Unlike Miss Montgomery, the three of them appeared well fed. The beauty was a curvaceous pocket Venus. The other two had square torsos rounded by ample bosoms and large hips.
“Move,” the matron snarled beneath her breath and made a motion to discreetly elbow her companions, but the movement was sloppy and obvious.
The pretty one moved, but only after gasping in real or supposed pain at the intended jab. The giantess stood aside, a surly expression on her face. It wasn’t until all three locked gazes with him that their irritated expressions became cloyingly sweet.
And then irritated again, once they’d a chance to take in his shabby clothes.
“Who are
you
?” the stepmother demanded in a flat London accent.
“Yes, who
are
you?” The beauty looked him boldly up and down.
The large one said, “I’ve never seen such a handsome man, even if he
is
dirty.”
At that, Charlie had a difficult time keeping his face perfectly neutral. She sounded exactly like a man trying to sound like a woman in a play. Could she be a male dressed in women’s clothing?
He peered closer at her. No. He didn’t think so. That would be too odd. But he couldn’t be entirely sure. The abundance of fabric and flounce she wore could camouflage a whole platoon.
He made no attempt at a jovial smile but, in a herculean effort, did lift up one corner of his mouth. “Good afternoon, ladies. I’m—”
“For all we know,” the stepmother interrupted him, “you—with your black eye and your tattered but fine clothes—could be a crazy vagabond who’s perhaps tied up or, God forbid,
murdered
a gentleman, stolen his breeches and coat, and arrived here intent on seducing the lady of the house into letting you stay.”
Charlie made an immediate assumption: she was shrewd but eccentric, a dangerous combination. “Of course I’m not that sort of fellow,” he said. “But if I were, I wouldn’t tell you, would I?”
All three ladies gasped, but the stepmother appeared—
No. She couldn’t be excited at the idea, could she?
“He’s Viscount Lumley, Stepmother,” explained Miss Montgomery.
“Viscount, indeed,” the older woman said scornfully.
“I
am
a viscount,” he said. “Why don’t you check
DeBrett’s Peerage
? My name’s right there, and I’m rich as Croesus. Properties all over England. I’ve got a castle here in Scotland, too … somewhere near a glen.”
“There are tens of thousands of glens!” Perdita said.
“Hundreds of glens,” Miss Montgomery corrected her.
Lord Lumley shrugged. “I mean to visit it someday and shear some sheep as a lark. If I ever get around to it. Of course, it might be years … London’s never dull.”
“Where do you live in London?” the stepmother demanded to know.
“Mayfair. On Grosvenor Square. If you still don’t believe me, write my good friend and neighbor, the Duke of Drummond. He’ll tell you.”
“I’ve heard of the Duke of Drummond,” the older woman murmured.
By now her cunning expression also showed hints of ambition, as Miss Montgomery had predicted.
Miss Montgomery smiled pleasantly and looked him square in the eye. “The poor viscount has been set upon by footpads and lost his way. A kind soul in Glen Dewey sent him to us.”
“Good thing,” he said, “as my
fiancée”
—he made sure to emphasize the word—“would be terribly concerned, otherwise.”
“You’re engaged?” the stepmother demanded to know.
“Yes. I am.” Charlie felt the full threat of her words and was vastly relieved to have a lie to tell. “To a lovely young lady.”
He tried to think of a name. And then he tried to imagine what his imaginary fiancée looked like and couldn’t decide if she were blond, dark, or chestnut haired. Tall or short. She was most definitely the belle of every ball she attended, which she went to alone—as balls bored him.
She was also a perfect virgin by day and a vixen by night.
Even though that was impossible.
But as she was only make-believe, he could make her anybody he wanted. She’d never speak of their impending nuptials, which somehow would never occur. And she certainly wouldn’t make outrageous demands, the way Miss Montgomery did.
Of course, if she kissed the way Miss Montgomery did, that would be ideal. But in no other way would she be similar.
“What’s your fiancée’s name, Viscount?” the giantess yelled.
“W-would you like some tea?” Miss Montgomery asked him at the exact same time.
Thank God for the tea question because he was hoping to avoid answering the first.
But when he opened his mouth to say something, the pocket Venus interrupted. “I’ll see that he’s looked after, Daisy.” She raked him with a shrewd glance. “Go prepare his bedchamber immediately, and don’t dawdle.”
“Bring us that tea first,” the stepmother ordered Miss Montgomery.
“And don’t forget the milk,” the large one added in a booming voice. “You always do.”
Charlie put aside for study later the discomfiting fact that the others were treating Miss Montgomery like a servant. Instead, he focused on her name.
Daisy
.
He liked it.
It suited her.
Not that it mattered. It didn’t matter at all.
But when she moved aside and the dark-haired siren took her place, he felt a lack—a lack he couldn’t put his finger on.
Yet it was there, just the same.
Daisy hadn’t taken two steps when her stepmother repeated Perdita’s question: “Who
is
your fiancée, Lord Lumley?”
Daisy stopped moving.
Lord Lumley stared intently at her.
She stared intently back.
Come on,
she was thinking.
Think of a name!
