So far he’d received just one reply; it had come from this gentleman and had been delivered just hours ago. From its few lines he’d only been able to glean that Marcus demanded an audience that very afternoon. Theo had been happy to grant him his wish and had, whilst pacing to and fro excitedly awaiting his arrival, persuaded himself that the fellow was eager because he still harboured a tenderesse for Jemma despite the fact that, in five years, she’d turned from a saucy minx in to a tiresome bluestocking.
Along with the rest of the ton, he’d seen gazetted Marcus Speer’s engagement to Deborah Cleveland. Theo had dismissed it as an irrelevance. His letters had been ready, and he’d despatched every last one. Now, with Speer within striking distance of him, he belatedly paid heed to two vital facts: the fellow had a far superior height and breadth to his own and was renowned as a talented pugilist and, secondly, Deborah Cleveland was, undoubtedly, younger, sweeter, and richer than was his cousin Jemma.
* * *
‘How do I look?’ Jemma asked breathlessly as she pulled her coat this way and that to straighten it. Her hands next darted to her abundant locks to try to bring some order to the ruffled chestnut waves. ‘Am I presentable? Are my cheeks stained with tears?’ Jemma was of above average height for a young woman and of necessity dipped her head to gaze at her reflection in the glass on the dressing chest. Watery jade eyes were rapidly blinked to clear them and briskly she rubbed at her complexion with her fingertips to erase any sign that she’d been crying. Her appearance had suffered during the past hours due to her acute distress. But now, having conquered the worst of her shock, and brought her wrath under control—for the time being, she certainly had not finished with Theo!—she was ready to set another gentleman straight on the matter of her guardian’s shocking plot, and her lack of a part in it.
‘I don’t think you should do that!’ Maura whispered with a throb of foreboding. To her mind Jemma was still in a stupor over it all and not thinking straight. Having listened, drop-jawed, to Jemma’s determination to loiter somewhere outside in Hanover Square in order to ambush Mr Speer as he left the house, Maura could only foresee such an action bringing more trouble down on her cousin’s head. She could sympathise with Jemma’s need to immediately set the record straight, but such a highly irregular scene was bound to be spotted by a chinwag who later would gleefully pass on what they’d witnessed.
Graham Quick had no doubt already passed on in the gentlemen’s clubs what Philip Duncan had told him. Soon those fellows’ wives would know too that negotiations were underway to get Miss Jemma Bailey a husband. If it was reported that Jemma had accosted a gentleman known to have once offered for her, and one who had recently become engaged to another lady, her name would be mud. The Clevelands were an important and popular family at the heart of the ton. Jemma would be labelled a shameless hussy who was trying to steal Deborah’s fiancé. She would be cut dead by everyone, and her disgrace would haunt her for very many years.
‘If you think waiting quietly outside to state my case the greater risk to the Bailey name than making a scene within these walls I shall simply go back to Theo’s study and say what I must now. It will be a nasty argument with your brother, I promise you. If Theo is made to look a fool in front of his visitor, so be it. He deserves all that is coming to him.’
‘No! You must not do that! It would never do to act so disrespectfully.’ Maura gulped in panic. ‘Theo is your guardian…your family, after all.’
‘Indeed he is,’ Jemma agreed bitterly. ‘Yet he has shown me no respect or consideration in acting so sly and underhand.’
Now that Theo had started scheming to arrange a marriage of convenience for Jemma it would be wise to leave it to him alone to finish it, so Maura thought. People would consider it an appropriate duty for a guardian to try to arrange his ward’s future security by marrying her off, especially when the woman in question had her début a good few years behind her. Maura relayed that advice to Jemma, then let out a doleful sigh when it simply caused her cousin to frown and violently shake her head.
‘Oh, you’re too late,’ Maura cried joyfully, interrupting her cousin who had been ready to quit the room. Maura had been standing close to the window and, twitching the curtain aside, she peeked at the top of a dark glossy head and impressively broad shoulders as Marcus swiftly descended the stone steps and strode off.
‘He is gone already?’ Jemma cried in disappointment. She darted to the window and craned her neck to check for herself that her quarry was on the move.
Maura’s sigh of relief that the immediate threat was removed only fired Jemma’s determination to impress on Marcus the truth. Now that she felt more composed, she regretted having let shock and humiliation cow her. She ought to have stayed in Theo’s study instead of scampering away like a frightened little girl. She’d had more courage at seventeen, she inwardly scolded. Then she’d brazenly borne the brunt of her papa’s chastisement, and the disapproval of the ton. She’d deserved both, too, for she’d believed her heart, her loyalty, belonged to another man when she’d flirted outrageously with Marcus during that heady Season when she’d made her début. She had led him on, taken everything he had offered as her friend and suitor, and now, older and wiser, she felt thoroughly ashamed of her selfish behaviour.
This time she was innocent of any wrongdoing, yet she had crumpled and cravenly run away instead of immediately mounting her defence and protesting against the injury done her. She should have stayed and made her scheming guardian admit that he’d acted without her knowledge or consent. She should have made it clear that she had no intention of entering a marriage of convenience with any man, no matter how convenient it might be for Theo that she did so.
With Maura’s groan of dismay echoing in her ears Jemma impulsively darted to the door. Within a moment she was down the stairs and out in to the street, heedless of Manwell’s dropping jaw as she sailed past him in a whirl of chestnut curls and swirling blue skirts.
Once on the pavement she squinted against the sunlight. She pivoted on the spot, hurried many yards one way, all the time looking here and there, then retraced her steps and rushed in the opposite direction. She paused on the corner and looked about. Of Marcus there was no sign, and he would be easy to distinguish amongst the strollers out enjoying the spring sunshine. With his lofty height and devilishly dark good looks he was an outstanding specimen of a man.
* * *
Marcus watched from the opposite side of the street as Jemma searched for him. And he knew it was he she was after as she flew hither and thither. She was retracing her steps along the pavement towards the Wyndhams’ house and he wondered if she would mount the steps and go in again. His mouth twisted cynically as he wondered whether Theo Wyndham had, as a last resort, sent her out to try to lure him back. She passed the Wyndhams’ door and kept to a slow pace, her head lowered as though she was both disappointed and distracted by her own thoughts. His narrowed silver eyes kept her in their sights as he moved a little away from the parasol his mistress seemed intent on twirling over them both whilst they stood beside her barouche.
‘Will you come with me to the theatre tonight?’ Lady Pauline Vaux repeated. A delightful dimple appeared in one cheek as she tilted her head to give Marcus a persuasive smile.
‘I’m afraid I can’t. My uncle is now mortally ill. I await some bad news from his physician,’ Marcus told her.
He made to hand her back into her transport, but it seemed Lady Vaux was not yet ready to say farewell to her lover. She murmured her sympathy at knowing that the Earl of Gresham was on his deathbed. The fact that Marcus was soon to become an aristocrat, and a good deal richer, was neither here nor there to her. He’d made it plain at the start of the liaison that he’d never marry her, so there was no status to share, no future son to groom to be worthy of his earldom. As for the rest, Marcus was already rich and powerful enough to satisfy any young impoverished widow’s yen for a pampered life.
Earlier that afternoon Pauline had been visiting her friend, Cressida