Free The Marriage Wager by Jane Ashford Page B

thought. It was his duty to his family and title, and he always did his duty. But what if he could have a woman who challenged and interested him rather than a frightened little mouse? Despite the gossip and annoyance, it was still an interesting concept. It was, he supposed, the main reason he was here. He was about to follow the sounds and find Emma when a small, thin woman burst into the room, her hands pressed to her pale cheeks. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” she said.
    Colin examined her. Her garishly colored gown had a streak of dust along the hem. Her graying brown hair was coming out of its pins on one side. With her eyes darting nervously about the room and her rather prominent front teeth, she looked like a cornered rabbit.
    “My lord!” she gasped. “So sorry. Things are a bit… I have been trying to keep her here, you see, until you… but Emma is so… forceful. I am afraid I have made her angry.”
    “You are Arabella Tarrant?” he asked, thinking that this Tarrant, at least, did not seem to fit the profile he had been given.
    “Oh! Yes. I beg your pardon. I am so… Edward’s aunt, you know. I believe I had the honor of meeting your mother at a ball years ago. Not that she would remember me, of course, but I thought at the time how—”
    “What is going on?” Colin asked, recognizing that she would veer off onto irrelevancies unless he intervened.
    Arabella clasped her hands together on her chest and assumed an excessively pained expression. “You will have to excuse me, my lord,” she said. “I am all at sixes and sevens. There has been such scolding, and running hither and thither, and that creature Ferik keeps bellowing at my maids. I really do not think he is a suitable servant for—”
    “Yes, yes,” interrupted Colin, losing patience. “May I speak to Lady Tarrant?” One of his discoveries today had been Edward Tarrant’s knighthood, which he had found both incongruous and annoying.
    “Yes, that is why I wrote to you. Emma is leaving, you see, and I… I thought she… that is, you… er, that the two of you should talk before she goes.”
    “Leaving this house?” asked Colin. He was very much in favor of that. It was not only shabby, but as far as he could see it was totally disorganized as well. And he wished Emma’s association with the Tarrant family cut as soon as possible.
    “No, no, the country. England. She planned to take the boat to France tonight, but…” Arabella’s timid glance grew sly. “I, er, managed to hinder her preparations a bit.” Her thin features took on a sanctimonious expression. “I don’t know what may have passed between you, but I thought you should at least say farewell,” she added.
    Colin looked at her. She was not the sort of person he encountered in the normal course of things. But his life seemed to have toppled right out of the normal course, he thought wryly. “Thank you,” he said.
    Arabella beamed at him. “ Very happy to be of service, my lord.”
    He sighed. It was clear he would pay for this favor in some as yet unstated manner.
    “Ferik,” cried Emma’s voice from the back of the house. “Have you found them, Ferik? If not, hang Jim by his toes over the cookstove until he tells you what he has done with those trunks.”
    “Yes, mistress,” replied the deep voice, in a tone that said the giant interpreted her orders quite literally.
    An inarticulate squawk of protest followed this threat. “Oh, dear,” said Arabella. She wrung her hands. “I had better go and see…”
    “Why not tell her that I am here?” Colin suggested.
    “Yes. Yes, I will. One moment.” She scurried out.
    There was a short silence, then Emma’s voice came again, saying, “What? What have you done?”
    The silence that followed was thick and ominous. Colin felt his lips twitch as he imagined the confrontation. By the time Emma swept into the room a few minutes later, he was having to work hard to suppress a smile.
    Her appearance sobered him,