“That is a very annoying habit,” a voice said from behind him.
Fitzwilliam spun around to see a pair of wide, doe eyes of indistinct color with a fringe of straight, dark lashes, pale ivory skin, and a full, pink mouth.
“Madam, pray forgive me,” he stammered, taking in the newcomer. She was tall, nearly as tall as himself, with a cap of dark hair that shone in the moonlight.
“I apologize for startling you,” she said in a flat, strange accent.
“Madam, you are without chaperone,” he said. “Allow me to escort you back to the party.”
“Just a moment, if you please. I could not think of another way to approach you.”
A warning sounded in his mind. This girl might mean to trap him; it had been attempted before with other, far more cunning women.
“Approach me? I am certain we are unacquainted. I would surely remember you.” He did not say so gently, censure coloring his words.
She smiled crookedly and dropped a curtsey. “I am Calliope Campbell. We have not met, but I am certain you have heard of me. As I have heard of you.”
Fitzwilliam had heard of the Campbell sisters: daughters of a wealthy, American merchant who had been quietly buying up storehouses on the waterfront. Campbell acquired his vast fortune in shipping, though there were whispers that he had become rather cozy with some of the more infamous, shoot-and-loot travelers of the high seas. Campbell had no sons, a dead wife, and three daughters—Calliope, Clio, and Thalia—each endowed with enormous dowries. There had been a great deal of fuss and expectation in the ton that these American sisters would be a great scandal in society. Instead, they were proper young women whose manners, while not being especially fashionable, left nothing wanting. In an entirely too predictable twist, London society despised them anyway, disappointed by their mediocrity.
Fitzwilliam could not count how many times he had heard some of the more impoverished nobles jesting about marrying a Campbell sister to improve their fortunes, only for the so-called Quality to erupt into laughter. He thought it rather cruel, for it was commonly known that their father was a vulgar man, and as Americans, they already had enough set against them. He suspected that all three Campbell sisters would be rather wealthy spinsters in due time. He thought it a shame, for the woman so brazenly introducing herself was a rather fine specimen of a female, with her large eyes, slender neck, and exceptional figure. His eyes strayed, briefly, to the neckline of her gown, thanking the heavens that she wore no fichu. He swallowed and shook his head, attempting to quell an unexpected pang of desire.
“Miss Campbell,” he said her name more formally than was his wont, “we have not been introduced. How is it you know me?”
She moved, nervously shifting her weight from one foot to another. Her white gown appeared silver in the moonlight, giving her the look of another world. Her hesitation gave him a chance to resume his study of the far-too pleasing neckline of her gown. His palms became dewy with sweat.
“You are Colonel Fitzwilliam, are you not?”
He bowed slightly out of habit, feeling foolish as he did. Had she noticed the direction of his gaze? “I am.”
She sighed, a sound of relief. “Very good. I’ve come to you because I need your help rather desperately.”
“What might I do? I am not agreeing to help you in any way, Miss Campbell, but I would like to know why you would risk your reputation to follow me.”
“But you see, Colonel, my reputation is just what I need your help with.”
A queer feeling washed through his stomach. He did not like the direction of this conversation.
“The truth is, sir...I require a rake. And only the best will do.”
* * *
He fumed silently as the carriage made its circuitous route to Grosvenor Square. His mind spun in tight circles, thinking over the conversation that had taken place earlier that night. He needed Darcy’s council. Gods above, he was actually considering her proposition!
I require a rake, and only the best will do. He nearly fainted at the words. What the deuce was she playing at?
* * *
“Madam, I am sure I do not know what you mean. I am certain you do not know what you mean either.” He was deeply offended, not for her bold approach—it simply was not done. Ladies were not supposed to know the inner lives of men, the dark and carnal secrets they kept. It seemed, to Fitzwilliam, like the crudest sort of trespass.
“Please explain yourself,” he said coldly.
“Do you know Brigadier General Harrington?”
