What a flirt he was, this unsuitable merchant! “That might be difficult, sir, as it is obvious a man of your grace is not easily discounted.”
“I recognized you as a true lady from across the ballroom.” He nodded brusquely toward the aristocratic suitors she had left behind. “Those worthless leeches aren’t worthy to lick your slippers.”
She was startled by his vehemence. “You are too harsh, sir.”
“And you are too kind.” Abruptly he seemed recalled to his role as gentleman-merchant, and he smiled whimsically. “In truth, you remind me of my dear, departed Mrs. Brindley.” He pressed his veined hand just above his heart. “I have heard that you are betrothed to Viscount Whitfield.”
She nodded acknowledgment and concentrated on imitating the slow, graceful movements of the other dancers.
“What a sad state of affairs for the men who even now watch you hungrily.”
“I doubt that more than their pockets will suffer from the loss.” Mary pointed her toe, turned her head at the proper time, and realized with triumph that she remembered her father’s instruction on the fine art of the dance.
Nostalgia assailed her. How her father would have loved this evening of celebration! How proud he would have been of her! Usually she tried to crush the memories of her father, but tonight invoked only the golden glimpses of his long-lost kindness and his never-ending joy.
And briefly she wished she had allowed Hadden to come. She’d feared danger, but how could danger exist in such a setting?
“So Viscount Whitfield is already firmly ensconced in your heart,” Mr. Brindley said as they wove in the intricate steps of the dance. “And you in his, I suppose?”
Startled by the familiarity of his inquiry, she missed a step and had to hurry to catch the beat.
“Ah, I’ve embarrassed you.” In a low tone he instructed her on the next few steps, then resumed their conversation. “Forgive me the liberty of old age.”
She couldn’t let him think that. He moved gracefully, like a man who kept active, and he displayed a veiled strength. “You’re not old.”
“I thank you, but my youth has slipped away, leaving me to think I have little time to set the world to rights.” He chuckled, disparaging himself. “Little time to see Whitfield set to rights. I’ve known him for years, you understand. We’ve occasionally been partners in some venture or another, and I’ve grown to respect the lad. He reminds me of myself when I was younger.” He clenched his fist to punctuate his words with it. “Dynamic. Unstoppable. Determined.”
“Yes.” Mary scrutinized the other dancers to keep Mr. Brindley from noticing the color in her cheeks, and to see if anyone was eavesdropping on their unorthodox conversation. “He’s all those things,” she almost whispered.
“No one can hear us,” Mr. Brindley said kindly. “A man of my background knows well how loud to project his voice.” He cleared his throat. “Business deals, you know.”
Mary surreptitiously glanced around again. Although the dancing couples appeared to be straining to hear their conversation, they also wore the deeply disgusted expressions of those thwarted.
“But we were speaking of young Whitfield, and I wish for him a deep and abiding love.” He squeezed her hand, and his firm chin wobbled. “A love such as Mrs. Brindley and I had for each other.”
Mary’s chin wobbled, too. How sweet he was!
“I see by your blush, Whitfield is lucky in this, too.” Mr. Brindley couldn’t have sounded more fond. “And the dance is finished. You must have been jesting.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
His hazel eyes twinkled. “You dance very well.”
“Only with the proper instructor.” She curtsied when Mr. Brindley returned her to the sidelines.
“Oh, stop scowling, all you young men,” Mr. Brindley said to the enlarged cluster of suitors. “She’s not yours, anyway. She’s Viscount Whitfield’s, and don’t you forget it.”
As he walked away, his step firm, the earl of Aggass said in a low voice, “Dockworker.”
“He is.” Mr. Mouatt sneered. “Or used to be. He brags about it.”
“They say he’s an anarchist, or worse.” Again Aggass spoke almost in a whisper.
“Why is he here?” Mr. Mouatt asked. “I didn’t know the Fairchilds allowed merchants in to mingle with the upper ten thousand.”
“The upper ten thousand have borrowed enough money from Mr. Brindley to get him invitations wherever he chooses to go,” Viscount Dyne replied, but without the discretion of his younger rival. “As the Fairchilds have undoubtedly discovered.”
“Inviting him to a party is better than finding yourself facing three of his thugs on a dark night in London.” Aggass looked ill, and he flipped his lace handkerchief in Mary’s direction. “It’s a frightening experience.”
Mary didn’t believe Aggass for a moment. The despicable earl wanted sympathy, nothing more. “Mr. Brindley is an agreeable man,” she said. “You should be thankful he will lend his money.”
Ian gave a bark of laughter as the other men shuffled uncomfortably. “You’re supposed to pretend you can’t hear them when they talk about usury. Young, unmarried women are required to be ignorant of such matters.”
“I’ll try to remember,” Mary promised, thinking that being a woman in any walk of life was much the same as being a housekeeper; one had to play dumb to please the men.
“Personally, I find Miss Fairchild’s frankness enchanting.” A man in his thirties with a hard air of dissipation bowed before her. “Baron Harlow, at your service.”
“Almost as enchanting as her beauty.” The pimple-faced son of the earl of Shaw captured her hand and pressed a kiss on it.
