She pressed her rosy lips together, as if holding in a great secret that longed to escape. “My daughter is not yet twelve,” she admitted grudgingly.
Anthony gave her a disdainful smile. “You didn’t waste any time, did you? How long were you married to Paget before you whelped?”
She flared up at him, just like the Marissa he used to know. “It’s not like I had any choice in the matter,” she retorted. “I was engaged to be married to Sir Richard, as you recall.”
“Oh, yes. I recall everything,” he said. “I remember how desperate you were to break your engagement. So desperate you begged me to elope with you to Gretna Green.”
She closed her eyes, fighting to regain her control. After a few moments, she opened them. Her stare was once again cool and remote.
A reluctant admiration stirred within him. Marissa would never have reined in her temper so quickly. Lady Paget was obviously made of stern stuff.
“What is your daughter’s name?” he asked abruptly.
A muscle in her cheek jumped, but she gave him a fierce scowl. “Why these pointless questions, Captain? Please get to the business at hand and be done with it. I have no intention of spending the entire afternoon in Wapping.”
He shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest. “My point is simple. I assume that you would do anything to protect your daughter, is that not correct?”
Marissa had always been pale, but what little colour remained in her cheeks leached away. Her perfect features froze into immobility. Except for her blazing blue eyes, she might have been carved from alabaster.
“Why … why would you ask me such a thing?” she stuttered. “Of course I would do anything to protect my child.”
“Then we shall deal very well together,” he said, not bothering to hide the triumph in his voice.
She gasped, swaying in her chair. He launched himself up from his desk and caught her by the shoulders as she began to slide off the polished seat.
“Damn it, Marissa!”
Anthony kept a firm grip on her shoulders, letting her head rest against his stomach. Guilt lanced through his gut. He clamped down hard, resisting the compulsion to sweep her out of the chair and into his embrace.
Her slender body trembled under his hands. He couldn’t see her face, couldn’t even tell if she had actually swooned. The rim of her bonnet not only obscured his view, it was poking him in the gut.
Carefully, he slid her across the polished seat of the chair to rest against the high ladder-back. With a quick tug, he untied her bonnet and dropped it to the floor. Her corn silk hair, coiled around her head in tight braids, gleamed in the dull November sunlight coming through the window. Like her simple pelisse, her grey kid gloves and her sturdy reticule, her glorious tresses were as neatly contained as her emotions.
Until he had made his thinly veiled threat against her daughter, that is.
He hunkered down before her, taking her hands in a gentle clasp. “Would you like a brandy? It will help to revive you.”
She gave a small shake of her head. “No. Please give me my reticule.”
He plucked it from the floor by her chair, where she had dropped it. “What do you need? Smelling salts?” He began to rummage around in the voluminous bag.
“My handkerchief, please,” she said in a thin voice.
Pushing away the growing remorse that threatened to destroy all his exacting plans, he dug around in the overstuffed reticule until he felt a square of starched linen. “What in God’s name are you carrying around in this thing?” he grumbled as he extracted the handkerchief. “You could store a frigate’s cargo in here.”
She ignored him, keeping her eyes closed as she blotted her forehead, cheeks and then her full, ripe lips.
His mouth suddenly went dry. He remembered those lips very well. They could take a man to heaven. “Marissa, are you sure you don’t want a brandy?” Of its own accord, his voice had fallen to a deep, husky note.
She opened her eyes. A gaze as hard as diamonds — and just as cold — stared back at him. She jerked her hands from his loose grasp. “I did not give you leave to use my name, Captain Barnett. Do not do so again.”
The treacherous warmth stealing over him fled under her withering look. Anger — his daily companion — took its place. He welcomed it.
He rose to his feet, resuming his perch on the edge of the desk. “Now, Marissa,” he chided. “We’re the oldest of friends. Why should you stand on ceremony? You never did before.”
“I was young. I didn’t know any better,” she retorted.
Her temper brought the roses back to her cheeks and the heat back into her eyes. For the moment, the ice maiden stood in no danger of fainting.
“And neither did I,” he said in a hard voice. “But you came to me, remember? You begged me to save you from marriage to Paget. You swore your undying love. Your eternal devotion if I eloped with you to Gretna Green.”
“I was only seventeen,” she protested.
“And I was but eighteen.”
In the world’s eyes, Anthony had been a man when he and Marissa lost their virginity to each other. But he had been so sheltered, raised by his widowed father in a small country parsonage. When he was ten, his father had died and Anthony had been dispatched to live with his distant cousin, Lord Joslin, and his family. He spent the rest of his youth on their estate in Yorkshire, deep in study, preparing to follow in his father’s clerical footsteps.
Through those years, he had also fallen in love with Marissa, and she with him. Or so he had always thought. Anthony’s mouth twisted into a sour smile, remembering how young and foolish he had been. In many ways, Marissa had always been more worldly than he.
“Do you want to know what happened that night?” he asked. “After Edmund discovered us together in my bed? After your father horse-whipped me and drove me from Joslin Manor?”
She blanched and, for a moment, he thought she might faint after all. But she took a deep breath and regained her composure.
“I don’t know what kind of cruel game you are playing, Captain,” she replied with quiet dignity. “But if reciting your tale will bring this tawdry scene to a conclusion then, yes. I do want to know.”
Anthony gave her a humourless smile. “I’m sure you’ll find my tale of woe edifying, Lady Paget.”
He pushed up from his desk, tasting the bitterness in his mouth and throat. It was always thus whenever he recalled those months after he first arrived in London — those months spent waiting for her to come and find him. Those months of back-breaking work and near starvation, his life barely a step up from the mudlarks who scavenged along the Thames.
“After discovering us naked in each other’s arms,” he said, prowling around his office, “your brother ran straight to Viscount Joslin. Your father had two grooms hold me down, then he beat me until my back was shredded raw.”
Marissa made a choked sound, but held her tongue. What could she say to soften such a painful and humiliating memory?
“Did you know Edmund stood there grinning while he watched your father beat me?” he asked, curious to find out how much she knew about the scene that remained burned into his memory.
“No,” she said, her eyes betraying her shock. “And Father forbade me to ever mention your name again.”
He resumed his prowl around the room.
“After he beat me half to death, your father threw me out of the house without a shilling to my name. Thank God the housekeeper took pity on me and gave me some coin to make my way to London. Her brother was a clerk at Nightingale Trading. She said he would find me work if he could, or at least give me a few days’ shelter while I looked for means to support myself.”
“Was there no one else you could turn to?” she asked, looking miserable.