He did and more was the pity. Harrington (known quietly by the men as Bloody Benedict) was a short, slight man who was pale of complexion and had fine, feminine features. He always had the appearance of ill health, but Fitzwilliam knew that appearances could be quite deceptive. Harrington was quick as a snake, and deadly with a blade, and had a mind that worked like lightning. Harrington was a strategist of the first order.
“What of him?”
“He has approached my father…about courting me.”
Fitzwilliam held back a shudder. He would not wish to be a dog in Harrington’s house, much less a wife. “My felicitations.”
“I will not be tied to Harrington. Nor any man who would treat me as his property.”
“Bold words for one so young.”
“I am old enough to know my own mind,” she said fiercely. He felt a warmth, a kindling of admiration for her. She seemed to have a bit of the soldier’s spirit in her.
“What have I to do with it?”
“It is very simple. I wish you to seduce me.”
Fitzwilliam felt a sharp stab of desire at her words and a cold shiver of something else, something far more troubling—he could not put words to it. He thought perhaps it might be shame.
“Not truly, you understand,” she continued. “I only wish you to pay court enough to set Harrington off his course. You and I will know that you do not mean it, but he will not.”
Fitzwilliam took a deliberate step closer to her. She held her ground, so he took another. Still, she remained unmoved. He reached out, tracing a line from her temple to her jaw in the lightest of touches.
“And why do you think I would ever go along with such a scheme?” he said softly, dangerously.
“Because I will make you rich.”
He dropped his hand as though he had been scalded. “Will you indeed?”
“I know more about you than your propensity for visiting widows. You are a second son with no fortune of your own. If I am unmarried when I reach my majority, I shall receive some twenty thousand pounds. Help me keep my freedom, and I shall give you a piece of that...say, five thousand pounds?”
His mouth fell open in wordless surprise.
“Very well, I shall give you eight but not a shilling more. Is that acceptable?”
Fitzwilliam reeled. Eight thousand pounds! It was not Darcy’s fortune, to be sure, but it would be enough that he might purchase a small estate, perhaps begin earning his own income. It would be...freedom, she said. It was fitting. He was not mercenary. There had been several opportunities for him to marry well, but he had not wished to tie himself to a woman for life for the sake of fortune alone. And here was this outrageous girl offering his freedom, without the shackles of marriage. It was too good to be true. Perhaps that was why it made him feel so unseemly. So cheap.
“You realize that when Harrington is chased off and I do not marry you, your reputation may not survive? For you can be certain of one thing, Miss Campbell. I will not marry you.”
She shook her head. “My reputation will be enough to ensure my spinsterhood, which suits me very well.”
“And what would you have me do? Ravish you in the middle of dinner?”
She recoiled as if he had struck her. He half-disbelieved it himself, that he could say something so coarse to a young woman while twenty feet away half the nobility in England danced and sipped lemonade. Her color rose, even in the moonlight he could see the pink wash across her
cheeks. He thought her eyes might be green, or perhaps blue. It was difficult to tell in this light.
“I was thinking you might ask me to dance at balls. Ask to open, ask for the supper set. Escort me about Town, a drive down Rotten Row, things like that. Nothing vulgar.”
“You understand that it is vulgar that you would even ask this of me?” he asked coldly.
She dipped her head for a moment before tilting her chin up, eyes flashing. “I had heard too that you were a man of honor.”
“Which would you have me be?” He seethed. “The rake or the gentleman? A man cannot be both.”
“Very well, I will have the rake. Do you accept my proposal?”
He stalked over to the doors that would lead him inside, back to the party, but not before stopping close to her, close enough that when he spoke, the force of his words made a loose curl at her neck bob and sway. He watched as gooseflesh raced across her skin, again feeling that curious mix of desire and shame. She looked up at him with her shining eyes. Green. He decided their color must be green.
“I do not accept. Farewell, Miss Campbell.”
* * *
Too late, Fitzwilliam only realized his error when he was admitted into Darcy’s study.
“My god, Cousin, you look terrible!”
