Miss Grantham's One True Sin (The Regency Matchmaker Series Book 2) (4 page)

The masculine voice yanked Marianna out of her wool gathering, and she realized she'd been caught woolgathering. Staring at his furry chest, to be more precise. His eyes sparkled mischievously, knowingly.

"Did you enjoy sleeping with me last night?" he asked.

"Yes.
No
!" She jerked her eyes away from him. "That is to say, I did not know I was sleeping with you. No!
That
is not what I meant to say. I ... I did not sleep with you. That is, I
slept
, but not with you. No, no, I mean ... I mean . . ."

He was laughing, a deep, rich, and infuriating sound.

She rolled her eyes. "Oh! You know perfectly well what I mean!"

"In truth," he drawled, folding his arms behind his head and causing the covers to slip lower, exposing what seemed to be a vast amount of muscled chest and belly, "I do not have the first notion what you mean, for I have absolutely no memory of what happened between us last night."

"
I
do," she blurted before she realized she'd put her foot in her mouth yet again. "Botheration! That is to say, my memory is unimpaired, and nothing happened between us. Nothing at all."

"How ... interesting." He looked her up and down, and Marianna realized he was not speaking of the maddening mull in which they'd found themselves. She'd forgotten she was wearing only her thin white chemise. She snatched up a garment from the floor and covered herself with it.

"I do not know how you came to be here, my lord, but I believe we should discuss it later." She nodded toward the door. "Downstairs."

"I would be delighted to do so, but there is one problem."

"And that is?"

"You have my breeches clutched to your bosom."

Handing a naked man his inexpressibles was bad enough, but standing in the same room with him—albeit turned away—while he dressed was outside of enough! She could hear the fabric sliding against his skin, and she may as well have been sliding her own hands over his skin, for all the embarrassment the sounds caused her.

Marianna's cheeks burned as the clocks in the large house all struck one. She grimaced. She hadn't slept this late in over a year, and she was appalled. At Baroness Marchman's School for Young Ladies, she'd been required to be up with the rising sun, a habit she did not dislike. She supposed she had better get used to keeping later hours, however, as ladies of the
ton
rarely rose before noon.

She tried to focus on her vexation at having been a slugabed, but it was no use. She couldn't keep her mind from veering back to him. Her cheeks were flaming and her knees felt weak before he finally left—without a word, thank goodness. She heard the door click shut softly behind him, whirled, and, locking the door behind him, sagged against it. The room seemed infinitely larger now. Her eyes flicked to the bed. It had certainly seemed quite small when she'd found him lying there next to her. She shivered and pushed away from the door to see to her own needs.

Believing in the saying that first impressions were lasting, she dressed carefully and appeared downstairs an hour later in her finest gown, a soft ice-blue muslin sprigged with tiny sprays of embroidered delphiniums and, in her hair, a matching blue satin ribbon.

When she’d first arrived in London from the West Indies, she’d come with a limited wardrobe, expecting to order new gowns without delay. She had been quite looking forward to it, in fact. But, of course, her circumstances had changed, and a closet of new gowns was not consistent with her assumed schoolmistress persona. Thus, she now had nothing better than the ice-blue muslin to change into for dinner this evening.

Not that it signified, she thought with chagrin, for she anticipated retreating to her chamber with a megrim long before the evening meal.

To be sure, the Viscount Trowbridge had left her bedchamber quickly enough and with no further shenanigans, but that was not particularly reassuring. Marianna barely knew True Sin, but she didn't like what she'd seen so far.

She didn't like salamanders, either, but she did like little girls, which was a good thing, for she was no sooner downstairs than was she presented with three of them—three little girls, thank goodness, not three salamanders. There had been only the one salamander, but, as she'd found it squirming half-submerged in the clotted cream on her tea tray, one had been quite enough.

At the housekeeper's insistence, tea was taken with the three young ladies of the house. The stout woman introduced them as "the ABC's—Miss Alyse, Miss Beatrice, and Miss Eleanor." Apparently, there was no governess.

Not anymore.

The girls, Marianna discovered, had been largely unsupervised for a little over three months. Their mother and father—Trowbridge's elder brother—had died at sea while returning from a visit with relatives in Scotland. The girls did not seem vastly sullen for the event. They wore no black garments, and they seemed rather animated. Rather too animated, for Marianna was certain they’d all had their heads together on the salamander. She ignored it and wisely took her scones with brambleberry jam.

The three of them soon gobbled up their own scones and guzzled their tea, wiping their mouths on sleeves that couldn't be harmed too much by one more stain. Then they sat staring at her with wide eyes.

"Who are you?" the eldest finally blurted. Alyse had straight, dark hair, and she seemed much too grown up for her ten years.

"My name is Miss Marianna Grantham."

"What Alyse means," the middle girl said with a shake of her long, dark curls, "is what are you doing here?" Beatrice had dark hair past her shoulders like her sister, but it was curly rather than straight, and it hung in tangled ringlets down her back.

"I am ... a visitor."

"Uncle Sin's lady friend?" Beatrice quizzed.

