“What are you doing?” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth, his mouth straining in a smile he did not at all feel.
But he did not want to ruin things for Frances, not when she had done so much for his cousin and, indeed, for countless charities in London and the countryside.
“I asked you to donate something,” Frances whispered back. “I asked you again and again, and you did not respond, or promised you would but never did. As such, you left me no choice but to putyouto auction.”
Hugo stared at her. “You cannot be serious.”
“Fifty pounds?” She glanced back at him, lowering her voice. “I am entirely serious. Besides, you might actually meet a lovely young lady you are interested in by participating. Do I hear sixty pounds?”
Turning his blurry gaze outward, he could not believe the sight that met his eyes: hands were shooting up everywhere, desperate mothers bidding with an eagerness and pace that left him chilled to the bone.
“It is only five outings,” Frances whispered in between calling out increasingly insane numbers. “You just have to be present for them. It is not like you have to marry the winner. And you did promise me that you would help.”
If it were anyone else making this request of him, ambushing him really, he would have walked off the stage by now. But since Frances had come into Dominic’s life, a man that Hugo thought of as a brother, he had become close to her too, thinking of her like a sister.
And Ididforget to give her something for the auction…
“You might have told me beforehand,” he argued, though he knew it was futile.
He was already on the stage. People were already bidding, higher and higher. There was no way out of this, not without breaking a promise to Frances, and not without inciting the wrath of his cousin, who would not be happy to witness Hugo destroying his wife’s charitable plans.
“Ididmention the auction when you arrived this afternoon,” Frances pointed out. “I just neglected to mention thatyouwere one of the prizes. Indeed, that was your last chance to offer something else, but you did not.”
He cringed inwardly, trying to come up with an excuse, but he had none; he only had himself to blame for this. Franceshadbothered him about a donation for weeks, to the point where he could picture where the letters were on his desk at home, asking what he was going to donate. He had continued to set them to one side, telling himself that he would get to them later.
Well, later had arrived, and now he had nothing to offer but himself.
“Do I hear two hundred and fifty pounds?” Frances asked, the bidding less eager than before.
Indeed, it was an extraordinary sum. It puffed Hugo’s pride somewhat to realize thathehad drawn the offer of such a large amount of money, though he could not see who had made the preceding bid.
It does not matter what they look like,he told himself.I should be polite and charming, regardless.After all, this was for charity and, as Frances had said, it was not as if he had to marry the winner. He just had to make sure that whoever won had a suitably pleasant time in his company until the five excursions were over.
The bidding slowed, seemingly a battle between two parties.
“Dare I ask for three hundred pounds?” Frances asked, her eyes wide, as if she could not believe it either.
From among the sea of rapt people, a hand shot up, not belonging to either of the parties who had been bidding fervently.
“Three hundred pounds!” a sweet voice called out, to the astonishment of the rest of the crowd.
Hugo’s eyes darted toward the commotion and closed the one that did not see much at all, so he might focus upon the woman. His eyebrows raised in surprise, for she was exceedingly pretty. Not at all the sort of lady who should need the help of an auction to gain the attention of a man. Yet, there was something strange in her expression, almost panicked. A look that he could not quite put his finger on.
“Oh, this is excellent,” Frances whispered, snapping Hugo’s attention away from the woman.
“Why is that?”
Frances grinned. “Well, my dear Hugo,youhave just been bought by the diamond of the Season.”
The diamond?He looked back at the woman, even more confused, for why on earth would she bid on him? If she had been chosen as the diamond, she could have had any gentlemen she liked without paying a single penny.
Something was amiss here… and he was more than a little curious to find out what. Perhaps this auction might be more exciting than he had first thought.
CHAPTER TWO
“What are you doing? Let go!”
Evelyn Bartlett, daughter of the Earl of Townshend, did not and would not let go of her friend Selina’s hand. She would not until she won this auction, though she really could not go above three hundred pounds. It was already everything she owned, everything she had scraped and saved over the twenty-two years of her life.
