The Importance of Being Wicked

by Miranda Neville

  “You’d better come in. After an afternoon at the British Museum, I imagine you’re ready for refreshment, and I don’t mean tea. The servants are out, but I expect you can open a bottle of wine.”

  A wise man would refuse. He’d made progress that day. A wise man would take leave of the woman he was courting and eschew the company of the woman he ached to bed. Every nerve vibrating, his eyes glued to her slender neck, the uncovered shoulder blades, the sway of her hips, Thomas followed his hostess up the stairs. Miss Brotherton, chatting away about the delights of that infernal museum, took her cousin’s arm.

  Halfway up, Mrs. Townsend looked over her shoulder at him. The lift of her brow and the mischief on her lips told him why she’d refused to accompany her cousin today. It wasn’t that she was a neglectful chaperone—though she was that too—but that nothing short of massive bribery or extreme torture would get her through the doors of Montagu House. A moment of silent communion, over as quick as a wink, told him that, on the subject of the charms of the British Museum, they thought as one.

  At the first-floor landing, Miss Brotherton continued upstairs. He followed Mrs. Townsend into the drawing room, which contained, of course, Oliver Bream. Did the man live in the house?

  “Who was it?” Bream asked, not bothering to rise from his chair, a lack of polite observance in the presence of a lady that Thomas abhorred. “I wish you’d lie down again. The light won’t last much longer.”

  The artist bent over a sheet of paper resting on a board on his knees and waved a pencil impatiently.

  “Oliver’s doing a sketch for a new painting of the Rape of Lucrece, and I’m posing for him,” Mrs. Townsend said. “He’s right about the light. Would you mind fetching the wine?”

  Taken aback at being given such a mundane domestic duty, Thomas nonetheless managed to find his way to the cellar, which contained a good many empty wine racks and a few dozen dusty bottles. His hostess had told him where to find a corkscrew and glasses. He examined the former with some trepidation. He’d never paid any attention to the question of how wine got out of bottles, but how hard could it be?

  Quite hard, as it happened. After some experimentation and a wrenched thumb, he managed to extract a rather crumbly cork from a bottle of claret and carried it upstairs in subdued triumph.

  Mrs. Townsend lay flat on her back on the chaise longue, her figure displayed in a way that dispelled any doubt about the identity of the model for the naked Venus hanging nearby. The model for that painting had been much fleshier than the live, shapely beauty stretched out before him. The painted woman’s waist was thicker, her breasts less firm. Despite arms bent back at the elbows and palms thrust forward to repel the assault of the Roman prince, Mrs. Townsend didn’t look at all like a woman about to be raped. As so often, she was laughing merrily, and everything about her pose seemed, to Thomas, to be an invitation.

  Bream agreed. “I’m about to draw your face, Caro. Could you try to appear more alarmed? The man’s about to violate you. The way you look, he’d think you were asking for it.”

  “Like this?” she asked, her features twisting into an exaggerated grimace.

  Miss Brotherton, whose presence in the room Thomas hadn’t even noticed, let out a gasp, then the two cousins relapsed into giggles. The ginger cat, who had been asleep on the hearth rug, woke up and leaped onto his mistress, making her laugh even harder.

  “Oh my Lord!” she shrieked, kicking her legs up and down with an indecent display of shapely calf. “Save me, save me! My virtue is under attack from a vile, furry creature!” The vile furry creature settled on her stomach and started to purr, for which Thomas could hardly blame him.

  Bream was not amused. “Remove that cat, please, Annabella. And Caro, I just need ten minutes to get the expression. Could you manage to look frightened and disgusted for that long?”

  “Ten minutes,” she said, pushing the cat onto the floor. “Then we’ll all have some wine.” She noticed Thomas standing by the door. “Oh, there you are, Castleton. Do pour yourself a glass.”

  “I’ll wait.” He felt awkward and a little foolish, standing like a servant with a tray of glasses and the wine bottle. Worried that he’d trip and drop his burden, he made his way carefully to a console table and set it down.

  “Do you often pose for Bream?” he asked. It didn’t seem quite proper for a lady.

