"Now, now my dear, you just go right ahead and cry," said Lady Cherrymore. "You've had a horrifying experience." She whacked her charge between the shoulder blades. " 'Tis a good thing we heard you scream in time to stop him."
"But I stopped him," Izzy muttered into the lady's generous front. She was ignored.
"Eppingham!" roared the gentleman she now recognized as the Marquess of Rotham. "Eppingham, wake up, you sot! Do you hear me? I demand to know the meaning of this!"
The still form only moaned, then lapsed back into silent unconsciousness.
"Well? Doesn't anyone know what the devil happened here?" ranted the marquess.
"My lord… it appears your son attacked Miss Temple in her bed."
"What?" He swung about, his mottled face contorted in a vicious scowl. "Where is she? No doubt some fast female—"
Lady Cherrymore stepped aside and revealed Izzy.
He stared, speechless, but Izzy knew what he saw. He saw what everyone did, when they bothered to look at all. Too small, too plain, too old. Her mirror showed her every day. She raised her chin, returning the man's gaze.
"I… I beg your pardon, Miss Temple. I did not realize, I mean, you are obviously not…" At a loss for words, he returned to raging at his son. "
Why
?"
Izzy tuned out his roar. The pain of his appraisal was the final insult she could bear tonight. Why, he had asked? Why indeed? It was not as though she radiated appeal like the woman huddled in the doorway.
She
was so very lovely. Hair the color of new gold fell past her shoulders in artistic disorder, and her perfect figure showed to advantage in the same shapeless wrappers that made other women look like sacks of flour tied with twine.
Izzy recognized her, of course. Everyone knew of the divine Celia, Lady Bottomly, the exquisite young wife of a wealthy lord. She had burst onto the scene last year and instantly taken the standing of Incomparable within London Society, according to gossip.
She looks so frightened, Izzy thought. One would think it was she the intruder had been after. That would be more understandable, certainly. He ought to have gone across the hall. He should have climbed into her—
Izzy straightened, the fog of depression suddenly lifting. She shot an appraising look at the lovely Lady Bottomly. Her perfection, her grace, her ample curves…
And Blackworth had stopped, she realized. He had touched Izzy and stopped, as though surprised.
"Celie?" he had said, even as Izzy had brained him. She narrowed her eyes at Lady Bottomly, noting the woman's pallor and fearful demeanor with sudden comprehension.
The wrong room
. Lady Celia's room lay across the hall. The lady gazed back at her with renewed alarm.
She knows that I know
. The two women gazed at one another for a long moment. Then the ravings of the marquess drew Izzy's attention once more.
"Eppingham, you Devil's spawn! This is the lowest you have ever sunk in your decadent, hedonistic existence. Well, you've shamed my name for the last time! You'll be disinherited first thing tomorrow, by God. But that is not enough, you foul predator of the innocent. You'll be brought before the magistrate, see if you're not! You'll go to jail, you misbegotten—"
Snarling now, fists clenched in rage, Rotham paid no heed to the gasps of the avid onlookers.
Oh dear. Izzy looked down at the peaceful figure of Lord Blackworth. He looked rather guileless in his limp condition, vulnerable before the force of his father's towering wrath. Oh dear, she could not allow this to go any further. It was a mistake. An outrageous error, yes. Still, merely a mistake, not a crime.
"Wait," she whispered. No one heard. She swallowed, drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
"Wait!" The uproar hushed as all eyes turned to her.
"It is not as it appears. He made a mistake. It was simply…" She glanced over at Lady Bottomly, who had shrunk into the furthest corner and now stared fearfully at the doorway.
Izzy followed her gaze to the looming figure of Lord Bottomly, Celia's husband. A drunken, obese man with large, brutish hands and small, vicious eyes, he glared about the room. A sneer appeared permanently etched on his porcine lips.
Izzy felt a wave of pity for a woman who was so apprehensive of her own husband.
"Yes? Yes? What was it then?" The marquess pointed an accusing finger at his son. "This foul scoundrel has broken the law. Rape is a sin no man—"
"It was not rape," Izzy said. "It was…"
She cast another look at Lady Celia, who only shook her head beseechingly. Izzy cast about for another solution.
