But he could stop himself from saying, “But there is as much danger in forgetting, as there was in not anticipating the trouble in the first place.”
But even as he said the words, he knew he liked—no, liked was far too tame a word. He idolized, he was obsessed with Lady Claire Jellicoe precisely because she was so sweet and so optimistic and so sunny a person that she could never have conceived of the idea that Rosing could wish her such malicious harm.
He could excuse her entirely. But others—her father the earl, her brother the viscount, and all the so-called men of the world who turned a blind eye to Rosing’s predations because he was “one of them”—those men Tanner held accountable. And as for Rosing himself—
Tanner felt the black, icy rage grip him again. He should have killed the bastard.
He would kill him if given another chance.
Lady Claire Jellicoe was not so decided—she was still trying to sort out the tangle of emotions that looked to be knotting her into a tight, miserable ball. “Yes. I know you’re right. But it’s just so...”
“So hard. Yes.”
“Yes.” She looked at him, and eased a bit from her cramped posture. “Thank you. For being so understanding. And for bloody well laying him out like an undertaker.”
God’s balls. Curse words aside, laying him out like an undertaker was a turn of phrase so improbable, so cant, and so directly from his own misbegotten youth that Tanner was startled out of his easy rhythm. The idiom was vulgar, street thieves’ cant of a sort that an innocent young woman like Lady Claire Jellicoe ought never have even heard.
“Where on earth did you learn that sort of talk?”
There, in the wash of moonlight, was the small beginning of a rueful smile—the first smile she had ever smiled for him—pressing up the corner of her lips. “I have brothers.”
Tanner did not have brothers, and so did not entirely take her meaning.
But he must have frowned at her, because Lady Claire Jellicoe answered his silence. “I have three brothers, to be exact, and they are full of what my father calls ‘buckish slang.’ But I like the way they talk. And I liked that they have always done that sort of thing for me—lay impertinent fellows out like undertakers. My brother Will was especially good at what one might call personal justice. Do you remember him? Rather like you, it turns out.”
She stared at him for a long moment, before she turned her troubled, wistful face up to the moon. “But I wish... I wish I knew how to do that for myself. To use my fives, as my brothers say. I had a friend once...one of my sisters-in-law, now. Mrs. Jellicoe, not the Viscountess Jeffrey, who is also my sister-in-law. Do you know them—they’re sisters? No? Well, she would have known what to do, Antigone. She would have been able to stop him, Lord Peter.” Another sigh wrestled it’s way out of her lungs. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything. I just felt so...absolutely powerless. So entirely useless.”
Useless. This he understood.
It was one of his greatest fears that somehow, someday, someone was going to find that he was entirely useless—a pretender of a duke. A sham of a man. Nothing but a creature of stealth and guile.
Lady Claire Jellicoe wasn’t a sham. She was everything he was not. Polished and easy. Elegant and refined. She belonged to her world in a way he never could—his exact opposite in every way.
Which was why he idolized her. If she had not existed precisely the way she was—beautiful and immaculate—he could not have thought her up and made her any more ideal.
And yet in the quiet intimacy of the skiff, she looked more real, if such a thing were possible.
It was possible, if only because he had idolized her from afar for all these past years—ever since the year she had turned seventeen and made her come out—and never before sought to make her real.
But up close, she looked so much less perfect now, with her hair coming down from its pins, and the breeze blowing one or two fine strands loose across her damaged face. It made her more approachable. More human, and fallible, and frail.
Infinitely more beautiful.
And more vulnerable.
And that was his fault. He should have found a way to stop Rosing sooner, before the bastard ever set his eyes on Lady Claire Jellicoe, who was now wrapping her arms about her torso, hugging herself. She was shivering in the warm summer air, her skin shining white with gooseflesh in the moonlight.
“You’re cold.” She might also be suffering from the shock of the bastard’s assaulting her like a ravening beast, but the effects were just the same—she was shaking.
Tanner once more shipped the oars, and let the skiff drift where it would on the outgoing tide, while he shucked himself out of his form-fitting evening coat.
And then he leaned forward to wrap it carefully around Lady Claire’s shoulders.
She let him, and clasped her hands into the coat’s lapels gratefully, even as she looked away in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I just feel so...so stupid. So inadequate. I don’t know what I would have done if you have not come.”
He knew exactly what Rosing would have done—which was why Tanner had followed them. He felt the icy rage, the cold, smoldering fury, flare up within him, but he leashed it, a power to use later, when he might have need of it. Not now. Not with her.
“You would have managed something. You did bite him.”
“Yes.” Another sigh, but this one was perhaps less forlorn and more resolved. “How clever you are to have noticed that.”
Tanner tried not to succumb the bitter thrill of pride welling within his chest. He knew he was clever—it was how he and his sister, who was cleverer still, had stayed alive all those stealthy, guileful years they had prowled the streets. It was why the Admiralty had kept its grappling hooks firmly into him even when he became the Duke of Fenmore, using him much as they had his brother-in-law, Captain Hugh McAlden, before him—making the most of his unique, larcenous abilities for the benefit of King, country and Admiralty with no one the wiser.
