. . . though not for long.
Further advice from Nanny Tasha
Minerva paused at the back door, her hand trembling as she reached for the latch.
“You can do this,” she whispered to herself. “You can face him.”
All those years ago. How long had it been? Twelve years since she’d discovered the truth about love. About him. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
At the very least it had been another life. One she didn’t want to revisit. Yet here she was, about to face a past she had tried to keep buried all these years. Her fingers wrapped around the latch and pushed the back door open.
Glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, she slipped into the garden and walked down the uneven path toward the gate, steeling herself for the sight of him.
But when she stepped into the alleyway, she found it empty. She glanced right then left, and for a moment felt a fleeting bit of relief.
She’d been wrong. It wasn’t him.
Oh, but it was. For just then, out of the doorway that led to the garden across the way, stepped a tall muscular figure.
“Maggie, me girl, look at you.”
Minerva stilled. Maggie. She hadn’t been called that since the day her father had hauled her down the aisle to marry Philip Sterling.
And instead of finding comfort in hearing someone use that old, long lost name, it sent a shock of terror through her.
“Don’t call me that,” she said, drawing herself up. You are the Marchioness of Standon. You are. He can’t do anything to that.
Oh, but he could.
“What, Maggie me girl, are you too lofty now for old friends? Not so lofty that you didn’t come running when I came to call. Just like old times, eh?”
“What choice do I have?” She crossed her arms over her chest and took another furtive glance up and down the empty alleyway. “Now state your business and be gone before someone sees me with you.”
Sees me and questions what I was doing out here . . .
“Gotten all hoity-toity, haven’t we? But I know different, don’t I? I knew you when you weren’t so fine and you were still my Maggie.” Much to her chagrin, he crossed the alley with the same determined stride that had once caught her eye. And unfortunately he was still darkly handsome.
But not as handsome as Langley, she found herself thinking. For where the baron was charming and lighthearted, this man brooded a dark mystery.
He stopped before her and smiled down at her. One that would have sent her heart pattering a dozen or so years before. But that was the advantage of time and reaching an age where youthful eyes gave way to sight that let one see past the veneer of dark countenances and heavy-lidded glances.
For there was no longer any mystery to Gerald Adlington. Not to her. Everything that seemed so exciting and enigmatic about him had been easy to discover: He possessed no heart, no loyalty.
And he had never loved her.
Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t toy with her. Couldn’t play cat to her mouse. Something he knew only too well.
“So, Margaret Owens, you can dress yourself up and call yourself by whatever fancy title you like, but deep down we both know you will always be naught but old Gilston’s by-blow. My hot-blooded Maggie. My dearest wife.”
Langley watched from the morning room window as Lady Standon stole across the garden like a thief. Whatever was she doing meeting her “painter” in the mews? Too many years spent unraveling the secrets of others made it impossible for him not to start wondering what she was hiding.
“So you have your secrets, do you, Lady Standon?” he mused quietly to himself.
From behind him, he heard the telltale creak of the floor in the hallway, and then it was the lady’s voice that stopped his speculations.
“Schatzi, how could anything hold your attention in this dreary place?”
Helga. He should have known her protestations against going out so early were for naught. He had to imagine that if there ever was an early bird, it was this woman. Sharp-eyed and ready to snatch up whatever came into her sights.
She entered the room without an invitation. “All alone? Goodness, your dear betrothed is a trusting soul. But she doesn’t know you like I do.”
Langley turned around, for it never was good to keep one’s back to Wilhelmenia, the Margravine of Ansbach, for too long. He nodded politely to her. No, she wasn’t a woman to be trifled with.
Nor given the least bit of encouragement.
“Where is she?” Helga asked, glancing about the empty place at the table, a slow smile on her lips.
“If you mean my betrothed, she is meeting with a tradesman.”
Helga glanced up, her head tipped as if she hadn’t heard him quite right. “Meeting with a tradesman? How very common.” She paused and ran her finger over the back of the chair. “And how convenient.” Then she moved like an eel around the table toward him.
