‘I heard an interesting rumour about you today, Lydia.’
Just the sound of his deep voice cutting through the music and incessant chatter of the ballroom behind caused her step to falter. She’d seen him earlier. Of course she had. Shaking hands with the great and the good. Smiling. Charming. The most striking man in the room. Because Owen Wolfe was hard to miss no matter how much she always tried to and had a way about him which vexingly drew the eye. But tonight she wasn’t quite herself, so hadn’t diligently avoided him with the same dogged determination as she usually did.
Wasn’t quite herself!
An understatement. Tonight she was reeling and in no fit state to spar with him—although hell would have to freeze over before she ever allowed him to see how much he affected her. How much he had always affected her, dratted man, regardless of how worryingly prophetic his comment was. She stared back towards the dancing couples twirling on the crowded floor dispassionately in order to centre herself before flicking her eyes coldly back to his, hoping against hope she projected a blandness she did not feel.
‘Then gossip and scandal must be painfully thin on the ground if I am the current topic of it. And it is my lady to you.’
Gossip was inevitable, she supposed, although surely the news could not have spread so soon? Not when she had only found out herself this very afternoon and had only been shamed into agreeing to the proposal with great reluctance moments before she strapped on her brave face and came here as was expected. A last resort, her brother had reassured her. Only if all else failed…
Although what the else was, she still had no earthly idea seeing that the Bartons were rapidly running out of options.
And credit.
Ignoring the sudden tentacles of dread at the daunting prospect which loomed before her, she tossed him her most irritated and imperious glance as she sailed past, avoiding the urge to run away as fast as her legs would take her to the sanctuary of home where she could lick her wounds in private. Coming here had been a mistake—one borne out of sheer denial that her life was about to thoroughly implode.
He, of course, was leaning against a pillar with his customary, casual arrogance, strong arms nonchalantly crossed. Effortlessly elegant. Aggravatingly handsome. Smug blue eyes far too intelligent for his own good—but then again, for all his many and hideous faults, Owen Wolfe had always been exceedingly clever. Even as the lowliest stable boy in the Barton mews on Berkeley Square all those years ago, his canny intelligence had shone like a beacon.
‘It’s true, then?’ Despite her haste to be shot of him, this cloying ballroom and the new, oppressive weight sat squarely and solely now on her shoulders, his long legs easily fell into step alongside hers. ‘Your father really is auctioning you off to the highest bidder, my lady?’
Yes. Because things had apparently become that dire and debtors’ prison loomed. Something he undoubtedly knew because he had the vexing habit of knowing almost everything well before everyone else nowadays.
‘Is that the actual rumour?’ It took every ounce of pride and fortitude Lydia possessed to shake her head in mock exasperation and to not allow the stunned despair and outrage to show on her face. ‘Gracious.’ She flicked open her fan for good measure and gave it a curt waft while another part of her died on the inside. ‘Well, I suppose while the gossips are talking utter nonsense about me, they are giving another poor soul a reprieve.’
‘You are truly getting married?’ He shook his tawny head in disbelief, his lying eyes appearing concerned when she knew better than to trust them no matter how much her heart still wanted to believe he possessed genuine human emotions. ‘And all these years I had convinced myself you were waiting for me.’
He enjoyed reminding her they had a past.
As if she would ever forget it, when the sorry truth was she remembered it as if it were yesterday.
She had been away all summer with her mother. The day they returned to Berkeley Square, when the carriage door opened, Lydia found herself looking into the bluest eyes she had ever seen, set in the most handsome face, too. He smiled at her and took her hand…and bang! The rest of the world disappeared as time literally stood still, because her tender young heart had apparently decided, there and then, it had found its mate.
‘You flatter yourself. But then you always had an inflated sense of your own worth and ideas far above your station.’ She knew reminding him of his roots would grate and was rewarded by the sight of his perfect jaw lifting defiantly, just as it always had when he was put back in his place by one of his betters. She paused before skewering him with her glare, making sure she was looking directly down her nose and letting every ounce of her heartfelt disapproval show.
‘What are you doing here anyway? I cannot believe you are an invited guest. More likely you are wholly unwelcome and entirely uninvited—which explains why you were lurking in the shadows behind that pillar… As usual.’ Or at least it had been usual in the two years since he had unexpectedly returned to Mayfair and the clocks had momentarily stopped once again. Too many clandestine pillars and tree trunks at too many cloying entertainments and society gatherings, when by rights, the owner of one of London’s most famous gambling clubs should remain in the gutter where he deserved to be.
He smiled, unoffended, yet the way her traitorous pulse quickened at the sight mortally offended her. Of all the men of Lydia’s acquaintance, only he had ever had that effect on her.
‘The shadows have always appealed to me more than the chandeliers—although if you’d care to dance, I might make an exception?’
