Suddenly he did understand. The dark clouds enveloping his private life parted to allow a bright sunlit moment, just as Lady Reanay asked the question of him. He was up off the seat, pulling at the points of his waistcoat, and hastily brushing the sleeves of his frock coat to be rid of imaginary creases. He straightened the sit of the pearl-headed pin in his cravat, leaned his head left then right while he cleared his throat. With a bow to his aunt, he politely excused himself, white in the face as if suddenly ill. He strode across to the French windows where Lady Caroline was admiring the view.
So intent was he, so full of purpose, that he was blind to everyone around him and deaf to his name.
The guests gathered about the clavichord appealed to him—everyone knew Sir Antony to be quite the musician. Their shouts of cajolery went unheeded. Lady St. John said she would rouse him. She would not play the harp unless her dear brother accompanied her on the clavichord. Taking up a handful of her embroidered petticoats, Diana St. John bustled across the room, determined to have her brother’s attention. She appealed to Mr. Dacre Wraxton, who had just broken conversation with Lady Caroline, to add his entreaties to hers, and he willingly complied. She put out a hand to him, and he offered her the crook of his velvet sleeve.
Everyone watched and waited.
Sir Antony continued to ignore his sister and her champion.
SIR ANTONY was at Caroline’s back before she sensed a presence at her shoulder. She heard the calls and pleas from across the room but had no idea what the commotion was about. All she wanted was to leave this gathering as soon as possible. Close conversation with Dacre Wraxton had drawn unwanted attention, and their association merely underscored her unworthiness. How could she hold up her head under the piercing blue eyes of Sir Antony Templestowe, who knew nothing of her sordid past, and Cousin Diana’s supercilious smile? According to Dacre Wraxton, her cousin Diana knew all there was to know about their affair. She did not doubt her cousin would use the information to her advantage. It was only a matter of time before Diana confided such shocking news in Salt, and worse, Sir Antony…
Two hours spent at an afternoon tea clearly designed as a self-congratulatory celebration of Diana St. John’s return to London Society was time enough, and Caroline hoped Lady Reanay thought so, too. She craved the solitude of her rooms in her brother’s Grosvenor Square mansion and the companionship of her menagerie. Her assortment of animals and birds loved her unconditionally. They never judged and they never failed to put her in a cheerful mood.
A clearing of the throat at her back intruded into these mental musings. Presuming it to be Dacre Wraxton intent on pressing his suit, she turned on a heel, snapping shut the sticks of her fan, which she then held across the lace gloved palm of her left hand, as one does a cudgel, and said with a sigh of exasperation,
“Wraxton, enough of your silly games. I will never share your bed again, married or unmarried, so it is pointless to—Oh! An—Antony!?”
He made her a formal bow and cleared his throat a second time.
He was so ashen-faced, the muscles in his face so tense that she instantly presumed Lady Reanay was unwell, and she put out a gloved hand, a glance past his silken shoulder to see if their aunt was perfectly well.
“What—What ever is the matter?”
He took her hand and instantly went down on silken bended knee.
“Lady Caroline… My lady, will you do me the supreme honor of becoming my wife?”
SEVEN
TWENTY MINUTES EARLIER, before Sir Antony’s unrehearsed and very public marriage proposal, Lady Caroline Aldershot was staring down at the walled garden. Two hefty men, under direction of the head gardener, were engaged in moving tubs of orange trees into the sunshine. But her ear was to the inane conversation between Kitty Aldershot and Dacre Wraxton. Kitty’s prattle was naturally all about herself. The time she had taken at her toilette to make certain everything from her curls to her clocked stockings were perfectly coordinated received only monosyllabic responses. Thankfully, Kitty was so naïve that not once did she pick up on Dacre Wraxton’s attempts to engage her in serious flirtation. She answered all his remarks honestly and directly. When he made throwaway comments she did not understand, she pretended comprehension by replying with a silly comment of her own, ending her sentence with a giggle. When her giggles became louder, Caroline knew Kitty was growing increasingly nervous and finding it difficult to dig herself out of the attention hole created by Dacre Wraxton’s singular notice.
