“Really? Then why do you continually fall back on your Standish blood to justify your terrible behavior?”

  “While I am not justifying the huge mess I have made, this entire regrettably misguided charade came about because I absolutely refused to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

  “Because you are incapable of falling in love or remaining faithful.”

  “I never believed I was capable of either.” Although there was a good chance his deep affection might grow into love if nurtured, and he would have made a damn good attempt at remaining faithful if she had accepted his offer.

  “What about Sarah?”

  “Sarah!” He stopped dancing momentarily to stare at her, stunned.

  “I have eyes, Hugh. Every time you see her, you behave peculiar.”

  “Then clearly you need spectacles if you cannot see what everyone in this room does.”

  “I see the way you look at her! Why don’t you just admit it. She broke your heart and that caused you to harden it. Perhaps you still love her— or perhaps you still feel guilty for disentangling yourself from her, too? Another unsavory entanglement which could never sully the impressive house of Standish. Because heaven forbid a common woman should taint that illustrious, noble, and tainted bloodline.”

  Had she gone quite mad? “I don’t love Sarah!”

  “But you did!” She spat the words in his face. “For once in your life, tell the truth, Hugh!”

  Several pairs of eyes were now watching them intently, so he took her elbow and steered her toward the alcove. The awful truth might well be common knowledge here but nobody ever said it aloud. Especially him.

  “Sarah is my sister, Minerva!”

  Her mouth fell open. Then she craned her head to look at his sibling, no doubt taking in the unmistakable similarities. The blond hair. The height. The blue eyes. The same features. All his father’s. Peas in a pod. “I never knew you had a sister!”

  “Neither did I until I turned seventeen! The woman over there with her was my father’s mistress.” And once again, although for the life of him he would never understand it, his mother was chatting to the woman as if she hadn’t stolen her husband and destroyed her marriage. “Probably one of many, I suspect— but he moved them both into our house when he found out he was dying . . .”

  He could still remember his mother sitting him down and explaining it to him. That his father’s other family had a right to be there, too, because they loved him just as much as he did. So calmly, as if the walls of Jericho weren’t crumbling around his ears and everything he had believed about the man he had worshiped hadn’t all been a flimsy lie.

  Days later, Hugh had had to stand with those unwelcome strangers around his father’s bedside as he took his final breath, holding the hand of the woman who wasn’t his wife while his actual wife looked on like a spectator. His father had died without ever explaining how that horrific and, for Hugh alone apparently, sudden new reality had come to pass.

  “I think this gives me the right to behave a little peculiarly on the odd and unavoidable occasions when I collide with them.”

  Behind them, people clapped as the waltz came to an end.

  “She didn’t break your heart?” That was the single detail she cared about when he had just laid his blackened soul bare?

  “No.” Hugh screwed up his face in disgust. “I cannot believe you even thought such a thing.”

  “Perhaps if you had been open from the start, I wouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”

  “I have always been open with you.”

  “You allow me to know what you think only if it suits you to tell me.”

  “That is unfair.”

  “Is it? You are the master of deflection. Constantly making jokes and hiding behind a mask of charm or avoiding real honesty because it . . .” She threw up her hands. “Really, I do not know what causes you to behave like that— but I suspect you avoid genuine honesty at all costs because it frightens you.”

  “I have always been honest with you, Minerva.”

  No, he hadn’t.

  There had been pockets of brutal honesty spread amongst a great deal of deflection. He was uncomfortable being seen as anything other than what he was— a huge disappointment who couldn’t be trusted not to let people down. “You know more of the real me than most do.” That was closer to the truth.

  “Maybe— but I’ve learned more about the real Hugh through your mother, Jeremiah, and Payne than I’ve ever heard from your lips. Tell me— would you have ever mentioned you had a sister unless I had made a mistake about the nature of your relationship?”

  “How was I to know her husband’s regiment was coming home? We do not keep in touch . . .”

