The Geek Girl and the Scandalous Earl (15 page)

As they came closer, Jamie examined the woman as unobtrusively as she could. The beauty was dressed all in white, gold braids and borders edging the skirt of her gown. Her honey-brown hair was done up in more gold, chains, and braids decorating the mass of curls. Her heart-shaped face was covered by a small mask over her eyes, the slits edged in gold paint.

Wait
a
minute. That guy said Marilyn, didn’t he?

Before they could reach the steps of the balcony, the guy, who apparently was as stupid and cruel as he was bad at poetry, decided he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Grabbing her arm, he twisted it high behind her back, eliciting a cry of pain from her.

“You bedamned tease, you’ll deny me no further.” He started to drag her back into the garden, away from the lantern-lit path. His hand clapped across her mouth, muffling her terrified cries.

Oh
the
hell
you
will
, Jamie thought, and yanked up her skirt for a full-on run. She didn’t give a shit what year it was; she wasn’t going to stand by while a woman got attacked.

Ignoring the bushes that grabbed at her silver skirt, Jamie followed the sounds of the struggle. He couldn’t go very fast with Marilyn fighting like she was, brave woman. Jamie tried to be as quick and quiet as possible, realizing that surprise was the best way for her to overcome this quite possibly inebriated dumbass. He had a height and weight advantage against Marilyn and Jamie, but if she could get the jump on him, they’d get her away safe. She hoped.

He dragged Marilyn behind a large old oak tree, the secluded area lit only by the soft glow of the moon overhead. Throwing her against the trunk, he pressed his lips roughly against hers.

She thrashed against him, kicking and scratching wildly. He spread his legs, using one of his to pry hers apart.
Bingo. My chance
.

Jamie darted behind him, not daring to breathe. In a move worthy of a professional wrestling low blow, she dropped to her knees and punched upward as hard as she could. He barely made a squeak before dropping to the ground, coughing painfully.

Marilyn kicked at his face, but he caught the heel of her golden slipper with the hand not cupping his privates. She screamed, falling back against the tree as he pulled her off-balance.

“You bitch,” he rasped in a thin voice, rising into an awkwardly off-center crouch. “For that you shall suffer.”

“Leave her alone,” Jamie shrieked as she belted him in the ear as hard as she could. Her blow upset his already precarious balance, and he fell sideways onto an exposed root, head cracking loudly against the wood. Marilyn yanked up her skirts and ran back toward the house. After kicking the douchebag in the kidneys to make sure he wouldn’t give chase, Jamie followed.

Once they were back on the lantern-lit path, Marilyn turned to Jamie with a sob. She threw her arms around Jamie.

“Oh, thank you, thank you so much. I don’t know who you are or how you knew I needed help, but without you, Mr. Collins surely would have…”

“Shh, Marilyn, it’s okay,” Jamie murmured as she rubbed her back with a still-tingling palm. Jamie was shaking too, if she was being honest with herself. Her own encounter with attackers hadn’t been all that long ago, after all, and she wasn’t sure that the sick feeling of terror would ever leave her fully.

“How did you know my name?” Marilyn pulled back, lifting her delicate mask enough to wipe her tears away.

Jamie glanced over her shoulder. She sure as hell didn’t want to wait around for the drunken asshole, but she might miss Mrs. K if she went inside. Opting to take her chances with the rabid
ton
instead of the wannabe rapist, she hoped the woman wouldn’t mind lending her a hand.

Jamie left out the part about being from two hundred years in the future. She didn’t figure Marilyn would buy the truth. Jamie told her that she’d fallen in love with the wrong man and that there was no working it out. She needed to find him to say good-bye. Marilyn agreed to help her immediately, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It seemed that love was something that a mistress could understand better than a titled and landed gentleman. Men.
Go
figure.

Apparently, as Marilyn told Jamie, masquerade balls were sort of the free-for-all of the
ton
. Normally rigid rules were relaxed, braver members of the less-than-virtuous frequently found their way there, and it was sort of a game to figure out who was who. Mrs. Knightsbridge had certainly brought Jamie to the only society event that she could make it out of unscathed—if she was careful enough.

After Marilyn helped Jamie brush the dirt from her skirt and Jamie knocked the stray bits of bark from Marilyn’s, they were ready to navigate the ballroom. Marilyn had spied a few men earlier that might be the earl and was going to take Jamie along in order to find out for sure. Once she’d made a positive ID, Jamie would lure him out to the balcony and share one last conversation with the most maddening, bright, and wonderful man she’d ever met. It would have to be enough because there was no hope for more between them.

