“Damnation!”
He stopped by a felled tree and dug his fingernails into the rotten bark. Behind him, candlelight spilled from the upper storey windows of the house, the glow welcoming and deceptive. So many horrors lurked within.
A woman like Fortuna needed protection, not tyranny. He understood her reason for not running with him; it was too big a risk. She’d be utterly ruined. It was far safer to put her faith in her own stubborn will and protest the union with Macleane until she was hoarse. For all the good it would do her.
Giles cursed again, and tapped his fingers to his lips. He wondered what had attracted Sir Hector to her. He couldn’t imagine they’d engaged in any sort of conversation, and her family, while respectable were hardly distinguished, the girls respectable, the brother borderline interesting. So it had to be down to her looks. He could understand that. Fortuna combined natural grace and poise, with delicate fine bone structure and bright wide-set eyes. She blushed prettily too, so that her skin turned rosy just along the ridge of her cheekbones. In his mind’s eye he pictured her with her gown loosened, the tiny puffed sleeves slipped from her shoulders, and her long blonde hair unpinned so it fell in a flaxen sheet down her back.
Still, if all Sir Hector required was a pretty wife, there were plenty of soulless harpies to choose from without troubling Miss Allenthorpe.
Surely, the man could see no joy would come of their match. Fortuna would never mask her disgust for him; it was so very clear in her face. Indeed, the thought of her lying stiff as a corpse, while that lumpen brute pawed at her delicate breasts flooded his own mouth with bile. The bitterness burned upon his tongue. He had to save her from the indignity of hiding her face in the pillows while Macleane satisfied his lusts with no thought for her feelings. The old boar would do that. It was his husbandly right.
Slowly, Giles left the shadow of the shrubbery and made his way back across the moonlit lawn. She’d gone from the balcony, so he bypassed the drainpipe and searched instead for an easier route inside. As luck would have it, someone had left the sash window into the library unfastened. Giles eased himself through the gap into the pitch-black interior. Doing his best not to collide with the furniture, he followed the wainscoting around the room, hoping to find the door, only for his hand to alight upon warm flesh instead.
A woman gasped in surprise.
“Who’s that?” demanded a familiar male voice.
“Neddy?” said Giles. He reached out again, to where he thought the man’s shoulder must lie, and discovered something softer instead. This touch raised a squeal and a giggle, as if he needed further proof of what his friend was about.
“Have a care.” Neddy knocked his hand away, although there was humour in his voice. “You know I’ll always share, but really, Giles, we’re only just getting acquainted. Would you mind watching the door?”
“I’d be happy to just find it!”
“Ah.” He could imagine his friend winking. “Eight paces to your left. And take care not to overshoot or you’ll topple Father’s bust.”
Giles grunted an affirmative, then stumbled around the pair and carefully counted his footsteps. By the time he reached the door, his night vision was working reasonably well. He gave Neddy a backward glance only to be rewarded with a glimpse of rather too much bottom. The man’s breeches were currently coiled about his knees.
Briefly forgetting to be cautious, Giles wrenched the door open, only to draw back equally fast when he caught the lilt of a distinctive West Country accent. He left the door open a tiny fraction, just enough to see Clemencè approaching.
“I’m telling you, Andrew. I saw him. Lord Darleston is lying. Giles Dovecote is in attendance tonight.”
Breath heavy in his lungs, Giles pressed himself tight to the doorframe.
“Clemencè.” Andrew Morton rested a hand upon his sister’s shoulder. “What does it matter even if he is? The man’s a fool, why will you not see that and break cleanly with him? There’d be no shame on your part.”
“A clean break requires a conversation.”
“What it requires, Sister, is a letter.”
Clemencè bristled, though not a single chestnut hair moved out of place. The emotion was all in her eyes. “Very well, then, perhaps I do not wish to break with him.”
Giles silently groaned. He turned his back to the door and nudged it shut with his bum. It seemed he wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Dammit, was the woman stupid or blind? Wasn’t it obvious after a year that he really wasn’t interested in her? He wondered if he ever truly had been, and as for her brother, he detested him more than anyone else alive. The sooner they severed all the ties between their families the better.
