Rupert stared at Cece as she handled the heckler far more deftly than most men he’d seen give speeches in the House of Lords. His heart thrummed in his chest as she went on.
“Home Rule is a solid concept,” she continued, her voice strong and clear. He could see her relax into her speech with each new idea she spun. “It has worked brilliantly with Canada, for example. The Canadian people were granted self-rule in eighteen sixty-seven, and for nearly twenty years now, they have continued to be productive, efficient, and forward-thinking.”
“They’re not Irish,” another heckler bellowed from the fringes of the crowd.
Cece turned to him and blinked as casually as if he’d attempted to sell her rotten apples in the street. “On the contrary,” she said. “I believe a great many Canadians emigrated from Ireland in the last few decades. Or does your ridiculous belief in the inferiority of the Irish mind spring from an insistence that there is something in Irish waters which addles the brain.”
“It’s called whiskey,” the man shouted. He was greeted by rude laughter from his friends.
“Well, if whiskey is what makes men weak of mind and incapable of self-governance, I can think of quite a few Englishmen who should be removed from their positions of authority at once.”
An even larger burst of laughter and applause met Cece’s words.
Rupert wasn’t sure if it was the response she was getting, the confidence that glowed from her, or the brief, superior smile she flashed suddenly in his direction, but his reaction was complete and encompassing. His heart wasn’t the only thing that throbbed at the scene playing out in front of him. His trousers were suddenly tight. This was a side of Cece that he’d never seen before, and it was magnificent.
“I do not believe the commonly-held assumption that if Ireland were to be granted its own parliament, the entire empire would collapse,” Cece went on. “Though I know that is the backbone of the argument against Home Rule. What I believe is that—”
“Lord Stanhope, you must put a stop to this horrific display at once.”
Rupert’s attention was shattered and his state of growing arousal doused as thoroughly as if he’d been thrown into an icy pond. Lady Claudia Denbigh was standing right next to him. The ridiculously ornate parasol she carried came close to poking his eye out as he turned to her.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, irritation flaring.
Lady Claudia stared up at him with a look of superiority and interest. “You must stop this, my lord.”
“Stop what, Lady Claudia?” Rupert asked.
“That.” Lady Claudia threw her hand out at Cece, who was continuing to speak with a vigor that lit her face and made her blue eyes sparkle. “Lady Cecelia is your would-be bride, is she not? You and you alone have the power to halt her ridiculous show this instant, and you should exercise that power.”
Rupert chuckled, sending a fond look Cece’s way. “Lady Cecelia has made it quite clear that I have no power over her whatsoever,” he said.
“Then your engagement is not final?” Lady Claudia asked.
“Not at present,” he said, suddenly wishing it weren’t so. He would have given anything to lay claim to the magnificence he was witnessing. A new part of him wished he had the right to sweep Cece into his arms to express just how intimately her newfound boldness ignited him.
“So you and Lady Cecelia are not together?” Lady Claudia asked.
Rupert almost spoke his thoughts aloud, but at the last moment, he realized just how pointed Lady Claudia’s question was. The cat was actually fishing for cream. He faced her again with what he hoped was a mysterious grin. “I honestly couldn’t say, my lady,” he answered.
Beside him, Fergus snorted.
Lady Claudia burst into a mercenary smile. “What a curious development,” she said. Her smile hardened, and she went on to say, “So do you plan to put an end to Lady Cecelia’s embarrassing display?”
Applause broke out before Rupert could answer. He turned back to the dais just as Mr. Shaw was shaking Cece’s hand and helping her step down and return to Lady Tavistock’s side.
“It looks as though my intervention will not be needed,” he said. “Lady Cecelia has come to her senses on her own.”
Lady Claudia pursed her lips, looking thoroughly displeased that Rupert didn’t have the opportunity to cause another scene. She opened her mouth to say something else, but Rupert had no interest in it.
“Excuse me, my lady,” he said, nodding slightly, then marched past her toward where Cece and Lady Tavistock were moving to the edge of the crowd.
He dodged his way through several men who had given their attention to the next speaker—an Irish laborer who instantly launched into a tirade about the abuses working class Irishmen were facing—his eyes fixed on Cece. She noticed him well before he reached her and already had her arms crossed when he made it to her side.
“Well done,” he said anyhow, smiling and brimming with arousal at his proximity to her.
Cece blinked, her defensive stare softening. “I would have thought you would disapprove,” she said.
“He most certainly does disapprove.”
Rupert winced at Lady Claudia’s statement from directly behind him. He pivoted to see that she had followed him closely. Fergus had followed as well and stood a few feet behind, looking as though he were watching a particularly entertaining circus act.
Fergus might have been on to something. The air between Cece and Lady Claudia crackled with tension. Clearly, there was no love lost between the women. Rupert handled it the only way he knew how.
“Lady Tavistock,” he said with a generous nod. “Have you been introduced to my friend, Lord Fergus O’Shea?”
“I don’t believe I have been,” Lady Tavistock said with a knowing grin, taking a half step forward and extending her hand, both as a greeting for Fergus and to serve as a physical barrier between Cece and Lady Claudia.
