The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  The laughter her comments generated was almost exclusively feminine. Her tart portrayal of upper-crust men’s habits was a bit too close to the mark, and the gentlemen present showed considerably less humor concerning their own peccadilloes than they did concerning women’s. Lord Carr was no exception. He stood with his arms crossed over his unfashionably broad chest, glowering as he considered her challenge.

  After a taut silence he raised one hand and stroked his generous bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger. Back and forth … those long, neatly tapered fingers slid over that velvety surface, drawing her gaze. It was an unconscious thinking gesture on his part, but it caused her own bottom lip to tingle wildly. Back and forth. Those supple fingers … rubbing, stroking … Her discomfort grew, and after a long, intolerable minute, she raked her teeth over her lip to make it stop.

  His expression abruptly changed. It was as if the sun came out in his face, and Antonia felt a hot clutch of embarrassment, as if her instinctive movement and his decision were somehow linked.

  “I shall accept your wager, madam,” he declared. “I will do your average woman’s work for a fortnight … for no other reason than to prove my own point.”

  Looming above her, he stared down into her eyes, testing her resolve, plumbing the depths of her resolve. Then his gaze began to wander over her face, and his slow, knowing smile sent a quiver through her. “I fear you have made a difficult bargain. I have been a long time in acquiring my particular views on women and domesticity, and I will not be easily swayed from them.”

  “I did not expect it would be easy, my lord. Only possible,” she said, barely containing a surge of exultation. “And I will warn you, I am a woman who makes the most of a possibility.”

  In the pin-drop quiet, they faced each other, their gazes locked, each taking stock of the other’s cleverness and determination. The other guests watched between them with bated breath, marking what an incendiary match they made: he the epitome of strident, uncompromising bachelorhood, and she the defender of righteous, all-assuming matrimony. Like air and phosphorus primed, they awaited only a small movement one direction or another to ignite them.

  “This is all perfectly scandalous!” Lady Constance inserted herself into the fray, her face flushed with excitement. She seized first Antonia’s arm, then Remington Carr’s, turning them both toward her buffet table. This titillating challenge, issued under her roof, had just made her reputation as a hostess for the rest of the season, and she was buoyant. “What on earth has gotten into you, Antonia? Wagering like a tar in port! And you, my lord … have you given any thought to the consequences of so reckless a course? Whatever will people say?”

  Antonia hadn’t the faintest idea what people would say; public opinion was the furthest thing from her mind at that moment. She was scrambling to understand the ramifications of getting exactly what she came for: Remington Carr’s cooperation in his own comeuppance. When she looked up, her adversary was taking a glass of champagne from a tray and holding it out to her. Glancing around, she found Constance and William Ellingson and a number of their guests with goblets in their hands, waiting for her to accept.

  “You may as well begin your education in the ways of men now, Lady Antonia. We men share a drink together to seal a wager. One of our more civilized habits.”

  “Ummm,” she said, considering, then accepting the glass. “And how do men handle the paying off of a wager once it is lost?”

  “It depends upon the terms of payment. Most meet at a prearranged place and time … at the winner’s convenience.”

  “If you’re determined to carry through with this madness, you can meet here,” Lady Constance said. “I’ll have another little evening two weeks from next Saturday, and you can announce the results then.”

  “Good enough,” Antonia said, assuming the victory would be hers and taking the winner’s prerogative. “Two weeks from next Saturday.” When he did not object, she raised her glass in salute and smiled confidently at him. After the toast she set her glass aside and unfastened the wrist buttons of one of her gloves, drawing out a calling card bearing an engraved address.

  “Be there at nine o’clock Monday morning, Lord Carr, ready to assume your new duties,” she said, presenting it to him.

  He seized her hand and pulled it toward him just as she began to rebutton her glove. She stiffened and tried to pull it away, but he held her securely, then turned her hand palm up to look at the neat little buttons and the pale skin of her wrist, visible through the opening in the leather. She held her breath as she felt his warm, liquid gaze traveling up the long row of buttons on the inside of her arm.

  “I cannot help but wonder, Lady Antonia, what else you might have tucked away in that glove.” He raised his eyes to hers, searching her in a way that made her tongue seem to stick to the roof of her mouth. Then he raised the card in his other hand. “What is this place you summon me to?”

  “My house in Piccadilly,” she managed, though with a betraying thickness to her words. When he released her, she lifted her chin and turned to her hostess. “Thank you, Constance, for a most profitable evening. As you might imagine, I have a busy time ahead. I shall bid you a good night.”

  With a nod to her bemused host, she sailed out the drawing-room doors. As the butler slipped her short cape over her shoulders, she heard the sounds of a delayed reaction breaking out in the dining room. She had just scandalized them beyond words: exchanging thinly veiled insults with a peer of the realm, challenging him to a wager, then pressing him into veritable servitude in her own house for a fortnight. She could scarcely believe she had done it herself!

