Almost Heaven Part 24

Elizabeth thought he looked breathtakingly handsome in a coat and waistcoat of rust superfine that set off his wide shoulders, biscuit trousers that hugged his long legs, and a cream silk shirt that emphasized the tan of his face and throat. "Very well, thank you," she answered, trying to ignore the warmth tingling up her arm as he kept her hand for a long moment before he reluctantly released it and allowed her to handle the introductions.

Despite her grave concern over her uncle, Elizabeth chuckled inwardly as she introduced Duncan. Everyone exhibited the same stunned reaction she had when she'd discovered Ian Thornton's uncle was a cleric. Her uncle gaped, Alex stared, and the dowager d.u.c.h.ess glowered at Ian in disbelief as Duncan politely bent over her hand. "Am I to understand, Kensington," she demanded of Ian, "that you are related to a man of the cloth?"

Ian's reply was a mocking bow and a sardonic lift of his brows, but Duncan, who was desperate to put a light face on things, tried ineffectually to joke about it. "The news always has a peculiar effect on people," he told her.

"One needn't think too hard to discover why," she replied gruffly.

Ian opened his mouth to give the outrageous harridan a richly deserved setdown, but Julius Cameron's presence was worrying him; a moment later it was infuriating him as the man strode to the center of the room and said in a bluff voice, "Now that we're all together, there's no reason to dissemble. Bentner, bring champagne. Elizabeth, congratulations. I trust you'll conduct yourself properly as a wife and not spend the man out of what money he has left."

In the deafening silence no one moved, except it seemed to Elizabeth that the entire room was beginning to move. "What?" she breathed finally.

"You're betrothed." Anger rose up like flames licking inside her, spreading up her limbs. "Really?" she said in a voice of deadly calm, thinking of Sir Francis and John Marchman. "To whom?"

To her disbelief, Uncle Julius turned expectantly to Ian, who was looking at him with murder in his eyes. "To me," he clipped, his icy gaze still on her uncle.

"It's final," Julius warned her, and then, because he a.s.sumed she'd be as pleased as he to discover she had monetary value, he added, "He paid a fortune for the privilege. I didn't have to give him a shilling." Elizabeth, who had no idea the two men had ever met before, looked at Ian in wild confusion and mounting anger. "What does he mean?" she demanded in a strangled whisper.

"He means," Ian began tautly, unable to believe all his romantic plans were being demolished, "we are betrothed. The papers have been signed."

"Why, you-you arrogant, overbearing"-She choked back the tears that were cutting off her voice-"you couldn't even be bothered to ask me?"

Dragging his gaze from his prey with an effort, Ian turned to Elizabeth, and his heart wrenched at the way she was looking at him. "Why don't we go somewhere private where we can discuss this?" he said gently, walking forward and taking her elbow.

She twisted free, scorched by his touch. "Oh, no!" she exploded, her body shaking with wrath. "Why guard my sensibilities now? You've made a laughingstock of me since the day I set eyes on you. Why stop now?"

"Elizabeth," Duncan put in gently, "Ian is only trying to do the right thing by you, now that he realizes what a sad state you-"

"Shut up. Duncan!" Ian commanded furiously, but it was too late; Elizabeth's eyes had widened with horror at being pitied.

"And just what sort of 'sad state," she demanded, her magnificent eyes shining with tears of humiliation and wrath, "do you think I'm in?"

Ian caught her elbow. "Come with me, or I'll carry you out of here."

He meant it, and Elizabeth jerked her elbow free, but she nodded. "By all means," she said furiously.

Shoving open the door of the first room he came to, Ian drew Elizabeth inside and closed it behind them. She walked to the center of the little salon and whirled on him, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "You monster!" she hissed. "How dare you pity me!"

It was exactly the conclusion Ian knew she'd draw, and exactly the reaction he would have expected from the proud beauty who'd let him believe in Scotland that her life was a frivolous social whirl, her home a virtual palace. Hoping to diffuse some of her anger, he tried to divert her with a logical debate over her choice of words. "There's a great difference between regretting one's actions and pitying the person who suffered for them."

"Don't you dare play word games with me!" she said, her voice trembling with fury.