“The pleasure is all mine, my lady,” Fergus said, taking Lady Tavistock’s hand and bowing over it. From his bow, he glanced up at her with the sort of rakish grin that ladies loved. Indeed, Lady Tavistock’s cheeks went pink at the cheeky look.
“I shall be lodging a formal complaint about this, you know,” Lady Claudia broke the silence that followed in a peevish voice.
Lady Tavistock withdrew her hand from Fergus’s and turned to her with a brief flash of annoyance before assuming a neutral look. “A complaint?” she asked, managing to sound far more mature than Lady Claudia. “What sort of complaint, my dear?”
Lady Claudia’s jaw went hard. “About her.” She inclined her head toward Cece. “At no point has our position on the Irish Question been discussed.”
“The May Flowers is a political organization,” Lady Tavistock said with a slight shrug. “We make our voices heard about the issues that matter the most to this country.”
“We do,” Lady Claudia agreed. “But only on the proper side of arguments.”
“You do not believe in Irish Home Rule?” Cece asked.
Lady Claudia looked at her as though she’d suggested she believed in rolling back protections on child laborers. “I most certainly do not, and neither should the May Flowers.” She stared at Lady Tavistock once more. “It is an outrage that you should set someone to speak on our behalf who holds such counterproductive points of view.”
“I support Irish Home Rule,” Lady Tavistock said, as if giving a reminder.
“Well, I do not,” Lady Claudia snapped. “The Unionist viewpoint is the only one that decent people should hold. And if you persist in flouting your radical views in public, believe me, there will be consequences for the May Flowers as a whole.”
Lady Tavistock looked as though she would quell the whole argument, but Lady Claudia didn’t give her a chance. She tilted her chin up and whipped around, smacking Fergus with the side of her parasol as she did, before marching away.
“Well,” Lady Tavistock said. The single syllable summed everything up as well as could
be expected.
Rupert shook his head, glad that he wasn’t a woman or subject to the furies of a woman scorned. Although, in fact, he was. He turned back to Cece, determined to launch his plan to woo her back to his side.
But before he could so much as smile at her, she looked him up and down and said, “If you will excuse me, Lord Stanhope, I really must be getting home now.” She turned and walked away without so much as a “by your leave”, leaving Rupert stunned in her wake.
Chapter 6
Cece bristled with energy, good and bad, inside and out. Standing on the dais, addressing a crowd of mostly men about an issue of such importance had been thrilling. The first few seconds had been terrifying, but after that, it felt as though her heart had latched onto what she believed and had spoken for her. She didn’t know how she’d maintained a façade of confidence, how she’d answered the men who heckled her, and how she’d delivered her argument without shattering into dust with nerves.
Those nerves got the better of her as soon as she was out of the limelight and back by Henrietta’s side. That was when she began to tremble at the audacity of what she’d done. So much so that she wondered if the thrill she’d experienced as the center of attention and the crash that followed was what opium-eaters experienced in the throes of their addiction.
That was the moment when Rupert rushed up to her, flushed with a sort of excitement that left her trembling for other reasons entirely. He’d never looked at her with that particular kind of admiration before. It was a hidden blessing that the odious Lady Claudia barged into their group, commandeering the conversation before Cece was called on to speak rationally. It gave her time to settle herself.
She still hadn’t recovered fully by the time Lady Claudia marched off, which was why it had been absolutely necessary for her to remove herself from the situation. But as she reached the edge of Pall Mall and began striding in the general direction of Mayfair, her hand pressed to her stomach in an attempt to diffuse the butterflies, guilt assailed her. She shouldn’t have run off on Henrietta the way she had. It was rude to abandon the rally before it was finished. She had never been so inconsiderate before. What on earth had changed her?
Her answer came in the form of Rupert chasing after her, calling, “Hold up. You shouldn’t walk all that way alone. I’ll escort you.”
Instantly, Cece stopped and turned to Rupert with pursed lips and a stern frown. Her expression was a mask to her true, much more tumultuous feelings, though. A dozen emotions hit her at once at the sight of Rupert jogging to catch up with her—indignation that he was ordering her around once again, relief that she wouldn’t have to walk the whole way to Mayfair by herself, and a far more tempting emotion that heated her blood and made her heart race, but that she didn’t want to name.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking home alone,” she told him, fighting to maintain her newfound dignity in the face of years-old desires.
“I suspect you’re capable of doing a great many things that I have never dreamed of,” Rupert said, out of breath, as he reached her side.
They continued along in silence, passing several prominent houses and clubs before cutting across Green Park. The longer they walked, the stronger the butterflies in her stomach grew.
At last, she stopped, turned to Rupert, and demanded, “Why are you staring at me without making conversation?”
Rupert blinked in surprise, an entirely too fetching grin lighting his expression. “My apologies,” he said. “I was lost in my own thoughts, transported by the wonders I have seen this morning.”
“What wonders?” she asked, eyeing him suspiciously and walking on at a slower pace. She told herself the decrease in speed was to preserve her energy, but a mischievous part of her wanted to extend the walk home as long as possible. It was the first time she and Rupert had had any extensive length of time alone together since his return.
