Lord Perfect

by Loretta Chase

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Lord Perfect

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2006 by Loretta Chekani

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0542-6

  A BERKLEY BOOK®

  Berkley Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: March, 2006

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Berkley Sensation books by Loretta Chase

  THE LION’S DAUGHTER

  CAPTIVES OF THE NIGHT

  MISS WONDERFUL

  MR. IMPOSSIBLE

  LORD PERFECT

  Other Regency romances by Loretta Chase

  ISABELLA

  THE ENGLISH WITCH

  VISCOUNT VAGABOND

  THE DEVIL’S DELILAH

  THE SANDALWOOD PRINCESS

  KNAVES’ WAGER

  To Walter

  Chapter 1

  Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London, September 1821

  HE LEANT AGAINST THE WINDOW FRAME, offering those within the exhibition hall a fine rear view of a long, well-proportioned frame, expensively garbed. He seemed to have his arms folded and his attention upon the window, though the thick glass could show him no more than a blurred image of Piccadilly.

  It was clear in any case that the exhibition within—of the marvels Giovanni Belzoni had discovered in Egypt—had failed to hold his interest.

  The woman surreptitiously studying him decided he would make the perfect model of the bored aristocrat.

  Supremely assured. Perfectly poised. Immaculately dressed. Tall. Dark.

  He turned his head, presenting the expected patrician profile.

  It wasn’t what she expected.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  BENEDICT CARSINGTON, VISCOUNT Rathbourne, turned away from the thick-paned window and the distorted view it offered of the lively scene outside—of horses, vehicles, and pedestrians in Piccadilly. With an inner sigh, he directed his dark gaze into the exhibition hall, where Death was on display.

  “Belzoni’s Tomb,” exhibiting the explorer’s discoveries in Egypt a few years ago, had proved a rousing success since its debut on the first of May. Against his better judgment, Benedict had formed one of the nineteen hundred attendees on opening day. This was his third visit, and once again, he had much rather be elsewhere.

  Ancient Egypt did not exert over him the hold it did over so many of his relatives. Even his numskull brother Rupert had fallen under its spell, perhaps because the present-day place offered so many opportunities for head-breaking and hairsbreadth escapes from death. But Rupert was most certainly not the reason for Lord Rathbourne’s spending another long afternoon in the Egyptian Hall.

  The reason sat at the far end of the room: Benedict’s thirteen-year-old nephew and godson Peregrine Dalmay, Earl of Lisle and sole issue of Benedict’s brother-in-law, the Marquess of Atherton. The boy was diligently copying Belzoni’s model of the interior of the famous Second Pyramid, whose entrance the explorer had discovered three years ago.

  Diligence, Peregrine’s schoolmasters would have told anyone—and had told his father, repeatedly—was not one of Lord Lisle’s more noticeable character traits.

  When it came to things Egyptian, however, Peregrine was persevering to a fault. They had arrived two hours ago, and his interest showed no signs of flagging. Any other boy would have been wild to be out and engaging in physical activity one and three-quarters of an hour ago.

  But then, had this been any other boy, Benedict would not have had to come himself to the Egyptian Hall. He would have sent a servant to play nursemaid.

  Peregrine wasn’t any other boy.

  He looked like an angel. A fair, open countenance. Flaxen hair. Clear, grey, utterly guileless eyes.

  A group of boxers under “Gentleman” Jackson’s supervision had been employed to keep Queen Caroline and her sympathizers out of the king’s coronation in July. These fellows, if they stuck together, might have contrived to keep the peace while Lord Atherton’s heir was about.

  Other than these—or a large military force—the only mortal with any real influence over the young Lord Lisle was Benedict—the only one, that is, apart from Benedict’s father, the Earl of Hargate. But Lord Hargate could intimidate anybody—except for his wife—and he certainly would not stoop to looking after troublesome boys.

  I should have brought a book, Benedict thought. Stifling a yawn, he directed his gaze to Belzoni’s reproduction of a bas-relief from a pharaoh’s tomb and tried to understand what Peregrine, along with so many other people, found so stimulating.

  Benedict saw three rows of primitively drawn figures. A line of men whose beards curled up at the end, all leaning forward, arms pressed together. Lone hieroglyphic signs between the figures. Columns of hieroglyphs above their heads.

  In the middle row, four figures towed a boat bearing three other figures. Some very long snakes played a part in the scene. More columns of hieroglyphs over the heads. Perhaps these figures were all talking? Were the signs the Egyptian version of the bubbles over caricatures’ heads in today’s satirical prints?

  On the bottom, another line of figures marched under columns of hieroglyphs. These had different features and hairstyles. They must be foreigners. At the end of the line was a god Benedict recognized: Thoth, the ibis-headed one, the god of learning. Even Rupert, upon whom an expensive education had been utterly wasted—Lord Hargate might have fed the money to goats with the same result—could recognize Thoth.

