Annie Burrows

by Reforming the Viscount

  ‘Not entirely,’ he said. ‘I still enjoy the company of pretty young ladies.’ He looked down at Rose in a way that made Lydia’s hackles rise. Had there been just the tiniest stress on the word young? And where had all his charm disappeared to? When she’d been a girl and Nicholas Hemingford had spoken such words, she would have defied any girl it was aimed at not to have melted right off her chair.

  But this man, Lord Rothersthorpe, well, she couldn’t quite explain why, but he did not sound charming at all.

  And when he said, ‘Will you not introduce me to your lovely companion?’ the expression on his face put Lydia in mind of a...of a...well, yes, of a pirate intent on plunder.

  Her fear crystallised when Rose smiled back up at him, for Rose did not appear to find anything about him the least bit sinister. But then what girl, fresh from her schoolroom, could fail to be anything but fascinated when he turned those smiling blue eyes upon her so intently?

  A painful sensation struck her midriff. Rose was as deaf to warnings as she’d been herself at that age. She couldn’t see the danger. And nor, apparently, could Robert, because he was performing the introduction.

  ‘This is my half-sister, Miss Rose Morgan,’ said Robert. ‘It is entirely on her account we have all uprooted ourselves and come to town this spring.’

  ‘Enchanted,’ said Rothersthorpe, bowing low over her hand. ‘London society will be all the better for having such a beauty adorn its ballrooms.’

  ‘And this is my stepmother, Mrs Morgan,’ continued Robert, while Lord Rothersthorpe continued to gaze at Rose. ‘Though, of course, you already know her.’

  Rothersthorpe turned his head. The expression of admiration which he’d bestowed upon Rose vanished without trace.

  ‘I would hardly claim to know her,’ he replied, making her a curt bow. ‘Our paths crossed, briefly, almost a decade ago. I seem to recall that you came to town for the sole purpose of catching a husband?’

  There was a distinct note of accusation in his voice, which was monstrously unfair. She could have snatched at those rambling words and held him to account for them. Instead, when he’d made it so obvious he regretted them the moment they’d left his lips, she’d let him escape.

  ‘You know very well that I did,’ she therefore replied. In fact, she’d told him quite plainly that if she didn’t find a husband before the end of the Season she was going to be in a pickle. And he’d brushed her concerns aside by making a jest about things never being so bad as you feared when the time came to face them.

  ‘And since,’ he said with a hard smile, ‘in those days, I was virtually penniless, that naturally meant you did not waste much of your time upon me.’

  It had not been like that. Why was he twisting it to make it sound as though she’d been in the wrong?

  ‘Not when you made it so very clear that you did not wish to get married, my lord,’ she retorted, confusion temporarily diluting her annoyance. ‘No woman with an ounce of self-respect would wish to be accused of setting her cap at a man so clearly averse to the notion of getting leg-shackled.’

  ‘Touché.’ He raised his hands to acknowledge the hit. ‘It is true to say I was young and enjoying my freedom far too much to sacrifice it. However, now,’ he said, turning his attention back to Rose once more, his expression softening, ‘I have matured to the point where the prospect of matrimony no longer terrifies me. On the contrary, now that I am a respectable man of means, marrying is not only the next logical step for me to take, but one which I find most desirable.’

  Lydia felt as though he’d slapped her. The prospect of marriage back then had terrified him. She’d seen it on his face, understood it from the way he’d vanished without trace after uttering what she might have interpreted as a proposal, if she hadn’t known him better.

  Mrs Westerly’s words rang in her ears, for the second time that night. ‘You mark my words, when the time comes, he will marry an heiress...’

  An heiress. She looked at the predatory way he was examining Rose. Rose, who was not only incredibly wealthy, but extremely pretty too.

  Had it been only this evening, before setting out, that she’d decided she’d never been in better looks? Oh, she’d dismissed Rose’s comment that she looked like a fairy princess as the nonsense it was. She was too curvaceous nowadays to warrant that description. Not that she minded. She’d been positively scrawny when she’d been Rose’s age. Worn down by cares that the Colonel had lifted from her shoulders. From the moment she’d married him, her health had begun to improve. And bearing and feeding a child had even bequeathed her a bosom of which she was positively proud.

