Her Perfect Gentleman: A Regency Romance Anthology
Page 69
“I will confess myself disappointed with the location of the bite.”
“Creighton!” Her admonishment lacked sincerity as she secretly agreed with her fiancé.
“However, the loss of a new shirt to someone as parsimonious as Brightworth assuages my pain.” He sat down on the arm of her chair.
“He wasn’t always that way.” She twisted Roger Faircloth’s wedding ring around and around on her finger. Sebastian didn’t need her to defend him. Not with his friends. “He was different as a child and later as a young man.”
“You knew him as a child, before his father died.”
“And after. My father had the living on the earl’s estate. Then after his mother died Lady Fitzhugh took him in and I did not see him until his cavalry unit was posted in the village.” She looked up at him. “He told you he…”
“Left you at the altar? Yes. Rattlepated rogue. Shall I horsewhip him for you?”
“Would you? I was heartbroken for at least a week.” Her cheeks ached with the gaiety of her smile. The high, silly tone she’d adopted shredded her throat. “It was simply a childish infatuation on both our parts. I loved his uniform far more than I ever loved him.”
“A narrow escape then.” Creighton stood and brushed his hands over his jacket.
“Indeed.” As awful as it made her, Minerva only wanted him to leave. Her ability to remain calm with so much turmoil on her plate had frayed to a single thread waving a white flag and warning of disaster. Through the door in the far corner of the room next to a lovely sideboard lay her bedchamber. Where she fully intended to chastise herself as the greatest fool in the history of women and then cry herself to sleep. If only the man she was about to marry would leave.
A large comforting hand covered hers. She’d not stopped twisting her ring. His touch sparked no passion. He had not meant it to, she realized.
“Did he tell you about his mother, Minerva?” Of all the things he might have said, this did not make even the last list in a line of lists. Until she saw Creighton’s face.
“Yes,” she barely whispered. “He told me.”
He raised her hand and kissed it, the most affectionate gesture he’d made in all the time they’d known each other. “I am glad. For his sake, I am glad.” He stood and drew a key from his pocket. “Speaking of mothers and sons. I liberated this from my mother’s chatelaine.”
She took it and touched her free hand to his arm. “Please don’t think Edward’s tantrums are on your account. He likes you very much.”
“And I him. Nothing happens in this house lest I know of it. I only play the indolent lord to spike my mother’s guns.”
“I suspected as much.”
“I spoke to Melghem.” A tic of an evil grin teased the side of his mouth.
“Oh dear.” Another conversation she’d pay dearly to have heard.
“Just so. I made it clear Edward will be a member of this family and as such, her master. He is to be treated with the same respect accorded myself.”
Minerva placed the key on the little table and folded her arms across her chest. “How did she take it?”
“Not well. Therefore, I explained, in as civil a manner as she is due, if I hear even a rumor of her mistreating or speaking ill of him again I will toss her out on her arse and without a character will be the least of her worries.”
Minerva covered her mouth to stay the bark of laughter such an image produced. “It is badly done of me to find joy at her misfortune.”
“Nonsense. You do not have joy enough in your life, Minerva. Then neither of us has had reason for it in a long while, have we?”
“No.” She could manage no more. He knew nothing of the true cause of her unhappiness, all of her own making. She knew only a little of his, but she feared none of it was his to own.
“Perhaps, if we are fortunate we will both find reason for joy in the future.” He bowed and turned to leave. “There is so little happiness to be found in our world, Minerva. When a chance for it is thrown into our paths, only a fool would let it get away.” He faced her once more. “Good night, my dear. Pleasant dreams.”
The soft click of the door snipped whatever force held her up, for Minerva collapsed like a broken marionette into the nearest chair. It had all been so simple. Find a gentleman of like mind, marry him, and secure a happy future for her son. A fortnight. A mere few weeks and everything she’d worked so hard to achieve since Roger’s death would be hers.
