“I am, yes.”
“Excellent. Lord Conyers is very highly regarded in society, and he has a box at Covent Garden. If you are seen with him there, that will help bolster your image in the eyes of the ton. The more you are seen in respectable places, and in the company of respectable people, the more society’s judgment about the episode with Elizabeth Mayfield will soften. Do you think you can arrange to attend a performance during the coming week?”
“That depends. Will you be able to attend as well?”
Belinda froze, her pen poised above her inkwell. “That would not be wise.”
“Probably not, but I would enjoy the opera much more if you were there.”
Pleasure bloomed in her at those words, and it suddenly seemed vital to appear preoccupied and busy. She dipped her pen in ink, tapped the nib, and wrote notes in her book—notes that were absolute nonsense—and she could only hope he did not possess the talent of reading handwriting upside down.
“You might enjoy it more, too, if I were with you,” he said, undeterred by her silence. “I’m vastly more entertaining than Wagner’s Valkyries or Rossini’s Figaro.”
“It would not be wise,” she repeated, scribbling away. But she didn’t know if she was reiterating the point for him or for herself, and she decided it was best to shift the topic. “We should also talk about Ascot. As you know, Race Week begins shortly after we return from Norfolk, and it is a very important week in the social calendar. Because most of the American young ladies aren’t fortunate enough to receive an invitation to the Royal Enclosure, I offer a luncheon, as a sort of consolation to them. I hope you would be amenable to attending?”
“Since I assume you have to attend your own luncheons, then, yes. I’ll come.”
“Excellent,” she said, and ignored the rest of his comment. “Now, in the interval between the duchess’s house party and Ascot, there is Lady Wetherford’s ball to consider. I believe you are well acquainted with her son, James?”
“Pongo? Yes, we were at school together. But—”
“Good. I believe I can persuade her to send you an invitation.” She inked her pen again, but before she could make an affirmative note about the ball, he leaned forward, placing his hand over hers to stop her. His palm felt hot, and her hand tightened around her pen. “Lord Trubridge,” she began, but he cut her off.
“Before we talk any further about my social calendar,” he said, “I think I should point something out to you.”
She pulled her hand free and forced herself to look at him. “Yes, what is it?”
He leaned closer as if to impart a vitally important secret, and she caught the scent of bay rum. “There’s an elephant in your drawing room,” he whispered.
That was so absurd and so appropriate to the situation that she almost laughed, but she caught it back in time, pressing her lips together. She didn’t want him to make her laugh. She didn’t want him to be absurd or charming, or so terribly attractive. She wanted to keep her mind on all his faults, damn it all, or she would start to remember how susceptible she was to men who could charm her and make her laugh.
“I thought perhaps I ought to mention it,” he went on, leaning back in his chair and straightening his cuffs. “Just in case you hadn’t noticed. Although how someone fails to notice an elephant, I can’t think.”
She strove to maintain an air of indifference. “I don’t wish to discuss elephants, thank you. Lady Wetherford’s ball is on the tenth of June—”
“But Belinda, it’s rumbling about, getting in the way. How can we possibly carry on as if it isn’t here? Wouldn’t it be best to talk about it?”
The last thing she wanted to do was talk about that kiss. Steeling herself, she looked up, trying to remember her cold regard for him during their first meeting. It was difficult, for she felt anything but cold right now. “Lord Trubridge, the metaphorical elephant to which you refer was a most unfortunate experience, and I feel it is best if we both forget it ever happened.”
God, how prim she sounded. Like someone’s maiden aunt.
“I don’t think I can forget about it.” His lashes lowered, and it was his turn to study her mouth. “As kisses go,” he murmured, “it was quite unforgettable.”
The arousal he’d awakened ten days earlier, arousal she’d worked so hard to snuff out, flooded through her like a wave. Desperate, she fought back. “Unforgettable?” she echoed with a laugh meant to make light of his declaration. “Was it, indeed?”
He looked up, meeting her gaze. “It was for me, Belinda.”
The pleasure in her deepened and spread, radiating outward to the very tips of her fingers and toes, the first stirrings of arousal. “I said I don’t wish to discuss it,” she said, somehow managing to make her voice hard as stone even though she felt soft as butter. “And a true gentleman,” she added, glaring at him across the table, “would not keep bringing it up.”
That made him grin. “A true gentleman wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
“Quite. Now that we’ve agreed that you are not a gentleman, can we carry on? After all, it’s clear you didn’t broach the topic in order to offer an apology.”
“An apology?” His grin widened. “No man is ever sorry for kissing a woman, so if he apologizes for it afterward, he’s a liar. I’m not a liar, and I’m not sorry, and I haven’t the least intention of apologizing, so put that in your pipe, my beautiful Belinda, and smoke it. And,” he added before she could reply, “in my defense, allow me to point out that you weren’t precisely fighting me off.”
Inwardly, she grimaced, well aware that fighting him off was the exact opposite of what she’d done. “I shouldn’t have had to,” she pointed out. “If you were any other client, I would terminate our agreement, but since I do not wish you to renege on your promise to me, I cannot in good conscience renege upon mine to you. Therefore, it’s best if we carry on as if that . . . that elephant had never occurred.”
