The butler protested, but Stephen pushed right past him. “Josephine. Josie!”
“Good Lord!” A tall woman with dark hair and Josie’s green eyes swept into the foyer, her dark skirts swirling after her. “Are you mad? Barton, call for a footman to escort Lord Westman out.”
Ignoring the cold reception, Stephen bowed. “Mrs. Hale, a pleasure.”
“I wish I could say the same. Now, get out of my house, you useless philanderer.”
Well, he supposed he deserved that one.
“Speaking of your daughter,” he said. “Is she home?”
“As though I would allow you to speak to her.”
“God’s breath, what is all this noise?” Joseph Hale hobbled down the stairs, his walk stiff and jerky.
Westman made another sweep. “I have come for your daughter’s hand.”
Both parents frowned at him, and he added, “In marriage.”
“Too late!” Josie’s mother said, waving her arms. “Too late.”
Stephen swore his heart stopped for a moment, and he felt all the blood drain from his heart to pool at his feet. “What do you mean, ‘too late’?” He said the words slowly, carefully. But inside it was a fight to keep calm, to stop himself from sprinting up the stairs and tearing the house apart searching for her.
“She’s already engaged.”
Stephen breathed again. Not much, but a tiny bubble of oxygen forced its way into his paralyzed lungs.
Engaged. Not married.
She was still his.
“To Lord Crutchkins,” her father declared. “His lordship has made her an offer, and my daughter has accepted.”
Stephen laughed. He couldn’t help it. Josie with that old codger. Josie with that elderly, weasel-faced peer, who couldn’t even walk without the help of a cane? A day with Josie and the man would expire from heart palpitations.
Mrs. Hale snapped her fingers at him. “You laugh, sir?” She snapped again. “Pray, what do you find so amusing? After all, were it not for you, my daughter would not be in this humiliating position.”
“Then allow me to do all I can to get her out of it,” Stephen said. “I am here to claim your daughter’s hand in marriage.”
“Ridiculous,” Mrs. Hale spat. “You cannot marry her. You’re a rake, a libertine.”
Stephen felt the blow but allowed it to glance off him.
“Your family is penniless, a step away from debtor’s prison.”
He shook his head. “Madam,” he warned.
“Added to that, everyone knows the Doubledays are liars.”
Stephen clenched his fists and held back his temper.
“There is nothing you can say that will persuade me to allow you—the enemy of my own good, decent family—to marry my daughter.”
Stephen forced a thin smile. “Am I to assume, then, that you would prefer it if I did not call you mother?”
“Oh!” She threw her hands up. “Get out! Get out of this house! Get—”
But Stephen wasn’t listening to her anymore. A shimmer of pale ivory had caught his eye, and he looked up the stairs to see a slim figure in a long white gown standing at the top.
