How to Beguile a Beauty
Kasey Michaels
His head tells him he shouldn’t have her, but his heart… Tanner Blake, Duke of Malvern, promised his dying friend he’d take care of his true love. So how dare he covet the gentle blonde beauty for himself? His solution: find Lydia a suitable husband immediately. Lady Lydia Daughtry’s thirst for books far outweighs any desire to entertain gentlemen callers. Especially those chosen by the one man she never wanted to see again.Several rejected suitors later, Lydia still hasn’t found her beloved…but he may just be closer than she thinks!
Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author KASEY MICHAELS
“Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and never misses.”
—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts
“Michaels’ new Regency mini-series is a joy…You will laugh and even shed a tear over this touching romance.”
—RT Book Reviews on How to Tempt a Duke
“Known for developing likable characters and humorous situations, Michaels adds an element of danger and suspense to this sexy romp.”
—RT Book Reviews on Dial M for Mischief
“Michaels has done it again…Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable details exposing the foibles and follies of the age.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Butler Did It
“Michaels can write everything from a light-hearted romp to a far more serious-themed romance. [She] has outdone herself.”
—RT Book Reviews on A Gentleman by Any Other Name (Top Pick)
“A hilarious spoof of society wedding rituals wrapped around a sensual romance filled with crackling dialogue reminiscent of The Philadelphia Story.”
—Publishers Weekly on Everything’s Coming Up Rosie
“Have you noticed, Tanner, that we’re alone here together? You and I. Nobody else is in this room with us.”
He lifted her hands in his, slowly kissing first one, then the other as he looked down into her face. “If this room were filled to the rafters with other people, along with the shades of a thousand more, I would see only you. May I kiss you, Lydia?”
She swallowed, the action almost painful. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry. She could only look at him.
“I’m sorry. It’s still too soon. I apologise–”
He didn’t say anything else because she had gone up on her tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his.
His arms went around her, making her feel small but not fragile. Instead, she felt real, perhaps for the first time in her life knowing who she was. She was Lydia. She was a woman. She was alive…
How To Beguile A Beauty
by
Kasey Michaels
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
USA TODAY bestselling author KASEY MICHAELS is the author of more than ninety books. She has earned three starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, and has been awarded the RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America, the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, the Waldenbooks and BookRak awards, and several other commendations for her writing excellence in both contemporary and historical novels. There are more than eight million copies of her books in print around the world. Kasey resides in Pennsylvania with her family, where she is always at work on her next book.
Available from Kasey Michaels and Mills & Boon
THE BUTLER DID IT
IN HIS LORDSHIP’S BED
(short story in The Wedding Chase)
SHALL WE DANCE?
IMPETUOUS MISSES
MARRIAGEABLE MISSES
A RECKLESS BEAUTY
LORDS OF NOTORIETY
LORDS OF SCANDAL
HOW TO TEMPT A DUKE
HOW TO TAME A LADY
and in theBeckets of Romney Marshseries
A GENTLEMAN BY ANY OTHER NAME
THE DANGEROUS DEBUTANTE
BEWARE OF VIRTUOUS WOMEN
A MOST UNSUITABLE GROOM
THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL
BECKET’S LAST STAND
To Jacob Edward Seidick
Welcome to the world, Jacob!
Chapter One
THE SUN SHONE BRIGHTLY as the traveling coach with the gold Basingstoke crest discreetly painted on its doors moved away from the flagway and out into Grosvenor Square. The magnificently liveried driver, a pair of similarly clad grooms hanging on to the rear rails for dear life, deftly swung the equipage about, and the team of fine black horses and the four accompanying outriders pranced their way toward the end of the Square, to the streets of London, and off to a great wide world of excitement and newfound love.
Harnesses jingled. The sharp sounds of iron-clad shoes striking the cobblestones sent up the message, Farewell—fare thee well.
The moment was a picture, really, a fine portrait set into motion. Adventure Awaits would make a fine title. Especially if the artist could capture the laughing Lady Nicole Daughtry, her bonnet discarded so that the sun fell fully on her face, as if the gods themselves had wished a closer look at her fresh, young beauty. Leaning rather precariously out the off-window, she continued to wave and blow exuberant kisses back toward the mansion until the coach reached the end of the Square and disappeared from sight.
And that was that. There was nothing more to see. Even the sun, which had deigned to appear amidst a Season noted most for damp and rain, withdrew behind a cloud, and the world turned grey once more.
Lady Lydia Daughtry pushed down the sash and backed away from the window on the second floor of Ashurst House to seat herself on the tufted light blue velvet padded bench in front of her bed. She sat with her back ramrod straight, her hands, else they tremble and betray her, neatly folded in her lap. Another portrait, yes, but one entirely without the fire and light she had just witnessed. After a few minutes of thus imitating a statue, she quietly sighed, her bosom rising and falling almost dramatically, before she resumed her quiet, even breathing.
To the casual observer, she was, as always, an island of calm. No one would think that her heart was pounding furiously, or that she felt perilously close to indulging in what her former governess would have condemned as a tantrum.
Not that the Lady Lydia ever had tantrums (if you threw something fragile against, for instance, a nearby wall, and it broke, you’d only have to clean up the pieces. So, really, what was the point?).
Her twin, however, the newly absent Lady Nicole, had manufactured any number of tantrums as a young child. The most memorable remained the last, the day their mother had wed her third husband and then immediately shuffled off her three children once more to Ashurst Hall. Children were not, it seemed, important once there was a new man in Helen Daughtry’s life. But if Nicole wasn’t to be deemed important, she would at least be noticed, most especially when she’d loosed a heavy silver vase at her new stepfather’s head.
The man really should have ducked.
Lydia smiled at the memory. Nicole did, with such marvelously dramatic flair, all the things the stick-in-the-mud, cautious Lydia only dreamt of doing.
And now Nicole was gone. Her sister, her twin, her heart-mate, was off on her way to meet the mother of her fiancé, Lucas Paine, the Marquess of Basingstoke. And life for neither Lydia nor Nicole would ever be the same.
Lydia had never in her eighteen years known a day without Nicole by her side. The laughing Nicole. The adventurous Nicole. Nicole, who could find excitement anywhere, and manufacture some on her own if none was to be found.
In the Ship of Life for the twins, Nicole had been the wind in the sails. Lydia, as she often thought of herself, had been the anchor. Her sister had pooh-poohed that, saying Lydia was the rudder, the one who steered them both along the straight and narrow and kept Nicole from making an entire cake of herself with her mad starts. But Lydia knew that Nicole was only being kind.
Because, as everyone else well knew, there wasn’t an ounce of excitement in Lady Lydia Daughtry’s entire body. She was quiet, pleasant, obeyed all the rules, never caused anyone so much as a modicum of trouble. To her own mind, she imagined doorstops were more adventuresome. And definitely more interesting, even if the only time anyone noticed one of them was when they tripped over them and stubbed their toes.
When Nicole was in the room, nobody noticed Lydia. Her sister’s wide smile, glorious dark hair, shining eyes, infectious laugh and, well, rather luscious body, drew all attention. Even her freckles were exciting. Leaving the slim, blond, blue-eyed Lydia to rather fade into the wallpaper. And that was precisely how Lydia liked it.
But now her shield was gone.
She’d known this day would arrive at some point. But then steady, older, gentle Captain Swain Fitzgerald would have been her protector, her safe harbor.
Except that Captain Fitzgerald had perished at Quatre Bras a year earlier, his death devastating her because she’d loved Fitz with all of her young heart, yes, but also in ways her family would never understand. She’d thought that with her captain she’d found the answer to never having to leave her cocoon of shyness to face the world alone.
Proving to herself that she was something no one had ever suspected of her. She was extremely selfish. Perhaps she hadn’t deserved the captain’s love and devotion.
If she were a more dramatic sort, she might even believe that God had punished her selfishness by taking the captain from her. But Lydia was also intelligent, and she knew that God would not allow one person to die in order to teach another person a lesson.
Still, as time passed, nearly a year now since the captain’s death, doubts about her love for the man had begun to creep into her brain during quiet moments. How much had she really loved him? How much had she loved the idea of love…of being always safe, protected? She’d been only seventeen. Even the captain, in his letters to her, had warned her of her youth, and promised that he would court her slowly once he’d “put Boney back in his cage.”
For most of her young life she and Nicole and their brother, Rafe, had been shuffled back and forth between their home at Willowbrook to the late duke of Ashurst’s estate—depending on their mother’s mood and marital status. Nicole had made her feelings plain on the subject of their nomadic existence. Rafe had gone off to fight Napoleon, kicking the dust of both estates off his boots until finally returning home to learn that his uncle and cousins had died, and he was somehow now the duke himself.
And Lydia? She had never complained. She’d hidden in books, and behind Nicole’s warming fire. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t felt the pain of being less than well-loved by her mother, and merely tolerated by her uncle and cousins.
So, yes, she had been drawn to the captain, Rafe’s good friend and fellow soldier. He’d been older, wiser, tall and strong and solid, and he’d seen past her quiet exterior and found something about her that he’d liked. That he’d loved. It had been impossible not to love him back.
Together, they would have been happy for all of their lives.
She blinked away the tears that stung at her eyes. He’d loved her. She’d loved him. She could not, would not forget that one real truth, no matter how her mind sometimes plagued her. And she would never forget Captain Swain Fitzgerald, not ever. She may have learned to live without him over this past year, but then she’d had Nicole ever by her side, hadn’t she?
Lydia didn’t want the world the way Nicole did. She didn’t smile easily, didn’t trust often; she preferred to hide in books…and behind the effervescent Nicole, living vicariously through her outgoing twin.
Now she would face the world alone. It was a daunting, if not even terrifying thought for someone of Lydia’s quiet sensibilities.
She longed to leave London, leave the Season, to escape back to Ashurst Hall and a quiet life. But Rafe was the duke now, and he still had business in the city, so they would not return to his estate until after the King’s birthday in June at the earliest. He was much too busy to devote his precious free evenings to squiring her about Mayfair. His wife, Charlotte, carrying their first child, did not go into Society. Lydia’s once-again widowed mother had set sail for Italy, fleeing from yet another of her romantic indiscretions…and now Nicole was lost to her.
How was she to go to balls and routs and musical evenings accompanied only by her chaperone? Mrs. Buttram would go off to natter with the other paid chaperones, and Lydia would be left to sit against the wall with all the other overlooked debutantes, all the desperate, reaching females tossed into the Marriage Mart with the mission of securing a rich or at least titled husband.
The heat, the cloying smell of too many hot-house blooms, too many unwashed or overly perfumed bodies. The ignominy of a nearly blank dance card, the occasional turn around the room with either some bored young lord on orders from his mama to squire a few of the wallflowers, or a crass inquisition from some adventurous fortune hunter who asked pointed questions about her dowry.
The thought alone was enough to make Lydia feel physically ill.
Of course, she could always count on Tanner Blake, the Duke of Malvern, to dance with her at least once an evening. It had been His Grace who had brought them the news about Captain Fitzgerald the preceding spring. It had been His Grace whom Lydia had condemned as a liar, his broad chest the one she had beat her fists upon in a terrifying burst of raw emotion, hating him for the words he spoke, struggling to be free of his strong arms, his attempts to comfort her as her world, all her dreams, shattered.
She hadn’t been fair to the man. Lydia knew that. She had blamed him, blamed the messenger. Ever since that horrible day, ashamed of her unseemly hysterical outburst, she had tried her best to avoid the duke if at all possible. A return to Ashurst Hall had given her time and space, away from the duke. Long months during which she’d hoped he would forget her outburst, forget her.
Except that the man wouldn’t go away. Ever since they’d all come back to town for another Season, even now, as he seemed to be mere days from announcing his betrothal to his third cousin, Jasmine Harburton, he remained a frequent visitor in Grosvenor Square.
And Lydia knew why.
The captain had been his friend; he’d said he wished for Lydia to be his friend. Tanner Blake’s persistence had won out over her embarrassment, and her normal clear-headedness had replaced her irrational dislike for the man. For that alone, she was grateful to the healing powers of time and distance. But why hadn’t he simply now told her the truth? That the captain, as he lay dying, had asked him to “take care of my Lyddie.”
How terrible to force a man into agreeing to such an obligation. Yet how much worse it was to be that obligation. She believed the duke saw her as an object of charity, deserving of sympathy, which also forced her into the role of a young woman still daily, actively, grieving her lost love. Even as she hoped, prayed, she could leave this limbo she had existed in for the last year, with the captain still always alive in her heart, but as a cherished memory rather than a constant ache.