“Find yourself some other fool,” he whispered into the dark.
“He’s still grieving,” he heard Clemencè snarl.
“I will not have you pursuing such an unstable man,” Andrew Morton snapped. “You speak as if the woman died yesterday, not a year ago. If I’m over it there’s no earthly reason why he shouldn’t be. I intend to find myself another wife.”
Giles cleared his mind and concentrated on the blackness before him. Only torture lay in the past, and this was not the place to sink into it. Thankfully, the Morton’s voices soon drifted away.
At about the same time, Neddy found a different sort of relief, and Giles was forced to remove his back from the door to allow the still giggling girl to make her escape. He made a point of avoiding eye contact with her as he watched her disappear in a trail of ribbons, although he realized she hadn’t been out long, and that she was vaguely familiar.
Neddy joined him in the doorway, his red hair tangled over his eyes as he tucked his shirttails into his breeches.
Giles shook his head in mock disapproval. “Dare I ask who it was?”
A sly smirk tweaked Neddy’s features. “Just a clever little bobtail with a very sweet mouth.” He refastened his waistcoat and cravat.
“You’re a disgrace,” Giles said, with as much disapproval as he could muster.
“I damned hope so. I practice enough.” Neddy bowed from the waist, still smirking lewdly. “And what, pray tell, is the point of being a libertine if one can’t be a shocking disgrace?”
Giles had no answer to that. Instead, he slapped Neddy across the back and pushed him into the hall. The younger Darleston twin was a licentious fool, but he was also darned fun to be with.
“And your girl, who was she?” Neddy asked as they began the climb up to the ballroom, nodding to various guests en route and prompting a fair few blushes. “I assume there was someone, and you weren’t just stumbling about in the dark for the fun of it. Unless you were checking up on me?”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“Damned if I can figure it. You know that if you want to watch you can do so anytime.”
Mid-stride, Giles turned to face his friend straight on. “Sometimes it alarms me how intimately we know one another.”
“Seriously, Giles,” said Neddy, as they turned to avoid the attention of his new mama, “What has got into you tonight? I know Clemencè and Andrew Morton are about, but I’m sensing you’ve a bee in your bonnet about something else too. A girl, perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” Dovecote replied. He guessed he was pretty agitated about Fortuna.
Neddy stopped with both his brows raised. “Another one? Damn me if your new tactics don’t reel them in fast. How do you do it, Giles? You haven’t danced with a single blessed girl all night, whereas I’ve endured a dozen crushed toes.”
“I’m not the one who has just been in flagrante in the library,” he replied. The sharpness of his tone caused Neddy to back off a little, although the light of curiosity still flickered in his friend’s grey eyes. “Besides, Ned, nobody’s begging to bed me, not even Clemencè. She just thinks she can cure my ills.”
“Oh, good grief, Giles. You don’t wait for them to ask to be bedded. What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know, maybe I’ve just h
ad my toes trampled once too often.” He rolled his eyes at their surroundings. “The novelty of all this has worn off. I’m nearly thirty. The whole flow of the seasons depresses me.”
Neddy’s easy smile tightened into a concerned moue. Giles sighed; he no longer wished to play the flighty fool. There were causes he believed in, and wanted to do something about, starting right now with Fortuna.
“Look, Neddy, I may need your help.”
“Over the girl?”
“Yes, but not what you think.”
Neddy’s pursed lips eased into a smile. “It always comes down to that in the end. Still, sounds serious, do tell.”
Giles shook his head. “Not yet. Somewhere private. Plus, we need to find your brother first.” He had the strangest inkling that if he could speak to Fortuna again, he could somehow convince her to trust him. The plan that swirled in his thoughts was possibly the maddest he’d ever made, but maybe, it would at least afford her a little happiness.
He intended to stage a rescue.
* * * * *
Some thirty minutes later, Giles occupied the earl’s study along with both of the Darleston twins.
