The Irredeemable Miss Renfield (Uncommon Courtships Book 3) Read online

  “As sorry as I was to hear about your father, I’m sure,” she replied. “But I have had some time to accustom myself to my loss. Are you all right?”

  He shrugged, but she could see the flash of pain in his eyes. “Some days are better than others.” He seemed to collect himself with difficulty. “But enough of the maudlin. I came here tonight with the express purpose of rescuing you.”

  Cleo stared at him. “You did?”

  He nodded. “I am attempting to live up to my new role as the Marquis of Hastings. Care for the widows and orphans, that sort of thing. But you don’t look as if you need my help. I would guess you are the belle of the Season.”

  Cleo shook her head. “I have no interest in being in London, I assure you. And much less so now that my sisters have taken it upon themselves to find me a husband.”

  “A great deal of that matchmaking going around. Are they giving you grief?”

  Cleo sighed. “Extraordinary amounts. Make no mistake, Les. We’re in the suds this time.”

  He raised a dark brow. “We?”

  “As you are my intended victim, I had hoped we were in this together.”

  She watched as his grin quirked. “I made Lady Agnes no promises. But I feel I can tell you, Cleo, as one old friend to another, that is not the kind of rescue I envisioned. I have no interest in marrying–you or anyone else.”

  Cleo waited for the expected rush of relief and was surprised when it didn’t come. Perhaps that was because Leslie looked so very presentable. More than one lady was glancing in his direction as if finding him just as intriguing as the famed Lord Breckonridge.

  “Nor have I any interest in marrying,” she made herself assure him all the same. “At least, not to anyone my sisters drop in my lap. And so I have told them, repeatedly. My wishes, it appears, have nothing to say in the matter. I am merely told I require a strong hand.”

  He muttered something under his breath, and she was delighted to hear that it was completely derogatory of her sisters’ intelligence. She giggled again, and he grinned at her.

  “Baggage,” he said in mock censure. He raised his head then, to gaze at the people passing them, and Cleo was forced to remember her surroundings as well. She couldn’t see around the room to where her sisters and Lady Agnes waited, but the couples passing her were casting them curious gazes. She wondered whether Leslie felt as if he were in a fishbowl as well and was about to ask when she noticed his gaze was moving. Following it, she saw that he had taken particular notice of one of the young ladies at the ball, a young lady whose exquisite green eyes widened in interest as she strolled past on the arm of her heavy-set chaperone.

  Eloise Watkin.

  It was quite one thing to commiserate with Marlys over Major Cutter’s interest and another to find Leslie’s attention wandering. Cleo tugged on his arm. “You must have developed other interests since Castle Combe.”

  He cocked a lazy grin, leaning back against the wall. “Since when did you notice I had an interest in women?”

  Since I became one. Well, that statement wasn’t exactly ladylike, and somehow she wasn’t comfortable saying it to Leslie at the moment.

  “I knew what you were doing down at the inn that last summer,” she explained instead. “Every boy in the neighborhood was after that barmaid. Only think what your poor father would have said had you actually brought her home.”

  “Oh, never fear,” he replied with a chuckle. “I learned a long time ago that there are ladies one brings home and women one does not.”

  She felt a blush heating her cheeks. This was one of those conversations ladies were not supposed to have. “Well, I assure you Eloise Watkin belongs to the ‘bring home’ camp.”

  Leslie’s grin reappeared. “Eloise Watkin, is it? I take it you refuse to introduce me?”

  “Absolutely,” Cleo declared. “I am supposed to be attaching your regard for myself.”

  “And a tremendous job you are doing too. Shall I threaten to fall upon my nonexistent sword if you don’t marry me right away or will following you about with puppy-like adoration suffice?”

  She could not help but giggle again. “Oh, falling on your sword would be far more entertaining.”

  “Bloodthirsty wretch. So, what exactly do you plan? And how can I help?”