  “Whenever he’s low on funds and can’t afford a model,” she said.

  “Can’t afford coal, either,” the artist said, unabashed by the revelation of his financial straits. “It was too cold out in the carriage house, so I brought my sketchbook here.”

  The drawing room wasn’t exactly balmy this chilly April afternoon. The fire was a small one and his hostess very underdressed. Thomas frowned and walked over to the fireplace, stepped over the cat who’d resumed his position in the only warm spot in the room (apart from proximity to his mistress’s body), and picked up the coal scuttle. It was less than a quarter full, so Thomas dumped the lot on the fire and picked up the bellows. As he coaxed a warm glow from the coals, he reflected that the afternoon was teaching him quite a lot about the duties of a servant.

  Bream was utterly thoughtless to make Mrs. Townsend pose in such a scanty garment. Miss Brotherton wore long sleeves and a voluminous shawl. Bream himself was fully, if shabbily, dressed. Not for the first time, Thomas found himself wishing he could wrap Mrs. Townsend in a blanket, then shied away from an image of her under the covers, with himself as a companion.

  “That’s a little better,” he said after a few minutes’ effort. “But not good enough. Do you wish Mrs. Townsend to catch cold, Bream?”

  The artist, who had been applying his pencil with utter concentration, looked up in surprise. “Are you cold, Caro? It’s much warmer in here than in my rooms.”

  “An icehouse is warmer than your rooms, Oliver. It’s not precisely the weather for Roman rape wear, but I can stand it a little longer.” She shivered perceptibly. A shawl was draped over the back of the chaise, cream-colored, with a floral pattern. Thomas strode across the room and, over Bream’s protest at the disturbance of his scene, pulled Mrs. Townsend to a sitting position. He felt the gooseflesh arise on her arms. Crouching, and trying not to look at her almost entirely exposed bosom, he enveloped her in the shawl. As he arranged the fine wool cloth about her, she raised a hand and for a moment he thought she was going to touch his cheek. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest.

  He examined her face, so close to his, and noted her pallor. She looked back at him gravely. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  Their eyes met for what felt like an age. A delicate pink flushed her cheeks. When at last she spoke, she sounded dazed. “You have a black eye. Or rather a colored eye.”

  Unfortunately true. In the last three days, the bruising had acquired tints of yellow, blue, and purple. A smile tugged at his lips. Miss Brotherton had tactfully refrained from comment the entire afternoon. If she’d even noticed, that is. Quite likely, her mind had been too full of tesserae to care that her suitor resembled a defeated pugilist.

  “Perhaps Oliver should paint you, instead.” Caro’s teeth were still chattering, and Thomas wanted to take her in his arms and warm her up.

  He stood up to put distance between himself and the temptation to do something foolish. “You’re a fool to wear so little in this damp weather.”

  Bream, the selfish idiot, chimed in. “Are you all right, Caro? You should have said something.” Miss Brotherton made cousinly clucking noises. Too late for both of them.

  “I’ll pour you some wine,” Bream added.

  “I’ll do it,” Thomas said, damned if he was going to let Bream make up for his thoughtlessness. Leaving Bream to serve Miss Brotherton, he brought Mrs. Townsend her glass.

  “I’m so sorry, Oliver,” she said, sipping the claret which was, unfortunately, even cooler than the room. “Could you finish the sketch tomorrow?”

  “I’m giving a drawing class at Mr. Monro’
s Academy.”

  “That’s marvelous!”

  “I didn’t know you taught, Oliver,” Miss Brotherton said.

  Thomas was glad to hear that the artist did anything except live off his landlady. Though not his business, it was beginning to annoy him the way Bream leeched off her.

  “There’s a lot of competition for these positions. And since I haven’t yet made my name as an artist, my services aren’t much in demand. I’m filling in for Girtin, who was called out of town.”

  “It’s a start,” said Mrs. Townsend. “They’ll find out how good you are.”

  “And I’ve decided,” Bream continued, his voice portentous with news, “to submit to the Royal Academy this year. The Rape of Lucrece, if it turns out as well as I expect.”

