SLIGHTLY WICKED

by Mary Balogh

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Effingham,” Judith said, withdrawing her hand from his as soon as she was decently able. “And I am delighted to see you again, Bran. But I must hurry inside. Grandmama will be waking from her sleep, and I must see if she needs anything.”

  “Grandmama?” Branwell said. “I had forgotten the old girl was here. An old tyrant, is she, Jude?”

  She did not like the disrespect with which he spoke.

  “I am remarkably fond of her,” she said, quite truthfully. “You may wish to pay your respects to her as soon as you have freshened up, Bran.”

  “If Judith is going to be with her, I’ll come with you, Law,” Horace Effingham said with a laugh.

  But Judith was hurrying away, contrasting her situation with her brother’s. She was here in the nature of an unpaid servant, while Bran was just arriving as a guest. Yet he was the cause of all her woes. All of them. If it were not for Bran she would not have been on that stagecoach. She would not be here.

  But there was absolutely no point in falling back into self-pity.

  She noticed in some relief that the hall and stairs were still deserted. As she hurried upward she could hear the hum of voices coming from the drawing room.

  Rannulf, just like the rest of his family, had never been much enamored of social gatherings, whether in London during the Season or at Brighton or one of the spas in the summer or at house parties any time of the year. The house party at Harewood was going to be particularly insipid, he could see almost immediately. Yet he could not escape it. He must spend the next two weeks determinedly dancing attendance on Miss Effingham. During those two weeks or soon after he was going to have to propose marriage to her.

  Two proposals to two different women, both within a month of each other. But from the second he could expect no reprieve.

  It was made embarrassingly obvious from the moment of his arrival at Harewood for dinner that he was the honored guest, even though he was not staying at the house as all the others were. Not only honored guest, but most favored suitor for the hand of Miss Julianne Effingham. The mother led him about the drawing room after his arrival to introduce him to those guests he did not already know—most of them, in fact—and invited her daughter to join them in their progress. Then she had him lead the girl into the dining room, and he found himself seated beside her through dinner.

  He was interested to discover that one of the guests was Branwell Law, a fair-haired, good-looking lad, who was presumably the brother of Judith Law—had not Claire Campbell named him? Of Judith herself and Mrs. Law there was no sign, for which fact he was enormously thankful. To say that he felt embarrassed after their encounters in the garden, especially the second one in the rose arbor, would be to understate the case. She had refused him.

  Miss Effingham seemed absurdly young and alarmingly empty-headed. She talked about nothing but the parties she had attended in London and how this one and that one— mostly titled gentlemen—had complimented her and wished to dance with her when she had already promised all her dances to other gentlemen. She really thought dances should come in sets of two instead of three so that there could be more of them during an evening and more gentlemen could dance with the lady of their choice. What did Lord Rannulf think?

  Lord Rannulf thought—or said he thought—that was a remarkably intelligent suggestion and should be brought to the attention of some of London’s more prominent hostesses, particularly those of Almack’s.

  “How would you feel,” she asked him, gazing at him with wide blue eyes, her spoon suspended over her pudding, “if you wanted to dance with a lady, Lord Rannulf, and she was engaged for every set to other gentlemen even though she wanted desperately to dance with you?”

  “Kidnap her,” he said and watched her eyes widen still further before she laughed with light, trilling merriment.

  “Oh, you never would,” she said. “Would you? You would cause a shocking scandal. And then, you know, you would be forced to offer for her.”

  “Not so,” he said. “I would have borne her off to Gretna Green, you see, and married her over the anvil.”

  “How romantic,” she said with an excited little gasp. “Would you really do that, Lord Rannulf? For someone you admired?”

  “Only if she had no dances left to offer me,” he said.

  “Oh.” She laughed. “If she knew that ahead of time, she would make very sure that there were none. And then she would be whisked off... But you would not really do such an outrageous thing, would you?” There was a small cloud of doubt in her eyes.

