To her dawning sense of horror, the Earl of Drake merely waved off her apology. “My dear, you are not the one at fault here. As anyone who knows you could tell, it is clearly this cad, Wilton, who is to blame for this.” He scowled at the younger man. “There is nothing for it but to arrange a duel. I would not be half a man if I did not defend my lady’s honor against a scoundrel like you.”
Abby regarded them both with distress. “You cannot mean this, my lord. I won’t have it.”
“Drake is quite right, my lady,” Riley said, giving his adversary a mocking smile. “A duel is necessary for the honor of all involved.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this is ridiculous. I thought such things had been outlawed. Besides, this is as much my fault as the Earl of Wilton’s,” she declared, scowling at her fianc;aae. She had never considered that things might go this far. “Can’t you just break it off with me? Declare I am unsuitable and that you are well rid of me? No one needs to be any the wiser about the precise reasons.”
Both men regarded her with expressions of astonishment. Riley Walker, whose wits she had already discovered to be quite sharp, apparently figured out what she was up to first. She saw the dawning awareness in his shrewd, considering gaze. The Earl of Drake, however, was too busy sputtering about the idiosyncracies of foolish women.
“She may have a point,” Riley told the Earl of Drake. Now his mocking smile was turned on her. “Perhaps she is not worthy of all this fuss and bother. At the very least if we duel, one of us will lie wounded at the end. I do not intend that to be me. Why not save yourself the pain and further embarrassment by cutting your losses now? No one knows of this incident except ourselves. Explain to any who ask that you have reconsidered the merits of such a match. There will be no scandal, no ruin for the lady and no messy, or quite possibly fatal, injuries.”
“You sound as if you have considerable experience in this area,” the Earl of Drake said, his expression grim. “But I can see the sense of your plan. Very well. I shall work out the details with your father, Lady Abigail. We shall speak of this no more. I would advise you, however, to stay far away from young Wilton here or face the consequences of a true scandal. Others might not be so generous with their forgiveness as I.”
“You are most gracious, my lord,” Abby said demurely, trying to keep any hint of relief from her voice or her expression. “I will most certainly take your advice to heart.”
When Drake had taken himself off, already looking rather pleased with his display of generosity, Abby finally allowed herself a small, congratulatory smile. One fianc;aae duly dispatched. The night’s work had been well done. There was just this one unfinished piece of business. She gazed cautiously at the Earl of Wilton.
“Thank you for seeing the sense in my proposal,” she said. “There was no need for bloodshed over something so innocent. Now, I believe it best if I do go inside before there is the very talk we sought to avoid.”
She had taken no more than a single step when his lordship’s fingers grasped her wrist and stopped her in midstride. His grip didn’t loosen even after she had paused.
“Not quite yet, my lady,” he said in a lethal tone that she found most worrisome. The expression in his eyes was fierce and altogether forbidding.
“My lord?”
“We have a few things to discuss, I believe.”
“None that I can think of, my lord,” she stated emphatically.
“Then you are quite wrong. Drake may have seen the sense in forgetting this incident because it suited his cowardly purposes, but the reality is that the end to your engagement will cause quite a bit of speculation. Given the length of time you and I have been absent from tonight’s festivities that speculation may well center on me and whether I have caused the ruination of yet another innocent woman.”
He actually sounded a bit distressed by the possibility. Abby hadn’t considered that he might find such talk hurtful. She had guessed he would be used to it. “I apologize for that, my lord.”
“Do you really?”
At his skeptical tone, her gaze shot to his. “Of course. I never meant to do you any harm.”
“Only to use me, was that it?”
Abby felt another flush of embarrassment steal into her cheeks. It was true. She had only been thinking of herself and extricating herself from that damnable betrothal to Martin Henry, the Earl of Drake.
Riley Walker, the Earl of Wilton, regarded her with what might have been a touch of admiration. She found that look extremely disconcerting. Shouldn’t he have been thoroughly disgusted with her just as Drake had been?
“You might have rid yourself of one fianc;aae tonight, Lady Abigail, but it would appear you are about to be saddled with another.”
She stared at him in shock. “What? Surely you are not suggesting...”
“Ah, but I am. If we are to avoid a scandal completely, it seems that I must step in to claim your hand.” He held up the one he’d been holding and brushed a kiss across her knuckles as if to seal the claim. “We will tell the world that our passions simply got the best of us the very moment we met and that true love could not be ignored.”
“But that’s a lie,” she declared, even as her heart thundered.
“Is it? I wonder about that. Perhaps you are too inexperienced to understand what happened between us tonight, after all. I, however, am not. I think you will make a most challenging wife, my lady.”
Panic streaked through her. This was untenable. She did not wish to marry anyone,