  “Really? I thought you believed the Academy to be a crowd of timid old women.”

  Intent on his own important announcement, Bream ignored the quizzing note in her voice. “They are, of course, but thousands will see my work there. I shall pass by the banal judgment of self-anointed cognoscenti and reveal my genius to the people. I shall elevate their minds and stir their emotions. I see Lucrece as an emblem of the common man and her rape by Tarquinius as symbolic of the fate of the French peasantry at the hands of the nobility.”

  The ladies appeared to drink up this radical nonsense along with their cold claret. Thomas couldn’t imagine that the stolid English patrons of the Royal Academy would be converted to Jacobinism by a mythological scene. Nor that the minds of the masses would be elevated by a painting of Caro Townsend being ravished. Though it might, he would allow, stir the emotions. How uncomfortable. Supposing it hung in the dining room? Having your emotions stirred during meals sounded like a poor idea, likely to lead to indigestion. He looked at the naked Venus, laid out in her glory of the wall opposite his seat. The painting left him cold. Whoever she was, the model displaying her every asset, she didn’t please him half as much as the sight of Caro Townsend huddled in a shawl, laughing at something Bream said and teasing him back.

  The informality of her hospitality was disturbing and beguiling, unlike anything in his ducal life. At Castleton, he lived with the blend of pomp and restraint his father had deemed suitable to the station of the Fitzcharleses. Neither did he have intimates. Aside from a brief period at Winchester, he’d been educated at home, so he had no close friends from his schooldays. He was on affable terms with his country neighbors, but the distinction of rank was maintained. During brief visits to London, before and after his father’s death, he’d become acquainted with some of his peers, but he knew none of them well. Even his sisters, all his junior, looked up to him.

  His father had always been his companion. The duke had kept his only son and heir close, personally directing every aspect of his life. The respect he’d felt for his sire had made it easy for Thomas to quell the occasional stirrings of rebellion.

  Quietly sipping his wine, he watched Caro, her cousin, and her friend, and he envied them. He had no one to support his endeavors, as Caro did for Oliver, no one to tease him. He believed himself a happy man. Actually, he’d never even given the matter much thought, but he was content with life, always had been. What if there was something more, something he was missing?

  Covertly he studied Anne Brotherton, his ideal bride, smiling at one of Caro’s quips. She always looked best when in the company of her cousin, whose joy in life was infectious. With conscious effort he kept his eyes on her, resisting their constant, involuntary tendency to drift in the direction of Caro Townsend’s sparkling countenance.

  He considered remaining until asked to stay and dine. Bream would, of course, and he’d gathered Mrs. Townsend kept a virtually open house. But he was a duke, not an artist. Dukes did not cadge meals.

  With some reluctance, he took his leave.

  “Shall we see you at Almack’s, Duke?” Mrs. Townsend’s valedictory words were delivered with provocatively lowered eyelids and the incipient descent of her garments when she rose to offer him her hand.

  Thomas managed to avert his eyes and meet her challenge. “I believe that’s up to you, madam. And Miss Brotherton,” he added as an afterthought.

  The response that emerged from her throat was a husky gurgle, if that was possible.

  “I’ll see you at nine o’clock on Wednesday, then.”

  Chapter 7

  On Wednesday evening, Thomas knocked on the door at Conduit Street, wondering what the evening’s entertainment was to be. Bartholomew Fair? A gambling hell? Naked bathing? Not knowing lent a certain anticipation, mixed with foreboding.

  Handed a note, he ordered his carriage to Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the home of a Mr. Soane, whom he believed to be an architect. It sounded decent enough, even dull, though the late duke would never have attended an evening party in such company. That was true of a lot of things Thomas had done lately.

  An acceptable contingent of footmen attended to his arrival. He ascended a handsome staircase—architecture was apparently a lucrative profession—to be welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Soane who assured him he was expected. He passed into a drawing room filled with people. No one he recognized immediately, but they all appeared respectable ladies and gentlemen, more of the latter, with no tendency to an overexposure of flesh or likely to start a brawl. Most of the furnishings had been removed, but the room was amply possessed of paintings on the walls and marble antiquities on pedestals and shelves.

