A Most Unsuitable Man
A MOST
UNSUITABLE MAN
Jo Beverley
* * *
Jo Beverley’s magnificent Georgian novels have made her one of today’s most beloved storytellers. Now the New York Times best-selling author presents a new novel set in the scintillating, dangerous Malloren world....
Damaris Myddleton never expected to inherit a vast fortune, but she’s ready to use it to buy the most eligible title in England. When disappointed by a marquess, she simply sets her sights higher—on a duke. But then there’s plain Mr. Fitzroger, the dashing but penniless adventurer who first saves her from social disaster and then saves her life.
Entangled in mystery, danger, and forbidden intimacy, Damaris fights not to surrender her freedom and her heart to a most unsuitable man....
The Malloren novels are
“GLORIOUSLY ROMANTIC. ”—Mary Balogh
“EXQUISITELY SENSUAL. ”—Library Journal
“STORYTELLING AT ITS BEST!”—Rendevous
* * *
Praise for Jo Beverley’s
magnificent Malloren novels
“Beverley beautifully captures the flavor of Georgian England.... Her fast-paced, violent, and exquisitely sensual story is one that readers won’t soon forget.”
—Library Journal
“Jo Beverley has truly brought to life a fascinating, glittering, and sometimes dangerous world.”
—New York Times best-selling author Mary Jo Putney
“Delightfully spicy... skillfully plotted and fast-paced... captivating. ”
—Booklist
“Delicious.... [A] sensual delight.”
—New York Times best-selling author Teresa Medeiros
“A fast-paced adventure with strong, vividly portrayed characters.... Wickedly, wonderfully sensual and gloriously romantic.”
—New York Times best-selling author Mary Balogh
“Romance at its best. ”
—Publishers Weekly
“A fantastic novel. Jo Beverley shows again why she is considered one of the genre’s brightest stars.”
—Affaire de Coeur
“Storytelling at its best!”
—Rendezvous
“A page-turner... a breathtaking and powerful love story. ”
—Romantic Times (Top Pick)
ALSO BY JO BEVERLEY
Winter Fire
Skylark
St. Raven
Dark Champion
Lord of My Heart
My Lady Notorious
Hazard
The Devil’s Heiress
The Dragon’s Bride
“The Demon’s Mistress” in In Praise of Younger Men
Devilish
Secrets of the Night
Forbidden Magic
Lord of Midnight
Something Wicked
* * *
A MOST
UNSUITABLE MAN
A SIGNET BOOK
* * *
Contents
Prologue
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Epilogue
* * *
Prologue
December 26, 1763
Rothgar Abbey, England
On this, the day after Christmas, the great hall of Rothgar Abbey was merry with holly, ivy, and mistletoe, all tied up with festive ribbons. The massive Yule log burned in the hearth, and spiced oranges scented the air.
The Marquess of Rothgar had invited many of his family to his home this Christmastide, and this chamber had been the heart of the celebrations. Now, however, the guests were drawn to a very different sort of entertainment.
Scandal.
The Dowager Marchioness of Ashart, short, plump, and ferocious, had just stormed into the house. She had brushed aside the welcome of one grandson, the Marquess of Rothgar, and commanded her other grandson, the Marquess of Ashart, to leave this hated roof immediately.
No one was surprised at that. The Trayce family, headed by Lord Ashart, had been at daggers drawn with the Mallorens, headed by Rothgar, for a generation. All of the guests had been astonished that Ashart had attended the gathering, and no one was surprised by the dowager’s outrage. But how could he respond to being ordered around like a puppy? All eyes turned to the handsome, dark-haired young man who was notorious for his temper.
“Why not stay?” Ashart asked the dowager with remarkable mildness. “There are family matters to discuss.”
“I wouldn’t stay in this house if it were the last one in England!” she snapped.
He shrugged. “Then allow me to present to you the lady who is to be my bride—Miss Genova Smith.”
Not a few of the guests gasped, while others began to compose in their minds letters to friends describing the shocking announcement. Ashart, to marry his great-aunts’ companion!
“What?” screeched the dowager, turning red as a holly berry. Then she looked around with furious eyes. “I heard the Myddleton chit was here. Where is she?”
All eyes turned to a straight-shouldered young woman in a green striped gown whose cheeks suddenly flushed with red. The color didn’t become her and she was no beauty to begin with. Her hair was an ordinary brown, her eyes blue, and her lips too thin for fashion. At the moment those lips were tight with anger.
Damaris Myddleton hated being the center of attention, but she’d been watching the scene in horrified fascination and growing fury. Ashart was hers.
When she’d discovered she was rich she’d determined on making a grand marriage. She’d had her trustees draw up a list of the neediest young, titled gentlemen in England. She’d studied it carefully and picked the Marquess of Ashart.
Since then, she’d visited his country seat and been approved by the dowager. Her trustees were even now negotiating with Ashart’s lawyers, drawing up marriage settlements. It was all settled barring the formal proposal and the signatures. He couldn’t marry someone else! He needed her money, and he was her key to her acceptance into the world of the aristocracy.
