“No, no, it’s quite all right. Really, I should love to go. You know me, darling, anything that gets me out of instructing the bloody servants, for today anyway.”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s no odds for me to—”
“What? Not have me at your side, is that it?”
“I never—”
“It’s perfectly all right, darling. I don’t blame you, the trouble I am. It’s not even as if I can bloody dance, certainly not in these shoes, with the state of my feet, either.” She grasped her chemise. “Now, I’ll just go next door and get dressed and you can go instruct the servants.”
She’d barely reached the bed when he spoke.
“Well, that makes two of us then.”
He stood in the doorway, leaning a little uncertainly on the jamb. She set the chemise on the bed.
“I’m sorry?”
“Who can’t dance.”
“You? But, you’re a lord. You must have had lessons.”
“I was too busy learning other things.”
“Well, I’m sure there’s no prizes for guessing what these were.”
“Probably. I don’t deny it. But you’re meant to be God-fearing so I suppose you could.” He paused. “We could sit the dancing out?”
“Mitchell, don’t be silly. It’s a dance. A dance for us, so obviously if you can’t dance and I can’t—”
“Give the floor to Fleming then. He can oblige. There’s not a step he doesn’t know. It comes from having Gabriella as his mother. Christian will only come up with something else if we don’t go.”
She sighed. “Mitchell, I’ve just said. You really don’t have to fuss. I’m perfectly cool with it. Actually, it saves me a lot of trouble not to go.”
“I’m not fussing. Maybe, for that matter Clarence is ready to accept you? Then I’d get Killaine House. You wouldn’t have to stay.”
Put like that how could she possibly refuse?
“Fine but, you will have to get me a better dress. I resolutely refuse to wear any more of Gabriella’s bloody, dreadful castoffs. Christian’s either.”
~ ~ ~
Mounting the stone steps that led from the sweeping driveway, Brittany was the first to admit it. When it came to dresses she’d have been better in one of Gabriella’s bloody awful castoffs. Did Mitchell Killgower want her looking like a frump for some reason? Or worse, as if she was up the duff. She’d thought something that might show off her narrow waist, her quite decent cleavage, not a great cream balloon of a thing that flowed from her breasts to the ground, with a long-sleeved, block-printed over-dress, to boot, which was what she’d felt like doing when she saw it earlier today, all round the room at that.
She knew she was meant to be God-fearing but was she also meant to be wobbling like a blancmange and God-fearing? In danger of falling forward with every step she took? As for the shoes? Maybe she should just accept that everything about women was shaped differently in 1765. Smaller backs, smaller frames, breasts, feet, smaller, period. Feet like four-inch rulers width and lengthwise. She wasn’t tall but she towered over every other woman here, if she excluded their powdered wigs. She’d drawn the line at the powdered wig. Already it was bad enough she looked like a blancmange.
For the first time she envied her heroines. Her heroes wanted to show them off, not have them looking like a pudding.
Still she was here at Killem—what she wanted to do to these shoes and frock—that rich, ancestral pile of a place and it was grand, if you liked ancestral piles of places. Mounting the stone steps, the cool breeze of midsummer fanning her face, the strains of a country jig, dancing on the spinning dust motes to meet her, that rich, grandness was ash in her veins, for all she wanted riches.
They had had fun this past week, she and Mitchell and Fleming, here beside her, looking like a sheep in blue breeches and a brocaded jacket. Learning to dance, learning to make this look as if they were a family. When they very definitely weren’t.
Her heroines would be sad, remembering certain words about wanting bloody rid of her. Perhaps, these weren’t the words exactly, but when she was all out of condoms, her adoring public had probably forgotten her and her career was in ruins, the sentiment was the same. Tonight. It had to be tonight.
“Take your time, son, you don’t need to bow to every passing pony. Every old crone too. You should pick and choose. Like this.”
Scrape her off the steps with the fish slice in the glow and flap of burning torches, did the great and lofty finally deign to give advice to his son? Bow his sleek head to some bursting at her purple seams frump who almost fainted on the spot, while offering the perfectly dangerous eyes of a young vixen in white, his best straight ahead stylishly chiselled stare.
That stare was something. A lot of him was. So much it was quite something to be on his arm. But she was not falling for him. Not only had he chosen this bloody dreadful dress for her, the drop to earth would be too terrifying. The fall too rushed and headlong. She was glad to see the panache tonight. Once or twice in the last week, she wouldn’t say it was more than that—all right it was once—his gaze had seemed more quicksilver than she liked.
There was no doubt the ground wasn’t even trying its worst to be inviting in its rash, fickle way so she’d no intention of plummeting towards it, with a failed parachute. She liked that. That despite the sex he kept this business-like. Some things were just a matter of time. Tonight was the place. Tonight was the time to go home.
“Good evening, Mitchell. You actually came?” Christian, plain as a pikestaff in an indigo gown stood at the top of the stone stairs. Brittany tried not to fiddle with her fan. If only she could have worn that. Not the gown—the neck was higher than the Eiffel tower and the skirt as fashionable as a medieval singlet—the color.