  “I shall take that as a no. Because talking about her would mean talking about your complicated emotions concerning your father, and why would you entrust anybody with anything meaningful when it’s easier to keep everything superficial! Then blame your Standish blood for everything else.” She exhaled slowly, shaking her head. “It makes me wonder what else you haven’t told me?”

  “Nothing of importance.”

  Bitter bile rose in his throat at the lie. He still hadn’t told her about her father despite Payne’s daily remonstrance. But how would it help her to know her sire had been within arm’s reach at all times but had ignored them for his own selfish reasons? Or that he had uncovered more unsavory details on the wastrel since he had started digging? Besides, if he confessed he had paid the man off, she would assume he had done it to save his own skin, and admitting otherwise would involve having to tell her again he had done it out of his deep affection for her.

  Deep affection?

  Perhaps he truly was afraid of real honesty, because he knew in his bones affection probably wasn’t this painful nor was it this all encompassing. He had a deep affection for Payne— it was nothing like what he felt for Minerva.

  “You are exhausting, Hugh! And I am tired of it.”

  The floor tilted beneath his feet. “What are you saying?”

  “That we cannot continue this awful ruse indefinitely. Not when it has run its course and it’s making us both utterly miserable.” She paused, her fingers going to the heavy ruby necklace as she glanced across the room to his mother and his father’s favorite mistress. “The banns are being read again tomorrow. I shall sit through those but I will not allow them to be read for the third and final time next Sunday. Which gives us exactly a week . . . to either enact the final scene in your story or to face the music.”

  Her eyes were troubled, angry, the unfathomable green depths swirling with bitter regret that cut deep. But not as deep as her parting words. “Either way, by this time next Saturday, I shall be gone, Hugh. It is long past time we said goodbye. . . . In truth, I bitterly regret we ever said hello.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Because her tears were about to imminently fall, Minerva excused herself and rushed to the retiring room. After ten minutes and the hasty repair of her face, she left it shaky— but outwardly calm at least. She took a deep breath, intending to return to the relative safety of Olivia’s side, but found her feet taking her toward the door instead, craving fresh air for a few moments before she pasted on her mask again.

  She hadn’t lied. Being his Minerva was exhausting. Every day threw up new challenges she was ill equipped to cope with. Rubies, wedding gowns, drunken actresses, secret sisters, her own crushed heart. Was it any wonder she was at her wits’ end? Or that tears were never far from the surface? She had been lured here by the promise of greener grass and had found herself waist deep in a field of nettles instead.

  She embraced the brisk winter chill as she wandered past the waiting carriages, toward the dark village square, needing to be alone.

  “When did you learn to dance?” The voice chilled her more effectively than the December night could.

  “Father?” Her head whipped around from left to right, trying to find him in the blackness, until a brief flash illuminated him leaning against a wall as he lit one of the foul-smelling cigarillos she had always hated.

  “Landed on your feet, haven’t you? Engaged to an earl no less.”

  She felt sick, knowing his convenient presence after such a long time could only signal one thing.

  Trouble.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “No tearful reconciliation for your long-lost father?”

  “I hoped you had died in a gutter somewhere years ago.”

  He took a long drag, then slowly blew out the smoke. “You always were a cold one, Minerva.”

  “Answer my question! What are you doing here?”

  He shrugged, typically unfazed. “I’d have thought it obvious. I’ve come to rescue my daughters.”

  “We don’t need rescuing.” The acrid smell of the cheap tobacco took her straight back to Clerkenwell in the dark days before he disappeared. Hiding in silence while the rent collector, the debt collectors, or the occasional Bow Street Runner hammered on the door. That same door being pounded by the fists of whichever messenger had been sent to summon her in the middle of the night to fetch her drink-sodden sire from whichever fetid pit he had collapsed in. Hiding the bulk of her hard-earned wages under the loose floorboard so he wouldn’t take them and drink himself unconscious rather than see food on the table. “How did you find us?”

