‘Then what Nash said about you was true,’ she responded, raising her volume to match his. ‘If you own such a place and would have allowed that to happen, you are as bad, or worse, than any who come here.’
His mouth snapped shut, as though he could not figure out how to respond.
‘For your information, he’d have married me no matter what had happened,’ she said, crestfallen. ‘I think he has debts. My stepmother speaks disapprovingly of his gambling even as she tries to arrange our marriage. He wants my father’s money as much as anything else he might get from me.’
‘I seriously doubt that.’ Mr Challenger gave another sweeping glance up and down her body, as though it was possible to see through the tablecloth that hid it.
After weeks of studiously ignoring her, she was unsure of what to make of his sudden interest. She did her best to disregard it despite the strange tingling she felt at the passage of his eyes. ‘Well, your interruption has prevented anything bad from happening tonight. If you will excuse me...’ She turned toward the door.
He gave a single, sharp laugh in response. ‘And now, you mean to go home as if nothing has changed.’
‘What else can I do?’ she said, trying to smooth the tablecloth into the semblance of a respectable garment.
‘Go on, then.’ He smiled, gesturing toward the door. ‘If you really think that is a good idea.’
His maddeningly smug tone raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She hated being lectured to like a foolish child. She hated it doubly so when she suspected that she deserved it. ‘All right, then. Say what you mean to. You are itching for the chance to scold me and I will not deny it to you. Why can’t I just go home? Do you still mean to ravish me?’ She had meant it as a joke, but once the words had passed her lips, they seemed to hang in the air between them on a cloud of musk.
‘You will go home, untouched,’ he said, in a reasonable tone that belied any knowledge of a change in the atmosphere. ‘But it will be quite impossible for either of us to pretend that this incident did not happen.’
‘Do you mean to tell my father?’ she asked in a small voice. The story would sound no better delivered by Mr Challenger than it would from Sir Nash.
‘I will not have to. Bowles will be there at first light to do it for me.’
Of course. He would come to press for an immediate approval of his suit. He would portray her as a wayward hoyden and himself as a rescuer from near disaster. ‘I have made it worse,’ she said, miserably.
‘Indeed,’ he said, not bothering to spare her feelings. ‘And dragged me into it as well. I will have to answer for our secret engagement and our sexual game playing in a club frequented by the more louche half of the ton.’
‘Oh, dear.’ She did not like the man, but she had never intended to include him in her personal problems. Then she remembered the conversation that had just occurred. ‘I did not ask you to lie for me.’
‘Nor did you denounce me when I did,’ he reminded her. ‘You were more than willing to hide in my shadow and allow me to take the blame for this debacle. Now you know what you must do to make it right.’
‘In truth, I do not.’ There was not a way forward that did not lead to disaster.
Mr Challenger dropped to his knee before her. ‘Miss Knight, would you do me the honour of accepting my offer of marriage?’
She had heard the phrase, ‘without a trace of irony’. This must be the opposite of it. The proposal was delivered without a trace of sincerity. And yet, he did not rise. He stared at her, grim-faced, awaiting an answer.
‘But, I do not want to marry you,’ she said, staring back at him incredulous.
‘Nor do I want to marry you.’ If possible, his expression became even more threatening. ‘But as you said before, if word of this gets out, I will be called to offer for you. I see no other way to save both of our reputations.’
‘Your reputation?’ Did men even have them? Of course they did. But she was sure that it did not mean the same thing as it did for girls.
‘If you do not marry me, I will be seen as the villain who threatened you, a seducer of innocents. Bowles, on the other hand, will be cast as your rescuer. In either case, your future is set. You will have to marry one of us to avoid ruin.’ The statement was followed by the audible grinding of teeth. ‘Please, my dear Miss Knight, allow me to be the lesser of two evils.’
The idea was insane. ‘But then, we would be married,’ she reminded him. ‘For ever,’ she added, when the first statement seemed to have no impact upon him.
‘That is the way it normally works,’ he agreed. ‘You must have understood the risk when you undertook this desperate mission. As I told you before, if you do not marry me, then you shall wed Bowles.’ He looked at her for the length of a breath, then added, ‘For ever.’
‘For ever,’ she repeated. It sounded so final. Eventually, she had known she would have to marry someone. She’d just never imagined it would be to a man who had never been willing to give her the time of day, much less a proposal. But marriage to Nash would be every bit as final and infinitely more horrifying.
Mr Challenger gave an impatient huff, as if it had never occurred to him that the woman he offered for would not accept him without question. ‘I do not like the idea any better than you do. But if we are reasonable about the business, we need have very little to do with each other, once we are married.’
‘And that is what you consider a proper match,’ she said. Even at their worst, her father and Marietta had a better union than that.
He continued, oblivious to her criticism. ‘I am a second son. It is not as if I am required to produce an heir. I did not intend to marry. I have no interest in tying myself to a single woman until death. But as long as you do not get in the way of my life, I see no reason why I should not. And it will prevent my sister-in-law from trying to match me up with someone in the future.’ Now he was smiling at this small advantage.
‘I am glad you are warming to the idea,’ she said. He had no right to be happy about a reversal of fortune that would leave her shackled to an annoying stranger.
‘We will get a special licence and be married by week’s end. After a brief period of celebration, you may retire to my country home, free of the attentions of Bowles.’
And now, he was organising her life. ‘I have not said yes,’ she reminded him.
‘It would be foolish to say no,’ he replied.
Perhaps so. But she wanted to say it, all the same.
That was not true. She wanted to shout the word directly into his smug face. She had disliked him from the first moment she’d seen him. Or the second moment, at least. When she had looked across the room at him that first time, she had thought him handsome, heroic, and sophisticated. Then, Marietta had ruined it and he’d proved he was also arrogant, snobbish, and dictatorial.
‘If you do refuse me, there is always Nash Bowles,’ he reminded her again in that mockingly reasonable voice she might be hearing every day for the rest of her life, since she could think of no other way out of this mess than the one he had presented to her.
‘Nothing would be as bad as marrying Sir Nash,’ she agreed. ‘Not even marrying you.’ She could not resist adding the final riposte and was pleased to see the flash of annoyance in his eyes.
‘You are no gift, either,’ he said, not bothering with courtesy. ‘But if you will promise to leave me alone afterward, I am willing to do the right thing and save you.’
He spoke as if she was a gnat to be waved away, or an annoying child who needed to be sent back to the nursery. ‘I am willing to accept,’ she said, holding her head high and giving him a cold look that would tell him he was