Ellie almost choked on her toast.
“You laugh too much,” her sister continued in a fraught whisper, so as not to disturb her husband again. “You always did. It is most off-putting for a gentleman to be laughed at.”
“I see.” Ellie nodded solemnly. “I shall try not to laugh from now on.”
“Be a little more serious, Sister, and for goodness sake, don’t argue. Men hate to be argued with.”
“I shall take your advice to heart, Charlotte. Thank you.”
“Soften your tone of voice, and always let the gentleman know you’re listening avidly to anything he says.”
“I see now where I went wrong all these years.” She could honestly say she rarely listened to any man for more than a minute. Frequently, far less time than that.
“And you will come tonight, for I called in a favor to get you invited, and if you cared at all about my comfort, you’d think of the inconvenience to me. Here I am with a child on the way.” Charlotte looked proudly down at herself as if she already saw the swelling that would not appear yet for months. “Don’t you think I would rather not be out in Society, either, in this delicate condition? But I put myself to the trouble for your sake.”
Ellie winced. “Of course.” She had only one more day until she escaped to precious peace and her aunt in Sydney Dovedale. She could put up with it until then, surely.
Her sister was content with her muttered reply, and breakfast resumed in utter silence but for the scraping of Ellie’s knife across her brittle, charred toast. Every charcoal crumb rolling from her plate to the tablecloth was observed by the dour gaze of her reluctant host and probably counted as a mark against her. When she pressed a little too hard with her knife and the slice snapped into three pieces, one of which whirled recklessly across the table and landed in his lap, he finally got up and left the dining room without a word. The fierce scowl he gave his wife communicated sufficiently on his behalf.
“Oh…Ellie!”
Apologizing to her sister, she scrambled to retrieve the broken pieces of toast and, in the process, banged her head on the table, spilling the tea and letting out a curse that was surely heard in the kitchen below.
Chapter 4
James entered his carriage that evening in a hurry and a bad mood. The last thing he expected or wanted to see was the small shape already perched there on his seat, feet dangling and eyes peering out from the shadow of a fur-lined, hooded cape. Behind him the groom waited, a lit faggot raised in one hand. When James moved aside, the dancing light from that breeze-blown flame skipped over a small, pale face staring back at him, fearless. Even, it might be said, pugnacious.
“I’m running away,” the creature announced, “to Gretna’s Greens.”
James sat heavily and reached over with one hand, tugging her hood back to reveal a bright head of copper hair. “It’s Green,” he corrected. “Gretna Green. Not Gretna’s Greens.”
“Oh. Are you sure?”
“Positively.”
She glowered at him as if he might lie to her deliberately.
“And you, Lady Mercy Danforthe, are going directly home to your brother.”
“We could be married there at Gretna’s Greens.”
“If you were not young enough to be my daughter,” he murmured wryly. “And more irritating than a nest of ants at a picnic. Now kindly remove yourself from my carriage, young lady.”
“But it’s dark out. How will I get home?”
“The same way you came.”
She swung her booted feet, knocking her toes on the side panel of his carriage. “I sent my maid home already. I told her she needn’t stay.”
If he wasn’t mistaken, she had cake crumbs in her hair and strawberry jam smeared on her cheek. She’d at least had the sense to bring refreshments on her otherwise ill-conceived adventure. Opening his door again, he called for Grieves, who was on his way back to the house. The valet swiveled around on his heel and returned to the carriage. “See to it that Lady Mercy is safely delivered to the Earl of Everscham immediately. And tell him we would be grateful if he kept a closer eye on his little sister in the future. Failing that, manacles.”
“Mr. James Hartley, you’re being most unreasonable,” the obstinate chit exclaimed.
“Yes, I know. I’m good at it.”
She widened her eyes and squeezed out a tear that gleamed in the light of the groom’s torch. “And terribly cruel.”
“See? I can’t imagine why you’d want to waste your time with a man like me. Off you go.” He scooped her up under the arms and swung her carefully down the carriage step. As her boots touched the cobbles, Grieves solemnly took her by the scruff of the neck, held her at arm’s length, and steered her toward the house.
James tapped on the roof of the carriage, and it jerked forward at once. He sat back, grimly considering his misfortune in attracting the notice of that copper-headed imp. No wonder her brother, the earl, called her The Bad Penny. Perhaps he kept sending her off, hoping she wouldn’t come back. Inheriting his title at a young age, being only just one and twenty himself, Carver Danforthe was far more interested in his own entertainments than he was in keeping watch over his troublesome sibling.
James was certain that if she were his little sister, she wouldn’t be running about the streets of London at night and writing love letters with excessive use of hearts instead of dots above the letter “i.” Neither would she throw herself at disreputable rakes like him. Someone should warn her about men like James Hartley. Indeed, he thought sternly, once he had daughters, they wouldn’t be allowed out of the house until they were twenty, and then only in his company. No one knew the dangers that lay in wait quite so well as he did, of course.