“Margravine,” he said as formally as he could.
“Helga,” she corrected. “Remember when you called me that?”
“Yes, I do,” he told her, stepping away from her and nudging a chair into her path. “I believe your husband found it rather offensive.” He paused and glanced over his shoulder at her. “By the way, how is the margrave?”
“Deceased,” she said with no sign of remorse, no grief.
“My condolences,” he offered, more for himself. He’d been half counting on the old fellow showing up in all his regalia and hauling his errant wife back to Ansbach where she belonged.
“No condolences are necessary,” she said, glancing down at her nails. “He was a pig.”
True enough. But one who had been able to outmaneuver his manipulative margravine from time to time.
During this exchange, the woman had managed to come closer. “What has happened to you, schatzi?”
“Nothing. As you can see I am well.”
She shook her head. “You’ve changed; you’re not the same man.”
“Time has a way of doing that to all of us,” he told her. “Look at me. I am engaged—”
“Bah!” she said, dismissing Lady Standon’s place at his side with an airy wave.
“And I intend to retire to the country—”
Now she began to laugh. Loudly.
Langley cringed, for unfortunately it wasn’t one of her finest qualities.
“Oh, schatzi, no! Stop! You cannot mean such a thing!” She reached for the back of a chair and steadied herself. “You? In the country? Such a waste. Such nonsense.”
“Not to me,” he said with a conviction that not even he knew he possessed. For standing here, with the margravine, looking back at what had been amusing and energizing for so many years, suddenly paled in the face of coming home to England. The quiet green meadows. The farmhouses. The stone walls lining the lanes. He had ridden from Dover like a man waking from a dream. “Perhaps I have changed.”
“Hmm,” she mused. “Most decidedly. Whatever happened to you in Paris?”
He turned to her. “I drank too much wine,” he said, making light of the night that had changed his life. Nearly been the death of him. One he barely remembered. No matter how hard he tried. That night was like a candle snuffed out; once the light was gone, it was impossible to remember the world otherwise. “What do you know of Paris?”
“Nothing more than the rest of us. You were there, and then you weren’t. The rumors, darling, were terrible. Three years of whispers I have endured. You were dead. You’d helped Bonaparte.” She spat the man’s name out like an olive pit. “But I never believed any of it. I knew—”
As quickly as her words had come tumbling out, they stopped and her gaze fixed on the side of his head. She reached out her hand and touched the scar that ran from his hairline around his ear and nearly to the back of his head.
Where his head had been bashed in and he’d been left for dead.
“That wasn’t there.” She shivered as she parted his hair and saw how far back it went.
He brushed her hand away and ducked out of her reach. “Perhaps you didn’t notice it before. I fell as a child, you know. While learning to ride.”
She laughed again and retreated toward the window, letting the morning sun frame her blond hair. “You’ve never fallen off a horse in your life. More like you fell into a cudgel. Or it fell into you. Which was it?”
Since he didn’t know, he couldn’t say, but this entire round of questions was growing uncomfortable. Nor did he trust her. “You know, madame, one of the reasons I adore Minerva is that she doesn’t badger me about my past.”
Helga shook her head and glanced out the window as she considered her answer. And when she turned to face him, it was obvious she’d found the perfect answer. “Perhaps it is because she doesn’t want you to pry too deeply into hers.” She nodded down into the garden.
Against his better judgment, he crossed the room and took a glance out the window.
And what he saw answered several of his earlier questions, and left him with a raftload more as yet to be answered.
“Let go of me, Gerald!” Minerva had tried to flee back into the garden, but he was too quick and caught her in his arms. But not for long. She managed to get her hands on his chest and push him away and close the garden door so they were once again alone in the alley and shielded from prying eyes.
“Hardly the way to greet your husband.”
“I am not your wife.” Never was.
Though once she’d thought she would be. Had been so madly in love with him. Ready to marry him.
Until her father had come home from London with the alarming news that she was to marry Philip Sterling, the Marquis of Standon, the future Duke of Hollindrake.
