Barons, Brides, and Spies: Regency Series Starter Collection Volume Two

by Mary Lancaster

  She passed on between the tables and into the smaller salon where the deeper gaming tended to take place, and where they served smuggled brandy and fine wine instead of tea. She assured herself she was checking to see there were enough refreshments available, that observing the stranger was merely a secondary chore. When she had a moment, she should ask Bernard who he was. He didn’t look like the sort of man who came to Blackhaven for the beneficial water. He looked to be, in fact, one of the healthiest and strongest people she had ever encountered. Although he could well be accompanying a sickly parent or friend…or wife.

  In the smaller room, she was greeted by her brother Bernard and several jovial young men at the faro table.

  “A little more brandy here, since you’re passing, Gillie,” Bernard requested.

  As she walked toward the sideboard where the decanters sat, she become aware of the tall, dark figure who stood in front of them, pouring brandy into a glass. For no reason she could account for, her heart seemed to flutter.

  He actually turned and bowed to her with perfect civility, although if she were being critical, it was more of an inclination of the head. “May I pour you a glass of brandy?”

  The deep, modulated voice sent shivers down her spine. The man had a most peculiar effect upon her.

  “Thank you,” she managed lightly. “But I was just going to leave them an entire decanter and let them pour as they will.”

  One sloping eyebrow lifted. “Leave whom with an entire decanter?”

  She waved one hand toward Bernard’s table of players. “My brother and his friends.”

  “I have no intention of serving them,” her stranger said with distaste. “My offer was to you.”

  She smiled involuntarily. “I don’t drink brandy, sir!”

  His eyes dropped to her lips. “You should when it’s as good as this.” A glass was thrust toward her and she was just bemused enough to take it. “Miss Muir, I apprehend.”

  “Yes, but you have the advantage. I don’t believe I know you, and I usually remember everyone.”

  “We’ve never met,” he acknowledged. “I’m afraid I came with Braithwaite.”

  “Oh,” she said, relieved that he wasn’t simply some stranger who’d turned up uninvited and would have to be asked to leave, by Danny if necessary. “Then you are most welcome!”

  “I thought I might be,” he murmured. “Tell me, was that young Kit Grantham I saw you with in the other room?”

  “Yes indeed. That is, I did speak to him. Do you know Kit?”

  “Not in the slightest. I’m acquainted with his mother.”

  “Let me introduce you,” she said at once, forgetting she didn’t actually know the stranger’s name as yet in her determination to be an excellent hostess.

  “On no account,” the stranger said at once, “would I willingly exchange your company for his.”

  She cast him a quick glance, uncertain if he were mocking her.

  He sipped his brandy. “I was merely trying to establish if he were the kind of hotheaded young officer to call me out for monopolizing your company.”

  She laughed. “Kit? He’s far too good-natured to quarrel over trivia.”

  The devil’s eyebrow rose again. “You regard yourself as trivial, Miss Muir? I must disagree.”

  “Well it’s very kind of you to say so,” she said, amused. “I suppose I just mean that we’ve known each other forever and he has no interest in who speaks to me.” She considered. “Unless you were a villain of some kind,” she added in the interest of honesty. “Which I doubt you are!”

  “Opinions vary,” the stranger said sardonically. “Shall we sit here?” He moved, ushering her toward the little alcove where two armchairs were set in the window.

  Since it was her part of this enterprise to make guests comfortable, she made no demur. She only hoped he couldn’t hear the strangely quickened beat of her heart. Something about him intrigued her.

  “Hoi, Gillie! The brandy!” Bernard called after her.

  The stranger paused, his hand on the alcove curtain, and glanced over his shoulder. “Shift for yourself,” he advised, and let the curtain fall.

  Gillie couldn’t prevent the gurgle of laughter escaping her throat. “Oh dear, I am a poor hostess!”

  “Not in the slightest, you are entertaining me.”

