by Lynne Barron
“Why is it people assume church mice to be poor?” Harry asked of no one in particular as Lord Knighton was joined by a faintly familiar-looking young man with, of all things, a riding crop tucked under his arm.
“Maybe it has to do with the scarcity of crumbs in church,” Kate suggested before leaning in to whisper, “The gentleman with Lord Knighton is Mr. Maxwell.”
“Or the fact every spare penny goes into the poor box.” This from Lilith, who’d yet to meet an orphan or widow and come away with a spare penny in her pocket. “But this is no time for your word games, Harry.”
“There’s Papa!” Madeline exclaimed, bouncing about as if the king himself had decided to grace them all with his majestic presence.
The Earl of Dunaway strolled into the ballroom, all lean limbs, golden hair and dashing good looks. Dressed to the nines in a powder blue velvet jacket over a creamy white waistcoat and gray trousers, his lordship stole the breath from more than one lady as he breezed by.
Harry couldn’t help but admire the inherent grace of his movements, the jaunty angle of his square chin and the slow curl of his lips as he spotted her within the tight little knot of his daughters.
It was a taunt, his smile, mocking her resolve to remain unmoved by the charm that came as naturally to him as breathing. He wielded that charm and the perfect symmetry of his features to seduce and beguile any woman foolish enough to stand within the brilliant beam of his presence.
As evidenced when a young lady barely past the first blush of womanhood trailed into the ballroom after him, tendrils of dark hair falling from her coiffure to straggle around her flushed face. Her bodice was askew, her skirts wrinkled and hiked up on one side.
“Why do you suppose Papa does it?” Annalise asked, her voice little more than a tortured whisper.
“Because he can,” Harry answered, quickly and concisely. “Because he is handsome and charming and just wealthy enough to get away with it. Because women have been throwing themselves in his path since his university days, and it has never occurred to him he ought to step around those women.”
“But he spoke vows to Mother,” Annalise replied in the same anguished manner. “Vows promising to do just that.”
“Oh, vows, is it?” Harry asked, amused and faintly awed by the girl’s innocence. “Like the vow you make each day to leave off gorging yourself with sugar biscuits? Or perhaps the vow Kate is forever making to settle down and choose a husband from the overabundance of fine gentlemen in Bartlesborough?”
“Don’t forget Madeline’s vow to kiss an even dozen men before her twentieth birthday,” Lilith added, bumping Harry’s shoulder with her own. “And your own vow to cease scheming and plotting and what have you.”
“I’ve never made any such vow,” Harry protested, tickled by the mere suggestion. “But you’ve proven my point. We are, all of us, at the mercy of our natural inclinations, vows to the contrary be damned.”
“But Mama loves Papa,” Annalise whined most unbecomingly. “And Papa loves her, too. I know he does.”
“Love? Oh, you poor darling,” Harry said, patting the girl’s hand. “Love is a myth created by men such as your father to excuse all manner of misbehavior, a myth perpetuated by women like your mother in order to justify the choices they’ve made.”
Five blonde heads turned to her, eyes varying from vivid green to turquoise to the palest blue blinking in shock, confusion, and, in the case of Lilith, what appeared to be concern for Harry’s sanity. “Love is not a choice.”
“Nor is it a myth,” Sissy added with all the authority of a woman married less than a full month. “Love is wonderful and magical and positively divine.”
Lord Dunaway’s arrival in their midst was perfectly timed and entirely apropos of precisely the point Harry was attempting to make, as were the words which dripped like warm honey from his lips. “What heavenly vision do I see before me? Could it be the six loves of my life all together under my roof? Be still my heart.”
“You haven’t a—” Harry began.
“A modicum of effort, Harry,” Lilith interrupted, dutifully turning her cheek up to his lordship. “Dun, you’re looking to be in fine fiddle this evening.”
Harry stepped back as his daughters swarmed around him, bussing his cheeks and basking in his shifting attentions. One by one, he complimented their gowns, their radiance and the rotundity of one particular belly.