  Rannulf was weary of the silly game. “I always make sure,” he said, “that if there is a lady I particularly admire, I arrive at a ball early enough to engage her for at least one dance.”

  Her mouth turned down at the corners. “Are there very many ladies you admire, Lord Rannulf?” she asked.

  “At the moment,” he said, fixing his gaze on her, “I can see only one, Miss Effingham.”

  “Oh.”

  She must surely know that she looked her prettiest with her mouth pouted just so. She held the expression for a moment, then blushed and looked down at her dish. Rannulf took the opportunity to turn to Mrs. Hardinge, mother of Miss Beatrice Hardinge, at his other side and to address a remark to her. Soon after, Lady Effingham rose to signal the ladies that it was time to follow her to the drawing room while the gentlemen settled to their port.

  The first person he saw when he entered the drawing room half an hour later was Judith Law, who was seated by the hearth close to her grandmother. She was wearing a pale gray silk dress which looked to be as shapeless as the striped cotton she had worn to Grandmaison earlier. She was also wearing a cap again. It was slightly prettier than this afternoon’s though it covered her hair just as completely. She was holding a cup and saucer for the old lady, he could see, while the latter held a plate and made short work of the cream cake on it.

  He ignored the two ladies after nodding genially to Mrs. Law, who smiled and nodded back. It was intriguing to notice that for everyone else in the room Judith Law might as well have been invisible—as of course she had been to him just yesterday when he had first been introduced to her. All her vivid, voluptuous beauty was quite effectively masked.

  Sir George Effingham offered him a place at a table of whist, but Lady Effingham took him firmly by the arm and bore him off in the direction of the pianoforte at which Lady Margaret Stebbins was favoring the company with a Bach fugue.

  “It is your turn next, Julianne, dearest, is it not?” her mother said even before Lady Margaret had finished. “Here is Lord Rannulf come to turn the pages of your music.”

  Rannulf resigned himself to an evening spent charming and flattering a gaggle of giggling young ladies and matching wits with a group of foolishly posturing young gentlemen. He felt a hundred years old.

  Judith Law, he could not help noticing, was kept busy by her grandmother. She was constantly going back and forth between her seat and the tea tray. Twice she was sent from the room. The first time she came back with the old lady’s spectacles, which were set down and never used. The second time she returned with a cashmere shawl, which was then folded and set over the arm of the old lady’s chair and forgotten. Nevertheless, he noticed that the two of them were talking to each other and smiling and apparently enjoying each other’s company.

  He smiled and complimented Miss Effingham, who had finished her second piece on the pianoforte and was clearly angling for a request for an encore. Meanwhile the Honorable Miss Lilian Warren and her sister awaited their turn at the instrument.

  And then there was a commotion from the direction of the tea tray. Judith Law had apparently been pouring a cup of tea when someone—it was Horace Effingham, Rannulf could see—must have jogged her elbow. The tea had spilled all down her front, darkening the gray of her dress, making it half transparent, and molding it to her bosom. She had cried out, and Effingham had produced a handkerchief and was attempting to mop her down with i
t. She was pushing his hand away with one of hers while with the other she was attempting to pluck the wet fabric away from her bosom.

  “Judith!” Lady Effingham cried in awful tones. “You awkward, clumsy girl! Remove yourself immediately.”

  “No, no, it was all my fault, Stepmama,” Effingham called. “Allow me to wipe you dry, Cousin.”

  There was laughter in his eyes, Rannulf saw—lascivious laughter.

  “Oh dear,” Miss Effingham murmured, “Judith is making such a cake of herself.”

  Rannulf found himself clenching his teeth and striding across the room to grab the shawl from under Mrs. Law’s elbow. He hurried toward the tea tray and tossed the garment about Judith Law’s shoulders from behind without actually touching her. She looked around, startled and grateful, even as her hands grasped the ends and drew it protectively about her.

