Deprived of both his dream and his much-needed sleep, he yanked open the door, feeling both sluggish and cross. “Delia, for God’s sake,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes, “are you trying to wake the dead?”
“So it would seem, since I’ve been standing out here pounding away for ages.” She didn’t wait to be invited in but shoved her way past him. “I was beginning to fear you’d already heard and the shock caused you to keel over. And given what’s happened, that’s quite a reasonable assumption on my part, although—”
“What are you talking about?” he interrupted, wide awake now. “What’s happened?”
“Evie’s gone. She must have left early this morning.”
Max’s gaze slid to the bedroom door, thinking of last night. “She’s probably just gone out,” he said, looking again at his cousin. “To the shop, or something.”
Delia shook her head. “I woke to find a note of farewell from her on the mantel. And her clothes are gone—her old ones. She left her new ones behind. Not that I blame her for that after what’s happened.”
Max frowned, realizing this was the second time Delia had referred to some catastrophic event. “Damn it, Delia, what are you rattling on about?”
“This.” She pulled a newspaper from under her arm, one he’d been too somnolent to notice until now, and thrust it at him. “Today’s edition ofTalk of the Town.”
“That gossip rag?” he muttered, taking it from her fingers. “What could possibly be so important about—”
He stopped, his half-formed question answered as he read the headline splashed across the front page.
DUKE OF WESTBOURNE? OR DUKE OF SEDUCTION?
He scanned the words below the headline, trying to assimilate their meaning, but his wits felt thick like tar. Something about torrid letters and clandestine meetings and Evie Harlow.
He let out the foulest oath he knew.
“My sentiments, exactly.” Delia leaned forward, her finger tapping the paper. “They know you bought Evie’s clothes—”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know, but it’s there. If she read that, it would explain why she left the clothes behind, although I don’t think Evie’s really the sort to read the scandal sheets. Either way, the accusation in the paper seems to be that while courting Lady Helen, you’ve also seduced dear Evie, making her your mistress. And that you did it all behind Helen’s back, making a fool of her, and me, and all of society.”
“Helen has no claim on me, nor I on her,” he cut in, feeling the need to say something, and deciding it was best to start with the one thing he could absolutely refute. “There is no romantic understanding between Helen and me. Things never got far enough for that, and Helen would be the first to say so. She’s angling for a far better catch than meanyway, trust me on that.”
“And Evie?” She gestured to the paper. “There is mention of secret meetings at your house, arranged between the pair of you. You and Evie? It’s absurd. I can’t think of two people less likely to engage in such a tawdry arrangement. Where do they get such ridiculous ideas?”
Guilt lashed him like a whip. Those arrangements had all been his, and his alone. She’d said it was wrong, that she couldn’t meet him alone, that it wasn’t proper, but he’d waved aside such pesky, inconvenient notions of morality, persuading her to come anyway.
“It says,” Delia went on in the wake of his silence, “that you deliberately introduced the girl into society to cover the affair you two were conducting. And they’re not sure, they say, if you ruined an innocent girl and made her a strumpet, or if she was a strumpet already, with an eye for the main chance, but they are determined to find out the truth. Truth?” she added with a sound of contempt. “They wouldn’t know truth if it bit them. Evie is as innocent as a lamb. As for you, I know you would never, ever ruin a girl—”
She broke off, and he knew something in his countenance must have given him away. “My God,” she whispered, staring at him in horror, a slow, dawning awareness coming into her expression. “You mean, some of this dross is actuallytrue?”
“Of course not. At least—”
He broke off, appreciating that there was no way to explain or justify. It had all seemed such a lark at first, but from the moment he’d kissed Evie on the ballroom floor at Westbourne House, everything had changed, and though she was too much of an innocent to appreciate that fact, he had no such excuse. He ought to have put a stop to the whole thing then and there, but God help him, he just hadn’t had the will. From that moment on, he’d wanted her too much for common sense, too much for caution, too much even for chivalry. And Evie was now paying the price.
In the silence, Delia stared at him, appalled, grasping the gist of what he had not said. “Oh, Max,” she said with a sigh, “what have you done?”
He tore his gaze away, looking at the scandal sheet in his hand, knowing that by tomorrow, it wouldn’t be the only one speculating about Evie’s character and smearing her reputation. So much for a lengthy, proper courtship. In light of this story, there was no time for such a thing.
She’d already lost her virginity to him. Now, if he could not persuade her to marry him, she would also lose her good name. She’d be ruined because of him, probably for life. He could not, he would not, allow that to happen to her.
“Max, what are you going to do?”
He looked up, meeting the concern and disappointment in her eyes with a hard, determined look of his own. “Isn’t it obvious?”
Without waiting for an answer, he dropped the paper onto the table by the door. “Where is Evie now?”
“I don’t know. As I told you, when I got up a few hours ago, she was already gone. She’s at her shop, I suppose. She may know about this by now. But she may not.”
