Making his way past the hopeful debutantes and their even more hopeful mothers, he heard his name whispered and was certain he could feel them feasting their eyes on a duke’s son. Then he stepped through the tall double doors to the fresh air. Or, at least, as fresh as London could produce, with its excess of coal fires. Tonight, they were lucky. There was a breeze blowing the foggy smoke out onto the Thames, and they probably wouldn’t need guides with torches to lead their carriage horses home.
There was no true veranda at Marlborough House, no sturdy stone railing to lean on and overlook a pretty garden—only steps to a small tiled area before the expanse of grass and more grass. Regardless of the small, rather plain, and even, some said, ugly, terrace, couples had gathered as expected for a little privacy. Their backs were firmly to any newcomers.
Christopher wasn’t interested in embarrassing any of them anyway or in ruining reputations by gossiping about those he saw.
Now what? He strolled from one side to the other, trying to keep his gaze on the tiles in front of him. Even so, he recognized Burnley’s tall form by a planter pot, leaning into the shadows of the building with his arm draped around some young woman displaying those blonde ringlets they’d discussed. Moreover, he heard his friend’s deep-timbered laugh.
Rolling his eyes and hoping for Owen’s sake the lady’s mother didn’t come outside and find them, Christopher had nearly reached the end of the terrace when he spotted a lone female figure looking out over the lawn. She remained on the tiled edge, smartly cautious of stepping onto the grass as the dewy night air would undoubtedly ruin her kid-skin dancing slippers at once.
A female alone spelled one thing: a trap. The last thing Christopher wanted was a debutante at her first ball to cry ‘seduction’ in order to become his marchioness.
No, thank you. Pivoting on his heel, he’d taken but a single step in the opposite direction when he heard, “Lord Westing.”
A familiar voice though he couldn’t quite place it. He sighed and halted.
Don’t be an idiot, he reminded himself. However, he was a gentleman, so he turned.
“I am vacating the area should you like to have it to yourself,” said the lady.
The full moon, which was playing hide-and-seek behind tattered clouds, happened to come out, and the shadows dropped away from the woman enough for him to see who it was.
“Lady Jane. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you at first, or I would never have been so rude as to turn away without a greeting.”
She nodded. “Quite all right. What brings you out here?”
“Tedium,” he said frankly, watching her nod in agreement. “And you?”
“Similar, I suppose. I know it is the height of foolishness to be out here alone, and I’m positive I have a frantic mother inside asking everyone if they’ve seen me.”
As if she didn’t care a fig for her mother, she stayed put, and he decided to stand with her, knowing in his gut she was not the deceitful kind. After all, Jane Chatley could have snagged a man over the past three seasons if she’d wanted. He’d heard rumors more than once about some spark being hopeful with regards to earning her affection, but she’d always let them down gently. Or so the wagging tongues said.
“I have been to enough of these I no longer care,” her tone was soft as a whisper, and he frowned.
“Lady Jane, are you in distress?”
She laughed then. In rather brittle fashion for a young woman, he thought.
“Yes, Lord Westing, I believe I am. I don’t care if I ever come to another ball. Or dinner party. Or matchmaker’s breakfast, boating expedition, or picnic, for that matter.”
His sentiments exactly. “Then why do you?”
“Oh, obviously for the champagne,” she shot back, and he realized she had a glass in her hand at that very moment. She must have bribed a waiter for everyone else was gulping lemonade or even switched to the last offering of the night, water.
Then Jane laughed again. “Actually, I do love a glass of cold champagne, except if I have more than one, it seems to affect me more than anyone else I know. Thus, even that small pleasure is usually restricted.”
Usually?
“And how many have you had?”
“I’ve lost count,” she admitted. “But I feel out of kilter, so probably three. This one is not cold, alas, and it has been so long since the previous glass, it has not made me giddy with happiness. Quite the opposite.”
She was silent again for a moment, then she turned to face him, the light catching her eyes, and he thought they might be glistening. With tears?
“Why do you?” she asked. “Come to these impressively awful events, I mean?”
He thought about it. “I come to see friends, I suppose.”
She shrugged. “I don’t have friends here. I have competitors.”
He tilted his head. “Competitors?”
“Or so my mother tells me. We—all of us females—are competing for the eligible men, are we not?”
“Yet surely some of the ladies are friendly.”
“Not with me. As an earl’s daughter, I’ve always been considered a desirable match, so none of the untitled girls or even daughters of viscounts on down the line really care to befriend me. They think even if a man prefers them for their greater beauty, he’ll turn to me as the preferable choice.”
“I had no idea it was so calculating.”
She stared at him, blinking slowly.
Christopher smiled. “All right. I did indeed know it was extremely calculating as I am on the other end of those untitled females and viscounts’ daughters, and their mothers. But I thought you all stuck together.”
“Oh, no, no.” Jane Chatley shook her head. “The largest dowry or the best title wins. Or loses, as I see it, because it has meant years standing alone at these wretched affairs. The short answer to your question is, I come because I am ordered to come. My mother is confident one day a man will sweep me off my feet. I am equally confident I will end up on the shelf. I can only hope she will give up in the next year or two so I can shelve myself with a modicum of dignity, rather than being the oldest woman still dancing during a Season. Soon, I’ll be able to chaperone myself.”
