No Marriage of Convenience (4 page)

And as if all this wasn’t enough to leave her wondering, the man wore spectacles.

Spectacles on an earl!

She would never have believed it.

Despite the fact that he looked more ready to lead them all in prayer or sell them his latest acquisition from some far off port, given his family’s reputation, she would have thought he’d already have tossed her paperwork aside and begged to have a private audience with her.

Still, she mused, could she be so lucky that his cousin’s fainting spell would distract him from returning to his sharp-eyed perusal of the contract?

“There, there, Cousin Felicity. Drink it slowly,” Lord Ashlin advised his cousin. He slowly tipped the glass to the lady’s lips.

The brandy worked immediately as Lord Ashlin’s cousin caught a hold of the glass and tossed down the entire contents in one large gulp—a maneuver that would have made a sailor choke and sputter. Cousin Felicity
however just sighed and laid back on the settee, her hand resting dramatically over her forehead.

Riley wondered if the lady had ever been on the stage.

“My sincerest apologies, my lord,” Riley said, hoping to soothe the man. “Hashim is rather proud of his injury and delights in showing it off.”

She shot a glare over the Earl’s shoulder squarely at Hashim.

You needn’t grin so much, you great fool
.

Hashim’s shoulders shrugged slightly.
Well, she asked for it
.

When would he learn that sheltered English ladies didn’t usually see a mouth where a tongue had been cut out? Continuing to wave her handkerchief over the lady, she commented, “Why, she seems to be coming to quite nicely.”

“Oh, my. Oh, my,” Cousin Felicity said, her eyelashes fluttering over her wide brown eyes. She started to sit up, but Lord Ashlin stopped her.

“Careful, Cousin. You’ve had quite a shock.”

“Oh, haven’t I!” she said triumphantly, before falling back on the cushions again. “What a tale to tell. I’ve seen Hashim’s mouth! With my very own eyes. Why I’ll be the envy of all my friends. I’ll be the toast for some time.” She reached over and clasped Hashim’s hand, drawing it to her ample bosom. “I will be forever in your debt, sir. Forever.”

Hashim bowed his head slightly and tried to extract himself from her grasp, but it appeared Cousin Felicity was not about to let go of her newfound hero.

Riley’s lips twitched with amusement at Hashim’s obvious discomfort, until Lord Ashlin came to his rescue.

“Cousin Felicity, release Mr. Hashim.”

The woman did, though with a great sigh of reluctance.

Hashim fled to his post behind Riley’s chair. Following Hashim’s example, Riley retook her seat, carefully posing herself to her best advantage, head tipped, chest up, and posture straight.

Back in an upright position, Cousin Felicity adjusted her spectacles. “Oh, Madame Fontaine, it is such an honor to have you in our house.” The woman turned, her white lace cap fluttering. “Mason, Madame does not make social visits, so we must count ourselves very lucky indeed.”

“Well this is hardly a social call, my lady,” Riley explained to her. “However, on some of my business matters, I find a personal touch makes the transaction go so much more smoothly,” she added, her statement directed with a smile and a demure nod at Lord Ashlin.

It was one of her better poses, one she’d used with great skill in
Romeo & Juliet
, yet the man seemed unaffected.

Cousin Felicity, meanwhile, continued peering at her as if she were on display. “Oh, I can see now why they call you ‘Aphrodite’s Envy.’” She turned to Lord Ashlin. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mason? Isn’t Madame Fontaine the most tempting woman who’s ever graced the world?”

He looked very much like Hashim had just a few moments ago. “Yes, cousin. Madame Fontaine is tolerably pretty.”

Tolerably pretty
?

Riley didn’t know if she should be insulted or wonder if Lord Ashlin needed new spectacles.

One called sallow-faced debutantes with large dowries and title-hunting mothers
tolerable
.

Pretty
described whey-faced dairymaids fresh from the country.

Never once since she’d taken the London stage and been dubbed “Aphrodite’s Envy” by the young bucks of London had anyone described her as “tolerably pretty.”

Her vanity, now that she had grown used to being the recipient of sonnets and tokens of affection, found itself pricked at Lord Ashlin’s vague praise.

Tolerably pretty, and from an Ashlin, no less! Rakes, reprobates, and wanton flatterers, the entire lot of them. And great patrons of the arts, well, rather actresses, opera singers, and ballet dancers.

What had happened to this one? Riley wondered.

He held the sharp look of a Lloyd’s advisor, able to add a column of numbers in his sleep. After all, she only wanted to make a down payment on the money she owed him, not let on that he was due a lot more.