  By the time she settled on the seat of the hansom cab and the door closed behind her, she was weak and trembling with excitement. Her heart pounded as if she had run a footrace, and her mind flew from one detail of her plan to another, savoring the surprises in store for him. But beneath her breathless feeling of triumph emerged the unsettling thought that it had gone perhaps too well. Why on earth had he allowed himself to be maneuvered into such an outrageous situation?

  He was not a stupid man; he must know that she intended some powerful and even underhanded persuasions. And though it was true that she had publicly challenged him, he was not a man who allowed the threat of public censure or embarrassment to trouble him. Saving face could not be his motivation. Then he must believe he stood to gain something in such a contest. But what?

  Thinking on that, she took a deep, cleansing breath and rubbed her temples. Her eyes fell on the still unbuttoned wrist of her glove, and she paused, staring at that pale slice of revealed skin. In the dim light of the cab she seemed to feel the heat of his hand on hers again. With a slight turn of thought she again saw his dark, velvety eyes trained upon her … traveling up her glove buttons … fastening on her face with cloaked speculation. She shivered in response. Devilish eyes. Hungry eyes. Her body reacted instinctively to the appetite in them, going taut and expectant.

  Instantly she knew. Every penetrating look and each double-edged comment had held a clue. Taken together, the evidence was irrefutable.

  He intended to seduce her.

  Like most men of his class, he enjoyed the chase. She had roused his male instincts for combat, she reasoned, and with a man like him, any challenge from a woman must ultimately be brought down to a personal—thus, carnal—level. Set in that logical framework, his seductive banter and his acceptance of her wager made perfect sense. The cad intended to use his wagered fortnight to worm his way into her favors, thinking access to her passions would somehow give him a victory over her and her ideals. How typically male of him.

  No doubt he expected that his wickedly good looks and silky manner would prove quite effective. She scowled, recalling her instinctive reaction to him. And well they might … if she didn’t know who and what he was … and if she weren’t much too clever to be flattered and beguiled by a bit of male heat.

  As the carriage rumbled along the darkened city streets, she burrowed back
into the seat and gave a sigh of satisfaction. It was all working out perfectly.

  When the cab stopped outside the front door of her house, Hoskins was watching and bustled out with a lamp to help her inside. While he paid the driver, she hurried up the steps, into the hall, and deposited her wrap on the center table. Light was coming from the drawing-room doors, and she headed straight for them.

  The large chamber was lit with numerous candles, and a small fire had been laid despite the seasonable warmth of the evening. A half-dozen cats were stretched out on the marble tiles that lined the hearth, and in the quiet their purring mingled with the ticking of the gilt mantel clock and the click of knitting needles. The several divans and upholstered parlor chairs in the room were occupied by women whose hair ranged from gray-tinged to completely white. At the sight of her they came to life, calling her name and nudging awake those who had found the waiting too tedious.

  “Toni, dear!” Aunt Hermione was on her feet in a wink, hurrying to her side and unleashing a veritable barrage of questions. “What happened? Details—we must have details!”

  “Was the earl there?” a tall, slender woman asked, leaning forward eagerly.

  “Did you talk with him?” A rotund matron wriggled to the edge of her seat.

  “Was there dancing?” a bent old woman with an ear trumpet demanded loudly.

  “Did you set him straight on the Sister Bill?” Pollyanna Quimby asked, scowling and crossing her arms.

  She looked from one adorably eager face to another, reading in them Remington Carr’s downfall. He would have to be made of stone to resist these faces. And her instincts told her he was not exactly made of stone.

  “Hoskins!” she called out over her shoulder, and the old butler came shuffling into the doorway. “Champagne, please, and plenty of it!” She turned back to the women who shared her house and her life, with an exultant laugh.

  “He will be here at nine o’clock Monday morning. He is ours for the next two weeks!”

  Antonia was not the only one savoring the evening’s success. Remington Carr had quitted the Ellingsons’ for his club not long after Antonia left. As the cab carried him toward St. James Street, he settled back with his hands propped on the head of his walking stick, feeling quite pleased at the way he had managed to turn the Dragon’s fire to his advantage.

  He couldn’t have planned it better himself. He had let her storm and fume and challenge him, accepting it all with infuriating good humor. And she had maneuvered and connived her way straight into his clutches. Astonishing, really. He could never have guessed she would seek him out and demand two long weeks of his undivided attention … in her own house, yet! He reached into his pocket for her card and on impulse brought it to his nose. The scent of roses made him smile. The possibilities for seduction in such a situation were endless. And to paraphrase her boast: he was a man who knew how to make the most of a possibility.

  He hadn’t imagined when he agreed to this scheme that she would prove to be so young or desirable, or that he might find the task of luring her to his bed quite so interesting. There was no use denying it; he had found their first confrontations quite stimulating, and looked forward to future “encounters.” He conjured a picture of her in his mind, and his eyes glowed hotly at the thought of persuading those soft lips to yield, of sinking his hands into that mass of fire-kissed hair, of watching those opalescent-blue eyes darken with desire …

  The drift of his thoughts suddenly alarmed him. Soft lips and alluring blue eyes? Dangerous thinking indeed, he realized, purging a traitorous trickle of heat from his blood and taking his lustful impulses in hand. She might be younger and a bit more interesting than he had expected, but she was still the devious and contriving woman who trapped wealthy bachelors into marriage. And his mission here had nothing to do with enjoying anything.

