How to Sin Successfully (Rakes Beyond Redemption)

by Scott, Bronwyn

  Fielding looked appalled at the suggestion. ‘My staff are familiar with both methods of serving.’ She hadn’t meant to offend him with her enquiry. The earl’s staff was certainly larger than her uncle’s. Fielding had no need to raid the stables or the gardens for extra footmen for a night.

  Maura straightened her shoulders. ‘Very well, then. I can see you have everything under control. I shall look forward to hearing about the party in the morning.’

  An odd sense of sadness swept Maura as she headed for the stairs. It was nearly five o’clock. Guests would be arriving in two hours for a party she had spent two weeks planning in a whirlwind and she wouldn’t be there to see it, wouldn’t be there to protect it if there was a glitch. She’d not thought she’d feel so proprietary about the party or about its host. She knew it was for the best.

  She should be celebrating the fact that she’d been in London for a month and there’d not been one unnerving sign that her uncle was making enquiries. If she was being hunted, she hadn’t been found. It was still early in the game, though. A month didn’t mean he’d given up or that she’d successfully eluded him, but it was a step closer. The longer she remained at large, the harder it would be to find her.

  Trails grew cold and she’d done what she could to ensure hers would cool as rapidly as possible; she’d given a false name to the coaching inn when she’d registered and another false last name to Mrs Pendergast. She hoped the deception was enough.

  For now, all that mattered was that she was safe, safe to begin a new life.

  Marriage to Wildeham promised nothing but a life of misery and degradation. She couldn’t do it, not even to save her uncle. He would find a way to settle the debt without her.

  Maura popped into the nursery. Riordan and the children had returned earlier.

  She was surprised to see Riordan still with them, stretched out on the carpet playing...vingt-et-un? Couldn’t the man play a simple game of jacks?

  ‘Will, you will want to bet more here since you have an eleven and you’ll get one more card,’ Riordan coached, urging the boy to place a few more marbles in wager. Riordan flipped Will a card: a queen.

  ‘Vingt-et-un! I win,’ Will crowed, and caught sight of her. ‘Six, did you see that?’

  ‘I most certainly did.’ Maura smiled.

  Riordan rose and tugged at his waistcoat. ‘Vingt-et-un is good for the arithmetic skills, teaches quick addition.’ He might have looked a smidge guilty. Then again she might have imagined it because she wanted to.

  ‘As do regular flash cards,’ Maura replied evenly. ‘We have our own games.

  Cecilia, did you show Uncle Ree your countdown calendar?’

  ‘I did, and the pictures I drew, too.’ But Cecilia was too busy with her own questions to give the calendar another thought. ‘Did you see the new doll Uncle Ree brought me? Her name is Heather. She has real hair. Is it beautiful downstairs? What do the flowers look like?’

  Maura laughed, feeling her blue devils slip away in the wake of Cecilia’s exuberance. She gathered the little girl to her and sat down on the floor, describing the decorations. William inched closer, interested, too, in the hectic comings and goings that had dominated his house for the past two days, the game of vingt-et-un forgotten.

  ‘There are arrangements of blue forget-me-nots and daffodils on the table. A menu card trimmed in gilt with a little picture of the flowers all done in colour in the bottom corner is at everyone’s place. It must have taken hours to draw each of them—they were hand done, you know.’

  Cecilia sighed dramatically. ‘I would love to see one!’

  ‘The ladies might take them home as mementos,’ Maura told her. ‘But if there are any left I’ll ask Fielding to save one for you. There’s a favour for everyone at their place setting.’ Favours were usually reserved for balls, but Aunt Sophie had thought it would be a good touch. Maura had agreed, as long as they were tasteful and small, and in this case edible. ‘Gunter’s sent special chocolate crèmes with different flavours inside. They came in the most elegant white boxes and tied with ribbons to match the flowers. Some of the chocolates have raspberry filling, some almond, some—’

  ‘Miss Caulfield, there you are!’ Aunt Sophie burst into the nursery, aflutter and out of breath. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ Clearly an exaggeration since she’d been downstairs until a half-hour ago.

  Maura decided to forgo pointing out the obvious—where else would she be if she wasn’t in the nursery? ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘Not something, the worst thing! It’s a disaster all around!’ Maura exchanged a quick glance with Riordan. Given the source, ‘the worst’ could be anything from a riot in the streets to a broken plate in the kitchens.

  ‘It’s the Langleys.’ Aunt Sophie wrung her handkerchief nervously. ‘Their daughter, Susannah, has come down with hives from too many strawberries, if you can imagine, and now they can’t come. Really, it’s most inconsiderate to leave us three short for dinner at this late date. Where will I find three people?’