Caroline knew this because Dacre Wraxton, debonair lothario, had played the same game with her when she was Kitty’s age. She had responded to his advances in much the same manner as Kitty was doing now. Yet, whereas Kitty was hesitant and nervous, Caroline had enjoyed the attention and was flattered to be singled out by such a dangerously handsome man. She flirted outrageously with her admirer. Wraxton pursued her and singled her out at every public event. Caroline hoped his attentions would rouse Sir Antony Templestowe to jealousy. Her plan did not take. The more she and Wraxton flirted under Sir Antony’s fine nose, the more her Antony ignored her. In fact, he went out of his way to be blind to her behavior. Being ignored by the only man she truly cared about brought out the worst in her, and flirtation with Dacre Wraxton entered a dangerous phase. Her behavior became so outrageous Salt was on the brink of sending her back to the country when she had her very public spat with Antony at the Salt Hendon recital. That had changed everything.
That incident sent her spiraling out of control, and under the influence of too many glasses of champagne, she was brave and reckless in equal measure to allow matters with Dacre Wraxton to go beyond flirtation. She permitted him liberties from which there was no recover. Her only salvation was having the Earl of Salt Hendon for a brother. She doubted that even her dowry of thirty thousand pounds would have saved her from ruination, had Salt not intervened and married her off to Aldershot.
She was determined history would not repeat itself. Dacre Wraxton would not be the ruin of Kitty. Not only did Kitty lack the mental fortitude to recover from such a seduction, she did not have an earl for a brother or a substantial dowry, the prime factors that had allowed Caroline to avert open scandal and life-long recrimination.
So when the right moment presented itself, Caroline turned from the French window and said quietly but firmly as she slipped her fingers back into her delicate lace glove,
“Kitty, dear, be so kind as to fetch a glass of orange water. The warm air off the balcony has left me parched. Ask the footman over there for a fresh batch. I do believe all the jugs on the table are empty.”
Kitty instantly closed her fan, bobbed a curtsy to Dacre Wraxton, and departed. If her sigh of relief was inaudible, the still air left by her immediate absence was enough to underscore her liberation. Dacre Wraxton moved into this space and with a shoulder against the painted window frame, looked down on Caroline with a rueful smile and a gleam in his dark eye.
“Your charge is very pretty but she lacks your fire. I hope she finds a husband in her first season. Her blonde beauty will fade, and she’ll become tedious before she gains the wisdom that comes with silence. She’ll end her days on a shelf, gathering dust.”
“Better a tedious beauty covered in dust than what you had in mind for her.”
Dacre cocked his head with a twinge of a smile and his black eyes lost their cynical gleam.
“My dear Lady Caroline, I have nothing in mind for Miss Aldershot beyond mere flirtation in the here and now. I had hoped she would take the edge off my boredom. At the very least, take my mind off the fact my effete dolt of a brother is in the same room with me, spouting his poetical drivel. I applaud Lady St. John for orchestrating the family reunion. Let me not bore you with my family. I would prefer to hear all about yours. Other people’s families are vastly more entertaining than one’s own.”
“There is nothing to tell.”
He peered at her closely.
“Nothing? Ha! A nice try at nonchalance but I am not
to be fooled, my dear. He’s put you out of sorts, has he not, your blue-eyed baronet?” When she did not deny it and did not look up at him either, he smiled thinly. “Proximity has us both shivering—me with embarrassment for having such a brother, and you with renewed awakening for your baronet.”
“Stop it, Dacre!”
“That’s better. Call me by name. I much prefer you animated to maudlin, even if it is with anger. The latter complements your hair delightfully.”
When he put out his hand, she lightly slapped his fingers with her fan and he took it from her, unfurled it and fluttered it like a woman.
“My dear, there really is no need to engage your scruples,” he continued. “I find that to survive the rigors of this Society to which we belong, it is better to—pardon the cliché—lock away one’s conscience and throw away the key.”
At that, she did look up at him, face flushed with the embarrassment of memory.
“So you admit to having a conscience. How touching!”
For a moment, he lost his suave façade, dark brows contracting over his thin nose.
“If I was ever inconsiderate to your needs, at any time, my lady, I most sincerely apologize…”
“No. No. You need not apologize or think that,” she confessed truthfully and swallowed. She bravely held his gaze. “You only did what I asked of you.”
