Ferguson thought it was a mad plan - but if all went well, it wasn't any madder than Madeleine's decision to become an actress in the first place. Her onstage disguise would keep anyone from guessing who she was, and setting her up as his mistress would keep others from pursuing her.

In fact, as he followed her down the back stairs of Ellie's townhouse, he knew that the only real danger Madeleine faced was him.

She seemed completely oblivious to that aspect of their masquerade. She looked like the perfect spinster the ton knew, wearing one of Ellie's most demure gowns for her quick journey back to Salford House. He watched her hips sway under the white muslin, more obscured and therefore more tantalizing than the revealing breeches she wore on stage. When she reached the bottom of the stairs and glanced back up at him, her green eyes brimming with laughter, he nearly groaned.

Perhaps he was the one in danger, not she. Whether she was dressed as his sisters' chaperone or his supposed mistress, she had the same effect on him.

It was not a connection he would be able to discard lightly when both arrangements ended.

But she wasn't thinking of the future. Her eyes only held the pleasure of the present. "If I knew that becoming a mistress would win me a house of my own, I should have done this ages ago."

Ellie had suggested that Ferguson rent a house for Madame Guerrier so Madeleine would have someplace to return to. With a house of her own, no one could follow her coach to the Stauntons' as he had. He suspected his sister took malicious pleasure in suggesting a variety of expensive options to make their arrangement look more believable, but in this instance, he agreed with her.

Still, he had to warn Madeleine that this was not just a lark. He caught up to her and took her arm. "You would not want to be a mistress, Mad."

She tilted her head, considering. "There is something appealing about one's own house - and I must say I love the stage."

"You cannot have the house without the man who provides it," he said, stepping closer until she was boxed in against the wall of the small passage.

"Perhaps that would not be so bad either." But her voice betrayed her, and he heard the tremor of nerves. She wasn't nearly as provocative as she wanted to seem.

He tilted her chin up with his hand, a demanding gesture to prove his point. "Would you really want to trade your body for a house? Take a man into your bed so you can eat?"

She clamped her lips in a rebellious line.

"I do not think you would like that lifestyle, Lady Madeleine," he said, running a finger down her cheek. "You're destined for a proper marriage, not a string of protectors."

She finally looked away from him. He knew she recognized the truth of his statement, even if she was too stubborn to admit it. "Surely my carriage is waiting outside, your grace."

He heard the derision in her voice when she said "your grace," and he found himself aching to prove his point. "If you were really my mistress, Mad, you would only go when I said you may. The life of a mistress isn't nearly as free as you seem to think it is. In fact, if I wanted to take you up against this wall like a common streetwalker, there would be no other choice for you."

He wanted to shock her, and he succeeded. Her mouth formed a small "o" of surprise at his harsh tone, and seeing those moist, parted lips made him think of something else his mistress might do if he desired.

But he had not shocked her in the way he expected. "Is that really possible? Prudence and I saw an engraving once that made it seem so, but we could not fathom how it would work."

The woman was a menace. But her curiosity - and the slight tinge of pink as she realized what she had just asked - took the edge off his anger. "It is possible, minx," he said, "but not something we should discuss if you want to go home tonight."

Madeleine stopped smiling. "All humor aside, Ferguson, I hope you know how much it means that you are willing to help me. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to have an ally."

"If there is anything I can do to protect you, I will do it - and would have done it for your own sake, not just because you are now linked to my sisters."

He wanted to kiss her then, to thread his fingers through that glorious brown hair, which had been freed of its wig only to be stuffed into a tight chignon. More, he wanted to make her see that his desire to help her was more than just chivalry.

But she was still an innocent. And if there was any hope of letting her walk away at the end of the month, he had to ensure she remained that way.

He escorted her out the door and handed her up into the waiting coach. Josephine's husband Pierre would deliver her back to Salford House, and Josephine would sneak her in through the gardens. She was safe for the night.

She would be safe the following night as well. Her next performance was two nights away, giving him time to put their plans into motion. It also gave him time to consider his intentions toward her - and whether she might be willing to entertain those intentions.

He walked slowly back up the stairs to Ellie's salon. Madeleine was like no other woman he had ever met, either in the ton or the demimonde, but her real identity meant that he could not seduce her as he wished. She was the type of woman one would have to marry, even if he suspected she could be just as passionate as a courtesan if partnered with the right man.

But he didn't want to think of marriage now. Seeing Ellie again only reminded him of the price they had paid for a marriage gone bad. Their childhood was happy, until their mother died and took every ounce of their father's heart with her.

Ferguson did not intend to turn into his father, but it wasn't lost on him that the worst of his father's actions were always related to his title. After all, the man enjoyed spending time in Scotland when his wife was alive. But when the woman died, only a few years after he unexpectedly inherited the dukedom, he had cleared the Scottish tenants, devastating the estate he once loved for the riches it could add to his ancestral English lands.

Ferguson had just inherited the title unexpectedly himself. The last thing he needed was to ruin his heart over a woman like his father had, even if Madeleine made him mad for her.

When he reached Ellie's salon, he pushed open the door, wanting to thank her for her assistance. She still lounged on her divan, just as he had left her five minutes earlier. But she pressed one of her pillows to her face, and the silent shaking of her shoulders told him that she was sobbing.

He didn't know what to do, how to comfort the sister who had grown into adulthood without him. He felt the same helplessness as when his mother died, a feeling that had only grown as his father turned colder, until he finally realized their family would never be more than a menagerie of damaged creatures.

That was the day he decided to get himself banished to Scotland so he could escape.

