What was possible was this miraculous chance to repay the man who had ruined his sister. In the same currency Demarest had used to destroy a woman whose only fault was her open heart.
Over the years, Ranelaw had only occasionally encountered the cur. However disreputable Ranelaw might be, his rank gave him entrée to society’s highest level. Demarest was almost equally disreputable, but his fortune stank of trade for all that he was distantly connected to the powerful Hilliard family.
Ranelaw had spent years waiting for the bastard to make the mistake that would bring him down. But Demarest, in spite of all his wild carousing, never did.
Then Demarest’s only child, untouched by scandal, lovely and vulnerable as Eloise had been lovely and vulnerable, made her debut.
It was as though the devil served the perfect opportunity on a silver platter. Through Cassie, Ranelaw would finally requite Eloise’s sufferings.
Then perhaps, perhaps Ranelaw would no longer feel he’d failed the only person who had ever loved him.
Chapter Three
Evading Lord Ranelaw over the next week proved more difficult than Antonia had expected.
For a man with a reputation for avoiding respectable gatherings the way a healthy person avoided plague, he appeared at every ball, rout, and musicale Cassie attended. He always danced with Cassie and acknowledged Antonia with a nod but, thank heaven, no conversation. After that hostile exchange the night they met, Antonia was wary, but his dismissal also irked. She burned to give the bumptious marquess the dressing-down he deserved.
Invariably as they returned home in the small hours, Antonia berated Cassie for showing the reprobate marked favor. Cassie, however, had overnight turned into a headstrong miss who refused to heed counsel from older, wiser friends. With complete accuracy, she pointed out that Lord Ranelaw did nothing exceptionable and he never requested more than the acceptable two dances.
After days of battling to curtail the marquess’s attentions to her charge, Antonia’s patience dwindled. Her head ached with constant tension. Partly because of the marquess’s unwanted presence during her evenings supervising Cassie. More because of his unwanted presence in her thoughts even when physically absent.
Every time she saw Ranelaw, she desperately searched for something unappealing about him. Instead the list of his attractions lengthened. He was, as Cassandra continually and irritatingly reminded her, a remarkably handsome man with his gold hair and Gypsy-dark features.
Antonia was immune to mere good looks—or at least she’d believed so—but she was less immune to Ranelaw’s dry humor. She wasn’t at all immune to the sizzle in the air when he prowled into their little group like a panther into a hen coop.
Tonight she and Cassie attended the Bradhams’ musicale, and of course the Marquess of Ranelaw was present. He inveigled a place beside Cassandra when the concert began. Antonia perched on Cassandra’s other side, fuming and surreptitiously watching for the rogue to make some advance. Then found no satisfaction when he sat unmoving through some surprisingly adept performances. Antonia couldn’t blame her burgeoning headache on the music—rare for a society musicale, where the entertainment was usually execrable.
When the first half of the concert ended, everyone trailed away to the supper room. It wasn’t a huge crush and Cassandra remained under the watchful eye of Mrs. Merriweather, who also launched her daughter this season. Antonia sighed and struggled to relax tight shoulders. Surely a few minutes to herself wouldn’t result in disaster.
She slipped onto the dark and mercifully empty terrace. It was too early in the year for people to seek the outdoors, but the cold night and solitude were exactly what she wanted.
Drawing her first unfettered breath in hours, she stepped forward to lean on the balustrade. She tugged off her spectacles and rubbed tired eyes. Lord Ranelaw didn’t spoil only her untroubled relationship with her cousin. He spoiled her sleep as well. She prayed he quickly became bored with pursuing a young girl who was so manifestly unsuitable.
She didn’t like her chances.
A distant hum drifted from inside but otherwise the night was blessedly quiet. Antonia inhaled again and felt her tension unwind.
The season had barely started. If only Cassie quickly fell in love with some eligible gentleman, bypassing all risk of disaster with the rakish marquess. Antonia would go insane if she had to devote the next months to keeping Ranelaw away from Cassandra. Between her prickling awareness, Ranelaw’s lures, and the girl’s rebelliousness, this London visit stretched ahead as an ordeal to try anyone’s nerves.
“Careless shepherdess. Aren’t you afraid I’ll whisk your lamb away?”
Had her very thoughts conjured up Ranelaw? Her heartbeat a wayward gallop, she straightened and turned to face the open French doors. In the darkness on the edge of the balcony, the marquess lounged against the wall. His very stillness breathed danger.
Antonia was burningly aware they’d never been alone before. She was also burningly aware that if anyone caught them together, her reputation would be in tatters.
She fumbled to replace her glasses, although in this light, he wouldn’t make out her features. “You admit your purposes are dishonorable?”
She should go inside. But something—perhaps the untamed spirit she’d never quite conquered, no matter how she tried—kept her leaning against the balustrade, studying the notorious rake who made her blood surge. And who reminded her of so much she’d struggled to forget through ten lonely, painful years.
He shifted, a patch of darker shadow in the shadows. She imagined the smile that curled his long mouth. He always acted as if he considered life a sardonic joke. His cynical amusement shouldn’t be attractive, but it was.
Like everything else about him.
“Even if I denied that, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
He gave a soft, knowing laugh, already familiar. The sound brushed across her skin like thick velvet. Why, oh, why did sin always adopt such compelling guise? She knew to her bones what this man was, yet nothing stemmed the fascination.