Then he sat in his carriage, ignoring the fact his driver was waiting to be told where to go. He felt as if the world had crashed around his shoulders.

His sister was having an affaire.

His fiancée had just handed back his ring in no uncertain terms. In fact, he had no fiancée. Sylvie was gone.

And little Josie had been ravished.

He felt like the hollowed out inside of a gourd. Of these three events, the only one that really mattered was the last.

Griselda…well, he supposed that he was hardly one to chastise someone for affaires. Lord knows, he’d had more than he could count. Almost.

He loved Sylvie. But was he really capable of loving anyone? Probably not. Because he’d feel more anguish at her rejection, if that was the case.

But Josie. Josie. Tears almost came to his eyes. He blinked hard and shouted to Wiggles.

“Where to?” came the shout back to him.

“Felton.” Because suddenly it was all clear to him. Josie was ravished. She was ruined. She might even carry a child from this day.

Unless he married her.

Of course he was a devil’s bargain, soiled as he was with the reputation of a roué and the tired soul of a degenerate. But he was better than nothing, and if she didn’t want to marry the father of her child, she could damn well marry him.

As Mayne sat in the carriage, the fixed truth of it only grew firmer in his soul. For the first time in his miserable, misbegotten life, someone needed him.

A block or two later he shouted at Wiggles, and redirected the carriage to the bishop’s palace where his uncle lived. His uncle had written him a marriage certificate once before. Felton had snatched that out of his hands and married Tess himself.

But there was no one to step forward and marry Josie. She was the laughingstock of the ton, and now she would never be a marriage prospect, no matter the size of her dowry. What did women do with a child born of such a union as she had endured?

But he couldn’t seem to think that far, because every time he considered what had happened to Josie a black cloud came over his eyes and he broke out in a sweat, finding a moment later that his fists were curled and he was breathing heavily.

There, in the darkness of the carriage swaying down St. James’s Street, Mayne made an oath to himself.

He’d marry Josie and then he’d find that bastard, whoever he was, and kill him.

Slowly.

It was the first time he’d smiled in hours.

28

From The Earl of Hellgate,

Chapter the Twentieth

She was my queen, my paramour, and my agony. I would have done anything for her, even lay down my life at her feet. Slowly our relations changed. She grew less commanding and more amorous.Rather than commanding my caresses, she caressed me. Reader…

D o you know what I like most about this story?” Annabel asked. She was sitting on Tess’s dressing room stool, her hair falling about her shoulders, just as she had looked when she received Tess’s summons. “I love the fact that his mouth was open when you slung all that manure at him.”

“I would have swung the shovel, not the manure, against his face,” Tess said tightly.Josie was just out of a hot bath scented with jasmine. It was all beginning to feel like a nightmare passed by. After all, no one had seen her; Mayne had taken care of that. “Mayne led me straight to his carriage,” she said, knowing she was repeating himself. “After I knocked him to the floor!”

“Poor Mayne,” Tess said thoughtfully. “It does seem that his life is oddly entwined with ours. As if he were our possession. First I was to marry him, although Annabel, you wanted the privilege. Of course, Imogen never wanted to marry him.” She was sitting on the edge of the bed, and had thrown her hair forward and was brushing, so that her voice emerged, rather muffled, from behind a chestnut-colored waterfall of hair.

Josie could feel that Annabel was looking at her. She pretended to be adjusting the belt of her dressing gown.

Tess continued, oblivious to the undercurrents in the room. “And I don’t think that Josie ever expressed such a wish. Josie, didn’t you expressly say that you wouldn’t take a man over twenty-five?”

There was silence in the room. Josie could feel herself turning pink. Annabel’s eyes were narrowed.

Meanwhile, Tess kept brushing. “I can’t imagine any woman not wanting to marry Mayne. I was perfectly happy to do so. He’s magnificent looking—”

“If tired,” Annabel interjected.

“With a good estate.”

“Not like your husband’s.”

“Pooh!” Tess said, throwing all her hair to the side and straightening up. Her face was pink. “Lucius would be the first to say that he owns far more properties than he has any use for.”

“I would applaud your ambition,” Annabel said to Josie, “but there’s the unfortunate problem of his fiancée.”

“What!” Tess yelped. She turned to Josie. “Are—”

“Of course not!” Josie said. “Could we return to a more reasonable subject?”

“Well, I don’t understand exactly how you ended up walking alone with that despicable young man,” Tess said. “Where was Griselda?”

Annabel frowned at her. “That’s irrelevant. If you haven’t noticed that Josie is showing every sign of having fallen in love with Mayne, I’m not so unobservant.”

“I have not!” Josie said hotly.

Tess put down her hairbrush. “For all the level of obliviousness you credit me with, Annabel, I think it is you who is showing a singular obtuseness. Mayne has a fiancée. Moreover, he is infatuated with Sylvie. If our Josie has indeed taken a fancy to him—and who wouldn’t, given his obvious attributes?—it can do no good for us to refine upon the subject. He is marrying Sylvie.”

“Well, as to that…” Josie said.

Her sisters’ heads snapped in her direction.

“No!” Annabel gasped.

Josie couldn’t help grinning. “She slapped him.”

“Slapped him?” Tess echoed. “Sylvie? Sylvie de la Broderie slapped Mayne?”

“What on earth did he do?” Annabel said. “I’m sure he deserved it.”

“He didn’t!” Josie said. “He didn’t—”

“How do you know?” Tess asked.

“I could hear.”

“You were eavesdropping!”

“Of course she was eavesdropping,” Annabel said, exasperated. “You’re starting to sound like an old biddy, Tess. Are you telling me that you would tiptoe away if you happened on a scene during which Mayne was being slapped and…are you saying that she broke off their engagement altogether, Josie?”

And, at Josie’s nod, “Fascinating!”

“But perhaps I shouldn’t tell the details to Tess if she disapproves,” Josie suggested.

Tess rolled her eyes. “The deed is done. Feel free to divulge the details.”

“He kissed her,” Josie said.

Annabel frowned. “And?”

“And she slapped him.”

“That was it? One kiss and she decides she’d rather not be a countess? You must have missed something, Josie.”

“What are you suggesting?” Tess asked.