  “Oh,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Rannulf bowed curtly. “Are you burned, ma’am?” he asked. Had no one considered the fact that it was hot tea she had spilled down herself?

  “Only a little scalded,” she said. “No, really, nothing.” She turned to hurry from the room, but he could see that she was biting her lower lip hard.

  Rannulf found himself eye to eye with Horace Effingham, whose leering expression came very close to a wink.

  “How gallant,” he said, “to find a shawl to hide the lady’s, er, embarrassment.”

  It had been deliberate, Rannulf realized suddenly, narrowing his gaze on the other man. By God, it had been deliberate.

  “She might have been badly burned,” he said curtly. “It would be advisable to be more careful around tea trays in future.”

  And then Effingham did wink as he murmured very low. “I am burned, even if she is not,” he said. “As are you too, Bedwyn, I’ll wager. Quick witted of you to find an excuse to hurry closer.”

  But Lady Effingham had raised her voice again, though now she was laughing and pleasant. “Carry on as before, everyone,” she said. “I do apologize for that unfortunate and undignified interruption. My niece is unaccustomed to mingling in polite society and has become all thumbs, I am afraid.”

  “Oh, I say, Aunt,” young Law said, “Jude has never been clumsy. It was just an accident.”

  “Lord Rannulf.” Mrs. Law tweaked his sleeve, and he could see when he turned toward her that the incident had upset her. “Thank you so very much for being the only one with the presence of mind to help Judith and to save her some embarrassment. I must hurry upstairs to see how badly hurt she is.”

  She set two plump hands on the arms of her chair to support herself.

  “Allow me, ma’am,” he said, offering his hand.

  “You are most kind.” She leaned heavily on him as she hoisted herself to her feet. “I believe it must be the summer heat that has caused my ankles to swell and that is making me so breathless all the time.”

  He thought it was more likely to be all the cream cakes she seemed to consume and her generally indolent lifestyle.

  “Allow me to escort you, ma’am,” he said.

  “Well, I will if it is not too much trouble,” she said. “I did not even really want that cup of tea, you know, but I wanted Judith to move from my side and mingle with the guests. She is very shy and even insisted upon taking her dinner with me tonight since I was too weary to come down to the dining room. I thought perhaps someone would engage her in conversation and all would be well. I am vexed with Louisa for forgetting to introduce her to the guests after dinner. I daresay she has too much else on her mind.”

  Rannulf did not intend to take her farther than the top of the stairs. But she leaned so heavily on him that he took her all the way to her room. At least, he assumed it was her room until she raised one heavily ringed hand and knocked.

  The door opened almost immediately, and Rannulf was trapped by the burden on his arm. Judith had removed both her dress and her cap. Her hair, still pinned up, had nevertheless pulled loose in several places so that long locks of bright red hair hung over her shoulders and temples. She was wearing a loose dressing gown, which she was holding closed with one hand. Even so, a large V of bare flesh was visible from her shoulders to the top of her cleavage. For a few inches above the latter her skin was a fiery red.

  “Oh.” Soon her cheeks matched the scald mark. “I—I thought it was someone bringing the salve I asked to be sent up.” She focused her gaze on Mrs. Law, but Rannulf knew she was very aware of him. Her hand clutched the robe closer.

  “You are burned, Judith, my love,” Mrs. Law cried, relinquishing her hold on Rannulf’s arm and hurrying forward far faster than he had ever seen her move before. “Oh, my poor child.”

  “It is nothing, Grandmama,” Judith said, biting her lip. But Rannulf saw tears spring to her eyes and knew she was in pain.

  “Allow me,” he said, “to find the housekeeper and make sure the salve is sent up without further delay. In the meantime, Miss Law, a cold wet cloth held against the burn may take away some of the sting.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her eyes meeting his. For a moment their glances locked, and then she turned away and the old lady set an arm about her shoulders.

  Rannulf hurried away, entertaining himself with pleasing visions of bathing Horace Effingham in something a great deal hotter than tea.

