Page 12 of The Truth About Lord Stoneville
“I’m not a thief!”
“Frankly, I don’t care if you are. The important thing is that you suit my purpose perfectly.”
She had the same brash temperament as his sisters, which Gran had always deplored. She had the sort of upbringing that Americans seemed to prize and Englishmen to despise. A mother who’d been a shop-keeper’s daughter, and a father who’d been an illegitimate American of no consequence? Who’d fought in the very revolution that had cost Gran her only son? He couldn’t ask for better.
Best of all, the chit was in trouble—which meant she wouldn’t cost him a small fortune, unlike the whore he’dplanned to hire. But since he’d met her in a brothel, he could still use that to thwart Gran.
He strode up to her. “You see, my grandmother and I are engaged in a battle that I intend to win. You can help me. So in exchange for my extracting you and Freddy from this delicate situation, I’ll require that you do something for me.”
A wary expression crossed her face. “What?”
He smiled at the thought of Gran’s reaction when he brought her home. “Pretend to be my fiancée.”
Chapter Four
Maria gaped at him. Surely she’d heard him wrong. “You want me towhat?”
The secretive smile playing about Lord Stoneville’s sensual mouth gave her pause. “Pretend to be my fiancée for a short time. As soon as I convince Gran that I seriously mean to marry you, the need for the pretense will end.”
She felt as if she’d stumbled into one of her Gothic novels. “You’re mad.”
“No, I’m just plagued with a grandmother who thinks that forcing me and my siblings into marriage will settle her mind about our futures—an idea that I mean to show her is absurd.”
“By pretending to be engaged to a perfect stranger?”
He shrugged. “I came here looking for a whore to do the job. But they’re expensive, and why should I settle for a whore when you’ll do nicely?”
His gaze traveled down her body with thorough insolence. “You’re exactly the sort my grandmother would find unacceptable as a wife for me: an American of low birth, with an impudent manner and a reckless tongue. And you’re just pretty enough to convince her that I might actually contemplate marriage to you.”
Shock held her motionless. She didn’t know which was worse—his nonchalant attitude toward hiring awhoreto fool his poor grandmother, or the insults he’d lobbed at her with insufferable arrogance. “Now that you’ve offended me in every possible way, do you think I’d agree to this insanity?”
Amusement flickered in his black eyes. “Given that your other choice is to take your chances with the gentlemen in the hall . . . yes, I do. Of course, if youwantto watch your cousin hang—” He headed for the door.
“Stop!”
He paused with his hand on the handle, one eyebrow arched in question.
The curst man had her trapped, and he knew it.
No one in London could vouch for her and Freddy. As he’d guessed, not a soul here knew them. Even the ship they’d traveled on had already set sail. If they were arrested, the English authorities might be willing to write to Aunt Rose and confirm their story. But until word came, she and Freddy would surely be imprisoned. She wasn’t sure she could survive weeks in prison, and Freddy wouldn’t survive a day.
What was she thinking? Freddy wouldn’t survive anhour.
Still, she cringed at the idea of letting this aristocraticbully blackmail her into doing his bidding. “You know perfectly well we’re not thieves. You could vouch for us if you wanted. They’d accept whatever you told them.”
His eyes narrowed. “And why should I? What would it gain me?”
“The satisfaction of knowing that you’ve done the right thing.”
“You really are quite fetchingly naïve,” he drawled.
She bristled. “So you have no morals?”
“None.”
He actually admitted it! And with an appalling lack of shame, too. Yet she pressed on. “You told me that if you were satisfied we were blameless of theft, you’d let us go. You swore it on your honor as a gentleman.”
Leaning against the door, he crossed his arms over his rather impressive chest. “Unfortunately for you, I have no honor. And the term ‘gentleman’ doesn’t suit me particularly well, either.”
