Taming Beauty

by Lynne Barron

  Jasper had a sudden recollection of Lilith worrying Meg wouldn’t make it from the hills she’d been gamboling across her entire life to the house without becoming lost. And here this woman worried not at all for her own daughter’s safety.

  “She took up residence with my mother in Bloomsbury for a time.” If Gwendolyn recognized Jasper’s poor manners or growing anger, she gave so sign of it. “But that was three or four years past, and she didn’t stay long. Oh, yes, I seem to recall she moved into one of Dun’s properties. But last I heard he’d sold the house, so I suppose Lilith must have relocated elsewhere.”

  Good God, the woman rivaled Dunaway for the honor of worst parent of the century.

  “You say your mother lives in Bloomsbury?” Jasper asked, already turning for the door.

  “Lilith would hardly move back in with Mother,” Gwendolyn said. “She has puritanical leanings, Lilith does, and Mother’s household is rather boisterous. Perhaps you ought to call upon the Duke of Cheltenham.”

  Jasper spun around and advanced two steps back into the tacky parlor.

  “His Grace and Lilith are fast friends,” Gwendolyn said, all wide-eyed innocence. “Kindred spirits, Mother says. The Duke might know where she’s gotten off to.”

  After a futile trip to Bloomsbury, only to discover Alabaster Sinclair had set off for Edinburgh with Miss Harry O’Connell the day before, Jasper reined in his mount in front of a stately gray-stoned mansion on The Strand.

  Of course the Duke of Cheltenham was not at home to the Cornish baron who presented himself attired in a dusty coat twelve years out of fashion, a wilted cravat and mud-spattered boots.

  Jasper considered pushing past the supercilious butler and the dozen footmen lurking in the dimly lit great hall, but he’d likely get lost in the mausoleum for hours and still not find the Duke of Cheltenham.

  With a muttered curse, he retreated down the steps and walked to the edge of the street.

  His horse gave a whinny in greeting, or more likely in despair. The poor old fellow had been ridden harder in the last two days than in the two years previously.

  He supposed he could walk his horse to a hotel somewhere nearby, get cleaned up and return in hopes His Grace would deign to allow him inside the hallowed halls of his home.

  Taking in his surroundings, he saw a huge gothic house on the corner with what appeared to be stone dragons and bats sprouting up along the rooftop. Jasper had read about the grotesque water spouts, he’d even seen paintings of them, but he couldn’t remember actually seeing a gargoyle up close.

  It wasn’t until he’d almost reached the baroque edifice that he realized there was a red-brick house tucked between the two behemoths. Fronted by a tidy garden of boxy hedgerows laid out in geometric formations and blooming roses of every imaginable color, the house was old and rundown but charming nonetheless.

  With a hoot of laughter, Jasper reached into his breast pocket for the torn and tattered piece of yellowing parchment he’d been carrying around for more than a fortnight.

  Charmed Crossing.

  When he’d found the deed beneath the clutter on his desk the day after Dunaway and his daughters had decamped from Breckenridge House, he’d suspected it to be some sort of joke. A parting shot from the lot of them to top off the humiliation of losing both his bride and his fortune.

  In a fit of self-righteous indignation fueled by half a bottle of whiskey, he’d very nearly tossed the deed into the fire. After all, what did he need with a ramshackle house slowly slipping into The Thames? It would likely cost more to shore up the house than it would fetch on the market.

  In the end, he’d tucked the deed into his pocket, determined to keep it with him always, a talisman against future foolishness.

  Only it hadn’t served as a talisman, but rather as a relentless reminder of the woman who’d waltzed into his world, blithely knocked it off its axis and left behind a crater the size of Cornwall where his heart had once resided.

  Thus this misbegotten journey to return the deed to a decrepit old house. If not to Dunaway himself, then to his beautiful, wicked, scheming daughter. It hardly mattered, so long as the memories of the woman went the same way as the worthless deed.

  Only, unless he was very much mistaken, the deed wasn’t worthless at all, and the house was the same derelict property two brothers had been fighting over for decades.

  And Jasper owned it, from the dormer windows poking out from the gabled roof, to the weathered timber and crumbling bricks, to the pink and white roses climbing the small portico.