***
James stood with his shoulder propped against the door frame and scanned the tightly packed drawing room, discarding faces with contemptuous haste, searching for only one in particular—the woman he knew to be the count de Bonneville’s mistress. His link to the missing necklace.
Ah. There she was.
His relieved gaze settled on a dark head of carelessly tumbled curls. A warm blush of candlelight accentuated a high bosom and the arch of a slender neck. He’d know those curls anywhere, and that throaty, mischievous laugh he felt all the way to the soles of his feet. A laugh that was usually at his expense.
Mariella Vyne.
He thought he’d heard her laughter within minutes of his arrival. Lady Clegg-Foster’s standards must have fallen, or else the old dear was desperate to enliven her usual dull party with a few stray fireworks. Then he recalled that both Ellie Vyne’s half sisters had recently married very well—to a baronet and the younger son of an earl, if he remembered correctly—thereby raising their status. His grandmother had read the marriage announcements out to him over breakfast one morning during her last visit to his London house, and commented with scorn on the ambitious conniving of certain desperate women. Half breeds as she disdainfully referred to the daughters of Admiral Vyne and his—oh, the word itself caused her to tip sideways in her chair as if the room spun—American wife.
Tonight the scandalous eldest sister chatted amiably to a potted palm. James quirked a bemused eyebrow. The potted palm, of course, couldn’t answer her back. That explained it. She’d probably chat away to him too, in that pleasant manner, if he had no means to reply. As it was, they could never have a conversation without a quarrel.
Mariella Vyne was left unguarded for too many years, got away with too much. Now she’d entangled herself with the count, a man to further ruin her reputation. If there was anything left for salvage. How many times had she been engaged, exactly? No matter. She’d taken none of her fiancés seriously. One might imagine she caused scandal with her behavior merely to put the men off and get out of marriage. These days her reputation for being difficult was well known, and despite those tempting curves, most sensible men kept their distance. After all, her provenance was distinctly foggy. Nothing was known of her real father, and her widowed mothe
r, plucked from the waves of the Atlantic by Admiral Vyne, had come to England with little more than the clothes on her back. Ellie was born seven months later and adopted by the admiral when he married her mother. After such an uncertain beginning, it was perhaps only natural that her life since should be full of ups and downs as violent as the waves from which her mother was once rescued. Only the elderly, widowed Duke of Ardleigh had the bravery to take her on recently, and then look what happened. The poor fellow died of a heart attack. In bed.
Where else? James carefully eyed the woman in the deceptively innocent white gown, measuring every treacherous curve. Nurse companion indeed! Everyone knew what that meant.
Now James had caught her in the count’s bed—witnessed her brazen, unapologetic behavior with his own two eyes.
Unequal standards indeed! There were rules in this world, and women must follow them. At her age, she ought to know that. Clearly she hadn’t yet reached her maturing moment of clarity. The way he had.
He imagined his grandmother’s voice in his ear: Look at her! Lurking in wait behind those leaves, ready to leap out on some unsuspecting fellow. That girl is completely without direction or guidance. Mark my words, she’ll come to a bad end.
His grandmother would urge him to stay well away, and he would do that too, if not for his diamonds. They were, he reassured himself, the only reason he planned to approach her tonight. What other reason could there be to seek her out?
Apparently her lover, the count, left her untended, but he couldn’t be far away. No man meaning to keep Ellie Vyne to himself should let her out of his sight for long. One never knew what she might do next. This was a woman who, ten years ago, loudly convulsed with laughter in the presence of the Prince Regent when the royal backside abruptly lost contact with a saddle and tumbled to the grass in the midst of an impromptu horse race. Not even the prince’s indignant fury and the incredulous glances of other onlookers had silenced her laughter, only increased it. The incident spelled the end of her chance of becoming a royal favorite and also closed many doors socially. Despite this, she was a woman who attacked life with a restless enthusiasm that, according to James’s grandmother, should have been safely exhausted in the decoration of bonnets and the sewing of petticoats or embroidered screens.
“A young lady’s fingers,” his grandmother commented sharply whenever anyone mentioned Mariella Vyne and her sins, “even those of an American, could not make quite so much mischief were they better occupied with a needle.”
Personally, James felt it was a mistake to give Ellie Vyne anything sharp.
Tonight most of the female guests snubbed her, and she looked as if she longed to be anywhere else. A few years ago she would have danced every dance, showing a grievous amount of ankle and bouncing about the room like an India rubber ball. But tonight she tried merging with the wallpaper. Why?
A few seats to her left, two frosty-faced matrons took no pains to hide their contempt as they critically examined her from head to toe quite openly. Meanwhile, she squeezed behind the potted palm, almost knocking it over. Another lady joined the two seated and began whispering behind her fan, but in such an obvious fashion that the only mystery remaining was the whereabouts of her manners. A light pink flush stained Miss Vyne’s cheeks, although she kept a merry smile on her face, and her eyes turned away from the gossiping harpies as if she hadn’t seen and couldn’t hear them. James frowned.
Young Robert Clegg-Foster made an ambitious beeline toward her from across the room, halted only by his mama, who suddenly wanted his ear for some reason.
