He turned and went back to the staircase and down to the taproom below. It was a strange seduction, giving her space and time to change her mind, to lock her door firmly against him. Or perhaps it was the most effective seduction of all. No coercion. There could be no looking back afterward to claim that she had been deceived by a practiced rake.

The decision was all hers.

. . . I shall indeed give you a very good night.

Would he? Was it possible? She had no idea what to expect except for the basics. Could that ever be good?

. . . a night you will not regret.

Oh, she very much doubted that. Which begged the question—why go through with something she knew very well she would bitterly regret?

She stepped inside her room after lighting the candle on her dresser from the larger candle in the wall sconce in the corridor and shut the door behind her. She set down the candlestick and stood watching the flame gutter and then grow steady.

I shall indeed give you a very good night . . . It will be a night you will not regret.

Would her door be unlocked when he came back upstairs? She really did not know. But the choice—the decision—would be hers.

Five

The noise in the taproom subsided somewhat when Marcel walked in and seated himself at a small table close to the fire. But when it became clear that he wanted neither to contribute to the conversation nor to listen to it, the men recovered from their self-consciousness in the presence of such upper-class splendor and the noise level resumed its former pitch. He drank his ale and stared into the coals.

He wondered idly if her door would be unlocked when he went back up. He laid private and conflicting bets with himself. Yes, it would be. She had made her decision, and it would go against her dignity to change her mind and hide behind a locked door. But no, it would not. She would think twice—and very probably thirty-two times after that—and decide that a sordid coupling with a near stranger, and a rake to boot, at a third-class inn was not at all the thing, and she would conclude that a locked door was what he thoroughly deserved.

He did not much care either way. If the door was unlocked, he would have a night of unexpected sport. If it was locked, he would have a decent night’s sleep . . . perhaps. There would be nothing else to do, and the bed in his room looked clean and comfortable enough. Tomorrow he would be on his way by some means or other. He was not worried about being stranded here indefinitely.

And he was indeed in no hurry to arrive home. He was going to have to assert himself when he got there over matters in which he really had very little interest. He ought of course to have done it two years ago immediately after he had inherited his title and Redcliffe Court and all the encumbrances that went with it. But it had seemed too much bother at the time. He had been content to settle the twins there with their aunt and uncle and to pay them his usual twice-yearly visits while leaving everything else to be sorted out by those who lived there. It had been too optimistic an expectation. Lately he had been inundated with an increasingly frequent stream of increasingly lengthy and discontented letters, and it was too much to be borne. He would not bear it. He was going to have to put a stop to it.

The marchioness, his elderly aunt, complained that her authority was being usurped by that upstart Mrs. Morrow, his sister-in-law. She—Marcel had assumed his aunt was referring to herself—had had the running of Redcliffe for more than fifty years and no one had ever found fault with her management until she—Marcel had assumed the marchioness was referring to Jane Morrow—had come upon the scene with the idea that she could just take over everything simply because she had the care of Estelle and Bertrand. Marcel had not bothered to keep track of which she or her was being referred to. Neither had he read on to find out. Obviously there was friction between the two women, and of course Jane wrote of it too, at great and indignant length, emphasizing her superior role as guardian of Marcel’s heir and her longtime experience in running his household. He had not read that letter to its conclusion either, though there had been three pages of it left.

He nevertheless had been made aware—by Jane in another letter—that his cousin Isabelle, who also lived at Redcliffe with her husband, the excuse being that the marchioness was elderly and frail and needed her daughter on hand to administer tender care, was also trying to assert an authority over the running of the house that she did not in any way have. She was also planning a lavish wedding for her youngest daughter, Margaret, doubtless at Marcel’s expense, and no one had yet answered Jane’s perfectly reasonable question about where the couple planned to take up residence after the wedding. He had stopped reading, but clearly he needed to go there in person, though he would rather be setting out for the North Pole unless there was somewhere farther away and more remote. The South Pole?

The steward complained that Mr. Morrow and his son were attempting to interfere with the running of the estate with ideas that were asinine. The man had been too diplomatic to use that exact word, but Marcel had understood him well enough. Even the housekeeper had written to ask him if it really was his wish that the cook serve late and inferior breakfasts—which some people she would not be so disrespectful as to name then proceeded to complain about—because she was required, along with all the other servants, who had better things to do with their mornings, to attend prayers with the family in the drawing room for all of half an hour, sometimes longer.

There was only one way to stop the flow of such letters, and he was doing it. But he was in no hurry nonetheless. A day or two here or there would be of no great consequence. At least no further letters could reach him while he was on the road.

The noise level rose, and along with it came an increased swell of laughter with the arrival of three more men, one of whom complained that their feet were all blisters from so much dancing and there was only one sure cure they knew of.

“Bring on the ale,” he bellowed cheerfully to the innkeeper. “A jug, man, and none of your tankards.”

And then there were the twins, who had been brought up in the mold of their maternal aunt and uncle. Adeline would turn over in her grave if she could know. He would turn over in his too if he were in it already. He was going to have to do something about them, though the devil knew what. Perhaps it was too late to do anything meaningful. And perhaps it was just as well they were not taking after their father. Or their mother for that matter, he thought with a guilty start. The trouble with sitting up late was that one’s mind became undisciplined and maudlin. Not that it was really late. His evening would probably be just starting now if he were in London. It just felt late.

He went back upstairs after half an hour and undressed in his room. He belted a silk dressing gown about his waist and crossed the passageway to Viola Kingsley’s room. Would the door be unlocked? Or would it not? He wondered why he had given her time to cool off and think about what she was about to do. That had been uncharacteristically foolish of him. Why stoke a fire to warm a room, after all, and then leave all the windows and doors open to the winter cold?

But he had done it, he knew, because she was not at all his usual type of woman. He had no doubt of her virtue, not just because she had rejected his advances fourteen years ago, but because . . . Well, there was something about her. She was a virtuous woman all right, a fact that would normally depress any spark of interest he might have in her. And then there was her age. She could not be more than a year or two younger than he. She might even be older. He was not a cradle snatcher, but very few of his women were ever much above the age of thirty.