The Duke of Malvern was a good man. An honorable man. But did he ever see her as anything other than an obligation? And why was it becoming increasingly important to her that he think of her only as Lydia, and not some appendage to the past?
That was a question she couldn’t even have asked of her twin.
There was a knock on Lydia’s bedchamber door, and she quickly wiped at her damp cheeks as she called out, “Yes, please come in.”
Charlotte Daughtry, Duchess of Ashurst, looking young and slightly flushed in the London heat as she carried around a belly that seemed to increase daily, entered the room, her head tipped to one side as she looked at Lydia. “I thought I’d give you some time by yourself. She’s really happy, sweetheart. Be happy for her.”
“I am,” Lydia said sincerely, getting to her feet and accepting Charlotte’s hug. “Lucas adores her, and she him. But I will miss her.”
Charlotte idly rubbed at her perfectly round belly. “We’ll all miss her, but it isn’t as if she’s gone to the ends of the earth. She and Lucas will be coming to Ashurst Hall in July, to see her new niece or nephew—please God, the babe will have arrived by then—and also so that we can make plans for the wedding. By the way, it will be your job to talk her out of arriving at the church on horseback, with some of the little girls from the village prancing along ahead of her, streamers in their hair, tossing rose petals. Lucas, I’m afraid, is so besotted he’d grant her anything.”
Lydia smiled even as she blinked away fresh tears. She loathed feeling like a watering pot; she’d always been so careful to hide her emotions, especially the stronger ones, which tended to frighten her. “Actually, I think that would be very nice. Very…Nicole.”
“Don’t tell Rafe, but I agree. Oh, speaking of Rafe, he’s downstairs with our friend Tanner, who has come to take you for a drive on this unusual warm day in dreary London. It’s so lovely to see the sun, even when it plays hide-and-seek with us as it is today. Honestly, the only reason I came upstairs instead of leaving you some time to yourself was to tell you about Tanner’s offer. Not only am I as big as two houses, I may be turning senile. At any rate, Tanner somehow knew Nicole was leaving today, and thought he’d bear you company. Such a wonderful friend, isn’t he? So you go fetch your bonnet and pelisse, and I’ll tell him you’ll be down directly.”
Lydia nodded, finding it difficult to speak, holding in her sigh until Charlotte had quit the room.
Was this to be her life for the remainder of the Season?
Charlotte and Rafe happily married; kind, caring, but also very much wrapped up in each other. Captain Fitzgerald, irrevocably lost to her. Nicole, her very best friend, off on a new adventure in her life.
And Tanner Blake, the man she’d initially taken in such dislike through no fault of his own, the man who still seemed so doggedly determined to live up to his promise to his friend Fitz, could soon be married as well, with a whole new set of obligations.
Why, were she the dramatic sort, she would say that she was alone in the midst of a multitude, which was not a very pleasant place to be.
“If the exercise weren’t so fatiguing,” she told herself, “I should most probably throw myself to the floor and drum my heels against the carpet. Nicole always vowed it made her feel better. But I’m much too polite and restrained and civilized. Much too dull and boring. No wonder I sit with the desperate wallflowers. I may as well be invisible. Then again, if my inside were on my outside, if I were to act as I think and damn the consequences, like Nicole, I should probably shock everyone to their cores, including myself.”
Lydia allowed herself another deep sigh before she lifted her slightly pointed chin and dutifully went in search of her pelisse and bonnet. The bonnet with the sky blue ribbon Captain Fitzgerald had picked out for her last Season, saying it went so well with her eyes. Thus armed, she then headed for the staircase, having firmly decided that she was a Daughtry, not a mouse, and it was time she began acting like one.
Chapter Two
“IT WILL BE A YEAR SOON,” Tanner Blake, Duke of Malvern, remarked as he accepted a glass of claret from his friend Rafe. “Sometimes it all seems a lifetime ago, and then at others it feels like yesterday.”
He knew he didn’t have to say more than that for Rafe to understand to what he was referring. Last year’s battle was a fact in all of their lives, one never to be forgotten.
“At least this time it looks as if Boney will be staying where we put him.” Rafe took up a seat on the facing couch in the large drawing room, a handsome man with a firm jaw and intelligent eyes. He put forth his glass in a toast. “To Fitz. And to all the good and true men who died in that damned unnecessary battle.”
Tanner solemnly clinked glasses with his friend. He wasn’t the sort who indulged overmuch in spirits, but it was easier to trust the wine of France than it was the cloudy waters of London. He was much of an age with Rafe, but knew he looked younger, thanks to his dark blond hair with its tendency to wave when he neglected his barber, and to features his late mother had often cooed over as being “nearly Greek.” It was only his eyes, seemingly turned a deeper green in the past year, which aged him beyond the schoolroom.
“They’re calling it all Waterloo now, you know, because Wellington stayed at an inn there while he wrote his dispatch to Parliament after the battle. I suppose it’s as good a name as any. A grand and glorious battle, they say now, a great victory for the Allies, destined to be one of the most memorable battles in history. All of these gushing fools forgetting that if they had just locked up the man more securely, none of it would have happened. To Fitz,” Tanner said, raising his glass. “To Fitz, and to the rest—and to stout locks.”
Both men drank, then fell silent for some moments, each of them lost in their memories of Captain Swain Fitzgerald and all the other good friends they had lost.
“I think she’s doing much better,” Tanner said at last, because it wasn’t a far leap in his mind from the captain to Lady Lydia.
Rafe nodded his agreement. “To forget him would appall her, but Lydia knows that he’d want her to go on without him. You’ve been very good for her, Tanner.”
“Have I? It’s no secret that she saw me as a constant reminder of what she’d lost, at least at first. But our time apart may have taken some of the edge off the events of that day last spring. I’d like to think we’ve become friends this Season. It’s what Fitz wanted.”
“And you, being such an honorable man and all of that, also feel obligated to make good on your promise to a dying man. Tanner, I appreciate what you’ve done, what you’re doing. Left on her own, especially now that Nicole has quit the city, it’s no secret to either Charlie or me that Lydia would prefer to return to Ashurst Hall and a quiet life.”
“I enjoy her company,” Tanner said, his eyes shifting toward the carpet at his feet. “Taking her out for the occasional drive, visiting the Elgin Marbles. I certainly wouldn’t say I’ve felt any of it a hardship.” He lifted his gaze again. “Have there been any suitors? I should think you’d be knee-deep in them.”
Rafe shook his head. “Oh, no, let me correct that. There has been one, but I sent him away. Damn near booted him down the stairs, as a matter of fact. One dance at Lady Hertford’s ball, and the mushroom had the nerve to come propose marriage to Lydia’s dowry, and then only after his plea for Nicole’s dowry fell on deaf ears. It hasn’t been easy, coming home from the war, falling into the dukedom, dealing with the twins who, to my shame, I barely remembered. Thank God for Charlie’s steady common sense.”
“Your wife is much too good for you, yes, but then you’ve always been a lucky bastard.”
Rafe grinned, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Don’t tell her. She mistakenly believes I’m quite the grand catch.”
Tanner sat back against the cushions, content to be with his friend, in this place, in this time. He enjoyed visiting Grosvenor Square, and would miss Rafe when the Season was over and they all deserted the city for their country estates. It probably would be another year until he saw Rafe again. Or Lydia.
“Rafe? Just because her sister isn’t here, Lydia can’t be allowed to shy away from Society for the remainder of the Season.”
“I know. But Charlie is adamant in refusing to go into Society as she is. Women,” Rafe said, his handsome features softening. “She’s never looked more beautiful to me, but she has vowed that until she can see her own shoe-tops again, she is banning herself from all social engagements outside this house. And now that Mrs. Buttram is spending the majority of her time with her wrapped foot on a cushion—gout, she tells us—I imagine it’s up to me to boost Lydia out of here from time to time.”
“Not necessarily. My cousin is in town, and—”
“The one you’re to be betrothed to at any moment, according to my wife, who may not go out in Society, but still manages to know every piece of gossip?”
Tanner once again took refuge in examining the fine Aubusson carpet. “Jasmine Harburton, my third cousin, yes. Her father seems to take the marriage as all but an accomplished fact, and he’s a man not known for his reticence. The rumor has come back to me a dozen times, and I’ve been told at least two adventurous souls have written down a wager on the thing in the betting book at White’s. Supposedly it was my father’s deathbed wish that I marry Jasmine, you see, bringing their small estate into our holdings. She’s an amenable enough young woman, but…”
“But, honorable man that you are, you’re finding yourself growing rather weary of dead people planning out your life for you?” Rafe suggested, and then quickly took a sip from his glass, keeping his expression blank.
“Thank you for saying that for me. When I say it, or even think it, I feel rather cold and callous. Especially where Fitz is concerned. But, God, Rafe, the man was dying. Clinging to my hand with his last strength as the battle still raged a few miles away from that pitiful ruined barn where I’d found him. I would have agreed to anything he’d asked at that moment, to make his passing easier.”
A flash of pain crossed Rafe’s features. Fitz had been his closest friend during six years of war on the Peninsula. If he hadn’t inherited the dukedom, hadn’t been handed the responsibility for his sisters and mother and all of the Ashurst estates, he would have gone to Brussels with his friend for that last confrontation with Bonaparte. Instead, he had stayed behind, to work inside the War Office. Tanner knew what the man thought: Rafe could never know if his presence on the battlefield might have made a difference, to Fitz’s future, to his own. “But now?”
Tanner saw Rafe’s expression and mentally kicked himself for a fool, bringing up old pain. Yet fool he was, as he debated as to whether or not he should keep his own counsel. But this was Rafe, his good friend. “And now I’m here because I want to be here. I think I’ve known that from the moment I first pulled Lydia into my arms as she flailed at me in her grief.”
Rafe shook his head ruefully as he slapped at his thigh. “Right again. Blast that Charlie, she’s always right. She was right about Lucas, and now she’s right about you. How do women do it?”
“I don’t know,” Tanner admitted, almost sighed…except that women sighed; men got themselves royally drunk. “Lydia no longer sees me as the enemy, her personal agent of death or whatever, but now I’m Fitz’s good friend, probably a constant reminder of him. Hell of a turn, isn’t it? He asks me to take care of her, watch over her…and I’m seeing myself as usurping his place in her life. I doubt that’s what he had in mind.”
“And now you’re feeling guilty, disloyal? Don’t do that. The past is the past, Tanner. It’s gone.”
“Is it? She loved him, Rafe. It’s too soon. I need to give her more time.”
“Don’t wait too long, my friend. If Fitz’s death taught us nothing else, it taught us that the luxury of time is just that. A luxury.”
Tanner got to his feet, unable to sit still any longer. “Now that she’s out from beneath Nicole’s…well, shining star, I suppose…let me take her into Society, Rafe. My cousin’s chaperone can easily handle them both. Lydia needs to understand that she is a beautiful young woman, inside and out. She always allowed Nicole to shine while she positioned herself in the background. If I’m to seriously pursue my suit, she needs to first find someone to compare me with other than Fitz.”
“You want her to be courted by other men? Is that what you’re saying?”
“God help me, yes, I suppose I am.”
“You don’t fear competition?”
“Not live competition, no, heartless as that sounds. A good man in life, in death I fear Fitz has been raised very nearly to sainthood by what was at the time a younger, very impressionable girl. She’s known only his companionship and now, to a very small extent, mine. I want to win her, I won’t lie about that, but not by default.”
“Charlie has mentioned to me, and not all that kindly, that men in love all seem to have maggots in their heads. Once again, Tanner, you’re proving the woman right. However, since you seem to be offering to take my place shepherding Lydia around Mayfair, who am I to argue, or to point out the obvious pitfalls? Although I will ask this, as I am Lydia’s brother and protector. You aren’t also using her to teach a lesson to Miss Harburton’s father about his presumptions?”
Tanner didn’t understand for a moment, and then smiled. “Well, now, Rafe, do you see that? I’m not as unselfish as you might think, am I. Even if I didn’t realize it until you pointed it out to me. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, I suppose. Ah, what tangled webs we weave, and all that rot.”
“I’m not weaving a web. I’m being quite serious. I didn’t even consider using Lydia to throw hints to Thomas Harburton and his assumption that I will wed his—” Tanner cut off his protest as he turned toward the foyer, to see Lydia walking toward the doorway to the drawing room.
Nicole, bless her energetic self, seemed to explode into a room, bringing her wide smile and dancing eyes with her, as if every moment was a party, an adventure. Lydia walked with such grace, almost floated, her posture the dream of any boarding school mistress, her movements never exaggerated as if trying to draw attention to herself. Both twins were magnificent, but when they were together, it was only natural for the eye to travel first to Nicole.
