No Marriage Of Convenience - No Marriage Of Convenience Part 21
Library

No Marriage Of Convenience Part 21

For a while they just kissed in the silence of the library, with the low crackle of the fire the only other

sound, that is, except for the soft sighs that escaped her lips as he pulled her closer.

His fingers caught the ribbon binding her braid and gently plucked it free so her hair fell loose. She shook her head, sending her hair tumbling over her shoulders in a wild tangle. Her eyes were now hooded in a sultry gaze as she watched him.

His siren, his Boadicea, his Aphrodite. She inflamed him with this madness, this sickness, this curse of being an Ashlin.

"I thought you professors praticed celibacy," she teased.

He leaned back and smiled at her. "I have, that is, until you came into my life."

"Oh, go on," she said. "You expect me to belive that?"

He let go of her and straightened his shoulders. "Yes, because it is the truth. I took my teaching vows very seriously-even after I inherited the title, for I thought then that I would still be able to return to Oxford."

"But that was months ago. You mean to say you haven't...well, what I mean is, in all this time, you haven

't...""Taken a mistress?" he finished for her. Mason laughed. "Even if I could afford one, I wouldn't. I'venever viewed sex the way my brother or father did. I always assumed that it should occur between twopeople who love each other and who stand on that commitment as a lifelong vow." He shrugged. "Ratherold-fashioned and foolish, I suppose."

Riley shook her head. "Not at all." She slanted a shy glance at him. "But with all that said, why are you kissing me? Practice?"

Mason was asking himself the same question. What the devil was he doing, kissing Riley?

"I know," she said, waving her hand at him before he could articulate an excuse, even a poor one. "This is an aberration."

"It's not that," he said, wondering how he could explain the way Riley made him feel, and how impossible it all was.

She backed away from him and headed toward the door.

He caught her by the arm. "Don't leave, Riley. Not yet." He heard a small sigh slip from her lips."I am sorry, milord. You must think me the worst type of Cyprian. But I am not. This was an aberration,and I promise you it won't happen again."

As he watched her flee from the room, he realized she was wrong on both counts.

He didn't think of her as a lightskirt, nor was the evening an aberration.

It was, he suspected, only the beginning.

As he started after her, he heard the crackle of parchment underfoot. Looking down, he realized she'd left her papers. Gathering up the pages, he was about to put them in a stack for her when one of the lines in the text caught his eye.

My Lord Ashlin, your kindness will always be remembered by our family. It was a line for a character named Aveline.

Obviously this was the play his brother's money had been squandered to finance-and from which Riley intended to pay them back.

Apparently, financing a play also gave a patron the added benefit of having a character named after him.

No wonder Freddie had given Riley so much money. The idea of being immortalized as a romantic hero would have been far too much of a temptation for his vain and frivolous brother to pass up.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he'd never asked what the play was about-something rather important,he gauged, considering his family's future rested in these words.

Since he doubted Riley would want to see any more of him this night, after his second blunder into her private affairs, he caught up the loose pages, out of order as they were, and settled down in the comfortable high-backed chair near the fireplace to decipher the story.

None of it made sense at first, considering most of it had annotations and deletions and cross-references to other scenes. Obviously the play Riley seemed so confident about was still a work in progress.

Something she had neglected to tell him.

From what he could tell, the heroine, "poor, lost Aveline," was being forced to marry the "despicable and aged Lord Tamworth," while at the same time she pined for her lost love, the "beloved and faithful Geoffroi."

"Romantic drivel," he muttered, after scanning the first few pages.

But as he continued to piece together the story, he found himself caught up in Aveline's adventure. Somuch so that when he got to the next to the last page where Aveline was making a long declaration to herbeloved, he found himself clinging to her every word. Especially when it appeared she was about toconfess the truth amongst all the play's deceptions.

I am not the woodcutter's daughter; in truth I am- Mason flipped the page to find the answer, but realized the one he held was the last. His gaze quickly

scanned the room to see if there were any more pages to be had. As he was about to give up, he spied a bit of white sticking out from beneath the secretary that sat on the other side of the room.

He sprang from his chair, crossing the room quickly, and dropped to his hands and knees, reaching and

stretching for the last elusive piece of the puzzle.

Finally his fingers were able to draw the page into his greedy grasp, but much to his ire, the page was nothing more than the cover sheet to the script.

Still, the words emblazoned across it took him by surprise.

The Envious Moon-A Dramatic Comedy Presented by the Players of the Queen's Gate Theatre...by

R. Fontaine.

Riley? Riley had written this play?

Mason sat back on his heels, holding the page up to the light to see if he had read it correctly.

Even on the second glance, and a third, just to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him, her name

remained as the author.

Mason shook his head.

This woman he'd assumed to be no more than another spoiled pampered London feline, this renowned

mistress to King and country, not only lived in the attic of her tumbledown theatre, wore reworked clothing until it was threadbare, and managed her company of misfits through long hours of hard work- but she also managed to write her own plays.

As he looked down at the notes scribbled in the margins and the crossed out and cross-referenced lines covering the pages, he realized how little he'd truly known of the woman he'd asked to move into his house and into his family's lives.

And even more startling was how much he wanted to know her.

In the wee hours of the morning, Del sauntered into his mother's sitting room. He strode across the floor to where she sat at a small table opposite his uncle, the Duke of Everton, playing piquet.

"Hello, Mother," he said, leaning over her shoulder and giving her a sloppy buss on the cheek.

"Winning?"

"Of course," she snapped, pointing at the pile of coins before her.

Del knew his mother cheated, but had never dared broach the subject. Besides, she was always happiest when she was beating some hapless player at her favorite card game.

"Your Grace," he said, bowing to his respected relative.

"Delander," his uncle said, laying down his cards. "Your mother was just telling me you've decided to get

married. About time."

Del grinned. "And to a veritable angel, as fair as a rose in the morning, as innocent as a-" He couldn't think of anything innocent enough, so he finished by saying, "Well, you get my meaning."

"That's all very well, Allister," his mother snapped, obviously unhappy about having her winning hand interrupted, "but your uncle and I are having quite a time placing the girl. You say she is a relative of Lord Ashlin's?"

"Yes. Miss Riley St. Clair. She's just come in from the country."

"Whereabouts?" his uncle asked.

Del shrugged. "I never thought to ask."

This didn't please the Dowager in the least. "I don't see how this girl is connected to them. Can you, George?" she asked her brother.

The Duke shook his head. "Never heard of her before and I thought I knew all the St. Clair relations, though they are a strange lot-has anyone ever determined how Lady Felicity fits in?"

"That nitwit?" the Dowager said. "She's no more a St. Clair than Biggers is my twin sister," she said, nodding at her long-suffering abigail who sat nodding by the fireplace. "She's a Dalrymple, related through their mother's side. And a distant one at that. But we weren't discussing her, we are talking about this Riley person. I find it quite vexing that her connection isn't all that clear. Mark my words, I will not sanction any marriage, Allister, until we have this straightened out."

"Then why not do it yourself, Mother?" Del suggested, taking a cake from the plate. "Why not call on the lady yourself? Tomorrow. I promise you will be as enchanted as I am-and you won't care a whit about where she fits in on the St. Clair family tree. She's a veritable paragon of virtue."

"Harumph!" the lady said. "We'll see about that."

"I think I might join you, Josephine," the Duke said. "It's been a long time since I met a paragon."

Chapter 10.