“I may now die a happy man,” he drawled, and made her an elegant bow, lace ruffles at his wrists sweeping the floor.
When he straightened she tried to snatch back her fan.
“That was ill-judged, sir! Now half the room is looking this way.”
He glanced over his shoulder and took in the fancifully painted walls with their Etruscan motifs of ancients in drapery, golden griffins and classical urns sprouting ivy foliage, and saw that indeed most eyes had turned in their direction. The guests were assembling around the gilded clavichord and footmen were arranging ribbon-back chairs in two rows. Thankfully, his brother had finished his recitation, and his discarded mistress, Lady Dalrymple, was no longer staring at him mournfully. He heard Diana St. John call to him, but he chose to ignore her, returning his attention to the deliciously curvaceous Lady Caroline—the only bright star in an otherwise dull affair.
“Only half?” he quipped. “Dear me. I must be losing my touch. I was hoping for all eyes.”
“Pray be serious a moment.”
“Must I? Why must I be serious, my sweet cheeks?”
“Never call me that,” she demanded in a low voice, blushing.
“But you have the finest—”
“Wraxton,” she hissed, face now the color of her hair. “Your word. You gave me your word you would never speak of our—of our—encounter.”
“Encounter?” he questioned. “I would prefer to hold to the memory as a most enjoyable liaison.”
“I’m surprised you can hold to a particular memory at all where women are concerned!”
His chuckle was low and full of amusement.
“I do miss you, spitfire. I miss your banter. To have you pretend to be disconsolate with me is such a refreshing change from doe-eyed ninnyhammers. Spitfire, you and I are cut from the same flawed cloth. We deserve each other. Admit to it! Now the boy is well-and-truly cold in his grave—”
“Don’t talk of Aldershot with such disrespect. For all his faults, he was still my husband.”
“Faults? He was a lily-livered, consumptive fortune hunter! He was undeserving of you. You are well rid of him, is the truth, and I’ll say it, even if you and others cannot.” He let the fan dip to her décolletage and ran its pleated edge along the little lace border of her chemise. “All I ask is that you give my offer serious consideration…”
“Offer? After a twelvemonth of marriage to you, if I should be so fortunate to receive your singular devotion for even that length of time, you’ll return to your dissolute ways and I will be just one of many. Worse. I will be the wife you forsook for other women. Your callous treatment of the weaker sex is evident in poor crumpled Jenny Dalrymple. She may only have been your mistress, but she did not deserve to be summarily dismissed. I shudder at the prospect! No, I thank you.”
He shrugged, a glance across at Sir Antony and Lady Reanay sipping tea. The large baronet was listening to the old lady as if her every word was coated in gold. It made him sneer.
“With the return of your blue-eyed baronet, you think you have a choice? Don’t be fooled. A man like that has scruples. He’ll accept a virtuous widow for a bride, but when he discovers you have a past, he’ll have justifiable cause to cast you off before he marries you. Pardon me for mentioning it—but as the interested third party in your impending romantic imbroglio I do have a vested interest—what do you think will be his reaction when he learns the truth?”
Caroline suddenly felt faint.
“You would not stoop so low…”
He looked deep into her green eyes.
“For you I would stoop all the way to hell.”
Caroline believed him. Such an earnest declaration from such a devilish handsome rogue would have had three quarters of London’s females swooning at his boots. It did nothing but make her feel ill. He made her feel ill. She averted her face, and in so doing caught a glimpse of her big handsome gentle man. He had a delicate teacup and saucer balanced on his silken knee and was politely listening to one of Aunt Alice’s monologues, as if she was telling him the most riveting piece of news. In all probability, she was giving him a medical inventory of her arthritis, and Antony was listening with all the assiduousness of an attending physician.
She swallowed back tears.