Now she had a fiancé making cryptic remarks, a son throwing tantrums and breaking up the furniture, a future mother-in-law who despised her, and that simply wasn’t enough. No, Fate had seen fit to drag the one man capable of decimating her every good intention with one kiss back into her life.
And what a kiss it had been. Every inch of her body still thrummed in anticipation of his next touch. She’d never in her life—
“No, no, no!” Minerva hefted herself out of the chair and marched to the desk. “There will be no more touching, kissing or even breathing in the same room.” She clawed a piece of foolscap from the drawer and snapped up a quill. She wrote so hard the nib nearly punctured the paper. “I will not allow you to do this to me again, you… you… you roguish, scoundrel, rake, rattlepate!”
The quill slid across the paper at the insistent knock on the door.
“If it is Lady Creighton, one of us is going to be stabbed in the eye with this quill,” Minerva muttered as she stomped to the door. “Who is it?”
“Me. Open the blasted door.”
Aphrodite stood on the threshold, the other nursery key dangling from her fingertips. The one Minerva dropped in the middle of kissing Sebastian.
“Were you talking to yourself?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I was.” Exactly where and when had Creighton’s sister found the key?
“Well, end the conversation. I want to talk to you about where you dropped this key and what you were doing when you dropped it.”
Queen Bess’s stars and garters.
Stealing Minerva: Chapter Seven
The gentlemen of England tended to face all enemies head-on with courage and even a dash of bravado when deemed necessary. However, when confronted by a battalion of marriage-minded mamas and their accomplishment-armed daughters in attendance of a wedding, no less, those same gentlemen exercised that age-old military tactic – retreat. Congregated in the safety of Creighton’s billiards room, the male contingent of the wedding guests had turned it into a combination of White’s and a seedy London gaming hell. The only thing missing was a bevy of soiled doves in silks and perfume to console the losers. The doors between the library and this room had been rolled back to create one large haven, but it didn’t help. The noise had exceeded deafening an hour ago.
Sebastian, seated in a plump armchair at the far end of the room, stared into the blue haze of cigar smoke and tried to decipher exactly where his seduction of Minerva Faircloth had gone so terrible awry. In the space of the first twenty-four hours he’d managed to give her such a disgust of him she promptly removed herself from any room he entered. At dinner, she made certain her seat was at the opposite end of the table from his. In direct conversation, a rare occurrence between them, she gave him two answers.
“Of course, Colonel.”
And…
“I don’t believe so, Colonel.”
Over the last several days he’d managed to seduce the son handily. He and Edward rode out every morning, accompanied by the curmudgeonly dog. Sebastian liked the boy. The dog, not so much. Minerva made certain to be anywhere but the nursery or the stables when Sebastian and Edward left or returned. If Creighton had hired him to win the son over he’d have his money in hand and be well on his way back to London.
At least there he would not be forced to watch Minerva and Creighton fielding pre-wedding congratulations together so amiably as to make Sebastian believe his friend truly intended to wed her. And it bothered him. Bothered him, hell. It made him furious. He awoke from dreams of that
one kiss ready to strangle his best friend with his perfectly tied neckcloth. He’d ground his teeth to powder each and every time Creighton put his hands on Minerva. Or kissed her cheek. The man had kissed her cheek so much in the last several days Sebastian did not know which was more chapped – Creighton’s licentious lips or the rose-petal soft curve of Minerva’s cheek.
Less than a week to the wedding and Sebastian had kissed the damned woman once and been handed his congé in the form of a note slipped under his door before the next day dawned. He drew the worn fragment of foolscap from his waistcoat pocket and ran his thumb over the broken seal. Should have tossed it in the fire and put Creighton Hall and this entire episode behind him.
Two thousand pounds was a great deal of money. He’d told himself so every morning when he drew the note from its hiding place and stuck it into his pocket. It had merely stung his pride, the note, and he never backed down from a challenge. Creighton was depending on him. These were the reasons he stayed and determined to seduce Minerva into crying off this engagement. Nothing more.
“Aha!” Fitzhugh snatched the note from Sebastian’s hand and flopped into the chair next to his to read it.
