“Now I see why you couldn’t go to the ’Change this afternoon. You’re the victim of profound emotions brought on by your betrothal.”
So Adam did not understand him as well as he thought. “There is,” Nick said, a scowl on his face, “no betrothal.”
Adam spun around in his chair. “You didn’t turn down the lovely creature?”
“Of course I did! I couldn’t take advantage of a woman in a time of such stress.”
“How could you be so cruel to the lady? Do you realize how difficult it must have been for her to grovel to you?”
“Of course I realize it. That’s why I went against my better judgment and offered her the damned money.”
Adam spit out another mouthful of tea. “I don’t believe you! I’ve known you all of my one and thirty years, and I’ve never known you to give away money—except, of course, to the orphanages and free schools you established, and I hardly think Lady Fiona fits in that charitable category.”
“I did offer her the money. She refused it.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Adam said, his face screwed up in disbelief, “that the lady was willing to sell herself to a strange man she’d never seen before but she was not willing to accept that same man’s charity?”
“She had seen me before. Twice.”
“I don’t understand. Are you saying you and she have a tendré?”
Nick shook his head with exasperation. “Of course not! The first time I saw her was at Tat’s—”
“Women don’t go to Tat’s!”
“This woman did. With her brother. He couldn’t avoid introducing her to me, though it obviously pained him to do so.”
“And the second time you saw her?”
“Last night at the theatre. Her box was opposite mine, and I believe she spent the better part of the evening staring at me.”
“Good God! Do you think . . . ?”
“The woman is not enamored of me.”
“I don’t know how you could have turned her down. You’ve said yourself you’re seeking a wife, and what woman could be more desirable than Lady Fiona Hollingsworth?”
“I can’t deny her desirability.”
“Hell, it’s like guineas raining from the heavens, and you trod over them instead of scooping them up!”
That same feeling of elation Nick experienced with Lady Fiona this afternoon swept over him again. It had been rather like guineas raining from the heavens. How could he have been such a fool? “Call me a fool,” Nick said, shrugging, “but somehow I always fancied I’d wed a woman who was as attracted to me as I was to her.”
“With your legendary bedchamber charms, I’ve no doubts the lady would have come around.”
The sudden vision of Lady Fiona’s bare body beneath him sent a painful throbbing to Nick’s groin. “I shouldn’t wish to take advantage of the lady’s misfortune.”
“You’re too damn proud! Papa didn’t rise from the gutter on pride. He made his fortune by humbly catering to the swells. Pride, dear brother, won’t warm your bed at night!”
“The pity of it is,” Nick confessed, “she’ll make the offer to someone else. And quickly, too.”
Adam uttered a curse. “Can you honestly tell me you would not want her for a wife?”
“Quite honestly, the lady’s spectacular.”
“Then push your pride aside. Go to her before it’s too damned late.”
Chapter 3
As he and Fiona settled into the carriage, Trevor swiped snowflakes from his greatcoat and screwed his face into a pout worthy of a spoiled princess. “Perfectly odious man, that bookseller! Offering you a piddly five thousand for your pere ’s library. Daresay it’s worth at least fifty thousand.”
“It wasn’t my father’s library, actually,” Fiona said with a shrug. “At least not originally. My grandfather’s the one who built the collection, but remember, Trev, he was buying new. Since the books are no longer new—though I daresay most of them have never been opened—their value, quite naturally, plummets. And the bookseller has to make his money.”
Trevor folded his arms across his chest and stomped his expensively shod foot. “You simply cannot give the books away to that thief.”
“I won’t unless I’m forced to,” she said. “Tomorrow we’ll see how much Mama’s jewels will fetch.”
“Nowhere near twenty-five thousand, I’ll vow.”
“You’re likely right.”
Her family coach, which should have been replaced a decade earlier, turned onto Cavendish Square and screeched to a halt in front of Agar House. The afternoon sun had almost shed its brilliance. Fiona sighed. Another day gone, and she was no closer to raising the money to save Randy. “Come help me draw up a list of well-to-do bachelors,” she said as they disembarked.
Trevor grumbled his dissatisfaction while he trailed after her.
Fiona swept into her house, then stood deadly still upon its marble entry hall, stunned. Bouquets of sweetly pungent flowers crowded the entire hallway. Roses reposed on the sideboard—six vases of them, each sprouting roses of a different color. Fat arrangements of marigolds and daisies graced the first half dozen steps of the iron-railed staircase. Colorful posies were strewn across the floor like a fragrant carpet.
“What the devil?” Trevor exclaimed.
Fiona’s gaze flicked to the butler. “Pray, Livingston, whatever is going on?”
“I couldn’t say, my lady. A stream of urchins has been delivering these for the past hour.”
“Did the urchins say who engaged them?” she asked.
He thought for a moment, then strode to the sideboard where he extricated a letter from beneath a vase of pink roses. “This note was delivered with the first batch.”
She eagerly snatched the now-damp missive and nearly tore the page in her haste to read it. The note was short:
My Dear Lady Fiona,
I hope in some small way these flowers will express my high regard for you more eloquently than can my abominable tongue, and I beg that you will consent to see me when I call upon you in the very near future.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Birmingham
Trevor’s impatience to read the note outweighing years of instruction in the art of good manners, he peered over her shoulder as she read. “Very nice, utterly masculine penmanship, don’t you think?” he asked.
She turned and glared down her aristocratic nose at him. “I hadn’t thought at all about the man’s handwriting!”
Trevor effected a contrite expression—for all of ten seconds, then his gaze circled the hallway. “You can’t say Birmingham doesn’t have a flair.” His glance lit upon a basket of flowers all in hues of purple and lavender: pansies, violets, lavender, orchids, periwinkles, and primroses. “I declare, this primrose is positively blue!” He withdrew it from the bouquet and inhaled it deeply. “I ask you, my lady, have you ever seen a primrose this color?”
She beat down the impulse to laugh. Trevor was surely the only man of her acquaintance who knew every flower by name. Her heart caught as she remembered Randy taking a stab at naming a rose. “It’s got thorns, must be a rose!” her brother had exclaimed dubiously, anxiously watching his sister for