“I wonder what he’s doing here,” the first gentleman mused after an awkward silence. “Surprised he was invited.”
“Why not? He was asked everywhere on the Continent. With royals, even. Even though he was seen hanging about in low places, gambling hells, dens of thieves, and with all sorts of rogues, doing who knows what…. Aye—less said the better. But he was seen doing we know what at every kind of house of assignation, too. And as for orgies! He openly attended infamous ones, I heard.”
“Some one saw him at it?” a very young gentleman asked in thrilled horror. “I mean, doing it? Right in front of everyone?”
“Him? No. But he was often seen at them.”
“What’s that to say to anything? I’d go to one if someone asked me.”
“Point is,” the second young gentleman said patiently, “he knows where to go. And what to do when he gets there.”
They thought about that, and every other dark rumor they’d heard about the notorious St. Erth.
“Well,” one of them finally said sadly, “see how much any of that matters. Just look at them.”
They turned to where their friend was looking. And saw all the ladies staring at St. Erth.
Sir Alasdair didn’t seem to notice. He made his way to the punch bowl and soon stood talking and laughing with other gentlemen. He might not be acceptable to the highest sticklers in the ton, his past had too many shadows for that. But many men liked him even so. Many females loved him especially so.
It was hard to ignore him. Even if one were mad enough to want to. For one thing, he was too tall to overlook. For another, he was too pleasing to watch and listen to.
This afternoon, he’d looked like a gladiator in his own skin. Tonight he wore correct evening dress and looked every inch the fashionable gent, although every stitch he had on was corbeau black except for his white linen. But with that regal bearing, whatever he wore would seem correct. Sir Alasdair commanded the eye and delighted the ear. The most delicious part was that he obviously didn’t give a tinker’s damn if he did.
Some women whispered about him, others dreamed. One did more. A regal lady in a silver gown stood by a back wall, gazing at Sir Alasdair. She stopped talking with the man at her side. She smiled. “Yes,” she said with satisfaction, “I’ll have him.”
The gentleman nodded, turned on his heel, and strode away. The lady continued watching the baronet.
So did everyone else, to see whom he’d dance with. Would it be one of his host’s ill-favored daughters? Maybe some well-bred tart? A dewy young thing? Or the wife of a friend, to prevent gossip? As if he could. They waited. They’d have to wait longer.
A footman wound through the crowd and delivered a note to him. He opened it, scanned it. A brief flicker of disquiet crossed his face before he wore his usual blandly serene expression again.
“Bad news?” Leigh asked.
Alasdair folded the note. “No. I’ve no idea what it is, actually.”
“Aha!” another gentleman chuckled. “A ‘billy due,’ unless I miss my guess. Sweet nothings and an invitation to more. Leave it to him, man’s got the luck of the devil. Never got one of them at a ball myself.”
“You never got one of them anywhere, sir,” another gentleman drawled. “If you had, your lovely wife would have slain you.”
“Likely,” the other admitted good-naturedly. “That’s what comes of having married in my infancy. Miss out on all the merry moments you bachelors have. Secret perfumed summonses are the stuff of my dreams, I fear.”
Alasdair drew the note under his nose. “This one was scented with cigar smoke.”
“And in handwriting bold and black as your heart, my friend,” Leigh observed, peering over his shoulder. “Since Napoleon’s left St. Helena for hell, I doubt it’s a summons from the War Office or a note from a French spy. I don’t think the nation has anything to worry about. But maybe you do. I wouldn’t care to meet the lady who wrote that!”
“I would,” Alasdair said with a smile. “Though I doubt it’s from a lady. My curiosity knows no bounds. If you’ll excuse me?”
He bowed his sleek dark head, turned, and strode away. His friends watched him go. Then they began chatting again, with no further comment about him. It wasn’t so much that he was a man of mystery. A man had his reasons, and Sir Alasdair likely had more than most.
Alasdair left the ballroom at full stride. When he got to the hall, a footman approached. “The gentlemen are gaming in the little salon,” he told Alasdair, indicating the long hall on the right. “The gentleman’s withdrawing room is to the left.”