Well, there was no help for it. Truly, it was not as if she had something worthwhile to lose. Without wasting another moment on deliberation, she spoke above the chaos.
"It was a lovers' quarrel."
Izzy laid her palm against the door to the yellow parlor, her fingers tracing the carved wood grain. She took no notice of the pie-faced cherubs ogling her from the ornamentation.
All she saw was the candlelight gleaming on the still form in her memory. He was in there, waiting for her. Lord Blackworth.
In the week since that bizarre night, she had thought of him constantly. She had recalled the scent of him and the breadth of his shoulders. She had worried if she had hurt him very much. She wondered how he had fared with his father, who'd had him dragged from her room, all the while spitting with fury.
Izzy smiled a little in memory. Really, that man's temper was vile. Her smile faded as she recalled the reactions of the room's other occupants.
Lady Cherrymore had leapt away from her as if frightened by a snake. After the first moment of stunned silence, mutters and gasps had swelled within the room. Whispering madly, the onlookers had fled to the hall to gather and gossip, leaving her standing like a stone left by the tide. She had not seen Lady Celia Bottomly go, but had found herself alone with her outraged cousin Hildegard, whom she had not even known was present.
Izzy repressed the memory of what followed. Having endured Hildegard's scandalized tirade several times since their hurried return home, she had no desire to relive it, even in memory. She turned her thoughts back to Lord Blackworth.
To be more specific, his hands. Oh yes, his hands had captured her thoughts many times in the last seven days. And nights.
Her dreams, sleeping and waking, now had the fodder of experience to feed them. She had been touched, awakened to something she had barely imagined existed. The memory of how warm and large Lord Blackworth's hands were, how powerful he was, was etched into her body like a signet upon sealing wax.
She could not help but wonder how it would have been to match him, passion for passion. To feel those hands upon her again, to touch him with her own.
Izzy shook away those pointless thoughts.
You'll never know
. She knew she should be thankful for it. She straightened her shoulders, pushed open the door, and entered the room with her head high.
Eppingham Rowley, Lord Blackworth, stood gazing at the garden outside
the
window. The hopeful view of emerging greenery and delicate blooms fighting back the gloom of winter had no effect on him.
He was only aware of his own grim fate. The trapped sensation he had been feeling for the last week had intensified until he thought he might like to destroy something—preferably with his bare hands. The worst of it was, there was no one to blame but himself.
The wrong room, he moaned to himself for the thousandth time. The wrong bloody room. One stupid, drunken mistake, one errant turn in a darkened hallway. The shy invitation from an unhappily married woman had lured him, the spinster's ambitions had trapped him, but in the end, it was his own fault.
Now the shackles of matrimony clanked incessantly just over his shoulder. He winced against the rising memory of his father's rage.
"You'll marry her, by God, you'll marry her at once! You'll not ruin this family with your wickedness. I shall not have my name dragged down by a despoiler of virgins!"
His father's voice rang through his mind again and again, making his fists clench. All his recent efforts to please the man, come to naught in one simple, disastrous mistake.
If he gave his father and grandfather cause, they would use the sword they had wielded over his head for years; Eppie would have to marry, or risk losing it all. He cursed the bad fortune that had determined the rewriting of the entail fell to his grandfather's generation. There was no guaranteed inheritance for him, not until his grandfather signed the document of settlement.
Worse, whom would he have to marry to obtain his inheritance? A woman he had never seen. Not by the light of day, nor any other light, for that matter. Resentment flared against this faceless woman. Whyever had she made such a claim?
Lovers
. Her declaration had ruined her. The only reason for such had to be a desperate gamble for a husband. It was a fact of life that women wanted to marry and men did not. He grimaced. A gentleman would, of course, wed the woman whose reputation he had destroyed. It was a matter of honor, but one Blackworth would have evaded, if he could have.
Lovers. He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair. He had only a faint recollection of climbing into the bed of the delicious Celia, who had not been Celia at all.