Money she didn’t have.

And much to her growing irritation, he’d picked up precisely the page he’d just set aside moments before. As she watched him scan the document with an efficient gleam, her pulse raced. Perhaps after he threw them out into the streets, she and the company could stage a play dedicated to him—
The Curate and the Actress
.

It would do well in the country, she thought, as she watched with a sinking heart as one of his brows rose with an elegant arch and a smile curved at his lips.

Oh, she was in trouble. They’d be lucky if they had enough left over to stage a puppet show.

“Are you familiar with the conditions of this loan?” he asked.

Riley tipped her head back and smiled sweetly, hoping the look would succeed in dazzling him out of his current line of inquiry. To her annoyance, it didn’t seem to distract him in the least.

A handsome nobleman impervious to her charms?

Oh, she was in more than trouble.

“Well, I think so…” she faltered, stalling for time. Maybe if she lifted the edge of her skirt a little and re
vealed a bit of ankle—goodness knows, that fair sight had kept the printer in abeyance for over four months.

But before she could put her plan into action, he frowned at her ever so slightly, rustled the papers with an important air, and spoke. “This contract shows that you owe me the opening night receipts from a fortnight ago.”

Her hands curled into tight balls. “We’ve had some unforeseen difficulties which have prevented us from opening on time. I assure you, we will be in full production within a month. And then you shall have your money.”

“What, and have you run up more bills in the meantime? No, that will never do.” Lord Ashlin shook his head, sending one of his golden brown locks straying out of its mercantile and orderly queue—giving him a rakish air and lending her hope that he truly was an Ashlin, not some foundling foisted onto the estate to maintain the lineage, as she was starting to suspect.

“Besides,” he continued, “with your payments overdue, that puts this loan in default. According to this paragraph here,” he said, pointing to a subsection in small print, “I’m entitled to collect the total amount due immediately, with penalties.”

“But I have no more cash, other than what I’ve brought,” she replied too quickly.

This appeared to stop him for a moment, until he glanced over at the gold-filled pouch on his desk. “Then you’ll have to find some other means of raising it. Perhaps your theatre company has props or costumes which can be sold?”

Riley looked down, pausing for a moment to prepare for the performance of her life. There was too much at stake here, and she’d do anything to save her theatre—from Lord Ashlin and the other problems which had plagued her these past months.

Searching her repertoire of characters, she glanced once more at Lord Ashlin and settled into what she hoped would be a role to touch even his stony heart.

Slowly raising a handkerchief, she dabbed at the corners of her eyes delicately, adding a small sniff and a quiver to her lips.

“I…I…I only meant my meager offering as a token of kindness for the immeasurable consideration your brother bestowed upon the arts. Think of his memory, my lord. This play, our production, is a memorial to him—his charity, his fine works, his dedication.” She looked upward at the plaster ceiling, a pleading glance meant to evoke the most benevolent of emotions, while her fingers clutched her handkerchief to her breast. “Now I fear my gesture is lost on his successor and will be the ruin of my poor beloved company.” She dropped her gaze to the wool rug, not daring to hope her speech had worked.

From the sobbing and sniffling across the room, his cousin had more than enjoyed the performance.

“Oh, Mason, you can’t close Madame Fontaine’s theatre,” the woman wailed. “We would be shunned by everyone in London.” She turned to Riley. “Madame Fontaine, please forgive my cousin. He’s been at Oxford these many years and doesn’t understand how things are done.” She turned back to Lord Ashlin, shaking her finger as if he were a recalcitrant schoolboy. “What would people say? It just isn’t done! Not at all.”

“Cousin,” he said, “Madame Fontaine owes us a great deal of money. Money better spent…well, say, on the girls. For all that finery and those lessons you think are so necessary for finding husbands.”

“That much?” Cousin Felicity replied in awed tones.

He nodded back at her.

Cousin Felicity sighed. “Oh, how Freddie’s dear girls
do need those lessons. If only they possessed a bit more deportment, knew when to use their sweet smiles, or how to do the latest dance steps. ’Tis a terrible shame. I know our girls could be the talk of the town, what with the proper instruction and all. Imagine it, Mason, they would be able to make their entrance into a room and all eyes would turn on them. Why, with the right teacher they would be the most tempting creatures, the envy of…” The lady’s voice trailed off as her bespectacled gaze fluttered, then turned slowly toward Riley.