As if at his command and to taunt her further, his mouth curved into a knowing smile as the orchestra played the first strains of a waltz. Lydia rolled her eyes, letting the irritation show. She was in no mood for his practised flirting. Those deceptively twinkling blue eyes masked a soul as black as pitch.
‘I had thought the Duke and Duchess of Aveley were more discerning in their choice of friends, as you are the absolute last person I would have expected to see within a mile of this illustrious place. What with your reputation…’ She let the implied accusation hang, hoping it, too, would gall. They both knew what he was—regardless of the romanticised version of the tale which was doing the rounds. He might well have earned a pardon, but the sordid truth of his crime was unpardonable.
‘Yet here I am. An official guest. I was even allowed through the front door. Would you care to see my invitation?’
‘I would much prefer to see the back of you. For ever this time.’
As cutting final barbs went, it was a pathetic effort, but under the circumstances all she had. Yet as lacklustre as it was, it seemed to do the trick. He was most definitely not beside her as she stalked to the door. Nor was he behind her. She knew that for certain because she always seemed to sense him. Only Owen Wolfe made her skin prickle with awareness—to the complete disgust of her better judgement. She was almost through the door when he spoke again, just loud enough that she could hear, and ruined her escape.
‘The smart money is on Kelvedon.’
Lydia stopped dead as the walls closed in. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The Marquess of Kelvedon…’ He pushed himself from the pillar he had lounged against and sauntered towards her. ‘Big belly. Bald head. Hideously foul breath. Old enough to be your grandfather…’
‘I know who he is!’ The prospect of her father marrying her off to that decrepit old lecher just to pay off a few debts was preposterous. That couldn’t be what she had been bullied into agreeing to?
Surely?
While she was prepared to concede keeping a spinster daughter properly attired Season after fruitless Season was indeed expensive, as was keeping her ad infinitum while she languished on the shelf gathering dust, clearing her debt to the family by marrying her off to an old lecher seemed a high price to pay. Even for her callous sire.
‘And you are entirely wrong!’ Dear Papa might well expect her to finally do her duty, he had been loudly emphatic in that demand, but not to that extent. Or more likely he wouldn’t have given it a passing thought. Daughters weren’t sons—something he had reminded her about tirelessly for as long as she could remember.
‘He’s certainly rich enough and his blood is certainly blue enough. Those are the main criteria anyone who is anyone in polite society cares about, are they not? Especially your father.’ Those insightful blue eyes were cold now and they both knew why. There was no love lost between their former employee and his employer. Too much water under the bridge. So much that the bridge had long been swept away in the raging torrents of the flood.
‘As usual, you are completely wrong.’ She turned on her heel to leave, suddenly desperate to challenge her unfeeling father and hear him denounce the rumour himself to put her racing mind at ease. And where was her brother? Her eyes nervously scanned the dance floor. He would defend her, too, if she pushed him hard enough. She might well be largely invisible to her sire most of the time but Papa sometimes listened to Justin and she was fairly certain there was no way he would countenance her marrying an old man.
‘Am I?’ She did not need to look at him to picture his smug expression. She knew it too well. ‘I dare say the smelly Marquess has enough money to clear your family’s oh-so-carefully hidden but rapidly mounting debts. Your pompous and pious family will be quietly bailed out—exactly as they want—and old Kelvedon gets to manoeuvre himself a little closer to the King…exactly as he wants. Everybody wins…except you, of course, Lydia. But you will do it regardless because that is exactly what any loyal blue-blooded, spineless daughter would do in the face of complete family ruination. You will do as they say…without question…as usual.’
His assessment sailed perilously too close to the truth for comfort, making her more uneasy about her future than she had been only a few minutes ago. It was all so sudden. All so final. All so hideously unfair. But what else could she do? This year’s failed crops and flat market had put them all in a precarious position. Money did not grow on trees and an estate along with a house in Mayfair was expensive. Justin needed her help to save things and she wasn’t about to abandon her only brother in his hour of need. They might not be as close as they had been when they were younger, but she was a Barton and Bartons did what was expected. If the only choice was Kelvedon…
The oppressive air in the ballroom was suffocating her, the noise pounding in her head in disjointed time to her hammering heart. ‘With an imagination as vivid and as fanciful as yours, you really should write for the scandal sheets, Mr Wolfe.’
‘You used to call me Owen.’
Something she did not need to be reminded of. It had been merely the tip of the iceberg of things she never should have done with the lowliest and duplicitous of stable boys all those years ago. Thank God nobody else knew of her shame. ‘I was practically a child then!’ He had been convicted on the same day as her seventeenth birthday.
‘So was I.’ He gave her the merest hint of a smile, then shrugged his now ridiculously broad shoulders. ‘Eighteen is hardly a man.’