  His plan was to trap her the same way she had trapped her wretched victims. How ironic that by her own conniving and audacity, she had just set the jaws of the trap herself. It added a rather satisfying twist to the situation to know that she would be partly responsible for her own demise.

  As they approached St. James Street, that last thought refused to die away. He stroked his chin, letting it circle in his mind. If he was using her own contrived conditions to entrap her, then just what was her original plan? She had come to Lord Ellingson’s ostensibly to continue their debate and to teach him about women and their place in the world. She was quick enough with the notion of a wager between them … wanted him in her house for some reason.

  He scowled, thinking of what devious possibilities might lie behind her attempt to educate him on what she deemed to be women’s proper role in life. It struck him like a thunderbolt: she had undoubtedly marked him as her next matrimonial victim!

  “Good God,” he swore, feeling his muscles tighten defensively. Her threat to bachelorhood was no longer an abstraction; his own bachelorhood was at stake this time. She was every bit as dangerous as they had said. Clever, determined, and with more than her share of feminine wiles … she was quite possibly the most treacherous female he’d ever encountered. He would have to watch his step with her.

  “No more sniffing … like some green clod just come to town,” he growled, stuffing the calling card back into his pocket. “And no more remembering blue eyes or shapely curves or twenty-button gloves open at the … What the hell kind of woman wears twenty-button gloves these days, anyway? They went out with hoops and crinolines. And I ought to know, I’ve paid enough haberdashery bills for gloves … and kerchiefs … and purses, petticoats, stockings, and dress improvers …”

  The weight of a thousand little outrages, the result of his experiences with women, settled on his shoulders and combined with his conclusions about her to hone his resolve to a razor edge.

  By the time he reached White’s and entered the bar, his vengeful mood had given way to a sardonic smile. Forewarned was forearmed, he thought. Let her do her diabolical best; it would only make his inevitable victory all the sweeter.

  The Dragon’s six victims were seated at their former table, at the far end of the room. They didn’t wait for him to be seated before they began firing questions at him.

  “Was she there?”

  “What was it like?”

  “Will you see her again?”

  “All that and more,” he said, beckoning to the barman and settling on the chair they had reserved for him. Before their widening eyes he produced her card from his vest pocket and waved it tantalizingly back and forth.

  “Her address, gentlemen. I shall be spending the next fortnight at her house in Piccadilly, as part of a wager between us.” His aristocratic features took on a predatory cast. “Within two weeks, my friends, I will slay your dragon and present you with its heart.”

  Two hours later the front door of White’s opened and a half-dozen well-oiled gentlemen spilled onto the damp street. Their voices brought to attention a form lounging against the railing of the nearby service steps. He ducked back against the corner of the building and squinted, searching the dimly lit figures and fastening on one form that was taller than the rest and noticeably steadier on its feet. As some of the men drunkenly hailed cabs, one fellow laughed and threw an arm around the taller figure.

  Rupert Fitch crept closer and then pressed back against the building, staying in the shadows as he strained to hear what was being said. He had followed Remington Carr here from Lord Ellingson’s party, hoping to learn something more about what had happened between him and Lady Antonia Paxton. Whatever it was, it had sent her home early and had sent him storming off to his club before the champagne had had time to get warm. The tall bloke before him was the Earl of Landon, all right. He’d stake what was left of his sainted mother’s virtue on it.

  “Brilliant, Landon,” Remington Carr’s hanger-on declared. “Couldn’t be more perfect. A wager … and her idea … who’d’ve thought?” A hansom cab clattered up, drowning out much of the rest, but Fitch made out the words “luck,”
and “Lady something,” which sounded very much like “Lady Antonia.”

  Several of the gents piled into the cab, and the others decided to walk down the street to the nearest cab stand. The earl struck off in the opposite direction, tugging the brim of his top hat lower and raising the collar of his evening cloak against the dampness. Fitch waited until he was a discreet distance away, then slipped out into the street to follow. He did not intend to let his quarry give him the slip after he had spent a long, miserable evening in the wet streets for some clue as to what was happening between the Ladies’ Man and the wealthy widow.

  A wager of some sort, he thought, as he stole along behind Remington Carr. The gent had been wishing the earl good luck on something with Lady Antonia. A wager on the lady’s virtue? Such things were not unknown in the elite and often dissolute world of the gentlemen’s clubs. But he discarded that possibility when he recalled hearing something about its being “her idea.” There was something brewing, he was sure of it. But to learn what it was, he would have to keep a watch on the earl’s posh digs and follow him to learn why he was going to need “luck.”

  As he slipped from doorway to doorway and skulked around corners, the news writer’s empty stomach growled, and he rubbed it with a grimace. Pulling his coat up about his neck and jamming his hands into his pockets, he hurried along after the unconventional earl, muttering to himself.