To Catch a Flame

by Kimberly Cates

  Oblivious to his surroundings, Griffin strode down the walk, trying to recapture the lazy aura of diversion he had experienced within Ranelagh years before when it had been but one more treasure trove of lights o' love, convivial company, and fine drink. How many times had he ambled along these winding pathways when he had been a young man eager for romances and spoiling for fights? He had embroiled himself in three duels here and had won considerable coin making far-flung wagers with his friends. But despite his wild actions, he had never felt this teeth-grinding, fist-clenching, tongue-tangling unease that made him feel as if he were walking along the edge of a razor.

  He scowled down at Isabeau, a muscle in his jaw working. Tonight she was a vision. She seemed alive with fire and passion and a playfulness that he mistrusted. Her flame-bright hair was unpowdered, in defiance of fashion. Her gown clung all buttery gold about her trim waist, its embroidery of rich green lattice and dainty blue flowers accenting the creamy luster of her flawless skin. Her tight sleeves were iced in snowy lace that spilled down past her wrists, her expressive hands fluttering as she delighted in each new spectacle.

  Griffin cursed inwardly, his gaze fixing on the filmy white froth. He felt the urge to rip away the delicate webbing and tuck it over the low swept bodice.

  She was an infernal menace. She drew the eyes of every man upon the walk. Three dandies had nearly run over an elderly baron's wife when they saw Isabeau. And one scrawny stripling of nineteen had slammed headlong into the side of a booth when she passed. She had so dazzled the cursed boy with one of her smiles—that blinding, impish smile—that Griffin had wanted to grab her and kiss her until she couldn't see or even think of any man save himself.

  "Is that the sort of man you are so eager for me to become acquainted with, my lord?" she had inquired with honeyed sweetness, a slight hint of a smirk upon her lips.

  He had dragged every bit of self-control he had possessed to the fore and had told her she might attempt to select one not so fresh from his cradle.

  "For a man who is going to such a deal of trouble to introduce me to eligible prospects, you seem to be overly particular," she had teased him. "We've been here nearly an hour, and you've not presented me to a single one." Tossing her curls until they had bounced, burnished red-gold, against her shoulders, she had peered at him from beneath her lashes. "Well, perhaps I shall be pure drowning in men at the supper you and your dear Cousin What-the-blazes have arranged."

  "Cousin Jane," he had snapped. "Lady Charcross. And if there was anyone here worth the cloth in his breeches, I would thrust you upon him at once."

  She had laughed at him then, a light, tinkling laugh that had been full of mischief. His chest had constricted until he had nearly tumbled over a cart laden with pastries.

  He glared at her, his cheeks burning afresh as he recalled the humiliating episode, but his eyes were snared by a tiny freckle that peeked over the bodice's edging as if to taunt him, and his already aching loins tightened further still.

  Blast it, she was driving him insane. And she was having a bloody rollick of a time doing it! If he could just get her to cover herself decently...

  "Isabeau, do you not think we should retrieve your cloak from the coach?" he managed stiffly. "You appear a trifle chilled."

  "Oh, nay, my lord. It is a wondrous balmy night." She brushed her fingers over the bared skin of her décolletage in a gesture that all but unmanned him. "I marvel that you could suggest such a thing. You look quite... er... overheated yourself. You are not becoming feverish?" Ignoring the crowd, she turned and laid her hand upon his brow. Her fingers were still warm from her breasts as she traced a delicately seductive path down his cheek. He drew in a sharp breath, but that proved still more devastating to his senses, for the scent of her—violets and cinnamon and sweet meadow breezes—filled his nostrils, raced through his veins.

  "Damn it, Isabeau, there is nothing amiss with me that your—your concealing yourself modestly would not cure. As your guardian—"

  "As my guardian, you ordered my gowns. All in the height of fashion. And as for what is disturbing you, look about you. Half the women here this evening have more flesh displayed than I."

  "Is that so, Mistress DeBurgh? Then I had best affix my attention upon those we pass, for they must be fair naked from the waist up!" The instant he snapped out those hasty words he cursed himself for uttering them. Isabeau's eyes widened with amusement, and she collapsed into a fit of giggles. He wanted to clap his hand over that berry-red, beckoning mouth.