But, Brittany did have one of the most handsome men here on her arm. Plundering blue eyes, the black coat, a perfect match for the hair the faint breeze teased and foil for the slash of purple at his neck. There was no denying his blazing sexuality, confidence, arrogance, power. That sexuality, confidence, arrogance and power was in Brittany’s bed. So was something else it would have quite broken the old Brittany to think of. Tenderness.
She preferred the Mitchell whose lips didn’t budge from their habitual straight line, whose eyes were unafraid as his gaze flicked Christian.
“Since you were naturally low enough to ask us, we were naturally low enough to come.”
“Well, I think we all know about you that way. But me? Low?”
“What else would you call throwing a ball in our honor when you knew my lovely wife was absent?”
Brittany strove for her most enigmatic stare. Lovely wasn’t a word she’d apply to herself right now. But she took refuge in the fact Christian would have a cheek the size of the Indian Ocean to forget about pots and kettles. What was Mitchell Killgower doing though? He’d wanted to come because success tonight might hasten Brittany’s departure? And he went for broke getting in an argument with Christian? Well, Brittany wasn’t getting into one.
“Knew she was absent?” Christian set her jaw. “How would I know that?”
“Don’t pretend. Unless you want Clarence to know your latest ploy?”
“My ploy? Oh, Mitchell, aren’t you a fine one to talk about ploys? When it’s perfectly obvious—”
“What is, darling?”
Two reasons Brittany stood here tonight? To help Mitchell Killgower ensure his place and find herself a random guy. Principally it was to find herself a random. The very action was in direct contradiction to helping Mitchell Killgower secure his place but think of how the world would pity him, having a faithless slut who’d abandoned him yet again. Not just two reasons she stood here, two reasons she fixed on her most serene expression, adopted her most wheedling tone.
She wasn’t her hero
ines who would have decked Christian flat out on the flagstones. Far more importantly the world wasn’t going to pity Mitchell Killgower if they thought the pair of them deserved each other and this marriage was a sham. Christian especially would grind axes. On the surface Brittany must be nice, sincere, wheedling, caring, the kind to take a man to the cleaners, despite being dressed like a blancmange. In fact a woman who was prepared to dress like a blancmange to do it. She could do that for Mitchell who never seemed to learn his lesson. She cleared her throat.
“That you didn’t think we’d come here, or how very deeply your kind invitation has touched Mitchell and me when it has?”
“Oh really? Is that so?” Christian rounded on her. “Because—”
“You didn’t think anything could touch me, darling? Is that it? Even a ten foot barge pole?”
She could have been wheedling and sincere, the kind of woman to take a man in. Why hadn’t she? Perhaps because there seemed to be no good reason for Mitchell Killgower going for broke when he wanted Killaine House so badly. Unless he wanted her to stay. She couldn’t let him but the thought threw her.
Christian didn’t flinch.
“Because I heard you’d left the area.”
“Ah? The famous servants? I was sure they would have told you, unless maybe you don’t pay them enough? I was visiting my family.”
“You have one, do you?”
“Oh, I have many things, including Mitchell. I understand how hard it must be not to aspire to the same, to have lowered one’s expectations with a man thirty years older.”
“That remains to be seen.”
Brittany glided on. How she did she’d no idea when the satin shoes propelled her forward at every step, and gluts of words weighted her tongue. But sometimes the best revenge in life was to say nothing, especially when she’d now to face Mitchell Killgower who she was thuddingly aware walked at her side, staring straight ahead. Of course it might be she was mistaken about the broke business.
“Thank you for ignoring that.”
“For you the world, darling.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
Her heart tightened like beaten birds’ wings against her ribcage. Flocks of them. “Then you frankly shouldn’t have gone for broke if tonight means so much to you because Mitchell, I don’t need it. And I bloody well can’t keep saving you from yourself. Can we please just treat this like the sex we have? Thank you.”
“I never—”
“Their Graces, the Marquess of Killaine and Lady Mitchell Killgower, Fleming Killgower of Killaine.”
The booming intonation cannoned off the wall of the cavernous hall, almost knocking her off her feet. Lady Mitchell Killgower? She’d looked around for who it was before she realized the Marquess of Killaine’s had dropped the sneer. There it was again, that quicksilver change, glance, huff of breath.
“That’s us by the way.”
“Really? I should never have bloody well guessed.”
He flicked his eyes shut momentarily, opened them again. “I just wondered in case you’d forgotten. Or you’d never been to a ball before.”
“And you think what? I’m somehow going to make a complete tit of myself jiving beneath the crystal chandelier?” She fixed her gaze on the one hanging dead center of the room that opened before them. Anything other than look at him, when the thought came sneaking, that he always gave these glances which were like bleeding drops on her skin, when she was at her most brittle. Somehow she made herself sound what she wanted to be—assured, controlled. “Just because a chamber pot was once my only friend, it doesn’t mean I plan on rekindling the friendship.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Good. In fact I’ve been to similar things and I know perfectly, how to behave. So you really don’t need to worry about me.”