  “If your little con was a secret, you probably shouldn’t have allowed Venus to leave a forwarding address at the Dog and Duck. I took that as an invitation. Not that I needed one. We are family after all and I am still head of the household.”

  “Something you have managed to conveniently forget for the last five years! I won’t bother asking where you’ve been. I know already all I’d hear was the usual crock of lies.”

  “Talking of lies, Daughter dearest, I wonder how your earl’s mother or this quaint little village would feel about the lie you and he are telling the lot of them?”

  Icy tentacles of dread wrapped around her ribs and squeezed her chest. “What makes you think we’re lying?”

  “Him? Marry you?” Her father threw his head back and laughed. “Earls don’t marry guttersnipes.”

  Wasn’t that the truth! “I thought I was a gentleman’s daughter? A blessedly dead gentleman’s daughter!” Minerva turned on her heel. She would brazen it out and then talk to Hugh, let him know they no longer had a week. They had hours.

  “I hear I froze to death . . . in the Cairngorms.” She stopped in her tracks. “And I thought you always looked down your nose at me because you thought you were morally superior, when it turns out the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, did it . . . Minerva Landridge?”

  “Nobody would ever believe you over Hugh.”

  “Hugh, is it? Cozy . . . But we’ll see? Or we could do this the easy way, and everyone remains none the wiser . . .”

  “What do you want?”

  “Whatever he’s paying you.”

  “He’s not paying me.”

  “Then I’ll have those rubies. . . . They are rubies, aren’t they? A toff like him would never buy paste.”

  Automatically, her hands went straight to her neck to protect Olivia’s unwanted gift. “They aren’t mine. They’re borrowed.”

  “Then I shall expect the funds in cash, then. Shall we say a hundred pounds . . . by tomorrow?”

  “He’s only paying me sixty!” She instantly regretted the stupid outburst, born entirely out of panic, but couldn’t take it back. The damage was done.

  “Only sixty?” Her father looked her slowly up and down, making her feel sullied and dirty. “You sold yourself too cheap, girl. . . . Or do you think me a fool when your fancy man’s pockets are lined with gold?” He blew smoke in her face and chuckled again. “I’ll take seventy-five. I’m sure you can convince him to give you more. The poor fellow looks at you like a dog at a butcher’s window. Use your wiles, girl . . .”

  “I am not giving you a penny!” She turned, but he grabbed her arm and yanked her back.

  “Happy to see your beloved’s name dragged through the mud, are you? The locals here all think he walks on water. And what about that mother of his? Does she know her precious boy has hired himself a fiancée? Or a whole family of Landridges to go along with her? Betrayal like that cuts a mother deep . . .”

  “Stop!” He knew too much— or he had pieced it all together too well— and thanks to her stupidity, he had confirmation she was being paid. “I can’t give you seventy-five. I can’t even give you the whole sixty . . . We have bills . . . rent . . . If we don’t pay up, we’ll be homeless.” Mentally she rapidly added up everything, wondering if she could get away with more, then realized it wasn’t worth the risk. “I can give you forty. By tomorrow. If you promise you’ll go away . . .”

  If she could remove her father for a few days, she could think of a way to terminate her pretend engagement swiftly and head back to London before her father ruined Hugh or hurt his mother . . .

  What was she thinking? This was merely opening the floodgates. Her father was vile enough to continue his extortion, and he had never kept a single promise to anyone in his life. He would be back like a bad smell, and he would want more. Some things were as inevitable as night following day.

  “Minerva?”

  Neither of them had seen Hugh’s stealthy approach.

  “What’s going on?” His eyes slowly turned to her father’s and glared. She had two choices. Both were awful but only one felt right.

  “My father knows. He’s trying to blackmail me!”

  Hugh took this shocking news with impressive calm, almost smiling as he folded his arms. “Is that so?” Bizarrely, his strength soothed her. “Was my hundred not enough, Mr. Merriwell?” The relief at having an ally was swiftly replaced by horror as the full weight of that damning statement sunk in.