She huffed and downed her warm champagne. As a gentleman, he took the empty glass from her, her gloved hand briefly in contact with his. For want of a better choice, he placed it on the tiled terrace a few feet away from her. As he turned back, she laced her fingers behind her, twiddling her thumbs and staring out into the darkness.
Most peculiar.
“I must be missing the obvious,” Christopher said, returning to her side. “You are lovely, and I know from your accomplishments with your charitable work, you are smart. You seem perfectly well spoken. And you are, as you say, an earl’s daughter. Why is it you think you should be shelved? In fact, why hasn’t a man swept you off your feet?”
She still didn’t look at him. Instead, she shrugged again. He waited. Perhaps she wasn’t going to answer.
Finally, in a tight voice, she said, “I have had a few men pursue me.”
“Ah ha.” He felt quite triumphant. She had tried to make it seem as though she were a wallflower, when he knew for a fact, she was considered a…Oh! A snout-looker!
“I wasn’t interested in them,” she continued. “It was all too clear I was being chosen for what I am, not who I am. My mother says I’m a hopeless romantic. And I confess, sometimes I do feel hopeless. A few times, though, she nearly pushed me hard enough to get her way.”
In all likelihood, his sister was incorrect about Jane Chatley—she wasn’t looking down her nose at her suitors so much as looking into her own heart and hoping for more. She wanted at least some modicum of kindred feeling.
He felt precisely the same way.
“We are more alike than not, I think,” Christopher mused. “Neither of us enjoys these social events, nor think them a very good way to find someone with whom to spend the rest of our lives.”
Jane shook her h
ead. “No, Lord Westing, we are not anything alike. You have freedom. You can pick a spouse or choose to wait another decade. You can come out here without risk to your reputation. You can refuse to dance and be deemed mysterious and brooding, whereas if I don’t dance with every man who asks, I’m called proud and finicky—and worse behind my back.”
He experienced a taste of guilt on his tongue at having discussed her with the other men and with Amanda.
She faced him. “You also have all the power. Unless you ask for the hand of a lady who refuses you, and that is very unlikely, don’t you think?”
Then she crossed her arms. “Besides, you are incorrect. This is exactly the sort of place one finds the person with whom one will spend the rest of one’s life—and most likely, unhappily at that.”
He considered. “That’s not always the case. I know of a few who’ve found love matches during a Season.”
“A few, I suppose.” Jane paused and seemed to study his face. “I shall not, though.” She tilted her chin. “And what of you? After all the balls we’ve both attended, do you really think some young woman is going to appear on the tile or parquet, and you will stare at her,” she moved a step closer, “and she will stare back,” she looked up into his eyes, “and you will feel something—really feel something—finally, at long last?”
What in blue blazes was she doing?
They were only inches apart, and he could feel something all right—her warmth radiating from her. This close, he could see the slight rosiness to her cheeks in an otherwise pale, cream-colored complexion. A lovely face, to be sure. He’d always thought that, though in a detached, impartial way.
Now, he could see how her upper lip lifted and dipped in a pleasing manner and how full her lower lip was. Nicely plump, the kind a man wanted to run his thumb over and then soundly kiss. And her eyes were not simply blue. They were truly as blue as lapis lazuli, even in the moonlight.
Who could prefer Jane over Maggie? Why had he ever asked such a ridiculous question? They were as different as chalk and cheese, and with Jane he felt…
Spark!
His mouth suddenly dry, Christopher swallowed. And she must have seen something in his expression, for she uncrossed her arms, dropping them to her sides. Cocking her head, she sunk her straight, white teeth into that pleasingly plump lower lip of hers and frowned.
“Lady Jane,” he began, though he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to say. In any case, he wasn’t given a chance to find out.
“There you are!” It was Jane’s mother, Lady Emily Chatley.
His worst nightmare had happened. He’d been caught standing alone with an unaccompanied miss by her overbearing mother!
Chapter Two
Utterly captivated by Jane, Christopher had forgotten the existence of Lady Emily Chatley, along with every other inhabitant of London for a few scintillating moments.
Thankfully, Jane didn’t jump back as if guilty. It would have done no good anyway, since her mother must have watched them from the top of the steps and had a good view as she descended and walked toward them.
In any case, the countess could see for herself they’d been merely standing looking at one another. She knew they had done nothing inappropriate. Except be alone.
Of course, that hadn’t stopped many a determined mother from wresting a marriage proposal out of a stammering, blindsided single man.
“Jane, what on earth are you doing out here? Dance partners have been asking for you. Yet here you are with…Lord Westing.” And the countess gave Christopher her broadest smile as if only just noticing him.
“Good evening, Lady Chatley,” he said, offering her a polite bow.
“Good evening, my lord.” Her tone becoming thickly sweet like honey as she sunk into a curtsey.
How could all the air have left this area of the outdoors, and so quickly?
Was it possible this overprotective, pushy woman was going to be his downfall at last?