Darcy looked up from the ledger on his desk, bleary-eyed and unshaven. Fitzwilliam knew that Darcy had not been studying accounts, as the ledger was currently situated upside-down.
“What do you want?” Darcy asked. “I am busy.”
“Yes, I can see that you are,” Fitzwilliam said, smirking. “Georgiana told me I could come up. Poor child nearly begged me, and now I see why. This will never do, Darcy, not for you.”
“Oh, surely not,” Darcy said with heavy sarcasm. He opened his desk and produced a bottle of brandy, which he drank from, offering none to his cousin. Fitzwilliam sighed and threw himself into a seat.
“Still wretched, old man?”
“As you see. Have you just come to laugh at me, then?”
Fitzwilliam shook his head. “Why do you always assume that I am laughing at you? It distresses me to see you so unhappy. You must allow me to care, Darcy.”
Darcy sighed with his whole body, shoulders rising up and slumping down dramatically. “I am out of sorts.”
While Fitzwilliam was amused in some small part by Darcy’s antics, he did feel a great deal of pity for him, for the man was clearly in pain and suffering. Fitzwilliam’s own brother was ten years his senior, as Darcy was to Georgiana. He and Darcy had always been more like brothers than cousins, and he was glad that connection had not diminished with age.
So, when he said, “I am sorry to see you thus,” it was with all warmth, affection, and sincerity. Darcy looked at him, somewhat calmer and more resolute than he had been a moment ago.
“It is I who am sorry, Fitz. What might I do for you this evening?”
He found that now that he was there, he could not bring himself to speak of Miss Campbell and their exchange on the balcony at Lady Snowley’s ball. He could not make himself say the words that made him sound no better than a common tart. He did have a reputation; Miss Campbell had been quite right in that regard. He had never felt ashamed of it, until this night, until this very moment, looking into the face of his cousin, who was suffering mightily over a woman. Women! The word had never been considered a curse by him, not even silently, until this moment.
He shook his head. “’Tis nothing. I happened to be passing this way and wanted to see if you were still in high dudgeon.”
Darcy stood up and fetched two glasses from the sideboard. He brought them back to his desk where he poured them each a portion.
“I am afraid my dudgeon is rather low these days,” Darcy muttered, handing Fitzwilliam his drink. “As is the rest of me.”
“I have just come back from Lady Snowley’s ball,” he said lightly.
Darcy scoffed. “Lady Snowley’s ball is the dullest affair of the season. I am not sorry to have missed it.”
“Actually, I thought it rather interesting this year.” He considered for a moment before forging ahead. He would not reveal more than he ought, but Darcy’s opinion and judgement counted a great deal in Fitzwilliams eyes. Or, it did when Darcy was not acting a proper ass.
“That American was there. The Campbell girl.” He supposed the younger two had been there as well, though he had not seen them. Calliope was the eldest; Fitzwilliam would have guessed her to be one and twenty.
“Oh lord, how dreary.” Darcy grinned into his glass of brandy. “Did anyone dance with her?”
He opened his mouth to speak but Darcy’s chuckle cut him off. “Of course, no one danced with her. Probably spent the whole evening with the other wallflowers. This town is going to eat those girls alive, poor dears.”
Fitzwilliam felt an indignant sort of irritation on the girl’s behalf. She had not seemed a shrinking wallflower to him, as she faced him down. I wish you to seduce me. Dangerous words to mutter to a man such as him. Even now, as furious as he still was over the scheme, he wished to rise to the challenge she laid at his feet. For the sport of it.
“Perhaps I shall marry her,” he said out loud. “She has a pretty bosom and an even prettier dowry.”
“If it were a pretty dowry you were after, you would have married Caroline Bingley by now. She has the added inducement of at least being English.”
“No bosoms though,” Fitzwilliam said with a grin. Darcy’s countenance sagged.
