No Marriage of Convenience (21 page)

M
ason stared at the woman on the floor. “What the devil are you doing down there?” He set the candlestick he’d been holding on the side table beside the door.

Riley flipped her hair out of her face, the strands falling in a tumbled mess from the severe, modest fashion she’d taken to wearing of late. “I was practicing my lines,” she said, struggling to right herself.

He held out his hand. “Odd place to practice.”

“’Tis an odd scene,” she said, accepting his assistance.

As his fingers entwined with hers and he pulled her to her feet, she came up a little faster than he’d expected. Slamming into his chest, her body connected with his like before.

Magically, intimately, passionately.

Warning bells went off in his mind as she molded to him, her breasts pressed against his chest. Her arms wound around his neck to steady herself. A little sigh fell from her lips as she found her footing, the gentle whisper of it wrapping its wispy tendrils around his heart.

He continued to hold her, even if she didn’t need his support.

“Is this part of the scene?” he asked, amazed at the teasing and rakish humor behind his words. It was as if Freddie were speaking for him.

“It could be,” she whispered back. “The audience would probably find it quite romantic.”

There was a challenge behind her words, as if she dared him not to find the entire situation romantic.

Mason had the feeling even a eunuch would find this situation a trial for his missing sensibilities. All he could think of was kissing her—thoroughly. Like they’d done the other night. He glanced down and found those haunting green eyes of hers staring back up at him, innocent and seductive at the same time. Her lips parted slightly, as if coaxing him to rekindle the fire they both knew smoldered between them.

This time, Mason doubted he could stop the blaze before it consumed them both.

Dammit
, he thought.
This isn’t right.
He set her aside, more than a little abruptly, and then fled across the room toward the window, leaving what seemed like a boulevard of carpet between them.

A safe and discreet distance. Exactly what the situation called for, he told himself.

Not that it made his desire for her any less. She stood, her figure illuminated in the shaft of light from the hallway, her features in shadows, but only that much more mysterious for it.

A soft breeze rippled in through the open window behind him, tousling her loose hair about her slender shoulders.

Damn his classical education, for all he could see was a vision of Aphrodite standing before him—the only things missing were the Grecian robe, a half shell, and sea foam.

He turned away from the living and breathing temptation before him and went to shut the window—not that the cool breeze wasn’t a refreshing change from the heat coursing through his veins, but she’d been shivering when he’d helped her up and he didn’t need a bedridden enticement in his house.

In the street below, the night watchman was passing the front door. The man glanced up and gave a quick nod at Mason.

“Good night, sir,” the fellow said in a voice that was barely a whisper but carried well in the stillness of the night.

It surprised him that he could hear the man so clearly, but then again, the man knew his job well enough not to raise the dead by calling out and risk losing his post.

For a voice any louder would surely carry…carry like Del’s, for instance.

Mason stared at the open portal before him, his hands frozen on the window frame, then glanced quickly over his shoulder at the room’s occupant.

Obviously Beatrice hadn’t been the only one who’d spent her evening eavesdropping on the Viscount’s one-act performance.

And if Riley had been standing before the open window, that meant she’d heard everything that idiot Del had been blithering on about.

Mason cringed.

All of Ashlin Square had probably heard his friend’s declarations of love and his brandy-soaked theory on the lady’s own preference.

When he turned back to Riley, the worst of his suspicions were confirmed, for the hint of blush rising on her cheeks convicted her without his having to ask the question.

Oh, yes, she’d heard everything.

If her blush wasn’t enough, her next words only damned her further.

“It is cold in here,” she said, shivering in the exaggerated method of an actress. She crossed the room and edged him out of the way, closing the window with an efficient push and then turning and wiping her hands of the entire affair. “I don’t know what I was thinking, leaving that window open.”

“Yes,” he commented. “You never know what the night air will bring in.”

It was Riley’s turn to cringe, but she recovered well. “Exactly. Can’t have the girls catching a fever.”

