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  “Lord Lenwood!” Fitzroy said, mocking. “When did you ever suggest that an innocent man should meet such a fate? I am as much a victim of my brother’s indiscretion as your sister, am I not?”

  Richard met his derisive gaze. “For God’s sake, Tarrant, show her the letter!”

  With an elegant bow, Fitzroy gave Joanna her father’s letter.

  Rage sputtered from the page, echoed in the ink splattered across the paper by a pen breaking under too forceful a fist. Lord Acton had learned from Lord Evenham that Quentin was already married. The two earls had agreed to the only solution: Joanna must marry Quentin’s brother, Fitzroy, or they would both suffer the consequences.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Surely her mother could soften him? But, no, at the bottom of the letter was a terse note in Lady Acton’s flowing hand.

  “He is not to be moved this time, Joanna. After what happened with Harry, like the lamb you are to be led to the slaughter. Your father has no compunction in destroying the tree along with the fruit thereof. I’m very sorry, my dear girl, but not every forced marriage is a bad one. You must make the best of it that you can.”

  Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may no more be remembered.

  It was one of Miss Able’s favorite passages from Jeremiah. Lady Joanna Acton had done something even more unforgivable than her brother Harry, who had married a Scottish governess, and her father was not going to excuse her. He was prepared to see Quentin Mountfitchet hanged at Newgate if she did not give in—a slightly uneven return for the loan of a curricle and an escort to Harefell, however ineffective he had been in delivering her there.

  Even if she called Lord Acton’s bluff over Quentin, her own future was doomed: to live out her days in that great marble mausoleum, King’s Acton, cut off forever from the world.

  She could stand it, perhaps, and surely they would not really hang the son of an earl?

  Joanna glanced up at the ring of faces.

  “I cannot,” she said. “I cannot marry this man.” She turned to Lord Evenham. “My lord, you will not allow my father to harm one of your sons, surely?”

  “I must have a suitable heir in the direct line in the next generation,” the Black Earl replied without blinking. “If it is necessary to sacrifice one useless son to compel the other to do his duty, then so be it.”

  Fitzroy watched Joanna with an oddly conflicting range of emotion. She was headstrong, willful, spoiled. She was at least ten years his junior, little more than a schoolgirl. She was beautiful.

  And at first glance she looked—if one did not concentrate too long on the pure English skin and the full curve of upper lip—decidedly like Juanita, his Spanish bride, who had died in circumstances that had made honorable Richard Acton want to execute her husband without compunction.

  Fitzroy turned to his father. “Sir, if you would kindly allow me a few moments alone with my future bride, I would be most grateful.”

  “I shall be waiting in my carriage, sir, to escort the young lady back to town. You may have five minutes. Then I would be pleased if you would do something to sober Quentin and bring him back with you in your phaeton. Smithers may retrieve my curricle, and this unfortunate incident will be behind us. Lord Lenwood, perhaps you would accompany us?”

  Richard bowed his head and with one quick, agonized glance at Joanna, followed Lord Evenham from the room.

  * * *

  Joanna could not bear to meet his gaze. She let her eyes wander across the dull plaster—faded prints hung on the walls, of birds and flowers—then up at the low, timbered ceiling where traces of paint hung in small green peels, so that the beams had the look of lichen-covered tree trunks in an ancient forest. The Swan was Tudor, no doubt, with its lead-paned windows and crooked doorways.

  How odd that in this busy, modern world, so many post houses should still echo that long lost past.

  “Evenham Abbey is Tudor, also,” Lord Tarrant said quietly, although still with an echo of anger and derision. “Stolen from the monks for the benefit of my ancestors. Strange that such a hallowed place should spawn such an unholy family, isn’t it?”

  “They will not hang Quentin,” Joanna replied.

  He dropped onto the chair opposite hers and stretched out his long legs.

  “Are you prepared to take that risk? I am not.”

  “I thought you hated him. Aren’t you glad to have an excuse to see him hanged?”