“Lord Lumley.” Mona’s demanding voice grated on Daisy’s ears. “Who is your fiancée?”
Yes, who was she?
“She stands here before me,” the viscount said in a rough voice.
Who? Who stood before him?
Daisy’s palms began to sweat. He’d spoken as if he’d had to recite that line in a very bad school play when he was ten years old.
She locked gazes with the viscount’s and prayed he’d come up with a convincing tale.
“She is Miss Montgomery,” he went on in a rather sick voice.
Daisy looked over her shoulder, but there was no one there.
He couldn’t mean—
Gasps were heard from every member of her stepfamily. Daisy wanted to gasp, too, but she felt if she opened her mouth, she might scream.
Swinging her gaze back to the viscount’s, she saw the sheer, dogged determination on his face to lie through his teeth and knew she was in for trouble.
“Through letters,” he practically whispered, “Miss Montgomery—
Daisy
—has consented to become my wife. Her godmother, after all, is my grandmother. So it seemed perfectly natural, when I realized my obligation as the heir, that we align the two families.”
Good heavens!
Daisy felt a pinch on her arm.
“You’ve never spoken of this,” Cassandra said through tight lips.
“No,” Daisy whispered, rubbing her arm. “I haven’t.”
“You don’t
act
engaged,” Perdita said, her hands clenched into giant fists.
“Oh, but we are.” Lord Lumley took two steps forward, leaned down, and kissed Daisy right on the lips.
It was her second kiss, and once again Daisy’s mouth felt scorched. She wasn’t sure if it was a bad or good feeling, but she took no time to wonder because she was furious at the viscount! So furious she could no longer breathe.
I have to learn how to breathe immediately,
she thought,
because it’s too late. This kiss is already happening, and unlike the last one, it’s not stopping.
She also had the fleeting thought,
I hate this man. What has he done
? But she had to give that thought up to concentrate.
The kiss was passionate one second and tender the next, so tender that she was aghast to realize she felt like weeping with the sheer wonder of it. Lord Lumley hugged her tighter, and she put her arms around his neck—his firm, solid man’s neck. The kiss grew passionate again, hot and demanding on both sides, as if they were in a battle of wills.
Who could kiss better … and longer?
She couldn’t help responding to the challenge, even though she knew it was in her best interests to stop. Mona, Cassandra, and Perdita were standing right there. They’d tease her mercilessly later; Mona would say hateful things about how she couldn’t kiss worth two cents and would make a terrible hussy (Mona hated all competition).
But kissing the viscount was like being tickled against Daisy’s will. Her mind screamed
no,
but her lips—her whole body—screamed
yes
.
“Stop it, both of you!” Perdita shrieked.
Which threw an immediate splash of proverbial cold water on the whole incident.
Daisy’s and the viscount’s lips came apart.
Whew
. For once in her life, Daisy felt she should be grateful for her loud stepsister. But she wasn’t.
She was frustrated. Kissing was the best thing she’d ever done. And she longed to try it a third time. The viscount smiled down at her, although the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m the happiest man on earth.”
He picked up Daisy’s hand—which made her jump—and folded it tightly beneath his arm.
“There, there, dear,” he said, as she tried to curl her fingers into a fist to better pull away, but he held her in an iron grip. “It’s all right. You’re supposed to find your future husband irresistible.”
Perdita flapped her arms, which caused a waft of air to stir all her ruffles. “I hate you more than ever now, Daisy.”
Mona tapped her foot. “How could you keep this a secret?”
Daisy was afraid to make eye contact with her stepmother, and so she stared at the floor to compose herself as her mind attempted to devise a lie and failed. “I—I was afraid to tell you,” was all she could produce.
A most feeble story.
“She’s being kind.” The viscount patted her hand. “The truth is, I told her
not
to tell you until I was ready. I’ve been doing my best to complete some unfinished business so we can be together, but it’s taken longer than I thought, and—”
“And what?” Mona asked.
Daisy’s mind raced.
“And she missed me,” Lord Lumley filled in. “She missed me so much she’s been crying. Every night. And I had to come see her in person to prove my devotion.”
Cassandra peered at her. “I
have
noticed how red and swollen her eyes are lately.”
“Me, too,” said Perdita.
God, Daisy hated her stepsisters sometimes!
Well,
all
the time, if she were honest.
“And
you
missed
me,
as well,” Daisy said through gritted teeth to the viscount. “So much so that you—
you
cried every night, too.”
Mona and Cassandra stared at each other and then back at him.
“He doesn’t look the type,” Cassandra said.
“No,” Mona added speculatively.
“I didn’t cry,” the viscount insisted, completely unruffled and still gazing at Daisy adoringly. “I merely moaned. Once. In my sleep. I think it was indigestion.”
“But you said it woke the neighbors,” Daisy said, looking deep into his eyes. It was so difficult to appear besotted when you were aggravated. “And you told them that was the last straw. You had to come see me. You said something about how love was better than … petting a lamb with brown eyes. Or a pudding.”
“Funny,” he answered her, his eyes sparking with a message that she read loud and clear as:
You. Will. Pay. And it won’t be pretty
. “I don’t remember that part.”