  With delightful innocence Beau flung her arms about his neck, setting up a roar of approving laughter all around them. Her breath was moist, warm against the tensile cords of his neck, the sensitive skin about his ear. "If you dare to fix your gaze upon any save me, Lord Stone, I shall steal into your bedchamber tonight and cleave out your gizzard!"

  Griffin let loose an oath, his hands sweeping up to clench about her wrists, drag her hands away, but the image of Isabeau slipping into his rooms, all soft and scented and hungry to love him, filled him with the even sharper vision of drifting down amongst cool linen sheets, touching her, tasting her until they were both wild with the need clawing through them.

  "Fine," Griff ground out, beads of perspiration clinging to his skin. "Cleaving out my gizzard would be far preferable to this infernal torture. Mark me, woman, if you—"

  "Shtone! Shtone!" The slurred cry muffled Griffin's warning. A hand slammed companionably into his shoulder as a bewigged man in a puce coat stumbled into him. The force made Beau wobble as well, and Griff’s hand shot out to steady her, his fingers colliding with bared flesh that was as warm as sun-drenched satin.

  He pulled his hand away as if he had been burned. In truth he had been, the sensation of her skin beneath his hand searing a molten path to his loins.

  He wheeled to face the man who had assaulted him, glad to have someone to vent his fury upon. But the somewhat vague eyes peered into his face with owlish pleasure, features only slightly coarsened by dissipation, alight with surprise.

  Albert Tarkington, Baronet of Vailtree, beamed with the same irrepressible good nature he had affected since they had been boys together at Eton.

  Griffin stared into the countenance of his old friend, for an instant regretting that he could not vent his frustration by challenging him to a duel—a nice, sane matching of swords to ease the fire raging inside him.

  "So 'tish you, Shtone!" the plump-faced baronet exclaimed, cracking his palm again into Griff’s shoulder. "Heard you were to be about, but I scarcely believed it, even if it was your own cousin who informed me. Dashed glad to see you again."

  "Bertie." Griff removed himself from the man's reach.

  "Ish been a thousand years since I saw you last," Bertie said. "Mished you dreadful, the lot of us did. Grieved for you when Tom Southwood told us the old duke dived for his crypt."

  Griffin had a fleeting twinge of worry for Charles as he recalled Tom's enigmatic note.

  Tarkington's voice dropped low, his bleary eyes earnest despite the network of red veins running through their whites. "Bleedin' good fellow, yer brother was, disregardin' the fact that he waxed a bit starshed."

  Griff grimaced, struck suddenly by the odd certainty that he was more touched by Tarkington's blunt condolences than by any of the more solemn ones he had received since setting foot upon English shores. "William was a good fellow, wasn't he, Bert?" Griff said, grateful that Tarkington's customary inebriation would most likely keep the baronet from taking note of the sudden thickness in Griffin's voice.

  But Bertie cleared his own rather gouty gullet and pulled a kerchief from his pocket to mop his sweaty brow. "So," he said with forced bluffness, "Janey—I mean, your cousin, Lady Charcross—said you were getting up a party tonight to... er, preshent some ward you were saddled with. There be half a dozen o' the ton's finest awaiting yon." He gestured in the general direction of the rotunda. "Expected old Southwood to be amongst 'em, seeing as the twain o' you were ever so thick. But he
just put in from the Continent this morn. Must be damned tired what with chasing after that wife of his."

  "Tom is waiting upon me tomorrow night." There was a grimness in Griffin's voice that startled Beau. "He's coming to Ravenscrest so that we can... clear up a bit of business between us."

  Bertie shrugged. "Well, Southwood has more woman than he can rightly handle already, I'm told. Leavesh more pickings for the resht of us." Tarkington thumped Griffin upon the shoulder good-naturedly. "So, Shtone, tell me. Did you provide a rash of other females in addition to this... ward?"

  "I fear he brought only me." Isabeau stepped toward Bertie, her eyes dancing beguilingly as she curtsied. "I fear," she continued in a stage whisper, "my Lord Stone is in a great hurry to marry me off so that I'll not be a bother to my family any longer."

  Griffin went rigid as Bertie almost strangled upon his own neckcloth. His thick fingers reached up to wrench that offending garment askew. "'Zounds!" he gasped. "You... are Shtone's—"

  "My ward," Griffin stated frigidly. "Mistress Isabeau DeBurgh."