  What the rest of it meant was work for the imagination, and Benedict kept his imagination, along with a great deal else, under rigorous control.

  He turned his attention to the opposite side of the room.

  He had an unobstructed view. For most of the Beau Monde, the exhibition’s novelty had worn off. Even their inferiors would rather spend this fine afternoon outdoors than among the contents of ancient tombs.

  Benedict saw her clearly.

  Too clearly.

  For a moment he was blinded by the clarity, like one stepping out of a cave into a blazing noonday.

  She stood in profile, like the figures on the wall behind her. She was studying a statue.

  Benedict saw black curls under the rim of a pale blue bonnet. Long black
lashes against pearly skin. A ripe plum of a mouth.

  His gaze skimmed down.

  A weight pressed on his chest.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  Rule: The ill-bred, the vulgar, and the ignorant stare.

  He made himself look away.

  THE GIRL STOOD at Peregrine’s shoulder. He tried to ignore her but she was standing in his light. He glanced up and quickly back at his sketchbook—enough to see that she had her arms folded and her lips pursed as she stared at his drawing. He knew that look. It was a schoolmaster look.

  She must have taken the glance as an invitation because she started talking. “I wondered why you chose the model of the pyramid,” she said. “It is all angles and lines. So uninteresting to draw. The mummy in the sarcophagus would be more fun. But now I understand the trouble. Your draughtsmanship is not very good.”

  Very slowly and deliberately Peregrine turned his head and looked up at her. He was startled at first, when he got a good look. She had eyes so blue, they looked like doll eyes, not real ones.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said in the icily polite voice he’d learnt from his uncle. His father was a marquess, a peer of the realm, and his uncle had only the courtesy title of Viscount Rathbourne at present, but Uncle Benedict administered far more devastating set-downs. He was famous for it. At his most excessively polite, it was said, Lord Rathbourne could freeze boiling oil at fifty paces.

  The icy politeness didn’t work so well for Peregrine.

  “There’s a perfectly good cross section of the pyramid in Signor Belzoni’s book,” she said quite as though he’d begged her to rattle on. “Wouldn’t you rather have a souvenir of one of the mummies? Or the goddess with the lion head? My mother could make you a superlative copy. She’s a brilliant draughtsman.”

  “I don’t want a souvenir,” Peregrine said witheringly. “I’m going to be an explorer, and one day I shall bring home heaps of such things.”

  The girl stopped pursing her lips. The severe look went away. “An explorer like Signor Belzoni, do you mean?” she said. “Oh, that would be something grand to do.”

  Try as he might, Peregrine could not tamp down his enthusiasm in the proper Lord Rathbourne fashion. “Nothing could be grander,” he said. “There are more than a thousand miles along the Nile to explore, and people who’ve been say that what you see is like the tip of an iceberg, because most of the wonderful things are buried under the sand. And once we learn to read the hieroglyphs, we’ll know who built what and when they did it. At present, you see, ancient Egypt is like the Dark Ages: a great mystery. But I’m going to be one of the ones who finds out its secrets. It’ll be like discovering a whole new world.”

  The girl’s blue doll eyes opened wider. “Oh, then it’s a noble quest. You’re going to shed light on the Dark Ages of Egypt. I’m going on quests, too. When I grow up, I’m going to be a knight.”

  Peregrine almost stuck his finger in his ear to be sure it was in working order. He remembered his uncle was in the vicinity, though, and picturing the look Lord Rathbourne would give him, resisted the impulse. Instead he said, “Sorry. Say again? I thought you said you were going to be a knight—as in shining armor and such.”

  “That’s what I said,” she said. “Like the Knights of the Round Table. The gallant Sir Olivia, that’s who I’ll be, setting out on perilous quests, performing noble deeds, righting wrongs—”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Peregrine said.

  “No, it isn’t,” she said.

  “Of course it is,” Peregrine said—patiently, because she was a girl and probably had no notion of logic. “In the first place, all that King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table folderol is a myth. It has about as much basis in fact or history as the Egyptians had for their sphinxes and gods with ibis heads.”

  “A myth!” The great blue eyes opened wider still. “What about the Crusades?”

  “I didn’t say knights never existed,” Peregrine said. “They did and do. But the magic, monsters, and miracles are nothing more than myths. The Venerable Bede doesn’t even mention Arthur.”

  He went on, citing historical references to the simple warrior leader who might or might not have been the source of the legendary Arthur. Peregrine explained how, over the centuries, a romantic tale developed, and along the way, mythical creatures, miracles, and various other religious associations got stuck onto the story, because the Church was the great power and stuck religion onto everything.