“Now, now,” he said. “I’ve got a marriage license that says I’m married to one Margaret Owens and we both know who you are.” He eased closer to her again, but this time she slipped away, turning to face him. “Shall we borrow a carriage and ride north to Gilston House? See if any of the old servants remember exactly which of the earl’s daughters you might be? Handy for you it is too far north to venture easily or often.”
“What are you doing here?” Minerva set her jaw. “Does she know you are here?” Her sister. The real Lady Minerva Hartley.
He had the good grace to look a bit repentant. But only for a moment. This was Gerald, after all.
“No, she doesn’t. But how could she? She’s gone, if you must know.”
Minerva’s gaze narrowed. “She left you?” That would explain his sudden arrival at her doorstep.
He laughed as if such a thing were unthinkable. Which of course it was. Minnie had been just as head over heels in love with Gerald as her half-sister. But as the earl’s legitimate daughter, the likes of Gerald Adlington was far beneath her. And it had been the first time Minerva had ever been able to aspire to something her lofty, selfish sister couldn’t have.
“Where is my sister?” she pressed.
“She’s dead.”
This simple statement brought Minerva’s gaze wrenching back to his. Her sister? Dead? No, it couldn’t be true. She searched his mocking gaze for some glimmer of deceit.
And when she looked at him, really studied him, she realized something telling. He wasn’t wearing mourning. A cold shudder ran down her spine. “How long, Gerald? How long has Minnie been gone?”
Gerald shuffled his feet under her scrutiny and looked away. “Five . . . maybe six—”
“Months?”
He scoffed at her question. “No, not months. Years. About six years now.”
Minerva staggered back. “But you never told me—”
“And what were you going to do, Maggie? Wear a black armband for her? Confess the truth? That you married that fancy toff in her stead? That you are naught but your father’s bastard?”
Minerva’s insides trembled. Not with grief, for she knew her sister never spared a thought for her, save for the money Minerva sent. No, Minnie would never have shed a tear if it had been Minerva’s fate, except perhaps because it would have stopped the payments coming.
The payments. If Minnie had been dead all these years . . .
Her gaze narrowed. “How dare you!” she whispered, afraid that if she gave over to the rage, and yes, the grief starting to edge its way into her heart, she would once again be Margaret Owens and give him what he deserved. “My sister was dead and still you took the money?”
“Why shouldn’t I have? It’s because of me you’re top-of-the-trees and worth a plum.”
“Because of you?” she sputtered. “You courted me, then eloped with my sister behind my back. Behind our father’s back.”
“Which is why you’ve got your fancy name—a good one, I might add. I deserve a little something for raising you out of the back halls and below-stairs where your father kept you.”
A little something? “ ’Tis blackmail.”
Gerald shrugged, a negligent tip of his shoulders. “Rather an ugly way of phrasing it, Maggie, but I suppose there are some who might see it that way. Not me, though.” He had the audacity to wink at her.
“Get out of here,” she said, pointing down the alleyway.
He shoved her hand down. “Not without my money. That’s why I’m here in the first place. When I went to Brighton this week to get the quarterly, that rum-cake solicitor said your account was closed. Emptied. Cavey business, that, Maggie. To leave your own kin high and dry.”
Now she saw all too clearly why he was here. Her accounts! She’d completely forgotten the part of her accounts that she quietly funneled to a solicitor in Brighton, who in turn saw the money turned over to her sister.
Since her banishment to this house on Brook Street, all her accounts had been closed, as had Elinor’s and Lucy’s. There hadn’t been any money to send on. Not anymore. She glanced up at him and smiled.
“I fear I’ve run afoul of the new duke and his wife. They cut me off. There is no more money to be had.”
He cocked his head and eyed her. “Oh, aye, what’s this nonsense? I won’t be bobbed by the likes of you.”
“I am not conning you, Mr. Adlington, if that is what you are saying. Not in the least,” she told him coolly. “I have this house to live in and naught much else.”
He glanced up at the house. “Any silver in there?”