Uh, oh. Better take the plunge or miss his opportunity.
James straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. Time to get his diamonds back.
And try not to think about her damned legs.
But with only three steps across the room he was intercepted. “James, darling!”
He could scarce believe that Ophelia Southwold dared approach him this evening, but she was, it became quickly apparent, tipsy. He recognized the glazed eyes and heightened color.
“James, I hope you don’t blame me about the necklace. I swear the count boldly removed it without my notice. I tried to see you this morning, but your stupid valet said you were indisposed.”
His way blocked, he stopped and looked down at her. Although his first instinct was to take the woman by the arms, lift her aside, and ignore her, twenty years of flirting with pretty women, charming them out of their drawers with the finesse of a magician pulling doves out of his turban, was too deeply ingrained. Tonight he went through the motions again. A slow smile, a tilt of his head, a partial lowering of his eyelids as he gave her gown a careful, appreciative perusal. “Ophelia—dear—can we discuss this later? I’m in rather a hurry.”
“But, James, darling—” she draped her hand over his sleeve—“what can be more important than me?”
There was only one way out. “I’m afraid I’m going to be sick. Too much punch.”
At once she drew back. “Oh!” Success. Now she made no more attempt to waylay him, but sent him on his way with a poke of her fan in his back.
***
Ellie was ten when she drew an elaborately curled ink moustache on a sleeping James Hartley’s face. Seventeen years later, she knew he still remembered the incident, particularly the humiliation of walking around for a full day with no one mentioning his strange appearance. Such a crime, to a man of his sizeable vanity, was unforgivable. Even worse than that, she was a Vyne. Since her disreputable stepuncle once ran off with James’s mother, for an adulterous affair that caused the scandal of the century, Hartleys did not speak to Vynes or even acknowledge their existence if it could be helped. And vice versa. The feud was fiercely adhered to on either side. Therefore, seventeen years ago, young Ellie, with her mischievous pen and ink, had upset her adoptive family just as much as his.
She’d been urged, many times, to stay away from James Hartley, and suspected he was warned the same about her. All good advice and possibly well intentioned. Now to be summarily dismissed. Again. They just couldn’t seem to stay away from each other. She watched his approach in her peripheral vision.
Standing beside the potted palm, she’d just begun to get that chilling sensation again, of being followed and spied upon. It must be the effect of Hartley’s blue gaze on her shoulders, she decided, and shrugged it off quickly.
He thrust his way through the crowd, bumped into her with one hard shoulder, expelled a tired breath, and grumbled in her general direction, “Are you dancing?”
Spilled wine stained her borrowed evening gloves and seeped through to her skin. She looked up and immediately felt the familiar shiver of annoyance. It was quite disgusting that one man should have so much in his favor—all of it wasted.
Ellie Vyne or Ellie Phant? She heard those mocking words again in her mind as if he’d just uttered them aloud. Even the laughter still echoed around her head as it did all those years ago.
“Do I look as if I’m dancing?” she snapped.
“Do you intend to?”
“I made no plans one way or the other.”
He smiled thinly. “Perhaps you can decide now.”
“Why do you want to know my plans?” She fluttered her lashes in feigned ignorance. “What interest can they be to you?”
A heavier sigh squeezed out between his lips. “You know very well, Vyne, that I am asking you to dance.”
“With whom?”
“With me.”
“Well, you might have said. It’s quite simple, but you always have to complicate things. In your tiresome, arrogant English way I suppose you assumed I was waiting in absolute desperation for you to ask.” Although she was born in England, Ellie considered that purely an accident. She liked to think of herself as an American, like her mother.
“I don’t intend to stand here arguing with you for another five minutes, Vyne.”
Not waiting for her reply, James swiftly removed the empty glass from her hand, gave it to a passing
footman, and gestured with a stiff bow of his towering form, for her to exit the room and join the line of couples currently gathered in the hall, where lack of furniture made it more suitable for dancing.
“I can’t,” she said, feeling hot, anxiously watching the security of her empty glass moving away.
“What’s the matter with you? What have you done now?”
“It’s not me. It’s the dress.” Her sister’s maid had done her best with the gown but, just a few moments ago, an entire seam of hasty stitches had snapped apart under her sleeve and down the side of her bosom. This required Ellie to keep her arm rigidly clasped to her side or else expose her chemise and corset to the room at large. Added to that, she’d accidentally sat in a dish of trifle half an hour ago, and that left a stain in a very unfortunate place. She was doing her best to hide and not move very much. Her sisters had disappeared, abandoning her soon after they all arrived at the party, but she’d been hoping one of them would come to find her so she could explain her predicament and leave.
Instead, James came along and suddenly, after all these years, wanted to dance with her.
His quizzical gaze now assessed the front of her gown.
With a low groan she lifted her arm to show the tear. His eyebrows arched high.
“And…” She turned, showing him the trifle stain that marked her sister’s lovely, white muslin frock.
The Wicked Wedding of Miss Ellie Vyne Page 5