“She is truly the loveliest in the land.” Lord Thistlethwaite tried to elbow his way to a position directly in front of her, but the other men pressed close and he had to be satisfied to call his compliment over their heads.
Wistfully Mary yearned for her old gullibility. If the sixteen-year-old Guinevere Fairchild had been standing here, splendor all around, compliments inundating her, she would have believed herself blessed. She would have been so happy, for in this moment the dreams of her young life would have been fulfilled. Instead, Mary Rottenson looked at the decorations and wondered how much they had cost and how long the servants would have to work to remove them. She heard the flattery and wondered how these noblemen who had been previously blind to her charms could suppose that she would believe them now.
A housekeeper, she thought wistfully, never indulged in self-deception.
Ian grasped her hand. “The orchestra is playing. Would you do me the honor?”
They took their places on the floor. Ian waited until the music had started, then asked, “Where did you go when you left here so many years ago?”
She was silent, unable to lie to the cousin who had been so good to her. Yet she couldn’t confess, either. Even Ian, with his kindness and empathy, would condemn a murderess.
“You don’t have to tell me.” He patted her hand. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“But I do! If not for you, Hadden and I would have…starved.” And been tortured and hanged.
“Were you…You’re so comely.”
She curtsied as part of the dance, and when she rose he touched a lock of hair that rested on her chest.
“Was it a man? Were you…compromised?”
There was a man, of course, but not as Ian feared. “I wasn’t compromised,” she answered steadily. “After much searching, I found a position as Lady Valéry’s housekeeper.”
“Housekeeper?” Ian’s mouth drooped. “You couldn’t have been her housekeeper.”
“Yes, I could, and a good one, too.” She could have laughed out loud at his expression. “What did you think would happen to me?”
“I thought you’d become some rich man’s mistress. I pictured you comfortable and safe, and whenever I went to London I looked for you.” His soft brown eyes were pools of outrage. “It would have been
more appropriate if you had been compromised, I think.”
“Is that what everyone thinks? That I’m Sebastian’s mistress, and he’ll take me to wife now that I’m an heiress?”
“More or less. He is marrying you for your money, you know.”
“That’s stupid,” she said without even having to think it through. “If he were marrying me for my money, he would have done so in Scotland before I learned the truth. Then he would have had control of my fortune before I knew I had one.”
Ian squeezed her hand a little too hard, and when she winced, he apologized swiftly. “Don’t tell anyone the truth. It’s better if they think you were a mistress.”
“Nobles are so odd, don’t you think? That they would prefer to think I had spread my legs for a man than to think I put myself into honest service.”
“What I think doesn’t matter.” Ian spoke urgently, as if he had limited time in which to convey his message. “Just don’t let anyone lure you into a secluded spot.”
The nape of her neck began to tingle, and she barely refrained from putting her hand there. What was wrong with her?
“Any man here would consider it a triumph to toss your skirts over your head and compromise you for the money.” Ian glanced behind her.
She would have sworn he was nervous. Was it the whispers she heard sweeping the ballroom? Or the sudden chill in the overheated atmosphere? “I’ll keep your warning in mind,” she said.
“Your betrothal wouldn’t save you.”
Sebastian. Sebastian was in the ballroom.
“If Whitfield is not marrying you for the money, then he’s marrying you because he’s just like every other man. He can’t resist a Fairchild.”
Sebastian was watching her. That explained the heat that rose from within her, her impulse to flee, her stronger impulse to stay.
“Everyone also knows he would strangle you rather than marry a woman carrying another man’s babe.”
Even now, Sebastian threaded his way through the dancers to claim her on the dance floor. She knew it without looking. She knew, also, that he wasn’t pleased to see her talking to Ian.
Ian looked defiantly over her shoulder as he finished. “He’ll not be made a buffoon by a Fairchild again.”
Sebastian slid his hand along her bare arm, disengaging her from Ian’s grasp. She wasn’t startled. She expected his touch, almost craved it. When she faced him, his cheek was high and swollen, dark with bruising, but his eyes still glittered, and with the passion stoked by his soul’s forge.
“We’re dancing, old man,” Ian protested.
“Not anymore,” Sebastian answered, leading Mary away.
She followed without a protest.
Chapter 12
Sebastian marched Mary across the ballroom, but when they reached the terrace she dug in her heels. “I am not to go with you out into the garden,” she said.
He whipped around so fast, he obviously had anticipated a protest. “And why is that?”
“Jill forbids it.”
He examined her face intently. Then slowly his gaze traveled her body, down toward the satin slippers that peeked from beneath her skirt. “I can see why,” he said, acknowledging the whiteness and delicacy of the material. Or was he insinuating he couldn’t be trusted with her? “Then let us step into this alcove and talk.”
She hung back, and he turned on her again.
“What’s wrong?”
“We can’t be alone, either. Ian forbids it.”
“And when has our cousin become arbiter of proper conduct?” Sebastian glared and touched his face. “If you’re displeased with my behavior, you can always strike me with a silver tray cover.”
The bruising reached from his cut cheekbone to under his eye, giving him the look of a street fighter. An apt image, she thought, but probably humiliating in view of his conqueror’s identity.
