Chivalrous Rake, Scandalous Lady. Mary Brendan

      * * *

      ‘Please, sit down, you will feel calmer in a moment.’ Maura tried to gently ease Jemma down into the chair by the window in her bedchamber.

      Her cousin resisted any such attempt to be seated or to be calm and continued to stamp a channel in the rug’s pile as back and forth across its width she went. Her face and manner betrayed her anguish, but failed to fully describe the maelstrom of conflicting emotions that kept her fists curling and uncurling at her sides. Her eyes were tightly closed to prevent tears of rage and mortification from again dribbling on to her cheeks.

      ‘How could he do this to me!’ Jemma gritted out for what seemed to be the hundredth time. ‘That my own kin should humiliate me in such a way is…is insufferable! Abominable!’

      Maura’s hands were agitatedly twisting in front of her. Up until a short while ago she had maintained that there must be some mistake or misunderstanding. Her brother surely could not be guilty of such underhand behaviour. Of course, Theo had made no secret of the fact he wished to see his cousin Jemma wed before she got much older, or much poorer. But to go to such lengths as to try to arrange a match behind her back was indeed outrageous, as was his choice of prospective bridegrooms. Contacting spurned suitors from Jemma’s past was undeniably embarrassing for her.

      In her brother’s defence Maura conceded that Theo had a point in thinking Jemma ought to pay more attention to getting herself a husband and children and less to squandering her time and money on charities for ruffians. Since Jemma had had her heart broken by her childhood sweetheart she’d shown no interest at all in a romantic involvement or a family of her own. ‘Perhaps my brother believed it all to be for your own good.’ Maura knew her loyalties were divided, so she decided she might as well side with her closest kin. ‘I expect he hoped to help you,’ she ventured diffidently, then shrank beneath Jemma’s violent green gaze.

      ‘Help me?’ Jemma ejected the phrase in a strangled gasp. ‘He wants to help himself, and well you know it. He’s so desperate to get his hands on what is mine that he is careless of making me appear the most ridiculous creature in the whole of London.’

      A crimson stain spread from Maura’s neck to the roots of her mousy brown hair. It was well known in the family, and probably in wider circles, too, that upon marriage Jemma would forfeit her inheritance to the next male heir. Theo was the beneficiary and would take two properties and whatever else Jemma had left from John Bailey’s original bequest.

      Niggling doubts over her brother’s motive had pricked at Maura’s consciousness as soon as she’d learned more about the sorry affair that afternoon. But she’d chased them away. Theo would never stoop to act in so mercenary a fashion. He had simply grown impatient and impulsive because Jemma refused to encourage any gentleman to court her.

      ‘I should not have run away.’ Jemma marched across the room to swiftly snatch at the door handle. She held on to it while attempting to steady her breathing and boost her courage. ‘I should go back downstairs now and tell Mr Speer that I had no hand in this. What will he say, do you think?’ Trepidation trembled her tone. ‘I cannot believe that Theo didn’t know of his recent engagement,’ she cried. ‘If by some chance he did miss seeing it gazetted, Mr Speer could have remedied his ignorance in a letter. He didn’t need to come in person to tell Theo what a fool he is. Oh, why is he here?’

      ‘I remember he was very much taken with you. Perhaps he has come to offer for you after all.’ Maura’s tone veered between disbelief and optimism.

      ‘Of course he has not!’ Jemma disabused her pop-eyed cousin in a croak. ‘He is going to marry Deborah Cleveland.’ Her cousin’s blunt suggestion had made Jemma’s heart leap to her throat. Maura had touched on a very raw nerve by forcing her to acknowledge an idea that had already wormed its way into her own mind.

      A poignant yearning had gripped Jemma’s insides as soon as she’d heard the butler announce Theo’s visitor. What if he had come to agree to her guardian’s outrageous proposal? It was a thought that had refused to be ejected until the moment she’d caught a glimpse of him as she’d fled to the stairs.

      Jemma cast her mind back to the terrifying sight of Marcus in the hallway. He had thankfully been too far away for her to properly read his expression, but every prowling pace he’d taken over the stone flags had impressed on her that he too was very angry indeed. Her stomach churned with the nauseating certainty that Marcus might believe, as had Philip Duncan, that Theo had been acting with her encouragement when he’d written those letters inviting gentlemen to renew their proposals to her. She’d had that awful information just an hour or so earlier, from the man himself.

      Following a frosty confrontation with Lucy Duncan in the fabric warehouse, Lucy had been ashamed and repentant at having spread gossip about Jemma. However, she was adamant she had not told lies and had offered to take Jemma immediately to her brother so Philip might vouch for her honesty. At the lodging house they’d found Philip about to climb into his gig. Ushering them in to his lodging house hallway so they might be private, he’d rather sheepishly admitted that he had shown Graham Quick a note he’d received from Jemma’s guardian. Jemma had demanded he go and get it so she could see the revolting evidence, but Philip had said he’d already thrown it on the fire. As Jemma had turned to leave he’d found the grace to mumble he was sorry for mentioning the matter to Graham Quick. Moments later he’d diluted his apology by adding that the message had clearly implied it came with her full agreement.

      Following that awful revelation there had been nothing Maura could say that would deter Jemma from immediately confronting Theo about what he’d done. At the Wyndhams’ town house in Hanover Square they’d found Theo looking very smug. Without a hint of remorse he’d told his enraged ward that he’d not only sent a letter to Philip Duncan, but to every one of the fellows he could bring to mind who was still unwed and had offered for Jemma in the past. In all, four letters had been sent. He’d even had the cheek to try to turn the tables on her and put her in the wrong. In a martyred tone he’d added that she’d put him to some considerable trouble by not dealing herself with the matter of getting off the shelf.

      Before Jemma could properly express her disgust and outrage Mr Speer’s arrival had been announced by Manwell. That information had stunned Jemma into silence. A moment later she’d bolted with just one horrifying thought in her mind: she had discovered the identity of another recipient of her guardian’s scandalous letters.

      ‘Mr Speer has simply come to tell Theo what he thinks of him…and me…’ Jemma finally told Maura on a heavy sigh. ‘One cannot blame him for that.’ A moment later her spirit had again rallied. ‘I wish he had just discarded the stupid, stupid letter and forgotten all about it as Philip Duncan did.’

      * * *

      ‘Ah…do come in, Speer. Glad to receive your message and your prompt visit, sir.’ Theodore Wyndham’s voice held a high note of confidence as he continued to nonchalantly pose against the high mantelpiece with an arm slung along its marble shelf.

      Theo now appeared so indolent that it would have been hard to imagine a more docile individual. Never would one have guessed that just moments ago this gentleman had been simmering with temper whilst listening to his ward violently berate him for interfering in her life.

      Jemma had discovered, sooner than Theo would have liked, his scheme to get her married before she completely ran through the Bailey inheritance. She’d turned up like a whirlwind, moments before Marcus Speer was due, making Theo fret that she might erupt in hysterics just as the fellow arrived. He’d been worrying needlessly. When his butler had announced Mr Speer’s presence in the hallway it was as though an invisible hand had dashed a bucket of water over her. She’d drawn a shuddering breath, taken on a ghastly pallor, then quietly fled from Theo’s study via the connecting door to the library as though the hounds of hell snapped at her heels.

      Now, as Theo watched his very welcome visitor close the door, then begin to bear down on him with a startling speed and purpose, he surged upright and fiddled at the knot in his cravat. He could tell, before a conversation had passed between them, that he’d misjudged this man’s reaction