Page 11 of Betrothal Between Enemies

Ismay wanted to scream. ‘Of course he’s amenable. He has the most to gain.’ They were throwing a fortune at him, although that had not seemed to make a difference to him tonight. He’d agreed quite eagerly to her plan. ‘But what if we can only make each other unhappy?’

Her mother sighed, stopping to press a kiss to her head as she passed. ‘Then, I suppose if that were honestly the case, we would revisit the situation. Until then, I would encourage you to rethink who is to gain from all this. You will gain plenty. Most of all, you gain that rarest of things, a second chance.’ A chance to make up for Edward Ashford, a chance to make her parents proud, a chance to stop being a disappointment. All she had to do was give up her independence.

Ismay slipped between the sheets of her bed, letting the breeze from the balcony cool her heated thoughts along with her cheeks. She loved her parents, but she could not do it, not even for them. This, too, would pass like the other contretemps that had plagued her adult life. Alistair didn’t want to marry her any more than she wanted to marry him, although she didn’t want to think about that too closely. What did it mean when a man being handed a fortune and a livelihood was still willing to turn both down if he could escape marriage to her? She told herself it had nothing to do with her. He resisted on principle. He valued his autonomy as did she. In this one thing, they were united. She needn’t worry. They already didn’t like each other. What could possibly go wrong? They had a plan, and it would succeed.

Chapter Six

They put that plan in motion immediately the next day. The Roses had been invited for hunting by Lord Danton, a wealthy client of Sir Thomas’s, at his private estate north of Naples. It was the perfect arrangement in which to inaugurate their ruse. The trip required six miles in the close confines of the carriage which meant six miles of Ismay shooting daggers at him over the top of her book when she wasn’t firing barbs or ignoring him outright.

The situation might have been too perfect. It was hard to tell if Ismay’s rudeness was real or part of the plan. Alistair studied her during a stretch of silence. Sir Thomas was dozing beside him, and both of the ladies were supposedly reading, though he hadn’t seen either of them turn a page in a long while. Ismay’s anger was certainly justified. Sir Thomas’s announcements last night had done more than shock her. They’d upended unspoken expectations she’d carried deep within, even if one might argue they’d always been unrealistic. Women didn’t run family businesses alone. Still, he didn’t take any pleasure in being part of a plan that stripped those expectations from her.

Perhaps she should have seen it coming. She was twenty-eight. Well past the age of marriage for most women. What had happened to bring her to this point? Beautiful women with money didn’t end up on the shelf, and she had all the attributes London deemed necessary for a successful Season. Then, he imagined Ismay actually in London and couldn’t repress a smile. She’d send all but the most intrepid of suitors running. Perhaps that was what had happened here.

‘Stop staring at me.’ Ismay’s head snapped up, eyes blazing. ‘Surely, you’ve seen a woman reading before.’

‘Yes, I have. That’s why I am so intrigued. You haven’t turned a page in a whole mile.’ Alistair grinned, enjoying catching her out.

She did not back down. ‘I often take some time for reflection as I read, especially when I run across a particularly insightful passage.’

The carriage hit a rut in the road, and Alistair took advantage of the jolt to snatch the book from her hands, going immediately to the page she’d been on and reading out loud in a dramatic tone suited to a Gothic. ‘I can best describe its shape by likening it to a pine tree. It rose into the sky on a very long “trunk”…’ Oh my, maybe he shouldn’t be reading this out loud, but he couldn’t stop now. ‘…from which spread some “branches”… At times it looked white, and at other times dirty and spotted.’ That sounded singularly unappealing and perhaps diseased. He persevered and finished the passage. ‘According to the quantity of earth and cinders that were shot up. Wait, “quantity of earth”?’

He stopped, a truth sinking in. He checked the cover. This was not what he’d expected. ‘You’re reading Pliny the Younger?’ That seemed quite ambitious. Most ladies of his acquaintance limited themselves to novels, Ann Maria Radcliffe, Regina Roche and the like.

She held out a hand for the book, her words crisp and smartly cool. ‘It’s actually a combination of translations. Only part of it is his letter to Tacitus on the eruption of Vesuvius. You needn’t make it sound like something sordid.’

‘Why are you reading about a volcano?’ He reluctantly handed the book back to her.

‘Because I live in the shadow of that very same mountain. Because I am interested in the science of volcanoes. Or is such interest only the purvey of men? Should a woman not also be interested in something that might one day so profoundly affect her life? Her home? If we could learn to predict signs of an eruption, we might fare better than our ancestors.’

Lady Rose stirred into action, a moment’s alarm in her eyes. ‘Ismay, darling, it’s not polite to argue.’

Ismay turned her gaze to her mother. ‘Then, I am not polite. Neither is Socrates who suggests argument is the means by which we discover a higher truth.’

‘Socrates is dead, darling. Alistair might get the wrong impression of his fiancée.’ There was a warning in Lady Rose’s voice now, a censure.

‘That I am well-read? That I mean to apply the education lavished on me so generously by my parents? Surely, the right man would see that as a blessing in a wife.’ She turned back to Alistair. ‘After all, Socrates saw argument as a cooperative activity, not necessarily a competitive one.’ But she was competing. Alistair could see that. She was testing his own mettle, his own depth. What had he done with his education? Perhaps she was also seeking to show him in a poor light, a man not educated enough to handle the intricacies woven into her father’s business. Alistair resented that, part of the plan or not.

‘Rigorous discourse is how Socrates referred to it,’ Alistair offered with a wicked smile, earning himself a quelling look. Ismay was no doubt disappointed that he’d not argued against her position. But to do so would have made him appear as uneducated as she’d like to show him to be, which he was not. His pride wouldn’t allow it. Neither could he let the opportunity for his own sharp remark pass. ‘Well, at the very least, we shall have plenty of rigorous intercourse in our marriage, if nothing else.’ He fixed Ismay with a purposeful smoulder proven to melt even the most frozen of hearts. He’d won a bet two years ago with that stare. Ismay’s boot kicked him beneath the cover of her skirts.

Lady Rose’s cheeks heated furiously as she reached for her fan and glanced outside. ‘Thank goodness, it looks like we’re nearly there.’ Those were Alistair’s thoughts exactly.

* * *

‘What were you thinking to make such an innuendo?’ Ismay hissed as they tromped through the grouse fields behind her parents and their host. ‘And it wasn’t even a veiled innuendo, as evidenced by the state of my mother’s cheeks. How could you suggest such a thing when we hardly know one another?’

Alistair chuckled in the wake of her chagrin. ‘That’s half the fun of going to bed with a stranger. You can be anything you want. They don’t know better, and neither do you. The fantasies can be endless.’

Ismay rolled her eyes and adjusted the gun beneath her arm. ‘Now you’re just trying to shock me.’

‘Turnabout is fair play. You are always shocking me.’ Alistair stopped and paced out his steps from Sir Thomas as they joined the line of shooters.

‘I’ve done nothing of the sort. I’ve only been myself. If that’s shocking, then perhaps society is too narrow-minded. It takes very little to be shocking these days if you’re a woman, even in Naples where behaviour is less tightly regulated.’

‘I had no idea you were interested in volcanoes.’

‘There’s a lot you don’t know. Twenty years is a long time, Alistair. I am more than the girl who stole your breeches from the swimming hole.’ She meant the words as a parting shot as she began to count off her own paces, but Alistair reached for her arm, their gazes colliding, a hot, furious flame leaping between them that had nothing to do with the ruse.

‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me.’ His words were a growl, his mouth, his body close to hers. Too close. She could smell the bergamot of his soap amid the scents of the meadow, could feel the masculine energy of his body.