  She purposely looked out at the dancers. He was as game as he’d always been, but she could not shake the feeling that the playmate of her youth was gone. She could not remember admiring the feel of muscle under his coat as she did with this man. She could not remember being so acutely aware of how tall he was, and how tiny she felt beside him with her head near his chest. Nor could she recall imagining how it might feel to rest her head against his chest as his arms came around her. She shook her head again.

  “Cleo?” He pulled on her arm so that she must face him. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”

  His dark eyes were narrowed with obvious confusion. His head was cocked as he watched her, and she could see that the sophistication he put on was little more than a mask. Deep down, he was still the same old Leslie from her childhood. He knew her better than most people, surely better than her sisters. He’d ridden, and hunted, and fished with her. They had shared scrapes and scraps together. Surely he would understand.

  “Yes, Leslie,” she admitted. “I have a plan. And it is not so far from what you jokingly suggested. I think we should pretend to fall madly in love with each other and behave so reprehensibly that they have no choice but to leave us alone, once and for all.”

  Chapter Three

  L

  eslie stared at her. Who was this woman? She couldn’t possibly be the spirited little hoyden he had ridden with at Castle Combe. Someone was having him on.

  Of course, he’d doubted her identity from the first moment he’d spotted her across the room. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been a scrawny fourteen-year-old intent on convincing him to smuggle her into a bare knuckles brawl. How could such a sorry little seed have blossomed into this curvaceous young lady with doe-like eyes?

  She certainly didn’t act like Cleo, crazed plan notwithstanding. Cleo Renfield had the rough-and-ready manners of a stable boy; this woman smiled sweetly and dimpled at his compliments. Moreover, Cleo Renfield had skin made up of several shades of brown, with one part being mud from the nearest creek bottom. This enticing lady had skin like cream, with the slightest sprinkling of cinnamon freckles across the bridge of her button nose, like spice on a frosted cake.

  Then there was the way she looked at him. Cleo Renfield looked at you straight on, with eyes nearly as dark as his own. This temptress had a way of slanting a look at him out of the corner of her raisin-colored eyes that made him want to beg for seconds, or howl at the moon. Only the light in those dark eyes told him that his childhood scamp still existed underneath all the window dressing.

  But even Cleo Renfield wouldn’t have proposed such an audacious plan.

  She made a face at him, her pixie nose wrinkling, those kissable rosebud lips pursing. “I’ve shocked you, haven’t I? Sorry, Les. But I do believe such drastic measures are necessary. My sisters are determined.”

  He glanced back at the two women, spotting them easily over the top of the crowd. They were staring at him, as they’d been staring since he’d been introduced. He rather thought vultures stared like that as they waited for a calf to die in the desert, gaze full of hunger and calculation. He could almost feel their claws digging into him, searching for the choicest morsel. He suppressed a shudder, turning to Cleo.

  “I can believe you feel trapped,” he commiserated. “But I assure you, I won’t be a willing party to this coercion.”

  “I wish you would,” she replied petulantly. Leslie blinked, and she hurried on. “Don’t you see, Les? If it isn’t you, they may set their sights on someone far worse!”

  That was a lowering thought. Of course, he wasn’t sure which was more distressing–that this delightfully confusing creature might be wed to someone terrible or that sh
e considered marriage to him to be a fairly poor deal. He felt her sisters’ eyes drilling into his back and decided to move to safer ground. Taking Cleo’s hand and setting it once more on his arm, he started off on a brisk trot around the room. She did not resist. Indeed, he had a feeling that if he had simply continued out the door and down the stairs to the street, Cleo would not have protested. When he was satisfied that the crowd once more blocked them from her sisters’ view, he pulled her up short.

  “Do you really believe they’d marry you to someone abhorrent?” he demanded.

  “Completely,” she assured him. “You have only to look at the men my sisters agreed to marry to know they will have no mercy.”