Inwardly, Ian smiled with pride at her perspicacity; even in a state of shock, Elizabeth knew when she was being gulled. "I apologize," he conceded quietly. He walked forward, and Elizabeth retreated until her back touched a chair, then she held her ground, glaring at him. "Nothing but the truth will do in a situation like this," he agreed, putting his hands on her rigid shoulders. Knowing she'd laugh in his face if he tried to convince her now that he loved her, he told her something she should believe; "The truth is that I want you. I have always wanted you, and you know that."

"I hate that word," she burst out, trying unsuccessfully to break free of his grasp.

"I don't think you know what it means." "I know you say it every time you force yourself on me."

And every time I do, you melt in my arms." "I will not marry you," Elizabeth said furiously, mentally circling for some way out. "I don't know you. I don't trust you."

"But you do want me," he told her with a knowing smile. "Stop saying that, d.a.m.n you! I want an old husband, I told you that," she cried, mindlessly saying anything she could think of to put him off. "I want my life to be mine. I told you that, too. And you came dashing to England and-and bought me." That brought her up short, and her eyes began to blaze.

"No," be stated firmly, though it was splitting hairs, "I made a settlement on your uncle."

The tears she'd been fighting valiantly to hide began to spill over her lashes. "I am not a pauper," she cried. "I am not a p-pauper," she repeated, her voice choking with tears. "I have-had-a dowry, d.a.m.n you. And if you were so stu-stupid you let him swindle you out of it, it serves you right!"

Ian was torn between laughing, kissing her, and murdering her heartless uncle.

"How dare you make bargains I didn't agree to?" she blazed while tears spilled from her wondrous eyes. "I'm not a piece of chattel, no matter what my uncle thi-thinks. I'd have found some way out of marrying Belhaven. I would have," she cried fiercely. "I would have found a way to keep Havenhurst myself without my uncle. You had no right, no right to bargain with my uncle. You're no better than Belhaven!"

"You're right," Ian admitted grimly, longing to draw her into his arms and absorb some of her pain, and then it hit him-a possible way to neutralize some of her humiliation and opposition. Recalling how proud she'd been of her own bargaining ability with tradesmen when she'd spoken of it in Scotland, he tried to enlist her partic.i.p.ation now. "As you said, you're perfectly capable of bargaining for yourself." Coaxingly, he said, "Will you bargain with me. Elizabeth?"

"Certainly," she flung back. "The agreement is off; I refuse the terms. The bargaining is over."

His lips twitched, but his voice was filled with finality "Your uncle means to unload you and the expense of that house you love, and nothing is going to stop him. Without him, you cannot keep Havenhurst. He explained the situation to me in detail."

Despite the fact that she shook her head, Elizabeth knew it was true, and the sense of impending doom she'd been struggling with for weeks began to overwhelm her. A husband is the only possible solution to your problems."

"Don't you dare suggest a man as the solution for my troubles," she cried. "You're all the cause of them! My father gambled away the entire family fortune and left me in debt; my brother disappeared after getting me deeper in debt; you kissed me and destroyed my reputation; my fiance left me at the first breath of a scandal you caused; and my uncle is trying to sell me! As far as I'm concerned," she finished, spitting fire, "men make excellent dancing partners, but beyond that I have no use for the lot of you. You're all quite detestable, actually, when one takes time to ponder it, which of course one rarely does, for it would only cause depression."

"Unfortunately, we're the only alternative," Ian pointed out. And because he would not give her up no matter what he had to do to keep her, he added, "In this case, I'm your only alternative. Your uncle and I have signed the betrothal contract, and the money has already changed hands. I am, however, willing to bargain with you on the terms." "Why should you?" she said scornfully. Ian recognized in her answer the same hostility he found whenever he negotiated with any proud man who was being forced by circ.u.mstances, not by Ian, to sell something he wanted to keep. Like those men, Elizabeth felt powerless; and, like them, her pride alone would force her to retaliate by making the whole ordeal as difficult as possible for Ian.

In a business matter, Ian certainly wouldn't have ruined his own negotiating position by helping his opponent to see the value of what he held and the advantageous terms he might wring from Ian because of it. In Elizabeth's case, however, Ian sought to do exactly that. "I'm willing to bargain with you," he said gently, "for the same reason anyone tries to bargain-you have something I want." Desperately trying to prove to her she wasn't powerless or empty-handed, he added, "I want it badly, Elizabeth."

