“I doubt that Mayne would offer his hand in marriage if it were still promised to another,” Felton said. “Yet is his sacrifice necessary?”
“It is,” Mayne snapped. Damn it, hadn’t they talked to Josie? Hadn’t they seen the state she was in, and the condition of her clothing? He had no wish to discuss the ins and outs of what happened to Josie with anyone. Ever.
“We are grateful for you coming to Josie’s rescue,” Annabel said, looking sweetly at him. “She needs someone to rescue her. Of course it will be hard for her to allow a gentleman to press his addresses after such a distressing experience.”
Finally someone appeared to be appreciating the gravity of the situation. “Right,” he said. “So could you please ask Josie to come downstairs—or I will go upstairs and fetch her myself.”
“As long as you are quite certain that you don’t wish to mend fences with Sylvie?” Tess asked.
“She returned my ring,” Mayne said, hearing a cold knife-edge in his voice.
“I was under the impression that you were deeply in love with Miss Broderie,” Tess insisted. “A gentleman in that situation may well weather a small disagreement, and win his way back into his lady’s graces by the following evening.”
“Even if I weren’t marrying Josie,” Mayne said impatiently, “I haven’t the faintest interest in chasing after Sylvie de la Broderie like a tame lapdog. What happened was between the two of us, and suffice it to say that Sylvie has made up her mind that I am not to her liking. My feelings in the matter are quite irrelevant.”
“Except they are not because you are marrying our sister,” Tess said.
Mayne’s lips drew back and he almost snarled at her.
Annabel stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. “Do forgive Tess’s sisterly anxiety,” she cooed. “Tess did not mean to imply that you would marry Josie if you still cared for Miss Broderie.”
“I don’t,” Mayne snapped.
Annabel smiled at him. “It is such a kind thing of you to do, to offer to marry Josie in this way. Almost chivalric, in fact.”
Mayne couldn’t even think what to say about that piece of idiocy. How could she twinkle at him when such a dreadful thing had just happened to her sister? His jaw clenched before he could tell her exactly what he thought of her smiling face.
Instead he bowed, turned around and opened the door. They were all a pack of weaklings, sitting around and talking of love and honor when Josie had been ravished. Why, they should be out beating the streets for the perpetrator. They should be holding Josie’s hand as she wept.
Josie wasn’t weeping.
She walked out of a bedchamber door just as he reached the top of the stairs. He came to a halt instantly.
“Josie.” Which was a stupid thing to say, but his mind seemed to have sunk into a bog. She looked pale, but composed and very beautiful. She was so beautiful that it struck him like a blow that anyone would touch her. Even looking at her made him feel like a madman.
“I came to marry you.” That didn’t come out right, Mayne thought. He was looking at her skin, what he could see of her neck, to see if there were bruises. Because he intended to repay the bastard, bruise for bruise…before he killed him, of course.
“To marry me?” If anything she turned even paler.
He cleared his throat. Josie may not have thought through the consequences. The possible child. Although surely women…
“Why would you want to marry me? Unless my sister—did you talk to Annabel?”
He scowled at her. “What the devil has Annabel to do with it? You need a husband. I intend to marry you. My uncle is here and he’ll do it.”
She was just staring at him, so he dragged a hand through his hair. “Look,” he growled, “I know I’m not the best bargain in the world. Sylvie just dropped me. In fact, I’m a pretty soiled piece of goods, if you want the truth.” A second later he was cursing himself. How could he bring up the question of soiling?
But she didn’t burst into tears, just stood regarding him silently. He squared his shoulders. “You need to marry, Josie. You are—are ruined.”
“I am? Are you sure?”
Of course, she was so innocent she probably didn’t even know what was entailed in being ruined. She probably didn’t even have the language to describe what happened to her. Mayne raked his hand through his hair again. “Yes.”
She seemed to shrivel a bit. Then her eyes narrowed. “Did my sisters tell you I was ruined?”
“Josie,” Mayne said, “there’s no need for your sisters to confirm the circumstances. It must be tremendously painful for you to talk about.”
“I’m not the same kind of person as Sylvie,” she said after a moment. “Sylvie is beautiful—” She held up her hand when he would have spoken. “If we marry, it would be because you are struck with the wish to serve as a knight in shining armor. But you thought to marry Sylvie because you were in love with her. You told me so yourself. Would you not wish to look for that same emotion elsewhere?”
“No.”
“I won’t be a very good hostess. You are sophisticated and urbane; I do not understand the ton very well, and as you know, I have not been a success.”
“You will be,” he said stubbornly, “if you want to be.” They were talking about things that didn’t matter a fig, not with the huge yawning grief burning a hole in his chest because of what had happened to her. To Josie. His Josie, now. “If anything, I’m too old for you.”
She smiled a little at that and Mayne’s heart lightened. Because he’d been reading women’s eyes for years, and Josie, young though she was, didn’t think he was too old. He could tell that.
“We are going to marry now,” he said, taking her hand and turning around. He didn’t wait to see if she said yea or nea. She was going to say yes. He’d never known, with more surety in his life, that this was the right thing to do.
They reentered the library to find that his uncle was sleeping on the sofa. Josie’s sisters and their husbands swung around to look at him, almost with alarm, Mayne noticed with some disdain. Not Felton, of course. Felton had been his friend for years now, and Mayne could read his every nuance. In Felton’s steady gaze was approval. He, if no one else, understood exactly why this marriage had to happen tonight.
The rest of them were fools, but Felton was a man of honor who clearly grasped, with his usual logic, that Josie was utterly ruined and in need of a husband.
Mayne shook his uncle until he came awake with a tumble of expletives quite unsuited to a man of the cloth.
“If it weren’t for your mother, I wouldn’t do this for the King himself,” he roared.
“Mother will be grateful,” Mayne said.
A moment later he had everyone where he wanted them. His uncle was yawning over a book of common prayer and fumbling with a special license. Annabel was holding hands with her husband, and Felton stood beside Mayne.
“Where’s Griselda?” Tess asked suddenly. “Oh Mayne, you can’t marry without your sister’s presence. Griselda will never forgive us.”
“She’s busy at the moment,” Mayne said. “I’ll tell her what happened.”