“It’s an adventure you’re offering her all right,” Darleston remarked. He sat perched among the papers on his father’s desk. “I admit that my attention’s well and truly piqued, but it does seem a tad chancy, and are you sure she’s going to agree?”
“I swear, if it hadn’t involved a drainpipe and a threat to her reputation I think she’d have run with me earlier,” Giles replied.
The twins both rolled their eyes at the mention of the pipe.
“It’s for her own good,” Giles insisted.
“Yes, but is it?” Darleston stopped fidgeting with his father’s blotter. “I mean there are far worse men out there than Sir Hector Macleane. Admittedly, he’s a bit of a warthog, but charmers such as ourselves are spread rather thin, and well, our philosophy disregards marriage anyway, so the ring’s not going to stop you getting what you want.”
Giles jerked off the chair arm he was resting upon. “I want her happy, Robert.”
“The devil you do. You barely know her. What you want is a taste of her. You came close in October, but then Raffe Devonshire stopped you and now it’s all about proving yourself.”
“You’re wrong.” Giles glowered sullenly, eyes fixed upon the carpet. He wasn’t about to raise his sister’s spectre now, besides it would make no sense to do so. Not even his two closest friends knew the truth of her death and how it concerned the Mortons or fed his own feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness. Besides which, while he was quite happy to admit his interest in Fortuna, this wasn’t about that. Not at all. They were just going to make her disappear for a while, until Sir Hector cooled his heels and he could be sure that she wasn’t being pressed into something she didn’t desire.
“Giles,” Darleston began again, his tone conciliatory. “We’ve said we’ll help. We just want you to think things through. Abduction’s a serious business, and that’s how the family will see it when they find out. And they will find out. They could press charges and make things distinctly uncomfortable.”
He appreciated the warning, but didn’t believe anything would really come of it. Not if she came willingly, which was the whole point. It wasn’t as if he was actually stealing her away. He was simply offering her a place of sanctuary.
He felt the twins’ gazes upon him.
Darleston launched himself onto his feet. “Look, we’ll get her to you. Then it’s her decision, you can’t say fairer than that. I’ll distract the mother. Ned, you’re on the sisters.”
The younger man gleefully rubbed his hands together. “How many’s that? Five? I always enjoy a challenge.”
“Four,” said Giles. “We’re extracting one, remember.”
Neddy gave him a broad grin. “Are you sure we can’t take a brace? If memory serves, the younger one’s a proper saucy minx.”
Darleston sighed, and a world-weariness infused the sound. “Ned, just because you’re hung like an ass doesn’t mean you have to act like one. I’ll not deny Mae Allenthorpe’s a buxom little pleasure-seeker, and doubtless a good giver too, but that doesn’t mean you have to break her in. Now—” he gestured to the door with an elegant flick of his wrist, “—if we can concentrate on the task in hand.”
* * * * *
Fortuna rested upon a chaise in an alcove at the edge of the dance floor, her presence masked by two tray-wielding footmen. After being made presentable by her mother, she’d been ordered into her current seat and told to stay put until the rest of the family had been rounded up. It seemed her mother’s intention was to shame her into submission by dragging them all home early.
“I see Sarah Allenthorpe has another one settled.”
Fortuna’s ears perked, as the voice drifted over the gentle tinkling of the crystal glasses. It seemed rumours about her were spreading already.
“Yes,” agreed a second woman. “They need hardly announce it. Why she’s made it quite obvious in the way she’s been brazenly flaunting those pasty younger girls of hers to every young fool in the place, though none of them are callow enough to fall for that kind of ploy.”
“I hear she’s trying to make a connection with the Rumneys. Sophia Morton told me all about it just this morning. She saw them all at the modiste’s last week ordering scores of new dresses. That and she took the younger girls to the Finchleys’ dinner two nights ago, and no sign of the elder two.”
Yet another cold trickle of terror ran down Fortuna’s spine. It hadn’t seemed odd at the time, when her mother had taken Mercy and Patience out to the Finchleys’ instead of her and Alicia as neither she nor Alicia had wanted to go, but seeing it put that way only further aggravated her differences with her mother. Her own situation was quite bad enough without her poor sisters being fostered off in a similarly repulsive fashion.