"What is it?" she asked warily, but much of the resentment in her lovely face was already being replaced by surprise.

"This," he whispered huskily. His hands tightened on her shoulders, pulling her close as he bent his head and took her soft mouth in a slow, compelling kiss, sensually molding and shaping her lips to his. Although she stubbornly refused to respond, he felt the rigidity leaving her; and as soon as it did, Ian showed her just how badly he wanted it. His arms went around her, crushing her to him, his mouth moving against hers with hungry urgency, his hands shifting possessively over her spine and hips, fitting her to his hardened length. Dragging his mouth from hers, he drew an unsteady breath. "Very badly," he whispered.

Lifting his head, he gazed down at her, noting the telltale flush on her cheeks, the soft confusion in her searching green gaze, and the delicate hand she'd forgotten was resting against his chest. Keeping his own hand splayed against her lower back, he held her pressed to his rigid erection, torturing himself as he slid his knuckles against her cheek and quietly said, "For that privilege, and the others that follow it, I'm willing to agree to any reasonable terms you state. And I'll even forewarn you," he said with a tender smile at her upturned face, "I'm not a miserly man, nor a poor one."

Elizabeth swallowed, trying to keep her voice from shaking in reaction to his kiss. "What other privileges that follow kissing?" she asked suspiciously.

The question left him nonplussed. "Those that involve the creation of children," he said, studying her face curiously. "I want several of them-with your complete cooperation, of course," he added, suppressing a smile.

"Of course," she conceded without a second's hesitation. "I like children, too, very much."

Ian stopped while he was ahead, deciding it was wiser not to question his good fortune. Evidently Elizabeth had a very frank att.i.tude toward marital s.e.x-rather an unusual thing for a sheltered, well-bred English girl.

"What are your terms?" he asked, and he made a final effort to tip the balance of power into her hands and out of his by adding, "I'm scarcely in a position to argue."

Elizabeth hesitated and then slowly began stating her terms: "I want to be allowed to look after Havenhurst without interference or criticism."

"Done," he agreed with alacrity while relief and delight built apace in him.

"And I'd like a stipulated amount set aside for that and given to me once each year. In return, the estate, once I've arranged for irrigation, will repay your loan with interest."

"Agreed," Ian said smoothly. Elizabeth hesitated, wondering if he could afford it, half-embarra.s.sed that she'd mentioned it without knowing more about his circ.u.mstances. He'd said last night that he'd accepted the t.i.tle but nothing else. "In return," she amended fairly, "I will endeavor to keep costs at an absolute minimum."

He grinned. "Never vacillate when you've already stipulated your terms and won a concession-it gives your opponent a subtle advantage in the next round."

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed suspiciously; he was agreeing to everything, and much too easily. "And I think," she announced decisively, "I want all this written down, witnessed, and made part of the original agreement."

Ian's eyes widened, a wry, admiring smile tugging at his lips as he nodded his consent. There was a roomful of witnesses in the next room, including her uncle, who'd signed the original agreement, and a vicar who could witness it. He decided it was wise to proceed now, when she was in the mood, rather than scruple over who knew about it. "With you as a partner a few years ago," he joked as he guided her from the room, "G.o.d knows how far I might have gone." Despite his tone and the fact that he'd been on her side during the negotiations, he was nevertheless impressed with the sheer daring of her requests.

Elizabeth saw the admiration in his smile and smiled a little in return. "At Havenhurst I purchase all our supplies and keep the books, since we have no bailiff. As I explained, I've learned to bargain."

Ian's grin faded as he imagined the creditors who'd descended on her after her brother left and how brave she'd had to be to keep them from dismantling her house stone by stone. Desperation had forced her to learn to bargain.

Chapter 23.

Duncan had been trying, with extreme difficulty, to keep a pleasant conversation going in the drawing room while Elizabeth and Ian were gone, but not even his lifelong experience in dealing with humans in the throes of emotion could aid him-because in this room everyone seemed to be in the throes of a different emotion. Lady Alexandra was obviously worried and tense; Elizabeth's loathsome uncle was cold and angry; the dowager and Miss Throckmorton-Jones were evidencing signs of enjoying the difficulty Ian was obviously having with this unusual betrothal.

