Captivated by a Lady's Charm

by Christi Caldwell

  “I could not sleep,” Lucinda said cheerily and made her way over to the sideboard. She helped herself to a heaping plate of eggs and sausage. After carrying her porcelain dish over to the table, she fell into the seat opposite Christian and just stared.

  His neck heated and he resisted the urge to tug at his cravat. “Oh, just say whatever it is you’d say.”

  “Is she truly scandalous?”

  He opened and closed his mouth, knowing he must look like a trout plucked from a lake and tossed ashore. “Is who scandalous?” Perhaps he shouldn’t have invited questioning after all.

  Wielding her silver fork, his sister brandished it about. “You know.” She gave him a pointed I-know-you’re-trying-to-divert-my-questioning look. “She certainly did not seem scandalous.” She widened her eyes. “Though she was sneak—” Lucinda promptly snapped her lips closed and devoted her attention to her plate.

  Christian leveled a stare on his sister. “Who did not seem scandal—oh, bloody hell, I don’t want to know.”

  His mother apparently didn’t care what he wished or didn’t wish this day. “I woke early to read the newspapers about…well…” Him. About him. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Regardless, I have been following,” him, “quite closely. And I was ever so eager to share in the wonderful news.”

  “There is no wonderful news,” he put in. There hadn’t been wonderful news since before he’d gone off to fight Boney’s forces and lost his pride, honor, and innocence. He turned to his sister. “There is no wonderful news.”

  His sister sank back in her chair, her shoulders deflated. “So, you did not dance twice with Lady P—the same young lady?”

  “I did not,” he said tersely. It had been two single dances at two different affairs and, even so, only half of one set.

  “He danced with the same lady twice but at different affairs,” his mother supplied, unhelpfully.

  Lucinda wrinkled her nose. “Well, is that not the same thing?”

  “It is not.” Christian put in before their mother could offer her own erroneous opinion on just what that dance mentioned by the gossip columns, in fact, meant. “At all the same,” he added so there could be not even a sliver of doubt as to his intentions, or in this case, lack of intentions for a bright-eyed innocent.

  “So, you are not in love.” Her crestfallen expression matched the disappointment in her tone.

  Ah, God love his sister and help him, for his sister would be the bane of his existence when she came out with her talks of love. With her words, she’d demonstrated the same remarkable lack of judgment Christian had years earlier with Lynette. He would allow Lucy her dream, not killing it with the truth of his own past. “I assure you, I am not in love.” That was a folly he’d not dare repeat. “I have attended less than five balls or soirees, danced with a handful of young women and courted no one,” he spoke over his sister who tried to get a word in.

  “Humph,” Lucinda said. “But what of Lady P—,” she coughed into her hand, “rather, the lady mentioned by Mama?”

  “Just a waltz,” he said curtly, and considering the topic of Lady Prudence Tidemore and his one and a half waltzes with that lady, he shoved back his chair. “Now, I bid you good day, as I am off for my morning ride.”

  “Oh, you are merely trying to avoid the discussion of marriage,” his sister called after his retreating back.

  “That is the first matter of which you’ve been correct on this morn,” he called without breaking his stride. His sister’s huff of annoyance followed him from the room. Christian lengthened his stride, knowing from too many similar past discussions that a Villiers woman could, and often would, pop her head out of the doorway with some forgotten question. He turned down the hall and, at a brisk clip, made his way to the foyer.

  His butler, a coarse man missing his left ear, stood in wait with Christian’s cloak in his hands. “My lord,” he greeted too loudly, a product of his lost hearing.

  “Dalrymple,” he said as the older soldier helped him into the thick, black garment.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of having your mount readied, my lord.”

  From down the hall, the determined tread of quick-moving footsteps carried to the foyer. Dalrymple limped over and pulled the door open.

  With a quiet murmur of thanks, he stepped outside, grateful when the door closed behind him shielding him from further questions about a lady he’d danced nearly two waltzes with.

  Prudence sat upon the drab, brown blanket alongside the riding path. Head bent over the sketchpad in her hands, she studied the partially completed sketch. He’d danced with her not once, but twice. Why had he done that if he’d not wanted to? “To be polite, to be gentlemanly. Out of pity.”

