The Problem with Seduction (37 page)

How did she tell him that she’d kept the news of his family’s potential fortune from him? He would assume she’d deceived him on purpose. And…she had. She’d have to admit it, for she couldn’t lie to him again, just to save her own hide from his contempt.

He rose and took her face in his hands. He kissed each of her eyelids, his lips brushing against her damp lashes, before sweeping his lips across hers. It was all more romantic than even the proposals she’d dreamed of since she was a little girl. And if she’d always imagined he’d say he loved her and couldn’t live without her, well, the fact that he’d ask her to marry him after all the trouble she’d put him through was enough.

He tasted her lips gently, then with more urgency. Suddenly he drew back, leaving her panting with want. “I do love you, Elizabeth. This
isn’t
just because Bart believes it’s our best chance.”

Icy water dashed across her.

“You
do
love me?” she repeated dully, feeling cheated. The right words, the ones she’d longed to hear her whole life, but said so…wrongly.
“He did love her,”
and
“he hadn’t proposed because it might help him to stay out of gaol.”
The way he’d said it, she wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.

Doubt crept back in. Perhaps he
wouldn’t
take kindly to her having kept the dispute over the quarry secret. Maybe this proposal had been provoked out of a sense of preservation, despite his assertion that it hadn’t. If that were the case, forgiveness wouldn’t be within his reach. Why should it, when he could just walk away?

He broke into a smile, seemingly oblivious to her guardedness. “It
is
unexpected, isn’t it? I had this feeling I couldn’t quite explain…right here.” He touched his belly just below his heart. “Montborne is always in and out of love, but not me. When Bart said we must marry or else no one will believe we’re the right parents for Oliver, I felt a conviction so strong, it must be love. I knew what I must do after that, and so here I am.”

She wanted to kiss him. Anything to make this feel more like a proposal and less like a confession. She didn’t regret turning his offer down just weeks ago, but today she knew him well enough to think they could be happy together. If only he would
kiss her
and make this real.

She loved him. If he thought he loved her, whether it was out of a sense of duty to Oliver or fear for his own skin, she should be pleased.

She turned slightly and sat on the couch, craning her neck to look up at him. “When?” If it wasn’t the storybook proposal she’d always wanted, at least it was built on friendship, a mutually satisfactory sexual relationship, and common goals. Many women had far less to look forward to in their marriages. She should be pleased.

He clasped his hands together and began to pace. “The trial is in two weeks. Any time before then, though it will take a few days for me to procure a special license. The ceremony will obviously be limited, but if you’d like to invite certain witnesses, I see no reason to keep it exclusively to family.” He smirked. “I’d love to see your father’s face when we take each other as man and wife.”

She couldn’t even see the humor in such a statement. Con slid quickly onto the couch next to her. “I’m sorry, love. I shouldn’t have teased. But wouldn’t he turn red? If he wasn’t already trying to lock me up, I’d say he’d try to ruin me for it.”

Her father did seem to have an unusually strong objection to Constantine. She supposed it was very male of Con to take perverse pleasure in provoking her father’s ire in return. “He’ll hear of it at the trial, and then you’ll see his reaction. But I
would
like to invite Lord and Lady Trestin.”

The conversation turned to making plans, and if it wasn’t entirely romantic, if a pall hung over them with the reminder that it might not be enough to bring Oliver back, their tentative plans to join their lives together gave Elizabeth a modicum of hope. For while she couldn’t see living without her son, Con’s proposal was the small miracle she must cling to. A glimmer of hope that Mrs. Dalton was right, and that Con and Lord Bart really could restore her only child back to her.

She must also hope they could keep Con out of the gaol.

Chapter Twenty-One

THE FOLLOWING DAY, Con still couldn’t credit his piss-poor luck. No, it wasn’t
luck,
if he were completely honest with himself. It was his own terrible judgment that had brought him to this point.

He took up a thin fold of notes and his black beaver hat from his dressing table and left the room. Inside the small wad of notes now securely contained in his coat were the five pounds that would procure the special license required to marry Elizabeth before the trial. God help him if that wasn’t the one good decision he’d made this week.

It was early yet, not quite noon, and a crisp, early fall breeze brought fresh air into the otherwise stagnant city. He drew a heady lungful and tried to eradicate the stench that seemed to cling to him. Mold, human waste, and fear. Sweat so putrid, it could make a man vomit just to smell himself.

Suddenly the wind changed. A warm updraft carried the putrid fetor of the hulks bobbing on the Thames right to him. Or was he imagining it? He hacked, trying to get the stench out of his lungs, and the spasm caused him to choke. He stopped walking and doubled over, bracing his hands on his knees while his body wracked with the need to expel the violent odor before it became a part of him.

Oh, God, he was terrified.

He kept his head down as two gentlemen passed. When he was alone again, he straightened and doffed his hat to wipe his hand across his brow. He didn’t want to go back to gaol. Bart had been no help with providing possible punishments. The Act was still too new; moreover, he wasn’t a common criminal, but the son and brother of a marquis. His fate would be up to the court, and a jury of his peers.

But oh, God. If he had to spend another night there… Gaol had been worse than he’d recalled. Newgate made King’s Bench look like Carlton House.

No. He
wouldn’t
go back. And for God’s sake, he must get hold of himself before he was no use to anyone. That was what he must concentrate on. Wedding the woman he loved.