With a sigh of relief, Duncan broke off his discourse on the likelihood of early snow and looked up as Elizabeth and Ian walked into the room. His relief doubled when he met Ian's eyes and saw softness there, and a touch of wry amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Elizabeth and I have come to an agreement," Ian told the occupants of the room without preamble. "She feels, and rightly so, that she and she alone has the right to give herself in marriage. Therefore, she has certain. . . ah . . . terms she wishes to be included in the betrothal agreement. Duncan, if you will be so kind as to write down what she stipulates?"

Duncan's brows rose, but he quickly got up and went over to the desk.

Ian turned to her uncle, his voice taking on a bite. "Do you have a copy of the betrothal contract with you?"

"Certainly," Julius said, his face reddening with anger. "I have it, but you're not changing one word, and I'm not giving back one shilling." Rounding on Elizabeth, he continued, "He paid a fortune for you, you conceited little s.l.u.t-"

Ian's savage voice cracked like a whiplash. "Get out!" "Get out?" Julius repeated furiously, "I own this house. You didn't buy it when you bought her."

Without looking at Elizabeth, Ian snapped a question at her, "Do you want it?"

Although Julius didn't yet recognize the depth of Ian's fury, Elizabeth saw the taut rage emanating from every line of his powerful frame, and fear raced up her spine. "Do I-I want what?"

"The house!" Elizabeth didn't know what he wanted her to say, and in the mood he was in, she was actually terrified of saying the wrong thing.

Lucinda's voice turned every head but Ian's as she eyed him with cool challenge. "Yes," she said. "She does."

Ian accepted that as if the woman spoke for Elizabeth, his gaze still boring through Julius. "See my banker in the morning," he clipped murderously. "Now get out!"

Belatedly, Julius seemed to realize that his life was in genuine jeopardy, and he picked up his hat and started for the door. "It won't come cheap!"

Slowly and with purposeful menace Ian turned around and looked at him, and whatever Julius saw in his metallic eyes made him leave without further discussion of price.

"I think," Elizabeth said shakily, when the front door banged closed behind him, "some refreshment is in order."

"An excellent idea, my dear," said the vicar. Bentner appeared in answer to Elizabeth's summons, and after glowering at Ian he looked at her with outraged sympathy, then he left to fetch a tray of drinks and food.

"Well, now," said Duncan, rubbing his hands with satisfaction, "I believe I was to take down some-ah-new terms of betrothal."

For the next twenty minutes Elizabeth asked for concessions, Ian conceded, Duncan wrote, and the dowager d.u.c.h.ess and Lucinda listened with ill-concealed glee. In the entire time Ian made but one stipulation, and only after he was finally driven to it out of sheer perversity over the way everyone was enjoying his discomfort. He stipulated that none of Elizabeth's freedoms could give rise to any gossip that she was cuckolding him.

The d.u.c.h.ess and Miss Throckmorton-Jones scowled at such a word being mentioned in front of them, but Elizabeth acquiesced with a regal nod of her golden head and politely said to Duncan, "I agree. You may write that down." Ian grinned at her, and Elizabeth shyly returned his smile. Cuckolding, to the best of Elizabeth's knowledge, was some sort of disgraceful conduct that required a lady to be discovered in the bedroom with a man who was not her husband. She had obtained that incomplete piece of information from Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, who, unfortunately, actually believed it.

"Is there anything more?" Duncan finally asked, and when Elizabeth shook her head, the dowager spoke up. "Indeed, though you may not need to write it down." Turning to Ian, she said severely, "If you've any thought of announcing this betrothal tomorrow, you may put it out of your head."

Ian was tempted to invite her to get out, in a slightly less wrathful tone than that in which he'd ordered Julius from the house, but he realized that what she was saying was lamentably true. "Last night you went to a deal of trouble to make it seem there had been little but flirtation between the two of you two years ago. Unless you go through the appropriate courtship rituals, which Elizabeth has every right to expect, no one will ever believe it."