  He knew both George Carlisle and Lord Stephenson. The banker was a dour man who showed neither emotions nor mercy in his business dealings. If he were even half as cold in his personal life, Cleo’s oldest sister could not have an easy time of it. On the other hand, the baron cared only for cards and drink, neither of which held much promise for a happy life for his wife. The idea of Cleo, either the Cleo who had been his little playmate or this beautiful woman who claimed to be her, being wed to anyone like them turned his stomach.

  “But surely your sisters wish to see you happy,” he protested. “I was never blessed with siblings, but I always wanted a brother or sister. I know I’d take particular pains to see someone in my family happily settled.”

  She lowered her gaze. “I suppose Ellie and Annie think they are doing what is right. They seem convinced they’re working in my best interests. At fourteen and thirteen years my senior, they believe they have the right to make all my decisions. I won’t have it, Les. I do not see the world the way they do. I prefer to follow my mother’s example. At least she married for love.”

  He tried to envision her mother and only succeeded in bringing up a pretty round face with a pleasant smile. Her father was more easily remembered–he had the heavy jowls her sister Electra had inherited, coupled with a towering height and a merry laugh. Even in his youth, Leslie had wondered at the pair.

  “Your mother was devoted to your father, I take it,” he replied, trying not to sound skeptical.

  He must not have succeeded for her response was heated. “Absolutely devoted,” she assured him. “She was a poor orphan, raised by the parish through a gift from Lady Agnes. Nobody even knew who her parents were. But she had several offers of marriage before she accepted my father. He was only a widowed country squire, quite a bit older than she was, and none too plump in the pocket. Position and wealth certainly made no difference to her. It is only Electra and Andromeda who insist that one needs more than love in a marriage. Indeed, I’m not certain they think love is the least necessary.”

  Until that moment, he hadn’t really considered the matter. His mother had died when he was young, but he vaguely remembered her exchanging fond glances with his father. Certainly the old man had never seen fit to marry again. And Leslie would have had to be blind not to see the love glowing from Chas Prestwick’s eyes every time he looked at his Anne.

  “I don’t care much for your sisters’ notion,” he decided out loud. “It seems the height of injustice, now that I think on it.”

  “I quite agree with you. And this is only one instance in which my sisters try to run my life. So, you see why I must fight against them.”

  He actually didn’t see that fighting was the logical conclusion, at least not the way she proposed. Behaving in a shocking manner would do her reputation no good.

  “But surely there’s some fellow who would satisfy both their need for security and your need for happiness,” he protested.

  She sighed. “If there is, we have yet to find him. My sisters seemed determined that only someone old, stern, and rich as Midas, preferably with a title, will do for me.”

  He felt his jaw tighten. “Thank you very much for the compliment. I had no idea I was ready to stick my spoon in the wall so soon.”

  She had the audacity to giggle. “Not you, silly. You’re not so very old and decrepit.”

  “Your praise quite turns my head, madam. If you are this generous with all your beaux, I am amazed you haven’t received more offers.”

  She raised a brow. “Will you bridle up on me? I tell you, I do not put you in the abhorrent category. Simply the ineligible.”

  Now what on earth did she mean by that? He peered at her, watching with fascination as she tilted her head to look up at him from under her thick lashes. The minx was flirting! He shook his head again.

  “You cannot have it both ways, Cleo,” he warned her. “Either your sisters are foul creatures, and I am not worth your wiles, or they are exemplary judges of character, and I am a candidate for your hand.”

  Her coy smile widened. “Or you are a wonderful friend, and they are ghouls for suggesting I consider you in any other light.”

  There was logic in that statement, he was sure of it. But for some reason it escaped him. “Very well, since I am as opposed to leg-shackling as you are, I am a wonderful friend. As your friend, I must tell you I fail to see how shocking your ghoulish sisters will bring them around to your point of view.”

  She squeezed his arm. “It isn’t so very shocking, actually. I won’t do anything truly wicked, I promise. I know there is a line that must not be crossed. I simply want to come close enough to that line that they will leave us both alone. If I’m lucky, they’ll exile me to the country, which couldn’t suit me more.” She gazed up at him. “I am right that Lady Agnes attempted to coerce you into marrying me?”

