by Claudia Dain
“No, I’m not upset,” Antoinette answered. “It might surprise you to know that I have my own plans.”
“Are you trying to say you have a man in mind?”
Bernadette asked.
As subtlety regarding men was not Bernadette’s strongest point, Antoinette might have been expected to give her sister a tepid and entirely vague reply. As it happened, Antoinette was not in the mood to be tepid, not after watching the Duke of Edenham make a complete fool of himself over a woman, and clearly not care that he might look a complete fool. Naturally, the result was that he didn’t look foolish in the slightest, merely determined and unafraid.
“That’s it precisely, Bernie. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
she said, and Antoinette glided across the room toward the man in question.
Bernadette lost sight of Antoinette almost immediately as she made her way into the red reception room. As Joel Elliot was in the blue reception room, Bernadette made her way to him. Why not? She’d done her good turn for Toni; now it was time for her to enjoy herself.
It was rather difficult to make her way to the knot that was Edenham, Joel, and Jane Elliot. Everyone, for obvious reasons, wanted to be near to them in the hope that something exciting would again occur. As she wormed her way through the crowd, she even heard more than one person suggest that inviting Americans to formal affairs would be an excellent way of livening things up. How did one get them to agree to it, was what the Earl of Quinton was overheard to say, once they found out how deadly dull they always were?
Bernadette took exception to that. They weren’t all deadly dull, and as Lord Quinton rarely left his estate he was hardly in a position to make sweeping pronounce-ments. Now there was a man she had no interest in pursuing. Quinton, Raithby’s father, was entirely too serious for her. Being serious about anything but making a name for yourself for having a rousing good time entirely missed the point, the point being . . . she hadn’t worked that bit out yet, but she was close. She could feel it. There had to be a point, didn’t there? There must be.
Finally! She’d made it to Joel Elliot, and didn’t he look as charming as he did an hour ago. Apparently getting into fistfights agreed with him completely. His cravat looked as fresh as when she’d first met him.
Edenham, strangely and for the first time since she’d had that rather indiscreet affair with Katherine’s husband, seemed pleased to see her. Bernadette, quite experienced at these sorts of things, understood immediately and without complicated explanations that Edenham would be quite content to have her take Joel Elliot off to some distant spot, leaving Jane to him.
She didn’t anticipate any sort of problem accomplishing that.
And she did want to make amends in some way, however small, for the disaster that had been Richard. She’d found him barely tolerable, and she’d had no notion that Katherine believed him faithful, which he most assuredly had not been, and she’d not intended any hurt to befall his wife. Far from it. Her own husband having been a complete rogue, she understood that particular situation too well.
“Captain Elliot,” she said, leaning close to him and giving him a nice view down her bodice, “you’re looking quite refreshed. How is that possible? I feel positively wilted in this crush. Do I look it?”
“Not at all, Lady Paignton,” he said, his dark eyes twinkling.
“What a charming liar you are,” she breathed, brushing her breast against his arm as she looped her arm through his. “Might I ask you to escort me out into the twilight air?
I believe Hyde has a spacious garden. Do you know it?”
“I do,” Joel said, looking a bit discomfited, staring at his sister and then back down to her. “Though I do hope you are not disappointed to find it is not twilight yet.”
“Not at all. Perhaps we should linger until twilight finds us? You don’t mind if I borrow your brother for just a few moments, Miss Elliot?” Bernadette said. “I promise to return him in the same condition I found him. Or nearly so.” She laughed softly.
“Not at all,” Jane Elliot said, her pale hazel eyes gleaming.
“Enjoy yourself, Joel. I shall be perfectly safe right here.”
“Perfectly,” Edenham echoed, his eyes very carefully not gleaming.
One had to be so careful around brothers. Bernadette was so relieved she had nothing but three sisters to bother about, and they were truly no bother at all.
And with that thought, she gently led Joel Elliot through the room, giving him every impression that he was leading her.
This was going to be such fun.
Jane watched Joel being led like a calf to the butcher by Lady Rampant and suppressed a sigh. She did hope Joel could handle himself. Lady Rampant . . . Paignton looked up to the task of eating him alive.
“He’ll be fine,” Edenham said, his warm voice cutting into her thoughts with alarming precision. Did she wear every thought on her face? She decided to experiment, thinking something very personal, and looking into his hazel green eyes as she did so.
Edenham’s eyes widened and then he grinned. “But Miss Elliot, I don’t think the Hyde garden is large enough for all of us.”
Jane, to her absolute horror, found her breath caught in her throat, which made her cough in a very indelicate manner.
“You are very forward, your grace,” she said, when she’d got her breath back.
“You have more than enough evidence to support that observation, Miss Elliot,” he said, lifting his gaze from hers to look at the crowd around them. She did not look about.
It might have been because she could not stop herself from staring at his face. “I must ask, does it offend you?”
“And if it did, you would change your manner?” she asked.
“Either that or convince you to be forward with me,”
he said, taking her by the arm and leading her through the room to the doorway to the music room. The crowd parted for him serenely. Because he was a duke or because he was bleeding? Or because they wondered what he’d do with her next?