  “I do not hate him.” It was said flatly, without emotion.

  Silence echoed for a moment.

  Joanna studied the carved leaves trailing up the edge of the stone fireplace. They were battered and blunted by time, the veining blurred, the stems chipped away.

  “It’s all absurd. I was not abducted. I left with your brother of my own accord.”

  “The law is often absurd, and Quentin has broken it. To carry off an heiress is a hanging offense, whether you claim you were willing or not. We have two earls determined to press charges. Your father to save your reputation. Mine to force me into marriage at any cost. Once the charges have been made, the law will grind out its inexorable course. No one will be interested in your opinion.”

  Joanna knew that she was defeated. She could not stand alone against the force of all of them: her father, the Black Earl, and most of all this man with his spoiled, sarcastic humor.

  “So what are we to do?”

  He laughed with a reckless lack of restraint.

  “Why, we shall marry, of course, like the dutiful children we are, and thus I shall save your reputation. It will be the first honorable act toward a lady that I have been seen to commit in a long time. We shall set up a splendid pretense at housekeeping in my house near town, and receive the well-wishers with smiles and a sham of wedded bliss. Privately you won’t ever need to see me. I have my own pursuits.”

  Why should it wound, when she had no desire to marry him? Yet it did.

  “Involving women, I suppose,” she said tartly.

  He grinned. “Of course. I shall make no demands on you. You may live as you please. As I shall continue with my own life. I have urgent business in town at this moment, which interests me far more than taking an unwilling bride.”

  The painting above the mantel was a watercolor, not badly done, of a riverbank and a rustic cottage.

  “I should want a studio.”

  “Very well. You may have an entire floor, if you wish. In fact, you may do any damned thing you please with the house. I don’t imagine I shall be there much. So, you see, marriage to me will bring you what you have been longing for, freedom to paint. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  She felt the force of his dismissal pierce like an arrowhead. It settled somewhere inside her rib cage, threatening to fester.

  But I have never wanted to marry. And he is offering me my heart’s desire, more clearly than my own plans for Harefell. It doesn’t even matter whether or not he means it. Because if he breaks trust, Richard and Harry will retaliate, and—like Quentin’s wife—once I am married, I can always run away. A married woman is free of her father, at least.

  “You don’t want children?” she asked.

  He took up the poker to rearrange the coals. Joanna’s attention snapped back to him. His hands were lovely, square and strong, yet with elegant, blunt-ended fingers.

  “I most particularly don’t want children. There’s no other revenge I can have on my father for this, except to deprive him of the grandson from my loins that he so desperately craves.”

  “In that case, Quentin’s wife will be the mother of the next earl.”

  The dark eyes glanced up, implacable, but with just that hint of derision.

  “Exactly. You will not again be subjected to my unwanted attentions. I have enough females to satisfy my natural male needs. Once we are married, you may take whatever lovers you please, as long as you’re discreet and produce no bastards. So let that one kiss be the first and last expres
sion of lust between us. Even if you invite me, Lady Joanna, it will never happen again.”

  Chapter 5

  Fitzroy accepted the brandy from Lord Grantley with a polite bow of the head.

  A rattle of carriages and a splashing of horses’ hooves could be faintly heard in the street outside, broken by the steady tolling of church bells. It was raining. The light seeping through the tall windows into Lord Grantley’s study in Whitehall was dull and flat, leaving the room washed in tones of gray.

  “We were wrong, sir,” Fitzroy said. “It is not Lady Carhill. Greeks and Trojans mean nothing to her. I was then forced to extricate myself from a rather delicate situation.”

  Lord Grantley was a generation older than Fitzroy, his white hair curling away from a balding brow. The buttons on his ivory waistcoat stretched a little too tightly over a portly belly, but he embodied command. He stood looking down at his guest with a slight frown.

  “It’s a damnable business, Tarrant. So who’s left?”

