by Brenda Hiatt
Max halted on the landing to consider this. He would rather deal with Miss Caine in private. But Vayle had a point. Who could tell what a Caine might do to further her family’s interest? A witness might keep her honest, or at least harmless.
Max said, “Good idea, Vayle. I rely on you to guard my back.”
“From a young lady?”
“From a Caine. They haven’t the least notion of honor, and I wouldn’t put ambush past them.”
Vayle made that choking noise again, but Max was already striding through the drawing room door and didn’t look back to see if he was ill. He stopped when he saw a dark-haired woman before the fire, her cloak and her bonnet draped on the chair. “You wished to speak with me, Miss Cai—”
Max never got that damned name out, because the woman turned to face him. In the silence that followed, he felt the engine of his heart slow and halt, and then take up again with renewed force, the blood pounding all the way up to his head. This was, he thought when he could think again, the cleverest trick yet.
Vayle was no help at all. He’d forgot to guard Max’s back, and somehow managed to get in front. He materialized next to the woman and bent over her hand in that old-fashioned way of his. “Enchanted, Miss Caine.”
Other ladies seemed to like Vayle’s cozening ways, but this one was tougher. Immediately she withdrew her hand from his. “Thank you for seeing me, Lord Sevaric.”
Vayle didn’t correct her misperception, so Max had to shoulder past him. “I’m Sevaric. This is Jocelyn Vayle. A houseguest. From the colonies.”
She transferred her gaze to Max. She had wary eyes, that mysterious green-gray of deep waters, and they held him for a moment before long lashes swept down to shadow her thoughts. “Mr. Vayle,” she said, and favored him with the smile she had withheld when she thought him a Sevaric.
Another malicious trick. That was how she won over his butler—that dangerous curve of red mouth, the advance and retreat of a little dimple there in the right cheek, the green eyes all stirred up now with warmth. Vayle fell for it. He started making a fool of himself, as men usually did in the presence of Beauty, begging her to take a seat, ringing for tea, taking a chair across from her, acting as if he, not Max, were her host.
But Max took up the command position next to the tea caddy, leaning one hand on it and effectively blocking Vayle’s view. The tea came in then, followed by a maid, and Vayle sent her back for more biscuits. The man ate like he’d been starved for decades, but at least it kept him from flinging flattery at the Caine woman.
Ah yes. The Caine woman. She held the teacup in one slender hand, and with the other held back the flow of her hair. Damn. It was maddening, that hair, all red-dark and wavy-thick, and as a lock brushed her cheek he could almost feel it trailing across him, too, careless and caressing. He gripped the edge of the table, hard. “You had something to ask me, Miss Caine?”
The teacup was reluctant to leave her lips, and he thought he understood why. To be in touch with a mouth like that— But then he realized she was afraid. Or something. Her hand shook slightly as she set the cup back in the saucer, and she didn’t look up at him, or even at Vayle, who was making encouraging sounds across the table.
“May I speak candidly, my lord?”
Max glanced back at Vayle. “Yes. He’s trustworthy. Whatever you say will go no further.”
“I know Mr. Vayle won’t speak of this.”
Max was speechless again, but this time it didn’t last so long. He couldn’t expect a Caine to understand what honor meant, could he? And so he didn’t order her out, only said brusquely, “You are a guest in my home. You may be certain I will behave honorably toward you.”
“I don’t want my brother to know, you see.”
“Your brother?”
“Robin Caine.” Bitterness flickered over her perfect brow but left no mark. “The man you’re trying to ruin.”
Ah. This must be Dorothea Caine, the wastrel’s younger sister. A woman, thus inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, but of course she wouldn’t think so. “He needs little help from me, if ruination is his aim. I haven’t forced him into the gaming hells.”
“If you wouldn’t offer to buy up his markers at a premium, no one would play with him!”
