Deceived

“No.” She shut her lips very tightly. It was evident that no further information would be forthcoming on that topic. Their eyes met and held. He could feel the tension in her. She was desperate but she would never beg.

Marcus let out a long, careful breath. He could turn her away, in which case she would be ruined and left to molder in the debtor’s prison herself. He would like to see that happen. It would be a poetic revenge.

On the other hand, he could marry her and exact a different and rather more satisfying form of retribution.

Isabella was not taking the delay well. He was pleased to see that she was barely able to control her impatience. Good. He needed her to be so on edge that she would snap up his offer when he finally made it.

She walked over to the table and picked up the book that he had been reading, holding the spine to the light so that she could see the title. “Theoretical Naval Architecture,” she read aloud. “It would need to be theoretical since I am told that you are likely to spend the rest of your days in here, sir.”

Marcus cocked a brow.

“So?” he said. “What is your point?”

She flicked him a glance. “My point is that according to the jailer you owe a great deal of money. More than you are ever likely to be able to pay. Your family and friends are apparently unwilling to help you. Or perhaps—” she put the book down and looked up to meet his eyes “—as I suggested earlier, they do not even know that you are here? I am guessing that that is why you use the name of John Ellis. It is a sop to your pride and to keep your shame from being known in the Ton. So…you would not wish me to tell anyone your true whereabouts, or make your disgrace known…”

Her blackmail made him smile inwardly. It seemed she would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. But there was a problem. She had stumbled very close to the truth through making all the wrong inferences. It was certainly the case that no one knew he was in the Fleet and that he could not afford for the information to become public. It was not because he was ashamed of his debt, though. He was running a complicated operation and no one could know about it. Isabella could not be permitted to tell the world what she had deduced.

Even so, he would play the game by his rules, not hers.

“So you seek to persuade me to change my mind by offering to keep my presence here a secret if I agree to marry you?” He arched an eyebrow. “It seems an unequal bargain, even with some books and food and wine thrown in to sweeten the pill.”

He saw her fingers clench on her reticule. She could not conceal it—she was shaking. Oddly, the sight unsettled him. He could feel her desperation and he did not want it to touch him. He did not want to feel sympathy for her.

He did not care what happened to her. He would not care. He could not.

Isabella was watching him, trying to interpret his expression.

“You are not in a strong position to strike an agreement, are you, sir?” she said steadily.

“Neither are you,” Marcus countered swiftly. “How long would you survive in a hellhole like this, Isabella? For it is surely where you will end if you cannot pay your debt.”

He saw her shudder but she met his eyes with defiance. “My state is not as parlous as yours,” she said. “I can find another candidate for my hand.”

“A candidate for your debts,” Marcus corrected. “Do not dress it up as something it is not.”

His anger was seething again now, whipped to a rage by her blatant determination to buy herself a husband with the last of her money and prostitute herself. He held his fury in check by the merest thread, but she could sense it.

Her eyes sparked with a fury to match his own. “Very well. If you refuse me, I shall buy myself another debtor. Is that plain enough for you?” She whirled around on him.

“And then I shall tell everyone of your disgrace, sir. A peer of the realm incarcerated in the Fleet for debt and so ashamed that he would rather hide his identity than accept the censure of the world! What would the scandalmongers make of that, I wonder? Reputation is so fragile, is it not?”

Marcus caught her wrist and pulled her around to face him. “If anyone knows the answer to that, then it is you! What would the Ton make of a disgraced princess trying to buy a debtor to save her skin?”

There was a silence heavy with challenge. Beneath his fingers Marcus could feel the racing of Isabella’s pulse. Her skin was very soft. She felt warm and sweet. Temptation stirred, slicing through him like a knife. Instinctively his grip tightened, pulling her toward him. In another second she would be in his arms, her mouth crushed beneath his.

This time she was the one who stepped back, freeing herself from his grip. “I do not see why this needs must take much more time,” she said. “I have made a business offer and I am awaiting your final response. If you refuse me I shall simply proceed to the next man in here who will agree.”

That was direct. Marcus felt a certain admiration for her. And he knew she would have no trouble in finding a man. They would be running a sweepstakes for the privilege of taking her on, debts notwithstanding. The thought of her proposing marriage to any of his cell mates impaled him with an intense and entirely inappropriate jealously. Damnation, he must be addled in his wits, or at the very least be led astray by some other far more basic part of his anatomy.

“You will have no difficulty in finding a man if you are not too particular,” he agreed unpleasantly. “There are plenty such hopeless souls in here.”