  Fitzroy smiled up at the older man. “After Lady Carhill? Lady Reed and Lady Kettering. Three ladies, two more campaigns of seduction.”

  “You damned dog! Very lovely ladies, too. It shouldn’t be difficult for someone of your talents.”

  “There is a small change in my situation, however,” Fitzroy said.

  Lord Grantley raised a questioning brow. “Which is—?”

  “I’m to marry on Friday.”

  “Marry?” The word burst out, an explosion of annoyance and shock.

  “Indeed. It’s a common enough human pastime—to tie oneself for life to a perfect stranger in a bond that can never be broken. Who does not marry? Aren’t we all gluttons for punishment?”

  “But marry! Now? To whom, by God?”

  “The lady who honors me with her hand is Lady Joanna Acton, the famous countess’s younger daughter. She favors her mother in looks, so you may believe that I have effected a coup, if you like.”

  Lord Grantley still looked completely astonished. “But the chit’s not even had a Season, has she?”

  “No. She comes to her nuptials straight from school, unsullied and refreshingly naive. Our fathers have arranged the match. A little gothic, but there you are. The wedding will take place at King’s Acton, a private affair, just immediate family. I shall thus be out of town for a few days.”

  “And you agreed to this? At this juncture? When Lady Kettering holds a ball this Friday? It may be critical that you attend. For God’s sake, Tarrant, have you gone mad?”

  “Very possibly.” Fitzroy stood up. “But a little delay will probably do no harm. It will keep our villain guessing, at least, and Lady Kettering offers another dance in a fortnight. Apart from missing this one upcoming ball, the marriage will not interfere in any way with my work.”

  “Ha! You would not say so if you had ever been—” Lord Grantley broke off and bit his lip.

  “But I was married, of course.”

  “I’m sorry. For a moment I had forgotten. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  Fitzroy’s knuckles shone white as his fingers closed hard on the stem of his glass.

  “To Juanita, whom I sacrificed willingly for the cause in the Peninsula. But poor Juanita was an orphan, so my crime went unavenged. Sacrifice should not be necessary, and would most certainly not be wise this time, unless it is mine, of course.”

  “For God’s sake, Tarrant!”

  “Lady Joanna has several puissant brothers, and her father is well known to you—not a man to cross lightly. I don’t want any of the Actons breathing down my neck, so I shall try to be as discreet with the ladies as you could possibly wish.”

  “But what will you do, sir, if the ladies do not wish for discretion?”

  Fitzroy kept his voice entirely free of distress as he replied with a certain humor.

  “I don’t know, Lord Grantley. My duty, no doubt.”

  * * *

  Joanna returned to London in an oddly detached daze. It all seemed so unreal. The journey with Lord Evenham and Richard, where the two men talked politely of commonplaces as if nothing momentous had occurred, passed in a blur.

  Her arrival at Acton House to face her father should have caused her some consternation, at least. Instead, she walked into the house quite calmly to find that the earl had gone out, and her mother wished to see her.

  She went up to the withdrawing room, which looked out over Park Lane, to discover the countess busy at her writing desk, compiling lists. It was too strange to comprehend. Everything seemed unchanged: the gilt chairs, the voluptuous goddess sailing across the ceiling in shades of blue and pink, her mother’s calm, quizzical look as she tapped her perfect cheek with the feathered end of her quill.

  “Ah, Joanna! But where is Richard?”

  Joanna walked restlessly to the fireplace and back. “He went straight home to Acton Mead. He said he didn’t trust himself to meet Father until he had given Helena a chance to calm him down.”

  “Very wise, no doubt. They will join us soon enough at King’s Acton for the wedding. Pray, sit down, my silly child. Now, I have drawn up a list of clothes and other things that you will need. And I have found you a wedding dress. Would you like to see it?”

  “To be honest, Mama, I really don’t care if I’m married in sackcloth and ashes.”

  “Ah, I was afraid it would be like that. Was Lord Tarrant quite impossible?”