  “What are you running on about?” Poppy’s perplexed tone cut into her musings.

  She yanked her head up and looked to her sister, who patted Sir Faithful on his mangy back.

  “Nothing,” she said, her cheeks warming at having been caught speaking aloud, and before Poppy, no less. With her tenacity, her sister could effortlessly replace Lady Jersey as the one to wheedle gossip out of the guests in her hallowed hall.

  Poppy shoved up from her reclining position and Sir Faithful scrambled to his feet beside her. “Did it perhaps have anything to do with the hour-long lecture in Sin’s office two evenings ago, when you returned from the ball?”

  She pursed her lips at the reminder of her brother’s highhanded treatment following that magical waltz. And her mother’s strident displeasure. “It was not an hour,” she muttered. “It merely felt like an hour.”

  The sisters shared a smile. Abandoning her efforts upon the sketchbook, she snapped it closed and sat up. Prudence skimmed her gaze over the empty grounds of Hyde Park.

  The lessons imparted by Lady Drake still fresh, she’d immediately set to work carrying out the lady’s advice. Place yourself wherever the gentleman will be. Force him to notice you.

  Only, she and Poppy had been here the better part of an hour and there had still been no hint of thundering hooves or sight of a broad, warrior-like figure such as the marquess. The wind stirred the barren branches overhead; the periodic snap of a brittle, aged branch filled the morning quiet. Prudence drew her knees close to her chest. She dropped her chin atop them and rubbed it back and forth over the velvet-lined, sapphire cloak.

  “Sin does not approve of your gentleman, therefore he must be scandalous,” Poppy put in.

  She snorted. “Sin wouldn’t approve of a duke-turned-vicar for any of us.”

  A giggle burst from Poppy. “Whyever would a duke want to become a vicar?”

  Ah, she could always rely on her youngest sister for a distraction from the madness of her own thoughts. “He wouldn’t. I was merely stressing the point that Sin would hardly approve of any gentleman.” Which was the height of irony considering he’d been a rogue gossiped about in papers. Even if he was now married. That rogue had been, and always would be, part of who Jonathan Tidemore, the Earl of Sinclair, was.

  “I take it that it was the gentleman in the park,” Poppy mused. “I certainly hope it was not the gentleman with an affinity for dogs. I daresay I would claim that one for my own.”

  When Prudence failed to give so much as a laugh or smile, Poppy nudged her.

  “He is a good man,” Prudence said quietly. She stared at the empty, graveled path where Christian had rescued her sister. Had the man been a fortune hunter with nefarious intentions as her brother suggested, then surely he could have and would have ruined her with that chance meeting in Hyde Park or in his gardens. No, a man such as Christian was incapable of that deceit. Nor, she was humbled to acknowledge even to herself, would he have to go about ruining her. She rather thought she’d put her own reputation at risk to know the pleasure of a third waltz. Prudence groaned and shook her head.

  No scandals. No elopements or rushed marriages…

  Poppy continued. “Lord St. Cyr. I gather he is the gentleman who waltzed with you? The one Sin is di
sapproving of.”

  Prudence gave a short nod. “He is the one.” A fluttering danced in her belly. The one who’d danced with her but twice and kissed her once. Her lips tingled in remembrance and she touched her fingertips to the flesh.

  A sound of disgust escaped Poppy and she promptly dropped her hand to her side. Sir Faithful startled at her side and her sister promptly stroked the top of his coarse head, calming the dog. “Pish posh, there is hardly an honorable man to be found in London and I require a gentleman with a passion for pups.” She sighed. “I daresay we shall end up spinsters together.”

  Knowing her sister sought to spare her wounded feelings, Prudence managed a smile. “I thought you wished for Lord Maxwell?”

  Her sister snorted. “Bah, he has pure-bred pups. Whatever would I do with such a gentleman and his proper dogs?” Then Poppy’s levity faded, replaced by a mature, stoic concern that hinted at the woman she was becoming. “Your Lord St. Cyr, he was the one at the shop?” she asked, bringing them back to the matter of importance.

