Grinning back at his second, he bowed. “Thank you, no. I fear you’d trounce me. Instead, may I persuade you to join me for a stroll?”
Rafe inclined his head in agreement as several banknotes were thrust in his hand by the proprietor. Both vampires knew he could not refuse the Lord of London. Still, worry creased the Spaniard’s brow, and though Ian wanted to reassure him nothing was amiss, he perversely remained silent until they were alone on the dark streets. It served Rafe right for announcing Ian’s title in such an inconvenient place.
“If this concerns Polidori, I apologize for not yet locating him.” Rafe pulled off the leather tie that held back his waist-length black hair, shaking out the mass to dry his sweat. “I believe the bastardo knows we seek him and is only venturing out in the day.”
“I am not concerned with Polidori,” Ian replied, gazing up at the fog-obscured moon. “In fact, I am considering calling off the search. His popularity is waning, and I’ve happened upon a more effective solution to keep society’s suspicions at bay.”
“What sort of solution?” Rafe eyed him warily.
“I shall marry,” Ian said calmly, bracing himself for the Spaniard’s outrage at the announcement.
Rafe snarled and let loose a string of Spanish expletives. “Dios mío! Why would you do such a thing?”
Ian sighed and related the tale of Angelica’s misguided foray into his home and its disastrous results. “And so, if I marry her, I may ensure that she keeps her silence about our kind as well as dissuade society from believing the rumors circulating about me.”
His second continued to curse. “Still, marriage? Have you gone loco? She could expose us all! Do you have any notion of the danger in which you are placing us?”
“Well, I can’t kill her,” Ian retorted.
Rafe nodded in reluctant agreement but stopped walking. His amber gaze turned speculative. “You could Change her.”
“No!” Ian growled, heart cringing at the thought of taking such an innocent away from family, friends, and daylight. “She is too innocent for this life and has such ambitious plans for her future. It would be monstrous to take that away from her.”
Rafe shook his head. “What shall you do with her, then? For one thing, she will not quicken with child, no matter how many times you lie with her, but the situation will grow far worse when she begins to age and you do not. At the prospect of such unhappiness, how do you expect her to hold her tongue?”
The Spaniard had a way of seeing the possible outcomes of any situation. It was one of the many reasons Ian had chosen Rafe to succeed him as Lord of London.
Ian suppressed curses of his own as he replied with feigned confidence, “Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”
Ten
“Pull the laces tighter, Liza!” Margaret commanded as she bustled back and forth, bumping into Angelica’s writing desk in her fluster. “And do be quick. His Grace will be here any minute.”
The victim of the clamping stays would have sighed if she had any breath remaining in her lungs. Every time Angelica tried to forget the nightmare of the Cavendish ball, her mother insisted on bringing the memory back in vivid clarity just by mentioning the Duke of Burnrath, a feat she’d accomplished at least a hundred times today.
To further add salt to the wound, Margaret punctuated nearly every sentence with “…and you will be the Duchess of Burnrath. Oh, my darling, I can hardly believe such a miracle has transpired!”
Angelica didn’t know which galled her more, the fact that she had been so close to attaining her goals and had them snatched away so quickly, or that His Grace expected her to swoon at his feet in undying gratitude when he only wanted her to save his reputation. He was using her.
She had to find a way out of this. And now that her reputation had been saved since the duke offered her marriage and announced to all and sundry that she was not in his house of her own free will, surely there was no real need to go through with this ridiculous farce… was there? Her stomach clenched in worry.
Between her mother’s strident commands as she flitted from room to room and the frantic racing of the servants in their efforts to ready the house for the duke’s arrival, Angelica managed to snatch enough precious minutes of quiet to formulate a shaky plan. Ironically, her mother unwittingly inspired the main point of her scheme.