“Yes, quite right,” he murmured. He glanced up, trying to find a way to broach the subject properly, but instead, he nodded at the papers and books scattered about. “Hard at work? Don’t you ever take an evening off from all this?”

She shook her head. “Not if I’m to make this play a success.”

Her words stung him. Here she was, spending every waking moment trying to make her play a stunning success—for herself, her company…and him. And how had he spent the evening? Lurking about the Royal Society, avoiding Miss Pindar and his responsibilities to his family.

“Well, it’s quiet up here,” he said, babbling on like Cousin Felicity. “You probably were able to get quite a bit done—uninterrupted and all. Well, except for Del and that bit of nonsense out there…”

She had started to pick up her papers and notes, but stopped her task and glanced up. “Lord Delander? He was here?”

A renowned actress she might be, but even Mason heard the catch in her voice. “Yes. I’m surprised you
didn’t hear him, what with the window open.”

She glanced at the now closed evidence and shrugged. “I am so used to all the comings and goings in the theatre that your discussion with Lord Delander barely registered.”

He tipped his head and studied her. “So you didn’t hear Lord Delander announce that you’d agreed to marry him?”

She spun around. “He said no such thing! I heard every—” She stopped in mid-sentence. Flopping down in the reading chair next to the table, she swiped at the loose tendrils of her hair. “Oh, bother. Of course I heard every word. The entire house heard him.”

He nodded. “This house and every house on the square heard that nattering idiot.”

His gaze met hers. To his surprise, he found her eyes alight with mischief, as if she didn’t mind at all being caught.

“Was he floored?” she asked. “He sounded as if he could barely stand.”

Mason nodded, not too sure that discussing another man’s state of inebriation with a lady was entirely proper. But this was Riley, after all, and with her there seemed to be no boundaries or constraints on one’s conversation. A notion he found wonderfully freeing. “Stand? Barely. But luckily for him, his horse knows the way to his mother’s house.”

She covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. “I hope he stops reciting that ridiculous poetry before he gets home. I doubt very much Lady Delander is fond of brandy-inspired poetics.”

Mason laughed. “I can’t see her as a patroness of Bacchus.”

At this, Riley dissolved into a bout of giggles. “Oh, I have a feeling that may be the last we see of Lord Delan
der—for when he awakens tomorrow morning, if he hasn’t forgotten his new vocation as poet laureate, his mother will surely lecture any inclinations toward another display like tonight’s right out of him.”

“Well, there might be some good to come out of tonight, then, after all,” Mason said, settling into the chair next to her, relishing this affable connection between them. He couldn’t imagine having such a conversation with Miss Pindar. “A more contrite Del won’t be making such outlandish statements for all the neighborhood to hear. Comparing your eyes to forget-me-nots when he should damn well know they are green, not blue.”

“When did you start noticing my eyes?” she asked. “Being only tolerably pretty and all, I didn’t think my eyes would rate notice.”

“I’ve had them glaring at me for the last week, so I could hardly avoid noticing them.”

She laughed at this, and so did he.

“My temper has been up a bit,” she conceded.

He cocked a brow at her.

“Fine. It has been in a rare state, but only because I think you are being high-handed about the Everton masquerade and the girls’ Season. They deserve all of it.”

He held up his hand. “Riley, I wish there was something, anything, I could do about that. You’ve worked miracles with them. I’m starting to think you replaced them with members of your acting company. But…” Mason paused, unwilling to admit his own failing.

He couldn’t finance any of it. And he couldn’t bring himself to marry Miss Pindar and spend the rest of his life saddled to some irksome featherbrain just to save his family’s fortunes.

Not even for his nieces.

He should have known that Riley would see through
his pride and get to the point in her own direct and blunt fashion.

“…But you don’t have the money,” Riley finished for him. She sounded truly concerned…not like his peers, who viewed the financial crisis of their compatriots as manna for the fodder. “Is it as bad as all that?” she asked.