  Chapter IX

  Judith remained in her own room for two days, nursing a painfully sore chest. Her grandmother, who forgot her own maladies now that there were someone else’s to occupy her mind, visited her often, bringing her books and bonbons and news from the rest of the house and admonitions to lie down and sleep if she could. And Tillie, on Grandmama’s orders, brought food trays to Judith’s room and came every few hours to apply more of the soothing salve.

  Horace Effingham sent up a bouquet of flowers with Tillie and a note explaining that he had picked the blooms with his own hands and wishing her a speedy recovery.

  Branwell came in person to see her.

  “Are you enjoying the house party?” she asked him when he had inquired after her health.

  “Oh, I am having the greatest good time,” he said. “We went riding to Clynebourne Abbey this morning. There are just a few old ruins there, but it is very picturesque. We rode over to Grandmaison first to invite Bedwyn to join us. I think Julianne fancies him, but she is looking to have her heart broken, if you were to ask me. The Bedwyns are all enormously high in the instep. Bewcastle—the Duke of Bewcastle, that is, head of the family—is known as a thoroughly cold fish and would be very unlikely to approve of an alliance with the daughter of a mere baronet.”

  “I am glad you enjoyed the ride.” Judith smiled. What would Branwell have to say, she wondered, if he knew that Lord Rannulf Bedwyn had offered to marry her just yesterday?

  “I say, Jude.” He got up abruptly from the chair on which he had been seated and paced across to the window of her bedchamber to stand looking out, his back to her. “You would not be able to lend me a few pounds by any chance, would you? Maybe thirty?”

  “No, I most certainly would not,” she said. “I doubt I could scrape together a shilling even if I were to turn my purse inside out and upside down and squeeze it. Why do you need thirty pounds?” It seemed like a vast sum to her.

  He shrugged and turned to face her with a sheepish grin. “It is not important,” he said. “It is a trifling sum, and Effingham did tell me not to worry about it. But I hate to be in his debt. I hated to have him pay all the expenses of my journey, but Papa has turned remarkably tight-fisted lately. Is he sickening for something?”

  “The journey here cost thirty pounds!” Judith asked, considerably shocked.

  “You do not understand what it means to be a gentleman moving in the company of other gentlemen, Jude,” he said. “One has to keep up with them. One cannot look like a country bumpkin with ill-fitting coats and breeches and boots that look as if they were made by an apprentice to a country cobbler. And one needs fashionable digs and a decent horse to get
about on. And unless one struts one’s stuff all alone, one must do what other gentlemen do and go where they go—the clubs, the races, Tattersall’s.”

  “Bran,” she asked, not really sure she wanted to hear the answer, “do you owe other people money too?”

  He waved a dismissive hand and grinned at her, though there was something sickly in the expression.

  “Everyone owes money,” he said. “A gentleman would be thought queer in his attic if he did not owe half a fortune to his tailor and his bootmaker and his haberdasher.”

  “And do you have gambling debts, too?” she asked before she could stop herself. She really did not want to know.

  “Trifling ones.” Again he flashed her his sickly grin. “Nothing like some fellows, who owe thousands. Some men lose whole estates, Jude, on one turn of a card. I never wager what I cannot afford to lose.”

  She was too cowardly to ask him the extent of his gaming debts.

  “Bran,” she asked, “when are you going to decide upon some career?”

  “Actually,” he said, laughing and looking his sunny-natured self again, “I have been thinking of marrying a rich girl. It’s a pity Julianne has her eye on Bedwyn—though she does not have a hope in a million of snaring him, I daresay. But the Warren sisters have a papa who is as rich as Croesus, or so I have heard, and they are both passably pretty girls. I do not suppose their papa would give me the time of day, though, would he?”

  He spoke as if the whole idea were just a lighthearted joke, but Judith was not sure it was. He was obviously deep in debt—again. She did not know if their father could extricate him this time without completely ruining himself. And then what would happen to Mama and their sisters?