  He then offered his views on religion, the same views that had led to his being chucked out of one school after another. Out of consideration for her weaker and less amply educated feminine brain, though, he gave a simpler and shorter version.

  When he paused for breath, she said scornfully, “That’s only your opinion. You don’t know. There might have been a Holy Grail. There might have been a Camelot.”

  “I know there weren’t any dragons,” he said. “So you can’t slay any. Even if there were dragons, you couldn’t.”

  “There were knights!” she cried. “I can still be a knight!”

  “No, you can’t,” he said, more patient than ever, because she was so sadly confused. “You’re a girl. Girls can’t be knights.”

  She snatched the sketchbook from his hands and swung it at his head.

  DISASTER WOULD NOT have occurred had Bathsheba Wingate been paying full attention to her daughter.

  She was not paying attention.

  She was trying desperately to keep her gaze from straying to the bored aristocrat . . . to the long legs whose muscles the costly wool trousers lovingly outlined . . . the boots whose dark gleam matched his eyes . . . the miles of shoulders bracing up the window frame . . . the haughty jaw and insolent nose . . . the dark, dangerously bored eyes.

  Bathsheba might as well have been a giddy sixteen-year-old miss when in fact she was a sober matron twice that age, and she might as well have never seen a handsome aristocrat before in all her life when in fact she’d met any number and even married one. She was not herself and she didn’t know or care who she was.

  She only stood for a long time, trying to pay attention to the Egyptians instead of him, and oblivious of the minutes passing during which Olivia might easily re-create some of the more harrowing scenes from the Book of Revelation.

  Bathsheba forgot she even had a daughter while she stood as though trapped, her heart beating so fast that it left no time or room to breathe.

  This was why she failed to notice the signs of trouble before it was too late.

  The crash, the outraged yelp, and the familiar voice crying, “You great blockhead!” told her it was too late at the same time they broke the spell. She hurried toward the noise and snatched the sketchbook from Olivia’s hands before she could throw it across the room—and break a priceless object, beyond doubt.

  “Olivia Wingate,” Bathsheba said, careful to keep her voice low, in hopes of attracting as small an audience as possible. “I am shocked, deeply shocked.” This was a hideous lie. Bathsheba would be shocked only if Olivia contrived to spend half an hour among civilized beings without making a spectacle of herself.

  She turned toward the flaxen-haired boy, her daughter’s latest victim. He shifted up into a sitting position on the floor near his overturned stool, but that was as far as he came. He watched them, grey eyes wary.

  “I said I was going to be a knight when I grew up and he said girls couldn’t be knights,” Olivia said, her voice shaking with rage.

  “Lisle, I am astonished at your flagrant disregard of a fundamental rule of human survival,” came an impossibly deep voice from somewhere nearby and to Bathsheba’s right. The sound shot down to the base of her spine then up again to vibrate against an acutely sensitive place in her neck. “I am sure I have told you more than once,” the voice went on. “A gentleman never contradicts a lady.”

  Bathsheba turned her head toward the voice.

  Ah, of course.

  Of all the boys in all the world, Olivia ha
d to assault the one belonging to him.

  SHE WAS THE sort of woman who made accidents happen, simply by crossing a street.

  She was the sort of woman who ought to be preceded by warning signs.

  From a distance, she was breathtaking.

  Now she stood within easy reach.

  And now . . .

  Once, in the course of a youthful prank, Benedict had fallen off a roof, and briefly lost consciousness.

  Now, as he fell off something and into eyes like an indigo sea, he lost consciousness. The world went away, his brain went away, and only the vision remained, of pearly skin and ripe plum lips, of the fathomless sea in which he was drowning . . . and then a pink like a sunrise glowing upon finely sculpted cheekbones.

  A blush. She was blushing.

  His brain staggered back.

  He bowed. “I do beg your pardon, madam,” he said. “This young beast is far from fully civilized, I regret to say. Get up from the floor, sir, and apologize to the ladies for distressing them.”

  Peregrine scrambled to his feet, countenance indignant. “But—”

  “He will do nothing of the kind,” said the beauty. “I have explained to Olivia time and again that physical assault is not the proper response to disagreements unless one’s life is in danger.” She turned to the girl, a freckle-faced redhead who bore not the slightest resemblance to her mama—if mama she was—except in the eye department. “Was your life in danger, Olivia?”

  “No, Mama,” said the girl, blue eyes flashing, “but he said—”

  “Did this young man threaten you in any way?” said her mother.

  “No, Mama,” the girl said, “but—”

  “Was it merely a difference of opinion?” said her mother.

  “Yes, Mama, but—”

  “You lost your temper. What have I told you about losing your temper?”

  “I am to count to twenty,” the girl said. “And if I have not regained it by then, I must count to twenty again.”

  “Did you do so?”