What should she do? Her instinct was to shrink away from so many unfriendly eyes but she would not be a coward. She stepped forward and curtsied to the old lady. “I’m glad you’ve arrived, Lady Ashart. I haven’t known what to do. As you know, Ashart is already promised to me.”
Silence fell, and it was as if a chilly draft brushed Damaris’s neck—a faint warning that perhaps she’d just made a terrible mistake. She glanced around, painfully aware of being an outsider. She had no blood connection to the Mallorens, and was here only because her guardian was Lord Henry Malloren. She came from a simple family and she didn’t know the rules of this world. Had she broken an important one?
Part of her wanted to run away and hide. But she would not—could not—let Genova Smith steal Ashart from under her nose!
Beautiful, blond Miss Smith broke the tense silence. “You must be mistaken, Miss Myddleton.”
“Of course she is,” Ash snapped.
That brought hot, angry blood to Damaris’s face and fire to her courage. “How could I be mistaken about that?” She swung to the dowager. “Is it not true?”
It seemed as if all the listeners held their breaths.
Lady Ashart fixed cold eyes on her grandson. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”
Damaris swung triumphantly to the marquess, but before she could demand an apology, Miss Smith reacted.
“You rancid fish!” she yelled at him. “Scum on the sewer of life!” Then she ran into the breakfast room and returned to throw food at him.
Damaris watched, as aghast as everyone else, but inclined to cheer Miss Smith on. She’d like to hurl some stewed fruit at the wretch herself.
But then Ashart went onto one knee, stained, messy, but still
gorgeous. “Sweet Genni, forgiving Genni, redoubtable Genni. Marry me? I love you, Genni, I adore you—”
“No!” Damaris screamed, her voice clashing with the dowager’s bellow of “Ashart!”
Damaris ran forward in a rage, but strong hands snared her from behind. “Don’t,” a man said softly in her ear. “You’ll only make it worse.”
Fitzroger. Ashart’s friend, who’d pestered her over the past days, preventing her from staying as close to Ashart as she’d wished. And look what had come of it! She struggled but was relentlessly drawn back out of the crowd, farther away from Ashart.
Then she heard Genova Smith say, “Yes, Ash, beloved, I’ll marry you.”
“No!” Damaris screamed. “He’s mine!”
A hand came over her mouth, and then another pressed at her neck.
Everything went black.
Damaris came to her swimming senses to realize that she was being carried upstairs. Carried by Fitzroger. She couldn’t find the will to protest, for behind her she heard chatter and laughter.
Oh, God. She’d lost Ashart! But worse than that, everyone was laughing at her. She’d mortified herself in front of the people she’d tried so hard to impress, among whom she’d hoped to belong. Now they were laughing at that silly Miss Myddleton who thought her wealth could buy her a place among them. Miss Myddleton, daughter and heiress of a man who, after all, had been little better than a pirate.
She was placed on her bed and could hear her maid Maisie’s anxious, questioning voice. She kept her eyes closed, as if that might change everything, make everything right. Someone raised her and put a glass to her lips. She recognized the smell. Laudanum. She hated opium and its lingering effects, but she swallowed it gratefully. She only wished it had the power to wipe away the past hour and let her react with more dignity.
The curtains were drawn around the bed. Voices became dim whispers. As she waited for the drug to take effect, Damaris’s mind whirled around and around disaster.
She could not bear to face any of those people again.
Who was she, after all? For the first twenty years of her life she’d known no finer home than Birch House, Worksop. It was an adequate house for a gentleman physician like her grandfather, but nothing compared to Rothgar Abbey or even Ashart’s decrepit seat, Cheynings.
Until a year ago, in fact, she’d lived in genteel poverty, for within months of marrying her mother, her father had gone adventuring and the little he’d sent home had not allowed for luxuries. Or so Damaris had been told. She and her mother had made all their own clothes and mended them again and again. Food had been of the simplest, much of it grown in their garden. They’d had servants, but clumsy young ones, because as soon as they were trained, they left for higher wages.
But upon her mother’s death, Damaris had learned the truth. Her father had become extremely wealthy, and he’d left nearly all his fortune to her. He had even arranged for a remarkable guardian if both he and her mother died while she was young. That guardian was Lord Henry Malloren, the elderly uncle of the great Marquess of Rothgar.
That was why Damaris was at Rothgar Abbey. Lord Henry and his wife had wanted to attend and they’d had no choice but to bring their unwelcome responsibility— Damaris—with them.
Damaris had been delighted to escape Lord Henry’s dull home and to have an opportunity to learn more about the glittering aristocratic world which would soon be her own when she became Marchioness of Ashart.
How had she ever thought to reach so high?
She should have known that a person didn’t change because of fine clothes and magnificent jewels. Covering a dung heap with silk, they called it in Worksop.
She didn’t truly belong here, and she couldn’t bear to face their sniggering tomorrow. As darkness gathered in her mind, she knew she would have to leave.
Chapter 1
At crack of dawn the next day a coach sped away from Rothgar Abbey as fast as the overnight snow would allow. Inside, Damaris prayed that they’d not be caught in a drift. Briggs, her guardian’s coachman, had dourly predicted that they’d not get far, and if they did it would snow again and stop the journey, but she’d poured out guineas until he agreed.