“Give me that.” Sebastian wrested it from him, folded it, and returned it to his pocket. “Don’t you have another pigeon to pluck?” He nodded towards the group of gentlemen milling about the billiards table.
“I’ve plucked them all.” Fitzhugh shook a silk purse heavy with coin in front of Sebastian’s face. “No one else will play me. Care to try your hand?”
“No thank you. I am here to win money. Not to lose it.” He waved over a footman to refill his whisky glass.
“Probably just as well.” Fitzhugh hoisted his empty brandy in the footman’s direction. “You’re not having much luck at anything if that note is any indication.”
“Merely regrouping.” He nodded his thanks at the footman and sipped his whisky.
“The devil with regrouping. You need a plan, and quick. Thanks, Robbie, you’re a saint among men.”
“As you say, Lord Fitzhugh.” Robbie topped off the brandy and placed a platter of crab cakes and sandwiches on the table between them. “Best eat those right quick. I hear her ladyship is planning an assault on this gathering if it doesn’t break up in an hour or so. Something about games and tea on the lawn.”
“God help us.” Fitzhugh threw a long leg over one arm of the chair and helped himself to a crab cake. “Do you have one?” he asked once Robbie moved on to the cadre of men playing whist at one of the library tables.
“One what?” Sebastian scanned the room in search of Creighton. How was he going to get Minerva alone with all of these people about the house and grounds? If this was Lady Creighton’s idea of a small wedding, he shuddered to think what a large one might look like. Every unshackled man with a title above baron had been invited. Already shopping for a husband for Creighton’s sister apparently.
“Why did the countess invite all of those unmarried girls and their mothers?” he mused aloud.
“Beg pardon?” Fitzhugh finished off his second crab cake and went for one of the roast beef sandwiches.
“I assume she invited the men for Lady Aphrodite to look them over. Why did she invite the girls?” Sebastian liberated the last crab cake from the platter and then put it back. He had not been hungry lately. A shame when all of this rich food was available and Creighton was footing the bill.
“Spares,” Fitzhugh mumbled around a large bite of beef and bread. “In case Mrs. Faircloth flees the field. I have no doubt should the lovely widow change her mind at the altar, Creighton’s mother will wrestle the wedding gown off her and cinch the first willing chit in line into it before the vicar can open his prayer book.”
“Won’t happen. I said I’d have him jilted before the wedding day dawned and I will.” Sebastian started at the vehemence of his own words. This was a business transaction. Best he remembered it.
“You’ve made a dashed poor showing of it so far, my friend.” Fitzhugh brushed the crumbs from his waistcoat and propped his feet on the scuffed tea table in front of them. “You could kidnap her like Leiston did Creighton’s first bride.”
“That was his second bride. The first one was spirited away by a highwayman.”
“Right. Wait. I thought Alwenbury got that one.”
“He was the highwayman. And I don’t intend to end up leg-shackled the way those two did.” The mere thought of having the care of another person, especially Minerva, broke him out in a cold sweat.
“Either one is a good plan. You don’t have to marry her. Take her away until the world knows she’s jilted our friend. No one will hold it against her. Especially not after the first two.” He downed the rest of his brandy. “Trouble is you don’t have anywhere to take her once you kidnap her.”
“I have a home.” Sebastian had a momentary vision of Minerva and her son in his home. He needed more whisky or less Fitzhugh. Probably both.
“Where?” Fitzhugh snorted. “That mausoleum you call a house?”
“A very comfortable house in Town just off Grosvenor Square. And it isn’t a mausoleum. It’s austere.”
“You have no furniture.” Fitzhugh scrunched down into his chair and sighed.
“I have a bed and a wardrobe.”
“You cannot entertain guests with a bed and a wardrobe.”
“Depends on the guest.”
“Lightskirt.”
“Sober sides.”
“Sober sides? Is that the best you can do, Brightworth?”
“Sorry. I was looking at Darcy. I don’t know why Creighton invited him.”
“Ah.”
“And there is a chaise lounge in my drawing room.”
