But the ordeal was far from over.

The other gentlemen had gathered outside the small parlor—no doubt drawn by the fearsome crashes Vere and Miss Edgerton had caused during their struggle. Lady Avery and Lady Kingsley, after putting Miss Edgerton back into her dressing gown, quickly whisked her away, leaving Vere behind to fend for himself.

“What happened?” Wessex asked, even though it couldn’t be more obvious what had happened.

Vere ignored the question, walked past Wessex, marched out of the front door of the house, and did not stop until he was in the middle of the garden. And even then, it was only to pull out a cigarette and light it.

“I’m sorry,” said Freddie, who had followed him out. “I should have said something.”

Vere expelled a lungful of smoke. “What would you have said?”

“I was—I was thinking of telling you to be more careful.”

The irony. “Me, be more careful?”

Freddie stuck his hands into his coat pockets. “Last night I was out walking late—and I saw the two of you, just the two of you, going back into the house. And in the morning, I thought you might be having your nightmare again. But when I opened my door I saw her coming out of your room.”

Vere sucked hard on his cigarette. Christ.

“I thought at the time that surely there was an innocent explanation for everything—you know, that she’d heard your nightmare and come to check on you…”

Vere threw down his cigarette and crushed it under his heel.

Freddie sighed. He took the cigarette case and the matchbox out of Vere’s pocket, lit another fag, and handed it to Vere. Vere sighed and accepted Freddie’s offering. How could he be angry at Freddie?

“I’m sorry,” Freddie said again.

Vere shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”

Freddie, who usually refrained from tobacco, lit a cigarette for himself. They smoked in silence.

“Will you be all right?” Freddie asked, after they’d had two cigarettes apiece.

Vere stared up at the starry sky. “I’ll be fine.”

“Well,” Freddie said, hesitating, “I have seen the way you look at her. And since she does return your regard…I mean, you have been trying to find a wife for a while, haven’t you?”

Had any man ever been so perfectly hoisted with his own petard? Next thing Vere knew, people would be genuinely delighted for him, that by hook or by crook he finally landed himself a wife. And once they’d had a look at her bosomy comeliness, he’d be the subject of a thousand congratulatory slaps on the back.

“She is very cheerful,” Freddie continued. “And she listens when you speak.”

When you speak, Vere wanted to retort.

He yanked off his necktie. “I think I’ll go for a walk now, if you don’t mind.”

As it turned out, one walk wasn’t enough. Lady Kingsley was waiting for him in his room, nodding off, when he returned at two o’clock in the morning. The conversation she desired necessitated another trip out of the house.

He thought she wanted to speak of the ramifications concerning the investigation at hand. But that was not at all the case.

“Just now she came to my room and begged me to help her,” said Lady Kingsley.

He glanced at her sharply.

“She said her uncle will kill her if he learns what happened. She wants to be gone from Highgate Court before he returns.”

“And you agreed to help her?”

“I know you are not one, but the world is full of awful men who do unspeakable things to women who depend on them. I have no reason not to believe her. And since you must marry her anyway, I told her I would arrange for a special license for the two of you and that we will leave at first light for London.”

“Is that all?” he asked coolly.

“She wants to bring her aunt along.”

“Well, then, the more the merrier.”

Lady Kingsley looked at him uncertainly, then placed a hand on his sleeve. “I don’t know whether to console you or to congratulate you. I know you didn’t quite have marriage in mind when you began your assignation, but if she gets you this carried away, marriage is not the most terrible outcome.”

He’d expected better from Lady Kingsley. He’d expected her to know that it was entirely out of character for him to be this carried away and therefore to harbor at least some suspicion of foul play on Miss Edgerton’s part.

Instead it was Freddie all over again, with the implication that Vere was largely, if not entirely, responsible.

“If you will excuse me,” he said. “I’m quite exhausted.”

Chapter Nine

Elissande packed, first in her own room, then in her aunt’s. Aunt Rachel sometimes woke up in the middle of the night and took another dose of laudanum—which made her difficult to awaken in the morning—and Elissande needed to prevent that.

She finished packing at quarter to five. At five o’clock she began to rouse her aunt. Aunt Rachel was confused and sluggish. But Elissande was determined. She finished Aunt Rachel’s usual morning ablutions, fed her a good portion of arrowroot pudding, and brushed her teeth.

It was not until she brought out actual clothes that Aunt Rachel first realized this was not to be another ordinary day in the Douglas household.

“We are leaving,” Elissande said to Aunt Rachel’s unspoken question.

“We?” Aunt Rachel croaked.

“Yes, you and I. I’m getting married and I need your help in setting up my new household.”

Aunt Rachel clenched Elissande’s hand in hers. “Married? To whom?”

“If you wish to meet him, dress and come with me.”

“Where—where are we going?”

“London.” Lady Kingsley had told her that she would help Elissande obtain a special license from the bishop of London.

“Does—does your uncle know?”

“No.”

Aunt Rachel trembled. “What if—what will happen when he finds out?”

Elissande took Aunt Rachel into her arms. “My fiancé is a marquess. My uncle cannot harm me once I’m married. You come with me now and you need never see him again either: Lord Vere will protect us.”

Aunt Rachel shook harder. “Are you—are you sure, Ellie?”

“Yes.” She was a terrific liar: Her smiles were her best lies, but she was no slouch with words. “We may put our absolute confidence in Lord Vere. He is a prince among men.”

She did not know whether she convinced Aunt Rachel completely. But Aunt Rachel became pliant enough that Elissande had no trouble dressing her in a pale green silk morning gown trimmed in white chiffon, and a hat of green velvet to match.

Unfortunately, real clothes only emphasized her aunt’s grayish pallor, stick-thinness, and that particular shrinking quality she had, as if she yearned at all times toward invisibility—but she looked presentable enough. For Aunt Rachel’s sake, Elissande could only pray that Lord Vere would appear half as formidable as she’d made him out to be.

Aunt Rachel started upon meeting her soon-to-be nephew-in-law. Elissande could well relate to that sense of delightful surprise. Inspecting him from the point of view of a stranger, she could not deny that he was a very impressive-looking man.

He was beautifully attired: all buttons properly aligned with their intended buttonholes, trousers free from food stains, and necktie not the least bit crooked. He spoke minimally—stunned into near silence by the enormity of the situation, she didn’t doubt. And he dutifully proclaimed himself honored and delighted at the “bestowal of Miss Edgerton’s hand.”

When she had shoved that hand deep down his esophagus.

He gave her one look, a quick scan of her person. She was dressed demurely in gray chiffon broadcloth—not that she could fool Lord Vere anymore as to what kind of woman she was. The thought suddenly came to her that perhaps she hadn’t needed to be entirely naked, that it might have been good enough to have been caught in his arms in her combination undergarment.