  "'Pon my soul, Griffin, can't be 'cause she's mudface that you're itching to be rid of her!" Bertie declared. "A reg'lar stunner, she is. With all that... that red stuff on her head."

  "Hair. It is called hair."

  Bertie looked mortally wounded. "I'm not that drunk, Shtone. You've seen me drunker. I've seen you drunker."

  Unaccountably Griff felt heat steal along his cheekbones. For the first time in his life he hoped none of the stories of his wild past would be told.

  "Bertie," he said, grabbing Tarkington by one meaty arm, "I hardly think it would be proper to discuss such states of indisposition with my ward present."

  Bertie hiccupped, waving his other hand toward the laughing Beau. "Well, it is just that, with a face the like o' that, all peachy an' smooth. I can't see why you're making a fuss you're about tryin' to leg-shackle her. Why, any man without numb breeches would—"

  "Any man would scarcely do for my ward." The shadow of pleasure he had taken in seeing his old companion once again had faded from Griff, leaving in its wake irritation and the fervent wish that he had never suggested taking in Ranelagh, had never dreamed up the scheme of introducing Isabeau into society, and that he had merely kept her safely locked inside Ravenscrest, bounding down stairs three at a time, sneaking licks from the sugar rock and matching wits with him at chess.

  "Mr. Bertie, I regret to say that my lord is a most tedious guardian, forever preaching propriety," Beau piped up, extending a hand to the baronet's gloved one. "But I think he is somewhat of a hypocrite. The stories I've heard..." Her voice trailed off suggestively as she peered up at Tarkington through those thick, dark lashes, "I believe that his lordship wants me out of his way so that he may take his place again in society as reigning rakehell."

  Albert choked out a guffaw, raising Beau's fingers to his lips in salute, and it was all Griffin could do not to knock Tarkington's hand away with one fist. "Well, I believe that there are a bevy of London's finest bucks in the rotunda fearing they are to be saddled with some horse-faced girl of agonizingly good family and torturously nondescript personality. That's how it usually is when there is such a stir to send a gel off. I think they will be pleasantly surprised. If I may, milady?" Bertie offered her one puce sleeve, and she let her fingertips drift down onto it, smiling up into the baronet's face in a way that drove Griffin mad.

  "Thank you, kind sir," she said, keeping pace with the nobleman as he began a somewhat unsteady course toward the rotunda. Heavenly smells wafted out, tantalizing those who would dine. The clatter of china and silver, the scraping of chairs against the floor, and the ever-present chatter seemed to lure those outside the building with an invisible thread.

  Isabeau slanted a glance up at Griffin, who stalked beside them. His mouth was tight with anger, and his eyes were like twin embers, hot and furious and full of hunger—a hunger every roast capon in London could not have filled. A hunger Beau fully intended to taunt and torment until even the most noble and saintly of men would not have had the strength to subdue it. And Lord Griffin Stone was no saint!

  She flashed him a wicked glance, wetting her lips so they shone in the lamplight, and a delicious shiver worked through her as she imagined what it would be like when that barely leashed passion that had glittered in Griffin's eyes was loosed upon her. Devastating. Mind-shattering. Wild and wondrous and as full of danger as the storms that hurtled in from the vast oceans, his loving would be. Yet filled with such a rare, sweet tenderness it would break her heart. She was stunned as tears pricked at the back of her eyes, her smile softening with anticipation.

  "Here we be, Mistress DeBurgh." Bertie Tarkington's voice jarred her back to the present, and she was surprised to find that they had entered the building. In front of her a fair rainbow of masculine forms was seated around a large table. Beau met the battery of their stunned eyes with her most winning smile, trying not to laugh as they all but tripped over one another in their efforts to secure a place at her side.

  Golden-curled Adonises, powdered dandies and rugged-featured paragons who reeked of the sporting set crowded near her. It was as if Griffin's cousin had managed to prepare a banquet of suitors for Beau's perusal. Whatever her taste in men, it would have been represented among this company. But not a one of them, from the flamboyant, bewigged giant of a man garbed in scarlet to the bookish, long-nosed gent with a slight lisp could hold a candle to the man who had already bewitched her heart.

