The Genuine Article (18 page)

"No, it is not," she agreed. "It is exceedingly boring looking for someone who is so obviously not here. If there is a secret passage, he could have moved half the furniture into it by now and fallen asleep. I had not realized how enormous this place is."

Since the mansion was scarcely half the size of his father's ancestral home, Reginald did not have an adequate reply. He merely sprawled in the chair and continued scowling at her. "I will see that you are repaid for every shilling that the necklace was worth."

He hadn't meant to announce the fact so coldly, but it had been on his mind for too long, and he wished to be rid of it. He wasn't even certain how he meant to carry out his promise. He might have to give in to his father's wishes and marry an heiress to scrape together that kind of blunt.

Marian simply looked at him with wounded doe-eyes that made him want to haul her into his arms and kiss her until he melted away her false facade.

"That is generous of you, of course," she said, "but entirely unnecessary. I risked the necklace every time I wore it. I risked it by taking it to the jeweler. You did nothing that I did not ask you to do. You could scarcely have foreseen that it would be stolen."

Yes, he could have. She didn't know he had a thief for valet, but
he
knew. Reginald wasn't in a mood for arguing with her about it. "I'll speak to your solicitor. We'll make some arrangement. I'll not have you marrying Darley just to pay the bills."

"I don't suppose anyone has ever told you that you are an odious tyrant." Marian closed the book and rose from the chair. She kept her voice pleasant, fearing Lord Darley would enter at any moment.

He drew himself out of his chair and blocked her path. "And you are a sharp-tongued witch. That does not change anything. You will have the funds as soon as I am able to collect them."

He was too close, but to retreat would be a sign of surrender. Marian held her place and glared up at him. He was a head taller and considerably broader. She clenched her fingers into fists. "You will remove yourself, sir."

The tension and frustration of the day had been too much for him. Reginald knew full well the danger of rosy lips and slender curves, even when they were armored with a mind and tongue equal to his own. A brief wish to shake her tempted him. He was lost to sensible thought. He clasped her arms and pulled her to him.

Marian felt the impact of his lips across hers before she fully registered what he meant to do. She was twenty-two years old and could count the number of times she had been kissed on the fingers of one hand, and not one of those times had in any way resembled the ferocity of Montague's kiss. She could taste the experience on his lips, in the way they molded to hers, forcing her to relent and kiss him back. She shuddered as she did just that.

His chest was hard and warm, and his fingers were strong as they held her to him. She feared there would be bruises where he held her, but she couldn't bring herself to pull away. She rested her hands on his chest and vaguely realized that she wasn't wearing gloves. Impropriety had fled her thoughts while her mouth grew parted at his insistence.

The sound of Jessica calling her name brought them both abruptly back to the moment. Reginald dropped her arms, and Marian backed away, and they stared at each other as if lightning had struck them. Jessica's arrival forced them further apart.

"Look at this! Do you think I might be introduced at court in this?" She swirled around in a gold velvet cloak with a gold band of ostrich feathers wrapped about her hair.

Marian tucked her hair behind her ears, tentatively rubbing the place where a rough beard had chafed her. She didn't look at Montague as she watched her sister's posturing. "It is rather—" she stumbled for words—"quaint," she managed.

Her insides were still shaking. She needed to sit down and recover herself, but she couldn't let Montague see what he had done to her. She didn't want to appear an inexperienced young miss. She would brush this off as if nothing had ever happened. Nothing
had
happened. It was just the strain they were all under.

"Montague, where the hell are you? Come here, would you? I want you to look at something." Darley stumbled into the room and stopped.

Uncertainly, he glanced to his friend's stiff posture, to Jessica's pretty smile of welcome, to Marian's nervous fiddling at her hair. With a shrug, he went back to his original intent. "There's something behind this wall. I just can't find how to get at it."

He crossed the small sitting room and knocked at the far wall. The rap was oddly hollow. "See that? It shouldn't sound like that." He went to another wall and his knock was more of a thud. "That's the way a solid wall sounds. There's something back there, I tell you."

Marian gratefully turned her attention to this new discovery. She pounded high and low on the wall, getting the same hollow sound as Darley. She tried it on either side of the same wall, with no difference. Reginald left the sitting room and his steps could be heard in the room adjoining. Soon his knock could be heard on the wall on the other side.

"Still hollow!" he called. "And this is the end of the hall. If there's a passage, it can't go any farther."

They all immediately descended on the bedchamber to renew their exploration.

* * *

Behind the wall, the marquess unfolded his lengthy frame and crept back the way he had come earlier. It would be a damned nuisance losing his hiding place, but he had other things to think about right now.

Michael had said the Lady Marian was soon to be pledged to the wealthy Lord Darley. From all he could tell, the viscount was the usual pleasant British fool. He had no particular objection to the match. But it hadn't been Darley in that sitting room when all went silent.

The eighth marquess of Effingham had the distinct feeling that his little cousin had just been thoroughly kissed by a man with whom she had moments before been trading insults. And if Michael's information was correct, that "odious tyrant" and cynical aristocrat was little more than a shopkeeper and not the wealthy lord the ladies needed. He didn't want to harm his only relations. But he needed the blunt as much as they did.

It made his head hurt to think about it.