  The door and all the windows were open, likely in deference to the unseasonably warm spring weather. Jasper took the pebbled path between two neat hedgerows at a clip and stepped into a narrow, dimly lit foyer. He turned to the open doorway on his left and poked his head inside to find a spacious, sunlit room decorated in shades of pale green and yellow. Surely it was the formal parlor, though it was empty of furniture but for a pianoforte carefully wrapped in bed covers.

  If he’d needed further proof he’d found Charmed Crossing, Jasper had only to look around at the organized chaos of a household preparing to vacate the premises.

  Boxes and crates were piled in the corners of the parlor. Paintings were stacked three and four deep around the perimeter of the room, the walls sporting dark patches where they’d once hung. A pyramid of trunks rose from the center of the room, tipping precariously to one side.

  He stepped into the parlor, carefully circling an open crate overflowing with straw and packed with various curios, from a silver candle stick to porcelain statuary to what appeared to be a collection of antique inkwells. From the back of the house, Jasper heard muted conversation and the clank of pots and pans. From above stairs came the unmistakable sound of a large piece of furniture being pushed, pulled or otherwise moved across the floor.

  A masculine chuckle drifted from across the hall, followed by heavy footfalls moving away at a quick, no-nonsense pace.

  Jasper followed the sounds back into the foyer in time to see a tall, stooped-shouldered older man dressed in butler’s garb push open a door and disappear on the other side.

  Intent upon catching up with the servant, Jasper walked past a pair of double doors thrown open to reveal a library. He glanced into the room only long enough to catch a glimpse of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves empty but for a few knick-knacks and a woman rooting through a box on the floor. Sunlight from the window at her back limned her slender form and gilded the sleek cap of close-cropped tawny tresses on her bent head.

  Halting mid-stride, his heart beating out a queer tattoo for no reason he could fathom, Jasper backtracked to the open doorway.

  Surely it was only a maid packing up the last of the books. Just a servant with the shortest hair he’d ever seen on a woman.

  Only it wasn’t a maid at all.

  Lilith Aberdeen knelt amid a miscellaneous assortment of bric-a-brac, her lavender skirts twisted around her legs to expose white stockings and scuffed gray half-boots, straw and crumpled news sheets littering the floor around her.

  “I know perfectly well I’m dithering again, Mr. Smithers.” She spoke without so much as glancing up, entirely unaware she’d set Jasper’s pulse to pounding. “It’s only an inkwell, and an ugly one at that. Ah, here it is.”

  Plucking a squat, tarnished bronze inkwell from the box, she settled on her heels, her gaze lowered to the object she held in her hands with an odd sort of reverence.

  Jasper took an unsteady step into the library, confusion and a vague sense of wonder mingling with the banked fury he’d been living with since she’d climbed into her father’s carriage two weeks past.

  “Whoever heard of an inkwell collection?” Lilith asked with a shake of her shorn head, wispy tendrils of hair fanning her forehead, curling behind her ear and just barely flirting with the soft angle of her jaw. “Leave it to Lord Dunaway to collect something so utterly ridiculous.”

  Unable to catch his breath, to marshal his thoughts into coher
ent words, Jasper remained mute while he drank in the sight of her lowered profile, the sweep of her dark lashes, the sculpted bones of her cheek, the pale skin of her exposed nape, the long graceful column of her neck and the twist of her lips.

  Jesus, that quirky little twist of her lips, not quite a smile though not truly a smirk. He realized he’d missed it, despaired of ever again seeing it or the woman who wore it with such aplomb.

  “I ought to sell the lot of them.” Lilith set the inkstand on the floor and swiped a hand across her brow. “On second thought, I’ll store them away in Alabaster’s attic with my things.”

  Jasper’s lips parted in preparation to speaking when her words hit him with the force of a cudgel. The paintings, the pianoforte, the motley assortment of bric-a-brac.

  No doubt the pyramid of trunks held all her possessions. Keepsakes and mementoes from her childhood, gifts from her grandmother and great-grandmother, perhaps from her sisters. Her entire life had been packed away in boxes and crates and trunks.