What he’d do with her . . . there was a phrase to send shivers along her scalp. And elsewhere.
The music room was not especially crowded. Edenham even managed to find them a pair of seats near the pianoforte, but that may have had less to do with luck than with the fact that he was a duke. Would an earl or viscount or a mere mister be able to deny a duke a chair if he wished one? She had no idea. It didn’t seem so, but she truly didn’t understand the whys and wherefores of a society built so firmly upon rank and the resulting precedence.
The chairs were small, but upholstered and comfortable, at least for her. Edenham, with his long legs, looked a bit like a grasshopper perched upon a thimble.
“Now, Jane,” he said once they were seated, “I do think we should take this quiet moment”—which was absurd as there were easily a dozen people in the music room, all strangers to her and yet certainly familiar to him—“to discuss why I want to marry you.”
Naturally, she was rendered speechless by that statement. And then she rallied. Was there ever a proposal made so dispassionately?
“Certainly,” she said, sitting forward upon her chair.
“And then we might discuss all the reasons why I don’t want to marry you.” She smiled brightly as she said it, not at all caring who heard her. She didn’t know anyone in this room, after all. “The fact that I don’t know you at all must rank near the top of my list.” Ha. This list idea was working out brilliantly. She’d have to thank Amelia, or whoever had first mentioned it, later. “But then there is the fact that you are English and I am not. That certainly must appear in the top three.”
“And where would my being a duke rank, Jane? I should be most disappointed if that fact did not rank at least in the top two,” Edenham said, looking not the least bit insulted.
Bother. She’d had no idea it was so difficult to insult a duke. One would have thought they took insult at nearly everything.
“but since I don’t, I won’t, but I am not going to allow you to determine either the content or the ranking of my list of objections, Hugh,” she snapped.
Edenham smiled. And she did not like it in the slightest.
It should have enraged her. It did not. It most definitely did not. It did very strange things just under her heart. In fact, she found it difficult to take a full breath.
“You’ve taken the trouble to find out my name,” he said softly.
“It was no trouble,” she said stiffly, and then winced.
That hadn’t come out right at all.
“I’m so glad,” he said. “It does show we have so much in common, our minds working along the same course. I, too, have learned your name and it was no trouble at all.
Libby.”
Libby? An abbreviation of Liberty? Who had told him that? And who had given him leave to assign her a pet name?
He’d given himself leave, of course. He was a duke.
“Whom have you been talking to?” she asked. “Not my brothers.”
“Whom have you?” he said, trying for an innocent look and missing it by miles. “My sister?” She must have made a face for he smiled and said, “Libby, you do warm my heart.
Already meeting the family, finding out all the little details that are sure to charm me.”
“That is not what I was doing!” she said, rather sharply as someone across the room twanged a string on the harp.
“No? And yet the result is the same.”
“It is not,” she said, aware she was sounding more and more like a pouty three-year-old child. “I did not know she was your sister, and I should think you’d be ashamed to make a spectacle of yourself with her in the room. I am quite certain my brothers are much more careful of me than you are of her.”
“By spectacle,” he said, leaning closer to her, lowering his voice, “I presume you mean the moment when I kissed you?”
Another shiver moved across her skin, lower than her scalp this time. Much lower.
She blinked and had to remind herself to breathe, her eyes going to the bruise on his jaw. It was bigger now, more purple. She tried to think if she’d always had a preference for men with . . . physical disturbances. They had all been laborers of a sort, the kind of men with rough hands, always sporting a few minor bruises and cuts.
Mercy. What sort of woman was she?
Not a very nice sort, clearly. She only hoped her mother never found out.
“Or was it the moment Jedidiah threw the first punch?”
he said, watching her face very carefully. Too carefully. Edenham rubbed his bruised jaw lightly, her eyes trapped by the gesture. “He had the right. You wanted him to, didn’t you?”
“You deserved it,” she said.
“True,” he said softly. “I kissed you, at your request, a detail I can’t think you want your brothers to know.” She could feel herself flushing. She stopped looking at his face and felt her skin almost instantly cool. “I paid the price for that kiss,” he continued. “I think that squares everything, don’t you? Now we may begin again, on far more intimate footing.”
“I hardly think so,” she said, looking into his eyes again.
“Would you care to make a wager on that?” he breathed, a slow smile taking over his face.
As it happened, she did not. A loosely worded wager with Louisa had started all this. She was not going to jump into the same pit twice.
“You don’t make wagers?” he asked, studying her face.
“I certainly don’t make a habit of it, no,” she said, avert-ing her gaze to look around the room. Six people were staring at her, five of them women. She didn’t know a single one of them. It was something of a relief that Louisa wasn’t in the room; Louisa would very likely do something awkward, like come over and blurt out that Jane had won the wager concerning Edenham. Yes, that was exactly the sort of thing Louisa would do. “I suppose you make wagers all the time,” she said primly.
“Because I am a useless, brainless, spineless duke of England?” he said.