  Hugh wasn’t surprised, because he had already met her father. Met him, paid him, and purposefully kept it from her. Another betrayal. Another reminder he wasn’t at all the man she had believed him to be.

  “You cannot blame a fellow for trying, my lord.”

  “I can. Especially when his duplicity reneges on the bargain we made.”

  Bargains? Blackmail? More secrets? So many lies she no longer knew which way was up. She must have shivered, because he turned to her and immediately shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it gently around her shoulders. The instant warmth— his warmth— should have comforted her, but it didn’t.

  “Go back inside, Minerva. I will handle this.”

  “No!” She wanted to slap him. “I have a right to hear everything said!”

  “Get lost, girl! I’d rather deal with the organ grinder than the monkey . . .” The final word came out in a croak as Hugh’s fist gripped her father’s lapels and twisted. Hard.

  “Do not speak to her like that!” With her father’s boots scrabbling for traction on the floor, he turned back to her with gritted teeth. “Go back inside, Minerva! Now! The things I need to say to your father are not for a lady’s ears and this is my mess to sort out!” And with that he frog-marched him farther into the darkness.

  She simply stood there, glued to the spot like a statue, desperately trying to comprehend everything, before coming to the conclusion there were too many gaps for her to understand exactly. Too many questions now needing answers. Why had her father suddenly turned up? Where had he been? The intervening five years hadn’t been kind to him. He looked older. Sicker. Colder than he ever had before. When had he approached Hugh? How long had Hugh been keeping this from her? And more importantly, why?

  As her lungs burned from the frigid air sawing in and out of them, Minerva realized she already knew the answer to the last question. Hugh had done whatever was necessary to save his own selfish, shallow skin and hadn’t given a damn how she would feel! Or how her sisters would feel . . . What in heaven’s name was she going to tell them? Hurt made her want to run and tell them now, but common sense told her now was not the time.

  Hugh emerged out of the darkness alone.

  “He won’t bother you again.” He came to stand in front of her. “I’m sorry you had to suffer that. I thought I had fixed . . .”

  Her hand shot out without her realizing, and slapped him hard in the face. He recoiled, stepping back, his expression wary.

  “Let me explain . . .”

  “There really is no need. Even a monkey like me can work it out!” She pushed his chest hard with flattened palms. “You looked after yourself, didn’t you!”

  “Minerva, it wasn’t . . .” She pushed him again, putting all her weight into it.

  “You did whatever you thought was necessary to maintain your convoluted and selfish charade!” Another push. He made no attempt to defend himself. No attempt to stop her. “You are a liar, Hugh Standish! A lying, self-centered, untrustworthy, two-faced scoundrel! And I want nothing more to do with you!”

  She ran then, not caring that his jacket fell from her shoulders into the mud, not caring that every carriage driver in the long line of them waiting outside the assembly rooms could see her in this state, dashing back to the sanctuary of the retiring room and bolting the door behind her in case he had the poor sense to follow, then sinking to the ground in a heap.

  At least she expected no less from her father. He was a wastrel. Morally moribund and terminally hideous. She had hated him all her life but had always known where she stood. But Hugh . . .

  He had manipulated her with charm and played her like a fiddle. She’d fallen for his story and agreed to lie for him. Fallen for every supposedly well-meant good deed. Fallen for every honeyed falsehood that had dripped out of his practiced seducer’s mouth. Fallen for him. All of him. Completely.

  Fallen in love.

  With the worst sort of scoundrel.

  What the hell was she going to do?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “She said to put it in writing, my lord.”

  Hugh gaped at his butler. “Writing?”

  “Yes, my lord. I am sure you are familiar with it. It requires pen and ink and paper. There is some in your dressing room. Shall I fetch it?” Payne deposited the glass of brandy on his nightstand. “I did tell you to tell her about her father.”

 

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