And all the while, around rosy cheeks and over golden heads, Dunaway watched Harry from the corner of his eye as if she might pounce upon him and deliver the pummeling he so richly deserved. For sins too many to count, for transgressions both large and small, for vows broken and those never made, spanning more than two decades and hundreds of miles, all of them littered with the detritus left in his wake.
Chapter Three
Phineas Nathaniel Griffith, third Viscount Knighton, was accustomed to catching the attention of women in ballrooms. In truth, he was accustomed to snagging every feminine gaze in a thirty-foot radius whenever he ventured from home. Riding in the park, walking along the street, perusing merchandise in shops, watching plays at the theatre. Even sitting silent and still in church, he found himself peered and peeked at shyly and surreptitiously, studied and watched with something approaching scientific analysis, and openly ogled with prurient curiosity.
Phin considered it his duty, as well as his privilege and pleasure, to satisfy the prurient curiosity of ladies from time to time.
Honor and simple common sense had him giving a wide berth to the shy and surreptitious sort, as any gentleman worth his salt knew without a lick of firsthand experience that innocents and coquets were trouble.
As for ladies of a scientific bent, his interest tended to be proportional to the stamina required for the following day’s activities, as such women were prone to expect herculean feats of acrobatics from a man reputed to be a spectacularly creative and energetic lover.
Never before had Phin caught the collective attention of six of the loveliest women he’d ever had the good fortune to witness gathered together in one place. It was rather like commanding the undivided attention of the sun, harnessing and hoarding its warmth and radiance. Decidedly pleasant in theory but deucedly uncomfortable in reality.
If that weren’t enough to unsettle the most stalwart of gentlemen, in the center of all that golden splendor stood a luminously pale goddess.
Moonlight streamed in through the open French doors, gilding her slender form and sparkling on the ribbons woven through the flaxen braids coiled and looped and twisted atop her head. The heavenly vision was adorned in a fantastical ball gown, yards of shimmery silver silk embroidered and bejeweled with an entire solar system of tiny gems gamboling around the hem and dancing whimsically across a bodice cut low enough to display the pearly slopes of a decidedly lovely, albeit small, pair of breasts.
The very same breasts he’d been invited to peek at only that afternoon.
At the time, he’d been too distracted by the mountain of a man pummeling various parts of his anatomy to catch more than the occasional whisper of soft, feminine voices and periodic glimpses of two women lurking in his peripheral vision, until the taller and slimmer of the pair had offered up the invitation. In the split second between whipping his head around and losing consciousness, he’d found himself staring at a strikingly beautiful face comprised of pale skin, elegant angles and glittering green eyes.
Of course, the invitation had not been meant for him at all, but rather for Mr. King of the corpulent footmen, ship works in Wales and, if he’d heard correctly, mistresses in their undergarments hiding beneath table lines and bedcovers all over England.
Lucky bastard, Mr. King.
Still, Phin wasn’t so foolish as to forego an opportunity when it was presented to him, especially one wrapped in lustrous silk that clung to every slim curve before cascading to the marble floor in a river of spilled moonlight. Slowly, torturously slowly at times, Phin orbited the lady, moving steadily nearer with eac
h pass around the crowded ballroom.
And all the while, she watched him.
There was nothing shy in her gaze, nothing surreptitious or scientific, and her blatant curiosity did not seem so much prurient as…amused.
No, not amused, but rather entertained, and then only slightly, in the way a play with a predictable plot was entertaining so long as the actors knew their cues and executed their lines with panache and perfect timing.
It occurred to Phin that the ethereally beautiful, vaguely entertained woman found him predictable, perhaps even…dare he so much as think it?
Safe.
As if she recognized his astonishment, her lips twitched before one corner lifted, slowly followed by the other, gifting him with a wry, mocking smile that did queer things to his equilibrium.
And oddly enough, had his cock hardening.
“Damn.”
“I say, Knighton, how’s the hunt coming along?” Arthur Maxwell joined him, riding crop tucked under one arm as per usual. “Corralled a promising bride yet?”