The noise inside was more than Jamie had been prepared for. Parties in her day were loud, crazy, screaming things full of throbbing bass and repressed cube-dwellers. She’d been expecting some nice string music and quiet chitchat. Boy, was she wrong.

She was almost there on the music, but the orchestra was having to saw hell bent for leather on their violins and cellos to be heard above the myriad conversations and gales of laughter from the raucous attendees. It was almost like home, but without the beer kegs and the strung-out stoners in the corner.

“Close to me now,” Marilyn reminded Jamie, as she skirted the edge of the dance floor. Jamie walked as close to Marilyn as her full skirt would allow. Jamie smiled at those who smiled at her, ignored the interested looks and downright ogles, and kept her heart as still as she dared. Mike was in there somewhere.

The first one Marilyn had seen was dancing with a lady dressed as a peacock. The brilliant blue-green of her gown and mask contrasted sharply with his lavender coat.
Ew
. Jamie didn’t have the heart to tell Marilyn that she was sure Mike would never be caught dead in a coat that color. It wasn’t his style.

When the orchestra finished their song and the partners bowed to each other, Marilyn hustled Jamie across the floor. The gentleman was speaking to an elderly lady in a rose gown and pink mask. Arm in arm, Marilyn and Jamie passed close behind him, and Jamie strained to hear what he was saying.

“…quite a crush, by all accounts,” he was saying in a nasal tone.

The older woman nodded her agreement. “Yes, Lady Wentworth must be quite beside herself. I say, Sir Andrew, have you seen Lord Somerset? I had so hoped he would dance with my eldest, Lydia…”

Marilyn looked at Jamie with a tilt of her head. Jamie shook hers in response.
Not
him.

They continued past the couple, and Jamie kept searching the crowd for a glimpse of those broad shoulders. The dark hair that curled around his collar. Those eyes that reminded her of Mexican hot chocolate. Rich, sinful, with the right amount of belly-warming spice.

The next man was in the card room: a gentlemen-only space that gave them a place to smoke, drink, and gamble away from the pestering presence of matchmaking women.

Jamie pressed her masked face to the crack of the open door. The men had discarded their own masks in the comfort and privacy of the room, so she was able to quickly see that Mike wasn’t among them. She was sort of hoping he’d be in there. At least there he couldn’t be dancing with some other girl.
Jamie, you are a jealous idiot.

With two of Marilyn’s ideas down and the hour growing late, the two decided to split up to find the final gentleman.

“He was speaking with the hostess last I saw him,” Marilyn told Jamie in the quiet of the hallway outside the card room. “Dressed all in black with a deep red mask. He was the height of Lord Dunnington, as I recollect.”

“Thank you, Marilyn. I really appreciate this.”

She smiled at Jamie a little sadly. “I believe that my debt to you goes farther than helping you locate a gentleman in a crowded ballroom. I shall take the right side. You search the left.”

Jamie nodded, gave her a quick hug, and wandered off in search of Mike.

Jamie hadn’t exactly realized how much safety Marilyn’s presence had lent her until she wandered through the ballroom on her own. She should probably have waited outside for Mrs. K. Men that had only leered before felt confident enough to proposition her and let their hands casually brush against her body. When she’d stomped the third man’s toe, some of them started to get the message and gave her a wide berth. The lessons continued until she’d made a complete circle around the perimeter of the large room.

She flopped down on a bench beside a potted palm. No sign of the man in black with a red mask. No conversation about the dashing Lord Dunnington. Where the hell was Mike? He’d said he would be here. Had Mrs. K already found him? Were they looking for her?

But more important, what if she didn’t get the chance to say good-bye?

Her heart locked in the iron grip of desperate sadness, she stood. She couldn’t do this to herself forever. It hurt too goddamn much.

When she made it back around to the balcony doors without sight of him, she slipped outside. The cool night air blessed her cheek, and she tilted her head up to the moon.

“Your protector is inside. You should go to him.”

Jamie froze. That was Mike’s voice, coming from the ground beneath the balcony.

“Micah, my darling, it was only a foolish misunderstanding. A woman in my position must have security, you know. If you were to renew our acquaintance, then I would have no need for Mr. Waites. Please, do say that you want me as I do you, for we both know that it is true.”

Jamie nearly blew her cover when the silence extended for a long moment, fearing that Mike was kissing Collette, but then his voice stopped Jamie from running toward them.

“Collette, there was no misunderstanding. I have no wish to renew our acquaintance. I have not forgotten your betrayal. I merely sought you out to inform you that your actions very nearly gravely wounded a young woman in my care. It will not be tolerated a second time. Now, I must take my leave.”