  ‘What my aunt means to say is that she’s a person short.’ Riordan rose, all six healthy feet plus of him, a complete juxtaposition to his flighty aunt. ‘We just need one to make an even dozen. We don’t have to have fourteen people to dinner.’

  ‘We might as well.’ Aunt Sophie sniffed. ‘It’s not that simple. Not just anyone will do. It must be a female or the table won’t be balanced and no decent female will come alone, which would put us at thirteen.’ She threw her hands up at this.

  ‘Thirteen! Just think of it, Chatham. It would be most unlucky.’

  He was smiling again, the moment past. And he was smiling at her. Maura read his thoughts instantaneously and took a step back as if to ward off the words that would come next. ‘No, I won’t do it.’ She tried to pre-empt the request. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ Riordan replied with that wicked grin of his that said he knew she would, that no protest in the world would overcome his request. ‘Don’t tell me you have nothing to wear. We both know you do.’ When he looked at her like that, she felt as if they were the only two people in the room, never mind Aunt Sophie who stood three feet away, her eyes darting between them, trying to follow a conversation that had apparently started without her.

  ‘It will be wonderful!’ Cecilia twirled a pirouette in excitement. ‘I will help you get dressed, Six. It will be like Cinderella going to the ball. You have to go, that’s all there is to it,’ she said firmly.

  ‘That settles it.’ Riordan folded his arms across his chest and smiled in satisfaction. ‘I’ll send a maid up to help if you like. I think one of the girls has some experience with hair.’

  ‘I’m the governess, it wouldn’t be seemly.’ Maura appealed to Aunt Sophie in a last effort to avoid the party, but Riordan swiftly overrode whatever his aunt might say.

  ‘If grooms can be footmen, governesses can be guests.’ His eyes twinkled with mischief. Drat Fielding for telling on her. ‘Hoisted by your own petard, I think the expression goes.’ A small private smile, far too intimate for employee and employer, hovered on his lips. ‘You’ll have to hurry if you want to be downstairs in two hours.’

  Maura couldn’t fight them both, although she knew she should, but with what ammunition? She could hardly say, ‘I can’t risk being seen in case any of my uncle’s friends recognise me and send me back to a marriage I would avoid at all costs.’ What would Riordan say to that? He’d probably send her back himself.

  Men always stuck together on such issues. There was little choice but to let Cecilia drag her off by the hand and dress for the party while butterflies of caution and excitement warred for supremacy in her stomach.

  *

  By the time the maid finished with her hair and Cecilia had clasped the pearls about her neck, excitement had won out, defeating caution with reason. Was her uncle even searching London for her? What were the odds that friends of his would be at a small dinner party for twelve? Twelve out of the th
ousands of people in town, for heaven’s sake. And if they were, would they recognise her?

  The young woman looking back at her in the mirror with her hair artfully arranged was far more sophisticated than the young girl who’d sat at dinners with her uncle’s family. Even more remote were the odds that someone at the party tonight would know an acquaintance of her uncle and connect them together when she was going under the name Caulfield.

  Odds. Perhaps she’d been under Riordan’s influence too long. She was starting to sound like young William. This was a gamble of sorts no matter what logic dictated, her caution reminded her, getting in one last jab as it slunk away defeated to the back corners of her mind. But it was a gamble she would win.

  Chances were indeed slim that one small dinner party would see her revealed.

  *

  Cecilia and William peeked through the spindles of the balustrade, watching the guests below as they passed through the hall and drifted to the drawing room.

  ‘We couldn’t have done better if we’d planned it ourselves,’ William congratulated.

  Cecilia agreed, still buoyed by the excitement of helping Six dress. ‘Six looks like a princess. Uncle Ree will see her and fall in love. I don’t doubt it will all be settled by morning.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Maura’s confidence grew with each course. This dinner party of twelve would not see her revealed. She could relax and enjoy the party, and she might have if it wasn’t for Riordan. He was staring at her again. Maura tried not to notice.

  Riordan needed to be careful lest the other girls feel slighted. This party was for them, after all. It wouldn’t serve for the host to spend the evening watching the governess. Maura wasn’t the only one who took note. From the glacial smile on Lady Helena’s face, she’d noticed, too. The daughters of marquises didn’t like being upstaged by governesses.

  Maura sipped from her wine glass, pinning her attention as best she could on the gentleman to her right, a Baron Hesperly, who had talked of nothing but fishing, with a passion she’d not imagined possible. But cold river trout was no match for the hot eyes that followed her every move. She was acutely aware Riordan knew every time she smiled politely or laughed softly at the baron’s remarks. Just as she was aware of Riordan’s charm reaching out and entangling Lady Helena in its intoxicating web.