“Who is the beauty with Dunaway’s daughters?”
“Miss O’Connell,” Max answered with a grimace. “If you ask her, she’ll tell you she’s the daughter of a Bloomsbury merchant or some such.”
“You asked after her origins?”
“A man ought to know who sired a filly before he goes sniffing at her hindquarters,” Max said. “For all she comes from common stock, Miss O’Connell is high-strung. As likely to take off your fingers as accept a cube of sugar when it’s offered. She might well be a merchant’s daughter as she claims, but rumor has it she’s connected to the infamous Alabaster Sinclair. A distant cousin on the Fitzroy side of the family, or some such.”
“Which would certainly explain the resemblance to Lady Malleville.”
“How in hades do you suppose Malleville managed to tame Lilith Aberdeen?” Maxwell grumbled. “Not only tamed her, but got her in foal thrice in five years’ time?”
“Perhaps he takes her for a long, hard gallop every night,” Phin quipped, never mind he knew better than to encourage Max’s mangled equestrian metaphors. “And a slow, steady trot each morning.”
“I’m guessing she was a joy to break to the saddle.”
“I wouldn’t mind breaking Miss O’Connell to the saddle.”
“Word has it Marchant is preparing to step up to the mounting block.”
“Charles Radcliff, Marquess of Marchant? Radcliff, the stiff?”
“Someone is seeing to the lady’s board and feed,” Max replied, squinting like the vain, near-sighted man he was. “And settling the accounts for the demented modiste who dresses her. The latest on-dit has Marchant footing the bills in return for future riding privileges.”
“You’re having me on.”
“Not a bit of it,” Max insisted. “Marchant is courting the lady, to be sure.”
“He intends to marry the daughter of a merchant?” Phin asked, surprised and set oddly off-kilter by the possibility. “To make her the Duchess of Montclaire one day?”
“The Duchess of… Ye gads, man.” Max gave a great guffaw, not unlike the snorting of a stallion. “Miss O’Connell is a pretty piece, I’ll grant you. But her lineage is beyond questionable, her temperament skittish, her gait too fast for a proper lady and if she’s in possession of more than ten pounds, let alone a dowry large enough to overcome all the rest, I’ll eat my riding crop.”
“Miss O’Connell is in the market for a protector, then?” Phin knew a moment’s warm satisfaction, followed quickly by the cold wind of reality. He hadn’t funds enough to see to his mother and sisters’ care, nor to settle their modiste accounts, never mind the extra blunt required to set up a mistress.
“You cannot afford the chit, old man.” Max’s words echoed the dismal thoughts clanging around in Phin’s head so well that, for a moment, they sounded like the tolling of a doomsday bell. “Better to set your cap for Dunaway’s by-blow.”
At Max’s less-than-subtle nod, Phin turned his attention to the other lady who had comprised the distracting duet that afternoon. She was a lovely woman, with honey curls piled atop her head and softly-rounded curves displayed by a simple ball gown of vibrant turquoise silk unadorned by so much as a single embroidered hem or sprinkle of moon dust.
“Miss Mary Katherine Price is a tad shorter in the forelock and wider in the flank. Most definitely no thoroughbred, but she comes from good stock and possesses a hearty disposition,” Max continued, clearly warming up to deliver a filly-laced lecture on the corralling of an heiress. “Dunaway sired her on the daughter of a privateer-turned-farmer. Captain Price has a fine estate in Dartmoor or thereabouts. Won it in a card game some two decades past and renamed it Folly’s Cost or Fool’s Prize or some such nonsense. Raises sheep, though why anyone would choose to raise the wooly blighters rather than horses I can’t imagine.”
“Greater profits and less overhead,” Phin interjected into the pause provided when Max stopped to draw breath. “For a land steward, you are shockingly ignorant about the managing of an estate.”
“Camden is more along the lines of a pleasure retreat than a working estate,” Max protested. “Say, you aren’t running sheep are you?”