Men were so easily dazzled by the obvious, making straight for the glittering diamond, overlooking the perfect pearl.
What would the gentlemen of the ton see now, when Lydia made her appearances in the Park, in the ballrooms all across Mayfair? Would they see what he had seen from the very start?
Was he out of his mind, as Rafe fairly well suggested, to allow any other man within twenty feet of her when he already knew he wanted her for himself?
Probably.
“Lydia,” Tanner said, bowing in her direction. “I thought some fresh air might be welcome after the past few days of rain. We should be just in time for the Promenade.”
She gifted him with a small, elegant curtsy. “Good afternoon, Tanner. How nice of you to think of me. Hyde Park? I’ve only been there in the mornings, to take the air. I heard it is a sad crush at five in the afternoon. Are you sure you wish to dare it?”
“Oh, he’ddare anything. Wouldn’t you, Tanner? He’s a very daring man,” Rafe said, kissing his sister on the cheek. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I have to go grovel at my brilliant wife’s dainty feet—the ones she increasingly insists I tell her still exist. Tanner, were you planning to attend Lady Chalfont’s ball this evening?”
Tanner looked at him, grateful for Rafe leading him so easily into the moment. “The invitation is among those stacked on my mantelpiece, yes. And I hear it may prove to be an entertaining evening.”
“Wonderful. Lydia, do you hear that? You now have an escort, unless you wish my company instead. I really do need to work on my speech for Parliament, the one that will most probably earn me a few whistles and catcalls when I again mention that it’s time we began taking care of our poor soldiers.”
Lydia looked from Rafe to Tanner, confusion clear in her eyes. “I shouldn’t wish to take you away from such an important speech, just to squire me. But, Tanner, there is no reason for you to sacrifice yourself in the role of chaperone, either. I have no crushing desire to attend the ball in any case.”
Tanner offered her his arm and walked her toward the foyer, throwing a silent thank you back over his shoulder at Rafe. “What? And miss out on those wonderful Gunther Ices I hear are to be served in the supper room? I’ve been looking forward to them all day, now that I think of it. And I also heard that her ladyship has commissioned an ice sculpture in the form of a pair of extremely long-necked swans. Ten feet high, I’m told. In this heat? We really should want to be there for the moment those long, delicate necks melt and the whole thing comes crashing down. Hugh Elliot has promised me he’ll be there, watching, just so that he can shout off with their heads at just the correct moment.”
Lydia looked up at him and smiled with those marvelous blue eyes of hers, clearly unaware that he immediately felt a figurative kick to his stomach. “You’re making that up as you go along, aren’t you, just so that I’ll agree to the evening?”
They walked outside, to his waiting curricle. “Ah, and that you won’t know unless you allow me to escort you to the ball, will you?”
“True. All right then, I accept your kind offer, sir. But there had better be swans.”
“I admit I can’t guarantee that, but at least I’m sure of the Gunther Ices. Lady Chalfont always has Gunther Ices, as they’re her husband’s favorite. Right after brandy, cigars, Faro banks and, rumor has it, a fiery redheaded opera dancer in Covent Garden. And here we are—up you go.”
Tanner vaulted around the rear of the curricle once Lydia was seated, and climbed up, taking the reins from the groom.
“Rafe informed me that your chaperone is suffering from the gout,” he said as they left Grosvenor Square for the short ride to Hyde Park. “And, as Nicole has left the city, I was thinking just now that you might miss her company at the ball.”
“I miss her company at all times,” Lydia corrected quietly. “But you’re correct.”
Tanner nodded, again, just as if he’d only this moment realized the problem, and the solution. “In that case, since my cousin is in town, and her chaperone is not suffering with the gout, what do you say I ask Jasmine if she wants to accompany us this evening, to bear you company now that Nicole is not here? I would not wish to have you feel alone in the ballroom.”
Lydia turned her head to look toward a knot of ladies just then crossing the street, heading for the entrance to the park. Was she intrigued by them, or just avoiding his gaze? “I’ve never met your cousin. But, yes, that would be very nice, I’m sure.”
If Lady Chalfont’s swans could be kept in close proximity to Lydia this evening, there would be no danger of their necks melting through. The sudden unexpected chill in Lydia’s voice was that evident, and strangely out of character. Lydia was never cross.
“Now I’ve upset you in some way,” Tanner said as he deftly eased his curricle into the line of coaches, phaetons and other showy equipages all jockeying for position on the broad sandy track that wound through the park.
She shifted on the plank seat, to face him. “Oh, I’m sorry, Tanner. I’m—well, let me just say that it has been a rather strange day. It’s not that I mean to be ungrateful. But it’s also so…well, so obvious. You’re being kind. Am I such a pitiful wreck, that people feel this need to be kind to me?”
“I wasn’t being—”
“Oh, but you were, and I really should thank you, even while in my heart I know I should not have to apologize for voicing my feelings in the matter,” Lydia interrupted, her smooth pale cheeks taking on a hint of color, of fire. “So, please, allow me to say what I feel. Everyone is so kind to me. Be careful around Lydia, they must tell each other, tiptoe if at all possible. Poor Lydia, now that Nicole has gone away. Poor Lydia, the bluestocking, the dull one, who only dances when Nicole’s card is already filled and the gentlemen hope to impress her by squiring her insipid, forgettable sister. Poor sad Lydia, still mourning her lost—”
She clamped her gloved hands to her mouth, her eyes now wide as saucers.
Tanner didn’t know if he should apologize, or cheer. “Lydia? Are you all right?”
She slowly lowered her hands, to reveal a small but growing smile. “My goodness. I think I’ve just had a tantrum.”
“Are you sure?” Tanner would have thought a tantrum involved a good deal more anger, some shouting, and possibly some general tossing and smashing of fragile china. But for a first effort, if that’s what it had been, she had done rather well. She certainly had his attention.
“I am, yes. And Nicole’s right. I do feel better. Tanner, since you say you are my friend, you will oblige me now by no longer treating me as if I should be packed up in cotton wool. Is that agreed? Wait, before you speak—and in turn, I will oblige you by not being such a…such a…well, whatever it is I was being that has had you all behaving as if I’m some delicate ice swan’s neck apt to melt and topple at any moment.”
Tanner felt a nearly overwhelming desire to pull her into his arms. But he was also aware that the opposite of coddling her in cotton wool was not an invitation for an all-out frontal assault and baring of his emotions.
“I’m sorry, Lydia, if we’ve all been tiptoeing around you. And, to prove it, I’ll ask you this time, and not tell you or attempt to cajole you—would you care to accompany my cousin and myself to Lady Chalfont’s ball this evening? Or would you much rather tell me to go find a pump and soak my head?”
“I would never say anything like that! At least I don’t think I would.” She then nodded her head twice, rather decisively. “Yes, thank you, I believe I should like very much attending the ball with you and Miss Harburton. And I’m certain I will enjoy meeting your cousin.” Then she gave him another smile, and another figurative kick to the gut. “But you think it was a good tantrum?”
“Tolerable, yes. You might need a little more practice before you’ve perfected it, but it was a good beginning.”
“I’m usually considered to be a good student. I’ll apply myself. Oh…someone is attempting to get your attention. Over there,” she said, pointing with her chin—how he delighted in the way she did that.
“Tanner Blake, it has been too long. How good to see you again,” the man called out, waving his hand in the air as he approached on horseback. “It was one thing to be long-ago chums, and to crack a few bottles with you in Paris a few years ago, but now that you’re the duke, I suppose I should take great care to cultivate your newly esteemed self.”
Tanner quickly took in the finely set-up grey stallion and the even more perfectly set-up gentleman in the saddle, still doing his best not to appear shocked at his friend’s sudden appearance. “Justin. Nobody told me you were in town. Did Vienna finally pall on you?”
Baron Justin Wilde, who had worn many hats during the last years in the fight against Bonaparte—many of them not known to any but the most highly-placed in the War Office—eased his mount around so that he was now riding alongside the curricle. The two men shook hands, no mean feat as both curricle and horse were still on the move.
Justin Wilde was now, as Tanner always remembered him to be, dressed in the first stare of fashion, the cut of his jacket accentuating the natural breadth of his shoulders, the buckskins molded to his strong thighs above high, close-fitting black Hessian boots sporting natty leather tassels and shined within an inch of their lives. But it was the lace at collar and cuffs that most firmly lifted him above the ordinary, as well as a face too handsome to allow anyone to feel threatened by him and his considerable muscles.
In fact, many would at first blush of meeting the Baron think him a smooth-speaking, faintly air-headed fop. They would look into those laughing green eyes beneath brows as dark as his boots and his hair, be disarmed by the frequent smile, and believe themselves in the company of a none-too-bright jewel of the ton. Which would be their mistake.
“I escaped Vienna nearly a month ago, slowly making my way home. Diplomacy can be boring, even when we’re carving up empires like bakers cutting a cake.” He half-stood in the stirrups as he tipped his curly-brimmed beaver at Lydia. “Forgive him, ma’am. The boy never did learn his manners. I am Justin Wilde, and you are the most delightful creature I’ve ever been privileged to see. Please tell me this scoundrel is only squiring you, and has no prior claim to your affections now that my heart hangs in the balance on your answer.”
Tanner’s laugh brought a small, hesitant smile to Lydia’s face. “Lady Lydia Daughtry, please forgive me for being forced to introduce to you Baron Justin Wilde. Soldier and statesman, wit and fool. And he plays all of those roles better than most. I suggest you avoid him at all costs.”
“Oh, foul, Tanner. Foul. You’re twice the fool I am, and so I tell everyone. Lady Lydia, again, I implore you. Tell me your heart is not as yet bespoken, most especially to an unnamed rogue bearing a rather canny resemblance to the gentleman now looking so uncomfortable beside you, else mine own heart will surely break.”
Tanner waited for Lydia’s answer, realizing that he had no idea what she would say. Yesterday, he would have known she’d be polite, rather shy, and most definitely exceedingly proper. But today? He looked at her curiously, his heart jumping when she revealed a small, rather wry smile that made him see, perhaps for the first time, a resemblance to her mischievous twin.
“I most seriously doubt my words hold such power, sir,” she said after a moment, “but if it eases your endangered heart at all, I will say that his Grace and I are friends out merely to enjoy the air and, of course, the present foolish company.”
Wilde swiftly removed his hat and pressed it to his chest in mock admiration. “My God, Tanner, she speaks in complete sentences. And without simpering or stuttering or feigning light-headedness at my crude attempts at flattery.” Once again he leaned his head forward, to look around Tanner. “Lady Lydia, please be so kind as to picture me figuratively at your feet. I had no idea beauty such as yours could exist, most especially in concert with a functioning mind.”
Tanner put out his arm, pushing Wilde back on his saddle even as he maneuvered the reins and the curricle moved forward slowly, thanks to the crush of other vehicles. “You should take yourself back to Vienna, Justin, if your opinion of London ladies is so poor.”
“Nonsense, Tanner. My opinion of all ladies is that they are delightful creatures. As long as one isn’t so unfortunate as to have to engage them in conversation for more than a few minutes, of course. Which, fortunately, I usually don’t. But Lady Lydia seems to be a wonderful exception to the rule.”
Now it seemed to be Lydia’s turn to push—politely—Tanner back on his seat as she leaned forward to question the Baron. “Exception though you have deemed me, I feel I must now ask you a question. Are you then a misogynist, sir? Or perhaps a misanthrope, and your distaste extends to all creatures who are not you? Are you Alceste?”
Tanner now sat back on the bench seat all by himself, without further direction from either Wilde or Lydia. He figured it was safer.
“Alceste, you say? That woeful cynic? Then you are familiar with Molière and his masterpiece, Le Misanthrope? Tanner, did you hear that? Wait, wait, this can’t be. Lady Lydia, indulge me by completing this line. He’s a wonderful talker, who has the art…?”
Tanner laughed out loud. “God’s teeth, Justin, you’d quiz her?”
“No, no, it’s all right. Shall I?” Lydia looked to Tanner, who merely nodded. “Very well, then. He’s a wonderful talker, who has the art of telling you nothing in a great harangue.”
“Ha! I can see why that line is one of your favorites, Justin. Sounds just like you. Are we done now? I brought Lady Lydia here to see the sights, not to amuse you. Although I’ll admit to being quite well amused myself.”
“I’ll leave you now, yes,” Wilde said, his considering gaze still on Lydia, who seemed to have suddenly remembered that she was the shy twin, the one who never put herself forward. “But perhaps we can meet again later, Tanner? It has been too long.”