  He nodded. “She tried. But, as I said, I am not concerned about my ability to extract myself, if needed.”

  She raised her head as if he had challenged her. “Oh? And now is it my turn to wonder when I became so abhorrent.”

  He felt his own grin widening. “Now, now, Cleo. I thought we had agreed I was a dear friend. As such, my intentions toward you must be purely platonic.”

  She slanted him that look again, and he was very tempted to tell her to forget everything he’d said for the last few minutes. He’d have to be a plaster saint to keep his feelings platonic around this vixen. He reminded himself yet again that this was little Cleo Renfield he was talking with, an innocent. He did not wait for her to answer him but slipped her hand off his arm and held it between his.

  “Cleo, as your friend, I am sworn to help you in any way I can. But this plan of yours concerns me. I don’t want to see any harm come to you.” He pressed her hand to his lips and admired the way the rose crept over her high-boned cheeks.

  “Thank you, my lord,” she murmured, dropping his gaze.

  He still could not find his Cleo under this veneer of sophistication. He tried again.

  “My Lord,” he said disparagingly, shaking his head. “You haven’t called me that since… well, I don’t think you ever called me that.”

  “I thought perhaps since you had inherited the title,” she began.

  He released her to wave a hand. “Please, don’t call me Hastings. That was my father. I will never fit in his shoes.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean? Did you not accede to the title?”

  “Certainly. The good gentlemen of Parliament could hardly do less. But I will never be the man my father was.”

  “I think you are too hard on yourself,“ she informed him primly. “You and your father have much in common. He was such a nice man. Everyone liked him.”

  “I never realized how much until he died. Do you know more than five hundred people attended his funeral? And not one a paid mourner. Hard to believe he was the head of one of Britain’s foremost espionage networks.”

  Her eyes widened. “Your father was a spy?”

  He chuckled, thinking how his father would have smiled at her incredulous tone. “No, only the spy master. He actively recruited, trained, and administered an elite troop of agents for His Majesty. He never volunteered the fact, but he never hid it either.”

  “I would never have suspected,” she said in obvious
awe. “He seemed so gentle, so dapper.”

  “That was my father. Tie his cravat in a perfect Mathematical and send three men into the jaws of death, both without blinking. There wasn’t a man under him who wouldn’t have taken his place in that funeral casket. They told me so, every last one of them.”

  “You must have been proud,” she said.

  Pride did not begin to express the tumult of his emotions, but he hadn’t been willing to name them all. He still wasn’t. “Ah, well,” he said, shrugging off the whole incident with far more composure than he felt. “That’s all over now. Life is for the living.”

  “I imagine you’re not even likely to see them again,” she returned.

  “Oh, I’ll see them. My father’s specialty was recruiting among the aristocracy. Dozens of London gentlemen would be only too happy to do me a favor, for my father’s sake, of course.”

  “Really?” She peered up at him, and he wondered what she was seeing. As usual, she did not hesitate in telling him. “I’m surprised, Leslie. I’d have thought your father would have recruited you to help him. With your love of adventure, you’d make a marvelous spy.”

  “Not according to my father,” Leslie told her. She looked him askance, and he felt compelled to explain. “I assisted him any number of times, but he consistently refused to make me an agent.”

  She cocked her head. “Perhaps that was a compliment.”

  “What do you mean?” Leslie asked with a frown.

  “Well, I don’t know all that much about spying. But I would think spies generally have to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice, kill anyone who gets in their way. Perhaps your father knew you were too kind-hearted.”

  He started to laugh. She slapped his arm.

  “Hush! You may pretend all you like, but you know you are. Who but a kind-hearted fellow would allow a child to drag him all over the countryside?”

  “A fellow who was bored out of his mind,” Leslie countered, refusing to see himself as the selfless martyr she painted him.