  “Am I?” she said lightly, concerned that the curtain was drawn, isolating their alcove, although she imagined it was an accident on his part. Unobtrusively, she tweaked the curtain back. “Then at the very least, you should tell me your name.”

  “Keith. David Keith.” He clinked glasses with her, a rather charmingly casual gesture, and held one of the chairs for her to sit. “What sort of a name is Gillie?”

  She wrinkled her nose as she sat down. “Short for Gillyflower. I’ve insisted on Gillie since I could talk.”

  “Why? I rather like Gillyflower. It suits you.”

  She laughed. “No, it doesn’t! There is nothing flower-like about me!”

  A faint smile of response lingered on his lips, but as though he’d forgotten about it. He gazed at her without blinking.

  Disconcerted, she blurted, “I saw you earlier, in the doorway. You looked…bored.”

  “I was until I saw you.”

  She flushed, covering her unaccustomed gaucheness by nervously rearranging her skirts. “Then you don’t care for cards?”

  He took a sip of his brandy. “Sometimes. When the stakes are high enough to excite me.”

  “Ah. We are too provincial for your taste,” she said deprecatingly.

  “I didn’t say that. It would give me no pleasure to fleece your squire of his sheep.”

  “He might fleece you of yours.”

  He appeared to consider that. “I don’t know that I have any, though I suppose I must. At any rate, it would take either of us weeks to win anything worth having at those stakes, which is damned dull when there’s a girl as beautiful as you in the house.”

  She blinked. “I’m not beautiful.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “I don’t lie. Or repeat myself. Drink your brandy.”

  She glanced at the glass, almost surprised to see it still in her hand. “I don’t believe I like brandy. I took a sip of my father’s once and it was nasty.”

  “This isn’t, I assure you. But if you’re not responsible for it, who is?”

  “My brother Bernard. My father always said his palette was his only sign of intelligence.”

  Mr. Keith looked faintly amused. “Is it?”

  “No,” Gillie allowed. “He’s pretty good at cards, too.”

  “Are you warning me he’s a sharp?”

  “Lord, no, he never cheats,” Gillie said, genuinely shocked. “Besides, I thought you wouldn’t play for such paltry, provincial stakes?”

  “I might for the pleasure of exposing a sharp.”

  “You have very odd pleasures,” she said tartly.

  His lips curved. He lowered his hip onto the arm of her chair, which brought him a little too close for comfort. “You don’t yet know anything about my pleasures,”

  Defiantly, she counted them off on her fingers. “Brandy, card sharps, lack of sheep…”

  Quite suddenly, his smile was genuine. “Are you making fun of me, Miss Muir?”

  “Only in a friendly way.”

  “Then you may add that to your list of my pleasures.” He set his glass on the table, straightened, and strolled out of the alcove.

  Gillie blinked after him in mingled surprise and disappointment. Really, his manners were quite eccentric. She wondered if her humor had offended him, though it hadn’t appeared to. Or perhaps he was just over-haughty—which begged the question why he’d spoken to her in the first place. Boredom, no doubt, clearly unrelieved by her conversation.

  She had just risen from her chair again when he walked back into the alcove, a pack of cards in his left hand. His right reached for the curtain, then catching her eye, he released a silent breath of laughter and le
ft the curtain alone.

  “Shall we play for love or money?” he asked, taking the other chair, and shuffling the cards.

  “I think it would bore you to play snap for either.”

  “On the contrary,” he said at once.

  Again, she caught a faint whiff of wine and brandy on his breath, but neither his speech nor his movements were those of a man in his cups. “Er…what is snap?”

  “The only card game I play. Bernard and I invented it as children and made our parents play. We divided the cards between us and then took it in turns to play the cards one at a time in a pile. When you play a card of the same number as the one before, you have to snap your hand over it to claim the whole pile. The winner, of course, is the person who gains all the cards. You see? No sophistication and no stakes whatever.”

  “Nevertheless,” he said, beginning to deal the cards between them with quick, smooth actions, “if that is your choice, I am happy to play.”

