The Madness of Viscount Atherbourne (Rescued from Ruin, Book One) (40 page)

Oh, dear heavens. Someone was in that room.
More than one someone, if her ears did not deceive her. Ice bloomed
beneath her skin. It should have been empty. She’d been
told
it would be empty. Swallowing hard, she backed slowly toward the
library.

Hands grabbed her arms from behind, squeezing
hard into the fleshy parts just above her elbows. “Hold there,” an
effete, refined voice sounded above her head. She squawked, tried
to twist against the man’s grip, but he simply shoved her forward
like a bit of seaweed on the crest of a wave. The third door on the
right opened, he shoved her again, and she stumbled into the room.
“Light it up, gentlemen!” the voice ordered. “Let’s have a look at
our intrepid intruder, shall we?”

Suddenly, two lamps were simultaneously lit,
and she could see what had been awaiting her. Men. More than a
dozen. She squinted at them, unable to believe the sight.
Everything moved slowly, as though in a dream.
Or nightmare,
she thought with distant horror. For, as her mind began working
again, she realized some of the men were familiar. The short,
prematurely balding one was Sir Christopher Flatmouth. Another she
recognized as the second son of Lord Gattingford. She glanced
right. Leaning negligently against a settee wearing an elegant gray
coat and an unreadable expression was the thin, inexplicably
attractive Viscount Chatham. She did not have to look behind her to
confirm the man who had shoved her into the room was Lord Milton;
she would know that lisp anywhere. To a man, they were all sons of
the aristocracy. And to a man, they were all wastrels, the
dissolute, perennially bored scoundrels of the ton.

Presently, their surprise at seeing her was
wearing off, because many began to laugh uproariously. She even
thought she heard a few “huzzahs” amidst the glee. She did not
understand it. Why were they laughing? Cheering? Her answer came
moments later when one of their members was shoved to the front of
the crowd.

Her eyes widened, shock moving through her
with tidal force. Curling blond hair tumbled artfully above
sheepish blue eyes. His boyishly handsome features did not appear
pleased, despite the back-slapping congratulations coming from his
friends. His face was ruddy, his posture unusually slumped—he
looked like a child caught in the middle of mischief.

She had done this for him. She was standing
amidst this briar patch of rakes and cads, dressed as a fat,
incompetent highwayman. Because of him.

Heat shimmered along her neck and cheeks, but
in all other aspects, numbness settled over her, as thick and
paralyzing as ten feet of snow.
Please let this not be
happening.
Dear God, this humiliation was intolerable. Nothing
made sense. She only knew she could not get enough air, could not
move from where she stood.

Her breath caught as she stared into his blue
eyes. All around, the others seemed to be crowding closer, their
laughing chatter louder, their wild gestures intruding into her
small bubble of space.
I must leave. Now. Before this gets any
worse.
By force of will, she took a scraping, stumbling step
back toward the door. Once again, hands stopped her. A lisping
voice mocked, “Where are you off to, little thief? Stay a while.
The entertainment has only just begun.”

The blue-eyed man she had once considered a
friend shoved violently at the man next to him and charged forward.
“Release her,” he barked. “The wager is won. You have what you came
to see. It is done.”

“Wager?” she murmured hoarsely, but it was
lost amidst the loud guffaws and protests of the gentlemen.

“Ballocks! Can’t let her go ’til she’s
unmasked,” Sir Christopher declared sloppily. Clearly, his
evening’s “entertainment” had begun early.

“Just so! How else are we to know for certain
the conditions of the wager have been met?” shouted another
man.

A third—Lord Gattingford’s son—replied, “Who
else would wear spectacles on the outside of her mask?” That
generated a new round of guffaws from the crowd. Jane reached up to
touch the edge of the rims.

“Lost ten quid on this one,” another man
remarked, resentment flinting his voice. “Should have known he
could charm the chit. The fat ones are always so eager to
please.”

The room began to rock and tilt. Heat and
shame squeezed like a coiling snake around a fresh kill. She shook
her head automatically, unable to stop the motion. She spun to face
Lord Milton, a whey-faced, wiry man who over-plucked his eyebrows
into thin, straight lines. He still had hold of her arm, but was
preoccupied with amusement. Almost without thought, she lowered her
shoulder and rammed it into his solar plexus. “Ooof!” She was
rewarded by the shock bulging his eyes and loosening his grip.

Tearing herself free, she ran for the door,
still partially open. Two steps away from freedom, it slammed shut,
a lean, elegant hand braced on the panel in front of her. Slowly,
she allowed her gaze to travel up the gray-clad arm to meet a
hooded set of turquoise eyes. Chatham.

Without a word, he stepped in close,
seemingly wrapping her in his arms. “Wh-what are you …?” she began.
Clean linen and citrus and the faint odor of whisky surrounded her.
He was surprisingly warm for such a cold man, she thought absently.
She felt a sharp tug at the back of her head. “No!” she shouted
hoarsely, suddenly realizing what he was doing. She tore at the
fine wool of his sleeves, shoved at the hard bones of his chest.
But it was useless.

The mask fell away, along with her spectacles
and several hair pins. Her hair came down, a fall as straight and
dark as her ruined pride. The chatter ceased. She pushed away from
Chatham, turned to the man who had engineered her humiliation. He
was a blur. A blond, deceitful blur who had made her into a
laughingstock. In the silence, she could not stop what happened—the
dollop of cream on the strawberry of her day. There, in the middle
of Lord Milton’s London townhouse, surrounded by cads of every
sort, wearing her brother’s breeches and a stable boy’s coat, Plain
Jane Huxley did what she had sworn she would never do in public:
She let the tears come.

*~*~*

About the Author

Reading romance novels came easily to Elisa
Braden. She’s been doing it since she was twelve. Writing them?
That took a little longer. After graduating with degrees in
creative writing and history, Elisa spent entirely too many years
in “real” jobs writing T-shirt copy ... and other people’s resumes
... and articles about giftware displays. But that was before she
woke up and started dreaming about the very
unreal
job of
being a romance novelist. Frankly, she figures better late than
never.

Elisa lives in the gorgeous Pacific
Northwest, where you're constitutionally required to like the
colors green and gray. Good thing she does. Other items on the
“like” list include cute dogs, strong coffee, and epic movies. Of
course, her favorite thing of all is hearing from readers who love
her characters as much as she does.

If you’re one of those, get in touch on
Facebook
,
Twitter
, and
Pinterest
, or
visit
www.elisabraden.com
.

*~*~*