for her to return, and if she didn’t do so promptly, one of them was bound to follow after her.
“Your grandfather’s not coming back, is he?” she asked.
St. Clare gazed down at her, his hand still holding hers. “Does it matter?”
“Not to me,” she said. And she meant it. “To put it in terms you might understand…I’d take you in your underclothes.”
He huffed a laugh. “Is that what I told you?”
“You did.”
“Well. Your underclothes are a vast deal more pleasing than mine.”
There was a heaviness in her chest that prevented her from laughing with him. She had too much of a sense of what he’d lost on her account.
She drew his hand to her lips and pressed a kiss to his bruised knuckles. “I have a little money of my own. A small income meant to sustain me in the event that Beasley Park passes out of my control. It isn’t much, but—”
His brow furrowed. “Maggie—”
“—two can live as cheaply as one, I’ve heard.”
“I’m not a pauper, my love.”
“I-I know that,” she said, stammering a little. She didn’t know it, actually. It was merely an assumption.
Nicholas Seaton had appreciated the value of money—the vast difference it could make in a person’s life. She couldn’t imagine St. Clare respecting it any less.
He’d have put something by, surely. Something to live on if ever his grandfather withdrew his patronage. She’d have bet her last shilling on it.
But whatever it was, it would never be enough to equal what he’d given up. Had she not forced him to go to Market Barrow, he’d never have been obliged to reveal himself as Nicholas Seaton. The Allendale title would have one day been his. He’d have been rich and powerful—entirely free from the unpleasant associations of his past.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve ruined the whole scheme, haven’t I? All because I insisted on going with you to the Crossed Daggers. And now—”
“Hush.” He cupped her cheek, and leaning down to her, brushed a kiss to her forehead. “The game’s not over yet.”
St. Clare ascended the stairs to the drawing room with Maggie on his arm. She was clad in a fashionable dinner dress of dark blue-gray silk. It was cut low across her bosom, with elbow-length sleeves that gently hugged her slim arms. Glass beads adorned the fabric, making her skirts sparkle as she walked.
She was a creature of magic. A beautiful blue-eyed sylph or fairy. And she was his, at last. All his.
A smile built within him as he recalled how she’d looked last night, standing outside the tavern, a smoking flintlock in her hand.
People underestimated Maggie Honeywell at their peril. She might be weaker than she’d once been. Her health more fragile. But what she lacked in physical stamina, she more than made up for in spirit. In heart.
He glanced down at her. The grave expression on her face provoked a twinge of conscience.
She believed that what had happened in Market Barrow had driven Allendale away. That she was to blame for his leaving.
It was the furthest thing from the truth.
St. Clare knew his grandfather. If he’d really intended to abandon him, Allendale wouldn’t have slunk away while St. Clare slept. The earl would have confronted him. Would have told him that he had no more use for St. Clare now that he’d been exposed as a bastard.
It was nothing less than Allendale had said countless times before.
Indeed, on many occasions during the past several years, the earl had seemed at great pains to remind both St. Clare and himself that he had no use for his grandson aside from securing the title.
St. Clare had often wondered. And when Allendale had suggested accompanying him to Somerset to meet Maggie, St. Clare had wondered even more.
No. His grandfather wasn’t gone for good.
That wasn’t to say that St. Clare hadn’t experienced a minor shock when he’d woken and found Allendale gone. And it wasn’t only that he’d left without a word, but that they were expected at Beasley Park for dinner that evening. In his absence, St. Clare had but two choices: either send his regrets or attend alone.
Sending his regrets wasn’t an option. Not with Maggie depending on him.
Besides, he’d realized something last night. He wasn’t afraid of facing his past. There had been something profoundly liberating about declaring his identity to the mob of villains inside the tavern. Not only his real name, but the fact of his parentage.
Maggie’s hand tightened on his arm as they crossed the landing. The drawing room lay