Minerva ran out of patience with him. “Good heavens, I’m in the suds enough with His Grace without adding to my crimes. And have you taken a good look at this house? I can tell you quite honestly there is nothing of value in it.” She put her hands on her hips. “You’ll have to live within your means. Isn’t your army pay—”
Then she realized something else that had been bothering her about him—his arrival in her midst not withholding: He was out of uniform.
“You sold out!” Her words came out like an accusation. For of course he’d sold out. And then squandered every coin.
How had she ever loved him? Fancied him her hero? Again, for whatever reason, her thoughts turned to Lord Langley and how different he was. Oh, Langley was a rake and a seducer, but he wasn’t a complete cad, a man who would live on a woman’s coattails.
“What if I did? Not that it’s anything to you. You still owe me my quarterly, and that’s all that matters.” His jaw worked back and forth. “Got any jewels?”
She sighed in exasperation with him. “No. All the Sterling jewelry belongs to the duchess.”
Including the Sterling diamonds, which Minerva had neglected to turn over. Luckily for her, the Duchess of Hollindrake seemed to be ignorant of her rightful claim to them. And if she hadn’t relinquished them to their true owner, she certainly wasn’t about to give them to the likes of Gerald Adlington.
Not even to keep her secret. She’d rather hand them over to the duchess. Which came in a close second.
“Come now, Maggie,” he coaxed. “You’re still a bit of a looker. There’s no one about you could hook? Another one of those old culls, the sort with a heart ailment and one foot in the grave like the last one you had? I’d say one of those sorts would come in right handy about now.”
What would come in handy right now was Thomas-Williams’s pistol.
Minerva cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner. Especially now that he was pressing her to get married. Why in heavens was everyone in London seemingly bent on seeing her wed?
Good heavens, this snake was as bad as Aunt Bedelia. Worse, perhaps.
“I fear, Mr. Adlington, that our arrangement is over.” She went to step past him, but he caught her by the elbow and held her fast, and to her shock, his other hand rose as if to strike a furious blow.
“You listen here, Lady Toplofty,” he whispered into her ear, his words blustering over her hot and wet. “You’ll get me my money and I’ll hear no more of your tomfoolery, or I’ll march myself over to that duke’s house and tell him who you really are. Then I’ll show him my wedding license—the one that says I’m married to one Margaret Owens—and I’ll demand he hands you over to me.” He shook her for good measure, just to make certain she heard him loud and clear.
Oh, she had. “You wouldn’t dare, Gerald.”
“I would, don’t think that I wouldn’t. Then what, Maggie? Whatever will the Sterlings do when they discover they nearly had themselves a bastard for a duchess? What will they say about the little switch your father made all those years ago? Do you think they’ll let you back in their house?” He shook his head. “You’ll be tossed out with only the clothes on your back, if they leave you those.”
She reeled a bit, her knees wavering, the nightmare she’d feared all these years beginning to come true.
“So if you can’t find anything of value in that house to give me what I’m owed,” Gerald told her, “then you had best find yourself a new husband, and right quick.”
Minerva tried to shake him off, but his grip was like a blacksmith’s vise. “There might . . . perhaps . . . there is someone.”
“Now yer talking sense,” he said, easing his grip a bit. “But this isn’t some flummery of yours? Just to gammon me?”
“There is someone,” she insisted. “Actually, I recently became engaged, though it isn’t widely known.” He eyed her as if gauging the veracity of her claim, and so she brazened him out. “A baron. With means.” She had no idea if Langley had a farthing to call his own, but she doubted Adlington would know either.
“To whom?”
“Lord Langley.”
Like she suspected, Adlington shook his head. “Never heard of him.”
“Why would you have?” she shot back, finally shaking him off. “He’s an honorable man.” That was probably a stretch, but then again, this was Gerald.
For a moment Minerva feared she might have spoken too quickly. She had gotten used to being a marchioness, a lady, one a gentleman wouldn’t strike or contradict. But to this man, she was simply Margaret Owens, the Earl of Gilston’s by-blow.