At last he had driven her to breaking point. He saw the moment when Isabella’s composure snapped.

“I am desperate, too, you know!” The words burst from her and she could not erase a quiver of grief from her voice. “I am very tired of struggling—” She stopped, and Marcus saw her make a huge effort to steady herself. She was turning away, shielding her vulnerability from him. She pressed her hands together tightly. “This is nothing to the purpose.” Her voice was muffled. “I think that I should leave.”

Marcus put his hand on her arm. It was too late. It had been too late from the first moment she had made her outrageous proposition. He was damned if he was going to permit her to offer herself to some other debtor, and exchange a bottle of wine in return for a scrawled signature on a marriage certificate. If anyone were to wed her, it would be him, and then he would take great pleasure in turning the tables and taking settlement for everything that she owed him. She was his—at least until all debts were paid.

He looked at her. She had not moved but, despite her stillness, her heart was in her eyes. Marcus’s world shivered, spun and settled on a different axis.

“I will do it,” he said. “I will marry you.”

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN SHE HAD BEEN SEVENTEEN, Isabella had dreamed of marrying Marcus Stockhaven. This marriage, however, was not the stuff that dreams were made of. In deference to the occasion, Marcus had paid two shillings to a fellow prisoner to borrow a clean shirt but there had been no hot water for him to shave. The chapel was gloomy, with no floral decoration to brighten the atmosphere. There were no guests and no one to dance at the wedding. It was, in short, a miserable business.

The priest had to be prized away from his brandy bottle. He glanced at the special license with vague interest and looked with a great deal more energy at the fifty guineas Isabella proffered to encourage his participation.

Marcus was also scrutinizing the special license as they stood before the altar in the Fleet chapel. His brows rose infinitesimally as he scanned the lines.

“Who is Augustus Ambridge?” he asked. “As your future husband, I feel I have the right to know.”

“Oh…” Isabella felt confused. She had forgotten that she had been required to supply the name of a bridegroom in order to purchase the marriage license in the first place. Lacking any inspiration, she had chosen the first name that had come into her head, that of a gentleman who had been an admirer of hers in the two years of her widowhood, but whose intentions had never been either permanent or honorable.

“He is a…friend,” she said.

Marcus’s brows rose farther. “A friend? I see.”

“Not that sort of friend,” Isabella said. She could hear the thread of defensiveness in her tone and wondered why she felt the need to explain herself to him. She owed Marcus no information. He was to be her absentee husband only and, under the circumstances, it mattered nothing to him how she comported herself, since he could do nothing about it. Yet something in that steady dark gaze compelled her honesty.

It always had. The feeling unnerved her.

“He is merely an acquaintance,” she said. “I have a great many such.”

“I see,” Marcus said again, and Isabella had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from pleading her innocence. That was not the way she did things. Never complain, never explain. Those were the tenets of royalty.

Looking at Marcus, at the hard, uncompromising line of his mouth and the forbidding light in his eyes, she wondered how such a man could have ended by being incarcerated in the Fleet. If such a thing had happened to Ernest, it would have been no surprise at all, but Marcus was deep where Ernest had been shallower than a muddy puddle, strong where Ernest had been weak, perceptive where Ernest had been worse than insensitive. Or, more to the point, Marcus had been all of those things when she had known him before. Twelve years could bring many changes in a man. She must remember that she knew nothing of him now.

She fidgeted with her cloak to conceal her nervousness and distract herself from the thought that she was making a very big mistake. She had wanted to meet, marry and part, remaining a stranger to her husband at all stages of the process. Yet already she had broken her own rules. She felt more deeply involved than she had ever intended to be.

“You will see that I have crossed out Augustus’s name,” she observed, pointing to the document and adopting a crisp attitude to mask her feelings of vulnerability.

“So that I may insert mine?” Marcus said, scowling. “I think that probably stretches the legality of the situation.”

Isabella twitched the license from between his fingers and handed it to the priest. “The license is legal enough and with another hundred pounds the wedding will be recorded properly in the register. The marriage certificate will be enough to satisfy my creditors.”

Marcus took the quill from the desk and wrote his name above that of Augustus Ambridge on the license. He scored out the other man’s name with another thick black line, although it was already obliterated. His face was grim and Isabella’s heart sank. This felt terribly wrong and suddenly she was not sure that she could go through with it. She found that she was shivering and shivering, like a dog left out in the cold. She folded her arms tightly to try to comfort herself.

“Do you have any paper?” Marcus asked the priest.