“He has the reputation of being a most chivalrous gentleman, and the most honorable,” Dacre Wraxton said in a low voice near her ear, because there were calls coming from the other side of the room and his name was mentioned. He pressed home his advantage before being called away. “Four years ago you could have had your baronet, and yet you ruined your chances. Face the looking glass, my tiny spitfire. Even as a naïve innocent, you knew he was too good, too righteous, for the likes of you. What are the odds he will offer for you a second time once he discovers the truth? Your brother can have no objection to you marrying me, not after he married you off to a sot like Aldershot. One day I’ll inherit title and wealth. I give you my word I’ll be faithful after my own fashion. If I stray, I’ll be discreet—”
“Discreet? Faithful? Your word? You face the looking glass, Wraxton!” Caroline replied, incredulous. “Such fine words are not in your lexicon.” She took a step away and shook out her silk petticoats, rallying herself enough to say without emotion, “I am not the girl I was at that masquerade. What I did then was out of spite. Marriage to Aldershot—our-our trifling affair—have merely allowed me to gain clarity on what is truly important. Antony is worth a hundred—no—a thousand of you! I know precisely what I squandered. But you are wrong. He has never asked me to marry him.”
Dacre Wraxton was genuinely surprised.
“It’s not like Lady St. John to be wrong about such an important detail…”
“Lady St. John?” Caroline’s eyes narrowed to slits. “How interesting. Time away from London society and Cousin Diana failed to learn her lesson to keep her nose out of other people’s affairs—more precisely, my family’s business!” She had a sudden, awful thought. “You couldn’t—You wouldn’t—You didn’t tell her?”
Dacre Wraxton flicked shut her fan and lightly tapped the end of her nose before returning it to her.
“My dear spitfire, I own to being a complete rogue and a breaker of hearts, but I do not break confidences, particularly when shared in the bed of a lady.” When Caroline closed her eyes with relief, he apologized. “I did not tell her, but she knows.”
“How? How does she know?”
Dacre Wraxton smiled with sympathy that her anger should instantly turn to dread at this revelation. Unlike most of his peers, he was not pleased with Lady St. John’s return to London. They shared a history in her late husba
nd Aubrey St. John. He looked into Caroline’s eyes and was not surprised she was fearful. Diana St. John was a force to be reckoned with. She had commanded Polite Society four years ago through force of personality and knowing other people’s secrets. And by her forays into Society drawing rooms in recent weeks, was well on the way to regaining her preeminence, and by every means at her disposal.
“I do believe the saying the walls have ears apposite. Servants are everywhere and yet we see them nowhere. One can only assume a menial blabbed.”
Caroline’s gaze fixed on Diana St. John, the center of the gathering by the clavichord. She could well believe her cousin capable of paying servants to spy.
“One of yours or mine?”
He shrugged a shoulder, indifferent.
“My servants or yours, that is of no consequence. With your cousin, I would be more concerned about the why rather than the how. She stores away other people’s secrets better than a squirrel does acorns for the winter! A circumstance I discovered too late for my own good, and so I dance to her tune when required. So now you must excuse me. I have been summoned.” Across her shoulder he saw Sir Antony fast approaching and said at her ear, “When you’re done playing silly games with honorable men, I’ll be waiting.”
SIR ANTONY’S marriage proposal on bended knee caused such a cacophony of good-humored shouts of encouragement from the gentlemen, and exclamations of joy and sighs of happiness from the ladies, that Caroline felt she was at St. Bartholomew’s Fair amongst the poor howling and squawking exotics of Pidcock’s Wild Beast Show. Several of the ladies rushed forward in a rustle of petticoats so they could hear her reply to such a thoroughly romantic gesture. Lady St. John, on the arm of Mr. Dacre Wraxton, and Lady Reanay with Kitty holding her hand, waited at Sir Antony’s back, eyes riveted to Lady Caroline’s flushed countenance.
Still reeling from the revelation that Diana St. John knew about her past, and wondering what her cousin meant to do with such scandalous and damaging information—inform Salt was her first thought—Caroline could only stare at her gloved hand resting across Sir Antony’s fingers. When she finally lifted her gaze to his pale face, the earnestness in his blue eyes formed an obstruction in her throat and she swallowed hard. She had not heard his words, but being on bended knee was indication enough of the question requiring her response. She had been waiting such a long time to hear him ask it, and had practically dreamed of this very moment on and off for so many years, that for him to make such a momentous declaration in public, and at such an inauspicious moment, terrified her to silence.
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