  Prudence hesitated and then gave a slight nod. “He was the one outside Madame Bisset’s.”

  “Ah,” Poppy said, inclining her head, as if she saw much from that admission. At least one of them saw something.

  Prudence did not know what to make of this maddening fascination with a man who’d dared Society and danced with her. Twice. And who read Sir Walter Scott. And who’d kissed her senseless in his gardens in the cold of a winter night. She sighed. Well, any lady would surely remember that first and very important moment.

  “And he is why we are visiting this boulder?”

  Goodness, with her tenacity, Poppy would make a better governess than all the first five to have tutored the Tidemore girls. “It is where Patrina met Weston.” Which had been what first brought her to the spot. So, it happened to be where she and Christian had also reconnected. Why, that only made it all the more special.

  “Humph.”

  At her sister’s pointed look, Prudence shifted. She really was better not asking. “Humph, what?” But she’d never been able to stifle her curious nature.

  Poppy snapped her eyebrows together. “I am not an oblivious Penny.”

  Even in the winter cold, Prudence’s cheeks burned with heat. “I merely thought this scenery would be beneficial to both of our artistic sensibilities.” Which wasn’t altogether untrue. It was just that Lady Drake’s suggestion had taken greater precedence today.

  Her sister snorted and stretched her legs out before her. “Do not insult me by taking me for Mother, who might believe that ladylike response.” Sir Faithful plopped down and burrowed against Poppy’s skirts.

  The lie died on Prudence’s lips and she stretched a hand out and petted Sir Faithful. “Very well. And he may be why we are here today,” she grumbled.

  Her sister looked off beyond Prudence’s shoulder. “And he is the one coming this way.”

  “And he is the one…?” Prudence swung her head about and followed her sister’s stare to the tall, familiar figure riding through the park. Nearly thirty paces separated them, but she could pick him out with the same ease this distance away as she could in a crowded ballroom filled with lesser lords. The reins of his impressive black mount dangled between his fingers as he strode through the park. “He is here,” she said breathlessly. Of course, that had been the expectation or, at the very least, hope. But the sight of him in the distance made this moment all the more real.

  “He is nearly here,” Poppy corrected with an infuriating calm.

  When he stopped beside a thick copse, she caught her lower lip between her teeth, worrying that flesh. “Perhaps he does not see me.” Indecision warred with this pressing need to see him once more. In her too-brief lesson, Emmaline hadn’t bothered to school Prudence on the very important aspect of making these carefully orchestrated meetings appear…well, not orchestrated. “I cannot walk boldly up to him.” Blast, he continued in the opposite direction. Did he see her and merely seek to avoid her? Her stomach tightened at that unwelcomed prospect.

  “Well, you are very nearly without an option of seeing him, Prudence,” her sister hissed. She shot a glance about for their maid who sat on a bench at the edge of the lake. “Go,” she whispered, giving Prudence a slight nudge between her shoulder blades.

  Prudence grunted and nearly tipped over from the force of that blow. The decision made for her, she climbed to her feet. After all, she’d not humbled herself before Emmaline only to play coward in the park.

  “Here,” Her sister tossed the sketchpad at her and Prudence caught it against her chest, wrinkling the pages. “You are sketching. You are nonchalant and you are not boldly approaching him.”

  Prudence wrinkled her brow. “Then what am I doing?” She found him again in the distance, loosely wrapping the reins of his mount under a willow tree.

  “Other than risking the wrath of Mama?”

  She nodded.

  “I was jesting.” Poppy dropped her head into her hands and shook. “Oh, must I instruct you on everything? You are searching out your next subject.”

  She stared dumbly back at her sister, blaming both Poppy’s confounded plan and this breathless need to see Lord St. Cyr for her inability to process this particular scheme. Prudence widened her eyes as, at last, Poppy’s muddied orders made sense. “Of course.” Goodness, if she’d maddened her mother and Sin with her disastrous Come Out, her sister would drive them both straight to Bedlam when the hoyden was unleashed on Society.