  She was better at picking out clothing that suited her, too. The pastels Mrs Westerly had told her to wear for her own début had always made her look completely washed out. White-blonde hair, greyish-blue eyes and milk-white skin could really make a girl look, according to the acid-tongued reigning beauty that year, like a streak of pump water.

  So she’d been pleased with the ensemble she was wearing tonight. The rich blue of her underskirt brought out the colour in her eyes, though it was the gauzy overskirt, sprinkled with spangles, that had caused Rose to make the comment about fairy princesses. She’d even decided not to worry that the neckline was a touch too daring, that there was nothing wrong with revealing what she now regarded as her best feature. Besides, the pearls that nestled between her generous breasts had always boosted her confidence. Colonel Morgan had given them to her on her wedding day, telling her she was a pearl beyond price. If he’d only said it on that occasion, she might have dismissed the words as idle flattery. But he’d kept on saying it, right up to the day he’d died. Even when he’d taken to giving her diamonds, these pearls remained her favourite. Because they made her feel...valued.

  But now she felt as though she’d become invisible because Lord Rothersthorpe had eyes only for Rose.

  ‘But I am being remiss,’ he said, turning towards her with an obvious effort. ‘I really ought to offer my condolences on your loss. Although...’ he paused, his eyes scanning her outfit slowly, before returning to her face ‘...you are so clearly out of mourning that I wonder if it is indelicate of me to remind you of Colonel Morgan’s demise at all.’

  It felt just as though he’d honed sarcasm into a sharp blade and thrust it between her ribs. The others might have missed it, but she’d seen the barely concealed contempt with which he’d assessed the finery with which she’d been so pleased, not half an hour since. And it all became too much.

  ‘Do you think I ought to go about in blacks for ever?’ She felt Rose flinch, though she was too angry to tear her gaze from Lord Rothersthorpe’s sardonic eyes.

  ‘And if it was indelicate to remind me of my husband’s demise,’ she continued, in spite of Robert clamping the hand that had rested on the back of her chair firmly on her shoulder, ‘why did you do just that?’

  ‘Naturally,’ put in Robert, while Lydia was floundering under the horrible feeling that Lord Rothersthorpe was deliberately trying to hurt her, ‘we had to delay Rose’s come-out until we were out of full mourning.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Lord Rothersthorpe said mechanically, ‘if I have caused any offence.’

  But he didn’t look the least bit sorry. On the contrary, she’d seen a flare of something like satisfaction flicker through his eyes when he’d goaded her into lashing out at him. And just to prove how insincere his apology to her had been, when he turned to Rose, his face showed nothing but compassion. ‘The death of a parent is always a difficult milestone in one’s life.’

  A parent, but not a husband, was what he meant.

  ‘I trust it would not be inappropriate for me to ask if you would care to dance? Is it too soon for you to think of it?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Rose, leaping to her feet.

  ‘Oh, but, Rose,’ said Lydia, ‘you really ought not...’

  Lord Rothersthorpe turned to her and smiled. Mockingly.

  ‘If you remember me at all, Mrs Morgan, surel
y you recall that I never pay the slightest attention to anything a girl’s chaperon might have to say?’

  Oh, but that twisted the knife in the wound he’d already inflicted. To refer to her as a chaperon...

  She knew his opinions of chaperons, all too well. He’d never had a good word to say about any of them and now he was calling her one, to her face.

  And it was no good reminding herself that a chaperon was exactly what she was. She knew what he meant.

  Her eyes stung as the last vestige of hope that she might ever have meant anything to him at all curled up and blackened, like a sheet of paper tossed on to an open flame.

  ‘Rose,’ said Robert sharply, ‘you cannot dance. You know you cannot.’

  ‘I know no such thing,’ she retorted. ‘My brother has some dreadfully stuffy notions about the suitability of dance partners,’ she said to Lord Rothersthorpe. ‘If he had his way, I would never dance with anyone. But he cannot object to you, since you are clearly a good friend of his.’