“I don’t.”
“Even better. So Fleming . . .” She turned, not just her head and her most glittering smile, but her equally glittering attention on the gauche young man. “Now, we’re here, we must have this dance. What do you say?”
“I—”
“Oh for God’s sake, darling, please not another bloody, great, fuss. Your father won’t exactly mind, will you, Mitchell? And I daresay it gets—”
“Actually, Brittany.” Another huff. “I do mind. I mind very much.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
“When I don’t imagine we’ll be home before dawn, there’s no need to rush. You can dance with Fleming later. He’ll wait. Won’t you, son?”
Before dawn? A favorable comparison with a night at Skinny Joe’s. But if they danced, if she danced with him, what would happen next? Would his need to hide from himself, lead to her saying things that somehow made her seem vulnerable? So then there was more delay and she ended up dancing till dawn? Her feet wouldn’t bloody stand it in these shoes for a start.
She mustered her most wheedling smile. “I know, Mitchell, but I really think a jig is as much as I can do. All these other steps and patterns are just beyond me. All these curtsies and kicks and sweeps. Are you kidding? They’re not my scene at all. Have you any idea of how damned ridiculous it all looks?”
Because it did. All right, there had been comradeship and all these past few days as she had struggled to master a few basic steps. It did not mean she was for poncing about with him on tiptoe.
“Perhaps? But there will be other jigs. And you don’t want to invite comment by dancing with your son.”
“But Fleming’s not my—”
“Or indeed asking your son, or otherwise, to dance with you.”
“Oh, aren’t you quite the prude? Fleming . . .”
“Fleming won’t do it. Not in this instance. Don’t ask him. It doesn’t become you.”
“Oh really? What does?”
He leaned closer, so close, his mouth against her ear, the screeching strains of the violins receded into much longed for oblivion. She had never liked violins, especially when played by those with faces long as fiddle cases who saw absolutely nothing wrong with the racket they were making. On a sliding scale of one to three with three being torture and agony, it was a four.
“I’d tell you but I wouldn’t like to be thrown out. But, you dressed in the same as the day you were born certainly is becoming, instead of that damned dress.”
“Really?” What sprang to her cheeks may have all but incinerated them, she lowered her eyelashes coolly. His voice was a rumble in his chest and she sensed the mercurial gaze.
“And what idiot chose it for me?”
“I had my reasons.”
“And these were for me to look like a blancmange?”
“These were to do this properly. You, looking like a tart wouldn’t pass muster with Christian.”
“Who you just picked a fight with.”
“I had my reasons for that too. These are why I will have the first dance with you. And no one else. Then we can find an alcove and I’m sure there’s no law that says a God-fearing woman can’t have a glass of punch.”
“You think drink is the way to my heart?”
“I don’t know you have one. But, then again maybe you’ll prove you do.”
Chapter 17
Maybe pigs would fly all round the potted palms first. Before she proved she had a heart. Icy fingers trailed tips up over her scalp. Did he know what she planned?
He inclined his head. “Now, let us do this.”
The screeching strains of some jig had given way to the screeching strains of some minuet? She’d sooner dance a jig—right out of the double doors and back to the carriage Christian had kindly sent for them to make sure they’d be here. She couldn’t though. She raised her eyelashes.
“Mitchell, I really don’t think I can. My feet are bloody killing me, I’d hardly ma
ke it onto the floor, never mind trail five miles round it—”
“You just asked Fleming.”
“Well, they were all right a second ago. But now I think my heel may have snapped. Damn it.” She reached down.
“Live a little.”
That was her mantra. How had he got hold of it all of a sudden? Delivered it with such quiet panache. Offered her his hand, bowed too. She didn’t know this man. The faintly curling lips, smiling eyes, the deathly charm. She didn’t want to. Choice. She stopped fiddling with her heel.
“I do all the time, darling. I just wouldn’t like you to regret it.”
“You see what I mean by heart, Brittany?”
The smile was so boyish the years dropped from him. But, she was so aware of what was going on here in the musky candlelight, yet again, she didn’t even trouble to ask.
“Not really.” She grasped his hand. “If that’s what you think of as heart, you have a—”
“When will you ever learn to shut your mouth?”
With his breath on her lips and his eyes like glittering beacons in the candlelight?
“Oh, not for some considerable time.”
“Shall we dance?”
The music said minuet. It was perhaps the first thing to go her way since she’d seen this bloody awful dress he’d brought her. Fleming had said something about the country-dance single set taking the best part of an hour to get through. Bloody hell, she’d thought at the time. Were these people mad, or what? Now, knowing her feet wouldn’t stand it in these shoes and the couples were arranged around the floor for something different, she could do this.
The Writer and the Rake Page 23