Max shrugged. “Can I help it if he is a dedicated loser? A worse card player I’ve yet to encounter, and as for dice—”
Abruptly Miss Caine rose, gripping handfuls of lilac skirt until her knuckles were white. Max looked from those small implacable fists up the lace-trimmed bodice, sweet and rounded and loin-tingling, to the ivory throat where he fancied he saw a pulse throbbing, and finally to the eyes, stormy now like the waters of the English Channel. He guessed she was angry. He knew she was passionate. A woman who stood so straight, so graceful, with her fists clenched and her mouth trembling—
Another dirty trick. He forced himself to stay where he was, not stepping back from her fury, or stepping toward her passion. He wasn’t going to lose his head because some Caine woman bit her full lower lip with small white teeth and glared at him with those stormy eyes.
“Your brother has chosen his own path to Hell, and I must say, he deserves it.”
“Why? Just because he’s a Caine?”
“Among other crimes.”
That made her even more angry, but it lasted only a moment. Then the fire went out of her eyes as if someone had snuffed it. Those long lashes dropped again, and her mouth drooped in the most beguiling way.
“Lord Sevaric, I am asking you as a gentleman. Lay aside this stupid feud. My uncle is more than a year dead. It was his obsession, not my brother’s. Robin—Robin cares naught for such things, I know it. He has done nothing to further the animosity between our families.”
“Nothing you know of, that is.”
Max didn’t look at her beguiling mouth anymore, or any other part of her that might make him forget again who she was and what she represented. He stared resolutely out the window and reminded himself what he knew of Robin Caine.
More than Robin Caine’s sister, that was for certain. She said hotly, “He’s done nothing! I asked him. And he said that he wants no part of this feud of yours.”
“He is part of it. And he’s chosen to be, whether he’s told you so or not.” He couldn’t resist any longer, and jerked his head around to get another glimpse of her. She was still beautiful, more now, with the late afternoon light gilding her ivory skin.
He couldn’t help the way his tone softened. “If you want no part of it, stay out of it. I don’t pursue quarrels with women. Not that your brother is much an example of a man.”
The insult was provocative, but she had, he noted, the good sense to ignore it. Or maybe she agreed with it. At any rate, Miss Caine only said, “I cannot stay out of it,” and hunched her pretty shoulders and crossed her arms over her bosom as if she were cold.
Vayle went back into his host impersonation, jumping up to toss another pair of logs onto the fire. When he beckoned to her, she came forward to stretch her hands toward the warmth, and Max found himself wishing that he had that sort of persuasiveness with her. He only set her back up. That was all he cared to do, of course, but still it annoyed him to see Vayle pat her hand in that avuncular manner, and the quick grateful smile she gave him in response.
It was unfair, this playing on his sympathy, on his chivalric tendencies. He wasn’t any different from Vayle. He didn’t like to see a woman anxious and upset, and in ordinary circumstances would do his best to make her feel better. But it wasn’t any of his doing that she had a weak malicious little slug for a brother.
Roughly he said, “I haven’t done anything to harm you.”
“You think not?”
He couldn’t see her eyes anymore, for she’d hunched her shoulders again and her lacy collar hid her face. But he didn’t need to, for he heard the hard tone in her voice and knew she had regained her anger. All the better. Her anger was no threat to him.
“A year and a half a
go,” she said, “I was making my debut. It was the victory spring, do you remember?”
“Of course I remember. I was in the 52nd Foot. We landed in Belgium in May.” A debut in 1815? Then she must be about Gwen’s age, a bit younger, probably.
“I became betrothed the night after we heard of the great victory at Waterloo.”
So she was betrothed, was she? He glared at the back of her head, wanting to suggest that next time she send her fiancé to fight her battles for her. But perhaps the fiancé wasn’t any more of a man than her brother, if he’d already waited a year and more and hadn’t yet claimed her as his bride.
“The next month my uncle died. When the estate was settled, there was little left.”
There was Vayle again, patting her hand with all the sympathy in the world, as if the bankruptcy and suicide of Hugo Caine had been anything less than divine retribution. Miss Caine took a deep breath and withdrew her hand and bunched it into a fist. She turned toward Max and pressed the fist against the lace over her breast.