  ‘That is not the reason for my objection and you know it,’ growled Robert. ‘Lord Rothersthorpe, I hope you will forgive my sister for being so outspoken—’

  ‘Of course,’ he cut in smoothly. ‘It is far better than blushing and stammering out some nonsense, like so many of the débutantes one comes across.’

  Lydia flinched. It was as though he was deliberately distancing himself from all he’d once claimed to find appealing about her.

  The only good thing to come of her reaction was the fact that Rose noticed it. Her eyes flicked from Lydia to Lord Rothersthorpe, and for a moment, she looked as though she was regretting her defiant outburst.

  But then Robert, fatally, said, ‘Rose, I am warning you...’

  At which she stiffened her spine, shot her brother a rebellious look and laid her arm on Lord Rothersthorpe’s sleeve.

  Short of leaping over the chairs, and forcing her back into her seat, there was nothing Robert could do.

  With one last hard smile, Lord Rothersthorpe bore Rose away with him.

  And Lydia felt as though a chasm had opened up inside her. A cold, aching void, into which all her cherished memories of this man tumbled. And shattered.

  * * *

  Lord Rothersthorpe hadn’t known he had it in him to dissemble so convincingly. He hadn’t known he could smile and perform all the steps of the dance in the correct sequence, and even flirt with his partner as though he was enjoying himself, when his gut was roiling with acid rancour.

  But then, a gentleman simply couldn’t give way to the savagery that had welled up in him when he’d seen Lydia sitting there draped in the silks and satins she’d got from marrying that disgusting old man. A gentleman couldn’t walk up to a woman he had not seen for eight years and twist on the obscenely opulent ropes of pearls she had round her neck until they choked her.

  Especially since no jury in the land would believe he had any reasonable excuse for feeling so murderous, if there was such a thing as a reasonable excuse for committing murder.

  But then what man would feel reasonable when a woman betrayed him by marrying another man without even having the decency to reject his proposal first?

  And not just any man, but one old enough to have been her father?

  He snorted in disgust, causing Miss Morgan to raise her brows in surprise.

  ‘Slight cold,’ he excused himself. ‘Beg pardon.’

  Father? Grandfather, more like. Much-married grandfather, too, according to Robert when he’d broken the news. ‘He’s already worn out three women with his filthy temper and his unreasonable demands,’ Robert had slurred, his voice thick with alcohol and revulsion. ‘Each of them younger and more unsuitable than the last. Can you imagine how I feel,’ he’d said, downing yet another glass of brandy in one gulp, ‘having to call a chit of a girl, scarce out of the schoolroom, “Mother”?’

  He hadn’t cared a jot what Robert thought about having a stepmother who was younger than he was. It wasn’t as if they’d ever been close friends. They’d fallen in with each other because they were much of an age and enjoyed the same pastimes, that was all. Besides, he was having too much trouble coping with the sensation of having been punched, hard, in the gut.

  Lydia, married?

  ‘She cannot have married him,’ he’d just about managed to gasp. ‘She wouldn’t.’ Fearing he might actually be going to cast up his accounts as he imagined her giving herself willingly to that stick-thin, papery-skinned old man he’d glimpsed striding about the grounds on the fateful day he’d taken her to the picnic Robert had thrown at Westdene, he’d shakily reached for the brandy decanter himself. ‘I only took her there two weeks ago. And I...’ asked her to think about marrying him.

  ‘Well, we’re not talking about a love match, are we?’ Robert had splashed a measure of brandy into a glass and passed it to him, when his own hands had failed to accomplish the task himself. ‘My father likes young women. The younger the better, apparently. And he’s so rich that he has no trouble getting them to marry him.’

  The words had eaten into him like acid scoring into a printer’s plate.

  This was her answer, then. The Colonel had money and he didn’t, that was what it boiled down to. She was just like all the rest.

  Though at least all those eligible débutantes who’d turned their pretty noses up at him because of his reputation, and the state of his finances, had been honest. Only Lydia had fooled him into dropping his guard. Into making him...hope.

