A Regency Courtesan's Pride: More Than a Mistress / The Rake's Inherited Courtesan
‘To keep the numbers down,’ Merry said with a marshal light in her eyes.
‘Within reason, I’d say,’ Broadoaks said.
‘I—’
‘We will think about it, Mr Broadoaks,’ Charlie said. He smiled at Merry. ‘Won’t we, my dear? Advice is always appreciated.’
‘Well—’
‘We won’t take up more of your valuable time, Mr Broadoaks. I believe I have business at the Muddy Duck.’
Broadoaks rose to his feet. ‘Tell t’innkeeper I said for him to tell you all he knows.’
In those few words, the old man had admitted Charlie to the inner sanctum. The local gentlemen’s club. He knew it from the chagrin on Merry’s face. He shook hands with the fellow. ‘It has been a great pleasure, sir. I hope we meet again soon.’
‘Ah, and good luck to you, my lord.’ He darted a glance at Merry. ‘Needs a strong hand on the bridle, a woman like her do.’
So she might, but that hand wasn’t going to be Charlie’s. Finally he’d seen right through the scheming little wench and he felt more than a little foolish. Not to mention angry.
He ushered her out of the office and down the steps.
She turned to him. ‘I—’
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along, not hard enough that anyone would notice, but firmly enough so that she knew he meant business. ‘We will talk in the carriage.’
Several times in the past few days, Merry’s escort had looked less than pleased. Now he’d withdrawn into a cool remoteness that put the distance of miles between them.
The distance of a duke-to-be from a lesser mortal. She had no trouble recognising it, since she’d seen the same kind of look on her fellow students’ faces at school when she was intemperate or bold enough to express her opinions or join their conversations. The reason she’d sought solace with Jeremy.
She lifted her chin as she’d done in those long-ago days. ‘What bee’s bustling in tha’s bonnet then, lad?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, you don’t think I’m fooled by that rubbishy accent, do you?’
She stiffened. ‘There is nothing wrong with the way I speak.’
‘Isn’t there? Perhaps the names of Purtefoy and Chepstow might give you a hint as to why it doesn’t ring true.’
She shrugged.
Anger flared in his eyes. Anger she could deal with. Better that than indifference. ‘My mother’s family has nothing whatsoever to do with me.’
A muscle flickered in his jaw. His lip curled in derision. ‘I’m not green, Miss Draycott. Or wet behind the ears. Nor do I have my mother’s milk still on my lips, my dear. I know exactly what you are up to. And it won’t wash.’
Inside she shrank from the bitterness in his quiet voice; on the outside she kept her back straight and her expression disdainful. ‘Doing it rather brown, Charlie. You forced your way into my business uninvited, you know.’
‘You asked me to pretend to be your fiancé.’ He said the words as if they tasted of poison.
‘For a few days,’ she said warily.
‘Let us hope Broadoaks is good to his word and keeps a still tongue in his head or Chepstow will be on my father’s doorstep tomorrow morning. And won’t that stir up an ant’s nest?’
What on earth was he raving about? ‘The Earl of Chepstow barely acknowledges my existence.’
‘Believe me, that will change if this betrothal comes to his ears. He’ll care enough to learn I have been living at your house. A house full of prostitutes, no less.’
‘They are not prostitutes.’
He raised a cynical brow. ‘I know when I am being propositioned.’
She gave him a slit-eyed look. Did he mean her?
‘I’m talking about Jane,’ he said.
‘I told you, I don’t think she is going to stay. In fact, I had already decided to talk to Caro about her leaving as soon as we get back.’
‘Stop avoiding the issue at hand.’ He leaned against the seat back, a hard smile thinning his lips. ‘Oh, Merry, I’ll admit you are good. Chepstow’s niece, for God’s sake. All that straightforward honest stuff really had me fooled. But I’m wise to you now. So let’s just deal with the business at hand and we can end this farce and go our separate ways.’
Chapter Eleven
It was if a hive of bees had stung her all over. The hot and itchy feeling was swiftly followed by a sweep of cold. She inhaled a few deep breaths through her nose and the cynical twist to his mouth became more pronounced. She wanted to hit him. Scratch his face. She curled her hands inside her muff and bit down on her tongue. The old hurt and misery boiled in her chest, the memory of things she’d never told Grandfather, knowing he would be cut to the quick. Not for himself, but for her.
A burning sensation scoured the backs of her eyes and bile rose in her throat. Damn him. She would not let him make her cry the same tears she had shed as a lonely schoolgirl in the gardener’s shed.
There, someone had cared to offer comfort. Here she was on her own.