“Uncle Hugo had made some bad investments in unsound enterprises. Eventually we learned who was behind those investments. Your father. He had others acting for him, of course, but his sole purpose was to entice my uncle to mortgage the family properties. The enterprises all collapsed, and the mortgages were called.”
“My father had nothing to do with that.” Max had heard this accusation before and found it baseless. “He was several months dead by that time, and there wasn’t any evidence he ever owned any of those enterprises.”
Even if it were true, well, it was only fair turnabout for the previous generation, when the Caines had implicated a Sevaric in the Jacobin rebellion. His head ended up on a pike at the Tower of London, and the family estate was confiscated and sold to the Caines.
Still, Max was a bit disquieted at the thought of such surreptitious doings. He didn’t condemn covert action, but he preferred to take credit for exacting revenge. It seemed more honorable somehow.
He was even more disquieted when Miss Caine went on dispassionately, “Once my financial expectations were revealed as limited, my fiancé asked to be released from the betrothal.”
“The cad! You are better off without him then,” Vayle said, and Max agreed, though his language would have been less temperate.
Miss Caine nodded soberly. “He wasn’t suited for me. I know that now. At the time, though—” She shook her head and took back whatever she had meant to say. “I went back home then. I thought, at least, with my uncle and your father passed on, the feud was ended. But then you returned from the war, Lord Sevaric, and it started again.”
“Your brother—” he began defensively.
“I know. My brother gambles too much. And he kept on signing markers, even after it was clear you were the one buying them up. Robin had control of my dowry, so that went first. And last year the lenders took the house our mother left us. I expect”—she added, with a hardness that looked all wrong on that sweet curved mouth—“that you sold it to buy those fine racehorses of yours.”
Actually, he’d deposited the proceeds in Gwen’s account at the Bank of England, as he’d done with all the funds he’d got from Robin Caine. But he had no reason to tell this to Caine’s sister, or justify his motives at all. “Your brother should be ashamed of himself. But he hasn’t even that much backbone, does he?”
He saw a protest starting up in Vayle’s eyes, but Miss Caine beat him to it. “You should be ashamed, taking advantage of his weakness this way! Now there’s nothing left worth taking, and you won’t even agree to stop before you bleed us entirely dry!”
“Nothing left?” Vayle’s usually friendly face was closing up, and his voice came choked with emotion. “All the family properties are gone?”
Max hoped that knock on the head hadn’t turned Vayle into some moralizer bent on saving the world from sin. It was unlikely, considering his facility with dice, but Max supposed that pretty Miss Caine had made more than one man repent his sins—at least till they learned her dowry was gone.
He shoved away the stirring of guilt. All he had done was buy up the markers Robin Caine had signed. That was no crime. “Caine’s not been taken up by the bailiffs yet. So there must be something left.”
“Nothing but the hunting lodge at Greenbriar.”
Miss Caine’s words seemed to echo in the sudden stillness of the room. The lodge. Greenbriar. He’d almost forgot Greenbriar Lodge.
The light was fading into evening, but there was enough from the fire to illuminate the panic in her eyes. Max wondered abstractly what he looked like now, for she must have guessed from his expression that she shouldn’t have mentioned the lodge. “You won’t—” she began, but fell silent as Vayle spoke.
“Greenbriar Lodge?”
When Miss Caine pressed her lips together and refused to reply, Max said, “In Surrey. We used to own it, but the Caines took it seventy years ago.” Another casualty of the treason charge against Joseph Sevaric, along with the London house and Sevaric Hall.
Miss Caine’s eyes were wider now, and wary again. She must be imagining—what?
He didn’t have time to speculate, for she came forward and seized his hands. Her grip was tight but not intimate. In the early evening dimness, desperation shone in her eyes as she looked up at him.
“Let it end, Lord Sevaric. You’ve got nearly everything we own. If you stop now, if you leave Robin be, I’ll have him sign a waiver. I know I can do it. I need only wait until he’s drunk, and give him the paper and tell him to sign. He’s got no caution when he’s drunk. You know that. He’ll sign a waiver.”