The weight of the woman’s last words hung in the room, until not only the lady’s gaze, but the Earl’s as well, had swung in her direction.

Cousin Felicity, for Riley couldn’t think of her as anything other than that, was beaming again as if Riley had just deposited the Crown jewels in their study, rather than an odd sum of coins.

Lord Ashlin, on the other hand, was shaking his head, his face a mask of disbelief, as if his cousin had just proposed stealing the royal treasures in broad daylight.

Riley shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

“It’s perfect, Mason,” Cousin Felicity announced. “She is perfect. There isn’t a man in London who can resist her, and who better to bestow a measure of charm and grace on our dear girls?”

Mason’s head shook faster. “You are not proposing that I…that I let
her
…?”

“Proposing what?” Riley interrupted, having the strange notion she was about to agree with the prickly Earl.

“Oh, Madame Fontaine,” Cousin Felicity bubbled. “You’re about to render a service to our family that will be remembered for generations.”

“R
iley, my love, whatever took you so long? While you were out dilly-dallying with our dear patron, I’ve been working my fingers to the bone.” Agamemnon Bartholomew Morpheus Pettibone the Third held up his smooth white hands, which had never borne a callus, let alone a hangnail, in their sixty-some years of avoiding manual labor. “Ah, what you’ve missed! I’ve been inspired, divinely so.”

Riley took a deep breath. Whenever Aggie uttered the words “divine” and “inspiration” in the same breath, disaster soon followed.

“I heard him speak to me. I vow he guided my hand as I wrote,” Aggie called out from his dressing table. “What lines he gave me! ’Twas like he stood right where you are, dictating to me. Ah, to be guided by the great Bard’s spirit.” He smiled at the memory of it. “And you off and about on that fool’s errand of yours, missing it as you did.”

Not more revelations from Shakespeare! Riley counted to ten and stepped further into the apartment they shared above the Queen’s Gate Theatre. From the discarded costumes and scattered drawings of sets and sheets of scripts,
Aggie was obviously going through a “character renewal,” as he liked to call them.

Character chaos, Riley knew from experience.

Nor did it appear that her troop had completed their daily rehearsals, which Aggie had assured her he would direct in her absence. No, her friend was settled in front of his mirror, working on his makeup for his upcoming role as the humble woodcutter in their production of
The Envious Moon
.

Wrapped in a striped green silk dressing gown, a gift from an aging marchioness or some other rich elderly patroness Aggie had managed to bamboozle with his repertoire of false credentials, he was in the process of tucking his iron gray hair underneath a skullcap.

“Where is Nan?” she asked, looking about for their émigré maid.

“
Petite
Nanette?” He affected a phony French diction, all the while peering at his reflection in the mirror. “I fired her. Such an ineffective wench. No depth in her delivery. No
joie de vivre
. No presence. I’m starting to doubt she’s French.”

Riley groaned. “Aggie, she’s a servant, not an actress.” Aggie’s dismissal would mean Nan had probably fled to her mother’s cheap flat in St. George’s Fields. Riley added to her list of things to do this afternoon a trip to Southwark, where she’d have to engage in a great deal of bribing to entice the greedy but efficient girl to return.

“We are better off without her!” he declared. “The inconsiderate chit refused to fix my tea before she left.”

“Well, now that you’ve fired Nan, you’ll have to fetch your own tea,” she shot back.

At this comment, Aggie sniffed and began sorting the makeup items before him. “Whatever took you so long with our dear patron, Freddie? Now, there’s someone with
a presence, someone who knows how to make an entrance. If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times, he’d make a fine actor.”

Riley pulled off her hat and set it down on Aggie’s dressing table covering his pots and paints. “Aggie,” she said slowly. “When was the last time you saw your dear Freddie?”

Aggie tipped his head as he considered her question, looking her straight in the eye. Riley knew he was trying to gauge her mood and determine whether or not he could get away with lying.

“Why, it must have been two months ago—before he and his lovely wife went north for a shooting party.” Aggie smiled and went back to studying his reflection in the mirror.

“Two months,” she asked. “Are you positive?”

“Quite,” he said, warming to his invented tale. “The dear pair invited me to join them—really, ‘begged’ would be a more apt account, but I explained quite patiently that I had my commitments here. Why? Is he still cross with me for declining?”

She shook her head. “He uttered not a word of it.”

“That is because he is a gentleman. Ah, well, next time.” Aggie reached under her hat for a bit of cloth to begin blending a new color into his already rouged features.