Glad of his need to focus on his horses as they passed a cart, she forced a smile, even managed a couple of flirtatious bats with her eyelashes and turned in her seat. ‘Ah, I see your problem.’
He shot her a quick dark glance.
Her smiled broadened. ‘It is all right to seduce a woman of the lower classes, but a noble-born wench requires a different set of rules. Not because she is any better, but because her family has the power to do something about it.’
He stiffened. ‘You go too far, madam.’
‘Do I? Well, rest your mind easy, your lordship. I wouldn’t marry you, if you were the last single man on this earth. What would I want with some useless nobleman, only interested in horses and gambling and the cut of his coat?’ She glared at his exquisitely cut driving coat with its layer of capes and gold buttons, at the artfully placed whip points in the lapel, and did a bit of lip curling of her own. ‘All right for a bit of fun in bed, but about as much use as tits on a bull, as Grandfather would say.’
His jaw dropped. ‘Good God, woman. Your grandfather should have been shot for talking like that to a gently bred female.’
Smile fixed, she straightened in her seat. ‘Get it through your thick skull. I am not gently bred just because I am related to the Earl of Chepstow. Draycotts are common hard-working people. My grandfather watched sheep from the age of four until he was ten. My father worked in the mill all his life. If I had been a boy, I would have worked there, too.’ Instead of going to Mrs Driver’s Academy for the daughters of gentlefolk and finding out exactly how unacceptable she was to the upper classes of England.
‘Don’t act insulted,’ he said stiffly. ‘You know you should have told me.’
She pulled all the pieces of her that seemed to have scattered themselves in the air around her—the pride, the hurt, the anger—and settled them back where they belonged with one deep breath. She clenched her hands together inside her muff and willed herself to feel nothing.
‘I am not acting insulted,’ she said, her voice deadly calm. ‘Angry, yes, but since we are almost at the Muddy Duck, I suggest we make our enquiries and then return to Draycott House. You may continue your journey to Durn immediately.’
He frowned. ‘You will wait in the carriage. I will make enquiries.’
‘Certainly not. If someone is out to harm me, I want to know who it is.’
The curricle pulled under the arch and into the small courtyard. An ostler ran out to take the horses’ heads.
‘If we are to carry off this betrothal,’ he spat the word, ‘in the eyes of the world, you will remain in the carriage. Any inn laying claim to the sobriquet of the Muddy Duck is no fit place for a respectable woman.’
‘I thought we had already agreed I am not the slightest bit respectable,’ she said. Blast. That sounded bitter when she had intended it to be simply sarcasm.
Tonbridge frowned at her. ‘If you are my fiancée, then you are respectable. Do as I bid, Merry, or I promise I will go right back to Broadoaks, swear it was all a hum, a lie, so that you could get your own way, and leave you to face him and his friends.’
She gasped at his perfidy. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Would you care to test that assumption?’
She stared at the granite line of his jaw and into the dark of his eyes. No laughter. No yielding. They’d won the day with regard to the house because of him, because Broadoaks wouldn’t risk the enmity of one of the most powerful landowners in England. One word and Tonbridge would ruin it all. It was blackmail.
She would not be blackmailed.
Caro had been right to caution her about involving him in her problems. And now there was no going back without losing all the ground she’d gained on Caro’s behalf. She gritted her teeth. There were other ways to show him he wasn’t going to push her around. She awarded him a tight smile. ‘As you wish.’
‘Good.’ Charlie jumped down. ‘Turn them around,’ he called out to the ostler. ‘I won’t be more than a minute or two.’
Merry watched him disappear inside the inn in a swirl of black coat. A three-storey building built in Tudor times, the inn looked tired, its roofs sagging and covered in moss. The curricle lurched as the man manoeuvred the horses in the tight space.
A hollow feeling filled her chest. Hurt because he assumed the worst.
Drat him. Why would she, a Draycott, wish to marry him, just because he was heir to a dukedom? He was judging her by his own standards.
A pang of realisation turned her stomach over. Naturally it would make him look bad if the betrothal became public. If she cried off, people would wonder why a low-class woman hadn’t found him worthy. Was that why he’d been so angry? Or was it because people would believe he had actually asked for her hand?
Her. Common as muck, Merry Draycott.
The latter. Definitely the latter. The emptiness seemed to grow.
The carriage ceased moving and Merry watched the door through which he had entered. Would he find out who had damaged her carriage? Lord, she hoped so, then he would go and leave her in peace. She winced. The locals were unlikely to tell tales to a stranger. Perhaps Prentice would have been a better choice for this task. She’d speak to him the moment he arrived tomorrow with his report on the mill.
He couldn’t have done anything with Mr Broadoaks, though. Clearly only a duke or his blasted heir could persuade the wily old mill owner to go against the indomitable Maria Broadoaks.