“In your care? You cannot mean that the trollop lives with you?”

Jamie crept closer to the voices, keeping herself hidden behind another potted palm. Thankfully, the Wentworths had spared no expense on their patio plantings.

Mike lost some of his cool. “She is in my care, and I will not tolerate another attempt to harm her.”

Collette lost some of the sugary sweetness in her voice. “Have you forgotten so quickly the last time you flouted Society’s dictums? You were ostracized, treated as a pariah. I held you close, ignoring the others who said I’d meet the same fate as your former mistress. Does my sacrifice and love count for nothing? You let this baseborn trollop abide in your home when I was never allowed to darken the door?”

“Your comfort, madam, was short-lived and selfishly done. I regret that I allowed myself the dubious pleasure of your company then. Louisa…” He trailed off, and a lump came into Jamie’s throat at the subtle, ragged note in his voice. “Louisa was special to me, and in my grief at her death, I formed an assignation with you. It was a mistake, one that I have paid dearly for and has since been rectified. My relationship with Miss Marten is of no concern to you.”

“Can you not see that I was desperate?” Collette’s voice was thin with anger. “I had not a farthing to call my own, nothing that you did not provide. What you see as my betrayal was merely a business matter. You must know that letting such a creature live with you will cause a scandal the likes of which you’d never survive. In any case, she cannot please you the way I do.” When she composed herself again and groomed her voice into that bedroom purr, Jamie snapped. As she strode down the balcony steps she heard Collette say, “Micah, that baseborn whore will never…”

Jamie snatched a handful of raven-dark hair and yanked Collette away from Mike. The black-haired hussy had been pressing herself up against him like a
Hustler
girl on a pole. Collette flailed her hands, shrieking bloody murder as Jamie slung her to the ground. Jamie bent down to yell into Collette’s blue-masked face.

“So, I’m a whore? Really. You don’t know anything about me!”

“Let me go, you Bedlamite!” Collette tried to slap her, but Jamie grabbed an arm and twisted it down into the dirt first.

“Not until we get some things straight,” Jamie snarled, and plopped down on the woman’s chest. Jamie pinned her arms down with her knees. Collette cried out, thrashing her legs, but Jamie had her good. Jamie grabbed Collette’s chin and forced her to look into her eyes.

“You listen to me, and you listen good.” Mike’s hand closed gently on her shoulder, but Jamie shrugged it off without looking back at him. “Mike doesn’t want anything to do with you. Not last week, not now, not a month from now. You sold him out, and he doesn’t owe you a damn thing.”

Collette pursed her lips to spit at Jamie. She dodged it in time, not acknowledging Mike as he moved to stand beside the two women, blocking the view from the balcony.

“Oh, that was so not smart. Mike is a good man, a great man. He’s brilliant and gorgeous and way too good for either of us, to be honest. He’s trying to court someone who won’t give him a flaming case of syph.” Jamie pressed Collette harder into the dirt as the woman squirmed. “If you know what’s good for you, then you’ll back the hell off and let him have his life, okay? That’s what I’m doing, and I love the guy! So get the hell out.”

Collette glared at Jamie but nodded. Probably because she couldn’t breathe with Jamie sitting on her.

“Good.”

Jamie stood quickly, moving away from the courtesan before she could grab for Jamie. Collette stood, trying ineffectively to wipe the damp streaks of dirt from the back of her skirt. Glaring at Jamie, she spoke instead to Mike, whose masked face was devoid of emotion.

“If this is the type of woman you prefer, then by all means, Micah, tup your whore. But you’ll regret it in the end.” With a longing look at Mike and a glare at Jamie, she snarled, “If you do not leave his house immediately, I shall see that you pay for this. Society’s bad opinion will mean naught in comparison to what I will see done to you. I do not make idle threats. You have been warned.” She limped away toward the front of the dark lawn.

Anger boiled inside Jamie as her chest heaved. She watched Collette go, wishing she’d slugged the bitch instead of sitting on top of her and threatening. It wasn’t even close to what she deserved. Too bad electric chairs hadn’t been invented yet.
Man, this time is turning me into a bloodthirsty wench.

A quiet clearing of Mike’s throat reminded Jamie that she wasn’t alone. Her anger dissipated instantly, hot shame taking its place. So much for not embarrassing Mike. So much for making a beautiful memory to last the rest of her life. Now when she looked back on this night, she’d probably remember the giant lecture that Mike was sure to give her.