“No, Cousin. You think I do not see it but I do. You would not marry for money, or you would have by now. You are the worst sort of romantic...you wish to marry for love.” Darcy pushed his empty glass aside, to the very edge of his desk. “We have never been so very different, you and I. Not in essentials.” Darcy shook his head, pointed at the glass. “This is me, or rather you. You know what you are. You have a purpose. And then comes this.” Darcy wiggled a finger in the air. “This. This is love.”
He brought the finger down, touching it to the rim, trailing down the curve of the vessel. “At first, love is a touch. A caress. But soon enough…” He tipped the glass with one finger until it slid off the edge. Fitzwilliam watched it fall, saw the moment it met the floor, the moment it changed from one thing to another. Scattered. Less than it had been. Broken.
Fitzwilliam cleared his throat, looking at his cousin’s expectant face. “Darcy, that is a ridiculous demonstration. And now you have broken a glass.”
Darcy looked crestfallen, for a moment, before both men erupted into laughter. A fresh glass was procured easily enough, and by the time one of Darcy’s footmen piled him into a carriage, he had forgotten all about the ball, marriage, and Calliope Campbell.
* * *
Fitzwilliam woke the following morning with a pain in his head and a curse on his lips. Without opening his eyes, he knew he had been delivered to his family’s house and not returned to the barracks after drinking far too much of Darcy’s excellent brandy. The shuffle of servants in the corridors and the smell of fresh flowers told him as much. He rolled over, his arm slung across his eyes as a groan escaped him. He had slept fitfully, not the leaden sleep of intoxication, but a sleep plagued with dreams. Lurid, unsettling dreams.
He roused himself and rang for a servant, his head exploding like cannon fire as he gave his instructions. Coffee, not tea, the hottest and strongest to be had. A headache powder and plenty of hot water for washing. He fancied he could smell the spirits seeping out of his skin. Once refreshed and feeling somewhat less dreadful, he made his way down to breakfast.
“Hello, darling.” His mother, Lady Matlock, greeted him in her usual way, with a pat on the cheek.
“Morning, Mater,” he said, taking her hand and placing a kiss on her knuckles. He looked at the breakfast spread out on the sideboard and turned away, stomach clenching.
“Will you not eat?” Fitzwilliam groaned, shook his head as much as he dared, and helped himself to a cup of coffee.
“It must have been quite an evening,” she said with a knowing smile. “I am glad Darcy had the good sense to send you here in his carriage.”
Fitzwilliam scoffed. “Darcy was laid ‘cross his desk, sleeping like a babe when I left. Darcy’s butler had the good sense to send me here.”
Lady Matlock chuckled and shook her head. “You boys always did have a bit of the devil in you when you were together.”
“A bit too much of a very particular devil last night, I should say.” Fitzwilliam looked up from his coffee. “Where is the earl this morning?”
He was not so stupid from drink that he missed the sudden tightness around his mother’s eyes, the downturn of her lips.
“Your father set out to see your brother at first light.”
Fitzwilliam sighed heavily. His elder brother and heir to the earldom had always been a lazy, self-indulgent man, but since his marriage his bad habits had only grown in extravagance and frequency. He had made a splendid match in Lady Isobel Weston, daughter of the Marquess of Huntley and society darling, but her beauty and popularity was only exceeded by her love of finery and talent for entertaining. Together they made a costly pair. Fitzwilliam worried that, left to his own devices, his brother would bankrupt the earldom. And then, what of the tenants of their Matlock estate? Or the people under their employ, both in the North and in London?
“What was it this time?”
Her lips compressed together, turning white. “I believe it was the horses.”
“Buying or betting?”
“Both.” The countess sighed.
He cursed his brother silently. Unbidden, a voice whispered in his ear, a low, feminine voice ripe with promise. Because I will make you rich. The thought lingered like smoke, tempting him more than anything ever had before. He could do much with half such a sum. Would it really be mercenary of him to simply comply with the lady’s request?
“Enough unpleasantness,” he said, smiling at his mother. “I am at your disposal today, my lady. How shall we entertain ourselves?”
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