His next memory was of waking with an immense lump on his head and a pounding headache made worse by his father's tirade. When at last he had escaped and pulled his friend, Viscount Stretton, aside, all his old schoolmate could relate of his soon-to-be-fiancée was that the creature was small and plain.
"And decidedly on the shelf, old man, most decidedly," had been his friend's woeful opinion. Eric had then given him a sympathetic clout on the shoulder and the mournful goodbye of a man sending a friend off to a sure and certain doom.
Now, Lord Blackworth closed his eyes against the cheerful scenery outside the window. His sole hope at this point was that the female was not too elderly for child-bearing, nor too ill-favored to procreate with. He shuddered thinking of the dismal future stretching out before him, so different from the exotic dreams of his youth.
Hearing the door open and a soft voice address him, he opened his eyes and turned.
Well. At least she was young, somewhere in her twenties. He had feared she would exceed his own thirty-four years.
Other than that there was little to recommend her. She was quite small, almost child-size. Slender, that was something. Cautious relief began to swell within him. She was not repulsive, at any rate, although it was difficult to see past the atrocious gown enveloping her.
Taste in fashion was apparently too much to ask.
One could not tell much about her coloring. The faded gown's gray-green shade would make anyone look pale, and her hair was scraped back and hidden beneath an enormous, ugly cap. It gave her a bizarre overbalanced look. At least, he hoped it was the cap's fault, and not in reality a huge and unwieldy head.
Blackworth became aware that she was studying him as well. He also became aware that they were alone in the room.
"Where is your cousin? Or your maid?" he blurted.
"I have no maid." She tilted her head and gave him a wry smile. "You needn't fear for my reputation, my lord. I haven't one, you know."
"Ahem. Yes. Quite." Oh God, he sounded like his father. He began again.
"I came here today, Miss Temple—"
"Izzy."
"What?" Startled, he wondered if she was barmy, as well, spouting out nonsense words at odd intervals.
"My name, Lord Blackworth, is Izzy."
Surely not. He blinked.
"Izzy?"
"Izzy."
Then she chuckled at his baffled look. It was a marvelous sound. It was an absolute confection of a sound. He wanted to hear it again.
"Izzy?"
"Utterly," she replied, and laughed outright.
Quite disarmed, he smiled at her in wonderment.
Her eyes widened. "Oh, my. Oh, you are quite devastating when you smile." Her hands fluttered dramatically, fanning her face. "Do stop. I cannot think when you do that."
Now he laughed, shaking his head in amazement. How could such a wit be hiding in that gown, under that cap? Intrigued, he gestured for her to sit, and took a seat beside her on the ornate, gilded settee.
"Well, Utterly Izzy, we must discuss our situation."
"Our situation, my lord? What would that be?"
"Well, to begin, perhaps you could tell me why you…"
Lied
. "Ah, invented our relationship."
"Don't you know? Oh, I suppose you did more or less sleep through it all." Her eyes widened. "Oh, dear. How is your head, my lord? Pray forgive me. You must understand, I was quite frightened at the time." Leaning forward, she looked him over for obvious damage.
Forgive her? He had burst into her room in the dead of night and jumped into her bed in a drunken mistake, and she was asking for his forgiveness? What an extraordinary response.
But wait. He eyed her suspiciously.
"Miss Temple, I should like for you to tell me what happened. I don't really know, you see. That is, I know, yet…"
"Do not worry, my lord. It was not as bad as you think. You were about to stop. When I struck you, I mean. You knew it was not who you expected the moment you, ah…" Gesturing bosomward, Izzy looked away for a moment. "So you
were
stopping, I am convinced of it. I needn't have struck you at all. But I was quite beside myself, for I was—well, my nightgown was tear—" She blushed and stopped.
He had torn her gown? Dear God, it was worse than he thought. He had well-nigh raped her.
Perhaps he did belong in jail.
For the first time it occurred to him to wonder how it had been for her to wake under such an assault. He felt his stomach shrivel at the thought. Although he had meant no harm, and she was not frightened of him now, guilt twisted within him. She must have been so frightened, so helpless.
Well, not entirely helpless, his sometimes still-throbbing head told him. She had thwarted him quite neatly, thank God. He smiled at her now in relief.