Uncle Sin
? Marianna nearly spilled her tea, but she looked the middle child steadily in the eye when she said, "Yes. Yes, I suppose you might say that."

"Lady friend, or lady
bird
? "

"Beatrice Jessamine Sinclair!" the eldest cried in a parody of parental disapproval.

"What?" Beatrice shot back. "Don't
you
want to know which it is?"

"Of course I do," Alyse said. "It's just not polite to ask her, that's all. We'll ask Uncle Sin instead."

Beatrice plucked a heretofore unnoticed chunk of scone from the tea tray and crammed it into her mouth. "He won’t tell us anything, silly. He didn't last time, did he?"

"Last time?" Marianna asked.

"The last time Uncle Sin had a lady visitor," Alyse supplied sagely. "We asked him if she was his lady friend, but he only sent us to the nursery for the rest of the afternoon."

Beatrice shook her head. "Aww ... we don't need to ask him, anyway," she said, tossing her head in Marianna’s direction. "She stayed here last night, didn't she?"

"Yeth," the youngest lisped between the gap where her two front teeth had been. "Sheth a thoiled dove, all wight."

Marianna's eyes widened, and the two older girls dissolved into peals of giggles. “She doesn’t know what that means,” Alyce said.

“Neither do you,” Beatrice said.

Alyce pasted on a sage look. “I know it’s not nice. I’m the one who heard the groom say it.”

“I’ll tell him you been looking under the stable door.”

“Fine. Then I won’t be able to share anything else I learn there.”

Beatrice frowned. “I didn’t mean it, sister.”

Alyce grinned. “I know.”

They both giggled.

Little Eleanor, a darling thing with close-cropped blonde curls, scowled at her elder sisters and then turned haughtily away from them to tug on Marianna's gown. "How come you haven't asked 'bout my name?"

Instantly, the other two girls fell silent. They watched Marianna, waiting for her answer. The question was clearly some sort of test, and Marianna very much wanted to give them a satisfactory answer. "Well," she said and took a sip of her tea. She had noticed, of course, that there was something odd about "the ABC's." Alyse, Beatrice ... and Eleanor. C and D were clearly missing.

"I thought you would tell me about your names—all three of you—if and when you wished me to know." Marianna peered at them over the rim of her teacup. "One should never attempt to force a confidence, you know."

The elder sisters traded glances.

"Oh," Eleanor chirped. "Then I shan't tell you."

"I see you have met my nieces," her host's deep, rich voice boomed from the doorway, startling Marianna so that her tea did slosh over the rim of her cup this time. "I apologize for my absence," he said. "I had hoped to be here to defend you." He gave the girls a wry look. "I trust they have been perfect young ladies?" His voice was full of storm clouds. Marianna watched as three sets of eyes darted to the crock of clotted cream.

"They were no trouble," she said. Her assertion earned her a raised eyebrow, but the Viscount said nothing to refute her claim. "Indeed," Marianna said, "They have agreed to do me a favor." She watched the ABC's' eyes widen.

"Which is?"

Ignoring the question, she leaned forward and gestured to the bellpull just behind him. "Would you be so kind as to ring for more tea, my lord? I find I am parched after yesterday's travels."

As Trowbridge turned his back to pull the cord, Marianna quickly replaced the lid on the crock and whisked it and the salamander into a small basket that stood empty on the side table. She thrust the basket into Alyse's arms and threw a meaningful look at all three girls, who clapped their mouths shut and glanced nervously in their uncle's direction.

Marianna said, "The girls have agreed to go outside and gather me a basket of ivy to brighten my bedchamber. Run along, girls," she prompted without waiting for Trowbridge's assent, and the three scurried out the door like mice. Truesdale watched them go, clearly bemused.

"They are afraid of you," Marianna said when they were out of earshot. She did nothing to cleanse her voice of the disapproval she felt.

Trowbridge shook his head. "They are afraid of everything." He chuckled. "Except salamanders, it seems."

"You
saw
the salamander?"

"Aye." Deep, merry dimples appeared, and Marianna almost groaned.
Of course
True Sin's face would come equipped with dimples. They were the perfect boyish counterpoint to his manly scarred eyebrow. They were like laudanum for the face, and Marianna couldn't help returning his smile.

He sat opposite her. "I rather thought the salamander was enjoying his swim in the clotted cream, didn't you?"

The dimples that had appeared left as quickly as they had come, and his face clouded over with concern. "I am afraid my nieces have had too little correction in their young lives, as you will no doubt agree."

"Then why, my lord, did you not scold them for the salamander?"

"For the same reason you did not betray their mischief to me, I expect. I am trying to win their loyalty” —his generous mouth tilted wryly—"or at least negotiate a guarded truce."

Marianna heaved a sigh of relief. At last, she'd found something she liked about the Viscount—
besides his dimples and chest hair
. She resisted the impulse to roll her eyes and fingered the delicately curved handle of her teacup instead.

“You are unusual.”

She gave him an arch look. “Oh?”

“Most women would have shrieked and run from that salamander.”