But it was strange to find himself the object of Lady Claire Jellicoe’s admiration for being so. And for some reason he didn’t want to examine too closely, he found himself wanting to impress her even more by his cleverness.
“His hand was bloody. Back there on the ground. His palm. Only logical explanation was that you had bitten him. You’d have gone on in the same vein.”
“You’re being kind again. And I thank you for it.” Her voice grew small and tight, and she seemed to shrink into the folds of his coat. “But I’m afraid you’re wrong. I don’t think I could have done much else.” The dark fabric swallowed her up until all he could see was the shining crown of her blonde head in the moonlight. “I hate it. Feeling so...powerless. Powerless to help myself.”
And because Tanner knew exactly what that felt like—the aching, gnawing desperation of having no good choices, or no choices at all—he could not stand for her to feel that way.
“I could teach you.”
Her face turned up toward him, and she looked at him now with the same sort of strange fascination as she had in the boathouse—as if she could not quite allow herself to believe him.
“Would you? Would you really?”
“Yes.” Tanner heard his voice come out of his mouth, firm and secure. Sure. As if he really could teach an immaculate, innocent young woman like Lady Claire Jellicoe how to defend herself like a brawling, barely civilized street rat.
As if he did it every day of the week. “I could teach you to take care of yourself. To notice things—the important things—so you’re never again put in a position like you were with Rosing.”
“Never again,” she echoed. And then her face cleared, and she looked once again like his immaculate angel. “I’d like that. I’d like that above all things.”
Tanner felt a smile soften the harsh planes of his face. “Good. We can start this moment.
Close your eyes.”
The directive brought the tense, guarded look back to her face—
she narrowed her eyes, staring and searching in the moonlight for a keener glimpse of him, and her hand strayed toward the sleek gun at her side, her fingertips seeking it out in the dark.
“Why?” Her voice was quiet and tight.
“Because I want you to understand how to take in all the information from your surroundings. I want you to understand that you already know things you don’t realize you already know.”
And because she did not answer, but continued to look at him with her doubt all but written across her face, he added. “I promise you no harm. And I am a man of my word.”
Lady Claire Jellicoe weighed the merit of his assertion for a long time before she finally said, “Yes, I suppose you are, aren’t you? All right.”
And she did slowly close her eyes.
But, he noticed, she took surreptitious possession of the gun. Clever girl.
He rewarded her for it. “Excellent. And you’ve already done the first thing to make yourself safer, taking hold of the gun. But the way you’re holding it, I can see that you are unfamiliar with firearms. Actually—open your eyes. If you’ll give me leave?” He took the gun from her hands to reposition it. “We’ll start with this.”
It was both remarkable and, from his point of view, rather criminal that her father, or one of her surplus of brothers had never taught her even the rudiments of shooting. If he did nothing else he would remedy that.
“This is a Royal Navy, sea service-style flintlock pistol, with flat stepped locks with half-cock safeties, waterproof pans, roller frizzens, and reinforced cocks. Take hold of it firmly—point it away. The gun is loaded. Always point it away from a person—or an animal for that matter—unless you mean to aim it at them. Never aim your gun at anyone or anything which you are not prepared to shoot. And kill. Do you understand?”
“You must have a good deal of experience with guns.”
“Yes.” He did, in fact, have rather a lot of experience of guns, among other weapons. He had learned how to handle and fire pistols in his short stint in the navy as a boy, and he had fired hunting pieces as part of his later training in the gentlemanly art of shooting.
But gentlemen generally didn’t carry firearms the likes of his pistol. Or the long knife in his custom-made boot. Or the blade up his bespoke, tailored sleeve.
But he was no gentleman.
And being a lady had only served Lady Claire Jellicoe ill this night.
“It’s at half cock, and the frizzen is closed. Which means that it’s been loaded and primed. Powder is in the pan, under the pan cover, which is this part of the frizzen, here.” He pointed to the striking plate. “That lock mechanism there, the hammer, when toggled back thusly”—he put the weapon into her hand, and closed his own larger fingers around hers, helping her to thumb the cock fully back—“means you’re ready to fire.”
He would have raised her arm up beneath his, in order to show her how to steady her arm and take aim.
But his brain—the intricate, organized, resourceful brain that had seen him through thirty-odd astonishingly full years of use—refused to do his bidding.
Because beneath his palm, her skin was soft. So astonishingly, exceedingly, innocently soft. Softer than morning air. Softer than wonder.
And he could only wonder at how small and delicate, and nearly fragile the bones beneath her extraordinary skin felt under the crude, dexterous strength of his hand.
He had never touched her, never been so close to her before.
So close the damp, liquid smell of the river faded away, and there was nothing but her. Nothing but orange blossom and lily and rose, and something beyond mere perfume.
Something that confused and unhinged and liberated him all at once.
He could have recited the scientific nomenclature for the oxidized alcohols and esters and compounds that gave her orange blossom fragrance the subtle welcoming hint of nutmeg, but he had no words, no knowledge, to combat what the scent of her did to his brain, and how it made him want to do more than cover her hand.