“And the library?”
“Past the gent’s room, down the hall, sir,” the footman said.
Alasdair turned left. Gentlemen at lavish balls were often given more means of diversion than dancing, eating, and gossiping. The gambling was small stakes, set up to ease the boredom of papas, husbands, and confirmed bachelors. The library was the best place for a nice nap until a fellow’s wife or daughter was done with all the tomfoolery and a chap could go home again. But Alasdair was looking for the blue salon the note said would be beyond the library. And he was looking for something more interesting there.
He didn’t know who the anonymous fellow who’d sent the note was. Nor what the “…meeting that I’ve cause to know would be most especially suited to your keenest interest and most pressing desire…” was. But he had a pressing desire, and it was known in certain places that he was always in the market for a special sort of information, arranged confidentially and paid for secretly.
There was no sound as he padded down the hall swiftly and silently as a wraith. This part of the house lay still around him. The quiet was a relief to his ears, but his heartbeat picked up. He had high hopes. Sending a note to him in the midst of a ball might mean someone had something new and valuable to sell him. Not that he hadn’t enough information now. But a man would be a fool to pass up any cream to go on top. Whatever he was, and he admitted that was a great many none too palatable things, he was no fool. Woe to the man or woman who took him for one. He was done with being a fool, forever.
The door to the library was open. He glanced in as he passed. The place was as crowded as the ballroom, but private as a mausoleum, and just as lively. One stout gent sat back in a deep chair with a newspaper folded over his face, another dozed in front of the fire. There were other old parties littered on the furniture everywhere. Alasdair moved silently on.
There was a closed door a few feet farther down the hall. He eased it open.
The room was blue all right. At least the walls were covered with watered blue silk. It was difficult to see the rest of the room, much less the colors in it. The few lit lamps and blazing hearth only showed glimpses of fashionably spindly chairs and settees in the latest Egyptian style. The long curtains were pulled closed. The place looked deserted.
Alasdair knew better than to trust first appearances. He stepped in and closed the door behind him.
“Good,” a throaty voice said with deep pleasure. “You came.”
“As you see,” Alasdair said, peering into the shadows, “though I can’t. Am I to talk to shadows? It wouldn’t be the first time. Deuced uncomfortable though.”
“Not at all,” the voice said with husky laughter. “Good evening, Sir Alasdair.”
A tall woman stepped out of the shadows. Alasdair’s eyes narrowed. She was elegantly dressed in a silver gown with a black overskirt. Her shadow-colored hair was bound up high, exposing her long aristocratic neck and the sparkling diamonds on it. She was whippet thin, her face handsome rather than pretty. He estimated she wasn’t yet thirty years old, but not much less. The back of his neck prickled. She could be an informant, she could be about his omnipresent business. But he had the uncomfortable feeling that though her business was his, it wasn’t what he wanted. He always trusted his feelings. He didn’t trust her.
“Good evening, ma’am,” he said, inclining his head in the merest bow. “I don’t believe I’ve
had the pleasure…or have I? But so long ago I don’t recall? Many of my pleasures from the old days are ones I confess I have the damnedest time remembering now.”
It wasn’t what he would have said to a lady. But he was beginning to believe she wasn’t one, at least not in manners. She laughed again, reassuring him that she wasn’t.
“Lud! No, my dear Sir Alasdair, we haven’t met, in any construction of the words. It would be best if we get that over with now, and quickly, for we’re going to know each other a deal better in future, you see. I’m Lady Eleanora Wretton, of Wretton Hall. My father is Duke Wretton. We’re twenty-seventh—or-eighth—in line for the throne, not that it means much, but it will give you some idea of our standing.”
“Indeed,” Alasdair said lightly, though his face was still and he stood motionless. “And I should have that idea…because…?”
“Because it will show you the futility of trying to rush out the door now. My brother’s already stationed on the other side, you see. And his word will be taken far more seriously than yours.”
