Free The Marriage Trap by Elizabeth Thornton

precise hour of four o'clock that morning, when Lady Cardvale was awakened by her maid's scream.
    “Someone broke into Lady Cardvale's dressing room and was discovered by the maid,” Lord Sedgewick said. “That's where the maid sleeps, you see. The poor girl was knocked on the head and the thief got away with the Cardvale diamonds.”
    Jack was incredulous. “And you suspect Miss Hill?”
    “Not I,” responded Lord Sedgewick. “But she was nowhere to be found when a search was made of the hotel, and when she did turn up, there was blood on her gown. Lady Cardvale is an excitable woman and, I'm sorry to say, my wife is not much better. They jumped to the conclusion that it must be the maid's blood. That's when Ellie, Miss Hill, told us she'd been with you at four o'clock this morning.”
    Jack felt as though a noose had tightened around his neck.
    He'd looked at his watch at four o'clock when he was with Aurora. If Miss Hill and Aurora were the same person, some lunatic might expect him to do the honorable thing and offer to marry her. Not that he would. He'd rather renounce his estates and title than marry a woman who had deliberately set out to catch him in her net. And if Aurora was Miss Hill, that's what it would amount to.
    He thought he was wise to every feminine trick. . . .
    He stopped right there. The thought was preposterous. There had to be some other explanation. It was true that Miss Hill wasn't nearly as docile as she appeared at first glance. He'd discovered that when he danced with her, but she wasn't anything like Aurora.
    Aurora was feminine, intriguing, captivating. From the moment she had walked into the Café des Anglaises, he could hardly stop staring. Part of her allure was that she wanted to be left alone, and he had resolved to change her mind.
    When he tried to picture Miss Hill, he couldn't quite bring her into focus. Before she'd opened her mouth, he remembered thinking that she had a trim little figure under her frumpy gown. But a trim little figure couldn't make up for that viper's tongue.
    If Aurora and Miss Hill turned out to be the same person, they could hang, draw and quarter him before he would marry such a deceiving jade.

Chapter 5

    Ellie's head was beginning to ache. She'd been up all night, without a wink of sleep, and now the maids were serving coffee and rolls. She was nervous, waiting for the moment when Lord Sedgewick would appear at the door with Jack. She was sure that Jack would support her alibi—that went without saying. But that wasn't the same thing as supporting
her.
No man liked to be duped. What she feared was losing his good opinion, but that was Aurora speaking. He already disliked Ellie Hill, and she didn't know why it mattered to her.
    They'd had a short respite to wash and dress for the new day, then they'd returned to Lady Sedgewick's parlor to wait for Lord Sedgewick and Jack. Cardvale, who was sitting in the chair closest to the fire, was lost in his own private thoughts. Dorothea and Lady Sedgewick were on the other side of the fire, heads close together, conversing in whispers, and Harriet, whom Ellie considered her staunchest ally, had been sent away, as though she were too innocent to hear the salacious details of Ellie's adventure with Lord Raleigh. And that's what Ladies Sedgewick and Cardvale were hoping for—a salacious scandal to titillate their appetite for the seamier side of life.
    They would be disappointed. Nothing much had happened, and Jack, she knew, would not elaborate on the simple facts. Not that it mattered. Alibi or no alibi, her reputation was in tatters. No respectable young woman would show her face in the Palais Royal at night, let alone accompany a man of the world to his rooms. The fact that she'd gone with him to escape the riot did not signify, not with these two ladies. They would have been happier if she had allowed herself to be trampled to death.
    She'd kept Milton's name out of it and she hoped he had the good sense to