  ‘If your reaction means what I think it does,’ Robert had said, looking at him with such concern he knew he must have turned white, ‘then let me tell you, my friend, you’ve had a lucky escape. She’s obviously mercenary to the core. God, but I pity my sisters, having that harpy foisted on them.’

  The remainder of that encounter had vanished into the red mist that had risen up and swamped him. He knew he’d said some pretty harsh things about elderly men preying on females barely out of the schoolroom, but he could not recall which of them had thrown the first punch.

  It could well have been Robert. A man can say what he likes about his own parent, but he won’t tolerate hearing it from another’s lips.

  Family was family, after all.

  Which brought him neatly back to this dark-haired, wilful beauty, with whom he was dancing right now. One of Robert’s half-sisters from one of those wives Colonel Morgan had worn out with his unreasonable demands and filthy temper while he’d been clawing his way up the rungs of the Company army ladder. Not his first, or she would be Robert’s full sister. But did it really matter which of them it was? All that concerned him was that Lydia had been his fourth wife. He ground his teeth. His fourth.

  Of course, he’d known Lydia had come to town to find herself a husband. It was why they all came, year after year, all these well-bred girls in their uniform white dresses. But he’d started to think she shrank from the prospect. He’d seen the way that dragon of a chaperon was always breathing down her neck, and how the longer the Season went on, the more she’d wilted under the constant pressure to bring some man up to scratch.

  She’d started to look so fragile she’d put him in mind of a dandelion clock. All that silvery-haired trembling beauty, being held together only by a tremendous effort of will. One hard knock was all it would take to scatter her to the four winds.

  Or so he’d thought.

  He snorted again. When he thought of how hard she’d made him work to get her to speak without stammering and blushing...or when he recalled the sense of triumph she’d aroused when she’d shyly confided that he could take her mind off her woes just by being there...or worse—that surge of protectiveness that had swept through him that day when she’d just about fainted, and he’d caught her in his arms, and carried her into the house.

  ‘God, how I wish I had the right to take you away from that dragon,’ he’d bitten out as she’d turned her face into his chest with a moan. ‘I would never force you to do anything you didn’t want,’ he’d said, wis
hing he could drop a kiss into the curls that had been tickling his chin. ‘You’re so delicate,’ he’d said, ‘you should have someone to look after you. I wish it could be me.’

  And before he’d gone three more paces, he’d loved the way she felt in his arms so much he’d found himself casting caution to the winds.

  ‘And why shouldn’t it be me? I’ve got to get married some day. I’ve got a duty to my family to preserve the name, if nothing else. And you know, I don’t think it would be such a dreadful chore, if it was to a girl like you. You make me feel as though I’m worth something, even though I haven’t two brass farthings to rub together.’

  She hadn’t said a word in reply. She hadn’t thrown her arms round his neck and said that marrying him would make her the happiest girl on earth. Even though he knew she was determined to marry someone. She’d confided in him, just the once, that she dreaded what would happen if it came to the end of the Season without her getting even one proposal.

  So the look on her face, as he’d lain her down on the sofa, had filled him with foreboding.

  It could have been the result of the headache that had felled her, of course, but he’d been so worried she was about to frame the words of refusal that he’d cut her short.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ he’d said, backing away hastily. He could see he was going to have to prove he could support her, even if it wasn’t in very much style. He’d noticed that his rather cavalier attitude towards paying bills had perturbed her. And she’d expressed open disapproval of his tendency to make rather reckless wagers. He was going to have to prove that for once in his life he was in deadly earnest. In short, he was going to have to raise enough money to at least pay for a ring, and a licence, and the vicar. ‘Just think about it,’ he’d said as he backed out of the room.

  He’d thought she would at least have done that, while he was off fleecing every drunk too cross-eyed to see what cards he held in his hands. But no. By the time Robert caught up with him at Newmarket, she’d already worked her wiles on that...jumped-up clerk! She’d coldly, ruthlessly assessed what the Colonel could give her and then...sold herself to him without a qualm. She must have a core of steel to have survived marriage to a man who had gone out to India with nothing but the clothes he’d stood up in, and burning ambition, but who’d returned to England with wealth beyond most men’s wildest dreams.