"What do you have in mind?" Ian demanded shortly. "One month," she said without hesitation. "One month of calling on her properly, escorting her to the normal functions, and so on."

"Two weeks," he countered with strained patience. "Very well," she conceded, giving Ian the irritating certainty that two weeks was all she'd hoped for anyway. "Then you may announce your betrothal and be wed in two months!"

"Two weeks," Ian said implacably, reaching for the drink the butler had just put in front of him.

"As you wish," said the dowager. Then two things happened simultaneously: Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones let out a snort that Ian realized was a laugh, and Elizabeth swept Ian's drink from beneath his fingertips. "There's-a speck of lint in it." she explained nervously, handing the drink to Bentner with a severe shake of her head.

Ian reached for the sandwich on his plate. Elizabeth watched the satisfied look on Bentner's face and s.n.a.t.c.hed that away, too. "A-a small insect seems to have gotten on it. " she explained to Ian.

"I don't see anything," Ian remarked, his puzzled glance on his betrothed. Having been deprived of tea and sustenance, he reached for the gla.s.s of wine the butler had set before him, then he realized how much stress Elizabeth had been under and offered it to her instead.

"Thank you." she said with a sigh, looking a little hara.s.sed. Bentner's arm swooped down, scooping the wine-gla.s.s out of her hand. "Another insect," he said.

"Bentner!" Elizabeth cried in exasperation, but her voice was drowned out by a peal of laughter from Alexandra Townsende, who slumped down on the settee, her shoulders shaking with unexplainable mirth.

Ian drew the only possible conclusion: They were all suffering from the strain of too much stress.

Chapter 24.

The dowager was of the opinion that the ritual of courtship should begin at once with a ball that very night, and Ian expected Elizabeth to look forward to such a prospect after almost two years of enforced rustication-particularly after she'd already conquered the highest hurdle last night. Instead, she evaded the issue by insisting that she wanted to show Havehurst to Ian, and perhaps attend a ball or two later on.

The dowager remained adamant, Elizabeth remained resistant, and Ian watched the interchange with mild confusion. Since Havenhurst was only an hour and a half's drive from London, he couldn't see why doing one thing would preclude the other. He even said as much, watching as Elizabeth looked uneasily at Alexandra and then shook her head, as if refusing something being silently offered. In the end it was decided that Ian would go to Havenhurst tomorrow, and that Alexandra Townsende and her husband would play chaperon there, a notion that pleased Ian vastly more than having to endure the frosty, gloating face of Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones.

He was on his way home, contemplating with considerable amus.e.m.e.nt what Jordan's reaction would be when he learned his wife had volunteered him to spend a day and evening playing duenna to Ian with whom he'd long ago gambled in most of London's polite, and impolite, gaming houses.

His smile faded, however, as his mind refused to stop wondering why Elizabeth wouldn't want to attend a ball after being banished to the country for so long. The logical answer finally bit him. and a fresh surge of pain stabbed at him, So convincingly had she played the frivolous socialite in Scotland that he still had difficulty remembering she'd been living in seclusion, pinching every shilling.

Leaning forward. Ian issued clipped instructions to his coachman, and a few minutes later be was striding swiftly into the establishment of London's most fashionable-and most discreet-modiste.

"It cannot be done, Monsieur Thornton," the proprietress gasped when he informed her be wanted a dozen ball gowns and an entire wardrobe designed and created for Lady Elizabeth Cameron at number fourteen Promenade Street within the week. "It would take two dozen experienced seamstresses a minimum of two weeks."

"Then hire four dozen," Monsieur Thornton replied in the politely impatient tone of one who was being forced to reason with an inferior intellect, "and you can do it in one. " He took the sting out of that by Dashing her a brief smile and writing her a bank draft in an amount that made her eyes widen. "Lady Cameron is leaving for the country early in the morning, which will give you all the rest of today and tonight to take whatever measurements you need," he continued. Tipping his quill toward the bolt of magnificent emerald silk embroidered with spidery golden threads lying on the counter beside his hand, he signed the draft and added, "And make the first of the ball gowns out of this. Have it ready on the twentieth.

Straightening, be thrust the bank draft at her. "That should cover it." It would have covered half again as much, and they both knew it. "If it doesn't. send the bills to me."