Her eyes jerked back to his. “If that’s how you define yourself, I’d hardly think to argue with you.”
“No, not about that, you wouldn’t,” he said, not precisely smiling, but doing something pleasant with his mouth. His bruised mouth.
She looked away abruptly.
Edenham narrowed his eyes, a slight furrow between his brows. “I gather that your brothers have trounced many a man, any man they feel has . . . sailed too close to your anchor line?” She turned just as abruptly back to him. “Trying for the nautical metaphors, as you can see.
I thought you’d like that.”
“I don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “What I mean to say is, I don’t care how you choose to express yourself. And there haven’t been that many men.”
“How many?”
“Really, this is absurd,” she said, starting to smile.
“I already know about Ezekiel Biddle,” he said. “That’s one. Did he endure a trouncing, too?”
“Of course not,” she said, her nose in the air.
“I suppose that means he didn’t kiss you.”
Absurd conversation. She was going to say nothing more to encourage him in it.
“Perhaps they simply didn’t catch him at it,” Edenham said. He had the most wickedly playful look on his face.
She couldn’t seem to look away from it. “I know someone has kissed you before I did. You kiss like a woman who’s been kissed before.”
“There’s no need to shout it!” she hissed, looking over her shoulder. Her brothers weren’t in the room. Neither was Louisa. Cranleigh was. She wished he weren’t. Cranleigh had met Ezekiel Biddle once; she had to assume he’d forgotten all about it. It wasn’t at all likely that Ezekiel could have left a lasting impression upon him. They’d only met briefly, and Ezekiel wasn’t the sort who left a lasting impression upon a person even after extended exposure.
“Ah, so they don’t know, these watchdogs of yours,”
Edenham said, grinning in a perfectly wicked way. He was going to use that bit of knowledge against her, she was certain of it. Dukes, and all that. “So, Ezekiel Biddle, that’s one. Were there more? Of course there were. You’re a beautiful woman. A man can overlook two raging brothers for a woman who looks the way you do.”
“I do believe you think you’ve just flattered me, but I am not the sort of woman who runs around New York kissing men, and I’m also not the sort of woman who falls into a dead faint because some man thinks I’m beautiful. But I can see that you’re the sort of man who thinks that I am that sort of woman, which is the very finest reason I can think of to not want to marry you!”
And with those words, she rose to her feet and walked out of the music room. Edenham sat with his mouth open and his shoddy attempts at charm crushed. It was a stunning look on him. She did hope he made a habit of displaying it more often.
“You’re making a habit of saying the wrong thing to her,”
Cranleigh said, taking Jane’s chair. “Are you certain you want to marry her? You don’t seem to get on very well together.”
“Bugger off,” Edenham said, staring at the floor between his feet.
It had been a good start. He could see that, feel it in the air that shimmered around her, like . . . like . . . oh, he couldn’t think of a nautical reference and so let the thought drift.
Cranleigh, like the thoughtful, sensitive man he was, laughed under his breath.
“She’s not from here, you do realize that?” Cranleigh said when he’d stopped laughing. “America? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? An entirely different way of looking at things, Edenham. Entirely different. She might make you the most miserable wife, if you can get her to agree to marry you in the first place.”
“I told her she was beautiful,” Edenham said. “The
re’s no place in the world where that is the wrong thing to say to a woman. No place, not even sodding New York.”
Cranleigh raised his eyebrows and held his tongue.
Edenham gave in.
“All right. Tell me,” he said, still staring at the floor.
A small black ant crawled next to his shoe. He watched its progress and had no urge to step on it. There was a metaphor.
“The Plain Jane,” Cranleigh said softly, looking at Edenham. Edenham stopped looking at the ant to lift his face to him; it was the least he could do as the man was trying to help him. “She was, you know. She wasn’t a beauty, not even pretty. Plain was putting it nicely. A girl gets treated a certain way when she’s not a beauty. Then she gets treated another way when she becomes one. Jane noticed the difference, understood the reason behind it, and didn’t like it.”
Edenham stared at Cranleigh, his brow furrowed. What woman didn’t enjoy being beautiful? New York women?
He didn’t believe it.
“You saw all this?” Edenham asked.
Cranleigh snorted. “ ’Course not. Her mother told me.
I think she was trying to build family feeling or some such.
Anyway, I’m certain she likes being a beauty, ’tis only that she doesn’t like men who like that she’s a beauty, if you catch the difference.”
“Bloody hell I don’t,” Edenham said.
But he did. Katherine fought against something very like it, though not exactly like it. It should be enough that a woman was beautiful, more than enough to make her happy; it was damned complicated when it wasn’t.
“That’s it, then,” Edenham said, his gaze going back to the floor. The ant was gone.
“No, there’s more,” Cranleigh said. Edenham lifted his head again. “This bit gets very tricky. I’m not sure I can explain it. I’m not actually sure there is a way to explain it. She’s kissed someone, more than one you said. Now, it might be fine enough for a girl to kiss a man, even more than one, but it’s not fine to talk about it. It’s as if you’re saying she’s loose in her ways.”