Chapter 15

The marquess removed his boots and crept quietly up the servants' stairs to the attic. He glanced down the bare corridor of closed doors, then decided on the nearest one. Michael wouldn't waste steps going to the last door.

He entered the first chamber, pushing the door closed with his heel. Had his gaze only been steel, it would have pierced the occupant through the heart.

Instead, the auburn-haired man on the narrow bed merely threw another card in his hat, wriggled his wrist, and flung a coin at the intruder glaring at him. The marquess caught the coin and shoved it into his pocket without looking at it.

"I ought to wring your neck." The look in his eyes was murderous, and his scarred cheek twitched furiously.

"You'll disturb your guests," Michael replied insouciantly, gathering his scattered cards with a wave of his hand.

"They've all taken a break for something they're calling 'nuncheon' but which smells very much like roasted game and apple pies. I'm damned well about to starve, thanks to you."

"Tarts. They call them tarts here. Pies contain meat." O'Toole sat up and crossed his legs blithely, tailor-fashion. "You could join them. They're only looking for me."

The marquess grabbed a straight-backed chair and straddled it. His expression wasn't any more pleasant. "Fine idea. I'll go down and terrorize the ladies, have the damned hot-headed gentlemen call me out, and spill my blood on foreign soil. What else have I got to do today?"

The irrepressible O'Toole grinned. "You're all cock-a-hoop about nothing, as they say here. Your fair visage ain't nothing to expire over. Lady Marian will no doubt pin you to your chair and interrogate you over hot coals, but the other two will twitter and offer you tea. Scary thought, ain't it?"

The marquess rubbed idly at his mutilated face. "It isn't your Lady Marian I'm wary of, it's that other damned bastard, the stuck-up fellow who looks down his nose all the time. He's already putting two and two together, and it's his cash on the line if the ruby doesn't show up. I heard him offering to pay for it."

O'Toole looked impressed. "I didn't think he had it in him. From all I can tell, he lives modestly by London standards."

The marquess crossed his arms over the back of the chair. "He's arrogant enough to bankrupt himself trying. When all this started, I just thought we'd be removing a bauble no one would miss. Now we're losing ladies their homes and bankrupting noble aristocrats. I don't like it."

"Gavin, your soft heart is showing. Besides, the ladies can't lose their home and Montague lose his blunt both. It's one or the other. Once we sell the necklace and get things righted around here, you can ask the ladies to come stay."

The marquess scowled, drawing the scars into a formidable mask. "It's not that easy. That blasted Marian has all the gall of every Lawrence ever born. She's determined to throw herself away on the viscount and save the family fortune. And I think your friend Montague is likely to tear a few people apart to prevent it. The situation is getting downright nasty out there."

O'Toole gave a fascinated whistle. "And here I thought the British were a cold lot. I'm damned glad Mother had the sense to find someone besides a Lawrence to father me."

The marquess stood up quickly and kicked the chair aside, bunching his fists as he did so. "Say that again and I'll beat you into a shadow on the wall. You're a Lawrence, just some hideous throwback, that's all. I'd suggest you put that active brain of yours to finding some way out of this mess, or I'll have to give the necklace back."

He turned and strode out, leaving his younger brother to grin after him.

His brother, the marquess, wasn't such a bad lot, O'Toole mused. Perhaps Gavin had killed a few men in the latest war between Britain and her former colonies and wouldn't be looked on all that friendly in these parts, but Gavin hadn't killed him yet. Considering the temptation Michael had offered, that was saying a good deal about the marquess's character.

* * *

"If it doesn't rain again, the roads will be clear enough for the ladies to return to London. There will be enough light if we hurry." Reginald wiped his hands on his napkin and sat back in his chair as if he were the head of their odd household.

"We have hired the servants for at least a day's work. We cannot leave them unsupervised." Marian offered a pleasant smile to soften the argument.

Reginald shot her a sharp look. "And tomorrow there will be some other excuse not to leave. You will wish to wait for the marquess to be certain he is well, or to make your apologies for intruding, or half a dozen other damned excuses. I say we leave now before anything else happens."

One of the new maids came to clear away the dishes, but Lady Grace spoke as if she were not there. "You really must mind your language, Mr. Montague. I had to remind the squire quite frequently. Single gentlemen often fall into bad habits, you know."

Since this was not at all to the point and misdirected his intentions, Reginald scowled and looked to Darley to back him up. His friend was so lost in thought that he did not appear to notice they were engaged in conversation.

Reginald stifled an exclamation of disgust. The damned hidden passage had yet to be discovered and explored. He wouldn't persuade Darley to leave any time soon, and he had hoped to send the viscount back with the ladies. He could see when he was overruled. He didn't even have to turn to Marian to see her triumph.

"I suppose we must search a little longer, then, but we are all leaving here on the morrow. I will speak to the help and see if any wish to stay until then." He waited for Lady Grace to lead the way from the table so he might go about his business. He wasn't accustomed to having ladies in the house, but he remembered his upbringing when it was necessary.

The lady graced him an approving smile and rose from her chair, indicating that her daughters follow. Reginald felt as if he had just been given a motherly pat on the back. He hadn't known any such damned thing since he had been in leading strings, and then it had most likely been from a nursery maid. His mother had seldom noticed him when she had been around, and she had left his father when he was little more than a lad. He had scarcely been aware of her existence by the time she died. Motherly pats weren't anything he expected.