Julia James - The Lady Most Willing

He cast her a glance that conveyed a censorious view of her pretensions. That look—he’d been reliably informed—was feared throughout London. Oakley was one of the oldest earldoms in the country, and Byron had learned at his father’s knee not to tolerate impudent and overfamiliar mushrooms.

Marilla didn’t even flinch. She merely patted his arm and dimpled up at him. “But I will forgive you, Lord Oakley. I know you must have any number of very, very serious matters on your mind. Men are so given to that sort of thinking.”

“I do not think it is necessarily a trait of the sex,” came a quiet voice in front of them. Fiona was waiting for her sister at the newel post. “Marilla, it is time that we bid the company good night.”

Marilla did have a very pretty pout. “No, don’t bow again!” she said gaily to Byron, who had no such intention. “We should not be on such terribly formal terms here, don’t you agree?” She pointedly looked behind them. Bret and Miss Burns had made it as far as the drawing room door before they started kissing again. “Obviously,” she added, “at Finovair we are not obligated to adhere to the very, very silly rules that London society requires.”

“Exactly,” Taran chortled, coming up from behind to beam at the girl. “We are all friends here.”

Byron shot him a silent snarl.

“I would contest that,” Fiona stated, putting a hand under her sister’s arm.

Marilla jerked away in a somewhat ill-tempered manner. But her face betrayed nothing but sweetness when she looked back up at Byron. “I think we should all be on familiar terms, don’t you?” she asked. “My name is Marilla.”

She had melting eyes, the color of cornflowers in spring. Ridiculously, Byron felt an overwhelming urge to flee, but stilled himself. It wasn’t her fault that her eyes were the same color as Opal’s.

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Taran said with his usual blustery cheer. “My nephew Robin, now, who will someday own this fine castle, he will be on the easiest of terms with a lovely lass such as yourself. Byron here is a bit stuffy. Always has been. He got it from his father. I tell you, I thought I’d seen it all when me other sister got married to a Frenchie, but Byron’s da was even worse. When she brought the earl—the old earl, that is—back to Finovair for the first time, I almost fled to the Lowlands. He was a humorless, obstinate old bastard who acted as if every Scotsman should kiss the toes of his withered slippers. I never blamed her when she flew the coop.”

Byron gritted his teeth. He’d heard the story a hundred times . . . from both points of view.

“Course, it only took a Scotsman one well-placed blow to lay the earl out flat,” Taran said, chortling. “Marilla and Fiona’s father did the honors. Took out that Englishman with a doubler to the jaw. No . . .” He paused. “I’ve got a detail wrong, I do believe.”

The company waited, some of them even looking faintly interested.

“It wasn’t a doubler,” Taran finished triumphantly. “It was a roundhouse. We didn’t ever see that pompous fart again in God’s green country. The man never met a Scotsman whom he didn’t find beneath his touch, and the same went for Englishmen. Didn’t have a friend in the world, to my mind.”

“My father had numerous friends,” Byron stated.

“Not one,” Taran contradicted. “Even sadder than that was the fact that Fiona’s da took him out with one blow. The man didn’t even get his hands in position.”

Byron heard a little moan. His eyes met Fiona’s. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who was finding Finovair Castle less than idyllic.

“My father was not given to common fisticuffs.” But he didn’t stop when he should have. “And I am not stuffy,” he heard himself saying. “As a matter of fact, I am on familiar terms with my many friends. My Christian name is Byron, and I invite you all to use it.”

Bret had one eyebrow raised now, and his face radiated compassion. Byron gritted his teeth again.

“As I said before, my name is Marilla,” the blonde chirped, patting his arm once more. “Now we will all be comfortable with each other! I shall look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning, Byron .” She said it with a breathy emphasis that made his jaw tighten.

Don’t be narrow-minded , he reminded himself, as Fiona grabbed her sister’s arm and hauled her up the stairs with what seemed unnecessarily forceful disapproval. True, Marilla was a lively girl.

His father would reject her on those grounds.

“Good work, boy,” Taran said approvingly. “Not that I want you to steal an heiress from under Robin’s nose. He needs the blunt more than you do. Pretty as a picture, ain’t she? I thought she was best of the bunch. Lady Cecily has a bundle of the ready as well. Why don’t you take Marilla, and we’ll reserve Cecily for Robin. Dang that lad, he’s missed all the fun.”

Byron headed up the stairs without taking leave of his uncle. There are limits to a man’s patience, and he had reached the limit of his.

He wasn’t pompous, he told himself. Or stuffy, or narrow-minded. That was his father.

He was just . . . irritated.

Chapter 10

The following afternoon

“Iknow it’s exciting to find yourself in a household with two eligible bachelors, even after the Duke of Bretton made that surprising proposal to Catriona,” Fiona said to Marilla, blocking their bedchamber door so that her sister couldn’t push her to the side and rush downstairs in hot pursuit of those very bachelors. “But you must play this right, Marilla. Neither of the other two gentlemen would be interested in a minx. Your behavior at blindman’s buff last night did you no credit, and you already have a mark against you as a Scotswoman.”

Marilla scowled at her. “I’m not the trollop; you are.”

“Just don’t play your hand too obviously.”

“If they think I’m a minx, it will be because your reputation ruined my chance at a good marriage before I even left the schoolroom,” Marilla said shrilly.

Fiona took a deep breath. “I am not under the impression that my lost reputation has, in fact, affected your eligibility for marriage. Your fortune has outweighed such concerns.”

“No one could possibly forget what kind of woman you are,” Marilla retorted. “I would likely be happily married by now if it weren’t for you.”

It was certainly true that there are some events from which no woman’s reputation can recover. An immodest kiss? Perhaps. A lascivious grope? Perhaps not. A fiancé falling from her bedchamber window to his death? Never.

Fiona had been labeled an uncaring trollop throughout her village by sunset on that fateful day; by week’s end, she was known throughout Scotland as a reckless fornicator. If not worse. The mother of her former fiancé spat in her path for a good three years at the merest glimpse of Fiona, and she wasn’t the only one.

No one seemed to care that when he fell, the lumbering oaf Dugald Trotter had been climbing up to her window without the slightest encouragement on her part. They were too busy being scandalized by her shameless ways—not to mention the fact that she had, in their version of events, “callously neglected” to inform Dugald that mere ivy cannot hold a man’s weight. Even those inclined to excuse frolicsome behavior between betrothed couples couldn’t seem to forgive her for not warning him.

Of course, any man with a functioning brain could have taken a look at the ivy below her window and come to his own assessment of its strength. But that was how stupid her fiancé had been, at least in Fiona’s uncharitable recollection.