Worse, she was glad to see she’d marked him, and her pride hinted at a possessiveness that horrified her. Falling back on safety, on the education she’d gained as a housekeeper, she folded her hands before her. “I take satisfaction in teaching a lesson the first time.”
His mouth tightened. His nostrils flared. “You are so damned prim.” He gestured. “Would you rather we spoke in public?”
She glanced around. Hundreds of eyes peered at them without any attempt at circumspection. They registered Sebastian’s bruise and had undoubtedly heard tales from their servants about the scene in Mary’s bedchamber. And since no one had witnessed the most familiar of the moments, she could imagine the tales that were flying about the staircases and corridors. Not turning her back on him, she inched toward the alcove. “I promise not to hit you again, if you promise not to…”
He followed her into the retreat formed by two columns on either side of a curving wall, and his mouth curled with the unprincipled smile of a fallen angel. “Promise not to…what? Kiss you? Desire you? It’s a little late for that, Miss Fairchild.” He mocked her with a formality made false by their recently shared intimacy.
The columnar enclosure should have given her a sense of security. Instead she felt cornered, at bay. “There are other Fairchilds here, more beautiful than I. Why don’t you go talk to them?”
“I’m not betrothed to them.”
“With very little effort, you could be, I suspect.” Oh, why had she put the idea into his mind?
Yet while he heard, he didn’t seem to care. “I don’t want them. You serve my purpose.”
Well. That put her in her place, and cured any propensity she might have for conceit. “The others are prettier.”
“Who?” He sounded annoyed.
“The Fairchild daughters. Look.” With her fan, she pointed to the dance floor, and he turned. How could he not be impressed? All her erstwhile suitors were watching, practically salivating, as her cousins swirled in the graceful motions of the country dances. When she looked at those women, she knew herself to be a plain dab. Sebastian would no doubt see the obvious, and, she told herself grimly, better sooner than later. “They dance gracefully, they’re well spoken, they compel the eye to follow them by their very loveliness.”
“Yes, yes, they’re very nice, but I suppose you’re fishing for a compliment.” He slapped a hand against the wall on either side of her head and leaned toward her. “It’s not any of them who have put coals in my trousers.”
Not a pretty compliment, she thought, and glanced down, expecting to see smoke rising from the dark material. Of course, no such oddity occurred. Instead, when she looked back into his eyes, she could have sworn the fire existed in his soul.
“You are the most beautiful woman here.” He couldn’t have sounded more impatient. “I can’t keep my eyes off you, nor my hands off you, and unless you want a demonstration of my needs right here in Bubb Fairchild’s bloody damned ballroom, you’ll stop flaunting yourself.”
She went from surprised to pleased to astonished during one coarse speech. “What flaunting?”
“You’re…looking at me.” He shifted from foot to foot as if he truly did have coals in his breeches. “And why did you buy that dress? It shows all your…bosom.”
“You insisted on this dress!”
“I’m a stupid sot.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
He relaxed a little. “You wouldn’t, you little harpy.”
Shocked and infuriated, she said, “You dare…you…you hardheaded ass.”
“My dear Miss Fairchild.” He pressed his hand to his heart. “I am shocked! I am horrified! I am dismayed!”
She was, too. Sebastian must think she had changed personalities before his very eyes.
Worse, she had. She had become Guinevere Fairchild, imagining that the world was a blancmange and petulantly demanding a serving of it. Dismay flung her back against one of the columns, and he caught her waist as if he feared for her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I can’t believe I called you a…an appellation.”
�
��An ass.” He rubbed his hand across the small of her back and smiled that hard-edged smile. “You called me an ass. No doubt I deserved it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Have you forgotten I called you a harpy?”
“That’s no excuse for me to lower myself, too!”
“So I am allowed to lose my temper. You are not.” He pulled a thoughtful face. “What an interesting woman you are.”
He watched her too closely, but she thought he understood her.
Why did that make her uneasy?
“I humbly beg your pardon for calling you a name,” he said, “and forgive you for calling me an ass, which is a mild term for what I really am. Think nothing of it.”
Think nothing of it? She could think of nothing else. She had tumbled to the depths once more. And he realized it, for his hands rubbed her back in a manner reminiscent of their familiarity the day before. He must think her an unprincipled slut who couldn’t even restrain a flare of temper.
With what she hoped was dignity, and not simply desperation, she said, “I have been poor, and a housekeeper, but I have always been able to call myself a lady. Don’t take that title from me.”
His mouth opened slightly. She could see his white teeth, and the minute movement of his lips as he breathed. The warmth of him crept through the layers of material at her bodice, and each one of his fingers pressed into the flesh of her back as if he wanted to restrain her regardless of her desires.
She was far too intent on him, noting his every action, analyzing him for pleasure, for anger, for pain and for passion.
“You’ll always be a lady.” He sounded sincere, and rather surprised. “Not like the rest of the Fairchild women. Not like so many of the women here who own the title but lack the deportment.”
She heard the buzzing of those ladies behind him, but her view of them was blocked, some by his chest and shoulders, but mostly by the fact that when he stood so close, she noticed no one else.
A Well Pleasured Lady Page 12