Tanner agreed, because he did truly enjoy Justin Wilde. He told him that he and Lydia would be attending Lady Chalfont’s ball later in the evening, and then finally watched as Wilde rode off, probably already planning on whom he would next harass with his perfect—and yet unexpected, almost bizarrely so—presence.
“What a strange man,” Lydia said as Tanner moved the curricle forward only a few feet, the crush of equipages now reaching a multitude on this rare sunny afternoon. “Does he really think women are so…useless?”
“I’d say I wouldn’t know, except that I like the man, and feel he may have made a rather odd first impression. Justin was once married to an extraordinarily beautiful young woman, Lydia, and it ended badly. He has told me that he chose her for her beauty, which, again, according to him, is a mistake made too often by vain and foolish gentlemen.”
“I believe that particular mistaken and short-sighted conclusion is shared by both genders.”
Tanner looked at her curiously. “Really?”
“You’re surprised?”
“I suppose not. And we men probably spend nearly as much time in front of the mirror or with our tailors as do women. Thank you for that insight.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, her smile once again shy. But, then, he treasured all of Lydia’s smiles, which had been far too infrequent since he’d first met her. “Now tell me the rest. I’m sure there’s more to the story.”
“Oh, there most definitely is. Justin was bored with his beauty within a fortnight, as her conversations veered from demands that he compliment her every outfit to reciting endless minutiae about the outfits of other women of their acquaintance. He said—and I remember it well because he was so very serious at the time, if a bit in his cups—that she could probably recite the names of every fabric, gee-gaw and thingamabob known to man with much more ease than she could the alphabet.”
“Poor man. Poor wife.”
“She found solace,” Tanner said, deciding it was time he took advantage of a break in the endless train of vehicles, and turned his curricle toward a nearby exit to the street. Seeing Justin again had been a shock, albeit a good one. “From what I’ve heard, not from Justin, who would never have allowed such an indiscretion, she found a variety of ways to comfort herself. Gowns, jewels…a long line of other men more than willing to keep reassuring her she was beautiful.”
“Was beautiful? Does that mean—?”
“Yes, it does, but not soon enough to save Justin, I’m afraid, even though that sounds callous. A month before Danielle met an unfortunate end tripping down a length of marble stairs at Carlton House after catching a heel on the outrageously flounced hem of her gown—the Prince of Wales had to take to his bed for a week after the accident—one of her lovers made the mistake of bragging about his latest conquest. Justin felt bound to call the man out, defending the honor of his dishonorable wife.”
“He killed the man?”
“He hadn’t planned to, but yes. I served as one of Justin’s seconds, so I saw it all. His fool opponent turned to fire on the count of two. We called out to warn Justin. He turned at once, and fired in self-defense. But the man was still dead, and Justin had to flee the country. It’s only his valuable service to the Crown, I imagine, and the passing of years that has allowed him to return to England. I wonder how he’ll be received now, eight long years later. The man he killed was the second son of an earl, you understand. There’s always a new bit of gossip to keep the ton happy, but that old gossip couldn’t be so far beneath the surface of many memories. Not with Justin showing himself so boldly in the Park. It’s as if he’s encouraging everyone to talk about him.”
“But you’ll stand by him.”
Tanner looked at her. She hadn’t framed her words as a question. “Yes, I will. Even though—no, especially because the old hurts don’t seem so far beneath Justin’s own surface now that he’s returned to England. He may have been teasing with you, but the wounds of his failed marriage and the consequences seem to have served to jade his opinion toward women.”
“Or perhaps served to undermine his faith in his own judgment when it comes to women,” Lydia said, causing Tanner to look at her sharply.
“Justin Wilde? Unsure of himself? I wouldn’t think that possible.”
“‘Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths,’”
Lydia said quietly. “After making what he has admitted to you was a terrible mistake on the part of his heart so many years ago, how can he now trust his own judgment?”
Tanner turned his pair of bays into Grosvenor Square, wishing he hadn’t chosen to desert the park so soon, for now he had no excuse to continue this unsettling conversation. “Molière again. And, again, from Le Misanthrope. He needs a friend, doesn’t he? For all his appearance of being so secure and confident.”
“He has a friend,” Lydia said, putting her gloved hand on Tanner’s arm. “And I know from personal experience that you make a very good friend.”
Tanner thanked her, feeling as if he’d just heard a death knell. Another quote, this one not from Molièire, slid into his head. Something about friendship being love without wings…
Chapter Three
Dearest Nicole,
You’ve been gone less than a day, and yet I find I have so many things I wish to tell you. At the moment, I should be dressing for Lady Chalfont’s ball, but you know I will put off that chore as long as possible in any event, as I find I loathe little in life, but balls definitely are near the top of that short list.
You’d be so proud of me. I had a tantrum today, nearly in the middle of Hyde Park during the Promenade (such a sad crush of mostly sad people). I believe I startled Tanner with my outburst, perhaps as much as I startled myself, but I will confess I get so weary of being coddled. Not that you have ever coddled me! I shall miss your forthrightness, so I have decided I must be forthright myself, for myself. After all, I am a Daughtry. Surely there must be fiery blood somewhere inside me? To that end, this afternoon I informed Tanner that I would rather he not feel obligated to me because of some promise to Captain Fitzgerald.
He seemed taken by surprise to think I should know that. I didn’t tell him about the captain’s last letter to me, the one Tanner himself unwittingly delivered that fateful day last spring. Perhaps one day I will. Suffice it for now that he knows I consider him a friend, and that I wish he would do me the same honor, rather than as the burden of a promise.
Oh, but there’s more! I met the most interesting man today, one Baron Justin Wilde. He has a Tragic Past, as you would certainly term it, and he seems to joke of it, even as his eyes clearly reveal his pain. Meeting him so soon after my tantrum, I fear I may have been more than a bit forward with the man, but he didn’t seem to be appalled by my amazingly blunt speech. Indeed, if you can imagine the thing, I made him smile. The Baron is a friend of Tanner’s, and we will see him again this evening at Lady Chalfont’s. It’s lovely to have something to look forward to besides sitting with my back against the wall, watching everyone else dance, offering up prayers no one will ask me to participate. You know something, Nicole? I just realized I perhaps do not fade into the wallpaper so much as I might intimidate the gentlemen who mistake my shyness and boredom for aloofness and haughty ways. My goodness, but that’s a thought to ponder!
I hope that by the time this letter reaches you, you are happily settled at Basingstoke, and am confident you have already charmed everyone there. I will save this letter until tomorrow, at which time I will report to you the happenings of this evening, as I know you will worry otherwise, and I promise I shall do my best to enjoy myself.
LYDIA READ WHAT she had written, frowned over the last line, and then crossed it out. Taking up her pen once more, she wrote:
And I know I will enjoy myself, most especially if there are swans.
Yes, that was better. If her evening was at all remarkable her letter would run to at least two sheets. But her brother was a duke, and he would frank her for the postage. How delightful! She had always been careful to keep her letters short, or to cross her lines in an attempt at economy, even if that made her letters difficult for the recipient to read. Well, that was just another silly, sensible habit she would dispense with as of today. This rather momentous day.
She slipped the page into the drawer of her dressing table before examining her reflection in the mirror. She liked what Sarah had done to her hair, sweeping it all severely back from her forehead and then massing long curls behind her left ear. When she moved, the shining blond curls tickled at her shoulder, making her feel very…female.
She looked most closely at her eyes, wondering if others could see sadness in them, as she had done when she’d looked into Baron Wilde’s eyes. Nicole would say they’d both been disappointed in love, although for quite different reasons.
“But at least you were not betrayed by love,” she told her reflection. “You have happy memories no one can take from you. You were not exiled from your own country for eight terrible years, so that you have become jaded or distrusting.”
She propped her elbow on the dressing table and rested her chin on her palm, continuing to examine her reflection until she’d come to a decision. “And you are going to stop feeling sorry for yourself right now. There are many worse things in life than having been loved, than having family and friends who care for you and wish you to be happy.”
“My lady? Were you wanting something? I’ve finished pressing off your gown.”
Lydia turned away from the mirror. “Oh, no, Sarah, I didn’t want anything. I’m afraid you caught me out scolding myself.” She got to her feet, smoothing down her silken undergarments. “And doesn’t that gown look nice. You’ve done a wonderful job with the crimping iron.”
Sarah curtsied. “Thank you, my lady, I do try. Only burned myself the once this time. Her Grace said to tell you that His Grace the Duke of Malvern is waiting on you downstairs in the drawing room. Such a well set up gentleman, my lady. I’ve always favored the blond ones. What a pair the two of you make, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Lydia became at once uneasy. Had she somehow betrayed her feelings to her maid? And if she had, who else knew? She really had to be more careful. After all, the man was going to marry his cousin. “The duke is my friend, Sarah.”
“Yes, miss, he certainly is. But mayhap he wants to be more than a friend? Not that it’s my place to say so, but Maisie and I just happened to be looking out the front window from the attics as you went off with His Grace this afternoon, and he had quite the spring in his step, Maisie said, if you take m’meaning. Now if you’ll just duck yourself down and lift up your arms, my lady, we’ll have this gown on you without so much as mussing a hair on your head. Ah, that’s the trick. And are you sure you wouldn’t be wanting just a quick whisper of a touch from the rouge pot?”
Lydia emerged from the yards of palest blue watered silk, about to tell the maid that she would rather not color her cheeks. She would have liked to ask what Maisie had meant by Tanner having a spring in his step, but she was certain that wasn’t a proper question.
“Ah, never mind, my lady,” the maid said, motioning for Lydia to turn around so that she could do up the covered buttons. “You’ve got lovely color now, all on your own. And why would that be, I wonder? There you are, all done. Now I’ll just fetch your wrap whilst you tug on these gloves, and you’ll be all nice and tight.”
Lydia smiled weakly as Sarah skipped off to the dressing room, and then quickly returned to the dressing table, bending forward to check her reflection one more time. Goodness. Her cheeks were rather flushed, weren’t they? And were her eyes brighter? All because Tanner supposedly had a spring in his step?
She leaned in closer, and suddenly realized that the neckline of her gown—lovely with its fluted and crimped flounce that ran completely around the neckline and the off-the-shoulder design—was rather lower than she’d remembered it the day of her final fitting in Bond Street. A good two inches lower, in fact.
How could the seamstress have made such a—but wait! Hadn’t Nicole taken the woman to one side for a private chat that day? And then winked at her twin and told her that she was sure the watered silk would be quite the stunner?
“If I lean forward too far, it most certainly will be,” Lydia said, holding her hand to her neckline as she leaned forward, stood back, leaned forward once more, this time without pressing a hand to her bodice. Her eyes went as wide as saucers. “Oh, dear Lord, I—Sarah? Sarah!”
The maid reappeared with a fringed ivory cashmere shawl threaded through with silver draped over her arm. “My lady?”
“Sarah, I need to change my gown. The bodice is all wrong. It doesn’t fit.”
Sarah tipped her head to one side, running her gaze up and down Lydia’s length. “It doesn’t? I’d say it fits you a treat, my lady. Besides, Lady Nicole made sure that all of your party gowns were—well, she’s a good sister to you, my lady, and that’s a fact.”
The door to the hallway opened and Charlotte entered, carrying a dark blue velvet case. “Tanner’s waiting, Lydia, but I just remembered that Nicole had asked me to be certain to please lend you my sapphires if you were to wear the—oh, my.”
Sarah curtsied, beaming. “Yes, Your Grace. Just as I was telling her. Fits her a treat, don’t it?”
“A treat? Yes, I can see where that word comes first to mind,” Charlotte said rather tongue-in-cheek, approaching Lydia and then walking fully around her. “You may go, Sarah, thank you.”
“Oh, but I want her to—”
“Lydia, let her go. You look beautiful. You are beautiful.”
Would nobody listen to her? Couldn’t they see what she saw? “I’m…I’m hanging out, just like Mama!”
Charlotte giggled. “Darling, your mama would sacrifice an entire herd of goats to look like you do tonight. But, yes, the resemblance is rather startling. And Helen Daughtry was, and still is, an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Your beauty, however, is more refined. Which doesn’t mean that you should hide it.”
“I don’t think it means that I should flaunt—do you really think the gown is, well, proper?”
Charlotte opened the velvet case and withdrew a stunning diamond and sapphire necklace. “Proper is perhaps not the word I’d use. Not precisely, no. I would rather say the gown is stunning. Interesting. Even captivating. Everything that you are, Lydia, whether you wish to acknowledge that fact or not. Now, turn around and bend your knees, so I can clasp this piece around your neck. You won’t feel half so naked once it’s on.”