Being one of the richest women in England had to be useful for something.
What if she was pursued? The crunch of her coach wheels and the pounding of the horses’ hooves blocked any sound of pursuit—or perhaps she was deafened by the pounding of her own frantic heart.
“It’ll come to disaster; I know it will,” Maisie prophesied, for perhaps the twentieth time. Twenty-five-year-old Maisie was plump, plain, and generally merry, but today every line of her round face curved downward. “How’re we going to get all the way back home without being caught, miss?”
Damaris would have screamed at her except that Maisie could be the only friend she had left in the world. “I told you. We only need to reach the London road and buy tickets north. I’m twenty-one. The Mallorens can’t drag me off a public stage.”
Maisie’s grim silence said, I wish I were sure of that.
Damaris felt the same doubt. The Mallorens seemed to be a law unto themselves, and her guardian, Lord Henry, was a tyrant.
Perhaps they wouldn’t care. Perhaps they’d be glad to see the back of her.
The coach swayed as it turned out of the park of the abbey. It was probably irrational, but she felt relief at no longer being on Malloren property.
She began to look ahead. She would switch to a public coach at Farnham, then in London buy tickets north. Once back at Birch House... Her vision ended there. She had no idea what she’d do then. She’d probably be back in poverty, because her father’s will allowed her guardian to withhold her money if she didn’t live where he said and do as she was told. She would hate it, but she could survive with little. And it would be only until she was twenty-four—
Movement in the corner of her eye made her whirl to her right.
A rider thundered by her window. Fine horse. Fine rider. Wild blond hair flying in the wind.
Fitzroger?
No!
He cut off her coach. It shuddered to a halt and the coachman said, “Trouble, sir?”
The reply came in that crisp, cool voice that had tormented her for days. “I need a word with Miss Myddleton.”
Maisie moaned. Damaris wanted to. Instead of a means of escape, the coach now felt like a trap.
Fitzroger rode to the window and looked in. He was always plainly dressed, but now he looked the very picture of a vagabond. His blond hair curled loose about his shoulders, his shirt lay open at the neck, and he wore no waistcoat beneath his plain blue jacket. He was as good as undressed!
His ice-blue eyes seemed... what? Exasperated? What right did Ashart’s penniless friend have to be exasperated with her?
Damaris let down the window, but only to lean out and call, “Drive on, Briggs!” Cold air cut at her. Briggs, plague take him, didn’t obey.
Fitzroger grasped the edge of the window frame with his bare hand. He couldn’t hold back the coach by brute force, but that commanding hand unnerved her, preventing her from raising the glass between them.
Bare hand. Bare neck. Bare head.
She hoped he froze to death. “What do you want, sir?”
“But a moment of your time, Miss Myddleton.”
He released the coach and swung off the horse, calling for the groom to come down and take the animal. That snapped Damaris back to action. She leaned out farther and yelled, “Drive on, you spineless varlet!”
She could have saved her frozen breath. Despite the extortionate bribe she’d paid him, Briggs was abandoning her at the first challenge. If she knew how to drive, she’d climb up on the box and take the reins herself.
The wide-eyed young groom, in his frieze coat, gloves, and hat, appeared outside the window and took charge of the horse. Fitzroger opened the door, smiling—but at Maisie, not Damaris. “Return to the house behind the groom. I’ll bring your mistress back shortly.”
“No, he won’t. Maisie, do not dare to obey him!”
Maisie, the traitor, scrambled toward the door. Damaris grabbed her skirt to stop her. Fitzroger chopped sharply at her hand, shocking it open, and pulled Maisie free.
Damaris gaped at him, her hand still tingling. “How dare you.”
She reached for the door to slam it, but the man leaped into the coach and closed it himself. He took the seat opposite her and addressed the groom through the open window. “Take the maid up to the house, and keep quiet about this.”
“Aye, sir.”
Pure fury blazed through Damaris, and she reached for the holstered pistol by her seat. She knew nothing of guns, but surely one had only to point one and pull the trigger.
A strong hand closed over hers. He said nothing, but she was suddenly unable to move, frozen by his bare hand controlling hers and his cool, steady eyes.
She pulled free and sat back, tucking her hands back in her muff and directing her eyes to a spot behind his head. “Whatever you have to say, Mr. Fitzroger, say it and be gone.”
He leaned out of the window. “Walk the horses, coachman, and you might as well turn them.”
Back toward the house. She wouldn’t return—she couldn’t—but right now she didn’t see how to prevent it. Tears choked her, but she swallowed them. It would be the final straw to cry.
He raised the window, cutting off the bitter winter air, but trapping her in this enclosed space with him. Their legs could hardly avoid contact, and she could almost feel his heat.
“You don’t really want to run away, you know.”
She responded to that with silence,
“I’m impressed that you persuaded Lord Henry’s servants to carry you away. How did you manage that?”
“Guineas,” she said flatly, “which I have in abundance, and you, sir, significantly lack.”