How it made him want to cover her entire body with his own, and feel every delicate bone and sweet muscle in her body, explore every elegant sinew, and hold the fey weight of her in his arms as if he could subsume her into himself. How he wanted to do so with a sudden swiftness that shocked him to his core.
Because he knew he would no longer be able to merely worship her from afar.
And so he slid closer to her, down on his knees in front of the stern seat, lifting his elbow over her head so he could line his right arm up with hers, and show her how to sight.
All along the length of his arm, where the linen of his shirtsleeve lay over the material of his own coat covering her, he felt the heat and slight, fine-boned tension of her beneath fanning across his skin.
“And then?”
He felt, more than heard, her quiet question hum into his chest. She was looking up at him, so close the moonlight poured into her eyes, and lit her like a beacon.
And all he could think was how much he wanted to kiss her.
And then she turned her head sharply away.
God’s balls. It was as if he had forgotten what had happened only half of an hour ago. And that there was a gun in his hands.
A loaded, primed and cocked gun, ready to fire.
He was a cad. An armed, dangerous, guileful cad, who was not worthy of her. And he proved it by shutting down all sensation but the feel of her finger under his on the trigger.
“And then we squeeze.”
Within a second, the slick sound of the flint hitting spark was drowned out in the echoing roar of the deafening explosion as the gun spat its bullet over the still surface of the water, and sped into the dark, silent wood behind the bank.
Her arm gave way immediately—she would have dropped the weapon if he had not held her there, buoyed by his strength and by his resolve to stay there, close to her, as long as possible. As long as she would allow.
But her arm, and indeed her whole body, began to tremble, and he made himself slide away from her, and let her be.
“Well done for your first time. There’s more to it, of course—the need to have a good, well-made lock, and keep a sharp flint, and a well-tempered frizzen, as well as proper loading, priming, and a proper touchhole.”
He was blathering—something he never did. Or had never done before.
But he had never been so close to Lady Claire Jellicoe before. Her nearness unhinged him, opening some heretofore-leashed part of his character. She made him a stranger to himself.
She placed the spent pistol on the seat beside her, and looked at it for a long moment, and he, who saw people think just as clearly as if he were reading a broadsheet, had absolutely no idea of her thoughts.
And so he—who never babbled—babbled on. “Even though the charge is now spent, you can still use the pistol as a weapon, if you take hold of the barrel with a backward grip, so you can backhand the butt of the gun across your attacker’s face at a moment’s notice if they make the mistake of thinking to act like Rosing.”
Which was exactly the wrong thing to say.
She folded herself back into the sanctuary of his coat, and turned to look over the water in the direction the gun had fired. “I hope to God I didn’t hit anyone, or anything.”
They were passing the along the unpopulated expanse of the Old Deer Park, the acres of former Royal hunting grounds that had originally made Richmond a retreat for the nobility.
“Only people in this wood this time of night are poachers.” Who might be expected to have earned whatever stray bullets came their way.
He, of course, was contrary enough to have a rather brotherly feeling for the poachers, despite being a duke. Honor among thieves, and all that.
“Thank you for the lesson in shooting.” Despite her discomfort, she was nothing if not unfailingly polite.
“I can teach you more.” He hoped his offer didn’t sound as salacious aloud as it did in the depths of his mind.
It must not
have, because she brightened a little—a star coming out from behind the night clouds—and said, “What else?”
“Just listen.” With another quick glance over his shoulder, he steered the skiff toward the quieter seclusion of the trailing boughs of a tall willow tree that marked the boundary of the Old Deer Park, where the river turned toward the vast Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
Which meant that they had already come much farther than he had planned. Which also meant that the tide had begun its ebb, flowing downstream toward the city of London.
But the woods were soft and quiet and peaceful. And she was not ready to go back.
So he plied them along the south bank where an industrious river vole was dragging a green reed into his hole beneath the willow’s roots. The trees overhead were full of drowsy insect sounds. “What do you hear?”
In the cathedral-like quiet of the trees’ sanctuary, the river quieted until to a low gurgle.
“The water,” she said. “The river, with the water lapping against the bank. And the night wind, rustling low through the trees.”
“Yes. Very good. All information you can use.”
“But it sounds the same as when I went out with Rosing. Were the bush crickets supposed to warn me as I went down the lawn? Did I fail to heed their warning?”
“No.” He could hear her self-remonstrance and frustration, and understand how little it seemed to make sense to her. “But there were other clues in Rosing’s behavior. In his look.”
She had opened her eyes and was staring at him now, her eyes wide and velvet dark with something stronger than frustration. “I should have read his intent in his look?”
“Yes.” There was no kinder way to say it.
He half-expected her to dissolve into sloppy tears—innumerable women had at his blunt assertions. But even that might be for the good—many women seemed to believe quite strongly in the efficacy of what they called a good cry.
But she surprised him with her depth of character. “You mean I should have given him greater scrutiny of my own before I accepted his—or rather his father’s—invitation to dance, and especially to walk in the garden. I should not have trusted that just because he’s the Marquess of Hadleigh’s heir he wouldn’t be a bloody bounder.”
After the Scandal Page 3