Henry studied him calmly. It was most disconcerting. Henry always saw far more than Jonathon would like.
“No. Lady Chester and I will have an amusing, momentary respite from the ball, a pleasant interlude, but nothing more than that.” Jonathon’s voice was firm.
“As always, my lord.”
“Indeed.” Jonathon raised the glasses in a toast of sorts. “As always.”
He nodded, turned and strode down the corridor, his pensive mood swept away by the thought of the delectable widow awaiting him.
Judith was the perfect choice for this evening. There was no better way to mark the season than with a bottle of good champagne and a beautiful woman in one’s arms. And if the lady in question expected no more than one was willing to give, so much the better. Besides, she would probably be the first to agree that he was no more what she wished, if she were in the market for a husband, than she was what he wanted.
No, he knew precisely what he wanted and, as much as his friends thought it was most amusing, when at last he found such a woman he would not hesitate to pursue, and win, her hand as well as her heart. And he’d do so with unbridled, imagined, never-before-seen passion. But not tonight.
He grinned, nudged open the library door with his foot and stepped into the room. The library was a long, large room with book-laden shelves reaching upward to a distant ceiling, an oversized desk opposite the door and a fireplace at the far end of the room with a sofa strategically positioned in front of it for whatever purposes may be deemed necessary. The gaslights in the room were dimmed and even the fire did not dispel the shadows at that end of the chamber. Still, there was the distinct silhouette of a woman lingering in the darkened corner.
“Ah, Judith, forgive my tardiness.” Jonathon moved to the desk, set down the glasses and expertly opened the champagne. “I had planned on arriving before you.”
“Had you?” she said, her voice a shade huskier than usual. Quite exciting, really. This evening might be far better than he had expected.
“Indeed I had.” He filled two glasses. “I wanted to greet you with champagne already poured.” He picked up the glasses and turned. “I do so hate…” The words died in his throat. A vision, definitely not Judith, but a vision all the same, stepped out of the shadows. “You do so hate what?”
“Surprises,” he murmured, and handed her a glass. “You’re not Lady Chester.”
“I’m not?” She sipped the champagne and gazed at him in an innocent and most effective manner. “Are you sure?”
“I haven’t a doubt in my mind.” His gaze slipped over her and he very much liked what he saw. But then, who wouldn’t?
She was much taller than Judith, but not overly tall, with hair a deep, warm red. He had always liked red hair. Her eyes were lovely, green in color and almost almond in shape. The low cut of her gown emphasized her lush figure. She was indeed a vision—no, a goddess, vibrant and fiery and straight from any healthy man’s dreams. Jonathon had always been extremely healthy.
“Might I ask what you have done with Lady Chester?”
“Done with her?” She laughed, a natural rich sound as if laughter came easily to her. He liked that too.
“Why, I have tied her up and stuffed her in an armoire.”
“Have you indeed? I daresay she’d rather enjoy that.”
She laughed again.
“Although I doubt she is tied up and locked away.” He studied the goddess curiously. “What has happened to her?”
“Nothing dire, I assure you. She was simply persuaded to allow me to meet you here in her place.”
“Persuaded? By you?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve never met the lady. Lord Norcroft spoke to her.”
“Did he?” Jonathon raised a brow. “Lord Norcroft, you say? How very interesting.”
She smiled in a noncommittal manner.
He chose his words with care. What was Oliver up to? “Why would Norcroft persuade Lady Chester to allow you to take her place?”
“Well.” She frowned and thought for a moment, then drew a deep breath and met his gaze directly.
“Because I have a proposal for you.”
“A proposal?” He kept a pleasant smile on his face, but suspicion coursed through him. “What kind of proposal?”
“It’s rather more difficult to say aloud than I had thought it would be.” She wrinkled her lovely nose and appeared ill at ease. Jonathon wasn’t entirely sure he believed her. He sipped his wine and studied her. “Is it a business proposal?”
It would be just like Oliver to send him an interesting investment proposition in the guise of a beautiful woman. Particularly if the investment was moreinteresting than sound.
“I certainly wouldn’t term it business, although I daresay some people might think so,” she added under her breath.
“Personal, then?”
“Exceptionally so.”
“A proposal of an exceptionally personal nature?” He laughed. “That sounds like a proposal of marriage.”
“Exactly.” She heaved a sigh of relief. “I do thank you, my lord, it’s so much easier to hear you say it than to say it myself.”
“Hear me say what?” He stared in confusion. “My dear lady, I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“It’s really quite simple. You said it yourself. I’m talking about a proposal of marriage.” She leaned toward him and spoke clearly, as if his intelligence were in question. “Between you and me.”
“You and me?” he repeated slowly.Marriage?
“I can see you still don’t quite understand do you?” She gazed at him in a most sympathetic manner.
“That’s my fault, I’m afraid. I am not very good at explanations, especially complicated ones.”
“You’re not?”Marriage? “Perhaps you could give it a try?”
“Oh, absolutely.” She downed the rest of her champagne, placed the empty glass on the desk, clasped her hands together and drew a deep breath. “My Lord Helmsley…” She paused and a slight frown creased her forehead. “Might I call you Jonathon? I know it’s terribly presumptuous of me and not at all proper, but it does seem that a discussion of this kind requires a sort of, well, intimacy that might otherwise be considered”—she thought for a moment—“naughty.”
“Naughty?”
She nodded. “Naughty.”
“One would hate to be thought naughty,” he murmured. “Jonathon it is, then. And you are?”
“Oh, dear, imagine that, I have quite forgotten to introduce myself.” She laughed lightly. “I shall attribute it entirely to nerves. I have never proposed marriage before.”
“To my everlasting relief. I should hate to think you made a practice of this, Miss…?