“The wonder of seeing something I have never seen before,” he said with a casual shrug.
She sent him a sharp, sideways look, as if warning him not to toy with her.
He caught her look and his cheeks reddened. “I didn’t know you were such a capable public speaker,” he said.
“My speech at the ball welcoming the soldiers home the other night didn’t alert you to my skill?” she said with wry teasing, though inwardly her gut twisted with embarrassment.
Rupert laughed. “Let’s just say I was too astounded by the content of your speech the other night to appreciate the skill with which it was delivered.”
The heat of embarrassment permeated every part of Cece. At least, she thought it was embarrassment. It was the kind of heat that tickled and pulsed, and it seemed to grow hotter with every sidelong look at Rupert she stole.
“You’ve changed quite a bit in my absence,” Rupert said after another uncomfortable silence.
“As I have been telling you for days,” Cece said in a flat voice.
“No, but you have,” Rupert went on as though she’d denied it. He studied her for a few more seconds as they crossed out of Green Park and into to the lattice of streets lined with the townhomes of England’s highest and brightest. “I think I like these changes.”
Cece blew out an impatient breath as they paused at an intersection to let a carriage pass. “Whatever changes you may see, I can assure you, they weren’t undertaken for your enjoyment.”
“No, of course not,” he said, then continued to study her as though she were a dazzling curiosity imported from foreign shores.
“If I have changed at all, it is to suit myself,” she said, unable to stand the renewed silence. It had never been so difficult to carry on a conversation with Rupert before he entered the army. But then, if she were honest with herself, they had never really had anything serious to talk about all those years ago.
“I should count myself lucky, then,” Rupert said as they walked on. “The changes you’ve made for yourself show great promise of benefitting me as well.”
“It was unintentional, I can assure you.” Speaking to him in such a high-handed, stilted way was beginning to make her heart hurt, so she looked for a way to shift the conversation. “You abandoned your friend, Lord O’Shea, in St. James’s Park, you know.”
“Fergus won’t mind,” Rupert said with a casual laugh. “Not when he has someone as delightful as Lady Tavistock to entertain him.”
A jolt of jealousy nearly stopped Cece in her tracks. Did Rupert find Henrietta to be delightful? She forced herself to dismiss the notion.
“Besides,” Rupert went on, helping her efforts. “You are far more important to me than Fergus.”
They reached another intersection where they had to wait for a passing carriage. She arched one eyebrow at him. “That is a far different tune than you were singing the other day,” she said, a little sharper than she intended to. The goal was to not give in to jealousy, after all.
Rupert smiled at her, swaying close enough to brush the back of his fingers along her forearm in a wickedly flirtatious gesture. “I have been made to see the error of my ways.”
Cece’s heart thumped hard against her chest as the carriage passed and they crossed the street. Marlowe House was half a block ahead, and they couldn’t reach it soon enough. In all the time she had known him, Rupert had always been kind to her. He’d been sweet and attentive before he left, and emotional in the letters he’d written from South Africa. But he had always maintained a respectful air. Now, however, he stood a little closer than was appropriate, smiled with a little too much fondness, and gazed at her with a look that hinted he was interested in far more than the mildness of her temperament or her goodness.
She wasn’t the only one who had changed in the past four years. As prim and proper as a major part of her was, a new, pulsing part of her was tantalized by what felt like decidedly carnal interest on his part. But, so help her, if that sort of interest had sprung up simply because she had boldly spoken her mind and without continued admiration for her more wholesome attributes
, she would slap him straight back to Africa.
“I have friends now as well,” she said as they neared home. “Whether you’ve seen the error of your ways or not, I know the value of maintaining relationships with others.”
“You must school me in these matters then,” he said as they climbed the steps of Marlowe House and pulled the bell chain.
Mr. Stewart answered the door before Cece could come up with a suitably withering reply, before she was able to decide how she wanted to reply to such overt flirting. She stepped into the house and removed her hat while her blood pumped wildly through her. It could be an absolute treat to flirt in the most wicked way possible with Rupert. She wasn’t the same doe-eyed schoolgirl she’d been when she met him, after all. Having Bianca as a friend had educated her in shocking ways. On the other hand, she would be devastated if Rupert turned out to be as much of a cad and a rake as any bounder running around London looking for a good time.
Ironically, it was Bianca who saved her from having to decide what kind of woman she wanted to be around Rupert.
“Cece! Rupert! You’re home.” She rushed down the hall before Cece had shrugged out of her coat—which Rupert smoothly helped her remove without being asked. “You’ll never guess,” she went on, her eyes as bright as a child with a new toy.
“We never will,” Rupert told her in a teasing tone.
“Of course, you never would,” she snapped back in true, younger sister style. She took a breath, assuming a more mature and commanding air. “Mama has decided to host a ball.”
“Mama?” Rupert gaped. “Hosting a ball?”
“Yes.” Bianca’s shoulders dropped. “And why should that be such an unusual occurrence?”
“Mama hates hosting large events,” Rupert said, removing his own coat and handing it to Mr. Stewart. “She’s more of a private supper and musicale hostess.”
A Lady’s First Scandal Page 6