“I see. And it was his handwriting on the note?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. But we felt a note from a smitten female would have been ignored.”
“Clever,” Alasdair said. “So it would have been. And so, unless I’m very much mistaken, this is not an invitation to dalliance, is it?”
“No,” she said, “That must come later.”
“Ah! Then it’s a proposal of marriage?”
She smiled. “Yes, I’m sorry, but there it is. Although it’s much more than a proposal at this point, sir. After luring me here, alone, for your sole enjoyment? With the door closed so I can’t escape, and I, the unmarried daughter of a peer? It is, I fear, a certain engagement.”
“Is it?” Alasdair mused. “I wouldn’t bet on it, my lady. I have some options. I can challenge your dear brother to a duel, you know. Or your dear father, if it comes to that.”
“So you can,” she said mildly, “and maybe even kill them, you’re very good at that, I hear. But then,” she added sweetly, “you’d hang, surely. Or be forced to go abroad for the rest of your days. And you so lately returned to England from the Continent,” she said with sympathy. “I’m sure that would inconvenience you.”
“Aye, it would be the very devil,” he agreed.
“So then, there it is. Now, you’ve only to decide whether to walk out of here and announce the thing graciously, or let my brother do it, in much less amiable fashion.”
He said nothing. She sighed. She rubbed a hand over her lips to make them blush ruddily, and stepped toward him, shrugging her gown off one shoulder as she did. “I’d hate to expose myself entirely,” she said, looking down to see the silky material had stopped sliding, caught on the puckered nipple of one little breast. “I’d thought to keep that a treat for your eyes only. But this—and this,” she added, shaking her head back, letting her hair loose from its pins so it lay on her shoulders, “should suffice, I think.” She raised her arms and ran both hands through her hair to muss it even more. “Such ardor you showed, my dear sir!” She laughed when she saw her motion had bared both breasts. “Naughty fellow.”
“Yes, but not this time,” Alasdair said, standing aloof. “A pretty sight, but wasted. There are gaps in your trap m’lady. I can exile myself, and will, I think, rather than be forced into wedlock.”
“Indeed? But everyone is saying how happy you are to be home at last.”
“So I was,” he said. He cocked his dark head. “Why me? Some baroque form of revenge?”
She laughed again. “Lud, no! But needs must when the devil drives…a singularly apt phrase in your case, you’ll agree. Look, my dear sir,” she said, suddenly serious, “you’re a fellow with a desperate reputation. I, unhappily, have one now, too. You may have committed all sorts of indecencies with all sorts of creatures. I merely forgot myself with one man who forgot his wedding vows. Yet I’ll suffer more for it than you with all your immorality. His wife is the vengeful sort.”
She shrugged again. “So my name will be ruined, and I’ll have to leave the social scene for years, if not forever. Is that fair? Hardly. So since I had to choose someone to cleanse my name in a sudden but acceptable marriage, we felt you’d be the most apt and the last to cry foul. You ought to understand. And you are, after all, getting a wealthy, titled wife, with the best social standing. I have a great deal to bring to the bargain, after all.”
“Including that forgetful fellow’s get to raise as my own?” Alasdair asked thoughtfully.
She had the grace to look away. “No,” she said after a moment. “I’ve some sense of fairness, you know.”
He seemed genuinely amused, though his hands were knotted to fists at his side. “No, my lady. I think not. I’ll do many things, and, as you say, have done. Not that you’re not charming,” he added, gazing with slow care at her breasts. “Indeed, I think if you’d met me in the normal way of things, you might well have achieved something like your aims. I do like a woman of courage, not to mention guile. And who knows what time might have wrought?”
He raised his head. His expression was mild and his voice remained urbane, but his stance resembled a stag at bay. “But we’ve had neither time nor opportunity to know each other, nor will we. I’m no man or woman’s slave, or toy, or prey. Do your worst. I won’t marry you. Sorry.”
“You will be sorrier,” she warned him. “Your reputation can’t recover from this. I’ve had a good name—until now. If I marry, the other matter will be forgotten. The gentleman’s wife only wants to know that I’m safely away from her husband. She won’t pursue it once we wed. You are, among other things, greatly feared. One of the other reasons we chose you.”