Lydia did as she was bid, albeit reluctantly. She was just so used to doing what other people said. But then she rallied, and stood straight once more. “You said it, Charlotte. You said naked. And that’s how I feel. And from what Sarah was grinning and mumbling about, I’m woefully certain Nicole has had all of my gowns altered this way. The mischief that lives in that girl’s head!”
‘I’m sure she had all the best of intentions.”
Lydia very nearly snorted. “Yes, the best of intentions. That’s what she said she had when we were seven, and she decided to save our shared maid the trouble of trimming my bangs. Granted, I was silly enough to believe she knew what she was doing. I had to wear caps for a month. What is it about my sister and scissors?”
“I wouldn’t know. Just bend your knees again, sweetheart, and let us see if the necklace makes you feel less—that is, more finished.”
Lydia felt the weight of the necklace and looked down to see that the largest sapphire, completely surrounded by diamonds and fashioned as a drop, now slid rather interestingly between the cleavage exposed by the neckline of the gown. As if that could make up for that same, truly outrageous neckline.
Charlotte nudged her toward the full-length mirror that stood in one corner of the room. “There,” she said rather smugly, “now how do you feel? Because you look wonderful. There are earrings as well, but I think they’d be too much for such a young, unmarried woman. Besides, look at your eyes, Lydia. They’re so blue they look like twin ponds on a clear, sunlight day. Dazzling. When Rafe sees you I’ll have to hold him back or else he’ll confine you to your room, even though you’re well within the bounds of propriety. Tanner, on the other hand, will be most appreciative, I’m sure.”
Lydia opened her mouth to ask if Tanner would be appreciative because men were basically lecherous, but quickly decided that neither Charlotte nor Rafe would allow her within fifty yards of a lech…or fifty inches from Grosvenor Square if either of them thought the gown too outrageous.
“I do feel…rather nice,” she admitted finally. “And more…confident, if that doesn’t sound silly.”
“It doesn’t. Now come along, Tanner is waiting. Along with his cousin, who seems a very lovely young woman, if prone to talking so much I wouldn’t be surprised to see that Rafe’s ears have quite fallen off his head by the time we get down to the drawing room.”
“She’s pretty, isn’t she? Jasmine Harburton, I mean. The cousin.”
“I would say beautiful, but a man sees such things differently. I’ll have to ask Rafe’s opinion, once his ears stop ringing,” Charlotte said with a smile. “Don’t forget your gloves.”
Lydia wanted to take one more peek at her reflection, as she still wasn’t quite sure who she had been looking at, but tamped down the urge, for it seemed indulgent, and perhaps even vain. She picked up her elbow-length gloves, pulling them on as she followed Charlotte toward the stairs, working the soft white kid over each finger, wondering idly why fashion had decreed that a female’s circulation be all but cut off in the pursuit of fashion.
She was just smoothing the kid over her left thumb when they reached the bottom of the stairs and she heard a sharp intake of breath and an awe-filled “Coo…” coming from one of the footmen.
Perhaps Nicole had been more right than Lydia would have guessed.
Buoyed by the footman’s involuntary flattery, she entered the drawing room, her confident step carrying her along very well, thank you, until she saw the faintly incredulous expression come and go on Tanner’s face as he stood at the mantelpiece, staring at her.
She resisted the urge to cross her hands over her bosom, and turned her attention to the dark-haired beauty just then getting to her feet so that she could curtsey to the newcomers.
Tanner stepped forward to make the introductions.
“I cannot tell you, Lady Lydia, how honored I am to make your acquaintance,” Jasmine said the moment the introductions were completed. “How delightful it will be to have company once we are through that depressingly long line waiting for our hostess to vet us, and we’re set loose into the ballroom like so many prisoners freed from the confines of their cells, only to find that they are now only in a larger prison, which is how I see ballrooms, and waiting to be rescued from the wallflowers by some gentleman who then assumes we are so flattered by his attention that, of course, we will want nothing more than to listen to him brag about himself and his prospects or even the cut of his waistcoat for the length of the dance. Don’t you think?”
Lydia, her mouth falling open unbidden, looked to Charlotte, who was busily examining her fingernails, and then to Rafe, who appeared ready to rip off his cravat and stuff it in Miss Harburton’s mouth.
“Um…” Lydia said at last, “yes, I agree?”
“Good, it’s safer,” Tanner whispered in her ear, as he’d somehow managed to be standing next to her. “Let me tell you now, Lydia, that you have never looked more beautiful. I say that because it’s true, and because I doubt either of us will get another word in edgewise between here and Lady Chalfont’s. Shall we go?”
Tanner’s words proved prophetic, for Jasmine talked nonstop all the way to Portland Place, all the time they were stalled on the stairs leading up into the ballroom, and she continued to talk as they were at last inside the cavernous ballroom and heading for the inevitable lines of chairs stuck against the long walls.
“You must need something to drink, Jasmine,” Tanner said once he had secured them seats, including one for the chaperone, Mrs. Shandy, a nearly stone deaf woman who had no idea how fortunate she was in her affliction. “Lydia?”
“Yes, please,” she said, although not before wondering if she would be too obvious if she’d fallen to her knees and begged him not to leave her with this sweet but incessant chatterbox.
“Oh, good,” Jasmine said with a heartfelt sigh once Tanner had gone off to find a servant with a tray of lemonade, and most probably something stronger for himself. “I’m so unconscionably nervous whenever Tanner is about. And then I prattle and prattle and my tongue runs on wheels, and I hear myself saying the most inane and silly things and I can’t stop myself. You must think me a ninny.”
“No, of course not,” Lydia said, crossing her gloved fingers in her lap. “But Tanner is your cousin. Why would he make you nervous?”
Jasmine rolled her expressive emerald eyes—really, with her coal dark hair and those lovely eyes, she was quite the beauty. “It’s Papa, of course. He keeps telling everyone and anyone that Tanner and I are to be married. It was his father’s dying wish, you understand. Tanner’s father, not mine. Oh, you’d know that, or otherwise Papa would be dead, wouldn’t he? Oh, dear, I’m doing it again. Prattling. At any rate, Tanner is such an honorable man, which is really quite vexing.”
“Why is that vexing?” Lydia asked, although she decided she might know the answer to that question. Wasn’t Tanner in her life right now because he was an honorable man?
“Why, because he’ll do what his father wished on his deathbed, of course. He’ll marry me. Eventually. And I really wish he wouldn’t.”
Lydia’s heart gave a distressingly revealing little flip inside her chest. “You do? I mean, you don’t? That is…”
“Good evening, beautiful ladies. May I say, you present a veritable landscape of loveliness. One so dark, the other so fair, and both the epitome of everything that pleases. I am all but overcome.”
Jasmine giggled nervously, snapping open the painted fan that hung from her wrist and frantically waving it in front of her face before turning to speak to her stone deaf chaperone, as if she knew she was not going to be necessary to the conversation between the gentleman and her new friend.
Lydia merely looked up to see Baron Justin Wilde executing a most elegant leg directly in front of her, and smiled. She doubted anyone could resist returning the man’s smile, even if the timing of his arrival on the scene couldn’t have been worse, what with Jasmine’s news about her disinclination to wed Tanner. “Well done, my lord. Any woman would think she’d been just delivered a most fulsome compliment, when, in fact, you harbor a distrust of all women. Most especially those whom you might deem lovely.”
He pressed his spread fingers against his immaculately white waistcoat. “Ah, I am cut to the quick. My friend Tanner has been whispering tales out of school since last we met, I presume?”
“Nothing too dire, sir. I do, however, remember your conversation of earlier today. Should I have been studying my Molière in the interim? Are you going to quiz me yet again?”
“A thousand apologies for that, Lady Lydia. You and Tanner were the first people I dared approach since my return to the scene of my disgrace. No, I fib. I did happen to be stopped by a few others in the park, one to tell me Society never forgives a murderer, and the other to confide that her husband was in the country for the week and she hoped I’d remembered her direction. All in all, not the most auspicious of homecomings, I think you’d agree? I fear my emotions were much too close to the surface for me to be fit company.”
“Your apology is accepted, sir, and there was really no need to explain. But I wonder, if you are so newly returned to England, how did you manage an invitation to this ball?”
He bent toward her, his remarkably green eyes twinkling with mischief. “Very simple, my dear. I remembered the lady’s direction. A sacrifice on my part, to be sure, but worth it in order to see you again this evening.”
Lydia felt hot color invading her cheeks, and was grateful she hadn’t given in to Sarah’s suggestion of the rouge pot, for otherwise she’d look like a painted doll at the moment. “You shouldn’t say such things to me.”
“Ah, but I always say such things. Being outrageous is a large part of my charm. Now tell me my sacrifice will not have been in vain, and that your dance card is not yet full.”
“Far from full, my lord, as you can see,” she told him, holding up the card she had been handed by one of the servants as she entered the ballroom.
“Is London peopled entirely with fools?” he asked her, snatching the card from her hand and using the small, attached bit of pencil to scribble on it before returning both to her. “I’d dare more, but convention limits me to three or else people will expect the banns to be posted tomorrow. Miss Harburton?” he then asked, bowing to Jasmine. “It would be my honor to be added to your dance card, as well.”
Jasmine looked to Lydia, who didn’t understand the question in the other young woman’s eyes. Was she actually turning to her for permission? But then she handed over her dance card and Justin signed it as well just as Tanner approached, carrying two glasses of lemonade.
“Ah, Tanner, here you are. I didn’t presume stealing Lady Lydia away for the first dance, but do see you have her returned here in time for the second. I shouldn’t wish to appear desperate by having to track the pair of you down on some balcony, would I? Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe manners compel me to find a certain rather rapacious lady and haul her about the dance floor for the next ten minutes as a reward for allowing me to escort her this evening.”
Justin then bowed to Lydia and Jasmine once more and turned on his heel, melting into the crowd that seemed to now border on a multitude in the large ballroom as the orchestra signaled with a rather rusty flourish of violins that the first waltz was to commence momentarily.
Tanner handed over the glasses of lemonade and then snatched up Lydia’s dance card, one corner of his mouth lifting as he read what Justin Wilde had written. “It would appear, Lydia, that you have acquired an admirer,” he said, handing the card back to her. “You as well, Jasmine? I assume so, as Justin is always very careful with his manners.”
“I don’t even know who he is,” Jasmine exclaimed, wide-eyed. “But he is pretty, isn’t he? Oh, look, there’s Lady Pendergast! She always wears so many feathers, doesn’t she?” She poked Mrs. Shandy with her fan, directing her attention to the rather prodigiously obese woman in purple, sailing past them as if propelled by some errant wind catching at the trio of enormous white plumes in her hair.
Tanner smiled at Lydia, and spoke softly. “Lady Pendergast’s feathers, a butterfly on the wing, most anything shiny—whatever takes her fancy. My cousin is easily amused, and even more easily distracted. But the baron was being attentive to you, I think.”
“The baron was only being outrageous, which I admit he does rather well,” Lydia said, taking the card, but not opening it. “I think he’s apprehensive about the evening, and how he’ll be received.”
“Justin? Apprehensive? I seriously doubt that.”
They both looked in the direction the baron had taken, just in time to see him bow to an older gentleman who pretended not to see the gesture before pointedly turning his back on him.
“Oh, that’s not good,” Tanner said, shaking his head. “What one does, others may do, until the whole room turns its collective back on him. We managed to chase Byron out of England only a fortnight ago, and now it would seem we’re about to do the same to Brummell, as well. That can’t happen to Justin. I won’t allow it. Excuse me, Lydia, while I follow him, make my own feelings known on the subject of his return and my friendship for him. After all, being a bloody duke has to count for something.”
Lydia nodded her agreement and watched Tanner hurry off to stand by his friend. It was as Jasmine had said, as everyone who knew him said: the Duke of Malvern was an honorable man.
Jasmine was now speaking with a young woman dressed all in virginal white, her complexion as pale as her gown, and since Lydia didn’t wish to interrupt, she busied herself by at last opening her dance card, to see what the baron had written that had brought such a strange smile to Tanner’s face.
The baron had scribbled his name on the second line, the fifth, and the eighth. The three dances he had mentioned. But it was the way he had signed the card that now brought a smile to her face.
Wilde. Wilder. Wildest.
What a wicked, wickedly interesting man.
The captain had been gentle, almost respectful, their attraction to each other expressed only in longing looks, but never in word or action. He had been, she was realizing more and more, not only her first love, but also her beginning. Not her end.