“Now that’s the funny point about all this.” She leaned over his shoulder and stared at his reflection in the mirror. “As it turns out, your dear Freddie is dead. Quite dead, and has been so for seven months!”

“Oh, my!” Aggie swallowed several times, his great Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

“Oh, my, indeed,” she returned. This had been Aggie’s responsibility—to keep tabs on their investor, to ensure he remained happy with their arrangements and see that
the flow of Ashlin money moved in one direction—into the theatre’s coffers.

“Seven months, you say?”

“Seven months.”

“Oh, my. I don’t see how I could have gotten that so wrong.” He shifted in his seat under her cold gaze. “Now that you mention it, I do remember some such bit of gossip about the Earl of Ashlin and his wife being lost at sea.” He snapped his fingers. “Yes, I remember—their boat overturned and they drowned. Don’t know how I forgot. Quite tragic. Might even make a good play.” He pushed aside her hat, selected a pot of yellow paint.

Riley frowned back at him. “
Tragic
would be a better word to describe
our
situation.”

He dismissed her dire words with a wave. “What does it matter whether it is Freddie or his heir? Ashlin men are all reprobates and wastrels. And poor businessmen to boot. You probably had the new Earl kissing the hem of your gown and begging you to take more of his gold.”

Kissing her hem, indeed! She pulled a chair up next to Aggie’s table. “This Earl may have gained the title, but the rest of his Ashlin inheritance you seem to think is so assured appears to have skipped our new patron. This Lord Ashlin is no reprobate.”

Though he certainly could be one, Riley thought. She could well imagine the stir he’d cause in his own box on opening night—decked in the latest fashions, his golden brown hair brushed back just so, and his piercing blue eyes scanning the audience.

Her play about a curate suddenly held a new dimension. The vicar with a past—he’d been a pirate before he’d taken his holy vows. A man filled with remorse, driven by his sins…

Perhaps that was the explanation behind the earl’s
bookish manners. He’d been terribly wicked as a youth, and now he was paying for the sins of his misspent adolescence.

Somehow, Riley doubted it.

Instead, she filed the idea away. If they managed to keep the company afloat, they’d open the fall season with it. And dedicate it to the Earl.

“So I take your silence to mean the man did not fall at your feet, forgive you our debts, and beg for box seats next to Prinny’s for opening night?” Aggie asked, his tone light and jesting, the notion of a man who hadn’t done so, utterly unthinkable to him.

At this, Hashim made a snorting noise, as if even
he
felt the insult to his mistress.

Aggie turned slowly in his chair, looking first to Riley, then to Hashim, then back to Riley. “You mean he was impervious to
you
?”

“Yes. In fact, he hardly seemed to notice me.” Riley got back up and paced carefully through the littered room.

The very notion was aggravating. She wasn’t foolish enough to think it was her acting skills that were the reason for their theatre’s success. No, their ticket sales were fueled by rumors of her past—making the men of London all that more anxious to unmask the mysterious Madame Fontaine.

So they kept purchasing subscriptions, watching her plays, and vying in countless ways for her attentions.

And Riley continued to refuse politely—though that didn’t stop the arrogant louts from bragging about their exploits with her. She knew Cousin Felicity’s story about her night with the Prince’s regiment was only a small tale compared to some of the other grandiose exploits she’d heard bandied about.

She wondered if any of them realized she’d probably
be dead if she’d done half the things the
ton
attributed to her licentious and all too fictional life.

Aggie appeared to be considering the idea that this man hadn’t fallen prey to her wiles, when suddenly his mouth curved into his famous sensual smile. “Perhaps I should have gone. Perhaps I would have had more influence with him. Perhaps a lady isn’t his—”

Riley shook her head. “No, he would not have appreciated your charms either.”

Of that she was positive.

While he might be outwardly bookish and scholarly, there was no doubt in her mind that Lord Ashlin was definitely a man who liked the attentions of a woman.

Just not hers.

Why it rankled her she couldn’t be sure, for she’d never considered herself a great beauty. But tolerably pretty?

Why he was probably as blind as his cousin, she told herself. Yes, that was it, he was nearsighted and he was too rolled up to buy new spectacles.

But even that excuse didn’t soothe her ruffled vanity.

“So what happened?” Aggie asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Riley continued to pace carefully about the littered apartment. “As we decided this morning, I tried to give him a down payment, as a goodwill gesture. To keep him appeased until we open. But the man would hear none of it. He was more concerned about keeping his papers straight and his harebrained cousin under control.”