“I do,” Daisy said, feeling nervous as a result of that threatening message of his, which he disguised well beneath his own cloying version of a besotted gaze. “We simply couldn’t stay apart any longer. He came here to win you over, Stepmother, despite his unfinished business.” She sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
Oddly enough, a corner of Mona’s mouth went up. “Don’t be. Finally, you’re showing some much-needed wiliness. A trait to be nurtured.”
And then she laughed—a slow laugh that built into a crescendo that sent Jinx flying from the room, her tail cocked to the ceiling and puffy, like a thistle in full bloom.
“Very well,” said Mona, seemingly satisfied with the explanations, thank God. “We’ll adjust. But we don’t have room for you in the castle, Viscount. We’re already cramped. You’ll have to sleep elsewhere.”
“Don’t tell me,” he said with a weary sigh. “The byre?”
“Right.” Mona wagged a finger at him. “And don’t think you can hide there. If you want to become a member of this family, prepare to be worked to the bone. No man will be allowed to steal my stepdaughter’s virtue without paying heavily for it, if not with gobs of money—which you apparently don’t have at the moment but is my preferred method of restitution—then with arduous labor. In fact, I need you to move this sofa immediately. Closer to the east window.”
She pointed to the extremely large sofa the viscount himself had lounged upon not a few minutes before.
“Very well,” he gritted out, and sent Daisy another
you-will-pay-and-it-won’t-be-pretty
look.
It’s
your
fault,
she sent back.
“Shall I tell you the story of my life, new brother?” Perdita yelled in his ear.
He winced. “I don’t believe now’s the time,” he replied in grim tones, moving small tables and footrests out of the way of the sofa’s path to its new resting place beneath the east window.
Nevertheless, just as he hoisted one end of the sofa with ease, Perdita began to regale him with a tremendous lie about her amazing ride on the back of a camel that she’d paid a nickel to ride down the Broad-Way when it had come to New York with a traveling circus.
She really ought to write books,
Daisy thought, engrossed in the fantastical tale despite herself.
They’d never been to New York
or
seen a camel
.
But Daisy was even more engrossed in the way Lord Lumley’s form was shown to perfection when he lifted that sofa.
He was a virile man. Shivers of awareness ran through her from head to toe. She was to pretend to be the viscount’s fiancée? Eventually, Mona, Cassandra, and Perdita would find out she was not.
She was trapped.
Trapped
.
But meanwhile, she was looking after her own best interests: hers, Hester’s, and Joe’s.
Even with that thought to comfort her, she still felt completely hemmed in by the situation, in more ways than one. Behind her was a solid low table beneath which Jinx had returned to splay herself, belly exposed hopefully, for potential scratches.
To her right, Cassandra glared at her. To her left stood Mona, who clapped her hands loudly, startling Daisy.
And then she saw why. Joe had entered the room, his cap doffed respectfully. “Pardon me, missus.”
“Get out,” Mona barked, and waved her hand toward the door.
“Can you not see we’re busy?” Cassandra added.
Joe’s face fell, and Daisy couldn’t help blurting out: “He’s here to tell us something important, Stepmother. He never comes in unless he needs help.”
“Shut up, girl,” Mona said. “Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it later.”
Girl
.
Mona always called her that.
Joe, his face ashen with distress, hunched his shoulders and limped out the door again, not making eye contact with Daisy, even though she wished he would with all her heart.
Daisy hated her stepmother more than ever.
Mona immediately swept round the table, lowered herself upon the sofa in its new location, and patted the cushion next to her. “Do sit, Lumley. I must tell you about the drawbridge. It sags. You’ll begin work on it tomorrow.”
She raked her bold gaze over his tight, if a bit torn, buckskin breeches.
He stared at her. Then slowly came forward. But he didn’t sit.
Daisy could hardly breathe.
Mona opened her mouth to speak again, but the viscount cut her off.
“I won’t stand by and allow you to treat your servants and stepdaughter so cruelly.” He exuded all the cold hauteur one would expect of a viscount.
“Yes,” huffed Perdita. “She treats me like the veriest toad. Why, just yesterday—”
“Not you,” Lumley interrupted her.
Perdita’s mouth hung open for an appalling second, exposing a row of yellow teeth, and then shut. “Then whom?”
Daisy wanted to swat her for being so stupid!
“Your stepsister
Daisy,
” the viscount explained to Perdita, his patience running thin, judging by the dangerous edge to his voice.
“You misunderstand me.” Mona paused to indulge in a light yawn. “I have only Daisy’s best interests at heart.” She threw her arm over the back of the sofa and stared off into the distance, her overlarge bosom thrust out rudely.
“I think not,” the viscount said. “And your lack of compassion to an elderly servant is equally reprehensible.”
Mona turned and glared at him.
He glared right back.
“Mine is a family that doesn’t tolerate cruelty.” He addressed Mona in a low, threatening voice that sent tingles down Daisy’s spine. “Have a care if you want to be received into it with any consideration for your own comforts. For soon your stepdaughter will be my wife, and I won’t tolerate your viciousness.”