But the cost had been leaving the rest of his siblings behind to fend for themselves. It was a price he was willing to pay at twenty-four, when he was too stubborn to seek a way to stay in London. Now, nearing thirty-five and responsible for them again, he only felt shame.

Ellie noticed him before he could leave. She hurled the pillow at him. "Go away!" she screamed, pulling herself upright and dragging a shawl around her shoulders as though preparing to chase him out.

He crouched next to her divan. "Ellie, I did not mean to hurt you like this."

She choked back another sob. Her face was splotchy with a redhead's unmistakable flush, her eyes puffy and rimmed with smudged kohl. He tried to offer her his handkerchief, but she swatted his hand aside and blew her nose into her shawl. It was an ugly, unladylike gesture, a measure of her contempt for him that she would rather ruin her garment than accept his help.

"You should have been here, Ferguson. How could you leave us with him? The twins needed you. I needed you," she said, her voice breaking on another sob. "And if you had been here, maybe Henry wouldn't have drunk himself to death and Richard might not have been so unbalanced."

He withdrew slightly, sitting on the carpeted floor with a hard thud. "I wasn't any better at dealing with the old man than the rest of you. And our mother's estate needed me too. If you had come with me when I asked you to, you would have seen how dilapidated it had become with the old man's neglect..."

"She's dead, Ferguson, and half the clan emigrated to America before you ever moved there," Ellie spat out, cutting him off. "Your leaving had nothing to do with that, and everything to do with feeling that saving yourself was more important than staying here with the rest of us and waiting for him to die."

He couldn't deny it, couldn't explain how the last six months he had spent living in his father's house before achieving his banishment had felt like he was being flayed alive by every disappointed stare. Ellie surely knew that look just as well as he did - and she had stayed in London to endure it.

"Why didn't you leave?" he asked. "If you didn't want to come to Scotland, you could have gone to the Folkestone estate after you were widowed, taken the twins in when their mother died."

"Don't you dare tell me that I could have behaved differently," Ellie said, blowing her nose into her shawl again. "Father wanted me to remarry, had started the arrangements before Folkestone was even cold. I merely followed your lead and made myself too notorious to be married off again so easily. Besides, until the current marquess finally decides to show his face in London, there's no need for me to leave this house."

"You had best hope he never returns, if you're spending as much of his money on this house as I wager you are."

"The trustees have never stopped my spending. I'm sure Nick will know why I'm draining his coffers," she snapped.

He raised an eyebrow. "Did you know him before you married Folkestone? I thought he left for the Orient before your wedding."

"If you had bothered to come to my wedding, I would have told you," she said. "I loved him once - almost eloped with him. But Father found out, and instead of merely forbidding me to run away, he knew he had to make me ineligible. Arranging for me to marry Nick's titled cousin was his idea of humor."

Ferguson felt the same cold rage he had always felt around his father. The man was a tyrant, an iron fist in a glove of ice rather than velvet. "So Nick left to avoid seeing you marry his relative?"

"Then the cousin died, leaving me a widow and Nick the heir. But Nick has never returned."

"Ellie," he said.

"Don't say anything," she said, her anger flooding back. "You should have been here, and there is nothing you can do to change the fact you weren't. I will help Lady Madeleine - but for her sake, not yours. Unless you promise that you will stay in London and be the head this family needs, I do not want to see you again."

He thought of his plan, of his desire to go back to Scotland and leave the English properties in the hands of his stewards. "I cannot say anything yet, Ellie. Once the twins are married..."

"So you intend to get rid of them through marriage? I never thought I would see the day, but you are becoming our father after all."

The words cut into him like a lash. He rose stiffly to his feet, not willing to acknowledge the truth behind the insult. "I will not turn into him, but I won't sacrifice my life for his estate either. I need time - and I think we all need time - to understand what to do."

"Don't kill yourself like Richard did," she said nastily. "At least he took Father with him. Your death would just be selfish."

He bowed. "I will endeavor not to disappoint you again. Now, if you will excuse me, I shall continue my metamorphosis into our evil father by going off and sacrificing a goat."

Her lips quirked at their old joke about the duke's satanic ways. He was glad to see the glimmer of a smile before she curled back into herself on the divan. His hand hovered above her hair, wishing they could say goodbye properly - but he had not said goodbye when he went to Scotland. She clearly did not want to hear it now.

So he left, ambling down the stairs so he didn't feel quite like he was fleeing. He had to find a way to make things right with Ellie - with all of his family - but that was not something he could achieve in a day.

First, though, he had to decide whether to truly be the duke. Every instinct screamed for him to return to Scotland, take up the life he had built for himself rather than the life that his inheritance thrust upon him. Every moment he stayed in London felt like he was being bound more tightly to his title - and if he was already using the old duke's favorite tactic of marrying people off to control them, how badly might he behave if he became the duke in earnest?

But returning to his old life would not make things any better for his siblings - and it wasn't enough to offer a woman like Madeleine.

He cursed as Ellie's indecently handsome butler showed him out the door to his waiting carriage. He couldn't think of what to offer Madeleine because he couldn't offer her anything - he needed to focus on getting her through the month with her reputation and virtue intact. Then, he would find husbands, or barring that, a better chaperone than Sophronia for his sisters, and go back to Scotland where he belonged.

And he needed to stop thinking of Madeleine as though she was already his, before the temptation to keep her overwhelmed his tenuous ability to be a gentleman.

-----

Note to readers: Ellie was a surprise when I started writing this book - she came out of nowhere and I loved her instantly. She'll show up again later in this book, but her love story is featured in The Marquess Who Loved Me if you want to see the world from her perspective :)