  Hell and damnation, the cottage situated on a scrap of swampland between two feuding brothers was Lilith’s home. And she’d sacrificed it to Dunaway’s skullduggery.

  On the heels of that thought came another, and another and another, unraveling like a heavy chain, each link a piece of the truth he’d been too bloody stupid to comprehend.

  Lilith in the churchyard fretting over his happiness, or lack thereof, should he remain dogged in his refusal to release Lady Priscilla from the misalliance of their impending marriage.

  Lilith halting a pall-mall match on the south lawn to vociferously defend his honor, actions, and choices at no little indignity to herself.

  Lilith on the moors, her skirts wrinkled and grass-stained, her chin lifted as she silently watched him stalk nearer, resignedly waiting for a tongue-lashing of a different sort altogether than the one he’d offered with his kisses.

  Lilith in the moonlit garden, her slender form little more than a silhouette in the darkness, demanding, nay begging, him to return to the house, to the path he’d foolishly chosen.

  Lilith straddling him on the edge of the bed, slowly loving him with eyes wide open as if to capture his image, to lock it away, a cherished memory she might bring forth long after their single stolen night came to an end.

  Lilith standing before him amidst the remnants of a bacchanal, the very picture of fearless determination but for the catch in her voice, the unruly curls cascading over her shoulders and the trembling of her hand as she waved that damn fan before her pale, perspiring face.

  There is a vast difference between one night of risk and a lifetime of ruin.

  Only there’d been no difference, not for Lilith. She’d risked one night of honest, unbridled passion and paid for the pleasure with the ruin of her life.

  He’d been too furious, too damn proud and stubborn to recognize the sacrifice, all of the sacrifices she’d offered up from the moment she’d stepped foot on his land. For her silly, spoiled sister. For her sorry excuse for a father.

  For a merciless, vengeful beast without enough sense to realize the curse of loneliness and isolation he’d brought down upon himself had been lifted. Charmed away by his love of this irreverent, passionate, contrary, complicated woman.

  Chapter 18

  “Lilith.”

  For a moment, an incremental snippet of time, Lilith fancied the gruff, almost soundless whisper to be nothing more than a breeze ruffling the curtains.

  Except the curtains—heavy velvet drapes unlikely to be ruffled by anything less than a typhoon—had been packed away with nearly everything else in the house.

  Even as her brain latched onto the logical thought as a drowning person might grasp the end of a fraying rope, Lilith’s heart began to race.

  Slowly, she turned her head, her gaze sweeping across the straw-littered floor to find a pair of mud-spattered boots planted just inside the library. There was nothing for it but to follow the boots up to the buff breeches tucked into them, to the dusty black coat hanging open over a gray waistcoat and wrinkled, unravelling cravat, to the jaw shadowed with whiskers noticeably lighter and redder than the auburn locks curling over broad shoulders.

  Lilith’s gaze stalled just there, on the ninth Baron Malleville’s chin, on the firm slash of his lips and the muscle ticking beneath the scruff on his jaw. She might have blamed the inability to lift her gaze higher on a fascination with the fiery whiskers which looked soft and silky, though likely they were prickly and rough. In truth, she was frightened by what she would see if she allowed herself to look higher, to meet the gray eyes that had haunted dreams.

  Nerves jangling, Lilith lifted a shaking hand to her neck, instinctively reaching for a wayward curl with which to fiddle. Only her curls had gone the way of her heart, hacked away and trampled beneath her feet in penance for her transgressions.

  “Lilith, my love.” Jasper’s lips formed the words, though she couldn’t hear them over the queer din in her ears, rather like the rush of the river after a thunderstorm.

  Still, the silent words jarred her, simultaneously unnerved and invigorated her.

  “Holy mother and all her minions.” Lilith scrambled to her feet, her skirts tangling around her and nearly tripping her. “What in blazes are you doing here?”

  Jasper strode across the room, his boot heels clicking on the warped old wood. Stopping near enough she might have touched him, had she a mind to do something so utterly absurd, he held out a creased and folded piece of parchment.

