He felt like he’d been clouted with a battle mace.
His shoulders were broad; the women behind him couldn’t see her, at least not her face or body. They would be able to see her topknot, telltale wheat-gold, over his shoulder, and even more damningly her stocking-clad legs clasped about his hips.
There was not a hope in hell of disguising their occupation.
A kiss would have been bad enough, but this…
There was only one course of action open to him.
Easing Minerva from him, he withdrew from her; given his size, that necessitated a maneuver that even viewed from behind was impossible to mistake. Her knees slid from his hips, he lowered her until her feet touched the ground. Her skirts tumbled straight of their own accord.
“Don’t move,” he murmured, quickly doing up the placket of his breeches. “Don’t say a word.”
She looked at him through wide, utterly stunned eyes.
Uncaring of the crowd, he bent his head and kissed her, a swift, reassuring kiss, then he straightened and turned to face their fate.
His expression aloof and cold, his gaze pure ice, he regarded the knot of ladies, round-eyed, hands at their breasts, their expressions as stunned as Minerva’s…except for Susannah’s. She stood at the rear, peering past the others.
Refocusing on those in the front of the group—a cluster of his sisters’ London friends—he drew breath, then said the words he had to say. “Ladies. Miss Chesterton has just done me the honor of agreeing to be my wife.”
“Well! It’s Miss Chesterton! Whoever would have thought!” Caroline Courtney, all agog, broke the news as he circled the billiard table. With the other men present, most Royce’s cousins, he halted and listened as Caroline blurted out the juicy details of how Royce and his chatelaine had been caught in flagrante delicto on the battlements.
“There was absolutely no doubt about it,” she assured them. “We all saw.”
He frowned. “Was she who Royce intended to marry all along?”
Caroline shrugged. “Who can say? Regardless, she’s the one he’ll have to marry now.”
Frowning, Gordon stated, “I can’t imagine Royce letting himself be trapped like that.” Then he realized what he’d said, and colored. “Not that Minerva won’t make a perfectly acceptable duchess.”
Inwardly smiling, he mentally thanked Susannah; outwardly calm, he turned back to the table, savoring his victory.
The news would reach London as fast as the mail coach could carry it; he wouldn’t need to lift so much as a finger.
So Royce would now have to marry his chatelaine—be forced to marry her, and that he wouldn’t like.
Even worse would be the whispers traded behind scented hands, the sniggers, the unsavory speculation directed at his duchess.
Unavoidable within the ton.
And Royce wouldn’t like that at all.
Smiling, he leaned over the table and sent one ball neatly into a pocket, then he straightened and, slowly circling the table, surveyed the possibilities.
In the duchess’s morning room, Letitia watched Minerva pace. “I appreciate that it’s the very last thing you would have wished to happen, but believe me, in the circumstances, there was nothing else he could have done.”
“I know.” Her tone clipped, Minerva swung on her heel. “I was there. It was awful.”
“Here.” Penny held out a glass containing at least three fingers of brandy. “Charles swears it always helps.” She took a sip from her own glass. “And he’s right.”
Minerva seized the glass, took a healthy swallow, and felt the fiery liquid sear her throat, but then the warmth spread lower, loosening some of her icy rage. “I felt so damned helpless! I couldn’t even think.”
“Take it from a Vaux, that scene would have taxed my histrionic capabilities.” Letitia, too, was sipping brandy. She shook her head. “There wasn’t anything you could have done to change the outcome.”
Rendered more furious than she’d ever been in her life, Minerva could barely recall descending from the battlements. In a voice that dripped icicles, Royce had, entirely unsubtly, informed the importunate ladies that the battlements, like the keep itself, were private; they’d all but tripped over each other fleeing back down the stairs. Once they were gone, he’d turned, taken her hand, led her down, and brought her here.
She’d been trembling—with rage.