He shook his head as if bemused. “You really think that’s possible?”
“What would you have me do?” she cried, unable to keep up any pretenses of indifference. “Engage in a torrid affair with you while I help you find a wife?”
He tilted his head, taking another lingering glance at her lips, still smiling faintly. “Give me a moment,” he murmured, “while I remind myself of all the reasons why that would be wrong.”
With a sound of exasperation, Belinda tossed down her pen, rose from the table, and walked away. “The fact that you need time to give yourself such reminders speaks volumes,” she said over her shoulder.
He didn’t reply, and when she glanced back over her shoulder, she found to her dismay that he had moved from the table and was standing right behind her. She looked away again at once, stiffening when he curled his hands around her upper arms. But when he turned her around, and she looked into his face, she saw something there that she hadn’t seen before. She saw tenderness, and it seemed so genuine that it threatened to crumble her already fragile resolve.
“I was teasing, Belinda.” He leaned down until his forehead almost touched hers, still smiling a little as he looked into her eyes. “Don’t you know by now that I always make jokes when I’m feeling particularly vulnerable?”
“Don’t!” she cried, feeling rather vulnerable herself. She wrenched free and stepped back, out of his reach, shoring up her defenses. “Don’t make me like you. Don’t make me want you. Don’t charm me or tempt me or try to beguile me or make advances toward me. There’s no future in any of it. Not for you, and certainly not for me.”
“I know that.” He raked a hand through his hair. “God, don’t you think I know that?”
She didn’t answer, and, after a moment, he gave a deep sigh. “I won’t bring up the subject again, and I won’t make any more advances toward you, tempting as it may be. All right?”
His promise left her feeling st
rangely flat and a bit dismal, but she made the only answer possible. “Yes. Thank you.”
“But if you throw yourself into my arms and beg me to make love to you,” he added irrepressibly, “I’ll fall like a ninepin. What can I say? I’m weak.”
Thankfully, the door opened just then, and Jervis entered with the tea tray. “I’ll keep what you say in mind, Lord Trubridge,” she said, and returned to the tea table, reminding herself that it would be best all around if she got him married him off as quickly as possible.
Chapter 10
Nicholas didn’t stay to tea. He’d already arranged to meet Denys at White’s, and he was glad of it, for that engagement gave him the perfect excuse to refuse tea and make a quick exit. Desire for Belinda was flowing like hot lava through his body, and sitting across from her through something as sedate and proper as tea while she discussed various possible brides for him would not only have been ludicrous, it would have been impossible.
Lusting after her was a delicious exercise and one he’d engaged in quite often during the past ten days, but it was also pointless. The carnal imaginings that had been haunting him ever since that kiss could never be fulfilled.
Despite her response to his kiss—which had been wildly, blissfully beyond any expectations he might have had, Nicholas had no illusions regarding her opinion of him. Either way, it hardly mattered. He couldn’t marry her. Not only because he couldn’t afford to support a woman who didn’t have a dowry but also because she’d never marry him in a thousand years. To her mind, he was and always would be that most loathsome of creatures: a fortune hunter. And as she had pointed out, an affair while she helped him find a wife was also out of the question. Even his somewhat flexible sense of morality wouldn’t stretch that far.
No, his only option was to put any carnal imaginings about Belinda out of his head. Nicholas leaned back against the leather seat of Conyers’s carriage and closed his eyes, resolved to work on that particular task. But a picture of her came immediately into his mind—an image of her sitting naked across the tea table from him, her full breasts partially concealed by waves of long black hair that spilled around her bare white shoulders, and a teapot in her hands. Curiously, the teapot made the image all the more erotic, and he knew without a doubt he was going off his chump.
The carriage jerked to a stop, bringing him out of this lustful reverie and making him grateful the journey from Belinda’s house to White’s was only two blocks.
He took a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face, working to regain his equilibrium. By the time the driver opened the door for him, he felt he was once again master of his own body, at least master enough to convey himself from the street to one of the club’s dressing rooms, where he intended to order an ice-cold bath. He needed it.
An hour later, his arousal abated by a dousing of cold water, his clothes freshly pressed by a member of White’s staff, and his face freshly shaved by the club barber, he felt considerably better. All he needed to feel completely restored to a sensible state was a stiff drink. Nicholas went downstairs to the bar of the club, where he had arranged to meet Denys.
He found the viscount just inside the entrance, waiting for him with a whiskey in one hand and a small, sealed envelope in the other.
“This note came for you a few minutes ago, just as I was leaving the house,” Denys said as he held out the envelope. “So I thought I’d just bring it along.”
Nicholas took it in some surprise. “I can’t imagine who would be writing me a letter so urgent that it needed to be hand-delivered,” he said, and turned the missive over. The small round seal with a feather pressed into the red wax hinted at the identity of the sender, and when he opened it, his guess was confirmed by the delicate, elusive scent of Belinda’s perfume.
Desire flickered up dangerously inside him, threatening to send his efforts of the past hour straight to perdition, and Nicholas tamped those feelings down at once, striving to concentrate on the note itself rather than the provoking, impossible woman who had written it.
