* *
Fifteen minutes later, and true to his word to be expedient, Hepworth had all the instructions he needed for the time being and told his employer so. Politely he took his leave and exited the room, quite aware that once he had gone his newly betrothed master would remain a while and again study the shocking note from Theodore Wyndham that invited Mr Speer a renewal of a marriage proposal to his cousin and ward, Miss Jemma Bailey.
Chapter Two
A rustle of skirts disturbed the quiet in the hallway. Marcus turned his head to glimpse a shimmering banner of chestnut hair waving behind a willowy figure dressed in blue. His harsh dark features became cruelly sardonic. He might not have seen Jemma Bailey in some while, but he’d immediately recognised her before she’d slipped out of sight. So the shameless chit was here, too, and so eager to discover if she’d hooked him that she’d been patrolling the hallway to spy on his arrival. Moments after she’d disappeared from view Marcus heard a door click softly shut as she concealed herself. His eyes remained riveted to the far end of the empty corridor as he battled with an urge to go after her, drag her from her hiding place and demand to know what in damnation she thought she was playing at. She’d turned his life upside down once before, and he wasn’t about to let her do so again.
‘Mr Wyndham will see you now, sir.’ The butler had returned and, by repeating himself, drew Mr Speer’s narrowed silver eyes from glaring into the distance. Manwell led the way to a room adjacent to the bottom of the stairs and, conscious of the hostility crackling in the atmosphere, promptly withdrew. A moment later he crept back, putting his head to the mahogany panels. After a moment of intense concentration, as he strained to listen with his good ear, he realised he was being observed by one of the parlourmaids. Shooting upright, he stalked off.
* * *
‘Please, sit down, you will feel calmer in a moment.’ Maura tried to gently ease Jemma down into the chair by the window in her bedchamber.
Her cousin resisted any such attempt to be seated or to be calm and continued to stamp a channel in the rug’s pile as back and forth across its width she went. Her face and manner betrayed her anguish, but failed to fully describe the maelstrom of conflicting emotions that kept her fists curling and uncurling at her sides. Her eyes were tightly closed to prevent tears of rage and mortification from again dribbling on to her cheeks.
‘How could he do this to me!’ Jemma gritted out for what seemed to be the hundredth time. ‘That my own kin should humiliate me in such a way is…is insufferable! Abominable!’
Maura’s hands were agitatedly twisting in front of her. Up until a short while ago she had maintained that there must be some mistake or misunderstanding. Her brother surely could not be guilty of such underhand behaviour. Of course, Theo had made no secret of the fact he wished to see his cousin Jemma wed before she got much older, or much poorer. But to go to such lengths as to try to arrange a match behind her back was indeed outrageous, as was his choice of prospective bridegrooms. Contacting spurned suitors from Jemma’s past was undeniably embarrassing for her.
In her brother’s defence Maura conceded that Theo had a point in thinking Jemma ought to pay more attention to getting herself a husband and children and less to squandering her time and money on charities for ruffians. Since Jemma had had her heart broken by her childhood sweetheart she’d shown no interest at all in a romantic involvement or a family of her own. ‘Perhaps my brother believed it all to be for your own good.’ Maura knew her loyalties were divided, so she decided she might as well side with her closest kin. ‘I expect he hoped to help you,’ she ventured diffidently, then shrank beneath Jemma’s violent green gaze.
‘Help me?’ Jemma ejected the phrase in a strangled gasp. ‘He wants to help himself, and well you know it. He’s so desperate to get his hands on what is mine that he is careless of making me appear the most ridiculous creature in the whole of London.’
A crimson stain spread from Maura’s neck to the roots of her mousy brown hair. It was well known in the family, and probably in wider circles, too, that upon marriage Jemma would forfeit her inheritance to the next male heir. Theo was the beneficiary and would take two properties and whatever else Jemma had left from John Bailey’s original bequest.
Niggling doubts over her brother’s motive had pricked at Maura’s consciousness as soon as she’d learned more about the sorry affair that afternoon. But she’d chased them away. Theo would never stoop to act in so mercenary a fashion. He had simply grown impatient and impulsive because Jemma refused to encourage any gentleman to court her.
‘I should not have run away.’ Jemma marched across the room to swiftly snatch at the door handle. She held on to it while attempting to steady her breathing and boost her courage. ‘I should go back downstairs now and tell Mr Speer that I had no hand in this. What will he say, do you think?’ Trepidation trembled her tone. ‘I cannot believe that Theo didn’t know of his recent engagement,’ she cried. ‘If by some chance he did miss seeing it gazetted, Mr Speer could have remedied his ignorance in a letter. He didn’t need to come in person to tell Theo what a fool he is. Oh, why is he here?’
‘I remember he was very much taken with you. Perhaps he has come to offer for you after all.’ Maura’s tone veered between disbelief and optimism.
‘Of course he has not!’ Jemma disabused her pop-eyed cousin in a croak. ‘He is going to marry Deborah Cleveland.’ Her cousin’s blunt suggestion had made Jemma’s heart leap to her throat. Maura had touched on a very raw nerve by forcing her to acknowledge an idea that had already wormed its way into her own mind.
A poignant yearning had gripped Jemma’s insides as soon as she’d heard the butler announce Theo’s visitor. What if he had come to agree to her guardian’s outrageous proposal? It was a thought that had refused to be ejected until the moment she’d caught a glimpse of him as she’d fled to the stairs.
Jemma cast her mind back to the terrifying sight of Marcus in the hallway. He had thankfully been too far away for her to properly read his expression, but every prowling pace he’d taken over the stone flags had impressed on her that he too was very angry indeed. Her stomach churned with the nauseating certainty that Marcus might believe, as had Philip Duncan, that Theo had been acting with her encouragement when he’d written those letters inviting gentlemen to renew their proposals to her. She’d had that awful information just an hour or so earlier, from the man himself.
Following a frosty confrontation with Lucy Duncan in the fabric warehouse, Lucy had been ashamed and repentant at having spread gossip about Jemma. However, she was adamant she had not told lies and had offered to take Jemma immediately to her brother so Philip might vouch for her honesty. At the lodging house they’d found Philip about to climb into his gig. Ushering them in to his lodging house hallway so they might be private, he’d rather sheepishly admitted that he had shown Graham Quick a note he’d received from Jemma’s guardian. Jemma had demanded he go and get it so she could see the revolting evidence, but Philip had said he’d already thrown it on the fire. As Jemma had turned to leave he’d found the grace to mumble he was sorry for mentioning the matter to Graham Quick. Moments later he’d diluted his apology by adding that the message had clearly implied it came with her full agreement.
Following that awful revelation there had been nothing Maura could say that would deter Jemma from immediately confronting Theo about what he’d done. At the Wyndhams’ town house in Hanover Square they’d found Theo looking very smug. Without a hint of remorse he’d told his enraged ward that he’d not only sent a letter to Philip Duncan, but to every one of the fellows he could bring to mind who was still unwed and had offered for Jemma in the past. In all, four letters had been sent. He’d even had the cheek to try to turn the tables on her and put her