But to her surprise and relief, he grinned at her and lowered his hand, instead chucking her under the chin like he had when he’d courted her. “Still got that bit of fire in your belly and the mouth to match. Maggie, you just proved what me mum always said, ‘You can take a girl out of the cellars, but you never take the cellars out of the girl.’ ”
Something inside her snapped. In all these years of being treated with the deference due a marchioness, the daughter of an earl, she’d forgotten what it meant to be merely the bastard in the kitchen. But it came back in a heady flash.
She caught hold of his sleeve, met his gaze and said with every bit of fire she still possessed in her belly, “And you would do well to remember my mother’s favorite saying, ‘When an old rooster crows too loud, it’s time to cut his throat.’ ”
Beneath her fingers, for only a moment, she thought she felt him tremble. Good. Let him know she hadn’t completely forgotten her backstairs origins. Her father might have been the lord and master, the earl of his realm, but her mother . . . now, she’d been feared for different reasons.
Gerald eyed her and then let out an uneasy laugh as he tugged his sleeve out of her grasp. “Get yourself married to this baron of yours, Maggie. And use that sweet mouth of yours for something other than threats. Talk him into giving you a generous allowance—I’ve grown used to your way of life.”
He bowed slightly to her and then turned to leave. “Oh, and don’t think I won’t be watching you, Maggie, me girl. Try to make a dash for it without me, it will be your ruin.”
Minerva spent a few moments composing herself as Adlington strode out of sight.
Not that she believed for a moment he was going very far. No, if there was one thing she did know about Gerald Adlington, it was that when it came to money, there was nothing he liked more.
“Wretched, horrid bastard,” she muttered as she came through the garden door and up the path.
“Problems with your painter?”
Her gaze wrenched up, and to her horror she found Langley leaning against the doorjamb, looking quite innocent.
Too innocent.
“Nothing I can’t remedy,” she said, drawing herself up and standing ramrod straight.
“Anything I can do to help?”
She stumbled then, and didn’t dare look at him, for once again he’d posed the question in that nonchalant air of his. And if there was anything she had learned about this man in her short acquaintance with him, it was that there was nothing innocent or nonchalant about him.
He always had a plan. Or was forming a new one.
“No, nothing,” she demurred. Well, lied. “If you will excuse me, I have my accounts to review. I don’t like them to go unattended. Details go missing if you don’t stay on top of every expenditure.”
“Thorough and practical,” he mused. “Are you sure I cannot help? I might not be all that good with accounts, but I have other talents you could avail yourself of.”
She had to imagine he did. For truly, as she stole a glance at him and managed a wan smile, she wondered if he knew anyone who could arrange for an accident. But then dismissed that thought. If she asked him—or for that matter, Thomas-William or Lucy—then she would have to explain to them why it was she wanted Gerald Adlington to end up at the bottom of the Thames.
And what would she say?
He was my betrothed until he secretly eloped with my sister and I was brought to London in her place.
For it would be exactly as Adlington had said: The Sterlings would cast her out without a second thought. And what of Aunt Bedelia? What would happen to her if it was discovered that her beloved niece wasn’t really her legitimate niece at all?
No, there was nothing she could do but stall the man, and one way to do that was to . . .
“Actually, Lord Langley,” she said, pausing on the step beside him. “There is something you can do for me.”
He inclined his head. “Anything, my lady.”
“I have given some thought to your proposal—”
“You have?” He slanted a glance at her.
“Yes,” she said, hurrying the conversation along because she didn’t want to get into the particulars of her change of heart. And she’d also learned in her short acquaintance with Lord Langley that he was the sort with a hawkish eye for details. Very much like his daughter, Felicity. “And as such, I accept your proposal—” He looked about to say something to her, but she staved him off by raising her hand. “However, I do have three conditions.”
“Only three?” he teased.
Ignoring him, she continued, “I will not share your bed.”