He set off toward the church. Stretching his legs with long, sure strides felt like freedom to him. He extended his stride even further, until he felt like a stilt racer at a country fair. Ten hours in a musty, damp cell had cramped his muscles beyond what even a day in a carriage would do. It was a maddening kind of confinement, made all the more frightening because he didn’t want to die there.

The streets became more crowded as he left St. James. He couldn’t shake the feeling that people were looking at him. As if they could have any idea he was on this street due only to the donation of one hundred guineas and the benefit of his own recognizance.

It was ridiculous to think that. No one could possibly
know
.

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched. He turned down an alley, wishing to get away from the prickly discomfort of having a target on his back, and nearly blacked out when something long and confoundingly hard clobbered him in the back of the head.

The sudden blow knocked white lights into his eyes. Immediately, he felt sick and doubled over, but whoever had perpetrated the blow came around and kicked him in the forehead. His head snapped back. His arms flailed and a second attacker swooped beefy arms under Con’s shoulders, effectively locking him against the man’s bulk of a chest.

And the smell. Oh, God. The smell.

Con hardly had time to open his eyes to see the pug-like face of his attacker before another fist sailed into his cheek. New pain eclipsed the throbbing in his head. He forced his eyes open to get a better look at the man pounding his face in. His attacker was stocky, with two meaty fists and a conspicuously fine greatcoat that hung too long on his short frame. His pudgy bottom lip protruded and deep folds creased over his small eyes. He didn’t waste a second before sending both of his fists into Con’s belly.

Con’s breath whooshed out of him, taking with it any chance of calling for help. He struggled feebly for release. For his trouble, his arms were yanked back cruelly. He didn’t even have the breath to yelp in pain.

“Get ’im in ’is pretty face again,” the man pinning him upright egged. “’E won’t be spending ’is nights at the table wi’ ’is nose all bashed in.”

Table? Con could barely think through the blinking lights and nausea spinning his head, but even in his savaged state he realized they’d confused him for Darius. “I’m not—”

“Stop yammering!”
Whack.
The sickening crack was followed by a rush of blood into his mouth.
Not his nose.

“We told you last time. You owe us. Shoulda killed you then.”

Two more blows to his stomach. Con could barely breathe through the agony.

“It’s not that much blunt,” the man behind him taunted into his ear. His fetid breath caused Con to gag. In response the man pulled Con more upright, using Con’s arms like puppet strings. “We know you ’ave it. You’ve always ’ad it before.”

Con’s voice wheezed from him. “Wrong. Man.”

The little villain before him laughed. “You always say that. ‘Wasn’t me, was my brother.’ Gets old, scarin’ me an’ Billy here into thinking we’re ’urting some poor fella who ain’t got a clue.” He brandished a knife.

Con kicked out with his booted foot but only succeeded in losing more of his weight to the man holding him up. “I
am,
” he panted, “Lord Constantine.”

“A fancy-pants lord? You ’ear that, Billy? Maybe we should just forget this whole thing about ’im owing us eight
thousand
fecking quid.
” His eyes turned hard and beady. “Or we can give ’im something to make sure ’e don’t forget.”

Before Con could even worry what that might mean, the man rushed forward and jabbed the knife into Con’s stomach. Agony radiated through him. This time, he managed to yell. But it was barely loud enough to ricochet through the alley, let alone draw attention on the street.

The pull of the blade leaving him almost caused him to lose consciousness. He wished he had.

Oh, God. He was going to die. Here. In this dirty alley. All alone.

The man holding him suddenly dropped him and Con buckled to his knees. His captor started kicking him: in his head, his side, his legs, his shoulders, until he collapsed onto his elbows and then onto his side, shielding his face with his arm as best he could while holding onto his bleeding wound. The man who’d stabbed him laughed and dropped to his knees. He rifled through Con’s coat. Con heard the tear of his coat being rent. Then the villain cooed. “Look at this, Billy. At least ten pounds in ’ere. And ’e said ’e didn’t ’ave a thing.”

Spittle landed on Con’s cheek. The man tugged brutally on Con’s ear, then smacked him hard. A solid kick to his back nearly broke his spine.

It surely broke his ribs. He couldn’t breathe. He felt blood trickling from him, making a sticky mess on his fingers, and his eyes were starting to swell shut. If they’d meant to kill him, they were close. He might still bleed to death. Or suffer a fatal infection. And all before he was to marry Elizabeth, and protect her from men like her father and Captain Finn.

He ground his teeth together, kicking his legs slightly as he tried to get up.
He couldn’t die here.

“You better not die yet,” the little man said. “Eight thousand, and if you don’t ’ave it by the end of the month, it’s going up to ten. Don’t make us come to your ’ouse to get it, neither. You know the place.”

The men’s boots scuffled on the cobblestones. The sound grew fainter, or else Con was finally losing consciousness. Then, from what must be the alley’s entrance, Con heard the little man yell out, “Oi! There’s a man dying in the street ’ere. Someone ’elp ’im!”

Because really, who’d be around to get them their money if he died?

Elizabeth rose from her desk at the sound of a man’s voice coming from the hallway. The low, insistent tones clipped along with a sense of urgency. Her own man’s responding concern frightened her almost as much. She went into the hallway.
Empty.