Tanner was an honorable man and a good friend (who had a spring in his step, according to Sarah), and a rather bemused but interested look in his eyes when she’d come into the drawing room this evening. She’d known, even at first feared, that Tanner could mean more to her than to simply be her friend. But she hadn’t considered that he might know that. Besides, Captain Fitzgerald stood between them, a bond and yet also a division.
Baron Justin Wilde, however, was a man totally outside her limited realm of experience, a man who well could be teasing her, or he could be using his teasing to cover something that was perhaps more than a casual interest.
Why, she was beginning to feel like the heroine in a Pennypress novel. All she needed now was a menacing stepfather, or a dark castle complete with a ghost.
It was good that Rafe was a duke, and could frank her correspondence for her, as Lydia already felt certain her letter to Nicole was going to run to two sheets, if not more. Which, for a quiet person who was accustomed to little excitement in her life, was rather extraordinary, indeed.
Chapter Four
TANNER AND JUSTIN stood on the dark balcony outside the ballroom, companionably sipping from their glasses as they leaned against the railing, looking out over the gardens and the inviting paths lit periodically by flambeaux.
It was good to have Justin Wilde back in his life, Tanner thought. They’d had grand times together in the past, young men fresh from school and the country, eager to explore the world and maybe make their own mark on it. They’d laughed together, traveled to the races and boxing mills together. Raced their curricles neck-or-nothing, drunk deep in disreputable taverns, even shared an opera dancer or two. They’d been young, so young, all of them, with their whole lives ahead of them.
Now those memories seemed to be of another world, another time, one before Justin’s marriage, his flight to the continent after the duel, and then many long years of war.
So many friends had been lost to that war, good men all. Jonathan, Richard, Harry…Fitz. A man needed to hang on to those friends he still had, stand with them, stand by them.
“I’m not hiding out here, you understand,” the baron said after a bit.
Tanner carefully kept his gaze on a married couple—but not married to each other—seemingly intent on finding a less well-lit area of the gardens. “Absolutely not. I would never think that of you.”
“It’s a mob of bodies in there. The woman must have invited all of London, and all of London came.”
“Perhaps even some who were not invited,” Tanner said, a small smile playing about his lips.
“I’ll ignore that remark. Balls can be exceedingly boring, don’t you think, when there’s no card room?”
“Yes, without doubt. Boring. And the wine is warm. All in all, a distinctly disappointing entertainment. I can’t imagine why any of us is here. Why are we here, Justin? And by here, I mean on this balcony.”
Justin drained his glass, and then stared into it for a while. “All right, since you’re being so insistent, I’ll admit it. I am hiding, perhaps just a bit. I didn’t expect Molton’s response. Some of the others, yes, I did expect idiots to be idiots. But not Molton. He was friendly enough when we were in Vienna. We worked together with the Austrians, securing Marie Louise’s condemnation of her husband so that the Allies could brand him an outlaw.”
“But now you’re both in Mayfair. Molton will follow the pack, perhaps even more so if he fears that someone will remember he’d been seen with you in Vienna.”
“At least Chalfont hasn’t asked me to remove my unacceptable self from the premises. There is that.”
Tanner turned his back to the rail, looking in at the bright, overheated ballroom. “Are you serious?” he teased his friend. “His wife is in alt, confident she has scored the coup of the Season, having you here. Her ball will be on everyone’s lips tomorrow. She was mortified, she was horrified, she feared her dear husband might at any moment draw his sword and order you out at the point of it. But as you’d already killed the once…”
Justin also turned about, to lean back against the railing. “So you’re saying I’m too outrageous to be in polite company, but too dangerous to exclude? How interesting. I might even like that. Shall I take to dressing all in black, do you think? Apply myself to developing a scowl?”
“You mean to combine a bit of Brummell’s severe attire with a hint of Byron’s pout? The ladies might enjoy that.”
Justin did a fairly good imitation of a dark scowl. “Ladies always enjoy the thought that they might be part of some titillating drama or the other. It’s their bread and butter. How else did George collect an entire treasure box filled with locks of pubic hair, for God’s sake. Women are fools. And then we have to defend their idiocy.”
“Sheila was one of Byron’s conquests?”
Justin shrugged. “I never inquired. Couldn’t bring myself to really much care either way, frankly, as long as she didn’t do anything so publicly stupid as Caro Lamb. I’ve had eight long years to refine on my mistake. I failed my wife, Tanner. I wed Sheila’s beauty, not concerned with more than scoring such a coup, having her on my arm. It was only once we’d gotten to know each other that we both realized we’d each married a stranger and, at heart, really didn’t even like one another. Let that be a lesson to you, my friend. Admire beauty, take it to bed if you must. But marry it? No, don’t do that.”
Tanner knew he had to ask this next question. “You’ve danced twice with Lady Lydia, Justin. You admire her beauty?”
The baron pushed himself away from the railing, to look carefully at Tanner. “Am I poaching on already-fenced property, my friend? If so, you’ve only to tell me. My friends do not appear to be so thick on the ground at the moment that I would risk alienating one of them.”
Tanner didn’t know how to answer that question. Was it only a few hours ago that he’d blithely told Rafe he would gladly welcome competition from somewhere other than the grave?
He’d watched Lydia and Justin as they’d moved around the dance floor in a waltz, and she’d seemed animated, quite happy, the two of them chattering the entire time…unaware of the sidelong looks, the furious whispers.
His friend Justin was handsome, rich, affable, and intelligent. Tanner didn’t mind that sort of competition. But how does a man compete with someone whose past made him also appear dangerous, even deliciously intriguing? Worse, how did one compete with a friend, dead or alive?
It was rather as if Lydia had bloomed today. First in the Park, then again once Justin had come on the scene. Tanner didn’t know what had happened, was happening. Perhaps Lydia had felt herself under her more gregarious sister’s thumb, and now felt free?
No, that couldn’t be it. Lydia and Nicole were more than sisters, even more than simply twins. They were very good friends. Still, he could understand how comfortable it might be for a basically shy person like Lydia to allow her sister to take the center of the stage, while she watched from the wings.
He’d thought—yes, he would admit it to himself—that, once Nicole was gone from the stage, as it were, Lydia would turn to him for companionship, and that their friendship, founded in tragedy, might grow into something more.
He’d even watch as she was pursued by other suitors, confident enough in his own ability to capture her heart when the time was right, when she could be sure of her decision. Especially now, today, as Lydia seemed to be ready to face life on her own, finally out from behind her sister’s shadow.
What a hell of a moment for Justin and his wicked smile, his even more wicked wit, and his romantic tragic past to show up on the scene…
“Tanner? Was the question that difficult?”
“What? Oh,” Tanner said, realizing he’d become lost, perhaps even tangled, in his private thoughts. “Forgive me. I was debating whether I should discuss Lydia with anyone. But you’re not just anyone, are you?”
“No. I’m an extraordinarily singular person,” Justin said, smiling that winning smile of his. “Are you about to make some confession to me?”
“Hardly.” Tanner came to a decision, not that he was particularly pleased with it. “No, Justin, Lady Lydia and I are friends, nothing more.”
“And now you’ve disappointed me, and after I’ve been so forthright and truthful with you.”
Tanner looked into the ballroom, to see Lydia dancing with a fairly well set-up young man he didn’t recognize. She was talking to him, smiling up at him, just as she had done with Justin. Definitely a blooming flower, a butterfly suddenly shed of her cocoon, taking flight for the very first time, her new wings glittering in the sunlight.
“She looks very happy, doesn’t she?”
Justin turned to look into the ballroom. “And that’s unusual? Tanner, have I ever informed you that I loathe a mystery? And even worse, that I will now feel it my duty to pick at you and pick at you until you’ve told me what I want to know?”
“I’m sensing that, yes. And I admit it, I’m a poor liar. Very well. Lydia was all but betrothed to a good friend of mine,” Tanner explained, once more turning his back to the ballroom. “Captain Swain Fitzgerald. He was killed at Quatre Bras.”
“Damn,” Justin said, also turning to lean his forearms on the railing. “A deuced tricky thing, stepping into a dead man’s boots.”
Tanner’s smile was rueful. “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but yes, it is. I was the one who was with him when he died, promising him I’d take care of Lydia for him. I was the one who brought her the news of Fitz’s death, delivered his personal belongings, what turned out to be his final letter to her.” He drank the last of his wine and carefully placed the glass on the railing. “Oh, how she hated me for that.”
“A natural reaction, I’m afraid.”
“I’ve never seen such grief, Justin. Lydia is a young woman of strong emotions, although she keeps them well tamped down beneath her quiet, rather shy demeanor. I’ve often wondered since then, would I ever inspire any woman to grieve so over me?”
“Planning on sticking your spoon in the wall, are you? No, don’t bother to explain. I understand what you mean. You wondered—wonder—if anyone would ever love you quite so much. We all do, my friend, and we are all, for the most part, doomed to disappointment. But we have begun to digress, so let us return to my original question. Clearly you envision a time when you and the lady are more than friends. Tell me to back away and I will.”
Tanner shook his head. “No, I won’t do that. I have no claim on Lydia.”
“And I’m selfish enough to take you at your word, even as I believe you’re still lying to at least one of the two of us. Now please tell me about Miss Harburton. Another very beautiful young woman.”
“Jasmine? She’s my third cousin.”
“Yes, she told me that during our dance. She told me about your father’s dying wish, as well. A very…sharing young woman, your cousin. She certainly kept me from the burden of cudgeling my brain to make scintillating conversation with a near stranger.”
“Jasmine talks when she’s nervous.”
“Really? Then shame on me, for I must then have truly terrified the poor child.”
Tanner laughed. “Oh, it’s good to have you back, old friend. I fear I’ve been much too sober and serious this past year, living a more quiet life.”
“And yet here you are this evening, with both Lady Lydia, who you say you lay no claim to, and Miss Harburton, whom you have likewise not claimed. That’s your idea of a quiet life, juggling two beauties in the same evening? And, then, as if you didn’t have problems enough, a handsome reprobate with an appreciation of if not a genuine affection for beautiful women stumbles into the Second Act. Yes, Richard Sheridan wouldn’t have been amiss if he’d said he saw the foundation for a rather marvelous comedy of manners, even a true farce to outdo The Rivals. It might have been the remaking of his career, as a matter of fact, poor dead fellow that he is.”
Tanner shot him a dark look, but then smiled. “Remind me why I’m your friend.”
“You don’t see me in the role? I could be the black sheep with a tarnished past but a heart of gold.”
“You have a heart? That’s good to know.”
“Ouch! Now I’m wounded to the quick. But, as I seem to be a glutton for punishment, I think we have hidden my shameful self out here long enough. And if I haven’t thanked you for standing my friend in there, I do now.”
“What you need, Justin, is a new scandal, to take everyone’s attention away from you. That shouldn’t take too long, I imagine. In the meantime, you might want to consider not, well, forcing yourself on Society.”
“After this evening, I have no invitations at all, so that’s not a worry. But you’re correct. I shouldn’t be jumping back in with both feet quite so dramatically, should I?”
“I’m sorry, Justin…”
“Don’t be. I could have been hanged, you know. Having Molton and a few others dealing me the cut direct is at least not fatal. Ah, and as if I just conjured him up. Tanner, go away. You don’t need to be involved in this.”
Tanner saw Lord Molton advancing toward them, his cheeks flushed with drink and false courage. He stepped forward, putting himself between Justin and the viscount, placing his palm against his lordship’s chest. “Not the time nor the place, sir,” he warned quietly.
“Robbie Farber was m’friend.” Molton leaned around Tanner to point an accusing finger at Justin. “And he killed him, shot him down like a dog while poor Robbie stood there with an empty pistol.”
Tanner took one step to the side, once more blocking Molton’s path, staring pointedly into the man’s wild eyes. “Because he’d turned and fired on two. Do you remember that part? I do, because I was there. Farber bears at least as much blame as Justin here. Let it go. It’s over. Let the dead lie, and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives. Robbie’s death was unfortunate, but it was eight long years ago. The baron is sorry. Of course he is. We’re all sorry your friend is dead.”
Molton once more shifted his fevered gaze to the baron, who was standing with his arms at his sides, his relaxed posture and amused smile not really aiding the tense situation, and then back at Tanner. “He doesn’t care. Do you see that? He doesn’t care.”
Molton turned on his heel and stomped back inside the ballroom.
“You could have said something, offered him something,” Tanner pointed out to Justin.
“I suppose I could have, yes. We could then have asked everyone to form a line and I could apologize in turn to each and every person who thinks that firing in self-defense is a crime for which I should beg forgiveness. I apologize once, Tanner, and it would never end.”
“You challenged the man to a duel, Justin. You do remember that part, don’t you?”
