He leaned toward her, gesturing her close as if he wished to impart a great secret.
She couldn’t help herself. She leaned in.
“You know,” he said simply, “that if I’d wanted to be gentlemanly and agreeable, I could have charmed you. In an instant.”
A wash of heat passed through her, a flush that was half embarrassment and half acknowledgment of the truth. A beat passed while his eyes held hers. Oh, he was good at that—at giving her just that hint of attraction. Not so much as to put her off; just enough to intrigue her.
Free refused to be intrigued. “You could have,” she told him. “But charmed or not, I would still have been thinking.”
“I’m dishonorable and disreputable. I lie and I cheat, and I am telling you plainly that you are only a means to an end for me. I’m not telling you the truth, but overall, I’m not playing you false. You may not know the exact cards I hold, but you will know the score. I promise you that much.”
She didn’t trust him or his promises—not an inch. And yet he was right. He might be a dishonest man, but he’d not pretended to be anything else. It was a curious sort of honor.
“I am not playing you false,” he repeated. “Delacey is trying to ruin your reputation. Delacey intends to do far, far more, with lasting consequences. Tell me the truth, Miss Marshall. If you had the opportunity to beat Delacey, would you take it?”
She thought of her editorials, so painstakingly written—stolen from her, her heartfelt words twisted and butchered to serve causes that she hated. She thought of all the things that she’d heard Delacey say about her, coming to her on whispers and innuendo.
Every last ugly letter she’d received, every cowardly anonymous threat that she’d shoved in her rubbish bin, every sleepless night after he’d propositioned her.
She couldn’t lay all those terrible letters at Delacey’s door. But if he planned even a fraction of what Mr. Clark claimed, she wanted him held responsible.
He was trying to take what was hers. He was trying to beat her down, to make an example of her to all the women who looked to her and thought, “Well, she did it, so why can’t I?”
And he’d singled her out because she’d said no.
“Do I want Delacey held responsible?” she heard herself say. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
Mr. Clark nodded. “Then, Miss Marshall, you’re in need of a scoundrel.” He spread his hands, palms up. “And here I am.”
EDWARD LOUNGED IN HIS SEAT, letting Miss Marshall contemplate him. She’d leaned forward an inch, her nose wrinkling. Those things should have signified unease, but paired with the clear, calm gray of her eyes, they gave him no idea what she was thinking.
He had thought she would be easy to read. Ha. He had thought she’d be easy to manipulate. Another ha. She’d not bent an inch. He’d been wrong on both counts, and as confounding as this conversation had become, at least these next few weeks would be exciting.
Miss Marshall, he silently admitted, hadn’t needed to be any more exciting.
Her eyes focused on him unblinking. She tapped her lovely lips with a thumb. “What does Delacey have planned next?” she finally asked. “You said he was going to have one of my writers discredited. Which one?”
She hadn’t agreed yet to work with him, he noted. He’d been furious when he went through his brother’s notes and pieced together the extent of what James had planned. A few things still in motion, his brother had told him, with an airy wave of his hand. No doubt he thought those few things unimportant.
Miss Marshall leaned forward. “Amanda? Alice?” There was a ferocity in her tone, almost a growl at the back of her throat as if she were a mother wolf protecting her cubs.
“Not that I know of.” Edward frowned. “He wants Stephen Shaughnessy.”
She blinked and sat back. “Stephen? He writes one column a week. It’s purely for amusement.”
“Yes, but he’s a man.”
She snorted.
He tried again. “Shaughnessy is an excellent target because so many dislike him.”
Her jaw squared. “Only idiots dislike him.”
Protective and loyal, too. “Ah, but there are a great many idiots,” Edward told her, “and he inspires so many of them. He writes a column making fun of men. He’s Catholic. He’s Irish. He doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. You saw it yourself—matters are bad enough that his own classmates pelted him with dye.”
Miss Marshall winced. “That was one of his classmates?”
“Yes. There are a great many who are primed to believe the worst of him. And Delacey knows him—his father was a servant on his family’s estate. There’s some sort of bad blood there. I’m sure if you asked Shaughnessy, he could explain the details.”
She didn’t nod. Instead, she set her chin even more mulishly. “So what is Delacey planning to do to him?”
“Tonight, someone is going to remove a family possession from another student’s room and place it among Shaughnessy’s belongings.”
Her expression grew dark indeed. He smiled at her languidly, refusing to let her see the fury he still felt at that.
Having Stephen charged with theft, and likely removed from school, was what his brother had dismissed as a few small things, ones that need not concern either of them overly much.
Miss Marshall considered this. “What do you propose to do about it?”
“I’ll follow the man in, take the item, hide it somewhere outside,” Edward said. “I could do all that without you. But it would be best if Shaughnessy had an unassailable alibi for the evening. I trust you can make that happen.”
“I can get him away,” she said slowly.
“Excellent. Then we’re in agreement.”
She held out a quelling hand. “Not yet. I still don’t trust you, Mr. Clark. For all I know, you’re planning to arrange the particulars of this as soon as you’ve gained my compliance. And since you propose to go alone, there will be nobody to gainsay your word about what you discover. Convenient for you.”
That sense of excitement returned, prickling Edward’s palms. “What do you suggest instead?”
She gave him a brilliant smile. “You may remain as my guest here throughout the day. You’ll be a guest who never leaves, who interacts with no one else. That way, I’ll know you’ve not sent any messages arranging anything.”