“Oh, well everyone knows they’ve given up hope of settling Alicia after that fiasco with Edward Holt last Easter,” said the first woman, whom Fortuna thought might be Mary Wilkes, a notorious gossip who had virtually auctioned her only daughter to pay for the refurbishment of the family’s country home.
“Oh, surely not! She’s still far too young to be branded an old maid. She’s all of twenty-two.”
Alicia slid onto the chaise beside Fortuna, instantly stilling the wagging tongues of the two matrons. The pair drifted off moments later, heads together and fans raised to mask the tittle-tattle they’d no doubt resumed.
“Mother found you, I see.” Alicia wrapped an arm around Fortuna’s shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “You were right to make yourself scarce. Father was quite furious after Sir Hector told him you’d refused. He swore violently, and told Mama that he wouldn’t tolerate anymore of our girlish nonsense. He stormed off with Gabriel and the Vicomte de Maresi. I do hope the countess won’t take offence.”
Fortuna’s frown deepened at the revelation, though it was hardly a surprise. Her father, generally a mild mannered man, had developed a vile sense of impatience recently. He rarely stayed home in the evenings anymore, and now left presenting them at social gatherings like this one to their mother. “Where have they gone?”
“Oh, some dire gentleman’s club where they play dice and swig port straight from the bottle.” Mae Allenthorpe, her eyes shining with glee, squeezed onto the chaise between them. “We shall have no dowries left by morning and it will be entirely your fault, Fortuna.” She sagged against the upholstery, breathless, and her cheeks blazing with colour. After a couple of deeper breaths she propped herself up again. “Can’t you just agree to marry him? None of us want to go home yet. Especially not for a row.”
“Of course she can’t.” The show of solidarity from Alicia surprised a smile out of Fortuna. “Do be quiet, Mae. It’s not as if you haven’t danced with every eligible gentleman already. Several of them twice. Think of someone other than yourself for a change.”
“As a matter of fact, I have be
en.” She crossed her arms beneath her chest, which squeezed her already ample breasts together, making them lift so the nipples were almost on show. “He has dark hair and the most beautiful smile in the room.”
Both Fortuna and Alicia glowered at her, and were still doing so when Mrs. Allenthorpe returned with her remaining two daughters. She stared imperiously down her nose at Fortuna. “I trust you noticed that you’ve driven your father off.”
Fortuna bowed her head. There was only one thing she could say that would make any difference, and she wasn’t prepared to say it. Therefore it seemed best not to say anything at all. Two gentle fingers stroked across her brow, prompting her to look up and face her mother. Some of the anger had washed out of her mother’s eyes, but her lips remained pinched around the edges and her jaw stern.
“I suppose such skittishness is only to be expected. Marriage is a big step. We all understand that, but you must see it as an adventure, dear.” She drew her caress into Fortuna’s hairline, and then down behind her ear to her jaw. “Now, I’ve arranged for Sir Hector to call tomorrow after breakfast, on the understanding that he will be warmly received.”
“No.” Fortuna’s insides bound themselves into tight knots at the thought of having to sit through another of his ghastly proposals. “I shall refuse him again, Mama. My mind is set.”
‘Will you, indeed.” Mrs. Allenthorpe’s voice dropped to an octave below lethal, and her pale eyes narrowed into two sharp slits. Just her appearance drained what little colour than remained from Fortuna’s skin. “Hear me well, young lady. You’ll accept him tomorrow, or so help me, God, I’ll lock you in your room until you see reason.”
Fortuna simply blinked, then her gaze fixed upon the rigid lines of her mother’s face. It seemed she could already feel the walls of her bedchamber closing in upon her until she was locked in a prison of bright flock wallpaper, and the only way out was to peel away the layers of paper until she was completely exposed and no hint of resistance or sanity remained. Giles Dovecote had been right. This was a battle she couldn’t win.
Three Times the Scandal (Georgian Rakehells) Page 3