  Gillie’s eyes strayed to his face. She guessed he was veiling his expression. It made her heart beat faster to imagine he was hiding too sudden an interest in her. She could even laugh at herself for such a fantasy. And yet, what other reason could he have for singling her out like this? Playing a child’s game with her…

  It all added a rather breathless intoxication to the game, which was quick and evenly matched. As they played, he distracted her with witticisms and questions until she did the same to him, when he threatened to take back his cards and play no longer.

  “Except that the cards are mine,” she pointed out.

  He shoved them toward her. “Take them, with the last of my self-esteem.”

  She laughed. “Truly, I am not so petulant.”

  “On the other hand, the game grows noisier with time and we shall draw unwelcome attention.”

  She glanced up and saw that a few amused faces were already turned toward them, including that of Lord Braithwaite, who seemed highly entertained by the sight of his haughty and presumably fashionable London friend playing such a ridiculous game for no money whatsoever.

  “I think we already have,” she said ruefully, rising to her feet. “I have been distracted from my duties long enough, sir.”

  He stood, too. “Five more minutes to make you laugh again.” Reaching up, he drew back the window curtain next to him, to reveal the French glass door onto the little terrace and the garden beyond. The night was clear and the moon full, spilling its light across the lawn and the blossoming trees to the little summer house. “You have a pretty garden. Shall we?”

  Gillie hesitated. Although she knew the rules of propriety, she’d always been among friends here in Blackhaven. And if this man was a stranger, she still knew him to be a friend of Lord Braithwaite, with whom she’d been acquainted since childhood, along with his family. Besides, it was hard to doubt a man who’d played snap with her.

  But even as she stood and unlocked the garden door, she understood there was more to it than that. He intrigued her. He was different, apparently oblivious to accepted manners and etiquette, yet possessed of elegance and self-assurance beyond any she’d encountered before. And if she was honest, his interest flattered her. To most of the young men of her acquaintance, she was simply Gillie, whom they’d known forever. No one told her she was beautiful as if they actually meant it, or deliberately chose her company over that of the cards or the dice. No one had ever invited her to walk in the moonlit garden.

  “You left your glass,” he observed as they paused on the terrace.

  “Were you planning on making a toast?” she teased.

  He raised his glass. “To the moon,” he said, but instead of drinking, he offered her the glass.

  Recklessly, she took it. “The moon,” she agreed and sipped warily. The fumes caught her breath and the liquid burned its way through her mouth and down her throat. The sensation was far from unpleasant.

  “I like it better now,” she said in surprise, handing the glass back. He took it quickly, trapping her hand beneath his and bending his head to drink from the exact place on the glass her lips had just touched.

  Her whole body heated in the friendly darkness. “Are you flirting with me?” she asked breathlessly.

  He smiled. “Most definitely. Do you mind?”

  She licked her dry upper lip, and his gaze dropped, following the movement in an avid way that made her cheeks burn. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

  “Then let’s see.” He bent his head, still clasping her hand over the brandy glass and kissed her mouth.

  She should, of course, have slapped his face, or at least pulled away from him at once. But in truth, his action took her so much by surprise that in the first instance, she was simply stunned that he would dare. In the second instance, she realized his lips were warm and firm and strangely exciting and that there seemed to be butterflies soaring and diving in her stomach. And by the time his free hand came up to hold her nape while he deepened the kiss, she was more afraid of it ending than of anything else.

  Her mouth yielded helplessly, letting him explore and plunder. Her free hand clutched at his coat for support and, without really knowing how, she was returning his kiss.

  “Please add that,” he whispered against her lips, “to your list of my pleasures.”

  And mine. Fortunately, she couldn’t yet speak, just gaze mutely into his hot, clouded eyes—how had she ever thought them cool? His fingers caressed the back of her neck. She could no longer doubt that he liked her, and nothing in the world had ever been as sweet and arousing at that knowledge.