“A waiver? Of what?”
“Of our claim. We’ll renounce our claim. You needn’t worry that we’ll prosecute then.”
A chill settled through Max. It was her hands, he thought. They were cold as ice. He slowly drew his own hands away. “What have you to prosecute us for?”
Impatiently she said, “For keeping the Caine treasure, of course. We’ll renounce our claim. You can bring it out of hiding then, and sell it, or give it to your wife, or whatever you want to do with it. You know it’s worth far more than—than an old hunting lodge.”
“I haven’t got a wife. And I haven’t got the Caine treasure, in hiding or out.”
She made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t care, do you see? You can go on saying you don’t have it. I don’t care. I’ll give you the waiver anyway. I’ll make Robin keep silent about it, too. You needn’t admit that it was ever ours, if you don’t want to—”
“How forbearing of you.”
The tightness of his voice must have been a signal. Vayle stepped forward, put a hand on Miss Caine’s arm, and gently drew her back out of range. A chivalrous gesture that, if unnecessary. It’s true, she’d as much as said he was a liar as well as a thief, and were she a man, he’d call her out for that. But Max wasn’t going to hit a woman, even one who piled insult upon insult.
He couldn’t stay in the same room with her though, not when she was looking at him with that mutinous plea on her face—a princess forced to beg. Savagely he cursed the brother who had reduced her to this. All the more reason to reduce him to nothing.
“I will consider what you say, Miss Caine. But it’s late now and we have a dinner appointment to prepare for. If you’ll excuse us—”
She made it to the door before she gave in. Hesitating there, her hand on the knob, her gaze downcast, she said in a low voice, “Please think about what I said. About the waiver. I promise you, I can get Robin to sign it.”
Before he could speak, Vayle had ushered her out the door.
Later, while Max was dressing in his room, Vayle knocked and then entered without waiting for permission. He was already dressed for dinner, and prowled around the periphery of the room as Max fastened shirt studs and pulled on stockings.
Finally Vayle stopped in front of the mirror—Vain Vayle, they must have called him at school—and frowned at what he saw there. “Tell me,” he said in a cas
ual tone, “what is this Caine treasure Dorie was talking about?”
“Dorie?”
Vayle started. “I mean, Miss Caine. Dorothea, isn’t it? Didn’t she say she was called Dorie?”
Max didn’t remember that exchange, but then he might not have been privy to everything the girl said to Vayle. She certainly had gazed at him confidingly enough. Perhaps she had felt emboldened to tell him not only her Christian name but its diminutive, too. Dorie, was it.
“The treasure,” Vayle prompted.
Max shrugged into the waistcoat his valet held up. “It’s some frippery thing the Caines say we stole from them. Stole! The Caines are the thieves, not the Sevarics.” He shouldered Vayle out of the way of the mirror so he could tie his cravat, and brooded for a while on Miss Caine’s implied accusation. “She thinks I’m as dishonorable as any Caine.”
Behind him, Vayle started pacing again. “You think the Caines are dishonorable, then?”
“I don’t think it. I know it.”
“You considered Dor—Miss Caine dishonorable?”
Max regarded himself in the mirror, remembering her standing before him, clenching her fists and biting her lip and swallowing her pride. Begging for her brother. That took—courage? Desperation? “Well, no. But then, honor isn’t for women, is it? They have virtue, we have honor. And the last surviving male Caine, he has no honor.”
“Why? Because he’s unlucky at cards?”
His hands weren’t working right, and the cravat came out lopsided. His valet took over, humming happily as he fashioned the sort of elaborate knot Max usually refused to wear. He was too distracted to remonstrate much. “Not so tight, dammit! And, no, I don’t think it’s a dishonor to be a poor card player, though gambling away your sister’s dowry about pushes the limit. No. He’s dishonorable because he turned down my challenge. Like a coward.”
He shouldn’t have said that, but he didn’t want Vayle to think that he was some rigid moralist, condemning a man for his card play. Nonetheless, Vayle seized upon the information.