was Mr. Trevelyan.
He was fully dressed except for his coat, which was draped over a nearby chair. His neckcloth dangled carelessly, and his tawny hair, glinting gold like new-minted coins under the soft light, was tousled—the result, no doubt, of being raked with his fingers. Even now he ran his hand through it as though bedevilled by something.
