Recklessness and disregard for consequences had already ruined his life twice. How many lessons did one need?
First his mother had left him, unable to deal with the wild child his aged father had spoiled rotten. How well he recalled the last incident before his father died.
Neil had had the best of intentions. Listening for days to his mother bewail the fact that she needed a grand hunt scene painted for the dining room, he had sought to oblige. He knew exactly how, he’d thought, after weeks of watching a visiting artist capture his mother in oils. His own attempt on the wall above the buffet wasn’t bad for a five-year-old. She didn’t agree. After her screaming fit, Neil made hasty amends. Mother must be pleased.
“What takes paint away, Jed?” he had asked the footman.
“Bird shit,” the disgruntled man replied, busy scrubbing the nasty stuff off the lord’s glossy carriage.
Well, chickens were birds, Neil reasoned. He’d visited the henhouse and set to work on the unwanted picture that very afternoon. Now that he looked back, he wondered that Mother had stayed as long as she had.
Married at sixteen to a man three times her age, Norah Guest Bronwyn had probably whooped with delight when her husband expired six years later. Until she realized she was only a dowager countess, stranded in the country with her own little hellion and an eighteen-year-old stepson—the new earl—who loathed her.
Without a word of explanation, Norah had packed her things and Neil’s, deposited him at a second-rate boarding school and hared off to God knew where. He hadn’t seen her since. But later, as a man, he’d met dozens of women just like her.
As far as he knew they were all like her—flighty, shallow, feather-headed females set on taking all they could get at the least possible cost.
Even after he’d realized that, he still fell responsible for her desertion. If only he’d been well behaved. If he’d been quiet, agreeable and more circumspect, she might have taken him with her or stayed and at least tried to love him. She wasn’t all she should have been as a mother, but he knew the fault was mostly his own. He should have been different.
With that thought dominant, he’d reformed his whole personality by the time he was twelve. He grew determined to find affection somewhere, somehow, and hold on to it. His older brother had doted on him after he changed, delighted with Neil’s newfound maturity. Didn’t that prove the theory?
Thank God Jon had been too preoccupied with estate business to notice Neil’s relapse at the age of twenty.
He’d thought Emma different from his mother. Showed how green he was—green as a goddamned summer cabbage. The old impulsiveness had reared its ugly head, caused him to think he could behave irrationally, love without analyzing the thing to death and get away with it. Lo and behold, another gut punch.
Now here he was, dead center in another harebrained fiasco that reduced his former lapses to insignificance. Why hadn’t he considered the repercussions first?
This incident would forestall Terry’s marriage, all right, but at what cost? The poor girl was scared out of her wits. And Terry might believe every word she said when this was over even if no one else did. Why in God’s name hadn’t Neil stopped to think before he acted? Hindsight was hell. Would he never learn?
Neil lifted his second glass of brandy as she appeared in the door of the study, interrupting his tardy self-recriminations.
She wore an unbecoming, dark, broadcloth dress buttoned up to her chin, and carried her valise. Like a child dressed in nanny’s clothes, he thought. Her shadow-smudged eyes dwarfed her other features. She faced him with that chin up, however. Tentative though it was, she had found her courage somewhere.
“I’d like to go now,” she said in a small, insistent voice.
“No doubt,” Neil answered with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Sit down and have a bite to eat. Only biscuits and tea, but that should do you. How is your stomach? Still weak?”
She nodded and dropped the case to the floor with a thud. Carefully, she inched her way to the chair he indicated and sat on the edge of it, watching him warily.
“You really are quite safe, Elizabeth,” he said as he handed her a cup. “I may call you that, may I not? I truly mean you no harm.” How many times would he have to say it to get that look off her face? he wondered.
Her brow screwed into a charming little frown as she seemed to consider his words. “Very well. I’ve thought about it at length. I suppose you’d have done your worst by now if you really meant me to die.” Her voice grew stronger with every word. “But why did you frighten me so before? I could have expired of heart failure! And why all this? Why did you abduct me?”
Neil had a ridiculous urge to praise her for her recovery. Her anger was righteous, but he couldn’t let it sway him now.
“I told you that. Because you were eloping with Terry, and I’ll not have his future destroyed. I had to stop you somehow.”
“Eloping? Are you mad? Why would you think that?” Then she pressed her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Of course, the silly dolt told you he had proposed. What am I to do with him? He won’t hear a no.” The dark eyes hid under shadowed lids and she sighed. “He has a good heart, but he’s such a fool sometimes.”
“Well, I agree with you there,” Neil said with a short, bitter laugh. “He’s not the first young pup to sniff after a skirt and call it love.”
Her head came up with a jerk. “Love? Is that what he told you? Well, I suppose he would say that.” She smiled, and the sadness in her eyes surprised him. At least she didn’t gloat.
“I overheard you tell the innkeeper that your husband was expected. I figured that it was Terry,” he said, sipping his brandy thoughtfully.
“You assumed wrongly, Dr. Bronwyn. Making up that story was the only way I could avoid sharing the common room. I never had any intention of meeting your nephew at the inn or anywhere else. Terry’s simply the only friend I have, and he thinks he can save my good name if he combines it with his. Sweet idiot.”
“Naturally you would say that.” He took another sip, peering at her over the rim of the snifter.
“You don’t believe I refused his suit?” she asked, looking so troubled he almost believed her.
Neil regretted what he had to admit, but spoke nonetheless. “Let us say that I doubt you enough to insure that no wedding takes place. In order to guarantee it, I must ask you to accept my hospitality for a while—perhaps a week—until his, uh, ardor cools. I promise you’ll be perfectly safe.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “All right.”
He couldn’t hide his shock at her ready agreement. She displayed no slyness, no taunting and no further fear. Just “all right,” as though they were cementing a minor business deal? What did she think to gain? Her capitulation was too easy.
“I think I understand why you thought it necessary to do what you did,” she explained. “I can’t say I’ll ever forgive you, but what’s done is done. Staying here for a while will suit my purposes as well.” She nodded once. “Yes, I’ll stay.”
Then she smiled.
Oh God, that smile. So she would turn her charms on him now, would she? Now that she couldn’t have Terry? Neil beat back the thrill that shot through his soul. Not bloody likely would he succumb to her! Not if he were careful.
“You really will be safe here, you know. In every way,” he said. “Please understand, I have absolutely no designs on you.”
“Well,” she said with sad sarcasm and a roll of those lovely dark eyes, “won’t that be a novelty?”
Impudent chit. He wanted to wring her neck. “No doubt it will. The trout all jumping at your boat, are they? Can’t