She did not need to think of that intoxicating young fellow, so full of dreams and full of life. The one who saw the sixteen-year-old her when nobody else did and listened when nobody else cared. Or at least gave the appearance of it. ‘I was ridiculously naive then—fresh from the schoolroom! And you always did have a silver tongue! It’s a pity I didn’t discover it was forked much sooner.’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘Are you determined to hate me for all eternity, Lydia? Because I don’t hate you…although Lord only knows I probably should.’ And there it was again. That flash of humanity in his eyes which wormed its way past her defences and made her want to believe it. Idiot! She loathed herself for that weakness. Loathed him more for taking advantage of it. ‘It’s been ten years.’
Ten years, two months and one day to be precise, when one dreadful moment in time changed everything. One second she had been blithely hurrying down the path to her future when the path disintegrated beneath her feet and there suddenly was no future. Or at least not the one she had wanted. Her heart still didn’t want to believe it. Her head still struggled to comprehend how one moment, one ominous tick of the clock, could possibly change everything.
‘Hate assumes I care enough to be bothered when I am indifferent, Mr Wolfe.’ A complete pack of lies. Everything about him set her emotions off-kilter. Always had. Always would. Nobody else had ever quite measured up and now she was about to be punished for her fickle heart’s foolish desire because of the sorry truth of it. An arranged marriage. To a very wealthy man who might well be the dreadful Marquess of Kelvedon—because he certainly met all the criteria, exactly as Owen said.
Another dreadful moment in time. Another path crumbling beneath her feet. Another future, albeit a lesser one, gone, too, in the blink of an eye.
The walls began to close in, but she looked down her nose defiantly.
‘Go back to your shadows, Mr Wolfe—they suit you so much better than the chandeliers.’
Lydia did not wait to see his expression. She slammed through the door and into the frigid garden, then tore across the lawn. The Aveley stables were housed on the same mews as her own. In two minutes she would be home and she could think. Perhaps miraculously come up with a plan to save her family and the estate and all the workers who depended on it which did not involve marrying a lecher. Not that marrying a stranger at such short notice was any better. A loveless marriage had never been what she had envisioned. The same foolish and romantic heart which had once loved Owen Wolfe so completely before he broke it, still yearned to love unreservedly once again and be loved in return. It still craved passion and excitement and laughter and joy.
But needs must and beggars could not be choosers. It was her turn to replenish the Barton coffers after taking from them so freely for years. Her father was adamant she must do her duty and her brother was doomed if she didn’t. Damned if she did. Damned even more if she did not.
With hindsight, Lydia cursed herself for being too picky. In the seven Seasons she had been out, there had been no end of suitors and several advantageous proposals, meaning she could be safely married by now and not burdened with this unpalatable chore. Yet she had turned them all down politely because none of them had ever made her heart soar the way she knew it could. She had been waiting patiently for the one—only to realise too late she had compared every titled gentleman to the hollow, calculating stable boy who had ruthlessly used her, then betrayed her when he had shown his true colours. Colours she should have seen if she hadn’t been so besotted with him to look.
The truth of it made her blood boil.
Her heart would never soar again. There would be no other one. No happily ever after. Just a marriage of convenience to a man she would probably never love. And if it was indeed Kelvedon, she wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of either!
Heaven help her.
The Aveley grooms stood to attention as she marched past. She didn’t pause to greet them as she normally would. The tears were too close to the surface and she couldn’t trust them not to fall. The mews was crammed with carriages, coachmen and stable hands played cards around overturned barrels as they waited for the ball to end. She wove around them, pushed past, her sights set on the blessedly silent Barton mews just a few yards away.
‘Lydia…’ She felt the unexpected touch of his hand on her arm all the way down to her toes and froze. She frowned at it before directing the full force of that frown at him. For a big man, he moved with impressive stealth. A predator. Like his namesake the wolf. Except he was every disarming inch a wolf in sheep’s clothing, preying on the weak and the stupid. And she had been both. A veritable lamb to the slaughter! And of course, he had to have stopped her here to witness her unshed tears and her patently obvious utter defeat—in the place where it all started—to rub salt into the reopened wound. An ironically fitting end to the second-worst day of her life.
‘What could you possibly want now?’ Her words were clipped, as hostile as she could make them, the urge to slap his handsome face simply because it existed causing her to clench her fists until her nails bit into her palms.
‘If I am right about Kelvedon… If you need…anything…’ those clever blues eyes were uncharacteristically stormy now, drawing her in, luring her to trust him as his grip loosened and she felt his thumb caress the bare skin of her forearm as if he cared ‘…you know where to find me.’
‘I won’t.’ She tugged her arm away, remembering exactly how foolish she had been all those years ago each time he touched her, when she had believed he cared and how shamelessly he had used her on the back of it. ‘I wouldn’t come to you if you were the last man on earth and my entire world had fallen apart!’
Which it was likely to do at any given moment.