“Did I have a choice? Answer me that, my friend.”
Tanner had been present to hear what Robert Farber had said about Justin’s wife. About how she had the beauty of a Venus and the sexual prowess of a block of stone, about how he could have serviced himself with more satisfaction, and saved the effort of having to talk her into bed. Robbie Farber had been an idiot, and to make such a statement in Justin’s presence could by some be considered suicide, and not murder.
“No, you had no choice. You had to defend Sheila’s honor. But you do have a choice now.”
Justin raised one well-defined eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“I don’t know what I mean. You’ve served notice that you’re back, that’s most definite. But will you continue to butt your head so forcibly up against the ton, or perhaps pull back for a space, let the ton become accustomed to seeing you in the park, on Bond Street, wherever. You seem to be trying to do it all in one go—rather pushing everyone’s faces in the fact that the Crown has pardoned you.”
“You keep saying that. And I’m beginning to understand the merit in your words. Very well, one more dance with the fair Lady Lydia, and I will take my leave.”
“Justin?”
The baron smiled and shook his head. “You’re right again. She should not be involved. Please extend my apologies to her, and excuse me as I tuck my tail between my legs and depart the scene of my latest crime.”
“Justin, for the love of God—”
“No, I’m being serious, Tanner. I should have gone directly to my estate in Hampshire, remained there as word slowly filtered back to London that I have returned, and only shown my face after a goodly amount of time had passed. Which is what I will do now.”
“You’ll leave London? When? I’m sure Lydia would wish to say goodbye.”
“I won’t be stealing out of town before dawn, Tanner. I’m sure we’ll meet again before I continue my penance in the country.”
“While wearing a specially made hair shirt from your favorite tailor, no doubt,” Tanner said, which put a smile on his friend’s face.
“We’ll meet again before I go. Oh, but before I forget. I feel the need to ask a most personal question. Are you experiencing some sort of financial pinch I might be able to help you with, my friend? And feel free to tell me to mind my own business.”
Tanner looked at him curiously. “Why would you ask that? No, I’m more than well-to-go, thanks to my father’s prudent stewardship. He wasn’t much of a father, but he did hold every penny most dear.”
“Interesting,” Justin said, glancing toward the ballroom. “So the necklace gracing your cousin’s beautiful neck is not then a part of the famous Malvern jewels?”
“The emeralds? No, they’re part of the collection. It seemed sensible to provide Jasmine with the loan of a few minor pieces for the Season. Why?”
“Why? Because they’re—no, I couldn’t be sure without my glass. Does the jewelry reside with her, or with you?”
Once again, Tanner glanced toward the ballroom. “With me. Justin, are you saying—”
“The emeralds are paste, yes, that’s what I’m saying, or trying very hard not to say. Very good paste, but paste just the same. Tomorrow at ten, Tanner? I don’t believe I have any other engagements. Most especially after I desert the dear lady whose invitation eased my way in here tonight. Perhaps I’m not a nice man, after all. I’ll bring my glass, just to be certain. But I doubt I am wrong.”
Tanner nodded mutely, and then watched as the baron made his way down the flagstone, only entering the ballroom at the end of the balcony, close to the stairs, to collect his hat and gloves and be on his way.
The duke remained where he was for several moments, mentally counting up the pieces of the Malvern jewelry he’d brought with him to town, and wondering if he should contact his solicitor for a more complete accounting of his funds.
Thomas Harburton had been keeping the journals at Malvern for nearly a decade, even while Tanner’s father was alive. He’d know if the estate was solvent, wouldn’t he? No, best not to ask him, not until he knew what questions to ask.
“Damn,” he muttered under his breath, the sound of violins intruding on his uncomfortable thoughts. Another set was forming, and Lydia was expecting Justin to come claim her.
He set off across the ballroom.
Chapter Five
JASMINE HARBURTON WAS fanning herself so violently that the crimped ruffling around Lydia’s neckline was actually moving in the resultant breeze.
“We have become part and parcel to a scandal, Lady Lydia,” the girl said, her eyes wide with what could be horror, or delight. It was difficult to know with Jasmine. “I understand Tanner’s feelings of obligation—Lord knows nobody should know that more than I—but how outrageous of him to foist the baron on us both, causing the pair of us to become the center of so much attention.”
Then she turned to Lydia and smiled, and it became clear that delight had won out over horror. “Not only is my dance card full, but I’ve had to turn away two applicants. One of them a viscount, the other an earl. I’d say that Papa will be furious when I tell him, but then he may just as easily decide that there is nothing more apt to bring a man up to snuff than to believe he may be replaced. Oh, dear, I’m prattling again. I do that whenever I’m nervous. Oh, I already told you that, didn’t I? I’m so sorry. It takes just the thought of marrying Tanner to set my tongue on wheels.”
The subject of Tanner, and this assumed betrothal, had been touched on earlier, before the baron’s arrival, before both Lydia and Jasmine had taken to the dance floor with him, before they both had seemed to become objects of considerable attention.
Lydia hadn’t wished to appear eager to enter into any such conversation then, and she was even more loath to do so now.
She was, however, curious. Much more curious than she ought to be, she was certain. So where else to begin, but with the obvious?
“Tanner’s father has been dead these two years and more, I think. Is that correct?”
Jasmine nodded furiously. “And Tanner has been back from the war for one of them, yes. Well, he was back for a minute, but then someone let Boney off his leash, as Papa says it, and he was gone again. In any event, his mourning period is most decidedly over. Papa said that’s why he didn’t ask for my hand that first year, which is understandable, what with his father only barely tucked into the mausoleum. And then Bonaparte did his flit and had to be dealt with—oh, I keep saying that, don’t I! I’m so sorry,” she said, snapping her fan shut and putting her hand on Lydia’s arm. “Tanner told me about your fiancé perishing at Quatre Bras. A Captain Swain Fitzgerald, I believe he said. Such a lovely Irish name. How terrible it all must have been for you.”
Lydia didn’t bother correcting the young woman. After all, in her mind, the captain had been her betrothed. “Thank you.”
“Oh, Lady Lydia, you’re so gracious. And I’m such a muddlehead.”
“Lydia, please, Jasmine. We needn’t be quite so formal.”
Jasmine clapped her hands to her bosom. “We’re crying friends? Oh, how wonderful. I have so few friends here in town that I must declare I’ve been woefully lonely. Thank you, thank you.”
Really, the girl was sweet, and faintly silly, and perhaps even tiring. But Lydia believed her heart was pure. Besides, she had to admit to herself at least, the subject of Tanner and his dragging feet when it came to the matter of a proposal to his third cousin interested her. Quite a bit.
“You’re welcome. And, now that we’re getting to know each other better, perhaps you’ll explain why you’ve taken your cousin in such dislike.”
“Dislike? Oh, no, no. Tanner is the best of good fellows, really he is. I should be very honored, flattered—all of that—if he was to ask for my hand, make me his duchess.”
“Oh,” Lydia said softly.
“If I wanted to be his duchess, that is. But I don’t.” Jasmine looked out over the ballroom and then leaned close to whisper in Lydia’s ear. “My heart lies elsewhere.”
Lydia’s own heart performed another of those disconcerting small flips in her chest. “It does?”
Jasmine nodded furiously, her dark curls bouncing. “Papa doesn’t know, and he’d be furious if he did. And Tanner is so honorable, and, Papa says, duty bound to honor his father’s last wish.”
“Yes,” Lydia said, sighing. “Duty bound. Tanner takes such promises quite seriously.”
“But that’s just it, Lady—I mean, Lydia. Tanner promised his father nothing. It was Papa who promised to tell Tanner of the promise. Oh, it’s all too complicated. All I know is that sooner or later Tanner will bow to the inevitable, as will I. He fights it, I fight it, but we are doomed to marriage. I’m already wearing his emeralds, which, Papa says, is as good as a declaration.”
“Yes, I suppose they might be considered as such,” Lydia said, looking at the beautiful, glittering stones that so flattered Jasmine’s green eyes. “But if your heart is not engaged…”
“Then you understand. Oh,” Jasmine sighed almost theatrically. “It is so good to finally be able to speak freely to someone. I could never say such things to Papa, or Tanner, or to any man. Only another woman would understand that love is so much more important than honor.”
“And you truly feel you cannot broach the subject with your father?”
Jasmine shook her head furiously. “Papa has most clearly and emphatically explained my duty to me, and I certainly can’t refuse Tanner’s suit once he screws himself up to the sticking point, as Papa calls it. It’s the land, you know. It hadn’t been part of the entail, which is how Papa’s ancestors ended up with it, and the late duke and his father, even his father’s father, had wanted it back for ever so long. Pride, you understand. And some lovely waterways that seem to mean so much to everyone. In truth, the land isn’t much at all. Most of it is very soggy, in fact. It’s the water. There was once an argument, many decades ago, and my ancestor cut off the water flowing from a spring on our property, which dried up a stream that ran through the pastures on Tanner’s ancestor’s property and—well, the history hasn’t always been pretty, I suppose you’d say.”
“Couldn’t Tanner simply purchase the land from your father?” Did that sound selfish on Lydia’s part? And did it matter? Was the girl even listening to her?
“And wouldn’t that be so simple? But, just between the two of us, I will tell you that Papa’s soggy estate is massively encumbered. My marriage to Tanner is Papa’s sure and only way out from beneath a crushing mound of debt, not that Tanner can ever, ever know about that until the marriage is a fact, oh no, definitely. Even then, how would he trust Papa to continue as his estate manager once he knew about the gambling? Without the marriage, without a lovely pension for Papa once Tanner turns him off, it would be the ruination of everything, and Papa has assured me I would not enjoy sleeping beneath a hedgerow, and the man I love is…well, he cannot marry at the moment, although he has vowed to find a way. But I don’t think he will find that way in time to save me.”
Curiosity turned to concern. “This man, Jasmine. Are you trying to tell me he’s already married?”
The girl sighed again, this time definitely theatrically. “No. He is just poor, at least for now, although he has promised me this will soon change. But will his circumstances change in time? I think Papa is right, that I would not enjoy sleeping beneath a hedgerow, not even for love. So unless something wonderful happens, it must be marriage between Tanner and myself, before Papa’s gambling ways have been discovered and he is turned off without a recommendation. You see? No marriage means no employment, no fine pension, and a really rather worthless estate gone for debt. So you must understand my dilemma. No matter my feelings, I cannot disappoint Papa.”
Lydia knew she should be warning this sweet but silly girl that she should not be saying such things to what was, at heart, a brand new acquaintance. But it was all so interesting, if terribly convoluted. Certainly there must exist another way to work things out without sacrificing two people to a marriage neither of them seemed in any rush to make a fact.
Except that Tanner was an honorable man. How Jasmine’s father must be counting on that fact.
Jasmine’s words were tolling a death knell to any of Lydia’s barely admitted dreams of a time when she and Tanner might put the past behind them and look toward a future as more than good friends.
Indeed, even Baron Justin Wilde had spent the entirety of his second dance with her extolling Tanner’s virtues, telling her how humbled and honored he was to have such a friend in his time of need. She had agreed with him without offering further explanation.
Ever since that dance, while she was being partnered by a seemingly endless succession of gentlemen who had seemed able to have managed to avoid noticing her during previous social events and balls, Lydia had been convincing herself that Sarah and Maisie had been wrong, that she herself had been wrong, wishing for something that wasn’t there.
Tanner was a good friend, and nothing more; he had other obligations. Honorable, loyal. Rather like a good hunting hound, Nicole would probably have said in some disgust.
But she, Lydia, had been seeing more. Not at first, no, but ever since her return to London she had been looking at the Duke of Malvern in a new light. One in which he was not obscured by the ghost of Captain Swain Fitzgerald standing between them.
And she’d begun weaving fanciful dreams. She’d deliberately refused to think about Jasmine Harburton, especially when Nicole had pointed out that a man about to be betrothed did not spend so much time squiring another young woman about London, poking into museums, dancing with her at balls.
Now she understood Tanner’s dilemma. His reluctant feet were being slowly bound up by his damnable sense of honor. It was a marvel the man could even take two steps without falling down.
“Oh, look, the musicians have returned,” Jasmine said, pointing toward the small stage with her fan. “I am promised to a Mister Rupert Carstairs for this next set, whoever he is. I think he’s fairly ugly, but I was so amazed to have so many asking to partner me that I could hardly refuse him, could I? Who has written on your card?”
Lydia snapped herself back to attention and opened her dance card. Wildest. “The Baron. Oh, dear, and I think it’s going to be a Scottish reel. I loathe the Scottish reel, but only because I seem to constantly forget the steps.”