  An art collector. He should have guessed. As he passed through, looking carefully at every glimpse of a gown, he heard snatches of conversation, phrases like “debasement of taste” and “unfortunate novelty.”

  In a second room, he spotted his intended bride. She was listening with rapt concentration and an expression of fascinated deference to a pair of elderly gentlemen in wigs. He decided to let her be for the moment. Neither seemed a potential rival. More likely, they were discussing antiquities as old and musty as themselves.

  He didn’t see her at first, but heard her voice. She was after all on the short side, as was Oliver Bream, her inevitable escort. But those smoky tones reached him and did something odd to his beating heart.

  “I wonder how soon Lord Stuffy will be here. I wagered ten o’clock, but Anne thinks he’ll go to Almack’s first. I think better of him.”

  “If he does, he’s even more of a pigeon than I thought,” said Bream.

  Thomas tapped on the shoulder of the last body that stood between him and Mrs. Townsend.

  “Good evening, ma’am,” he said with a polite bow. “Bream.” A brief nod for the artist.

  She smiled, Bream nodded back.

  “I don’t like to be particular,” Thomas went on, “but that really should be the Duke of Stuffy, you know. Or, if you insist on ceremony, His Stuffiness.”

  Her smile stretched to a delighted grin. “No formality between friends, surely. I shall simply call you Stuffy.”

  The ridiculous thing was, he wouldn’t mind. There was no malice in her words. He felt instinctively that if she disliked him, she’d never have given him a nickname. He had the urge to ask her to call him Thomas, but naturally no one outside his immediate family so addressed him. Perhaps he’d invite the informality after they were cousins, after he and Anne were wed.

  “And how was Almack’s, tonight, Your Stuffiness?”

  “Most enjoyable, thank you, ma’am. But the company wasn’t all I could have wished, so I didn’t stay.”

  “I thought you might have been refused admission since you aren’t correctly dressed.”

  “I see you have found me out. I decided to forgo the pleasure and come instead to this excellent and most interesting gathering.”

  “A wise decision. I think.”

  “You don’t sound certain.”

  She screwed up her nose. “I prefer my entertainment a little less sober.”

  “The masquerade was your choice?”

  “And this was Annabella’s.”

  “It seems highly respectable,” Thomas said.
And deathly dull, he thought.

  “And deathly dull,” she said.

  “The absence of violence must be held to be an advantage in an assembly,” he said.

  “You think so?” Her eyes twinkled, and her provocative lips demanded a kiss. Which he couldn’t—wouldn’t—give her.

  “How did you make the acquaintance of our hosts?” he said instead.

  “Neither Anne nor I had met him, or Mrs. Soane, before tonight. The evening is in honor of Mr. Ashley. Anne had some correspondence with him about digging up a barrow. She’s talking to him now.”

  “The old fellow or the very old fellow?”

  Mrs. Townsend giggled. “The very old one. Look at him carefully, Duke. He may be a rival. I believe he is unmarried.”

  “I quake with fear.”

  “And so you should. In a short while he’s going to make a speech about barrows, and Anne will be in ecstasy.”

  Thomas, who had been trying to keep a straight face, lost any desire to laugh. “Please tell me you are joking.”

  Her face twisted into a caricature of dolor. “I am afraid not. You must wish you were at Almack’s.”

  He didn’t. He wanted to be nowhere in the world except wherever Caro Townsend was. Even a lecture on barrows, whatever the deuce they were, would be bearable if he could watch the fascinating parade of expressions that spoke her thoughts as well as any words.

  “No,” he said. “I’m content to allow you to choose the evening’s entertainment. I mean Miss Brotherton.”

  She placed a hand on his sleeve and leaned close. “Well done, Castleton.”

  “You’re testing me, I believe,” he managed to say, his head dizzy at her proximity.

  “Perhaps.”

  “And do I pass?”

  She regarded him with a serious face, but her eyes danced, making his heart turn over. “I’ve discovered you and Anne have something in common.”

  He should be pleased to hear it. He was pleased to hear it. “Does that mean I have your support in my courtship of your cousin?”