  Joanna’s lips twisted just a little as she bit back a derisive grin.

  “Richard doesn’t like or trust him. They almost came to blows.”

  “A bad sign, I admit. Richard is usually an excellent judge of character. Does he think Tarrant merely offensive, or actually dangerous?”

  “He’s an arrogant, self-centered rogue.”

  Joanna felt a faint stirring of dread as she said it. They weren’t just words, were they? They meant something real, something quite appalling to face.

  She was to be tied to this man for life. Once it was done, it could never be undone. She must swear to love, honor, and obey him till death did them part. As the panic leaped into her throat, threatening to strangle her, she crossed the room to her mother.

  Having no idea that she was about to do it, Joanna dropped to her knees and laid her head against Lady Acton’s lap.

  “But then so am I. He and I will be well matched. Mama, I’m so sorry.”

  Lady Acton touched her daughter tenderly on the cheek, then brushed a wisp of hair back from her forehead.

  “You’re not selfish, Joanna. You’re just filled with too much passion and too much burning longing for life. You will find love, my dear, either within this marriage of convenience, or out of it. And there will be children, at least.”

  Joanna rocked back on her heels to gaze up at her mother.

  “I don’t want children. What if I want something of my own that isn’t dependent on a man or lived through him? I want to paint, Mama. Can’t you understand that? And a woman can’t do anything of her own, nothing real anyway, if she’s gone soft in the head for a man and babies. So if it has to be marriage, then very well, let it be to a self-centered, arrogant bastard like Fitzroy Mountfitchet. At least he will leave me alone.”

  To Lady Acton’s considerable distress, Joanna fled the room.

  * * *

  Lord Tarrant came to call the next afternoon. He was charmingly polite to Lady Acton and the earl, and calmly civil to Joanna.

  She returned his greeting with an even cooler one of her own.

  Yet she dressed in a stylish pelisse and bonnet and went with him in his phaeton to inspect his house, where they were to reside together in wedded bliss, once they returned from King’s Acton.

  His home lay a few miles from London in several acres of grounds. He led her through the rooms, from the kitchens in the cellar to the servants’ quarters in the attics.

  It was an elegant, formal house, decorated in the latest style, reflecting nothing of its occupant’s personality or taste.

  Finally,
he took her into another withdrawing room. Large windows faced a quiet lawn to the north.

  “You may have this room for your studio.” He strode to the window to look down into the garden. “I have given orders for the furniture to be removed, and the carpets put in storage. Will it do?”

  “I should like the wallpaper peeled and the walls whitewashed, please,” Joanna replied.

  He turned to her and raised a brow. “For God’s sake! Are you serious? The house is leased. The wallpaper?”

  “You said I might do anything to the house that I liked.” Joanna forced herself to face the insult of his incredulity calmly, while she hated herself for caring at all. “And I have a list here of supplies I shall need.”

  She reached into her reticule and pulled out her wish list. Easels and canvas stretchers, pigments and brushes, oils and charcoal sticks.

  He gave it a perfunctory glance.

  “Order anything you like,” he said. “You may have it all charged to my account. I shall see to the whitewash, if it’s so important to you.”

  It shook her that he could be so very calm and casual about it—to take on a wife he didn’t want, then tear down the wallpaper to satisfy her whim.

  “I didn’t really think that you meant what you said at the Swan Inn.”

  Joanna heard the uncertainty in her own voice. This man, Fitzroy Monteith Mountfitchet, Lord Tarrant, was going to be her husband. For a lifetime. A lifetime of frosty exchanges and this rigid, barely controlled civility.

  She didn’t know him. She even felt a little afraid of him, perhaps, but there was no reason for them to be enemies, was there?

  “I meant every word,” he said. “I promised you a studio. Here it is. If you wish it painted purple, it’s of no interest to me.”

  What had Helena said to her once? We all of us need all the allies we can get, I think. Joanna took back the list, folded it, and thrust it into her reticule.