The mention of a cousin perked Aggie’s more Lothario-like propensities. His hand drew up to rest over his heart. “I take it by harebrained, you mean this cousin is a lady?”

“Yes, Aggie, a lady cousin. And don’t start getting any ideas.” And while Aggie never went out of his way to seek female companionship, he was never one to turn
down their fawning attentions or their riches, and often talked of making an advantageous and convenient marriage to secure his retirement.

An activity, Riley knew, that was going to get her friend into a lot of trouble one day with an aggrieved relative or an outraged son. She took the pot of paint out of his hand and passed him a different shade. “I doubt she has any money, at least, any for you.”

At this Aggie appeared unconvinced.

Riley shook her finger at him. “If there was any money, I’m sure it’s gone by now,” she said, hoping to deter that mercantile look in Aggie’s eyes. “She’s a foolish, silly woman. When this Cousin Felicity laid eyes on Hashim, I thought she was going to have a fit of apoplexy.”

Aggie leaned back in his chair. “Oh, let me guess. She wanted to see your friend’s tongue.”

“Of course she did.” Everyone always wanted to see Hashim’s tongue—or rather lack of one.

“Did he oblige her?”

Riley’s brows rose. “What do you think?”

“Oh, how delicious!” Aggie beamed at Hashim. “Did she faint away? Scream? Beg for a second look? Oh my, why do I always miss the great scenes?”

Her patience thinning, Riley’s hands went to her hips. “Aggie! What you missed was the fact that this new patron of ours has no intention of continuing to assist us. In fact, he rather expects this loan to be repaid.”

Her declaration stopped Aggie’s theatrics in a flash.

“Repay our debts?” He rose from his seat, coming eye to eye with her. “How decidedly vulgar of the man! Certainly you’re joking? You’re teasing me in my dotage. Repay our debts to Ashlin—that would take…”

She finished his lines for him. “Every last farthing we’ve got on hand. Then we’d have to scrap the sets and
props, pawn the costumes and jewelry, and find a buyer for the furniture to come up with the rest.”

Aggie plopped back down in his seat, and for the first time since Riley had met the man, he remained silent and dumbfounded.

But silence and Agamemnon were never an easy mix. “And you couldn’t charm him out of this?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking, my charms have given us a reprieve. You could say Lord Ashlin and I reached an agreement.”

The man’s brows shot into an indignant V. “Why that villainous motley-minded pumpion! How dare he! I’ll not stand for it. I’ll call the miscreant out for blackmailing you into such a compromising situation. My innocent girl is not a bit of muslin to be handed
carte-blanche
!” He reached for his sword, a leftover stage prop from
Hamlet
, and swung it in a wide arc, scattering Riley and Hashim into the far corners. “I’ll skewer the flap-mouthed jolthead for even suggesting the notion!”

Riley shook her head. “Aggie! Put that sword down.”

Heedless of anything but his own voice, Aggie continued to prod and pummel their poor furniture, knocking the limbs off his imaginary foe, using every Shakespearean curse in his vast repertoire to decry the new Lord Ashlin.

“Aggie, that is quite enough!” Riley exclaimed. “Whatever are you ranting about?”

“Why, Lord Ashlin! How dare he use our debt as a means to force you into becoming his mistress.”

“You old fool, I never said anything about becoming his mistress. The agreement is that I teach his nieces how to be more charming, like I am on stage. You know, appealing to men so they can find husbands—rich ones.”

From his open-mouthed expression, Riley would have
thought the truth was more repugnant than her being compromised by the Earl.

“You agreed to do whaaaaat?” he sputtered.

“You heard me the first time. I’m to tutor his nieces.”

“Hiring yourself out as a
tutor
?” He choked on the last word as if he’d drunk from Romeo’s vial. “Why, it is unheard of! Sharing your talents outside the boards? With one of
them
?”

“Cry and wail all you want, but the deed is done and agreed upon,” she told him.

Aggie immediately went into a new tirade about the sacred secrets of the stage being given to the audience.

She wasn’t any more pleased with the idea of tutoring the Earl’s nieces than Aggie, but what choice did she have?

Riley didn’t want to consider four weeks in Lord Ashlin’s proximity—she found the idea too unsettling. Try as she might to convince herself it was because of his obvious disapproval, she knew what it really was.

She found the Earl of Ashlin rather distracting.

While he found her—well, he’d said it plainly.

He found her
tolerably pretty
.

A pox and a bother. As if she cared what the likes of Lord Ashlin thought about her.