“If that’s your preference, I am certain Creighton has a comfortable chaise about the place somewhere. Lure the lady there and have at it.”
“Fitzhugh, do shut up.” Something dark and hot flared at his friend’s careless suggestion. He spoke of Minerva as if she were a wanton to be shrived in a dark corner of some ballroom. “Have at it,” he muttered. One hand curled into a fist. The fingers of his other sought his waistcoat pocket.
Sebastian turned his head to meet Fitzhugh’s pointed stare. “What?”
“Nothing.” He sat up and propped his elbows on his knees. “And everything. You’re an idiot, you know.”
“Thank you.” Sebastian stretched his legs out and crossed his ankles.
“Think nothing of it.” He cleared his throat. “You could marry her, Brightworth. You’ve made your fortune. You need someone to look out for you. Marry her and save her from a man whose heart will always belong to another. You cannot continue to punish yourself for—”
Sebastian pushed out of his chair so abruptly the platter of food upended on the floor. The noise and smoke ensured none of their companions noticed a thing. Ever watchful, one of Creighton’s footmen glided over to clean it up.
“It appears Bottleby is making sport of Darcy again.” Fitzhugh slowly got to his feet and tugged his jacket into place.
“Someone is always making sport of Darcy.” Sebastian tucked the note deeper into his pocket.
Fitzhugh’s eyes flicked to that pocket and then back at Sebastian. “He makes it entirely too easy to do so.”
“Yes.” He swallowed hard and blinked against the smoke. “Are we sure it’s the cigars or has someone set that old horsehair settee on fire again?”
“I hope not. I plan to steal away later and nap there once I escape these games on the lawn. Rumor has it Darcy proposed to some chit and she turned him down. He’s here for Creighton’s advice on how to get the young lady to accept.”
“We’d better go save him.” Sebastian started towards the library alcove where Creighton sat, his boots propped on his desk and hands behind his head, regaling a small group of laughing gentlemen.
“Darcy or Creighton?” Fitzhugh lifted a brandy from a footman’s tray as they crossed the room.
By the time they waded through t
he knots of men scattered about Creighton’s impromptu club Darcy, Bottleby, and the others had moved to one of the whist tables.
“Well, Brightworth, how goes the campaign?” Creighton tossed each of them a cigar. “Am I jilted yet?”
“Don’t ask,” Fitzhugh warned.
“You will be,” Sebastian assured him. “I give you my word. You might try showing the lady a little less affection.” He hoped he imagined the irritable bite to his tone.
“I see.” He and Fitzhugh grinned.
“I don’t see what you two clodpates find so amusing.” Sebastian propped a hip on Creighton’s desk. “I, however, find it more than amusing your mother feels the need to recruit reinforcements to get you married. There must be a dozen eligible ladies in attendance.”
“You aren’t the one under siege.” Creighton snipped the end off of his cigar and lit it.
“Why haven’t you married one of them?” Fitzhugh asked quietly. “Not Mrs. Faircloth, but one of the others.”
Sebastian kicked him in the shins and shook his head.
“You know why.” Creighton’s face turned to stone. He dropped his feet to the floor and stood.
“It’s been so long,” Fitzhugh continued. “She may well be dead, Creighton. It has been—”
“Ten years,” Creighton snapped. “I know. In my head, I know.”
Sebastian did not like where this was going. “What else is there?”
Fitzhugh laughed and jerked a thumb at Sebastian. “And this is the man you’re paying to save you from the parson’s noose?”
“I’m doomed.” Creighton threw the back of his hand against his forehead dramatically.
It came to Sebastian. All of these lovely ladies here in the hope of snatching an earl from the vicar’s daughter. He had an idea. A mad one, but it was better than nothing. Not much better, but better.
“Let’s join the ladies, you two. I’ve got a plan.” He grabbed Fitzhugh’s arm and dragged him towards the French windows that opened onto the terrace.
“You recall, Creighton, every time he says he has a plan we end up either sent down from school or shot at or both.”