  Beau stole a glance at him, taking in his thunderous scowl. There were ominous emotions roiling in the blue-gray depths of his eyes. They held a delicious danger, the same alluring menace that had been present when she had first seen his face across a moonlit road. And there was something about seeing him this way that fueled the imp of mischief always lurking in Isabeau's breast, making her want to prick even more relentlessly at what sanity he had managed to maintain.

  She shook herself mentally. She was aware that the vague babble she had been hearing was several introductions being rattled off at once, as if she were a prize to be awarded to whichever of the candidates was first to reveal his name. She drew a fan from her pocket, unfurling the painted scene of the Muses with a flirtatious snap.

  "I vow I shall never be able to keep the lot of you straight," she said, giving them her most dazzling smile. "There are so many of you, and... well, I regret I have not been much in polite company."

  "It is a crime to keep such beauty hidden," a bull of a man boomed. "Stone should be taken up by the constable for effecting the thievery of such a delight to mine orbs."

  "And such fine orbs you have, too," Beau commiserated, tapping the man on one brown coat sleeve. "I know what I shall do to save myself from this muddle. I shall call you all by what I judge to be your finest feature—that way I shall not have to trouble myself by stumbling over your titles and whatnot. What say you? Do you not think that the most marvelous of ideas?"

  A rumble of laughing approval rose up from the throng of men.

  "Mistress DeBurgh, you will not insult our guests by denying them their names," Griffin began in steely accents.

  "Ah, blast, Stone, who the devil wants a mere name when such a beauty as this might be flattering the very deuce out of him?" a jolly lad of about five and twenty offered, then he turned to Isabeau, bowing over her hand. "You may, milady, call me anything you desire, so long as you gift me with the light of your smile."

  Beau giggled as Griffin nearly choked at the boy's words. She so enjoyed Stone's discomfiture that she oozed charm as she took the boy's hand in her own. "I believe I shall call you Monsieur Hands. I ask you," she said, drawing the others into her game, "does he not have a most remarkably strong set of hands? Yet well shaped. Like those of an artist. Have you ever considered taking up the brush?"

  The boy looked as if someone had smeared crimson paint on his face, his lashes dropping over his eyes in a sudden bout of shyness. "I—I... er... have dabbled at it a bit."

&nb
sp; "Then when I choose my husband I shall commission you to paint my wedding portrait. There. It is settled. And you." She turned the full force of her eyes upon a tall man whose face was sprinkled with freckles. She could almost see the poor fellow blanch and was intuitively aware that he was most likely curling up in dread, thinking she'd mention his obviously hated feature. But Beau fixed her gaze upon his nose, then clapped her hands in delight. "Hawk. Aye, sir, that is what you will be called. You boast a right noble beak, I think, and—"

  "And I? What shall I be called?" others piped up as she christened them each anew, making them all blush with pleasure or chuckle in amusement. As the last youth stepped forward—with an exceedingly handsome face and form, but eyes somewhat lacking in intelligence—Beau's own lids widened with wicked excitement. Upon each of his cheekbones was a small white scar so symmetrically perfect it was all Isabeau could do not to fall into her pudding.

  Instead she fluttered her fan, inquiring with a husky breathlessness that made Griffin curse. "Oh, sir, you... you bear the most dashing feature of all. Those marks upon your cheeks! I vow they make you look like a bold pirate rogue, or Robin of the Hood. So... so masculine, so wondrous menacing. I swear it fair robs me of words to express..."

  Monsieur Scar preened like a gamecock, fingers weighted with jewels brushing the white marks with as much pride as though they were medals of valor. "Why, Mistress DeBurgh, I would boast to you from whence these came, but I do not want to distress you."

  "Distress me?" Beau said as she nibbled at the food servants had slipped onto her plate. "I shall contrive to keep my courage up. With all these strong men about me, I believe I shall manage not to quake."

  She had taken them all up into her web of charm, the entire party hanging upon every word she uttered, every smile, every laugh. And with each stroke of the witty repartee Griffin's face grew darker, grimmer.

  "If you are certain..." Monsieur Scar let his voice drop into the eerie tones Beau had so often used herself. "Even sheltered as you have been, Mistress DeBurgh, you must have heard tell of Gentleman Jack Ramsey."