Jasmine looked out over the floor as couples began assembling for the dance. “I don’t see the baron, do you? Oh, here comes Mr. Carstairs. Such a pity he has no chin, don’t you think? Shame on me. Nobody dances with me save Tanner, since everyone seems to think I’m out of the marriage mart. Without a title or a huge dowry, I’m good only for filling one of these chairs. And there’s Tanner. But the baron isn’t with him.”
Lydia looked up and saw the duke at once. He was alone, and looking quite serious. And, ah, so very handsome. She’d have to stop thinking of him as handsome.
“Ladies,” he said, bowing to them both, his gaze seeming to linger on Jasmine in a…well, in an appraising sort of way. “Lady Lydia, I’m here to tender the baron’s deepest apologies, as he’s found it necessary to leave without honoring your dance, and to offer myself in his place. Jasmine, where’s Mrs. Shandy? We can’t leave you here alone.”
“Oh,” Jasmine said, looking to her left as if only now noticing that her chaperone had gone missing. “She said something about seeing if there were any Gunther Ices still in the supper room downstairs. But no matter, Tanner. My partner is standing just behind you.” She leaned to her right and waggled her fingers at the tall, rather thin and, yes, chinless gentleman. “Hullo again, Mr. Carstairs.”
“She’s such a child,” Tanner said as he held out his hand to Lydia, drawing her to her feet. “How are you two getting along? She hasn’t yet talked off your ear?”
“She’s delightful company, Tanner. I don’t think I’ve had time to miss Nicole at all tonight, although I would give much to hear my sister’s opinion of your cousin. And we’ve both danced every dance.”
“Would you then care to take the air on the balcony, rather than face the floor again? As I recall, you don’t much favor the Scottish reel.”
He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Yet I don’t recall ever mentioning that I don’t care for the Scottish reel.”
“You never have,” he told her as he steered them along the edge of the dance floor. She already believed she could feel a pleasant drop in the temperature as they neared the opened French doors.
“But you noticed.” Lydia realized that, only a few hours ago, she might have attempted to see more in his notice than was actually there. “Did the baron take ill?”
Tanner stepped over the low threshold that led onto the balcony, and then assisted her so that she wouldn’t stumble. “In some ways, yes, I suppose he did. An unexpected bout of conscience I believe. The evening hasn’t been what he expected, although I can’t say I know what he did expect.”
“He has very sad eyes,” Lydia said as they turned to walk down the length of the balcony. It was a beautiful night, filled with stars. There were so few nights like this in London. Having Tanner beside her made this one even more special.
“I should tell him you said so. They’d go well with his funereal black clothes and planned scowl.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” Tanner said, stopping as they neared a shallow set of stone steps leading down into the darkened gardens. “Shall we?”
There were other couples strolling the balcony, and a few had ventured down into the gardens. But as Tanner turned them to the right, along a side path lined with high hedges, they could have suddenly been alone in the center of the huge metropolis.
It was, she realized, the first time they’d ever been alone. Really alone.
Her heart pounded in her chest and she willed it to slow its furious beat.
He wasn’t hers, he couldn’t be hers. He was as unattainable as Fitz, and her memories of that good man which seemed to soften and fade with each passing day. How she hated that. How she’d hate seeing Tanner fade that same way.
They strolled slowly, her arm still in his.
“He was uncomfortable, wasn’t he?” she asked at last, feeling the need to fill the silence. Dear Lord, was she becoming Jasmine?
“Justin? Yes, he was. His welcome back to Society wasn’t all he’d perhaps imagined it might be, considering that many of the supposed gentlemen here tonight didn’t cavil at being friendly with him during the years he was in exile. I think it came as a shock to him. No one was more popular than Justin our first Seasons in town, more sought after.”
“And now he is a pariah. Two of my dance partners warned me away from him. The third felt the need to go into rather descriptive detail on the matter of the baron’s crime. And all three of them told me that you should be ashamed for having foisted such an unwelcome creature on the ton in general and on two innocent young women in particular. Actually, I think that’s why they danced with me, so that I could deliver their messages to you.”
“Bloody cowards.” Tanner led her to a wrought-iron bench at the side of the path and they sat down, facing each other in the moonlight. “I’m sorry, Lydia.”
She smiled slightly, and forced some gaiety into her voice. “Oh, no, don’t be. At first I thought this sudden popularity among the gentlemen might be traced to the gown, or to the fact that Nicole isn’t here. I was rather relieved to learn that neither of those things was true. So you think I’m right, that our dance partners were using Jasmine and me to convey a message to you, and through you, to the baron?”
“Probably, yes. Give me their names. Was one of them Lord Molton?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t be so foolhardy as to tell you any of their names. Nicole would have left each one of them standing alone on the dance floor, not caring a whit that she was causing quite the scene. But I’m not that courageous, I’m afraid. I merely informed them all in turn that I was not your guardian. I thought it a rather clever riposte at the time, but perhaps not.”
Tanner took her hands in his. “I shouldn’t have involved you, which I did by not warning Justin away from you and my cousin both.”
She did her best to ignore the tingle of awareness that had run through her at his touch. “It’s all right. This evening was quite the education. Nicole spent years anticipating her first Season, and then found it petty and insipid, so that she almost immediately sought adventure and excitement elsewhere. I, in my turn, dreaded the day we’d come to London, yet I find myself enjoying the experience for the most part. The museums, the Tower, the theaters, the book repositories, the sheer masses of people and bustle. It’s silly of me, but I didn’t see the meanness anywhere, until tonight.”
“Justin has decided to leave London for a space, probably until next year’s Season. That will give Society time to become resigned to the idea that he’s back. But now I wonder if that’s wise. He might only be prolonging what is bound to end with some sort of confrontation with somebody. Still, he knows I’ll stand by him.”
Lydia wondered if she should withdraw her hands, but it was as if Tanner didn’t even realize he was still holding on to them. “I’m sure he does. That might be one reason he’s leaving London. To protect you.”
Tanner’s fingers tightened on hers briefly. “My God, I never thought of that. I’ll be seeing him tomorrow morning, and will quickly disabuse him of any idea of sacrificing himself to protect me.”
“As he would disabuse you of any idea of sacrificing yourself to protect him, I would imagine. Do you know something, Tanner? I think men might really be rather silly, at the heart of things.”
That brought a smile to his face, and another quick flush to her cheeks. “Spoken like a highly intelligent woman. Yes, men are idiots. Idiocy is beaten into us from the nursery cot on. And the more civilized we become, the more rules we make, the more we toss around words like honor and law, the more savage we really are. We merely dress up our baser selves in fine linen. And I’m as guilty of that as any of us.”
It wasn’t the most romantic of conversations. It certainly wasn’t a usual conversation between a man and woman. But what it was, Lydia realized, was a conversation between equals, between friends. With no artifice, no polite skirting of unpleasant subjects, no thought to impressing each other.
“I disagree. If anything, Tanner, I believe you may be too good. Too honorable.”
The moment she’d said the words, Lydia was appalled at her forthrightness. She withdrew her hands, faced forward on the bench, and folded those hands in her lap. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She felt his hand at the small of her back, and closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing, which had seemingly decided to stop occurring on its own and needed her full concentration.
“We’re not speaking of men as a whole or my involvement with Justin now, are we? It’s Fitz, back again, front and center.”
“No, I…yes, I suppose so. You’ve more than satisfied any favor he asked from you where I am concerned.”
“Are you telling me to go away, Lydia? Take myself off?”
She turned to him in surprise. “No! I…I don’t wish to be an obligation, Tanner. That’s all.”
He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, pulling back only slightly as he said, “You’ve never been an obligation to me, Lydia. Never.”
She wanted to avoid his eyes, his closeness, but it was no good. She couldn’t look away. He’d kissed her! Had it been a brotherly sort of kiss? The kiss one might deliver to a friend? What if she had known he was going to do what he did? Would she have turned her head so that he could kiss her on the mouth? What would he have done then? What was she thinking!
But she only said, “I was horrible to you that day, and for a long time after that. I did my best to avoid you.”
“Really?” He smiled. “I didn’t notice.”
“Oh.” She twisted her hands in her lap, a part of her longing only to raise her hand, touch her fingers to his cheek. “Everyone else did.”
“Everyone else should mind their own business,” Tanner said softly, moving closer to her, his mouth suddenly the center of her attention. His full, smiling mouth…
“Malvern! Ran you to ground at last!”
Lydia nearly jumped at the sudden shout, and instantly Tanner was gone, standing beside the bench, his body placed protectively in front of hers.
“Molton,” he said dully. “Brittingham—Featherstone. I wasn’t aware either of you were out of short pants eight years ago, let alone a friend of Farber’s. And you’re drunk, all of you.”
“So?” the man named Molton answered. “Where’s Wilde? Someone told me he’d seen him slinking away like the coward he is. Or is that him now, hiding behind you? Bring him out, Malvern. I’ve got something for him.”
With that, Lydia heard the sharp snap of braided leather against the brick path. She knew the sound. A horse whip, probably procured from one of the coaches.
“Oh, for the love of heaven. You ass, put that away.”
“Why? It’s what he deserves. Wouldn’t touch him, wouldn’t dirty my hands on him. Wouldn’t challenge him to a duel, either, wouldn’t be that stupid, when the man has no honor, fires early.”
“Molton, we’ve had this discussion. While I admire your friendship with Robbie Farber, sentiment doesn’t alter facts. He turned early, and fired.”
“Who cares a damn? Are we going to talk, or have us some fun?” one of the others said, slurring his words badly. “You promised Oliver and me some fun.”
Lydia sat quietly, not daring to move, knowing she was hidden in both the shadows and by Tanner’s body. Fear froze her body, even as her mind raced to unlovely conclusions. There were three of them, and only Tanner to face them. They were drunk, and clearly eager for an unfair fight. Did the target matter all that much, or would any target do? Had it yet occurred to Tanner that being in the right did not necessarily lend him any sort of protection?
Clearly not.
“Is that true, Molton? You talked these two young fools into stretching Justin’s arms around a tree out here, while you whip him raw? Yes, that sounds like a notion that would appeal to you. I can see why you and Farber were bosom chums. Your shared sense of honor is evident. Well, so sorry to disappoint you all, but Wilde is gone, he isn’t here. Which, whether you choose to believe it or not, is damn lucky for the three of you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is a lady present, not that any of you noticed. I wish to escort her back to the ballroom. Let us pass, and if you wish it, I’ll be more than happy to stand in for my good friend and then return to speak with you and your false courage some more.”
He turned his back on the three men, extending his hand to her. “My apologies, Lydia. You should not have had to endure any of this. Let me take you back inside.”
She heard the slither of the whip as its length was uncoiled onto the ground. “Tanner!” she called out in warning, leaping to her feet just to have him rather roughly push her toward the far side of the path, out of danger.
But his need to protect her had cost him valuable moments.
By the time he could turn, Molton had raised his hand, the whip already snaking out, meant to strike him across the back, its tip instead snapping against his cheek.
Molton’s companions cheered at the quick eruption of blood, further emboldening him, so that he laughed and drew back the whip once more.
But this time it was Tanner who moved first, as if he’d never even been touched. His left arm shot out so that the whip wound harmlessly around his covered forearm and he could grab the fat braiding. A quick pull on the whip threw Molton off-balance, for the fool’s wits were dulled with drink, and he hadn’t let go of the handle.
With her hands pressed to her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream and distract him, Lydia watched as Tanner then made short work of the man, who now lay moaning rather piteously on the brick path thanks to several short, hard punches from Tanner’s right fist.
He then picked up the whip and flourished it, its length snapping in the air like a thunderbolt, proclaiming his expertise with the thing.
When he spoke, his voice was low, calm, cold as ice. “Anyone else? Come, come, gentlemen. You were looking for a good time. Don’t let me disappoint you.”
The younger men, big and brawny, and perhaps brighter than their first acquaintance might have led anyone to believe, turned and ran back up the path, deserting Molton, who was now sitting up with both hands raised to his face. “M’nose…you bloody broke m’nose…”
“And you deserved that, you cowardly beast,” Lydia said with feeling, and then quickly bit her bottom lip, horror-struck at her outburst.
“Nasty fall you just took, Molton,” Tanner said, leaning down and lifting the man’s head by the simple expedient of grabbing at his lordship’s full head of hair. “Do you understand me? You came out into the gardens for a bit of fresh air, and you fell in the dark. That, or name your seconds. It’s your choice. Who knows, Robbie might be lonely in the graveyard, and crave your company. God knows nobody else does.”
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