Mary threw him a stunned look, but then obeyed.
Leaving her, still clad in her watered silk evening gown from the night before, with her dark curls gently disarranged and becoming color in her cheeks, sitting on his bed within the curve of his arm as he lay apparently relaxed and at his ease.
At eleven o’clock in the morning.
With a last spurt of effort, he managed to shift his right hand enough to drape his fingers over the curve of her right shoulder.
Pemberly entered first, all but propelled through the doorway. “My lord! I tried . . .” He gestured helplessly at Lavinia, who, eyes lit with a conflagration of disbelief and mounting fury, swept into the room.
Lady Jerome and Mrs. Framlingham, arch-gossipmongers and two of the busiest bodies in the ton, hung back in the shadows of the corridor, apparently sensing rather better than his stepmother that barging into his bedchamber without an invitation might just be that one step too far.
Grateful that the pillows allowed him to keep his head upright, he didn’t attempt to move it. “Thank you, Pemberly.” His gaze on Lavinia, his tone chilling significantly, he continued, “Good morning, Lavinia—I wasn’t aware I had arranged a meeting. To what do I owe this unwarranted invasion?”
Predictably Lavinia’s gaze had swept over him and fixed on Mary. His stepmother goggled; her lips opened and shut several times—which he would have found amusing had the circumstances been different—but then she finally wrenched her gaze to his face and brusquely waved at Mary. “What the devil is she doing here?”
Playing to the audience peering in from the corridor, he sighed gustily in the manner of a man supremely beset by uncomprehendingly obtuse females and lightly, warningly, gripped Mary’s shoulder. “If you must know, last night Miss Cynster did me the honor of accepting my offer for her hand.”
Ryder slanted a fleeting, heavy-lidded glance at his bride-to-be. Via his hold on her shoulder, he’d felt the jolt his words had unsurprisingly sent through her, but although he could only see her profile, he didn’t think any overt shock showed in her face; if anything she seemed to be regarding Lavinia with becoming, somewhat icy, hauteur. Returning his gaze to his stepmother, he continued in the same arrogantly cold tone, “Her presence here should therefore surprise no one, and, indeed, be of no interest to anyone. Your presence, however, has yet to be explained.”
Lavinia could not have looked more stunned. It took her three attempts before she could get her tongue to function. “You . . .” Then her gaze switched to Mary and her fists clenched. “You silly chit! You could have had my Randolph . . .” Lavinia trailed off, no doubt realizing any suggestion that Mary should have preferred Randolph to Ryder was, in ton terms, ludicrous.
Somewhat to his surprise, Lavinia paled, but then hot color surged into her cheeks. Her gaze locked on Mary and her eyes narrowed. “Why, you—”
“Lavinia!” Ruthlessly, he reseized the reins; his strength wasn’t going to last much longer. “You—and your friends—have burst into my home and have erupted into my private chambers without so much as a by-your-leave. I suggest you retreat. Now.” He held her gaze. “Pemberly, please show her ladyship out.”
“Indeed, my lord.” Pemberly didn’t utter the words, but “it will be my pleasure” hung in the air.
Lavinia glared at Pemberly as, with the weight of Ryder’s authority behind him, the butler advanced and took her arm. With a muttered oath, she wrenched it free, cast one last, furious, yet still stunned and reeling look at the bed, then swung on her heel and marched out. Pemberly followed, closing the door behind him.
Exhausted, Ryder fell back on the pillows; his eyes closed all by themselves.
He heard Collier emerge from the dressing room.
An instant later, still beside him on the bed, Mary murmured, “Would you like to lower your left arm?”
“Please.”
Between them, they eased his hand from behind his head and lowered his arm to the bed.
He hated, absolutely hated, being weak. And now, courtesy of his stepmother, he had another battle on his hands. “Collier—get out.”
“Yes, my lord.”
He waited until he heard the door snick shut before drawing in a deeper breath and forcing his lids up, at least enough to see.
Although still sitting on the bed, Mary had shifted to face him. The look on her face, the expression in her eyes as they rested on him, was . . . utterly inscrutable.
That surprised him; until now, he’d been able to read her reasonably well, relatively easily. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might not always be able to, that she might be able to hide her thoughts, her feelings, from him.
A faint line etched between her brows, she was patently considering him . . . as if he was of a species she’d encountered before but was a specimen that broke the mold.
Regardless of what her thoughts actually were, for him there was only one way forward. “I apologize. Unreservedly.” He managed to wave the fingers of his right hand. “That bore no resemblance to how I would have wished to propose to you.”
Her brows arched. She hesitated, then said, “As I see it, you’ve now proposed, and I’ve accepted.”
Understanding the question concealed in her words, he grimaced. “There was no other way.”
When she continued to study him—when he continued to have not a clue about what was passing through her mind—he said, “If I might make an observation?”