On Friday, the best train for Clyffeton departs from Victoria at half past one. This puts our arrival at Highclyffe just before tea time, and the duchess has assured me that our arrival at that time would be satisfactory since most of the other guests appear to be taking the four o’clock train. If this plan is equally satisfactory to you, you need not reply.
Lady Featherstone
Satisfactory? The word almost made Nicholas want to laugh. A week of being near her without being able to be alone with her, touch her, or kiss her, while she shoved him at other women was the most unsatisfactory thing he could imagine. And yet, he had to go through with it. He couldn’t afford not to.
“Not bad news, I hope?”
Denys’s voice intruded on his thoughts, and he looked up to find his friend watching him. “Not bad news at all,” he answered, trying to believe his own words. “Quite the contrary, in fact.”
“That’s a good thing,” Denys said, glancing past him toward the door, “because I fear that some very bad news is headed your way as we speak.”
Nicholas turned to look over his shoulder and found Landsdowne coming through the doorway right behind him. The duke saw him at the same moment and stopped.
My God, he’s grown old, was Nicholas’s first thought. It took him back, rather, to see the other man’s sunken cheeks, gray complexion, and gaunt frame, for to everyone who knew him, Landsdowne had always been an overpowering presence, striving to dominate everything and everyone in his vicinity, and to see him like this was a startling revelation. In some ways, however, he hadn’t changed at all. The bitterness of his mouth, the calculating gleam in his green eyes, the arrogant tilt of his head—those things, Nicholas knew, would never change.
“Trubridge.” The old man glanced over his face, no doubt noting the now greenish yellow bruise beneath his eye, but he made no reference to it. In fact, he said nothing more at all giving only a brief nod. When addressing a mere marquess, nothing more was required of a duke, and Landsdowne never did more than what was required. That, of course, impelled Nicholas to adopt the opposite demeanor.
“Papa!” he cried, loudly enough for those around them to hear. “My dear, dear papa!”
He wrapped his arms around his father in an exaggerated display of affection before the old cod could slip away. He patted the duke’s back with a bit too much heartiness, then drew back just far enough to plant a kiss on each of the old man’s cheeks, and he thoroughly enjoyed Landsdowne’s grimace of distaste at that French custom.
“Sorry, old man,” he apologized at once, making no effort to look regretful. “I know how you hate displays of affection, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen you, I got carried away. And living in Paris, one is so apt to take on Continental habits.”
He drew back. “I didn’t know you were in town, Papa, or I’d have called.” A lie, that, but he didn’t care. The pang of alarm in Landsdowne’s eye at the idea of his dropping by almost made the idea a tempting one. “I could come by sometime this week,” he offered, “and we could settle in for a nice, long visit.”
“I’ve only just arrived, and I’m quite busy, I fear.” The duke shifted his weight and glanced past him, clearly wishing to move on, but Nicholas couldn’t let him go, not quite yet.
“Oh dear,” he said, bending a bit to peer at the white carnation adorning the lapel of Landsdowne’s morning coat. “I’ve set your buttonhole askew. Allow me to adjust it.”
He made a great show of tweaking the smashed flower, and he succeeded in mangling the petals even further before Landsdowne shoved his wrist aside, and hissed, “For God’s sake, must you embarrass me by your conduct at every opportunity?”
“Oh, yes, Father,” he answered, his voice low and fervent. “I absolutely must. It’s what I live for. Did you see that tidbit about us in Talk of the Town?” he added, raising his voice on the last question so oth
ers could hear. “I fear the world thinks we’ve had a row. Silly of them, isn’t it? We’ve always rubbed along so well.”
Landsdowne cast an uneasy glance around, observing that the bar had gone from subdued to silent, and that all the other gentlemen there were watching them while striving to seem as if they weren’t.
Nicholas pretended to be oblivious to both his father’s hostility and the curious crowd. “Heavens, how rude I’m being,” he exclaimed, and gestured to the man beside him. “Do you know Viscount Somerton?”
“Of course. Good evening, Somerton.” The duke gave another short nod and started to step around them, but Nicholas moved just enough to keep him from going quite yet.
“Why don’t you join us, Papa?” he suggested, his voice filled with joviality and friendliness. “After all, it’s been ages since I’ve seen you. Is it seven years, or is it eight? I forget.”
The bitter mouth turned down further. “Eight.”
“My, how time does fly. In town for the season, are you? So am I,” he went on before the duke could answer. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m having a ripping good time. Did Freebody tell you I’m looking to marry? I must say, this business of finding a wife is proving to be much more enjoyable than I’d first thought it would be. Of course, Lady Featherstone’s assistance has been invaluable.”
The duke’s face didn’t change, but his eyelids flickered a bit. He was rattled and no mistake. “Lady Featherstone?”
“Why, yes.” He tapped the letter from her against his palm, smiling. “Delightful woman. Do you know her?”
His father gave a cough of discomfiture he found quite gratifying. “I believe I have met her. American.”
He said the last word just as Mrs. Beeton might have said, “Mice,” or as Gladstone might have said, “Disraeli,” with just the same inflection of disdain the other two might have used.
American Heiress [1]When The Marquess Met His Match Page 13