  “I’d like to discover a few of yours,” he murmured. “Take me to your chamber.”

  Chapter Two

  Gillie blinked at him, uncertain that she’d heard him properly. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your bedchamber. I want you very badly.”

  By then, they stood so close together that she finally understood the hardness pressing against her stomach. With a gasp of outrage, she tore herself free.

  “How dare you? Do you take me for a—a…” She struggled to find the word. “…a camp follower?”

  “Not exactly.” He sounded more amused than contrite. “I understood you were free, but if you’re not interested, just say so.”

  For some reason, her eyes stung. It wasn’t so much the insult to her honor. It was…hurt, because she’d actually liked him. She’d actually believed he liked her. She’d naively, stupidly, mistaken his sordid interest for romance. The earlier conversation about Kit suddenly made lowering new sense.

  “Danny!” she called, drawing herself up to her full height.

  “Who the devil is Danny?” he asked, sounding a little less amused and a little more irritated.

  “I am,” said her father’s old sergeant, emerging around the side of the house at high speed. He’d been keeping his eye out for the Watch, who’d visited more than once before to be sure the parties were truly private affairs.

  “This gentleman is leaving, Danny,” she said, proud that her voice didn’t shake like her knees. “He is not allowed back.”

  Without waiting to see her order carried out, she turned on her heel and walked back across the terrace. She held her head high, but it made no difference. She’d never felt so stupid, so humiliated, so insulted. And God help her, so disappointed.

  She re-entered the house by the kitchen door in order to avoid her guests until she had calmed her temper and the angry tears. The cook and maids barely noticed her as they put the finishing touches to the supper dishes about to be served. She flitted past them, using the back stairs to reach her bedchamber where she washed her flushed face and repinned her slightly wild hair before descending once more to do her duty.

  “There you are,” Bernard said in relief, crossing the empty hall to meet her. “Not one to preach proprieties as you know, but, seriously, not sure you should wander off alone with the wicked baron. He ain’t at all the thing. Or at least not in that way.”

  “Bernie, what are you ta
lking about?” she asked impatiently.

  “Wickenden! You sat down with him in the alcove, then went out into the garden.”

  “His name is Keith,”

  “Yes,” Bernard said impatiently. “David Keith, tenth Baron Wickenden.”

  “Oh.” The name and title meant nothing to her except mild irritation. “Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re quite right, he isn’t the thing, so I had Danny throw him out and told him he isn’t allowed back.”

  Bernard blanched. “You did what?”

  “I had Danny throw him out—”

  “Damn it, Gillie, what the hell for? You’ve ruined us just as we were beginning to make something of this!”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic. The man insulted me. I don’t care if he has a title—”

  “It ain’t his title that concerns me. Don’t you know anything about London fashion? Wickenden leads the fast set and has such influence that one word from him and no one will bother coming to our parties – except a few old friends out of pity.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe, but why would he bother to speak such a word? We’re nothing to him.”

  “Let’s hope so, but trust me, Gillie, he’s got a nasty reputation for vindictiveness. I wouldn’t put it past him to ruin us on a whim of revenge before he forgets us altogether.”

  Gillie stared at him, unease growing steadily into something akin to horror. “But…but he was in the wrong, Bernie!”

  “It makes no odds,” Bernard said, dragging his fingers through his hair until it stood up in spikes. “The wicked baron never apologizes. He just leaves a trail of ruin in his wake, including us. We’re done for.” He paced as far as the mirror on the wall, where he hastily flattened his hair with his hands before swinging back toward her. “Unless we apologize to him. That might work.”

  Gillie closed her mouth. “Apologize for what?” she said flatly. “Refusing to let him in my bed?”

  Bernard’s mouth fell open. “Oh the devil!” he exclaimed, clearly wishing for a stronger expletive and tearing at his intricately folded cravat instead. “Now I shall have to call him out and you’ll be left all alone when I’m dead.”