For if she said anything untoward about his and Jane’s actions, Christopher would defend her and even ask for her hand if necessary.
If necessary! He was, above all, a gentleman.
“Mummy,” Jane began, but she was cut off, as her mother turned back to her.
“I find you out here alone with a man,” Lady Chatley pointed out, her tone changing to one of outrage. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
If it weren’t so serious, Christopher would have rolled his eyes at the sheer glee in the woman’s voice.
And then rescue came from an unlikely source—quiet, reserved Jane.
“Don’t be absurd, Mummy. We were not alone for a moment. There are other couples here.” She gestured as if those fifteen feet of distance between them and other couples were negligible, as if company was right at her elbow. “What’s more, I am twenty-one, quite old enough to stand where I want.”
“But, Jane, only think—”
“Only think how your friend, Lady Westing, would appreciate the way her son kept me safe out here.” She took a step away from him at last.
Then with a glance at him, Jane said, “I bid you good night, my lord.”
He was almost too shocked to speak, but she offered him a quirky smile of triumph and an arched lift of one lovely eyebrow, and he recovered.
“Good night, Lady Jane, and you, too, Lady Chatley,” he added to her mother.
Jane walked away, seemingly assured her mother would follow. It appeared she was not going to cower or let herself be pushed into a marriage, not even with him, a marquess.
Bravo! But would she hate being married to him so very much?
Her mother gave him a long, lingering look, her lips pursed with disapproval as if she’d expected him to step up and offer for her daughter, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.
With a loud sniff and a tilt to her chin even higher than Jane’s, Lady Emily Chatley marched off.
The terrace seemed quite empty without Jane. Christopher stared after her, glad at having the opportunity for their first long talk, and he wondered why he’d never really noticed her before except in the most superficial way, to nod at politely in passing, even to dance with once or twice.
Strange. Was he seeing her differently or had she changed?
Deciding to go back inside lest some other young lady and her mother approach with less than desirable consequences, Christopher decided to find Jane again and see if there was any space left on her dance card.
*
“I refuse to discuss Lord Westing,” Jane said, feeling as if her backbone had never been stronger. She would not give her mother even a hint she liked Christopher. Her tendre for him, just a gentle preference for the man above all others, had been her small secret for years, and she liked the fact no one else on earth knew it. Her mother would make her life intolerable if she knew, for she would start to throw Jane at him upon every occasion.
Instead, by confiding in no one, Jane could be near him when she pleased, could watch him, even speak to him, without anyone tittering behind her fan or whispering behind his glove. And up until that evening, it had meant the lack of pressure from her mother.
At Marlborough House, Jane had allowed herself the pleasure of approaching Christopher and taking a drink from the same tray precisely when he did. He’d been forced to look at her and acknowledge her presence. And she’d taken the moment to make eye contact, letting the pleasure of seeing him permeate her being as it always did. Then she’d moved away.
She’d never dreamed he would come outside when she was staring at the stars and wishing herself far away, never imagined they would share a moment—not an extremely romantic one, but intimate all the same. And then, when it was getting even more interesting, her mother had shown up and ruined it all.
They climbed into Jane’s father’s carriage, a man she saw infrequently. It used to bother her, long ago when she was a young girl, yet it no longer did. She was more upset on her mother’s behalf because everyone knew the Earl of Chatley
had a wandering eye. It was his love of women—many women—that kept him away from home, sometimes for weeks at a time, in France, Spain, and sometimes, somewhere in London with a mistress.
Love was probably the wrong word for it.
More and more, when he was home, he enjoyed a large quantity of gin at all hours. Or maybe he always had, and Jane hadn’t realized until she grew older and understood what the pleasant scent always clinging to her father really was.
In any case, he was an earl and a wealthy one at that, so he could do what he pleased, and the ton turned a blind eye.
As for her mother, the countess acted as if her husband didn’t exist. She lived for Jane, her only child who’d survived infancy. And she devoted all her energy first into her daughter’s upbringing, and for the past few years, into getting her well-married.
“But, Jane dear, he is a marquess, heir to a dukedom. You had him alone. You could have said anything at all had happened, and he would have been yours for the taking if he had even a modicum of decency, which I’ve heard Lord Westing has in spades.”
At first, Jane didn’t say anything as they headed home. After the scene on the terrace, she had walked straight to the coat room and gathered her coat and street shoes, regardless of any names still on her dance card.
In the spacious carriage, she let her mother prattle on, wondering if it were too late to still make a claim of impropriety against him.
“To what end?” Jane asked at last.
Her mother stared at her as if she were a simpleton.
“So you can marry him, of course! Why else would we go to these events?”
Jane nearly swore with exasperation. The very idea she would coerce Lord Westing into marrying her—how humiliating! And him, of all people, whom Jane actually admired. He spoke intelligently and thoughtfully, whenever she heard him. He made people around him laugh in a kind way, not with spiteful comments. Of course, he was ridiculously handsome, and those gorgeous blue eyes!
She sighed. Tonight, she’d had the pleasure of gazing into them for the longest period of time ever.
Beastly Lords Collection Page 101