my life, and as long as her future is uncertain I shall do every bloody thing I can to help her. As for my intentions...I’ve all but settled my mind on Miss Underbridge.”
“Pinsbury’s niece?”
James nodded, wondering when the hell he’d settled on any such thing. Just now, apparently. And why not?
His mind answered the question with an erotic image of Katherine with her breasts pushed over the top of her stays, and he cursed silently. Vilely.
“God.” Nick sank into an armchair and rested his forearms on his knees, staring holes into the carpet. “There must be something I can do for Clarissa. Something.”
“Are you absolutely certain she isn’t pretending a greater naiveté than she possesses?”
For a second it looked like Nick might lunge across the desk. “If she is,” he said tightly, “then she’s a masterfully accomplished actress.”
They looked at each other. Plenty of women were accomplished actresses. “I have no doubt Miss Holliswell is exactly what she appears to be,” James said for Nick’s benefit. “And I can’t think of one damned thing you haven’t done. Perhaps it’s time to be sensible.” He rose and stalked to his brandy snifter, grabbing hold of this liberating idea, and poured two glasses.
“Sensible.” Nick muttered the word. “I’m not sure I know what that means anymore.”
James handed Nick a glass and ignored the uncomfortable feeling wriggling in his chest. “Then here’s to finding out,” he said.
* * *
THREE DAYS LATER Millicent was out of danger, and James decided that being sensible started with refusing to concern himself with Katherine’s plans. To simply forget her.
Forget what happened in the coach.
Forget whatever the hell al-Zayar might have done all those years ago.
Forget her infurating attempt at forgiveness. Damn it all—forget he needed forgiveness.
It was time to move forward, and moving forward started with finding a bride. The sooner he could come to an understanding with someone, the better.
“Forgive my bluntness, my lord,” Miss Underbridge said as he drove her through the park in his open carriage the next day, “but I was led to believe that you have an understanding with the countess of Dunscore.”
“And you believe, despite such an understanding, that I would ask you to accompany me on an outing?”
“Would you?” The blasted woman regarded him calmly with the most direct pair of brown eyes he’d ever had the discomfort of meeting.
“Perhaps, Miss Underbridge, you would fare better during the social season if you honed your skills of discernment,” he said with an irritable flick of the reins. “There is no such understanding.”
“Hmm. Thank you, my lord—I believe my skills are being honed even as we speak.” That calm expression did not so much as falter. “I would like to go home, please. Now.”
* * *
THERE WAS ALWAYS Lady Maude. Perhaps he’d judged her too quickly. Her fascination with Katherine may have been nothing more than a girlish curiosity that had faded by now. James received her response to his invitation the next afternoon and opened it immediately.
Lord Croston,
I am in receipt of your kind invitation for a picnic. However, I fear my powers of discernment force me to decline. Perhaps Lady Dunscore would enjoy going in my stead.
Respectfully yours,
Maude Linton
James crushed the refusal in his fist and threw it into the fire.
* * *
“LA, JAMES,” HONORIA said that evening, whisking into his library, “what are you about? I’m hearing the most dreadful things!”
James relished the angry scratch of his pen across paper and didn’t bother to look up. “I don’t wish to discuss it.”
“Well everyone else wishes to, and if you don’t have a care you’ll go from hero to laughingstock before the month is out. I’ve come to tell you that Lady Dunscore has left for Scotland. I want to know what you plan to do about it.”
“If she’s gone, there’s nothing anyone can do.”
“Sometimes you aggravate me to distraction, James. You’re in love with her, and now she’s gone, and you’re pretending you don’t care. Which makes your fumbling attempts to court these other young women all the more pathetic.”
He jabbed the pen into its stand and stood up. “Pathetic?”
“Yes.”
They faced off across his desk. And then James smiled. “My dear Honoria, your female sensibilities have taken you too far this time. Why women insist on seeing love whenever a man so much as glances at a woman, I’ll never fathom.”
Honoria laughed. “La, James, I daresay you’ve done far more than glance at Lady Dunscore—but that’s neither here nor there. Tell me this, if you’re not in love, then why did you stay up all hours when Miss Germain was injured? Do not say it was for Miss Germain’s sake. And why have you gone to such lengths to help Lady Dunscore’s cause? I hear things, James. I know what you’ve been about.” She narrowed her eyes and studied him too intently for comfort. “You are in love. You’re just too mutton-headed to see it.”
* * *
HE WAS NOT. In love. It was the refrain that repeated in James’s head as he drank his coffee in the morning, sorted through correspondence in the afternoon and, instead of attending every blasted social event in London, played away his cares at White’s in the evening.
He’d succumbed to lust, but that was behind him now. It was what he told himself as two more days passed with all the haste of a bit of flotsam on a calm sea. A few more loose ends, and he would go to Croston. He met with his accountant, his solicitor, his banker. He compared figures, reviewed plans, studied reports.
Lust was an easy enough state to ease should he decide to do so. It was what he reminded himself in the middle of the night when he woke up in the darkness with a raging erection and a sheen of hot sweat on his skin.
God knew it would be a simple enough matter to find someone willing. There were plenty of women equally as beautiful and half as contentious. He could make an acquaintance in the country. Find a sensible woman, come to an understanding while he looked for a suitable bride. It was the fantasy he was indulging in, overseeing the packing of his valises on morning seven since the disastrous carriage ride home from Westminster, when news came that the committee would present its report that afternoon.
“YOU STUPID BASTARD!” Holliswell raged under his breath,