  Lilith stared at the deed to Charmed Crossing, her mind spinning in seven directions at once, until finally she reined in her chaotic thoughts enough to grasp the colossal miscalculation in her machinations. “Damn and blast. You likely passed Horace on the road in Wiltshire or Somerset.”

  “Horace?” Jasper’s fingers curled around the deed, mangling the paper.

  “His Grace, the Duke of Cheltenham.”

  “On his way to Cornwall, I take it.”

  “It needed only one day,” Lilith muttered. “One more day and I would have been gone—”

  “Gone where?” Jasper barked.

  Lilith shrugged, for she hadn’t any idea. “To Scotland, perhaps. Or maybe the Continent. It hardly matters where. The point is I never considered the possibility you’d make the journey to London, never even considered you might venture beyond the village. And now His Grace is likely nearing Breckenridge, Withy hot on his trail, and you are not there.”

  “Lilith.” Just that, just her name whispered on a low groan, had Lilith’s breath stalling in her chest, her pulse running rampant.

  “You’ll simply have to turn around and return to Cornwall.”

  “Lilith, look at me.”

  She lifted her gaze only so far as the top button of Jasper’s waistcoat. “His Grace isn’t the most patient of gentlemen, but I imagine he’ll wait a day or two for you to return. Withy will camp out on your front lawn until the cows come home and offer you an outrageous sum. But, if it’s all the same to you, would you mind terribly giving Horace a chance to outbid his brother?”

  “There isn’t going to be any bidding.”

  Lilith’s head snapped up, her gaze colliding with Jasper’s.

  Lord have mercy, the heat in his eyes singed her senses and left her feeling as if she’d been bludgeoned about the heart.

  “Charmed Crossing does not belong to me.”

  Curling her fingers around his wrist, she lifted his hand and gave it a little shake. “Of course it belongs to you. You’ve the deed right here in your hand.”

  No sooner had the words tripped off her lips, than Jasper released his grip on the parchment. The deed fluttered to the floor between them and he took hold of her hand, his work-roughened fingers clasping tight.

  Instinctively, Lilith attempted to tug free of his hold, to no avail. “You can toss it away, burn it or throw it in the river, but it won’t change the fact the property belongs to you. And two men with deep pockets and little sense are en route
to Breckenridge fully prepared to pay you an obscene sum to purchase it.”

  “I will not sell your dowry.”

  Lost in his pewter gaze, in the feel of his warm hand around hers, in the notion he might never release his hold on her, it took Lilith a moment to grasp his words, and when she did her breath left her on a strangled laugh. “Dowry? How in Hades did you come by the preposterous idea this rickety old house was my dowry?”

  “Your father told me as much the day your reinforcements arrived,” Jasper replied, his voice a low rumble. “Not ten seconds after he offered you up as an alternate bride.”

  “Dun offered…that lying…scheming…” Lilith spluttered in exasperation. “Why is it I’m surprised? He has proven himself a deceitful, manipulative rogue time and again and still I am surprised by his treachery.”

  “Treachery or not, Dunaway made the offer and gave over the deed, so I am honor-bound to marry you.”

  “Honestly, haven’t your cockeyed notions of honor gotten you into enough trouble?” Lilith yanked her hand free and stepped away from the temptation his words evoked. “Honor-bound to marry me, indeed.”

  “It isn’t only my honor at stake.” Jasper raked a hand through his hair, mussing the already tangled curls.

  “Your honor is not at stake, as Charmed Crossing was never my dowry and Dun had no right to dangle it, or me for that matter, before you.”

  “And yet, he did more than dangle the lure,” Jasper retorted. “He left the deed in my study for me to find and collect upon.”

  Exasperation giving way to aggravation, Lilith flung her hands in the air and stomped her foot. “For pity sake, I left the deed!”

  Jasper blinked in obvious surprise and took a single step toward Lilith.

  “I wagered Dun for it, bested him and left it for you.” Crikey, when would she learn not to let her temper get the better of her? Ah well, there was nothing for it but to brazen it out as if her life depended upon it. Or, better yet, Jasper’s life. “And before you get your smallclothes in a wad, it wasn’t a noble sacrifice by any stretch of the imagination. Dun would only have lost it again the next time he sat down at a card table.”