Minutes had passed. Where was he?
She hated waiting. Hated not knowing what was going on. She grabbed the side of the carriage and jumped down. ‘Back in a moment,’ she said to the ostler.
The courtyard needed a good sweep. If it was her yard, she’d see it done, too. She glared at the ostler, who appeared not to notice, and picked her way around the dung. The door opened before she could put her hand on the latch.
A frowning Charlie took in her presence. ‘I told you to wait in the carriage.’
‘You’ve been gone half an hour.’
He grabbed her elbow. ‘That’s because it takes time to get questions answered.’
She didn’t like the grim note in his voice. ‘What did you find out?’
‘I’ll tell you once we are on the road, as I promised.’
She glared at him.
‘Someone ought to have taken a birch twig to you as a child,’ he muttered.
Her lip curled. ‘What makes you think they didn’t?’
His eyes widened. ‘Damn it, Merry.’
Now what did that mean?
Back in the curricle and heading back for Draycott House, Charlie couldn’t stop wondering who could possibly have beaten Merry. While she was utterly infuriating, and had put him in an impossible position with regard to her family, he really couldn’t bear the thought.
‘Well?’ she said.
The anger simmering beneath the surface of his skin would have to wait. The current problem required all his attention. He formulated what he had learned into some sort of order.
‘Don’t sweeten the medicine,’ she said.
He huffed out a breath. ‘The landlord said someone got the men stirred up the night of the fire. A small group of them in the corner were muttering about jobs being lost. Men who haven’t worked for a very long time. They blame it on the changes in the mills, the new machines. One moment it was the usual complaints and the next a mob ready for mischief.’
‘Did he recognise the ringleader?’
‘He said not.’
‘Did you believe him?’
Charlie made a wry face. ‘I offered him a pony to tell me who led the charge.’
She gasped. ‘Twenty-five pounds is a great deal of money,’ she said, then she shook her head. ‘But York-shiremen have their pride. And very stiff necks. I will ask Mr Prentice to talk to him when he comes in the morning.’
Damn. Couldn’t she give him any credit? ‘He won’t get any more information than I did. The man swore he didn’t know and looked me straight in the eye. I believed him.’
She pressed her lips together as if to stop herself from saying more. He didn’t like that. He preferred her open and honest.
His stomach fell away. He couldn’t seem to reconcile the woman he thought she was with the person who had emerged in that meeting. She hadn’t been the slightest bit open and honest with him. She’d hidden her noble connections, when most people would have trotted them out to impress. How could he not suspect her motives? And of all people, her uncle had to be Chepstow. The duke’s friend. And the father of Charlie’s intended betrothed. What a mess.
‘I don’t think there is any more to be done,’ she said. ‘Mr Broadoaks will see there is no more trouble and you can be on your way to Durn in the morning.’
‘Eager to be rid of me.’
‘As eager as you are to be gone.’
He damned well ought to be eager. ‘There is the little problem of our publically announced engagement.’
Her mouth fell open. She snapped it shut. ‘We agreed. You will cry off as soon as we sorted this out.’
‘And what will your relatives have to say about that?’
‘They have nothing to say. I am not answerable to them.’
But he was answerable to his father. And he’d gambled Robert’s future on a roll in the hay—something Robert would no doubt find humorous and ironic, if he were here to enjoy the joke. It wasn’t the slightest bit funny. ‘If your family learn of this we will be in the soup.’ Especially since he’d proposed to the wrong cousin.
‘I can stand the heat.’
Damn her, now she made him sound like a coward. He cursed under his breath. ‘I wish you’d told me you were related to an earl. I was blind-sided by Broadoaks back there. And we still don’t know who is responsible for the attacks on your person. Until we do, our betrothal must stand.’ And the longer it stood, the harder it would be to keep it a secret. As she must have known.
She flashed him a glance of dislike. ‘The mill owners have agreed to support the house so there is no reason to continue the pretence. No reason for you to stay.’
He could think of another reason. Not that it was very noble minded. He widened his legs, touching her thighs with his, a simple shift of position that could be interpreted as innocent. ‘Perhaps I can convince you otherwise later this evening?’
A low blow. But anger still rode him hard.
She edged away from him, but the narrowness of the seat kept her pinned against his side. ‘You, sir, are a blackguard and a scoundrel.’
‘So it seems.’ They passed beneath the old medieval gate and beyond the cobbled streets of the town. It was colder out here on the moors, the wind fresher. It would have been kinder to bring the closed carriage. And more fun.
The thought of being closed up in such a confined space made his blood run cold. He reached down and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders. ‘Warm enough?’
‘Perfectly,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Thank you.’
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