He didn’t answer.
“And so?” she finally asked after a bit of wood snapped in the fire and broke the silence. “One last chance, sir. I look well kissed, I am half-dressed. Make me a pretty offer, or I’ll take the decision out of your hands. One more moment, then I’ll cry out. My brother’s waiting for that summons. He’ll rush in, accuse you of all things. How tedious. How bourgeois. But everything he says will be believed, you know. Come, Sir Alasdair. Though you hesitate, I am considered attractive. They say you did every vile thing in your wild youth. No one will be shocked to see you returning to such behavior now. But they will be shocked, and appalled, that you violated a gentleman’s code by attacking another gentleman’s daughter. Last chance, sir. We’ll be wed anyhow. Wouldn’t it be better to do it in dignified fashion?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I shudder at the thought of the outcry, of course. But I’ve no intention of marrying you, certainly not like this. So shout, have your damned brother in, have the world in, if you wish. Screech away, my dear, but even if you caterwaul like Catalani herself, I won’t have you.”
She looked shocked. Then her expression grew cold. Her body stiffened, and her widened eyes glittered.
He braced himself.
“Oh, my,” a light, breathless voice said from the corner of the room. “Oh, my dear lady, please don’t! My family would hate my name involved in a scandal. It’s what I get for always being in the wrong place at the right time…or is it the other way around? Whatever it is, I beg you, please don’t shout! Or at least, could you wait until I leave?”
2
Alasdair and the lady spun around to stare at the young woman standing in front of the curtains, twisting her hands together. A very pretty and very worried young woman, simply dressed in white. She was white-faced, too.
“I was here, resting, when you came in,” she told Lady Eleanora quickly. “I thought you’d only be a moment, that you were here to fix your gown or some such. When the gentleman arrived, I hoped to slip away because then I thought you and he…” She hesitated, clearly embarrassed. “But it was nothing like that. I mean to say, you wanted him to, but he didn’t. Oh, Lord!” she said miserably. “What a strange situation! I’m making it worse, aren’t I? But please, don’t shout. I coul
dn’t bear it!”
“A servant,” the lady spat, spinning around to stare at Alasdair. “Never mind. She’s nothing. She won’t be believed.”
“I beg your pardon!” the young woman said, sounding even more upset. “I’m not a servant. I’m not dressed for a grand ball, to be sure, but I only recently arrived in town, you see. I’m a cousin to the Swansons and very respectable, I assure you. I may not be dressed in the first stare of fashion,” she said, drawing herself up to her not very considerable height, “but at least I am dressed.”
Alasdair began laughing.
Lady Eleanora drew herself up, too, in every way. She pulled up her gown and swiftly retied her hair. “Good evening,” she said through clenched teeth. She walked past Alasdair, drew open the door, and swept out of the room. Only the door slamming behind her gave hint of her wrath.
Alasdair stopped laughing. “My thanks, and from the bottom of my heart,” he told the young woman. “But now we have to get you out of here, unseen, and fast. She’ll be bent on vengeance. She’ll cry rape on us, and then you’ll be in the soup.”
“And you, too,” she said wisely. “But don’t worry. I’ll leave the way I came in.” She gestured to the curtained wall. She saw his dumbfounded expression and smiled at last. “No, I’m not a ghost.”
“No, you’re an angel,” he said. “But you walk through walls?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. This is an old house, and there are hidden corridors for the staff to use throughout. They didn’t want servants lugging chamber pots and such through the halls for everyone to see in the old days, it seems. So I came in that way.”
“But why?” he asked, “Why did you come in here tonight?”
She hesitated. “Because it wasn’t fair,” she said. “We heard what she and her brother were planning. Overheard, that is. Sibyl and I. Sibyl’s the youngest Swanson daughter. She’s not been presented to Society yet. We were standing at the back of the ballroom and heard them whispering together.”
Edith Layton Page 2