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Johnny’s face flooded with pique as he glanced from her to Nicholas. “You can’t expect me to believe you’re out at this hour with a man of Ranelaw’s reputation and you’re not his mistress. For God’s sake, you look like you’ve just crawled from between his sheets. I’m not so wet behind the ears as I used to be, my lady.”
“I’ll box your blasted ears if you don’t show some respect,” Nicholas snarled, moving so close behind her that she felt like a mountain was about to tumble down on her head.
“For a man who claims no interest in the lady, you’re mighty proprietorial,” Johnny sniped back. It was the closest he’d verged to spirit, if one discounted his recklessness in proposing marriage to a woman he hadn’t seen in a decade.
“That’s it.” Nicholas brushed past Antonia and stalked toward Johnny.
“Stop it, both of you!” Antonia was suddenly sick of the whole farrago. She’d grumbled about the boredom of life as Cassie’s dowdy chaperone but right now, that dull existence seemed paradise. “I will not have you fighting like a pair of dogs snapping over a bone. It’s degrading.”
Both men turned to stare at her in shock. It was as if a cart horse had risen to make a maiden speech in the Commons.
“Antonia?” Johnny asked in bewilderment. Nicholas remained silent but the aggression drained from his expression.
“I don’t want to hear any more. I’m leaving. You can murder each other in peace then.” She leveled a glare upon her first lover. “Johnny, I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth. Once you’ve considered your proposal with a modicum of sense, you’ll be grateful for my refusal.”
She faced Nicholas and some of her angry self-righteousness ebbed. Nonetheless she managed a good imitation of a woman who knew what she wanted. “Lord Ranelaw, I appreciate your escort across the park. I bid you good day.”
With a swish of her skirts, she left both men standing. At this moment, she heartily consigned every member of the male sex to Hades.
Chapter Twenty-six
Ranelaw downed another brandy and just stopped himself flinging the delicate crystal glass into the unlit library grate. The act smacked too much of bloody Benton. The act betrayed too sharply how his belly had cramped with misery when he watched Antonia flounce away to a life sans the wicked Marquess of Ranelaw.
He felt anything but wicked right now. The heartless marquess felt bereft and alone and angry.
Oh, yes, he was angry, with the desperately held anger that kept mortal pain at bay.
Damn Antonia. Damn her, damn her, damn her.
Except the person who suffered the torments of the condemned wasn’t the woman who had briefly transformed his life into radiance. It was the selfish, careless rake.
The description rang humiliatingly hollow.
After warning that mongrel Benton to stay away from Antonia, he’d prowled back to his house. To what felt like a thousand hours to fill and not a servant within earshot. He’d planned for Antonia to linger through the day. But she’d left him. Meant to leave him for good, blast her.
This dark, empty room where he’d skulked all day seemed a bitter foretaste of the dark, empty years to come. His hand closed into a fist and he slammed it against the mahogany top of the sideboard, setting the decanters rattling.
Curse the witch. Didn’t she realize how precious that sensual delight was? How rare?
He ached for her. His need was throbbing physical pain. The excruciating longing wouldn’t subside, no matter how he lambasted Antonia.
The luscious, mysterious Lady Antonia Hilliard, only daughter of the late Earl of Aveson.
When Benton spilled that information, she’d been too flustered to notice the slip. Ranelaw had noticed, and he’d wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled.
Why the blazes was a woman from one of the nation’s greatest families playing nursemaid to henwit Cassie Demarest?
Even after Antonia’s father disowned her, she must have had relatives or friends to turn to. People to ensure her youthful indiscretion didn’t stir a whisper of gossip. People to see she took her rightful place in society. That worm Demarest had offered sanctuary, but in return he’d made her his drudge.
Ranelaw didn’t keep track of every blue-blooded family. But the Hilliards were famous, inescapable, their history entwined with the nation’s since the Norman Conquest. On their vast estates in wild, remote Northumberland, the Hilliards ruled like princes.
No wonder Antonia had refused his proposal. She probably considered him below her touch.
If she’d been a shred less honorable about her disgrace, Antonia Hilliard would be married with a gaggle of children by now. His gorge rose as he imagined her wed to another man, in bed with another man, carrying another man’s baby.
The Hilliards were noted for their riches, their pride, and their Nordic good looks. Good God, he should have realized who she was the instant he saw her unusual coloring. Silvery blonds with pale blue eyes marked the line. Her father, a major political figure until his death, had been a striking giant of a man, like an elegant Viking.
Hell, Ranelaw even knew her brother, Henry. They’d been at Oxford together, although the fellow was a year younger. Not that they’d run in the same circles. Young Viscount Maskell, Aveson’s heir, had been a studious cove, not a dissolute blade like Ranelaw and his cronies.