“Miss Fairchild. Fiona Fairchild.” She held out her hand to him. “But you must call me Fiona.”
“I would be delighted.” He took her gloved hand and brushed his lips across it. Fairchild? It was vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. His gaze never left hers. “Fiona.”
“I like the way that sounds.” She tilted her head and studied him thoughtfully. “Jonathon and Fiona. It sounds…right. As if it were meant to be.”
“Meant to be?” He didn’t like the sound of that one bit. Particularly as the subject was marriage. He wasn’t entirely sure he should continue whatever game this woman and Oliver played. Still, he did hate to surrender before knowing if it was a game he might win. “Fated, perhaps?”
“Exactly.” She cast him a radiant smile that did something odd to the pit of his stomach. For a moment her words were obscured by the roar in his ears and the blood pounding in his veins and nothing in the world mattered save her smile and her eyes. “…destiny of a sort, I should think.”
He shook his head. “What?”
“I was saying that as you are not yet married, it does indeed seem like destiny or providence or something of that nature.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Why?”
“Because I am perfect for you.” She beamed that amazing smile again, but he firmly ignored it. He obviously needed all his wits about him.
“Perfect for me?” he said slowly.
“Do you respond to everything with a question?”
“Forgive me, Miss Fairchild—Fiona. I have never been the object of a proposal before.”
“No, of course not.” She waved away the comment. “How silly of me not to realize you might well be every bit as discomforted by this as I am.” She paused. “Now, then, where was I?”
“You are perfect for me,” he said wryly.
“Ah, yes. Well.” She squared her shoulders and met his gaze in an unflinching manner. “Your future wife will be the Marchioness of Helmsley and one day the Duchess of Roxborough. In very many ways, I have spent my entire life preparing for such a position.
“My mother was the sister of an earl, my father the younger son of a marquess. I have traveled extensively and am fluent in several languages. I can run a household with both efficiency and elegance and I am an excellent hostess.” She spread her hands in a modest gesture that didn’t seem the least bit modest and smiled. “As I said, I am perfect.”
“Perfect perhaps if I were simply filling the position of marchioness or duchess, but are you indeed perfect for me? As a wife, I mean.” Jonathon chose his words with care. There was something afoot here and he was determined to discover precisely what it was.
“Oliver thinks so.”
“He does, does he?” So she called Oliver by his given name. This was most interesting and implied a relationship of a close nature. Whatever game his friend was playing, Jonathon would play along for the moment. Besides, whoever this woman was, she was undeniably lovely, and rather amusing as well. He sipped his champagne and cast his gaze over her. “Why?”
“He says I’m stubborn and single-minded. He says as well that I have an inordinate amount of spirit and I am far too intelligent for my own good. In truth, it makes no sense to me.” She shook her head, a puzzled look on her face. “I have always considered those qualities more a problem than an asset, at least in the eyes of men, but Oliver says they make me a challenge. And he further says you wish for a challenge in a wife.”
“I am an unusual man. I do enjoy a challenge….” And hadn’t he admitted it to his friends just last week?
“I will further confess that a lovely woman”—And hadn’t they found it most amusing?—“who is as well a challenge is…”
Surely it was no coincidence that this green-eyed goddess now appeared in Judith’s place assisted by Oliver?
At once the answer struck him and he was hard-pressed not to laugh. He should have known. He should have realized the truth the very moment this woman had said she was perfect for him. This was obviously some sort of joke. An elaborate scheme concocted by his friends to make him look like a fool.
“Is…what?” Fiona—if that was indeed her name—prompted.
“Is”—he cast her his most charming smile—“perfect.” He turned to refill his glass and hers. Just how far would this woman go at the direction of Oliver and the others?
He handed her a glass and she accepted it with a grateful smile. She was obviously an actress. And a good one at that. That innocent widening of her eyes. The slightly unsure expression that would cross her face, the slight hesitation, the touch of discomfort. And Fairchild probably had a familiar ring because he had heard her name in connection with some play or other. He might even have watched her onstage, although surely he would have remembered if he had seen her before tonight. In truth, he couldn’t imagine ever forgetting her. This was a woman who would linger in a man’s mind.
“So tell me, Miss Fairchild—Fiona—why a woman as lovely, as accomplished and as much of a”—he chuckled—“challengeas you are should have to resort to proposing marriage to a man you have never met.”
“It’s complicated.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
“It bears repeating.” She sipped her champagne and thought for a moment. “My father wished me to marry—”
“As fathers tend to do.”
She nodded. “And as I hadn’t wed before he died, he arranged for me to marry the son of an acquaintance of his.” She glanced at him. “Yet another man I have never met.
“Go on.”
“Until I marry, I receive no inheritance or dowry. Nor do my three sisters receive their dowries unless or until I wed.”
He choked back a laugh. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
She heaved a dramatic sigh. “I know.”
“So your future and the futures of your sisters are dependent upon your actions?” It was remarkably difficult to restrain from laughing aloud at the dramatic nature of her story. “You alone can save them from a life of poverty or servitude?”
“Exactly.” Her green eyes misted with tears at the very thought. It was a nice touch.
“I see.”
What a fabrication. What a far-fetched tale. And surely he had heard that plot performed onstage before. He would not be the least bit surprised if an entire cast tripped into the room at any moment. Or at the very least the playwrights, the authors of the farce: Norcroft, Warton and Cavendish.
Oh, they were fiendish fellows, these friends of his. No doubt they had plotted this scheme after he had left them last week. There were likely significant wagers among themselves as to what he would do. Perfect wife indeed. They probably thought he would run like a frightened rabbit when confronted with such a woman and the imminent prospect of marriage. This Fiona Fairchild certainly filled all his qualifications, but then she would, wouldn’t she?