His Secret Heroine (19 page)

Portia giggled in a high pitch that jangled in Reggie's ears, as she bounced daintily to her feet. He watched Portia's mincing step as they disappeared down the path after the others, and decided he had to admire Castlebury's sacrifice.

"I suppose that was all deliberate," Chloe said. Hopelessness tinged her voice.

"Oh, quite. I cannot tell who started it, but Portia has made it quite clear she wishes me to marry elsewhere."

"Oh." He saw a tear glint in her eye.

Reggie helped her to her feet and gathered up the brown wool blanket. Taking her hand, he led her behind the folly
into the forest to a secluded glade. He spread the blanket on the grass.

"Reggie
—"

"Sit with me." He reached for her hand. "Come. I am your friend if I am nothing else. And there is a lot you have not told me."

A tear trickled down her cheek as she sat. Reggie wiped at it with his handkerchief.

"I can't."

"Then just tell me about your sisters."

For a long, still moment, Chloe ran her fingers back and forth over the
rough brown wool. She sighed. "I haven't heard from them in two months. They usually write to me every few weeks."

"If you are afraid for them, I will go for you."

"Cottingham won't let you see them. I have not seen them since my mother died."

Reggie put an arm around her shoulders. "Chloe, I have made up my mind. I will marry you, and no one else. My expectation has come through, and I have the blunt now to do as I please, even if my father continues to withhold my inheritance and Featherstone from me."

"An investment?"

Reggie gritted his teeth, wishing he had explained about the book before. But he hadn't really thought how to tell her, or how she would take it. "Of sorts. We shall have to talk about that. I do not mean to say we shall be in the lap of luxury, but we can live with at least reasonable modesty until my father relents."

"It is utterly unfair. I do not see why you do not stand up to him, Reggie."

Probably nobody really understood that. Parent or no, how did one explain love for such an obtuse man as his father? "He's my father," Reggie said. "I remember him the way he used to be. I was a very odd little boy, you see. I was always running into things or getting bumped or bruised. I couldn't sit still, no matter how hard I tried. He was the only one who understood. He would take me out to the fields and let me run, and fly kites, and ride, anything to use up all that extra energy I had. And he always protected me, even when my grandmother wanted me whipped for breaking her favorite vase."

"Your own grandmother? Why would she want to do that?"

He shrugged. How did he explain that he had always thought it was his own fault his grandmother hated him? "I don't remember much. I just know she detested me. One day I ran around a corner, right into the pedestal, and her vase fell, and shattered. She called for a footman to whip me, and father stepped in. There was a horrible row, and grandmother packed up and left for the dower house and never returned."

"Because she couldn't whip you? I should not have liked to have her for a grandmother."

"If there is anything that will set my father into a rage, it is cruelty to a child. I suspect she is the reason, but he has never mentioned it."

"Well, I still think he is a horrid man."

"He isn't, Chloe," he said. Yet nobody liked the duke, and Reggie knew it. "I cannot say what it was that changed him so, but he is bitterly unhappy. He has lost everyone. He and my mother have not seen or spoken to each other in sixteen years. My brother Robert has hated him since father took him out of mother's home and forced him to live at Beauhampton. He has no one but me, now."

"And if you stand up to him, he will cut you off, too, won't he?"

Reggie nodded. The thing he most feared, that he would, like his mother and brother, discover his father did not love him after all. And the truth was, he had set the wheels of that confrontation in motion, and they could not now be stopped.

"Possibly," he said. He interlaced his fingers and stretched them backwards as if somehow that might ease his frustration. "He would see it as a betrayal. I'll deal with that when I must, but not now. We can solve our own problems now, Chloe. Once we are married, I shall petition the court for custody of your sisters."

But Chloe shook her head. "Reggie, they won't grant it to you. Cottingham is wealthy and powerful."

"I have a lot of friends, too, Chloe. And if necessary, I'll go to my father."

Her eyes suddenly widened. "No, Reggie, you can't! You are supposed to marry Portia
. If you don't –"

Chloe gasped, and clamped her mouth shut.

His father. The premonition ran up Reggie's spine in a shudder. "What will he do, Chloe?"

"You know what he told you
—"

"No, I am interested in what he has told you. You've met him, haven't you?"

She had. He could see it in the stricken look in her eyes. Reggie wrapped his arms around her, but she pushed herself away.

"He has bought up my debts."

Reggie muttered a curse. Knowing his father, he easily discerned the remainder. He should have realized the Duke of Marmount would never rest in his unending quest to control his son. Perhaps that confrontation was coming sooner than he expected.

"Then there is only one answer, my love. As soon as you marry me, all your debts will become mine. Let him try to throw his own son into debtor's prison. That, I assure you, cannot be done, without extreme humiliation to the duke himself."

"Reggie—"

"I promise you. And we will find a way to help your sisters too."

Reggie turned her to face him and held her face in his hands as he touched his lips to hers. With a quiet sound like a dove's mournful call, her arms wrapped around him, pouring fuel onto the glowing coals of his growing passion.

"Oh, there you are, Beauhampton. We thought you'd got yourself lost."

Vilheurs. Murderous thoughts flitted through Reggie's mind. The haze cleared from Reggie's mind like fog blown away by a sudden, stiff wind.

Chloe gasped and sat back, pulling up the sleeve that had slipped off her white shoulder.

And Letitia Lavington. Reggie tamped down the instinct to leap up and flatten them both, but the situation was tight enough as it was, and could expose Chloe to humiliation. He stood and reached down for Chloe's hand, but Vilheurs stepped in.

"My dear," said Lady
Lavington, oozing her words, "We really must hurry back. Lady Mythe is anxious to begin the evening festivities."

