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hospitals or asylums to care for wounded war veterans. And more recently,he’d commissioned actor Patrick Hennessy to look after her when she visited the theater district to foster clever new projects that generated income for her charities.
    He hadn’t wanted Tess to know he was so concerned for her welfare. There was no point in advertising his involvement with her charities either. As soon as he returned from London, he would remind the actor of his promise to keep quiet, Ian noted.
    His outsized protectiveness was largely the reason he hadn’t fought having to wed her. He felt obliged to save Tess from a scandal he had caused.
    By marrying her, he would also be making reparations of another sort. Although for good reason, he’d been the one to send Richard off to war in the first place, thus changing Tess’s fate irrevocably.
    At least Lady Wingate should be pleased by the marriage, Ian surmised. The baroness’s violent reaction to their wanton conduct had seemed a bit overplayed, now that he had time to consider it. In fact, he suspected her ladyship of trying to throw them together, much as she’d done four years ago at Tess’s comeout ball. But if she wished to promote a love match between them, this was hardly the way to go about it, forcing Tess to choose between her beloved charities and ruination.
    “Your carriage is ready, your grace.”
    His reflections interrupted by the Wingate butler, Ian donned his greatcoat and beaver hat and stepped out into the rain.
    He likely wouldn’t sort out his complicated feelings for Tess any time soon. And just now he had to driveto London to procure a special license for a marriage neither of them had anticipated … and she, at least, violently opposed.
    The impending termination of his bachelorhood didn’t exactly fill him with delight either, Ian admitted. Yet he couldn’t deny that it had crossed his mind recently to court Tess himself. Indeed, for the past several months—ever since Lady Wingate had insisted her goddaughter was coming out of mourning—he had toyed with the notion of seriously considering matrimony, and of making Tess his first choice.
    He’d doubted she would be amenable to his suit, though. He had done too good a job of deliberately antagonizing her.
    And now, Ian thought with a sardonic twist of his lips, it probably served him right that he had to deal with the extreme ill will he had purposefully sown.
    Shaken and dismayed, Tess was grateful to reach her bedchamber at Wingate Manor without encountering anyone. She couldn’t bear to face the baroness or any more gawking houseguests just now. Not when she had to struggle with such a life-altering decision.
    As Tess let herself into her room, the weight settling on her chest made it difficult to breathe. She was aghast to think she would have to marry Rotham despite their mutual antagonism—and furious at herself for letting this disaster come to pass.
    Yet you will be facing a worse disaster if you don’t accept his offer
, she reminded herself. Not only wouldscandal render her an outcast in society, her precious charities would be devastated.
    Tess didn’t doubt that Lady Wingate would carry out her threat to ally with the entire ton against her. The baroness actually had ties to Rotham’s family by marriage; Judith’s late sister-in-law had been his maternal aunt. But they might as well have been related by blood, given their forceful natures. Her ladyship had an acerbic wit just like Rotham, and had regularly run roughshod over her weakling husband before Baron Wingate’s untimely demise from a lung ailment several years ago.
    Rotham was just as strong-willed as Lady Wingate, perhaps more so, Tess acknowledged. He was a nobleman accustomed to getting what he wanted—which was one of the prime sources of friction between them.
    How could she wed a man who was so vexing, so overbearing, so dictatorial? His arrogant highhandedness made her blood boil.
    “If anyone could induce me