“My bed in the attic is rather narrow. I had hoped we would share yours. From the little time I did get to enjoy it, I found it quite delightful.” She cocked a brow at him, and he shook his head. “If you insist. No sharing beds.”
“And there will be no more kissing.”
“No more kissing? However do you expect us to convince anyone—especially my old boon companions—if we are not seen as wildly and passionately in love?”
“It will go a long way toward reforming your reputation. As you said, you are a changed man,” she told him tartly.
“More changed than I like,” he muttered, then again waved her off. “Agreed, no kissing. What is your third condition?”
“That I will not be embarrassed by any untoward behavior on your part.”
He paused for a moment and then his eyes sparkled with amusement. “Whatever do you mean, Lady Standon?”
Pursing her lips, she considered giving him another shove. Demmed man knew exactly what she meant, but he was going to force her to say it.
Well then, she would. “I will not have my betrothed carrying on with other ladies while he is engaged to me. I have my reputation to think of, as well as that of my family.”
“And after we are married, am I free to roam then?”
“Lord Langley, this engagement is a temporary situation.”
“Well, thank goodness, for you have cut me off at the knees for the time being.”
“Surely you can restrain yourself for a few weeks?”
“If I must . . .” He edged closer, grinning and looking about to seal their bargain with a kiss.
“You must,” she told him, pushing him back.
He shrugged and seemed hardly put out, for he said, “I also have terms of my own.”
Minerva had been about to brush past him and go into the house, but she paused, immediately suspicious. “And what would those be?”
“That you agree to the very same terms you have rendered down upon me. You agree not to share my bed, there will be no begging for my kiss, and most importantly, you will not carry on with other men.” He glanced over at the garden door that led to the alley and let one elegant brow arch upward.
Minerva froze. Good heavens above! What had he seen?
Or even worse—what had he overheard?
She stared at him for a moment, waiting for him to ask, to reveal what he knew, but he only stood there, charmingly handsome and appearing as innocent as a lamb.
In other words, he wasn’t about to show his hand.
“Agreed,” she told him through clenched teeth. “You need have no concerns on my side of this bargain.”
“I should hope not,” she heard him say as she hurried past.
Langley watched Lady Standon flee into the house. She could run all she wanted to, but he had every intention of discovering why she had just lied to him and why it was she had suddenly agreed to their faux betrothal.
He suspected it had nothing to do with Lady Chudley’s constant machinations and more to do with her “painter” in the alley. A fellow he needed to get a better look at.
Crossing down the garden path, he pushed open the door and hurried down the alley in the direction he spied the man leave.
For as much as he had hurried downstairs and crept out into the garden to overhear what was being said, all he’d managed to discern was the last thing the man had said to Lady Standon.
“ . . . it will only be your ruin.”
Whatever could this fellow be holding over her head that could be ruinous? She didn’t seem the type.
Then he thought of the kiss they’d shared last night . . .
Who would have thought there was that much passion inside such a tightly wound lady?
Langley shook his head. No more kissing! What nonsense. The lady burned to be kissed. Even if she didn’t know it.
Which was the other point. She certainly wasn’t some Merry Widow seeking her affairs here and there and living the freedom that her dowager status afforded her. Quite the opposite.
Everything he’d heard over the last sennight from her staff, and his impression from meeting her, said quite clearly Lady Standon lived her life completely above reproach.
The perfectly respectable lady.
But he wasn’t so convinced. Not now. Not since he’d kissed her. And in his experience, such tautly held respectability was usually naught but a veneer to protect oneself.
But from what?
He had reached the corner and was so lost in thought he nearly ran into a large fellow coming in the other direction. He glanced up to find Thomas-William planted in front of him.
“Just the person I need,” he said, thinking to recruit the man into discovering who Lady Standon’s painter might be.
However, the very investigation Langley had thought to launch into his new betrothed melted away the moment Thomas-William said, “My lord, I think I have found someone to help us.”
Langley glanced down the busy streets of London where her “painter” had disappeared, the man having slipped away.
No, it appeared for now that Lady Standon and her secrets would have to wait.