“I’ve a small herd and a few head of cattle.” What Phin didn’t say was just how close he was to selling off what little livestock remained, along with two hundred prime, un-entailed acres running along the River Teme. “I’m afraid the only horseflesh I currently own are beasts of burden.”
“Bloody hell, has it truly gotten as bad as all that?”
“I only need a good harvest come autumn.” The words had become something of a mantra to ward off complete and utter destitution.
They might even prove true. If he could keep his woefully underpaid servants working the fields rather than running off in search of greener pastures. If the weather, the ficklest of mistresses known to man, would cooperate. If his creditors could be persuaded not to call in the outstanding loans, never mind he’d yet to make a single payment since he’d inherited seven months previously. If he could beg, borrow or steal the funds needed to pay the reapers and the grist mill owner when the time came. If the price of barley, wheat and wool held steady.
It was a long list of ifs.
And should every last one of them come to pass, it was but a temporary solution to the problem. Next year would be only marginally better and fraught with the same litany of contingencies. As would the following six or perhaps seven years, until he’d replenished the family coffers his grandfather had systematically and intentionally depleted in a fit of righteous indignation spanning nearly four decades.
And all because the second viscount’s heir had defied the expectations of his father and Society to marry his mistress.
“What you need is a wealthy bride.” Max gestured to Miss Price with his riding crop.
“I take it Miss Price is poised to inherit her grandfather’s sheep empire?”
“And bounties from dozens of ships Captain Price boarded during his years at sea,” Max replied. “It’s said there’s treasure buried all over the estate. And all of it just waiting to be unearthed by the man lucky enough to win her hand.”
Miss Price’s attention was snared by something or someone across the room. As if pulled by gravity, all of the ladies turned to watch the Earl of Dunaway stroll into the ballroom. Lagging just behind the randy old goat was a disheveled miss young enough to be his daughter and old enough to know better than to tangle with a lecher of notorious reputation.
“Be careful you don’t end up like Dunaway,” Max said with surprising venom. “Husband to an heiress whose fortune you’ve whittled away to nothing, and father to five daughters you shame on a daily basis.”
“Dunaway’s daughters don’t seem the least bit shamed,” Phin replied as the ladies swarmed their father, all smiles and good cheer. “In fact, they appear quite pleased by his attention.”
“Don’t be fooled. There isn’t a one of them he wouldn
’t scheme to sell off to the highest bidder, and well they know it.”
“It’s simply the way of things,” Phin replied absently, not the least bit interested in Dunaway’s schemes to marry off his daughters. “Are you certain Miss O’Connell hasn’t a fortune buried somewhere?”
“Not so much as ten pounds, buried or otherwise.”
“That is a shame,” Phin murmured as Miss O’Connell stepped back from the hoopla surrounding Lord Dunaway and his daughters. “Still, she is a beautiful woman who deserves better than to be tupped by Lord Marchant. Do an old friend a good turn and make the introductions.”
“I’ll do you one better.” Max raised his voice to be heard over the orchestra striking up the first chords of a melody. “I’ll introduce you to Miss Price.”
The first set of the evening was beginning, a quadrille if Phin wasn’t mistaken. Lord Dunaway escorted his youngest daughter—a troublesome bit of muslin in the making, if rumors were to be believed—to the floor to lead the dancing. Ladies and gentlemen swarmed about in search of their prescribed partners, forcing Phin and Max to sidle around a matron towing her daughter along in her wake. They sidestepped a couple dashing forward to get a good spot from which to propel themselves into the melee when the dancing opened up to include one and all. When three young ladies rushed forward, plowing right between them, the two gentlemen had no choice but to separate.
Phin kept his gaze on the huddle of five women crowned with blonde hair, ranging from Lady Malleville’s tawny, cropped curls to Miss O’Connell’s flaxen tresses braided and coiled into a complicated coronet, until they were four, then three. Dodging a matron with wilted ostrich feathers fanning out from her powdered wig, he came up just to the left of the ladies.
Miss O’Connell slowly turned to face him, and Phin was struck with the notion she’d been anticipating his arrival, patiently waiting for him to put in an appearance which had never been in doubt.