“Poor man.” She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket in her gown and dabbed the blood away.
He reached down for his wig and attempted to mold it into some semblance of its original shape.
“Don’t bother. I like you better without it. You look agreeably dissolute.”
“I do?” He looked startled but not displeased. But then his face returned to a grim line. “Constance—” he whispered, adopting the rather self-serious tone he always took when he was about to bore her with a pontification upon correct behavior.
Instead of listening, she spun on her heel and followed her brother down the hall. She was not prepared to discuss the oddness of what had just happened, and in any case her brother would certainly not wait for them to parse the strangeness of her intense desire to drag Apthorp to her bedchamber.
When he didn’t follow her, she reached back for his wrist and pulled him after her down the hall, hoping a show of brisk congeniality would reassure him that they did not need to litigate the fact that he had just kissed her in a way that left her vibrating from her belly to her heels.
He let her. He seemed as dazed as she felt.
Westmead threw open the door to the billiards room and gestured at a sofa.
“Sit down,” he ordered them.
They sat, side by side, like two naughty children.
“Be honest,” he growled. “Is there a need for a special license?”
“No, Archer!” she sputtered, trying not to laugh at the idea she might be carrying Apthorp’s child. She suspected Lord Bore would no sooner take her virtue prematurely than he would parade through Windsor Castle in his small suit, his performance in the powder closet and a certain illicit members’ club notwithstanding.
Apthorp cleared his throat and took her hand in his. “Your Grace, I sincerely apologize that I let my emotion and affection for your sister overcome my gentlemanly propriety just now. I assure you that Constance’s honor is safe in my hands. There is no undue haste; if you are amenable, we will post banns and be married at St. James’s Church after the parliamentary session concludes.”
Archer paced, his black frock coat trailing him like the feathers of a crow. She distracted herself from her nerves by discreetly tracing her middle finger along the inside of Apthorp’s palm. When he subtly squeezed her hand, as though to shore her up, it made a prickly feeling dance upon her spine, rather like the sparking of joy at unexpectedly good news.
“Fine,” Archer said suddenly. “If you want to do this foolish thing, I will not stand in your way.”
Ah, but victory was warm. She could feel it flooding through her like the waters of a soothing bath.
She gave her brother her meekest, most grateful smile. “You are so kind, Archer. Of course, it goes without saying that we will need to do something about Julian’s waterway bill. If it’s allowed to languish, our future will be limited to my dowry, which I doubt will be sufficient to keep me in the immoderate comfort to which you have made me accustomed.”
She winked at him. Her great facility for spending his money was an old joke between them. The kind that took its humor from profound veracity.
Archer was not amused. “If you expect this marriage to redeem his reputation, you will need a very clever plan to carry it off. The evangelicals are still parading in the streets as we speak.”
“My dear brother, have you ever known me to lack for a clever plan?”
Constance had truly missed her calling on the stage. Apthorp could have sworn she’d felt it just as deeply, what had happened in the closet. And yet now she was her usual effervescent self, sharp and fizzy as a brut champagne.
He, on the other hand, could just barely get through his lines. Kissing her had made pudding of his brain. His head was still thick with the incense and jasmine her skin exuded when he’d brushed his lips along the hollows of her collarbone.
God, she was disarming. Lush and vulnerable as a dewy maiden when touched, yet canny and self-possessed as a woman twice her age when speaking. And yet despite her airy tone, she gripped his hand like he was her sole attachment to this earth. He simply didn’t know what to make of her.
Westmead glared at him, and he realized he’d been caught staring at her in wonder. He lifted his eyes to the duke’s angrily tapping fingers.
Westmead turned his eyes back to his sister. “I never doubt your ability to craft a plot, Constance, but even with the most careful management, I am not certain any amount of coin or influence can repair the damage that’s been done to Apthorp’s bill.”
Constance waved this off. “It can. I have it all worked out.”
“Does he?” he drawled, raising a brow pointedly at Apthorp as though to ask if he was sitting on the sofa in silence because he had a head injury, or if he had merely ceded his will to Constance.
It was possible he did have a head injury. Westmead’s fist had alighted on his jaw with all the delicacy of a cannon blasting into a puddle. But more likely, the trouble was that he simply could not outthink the outrageous pleasure of feeling Constance Stonewell’s finger rubbing circles on the inside of his palm.
“We have a strategy,” he affirmed, pulling his hand away. “Though it will not surprise you that the social aspect of it rests with your sister.”
Constance smiled at him like a cat who’d been served foie gras.
“Indeed,” she said. “First, we need the family to make a show of support. It needs to be understood that to cut Apthorp is to cut the Rosecrofts and the house of Westmead. We’ll start with a public appearance in the Rosecrofts’ box at the opera tomorrow. You will grace society with one of your rare outings and make a great show of being protective and intimidating and Apthorp’s greatest friend.”
“That won’t be enough,” Westmead said. “This goes beyond operas and ballrooms. If we can’t win back political support—”
“We can. I intend to enlist my godmother’s support. She will help us with the evangelicals. She might even pick off a few Tories.”
Westmead laughed. “Lady Spence? Not likely. Her impulse will be to cut us both entirely. She’s flirted with the idea ever since your stunt with those foxes on Boxing Day.”
“Nonsense. She has been itching to save my soul ever since you sent me to the nuns. You will seed her sympathies by requesting guidance in preparing me for marriage in the absence of our mother. Say I’ve gone wayward like my father. I’ll handle the rest.”
Westmead nodded, as though this was a normal conversation. It was terrifying to watch them when their full powers were aligned. The duke and Constance had gone from being outsiders of ill repute—dispossessed children of the most infamously dissipated man to grace the peerage in a century—to influential members of society in the span of the last half decade. Westmead had furnished the financial power and amassed a bloc of seats in the Commons, while Constance had beguiled the beau monde with her charm and lavish entertainments and ability to make intriguing introductions.
He needed to think clearly or his own will would be lost to the house of Westmead’s machinations. He did not intend to be treated like a hapless damsel in distress; when it came to politics, he was capable of captaining his own redemption. And if he wasn’t, he deserved the failure that awaited him.