Reggie stared. Lady
Lavington was smiling as if she had seen absolutely nothing, which was quite impossible. Of course, the two of them had no advantage in publicizing the compromise, which would effectively scuttle their own schemes, but if she and Vilheurs meant to help keep this assignation secret, Reggie had no objection. He glared as she offered her arm for his taking.

It probably was better if Chloe was next seen on another fellow's arm. His only consolation was that it must have taken them quite some walk, all the way around the lake to the bridge, since all the punts were on the island.

And he glared as he punted them back across the lake, and continued frowning all the way up to the manor and the safety of the conspirators.

Chapter Twelve

As Chloe and Aunt Daphne reached the arched doors of Lady Mythe's lavender saloon, the noisily babbling music of feminine voices came abruptly to a halt. Every pair of eyes in the room turned on her and widened.

Chloe gulped as she cast about from one face to another. Miss Amy looked silly and closed a little red book in her hands. Lady
Lavington smiled, but it was the kind of smile that made a person feel she was about to become a crocodile's lunch. Lady Constance and Lady Mythe looked mildly horrified, while Miss Nightengale merely stared with a frown. Whatever the
on dit
was, Chloe had no trouble discerning it was about her.

"Well?" Miss Amy asked in her girlishly breathless voice, as she hid the little book behind her back.

"Hush. It is none of your concern," said Lady Constance, and she grabbed for the book, but Miss Amy whirled away.

"Well, what?" Chloe returned.

"Well, did he ask?" The carefully constructed yellow ringlets on Miss Amy's head bobbed with her eager nodding.

Chloe hoped that was all this was about. The room was full of the female members of the conspiracy. Even Lady
Lavington appeared to be one of them, but Chloe didn't quite believe that.

"I do not think I am prepared to discuss it just yet," she replied, trying to smile. How could she tell anyone when she had not puzzled out the answer herself?

"There! You see, I told you he would," Miss Amy gushed. "Are you? Are you going to marry him?"

"Miss Amy, you are above forward," said Lady Constance, her older cousin. "Let us allow Miss
Englefield her privacy."

"Oh, do not be so high in the instep, Connie. We are all friends here, are we not? And it is all so very romantical! I wish I had a lover who wrote a book about me!"

An anguished moan hummed through the women.

"Miss Amy, how very shocking," retorted Lady Constance. "You do not have a lover, and neither does Miss
Englefield, and you should never intimate so."

"Well, I did not mean precisely a lover. I am sorry, Miss
Englefield, I did not mean it quite that way, but it is so romantical."

Chloe felt her heart starting to race. "What is so romantical?" she asked, her voice sounding a bit squeaky.

"The book. Oh, it is so grand." Miss Amy proudly held out the little leather-bound book in her hands, dodging Lady Constance's attempt to grab it away.

"I do not think this is a very good idea, Miss Amy," said Lady Mythe, stepping forward between the two ladies.

"Perhaps we should break it to her more gradually," said Lady Lavington.

"Let me see that." Chloe snatched the little book out of Miss Amy's hands just before Lady Mythe could intervene and take the book.

"Oh, no, now you've done it!" said Portia, folding her arms. "Just when everything was going just right."

Chloe walked over to a branch of candles for a little more light. It was just a little book, bound in red leather with gold lettering. Rather new, but it looked like it had been read several times, for the thin paper of the pages was starting to curl at the corners. Two tiny scraps of newsprint marked places.

"
The Adventuress
," she read. "By Roger Beauchef." Something about that felt ominous.

"Ooh, it sounds so romantical the way you say it," said Miss Amy. Her cooing was becoming annoying.

"Oh, do be still, Miss Amy." Lady Mythe moved next to Chloe. "Do take it in the vein it was meant, Miss Englefield. It is really sort of a tribute, you see."

"A tribute? What do you mean?" Chloe opened the pages to a torn paper bookmark in the middle and read silently.

As the fierce wind whipped her sodden golden curls and molded her wet garments against her ambrosially delectable form, Circe shouted...

Circe? Where had she heard that? Hadn't Reggie called her Circe once? His Siren of the Seas?

She flipped back to the cover. Roger Beauchef.
Reggie Beauhampton! It had to be!

Ambrosially delectable form?
What was this?

Chloe flipped back the pages and kept reading, seeing herself everywhere,
line after line, with light green eyes and curls just like her own, described as a hoyden of the worst sort, a flagrant adventuress, blatantly displaying her charms like a light-skirt in Covent Garden!

But if you could, would you not like to have such an adventure?
Reggie's words, from their first sailing trip.

He had! He'd written the book about her! Made her a laughingstock before the entire of the
beau monde
!

She slammed the book shut and whirled around, violent heat flushing her cheeks as she searched for escape.

Lady Mythe touched her shoulder. "Now, my dear, you mustn't take it that way. I am sure he did not mean it."

"He told me he was writing poetry!"

The low rumble of jovial men's voices invaded the room. Men who had already begun their evening drinking, who were full of chuckles and merriment and practical jokes. Was that where this had begun, with men making merry at the expense of women?

And there he
walked, at the head of the pack, jostling about with all his very good friends.

The moment they spied the unusually silent women, the entire clutch of men to an abrupt and equally silent halt. Chloe stared, openmouthed. The lump in her throat
felt like a wad of rags.

"Uh oh," said Castlebury.

Chloe looked down at the little red book and back at Reggie, and she watched all that jovial male camaraderie fall from his face as he stared at the book in her hands and reality dawned. So he really had written it. For a brief moment, she had hoped it was a prank his friends had pulled.