“Yes, very bad,” he told her. For some reason he felt free to confess to her what he couldn’t admit even to his family. “The worst of it is that someone has started buying up Freddie’s vowels. I don’t know who or why, but if they call them due—we’ll all be out in the streets. I know you’ve worked hard to see the girls prepared for their Season, but there is no way I can finance it at this time.”

“Oh, bother that. You don’t need any money to give the girls their Season. They already have all their dresses ready and waiting for you just to say the word.”

He stared at her, wondering if she’d gone as mad as Cousin Felicity. Why, what she was saying would put them on the streets.

He must have looked ready to explode, because she flew to his side. “Oh, don’t be mad. It won’t cost you a thing! Besides, it was really your idea in the first place.”

Mason shook off her wild rush of words like water off a soaking wet dog. And when he opened his mouth to ask the questions, nothing came out of his stunned lips.

How? How could she have done this?

“It was your idea,” she repeated. “I knew you couldn’t afford new clothes for the girls, so I took the liberty of borrowing from the wealth of clothes you already had.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “I have a wealth of women’s clothing?”

She nodded, her eyes sparkling again with mischief. “But no one would have guessed that about you.”

He laughed a little at this.

“Yes, well,” she said, continuing her explanation, “did it ever occur to you while you were reworking Freddie’s clothes that the same could be done with your sister-in-law’s gowns?”

“Caro,” he breathed.

“Now you understand,” she said, catching his hand and squeezing it. “You should have seen her clothes press, and the trunk after trunk we uncovered in the attic. All of them filled with gowns that are in perfectly good shape and ready to be made over. Enough so all three girls can make respectable debuts.”

Mason sat back in stunned silence. He was starting to believe there wasn’t a financial hurdle he couldn’t leap with Riley at his side.

Meanwhile, Riley was chewing her bottom lip. “You don’t mind, do you? I know I should have asked, but then again, it was
your
idea, so I—”

“—Mind? Hardly. I don’t know how to begin to thank you.”

“So you’ll give your approval for the girls to have their Season?”

He grinned at her. “You can tell them. First thing in the morning.”

Riley got up, hands on her hips, and turned an ecstatic little jig.

Mason felt like joining her.

When she whirled to a stop, she studied him for a moment, her eyes full of warmth and something else.

Something not unlike what Del had said.

Love.

Riley in love with him? It was too preposterous to believe. Wasn’t it?

She must have been remembering the Viscount’s words as well, for she suddenly blushed and then looked away.
“Oh, dear. I’ve made a mess of your library again,” she said, and went to work picking up her littered pages.

Mason stooped down to help her, gathering up a script that looked like it had been annotated to death.

“How goes
The Envious Moon
? Have you determined whether it is to be a comedy or a tragedy?” he asked, starting to leaf through the pages.

“I can’t decide,” she said, sighing. “I’m having a terrible time with it.”

“Maybe I can help,” he offered.

“You?” she said, shaking her head at the idea.

“Yes, me.” He pulled off his coat and set it over the back of a chair. “’Tis the least I can do for you.”

“I thought you had your own bride to seek, Geoffroi,” she teased, nodding at his discarded coat.

“Not tonight,” he said, quite relieved to find himself out of the Marriage Mart—at least, for the rest of the night.

“I think you should eliminate that line,” Mason suggested, pointing to a piece of Geoffroi’s dialogue. “It sounds rather sappy.”

They sat, as they had for several hours, side by side at the library table, the candles burning low in front of them, the scattered pages of the script before them.

“No!” she snapped. “Can’t you see that line is critical to the next scene?”

“He sounds like Cousin Felicity.”

She picked up the page and studied the line in question. “He does not,” she protested, though only half-heartedly. She almost regretted having allowed Mason to help her.

Especially when she suspected he had the right of it. Still, she offered one more feeble protest. “I think the line is fine.”

“Gracious me?” Mason said, imitating Cousin Felicity’s tone and pitch.

She pursed her lips. “Oh, perhaps you are right.” She scratched out the line and bit her lip as she considered another phrase. “What would you say?”

“My wish is to have your love,” he said.