  The youngest Tidemore girl gave her head a relieved shake. “Now, go, before Judith sees you darting off.”

  With that warning imminent, sketchpad and charcoal in her gloved hands, Prudence scrambled to her feet and attempted her best efforts at nonchalance.

  Chapter 13

  Lesson Thirteen

  It is essential that a lady be a skilled spy…

  Staring at Lady Prudence Tidemore in the distance, Christian came to the immediate discovery—she would have made a deuced awful spy. Such a certain critique came as she proceeded to walk backward through Hyde Park.

  Christian stood beside his mount, stroking Valiant upon the withers, as Prudence strolled in his general direction with her head tipped up, staring at the early morning sky. She moved at a pace that alternated between a sprint and a too-quick walk.

  Despite his intentions to forget the lady, he remained fixed to his spot while she made her way toward him. He took in the sight of her, with her blue velvet cloak slapping against her ankles in the winter wind. No good could come from being near the innocent miss. Lynette had proven that all innocents were capable of deception; be it against the Crown or, in this case, against…him. Though what business did this lady have with one of his reputation? It would be wise to turn, as if he’d never spied her making a poor attempt at nonchalance. Not when the papers had paired their names together. Not when he’d waltzed with her, nearly two full sets. Not when he hungered for the honeysuckle scent that clung to her skin.

  But Christian had never done what was intended for him. Not with Lynette. Not upon the fields of battle. And not with this young woman. He furrowed his brow. A woman who was just now backing right toward the trunk of a wide elm. Tamping down a grin, he quickly closed the gap between Prudence and her unfortunate target.

  “Lady Prudence Tidemore,” he drawled, bringing her to a stop just as she would have collided with that white-grey trunk.

  She spun about and blinked wildly, searching about as if she’d had no hint of awareness of his nearby presence. Then she widened her eyes. “Christian!” she greeted him with such feigned nonchalance, he smiled despite himself. Yes, she’d have made a deuced awful spy. That same sketchpad from their previous Hyde Park meeting brandished in her hand, she waved it about. “La, how unexpected meeting you here this morning. At this time. At this place.”

  Christian schooled his features into a collected mask, hiding all hint of humor. Since Toulouse, he’d filed women into two distinct categories: his
mother and sister and…everyone else. From Lynette to the widows who’d had designs on him and his title, women had proven themselves ruthless where Christian was concerned. For all his reservations, there was a guilelessness to Prudence Tidemore that set her apart from all others. He sketched a bow. “I gather you are here to…?” He looked at her.

  She shook her head. He prodded her with his gaze. Prudence shook her head once again. Ah, so she did not know the practiced lines in this farce they both took part in. The woman he’d taken for an innocent before had always had answers and words. With Prudence’s lack of artifice, she challenged years’ worth of cynicism. Clearing his throat, Christian tipped his chin at the book clutched in her hands. “This is the part where you explain what brings you here today.”

  She followed his gaze and then widened her eyes. “Oh.” Her cheeks bloomed red, putting him in mind of a ripened summer berry. And God if that wasn’t her—sweet, enticing, and beckoning a man who had a taste for that delicious treat. “Sketching,” she said lamely. She held up her book for his inspection. “I was searching for the perfect place in which to sketch. And you were…?”

  “Riding.” Riding, as he did every morning at this time. He searched about for Maxwell who joined him on his daily rides, but found the other man uncharacteristically late. Staring at Prudence, he wished his friend remained away. Which was madness, particularly when the alternative was him being alone here with an unwed lady who had stars in her eyes. He’d ceased trusting in stars where he was concerned years ago. “What has inspired your artistic sensibilities today?”

  Her eyes lit, and she took a step forward, as if to show him her book, but then promptly tucked it behind her back. “Er…I haven’t begun a new drawing yet,” she said and he suspected those were the first true words put out by the lady during this exchange.

  Christian held out a gloved hand. She hesitated and then turned over her small leather book. They stood in companionable silence, their breath stirring puffs of winter air about them as he popped her book open to a random page, somewhere in the middle. He stared, frozen, unblinking at the image.