  Was Lady Helena to be the one? Envy stabbed hard at Maura’s stomach. As classically lovely as a Greek statue and likely as cold, it was hard to picture Riordan’s liveliness and informality next to her. Lady Helena didn’t seem like the type to enjoy a picnic in the park complete with kites and boats and grass stains on skirts.

  None of the girls, in fact, seemed like the type to take on Riordan’s spontaneity and the exuberance of the children. Lady Audrey seemed hardly more than a child herself, Lady Marianne too compliant. Really, she had to stop. It was most uncharitable of her to sit at a table and mentally denigrate her fellow guests.

  ‘Do you like to fish, Miss Caulfield?’ the baron was asking.

  Maura smiled. ‘I like to eat fish.’

  Baron Hesperly laughed a little too loudly and slapped his leg. ‘Well said, Miss Caulfield.’

  The outburst drew her two stares from Riordan’s end of the table; one from a chilly pair of cat-green eyes belonging to Lady Helena, the other a pair of heated sapphires that made no secret of the fact he was staring. Again.

  *

  If he shot Hesperly, he’d have to shoot them all, Riordan thought rather morbidly, watching Maura charm the baron beside her. They all liked her. All the men, that is. He’d seen it before they’d come into dinner. Maura had circulated the drawing room discreetly with Aunt Sophie, talking to the guests.

  Where Sophie fussed over each gentleman in a fashion that hovered between obvious and annoying, Maura had been more subtle; a little smile here deployed at crucial times to show interest, a quizzing furrow of her brow there to encourage further elaboration on a topic, a light touch on a sleeve to help a nervous guest feel at home. She had a little trick for each of them to make them welcome, to make them feel important.

  Riordan signalled for another glass of wine, his eyes narrowing as he watched Baron Hesperly watch Maura. More precisely, as Hesperly watched Maura’s bosom. The gown revealed far too much of her, Riordan decided. The aquamarine confection was cut fashionably, no lower than the other ladies’ gowns at the table.

  Yet Maura’s clung to her curves and nipped at the waist in all the right places with impeccable detail, leaving everything and nothing to the imagination.

  A gentleman couldn’t help but notice, and since the moment of her arrival in the drawing room, several gentlemen present had noticed. He’d noticed them noticing her. Lucifer’s stones, he was getting foxed at his own party. What was this? His fifth glass of wine? Not counting the fortifying brandy he’d taken privately while dressing.

  To be fair, the gentlemen in question might have been noticing Maura’s fine conversation, or the way she gave them all of her attention when she listened to their

  stories—all of them boring, no doubt. But maybe, because he knew how gentlemen thought, they were thinking as he was. If so, only a few of those thoughts were about her elegant table manners and scintillating conversation.

  Most of his thoughts were about the way the simple strand of pearls lay at the base of her neck right where her pulse beat, or the way her hair resembled spun cinnamon in the light of the chandelier, or, most wickedly, how he’d like to push the delicate sleeves of that gown down off her shoulders and see for himself how those high, firm breasts of hers fit into his palms. Great. Now he was aroused and drunk.

  In an effort to sober up, Riordan took another serving of venison à la jardinière and studied the table. Aunt Sophie had assured him the four young ladies in attendance were highly sought after, veritable toasts of the Season.

  On his left was Lady Helena Bostwick, daughter of the Marquis of Southdowne.

  She’d come with her brother, the heir. A pretty, well-spoken blonde, Lady Helena seemed quite aware of her own consequence and eager to help others achieve that same level of awareness.

  Further down the table was Miss Ann Sussington, Hesperly’s daughter. She had luminous grey eyes and a sharp wit that apparently sparkled at her end of the table, or whenever the marquis’s son turned his attentions her way. But she’d been rather reserved when Riordan had spoken with her before dinner. There was Lady Audrey, whose best feature was her money, which accounted for all the attention she’d drawn early in the Season, and finally, at the far end, next to his aunt, Lady Marianne, who might have brilliant conversation if she could ever get a word in edgewise.

  All accounted for, his aunt had chosen well for his first foray into the marriage mart. Riordan recognised, too, it was something of a coup that he’d been able to gather such a fine collection all under one roof. He had no illusions as to why they’d all deigned to come. Pure curiosity had brought them to his table: curiosity about his brother’s death, curiosity about the legendary Riordan Barrett himself.

  ‘Legendary’ might not be quite the right word there. ‘Nefarious’ or ‘notorious’

  would be more apropos. When else could an upstanding girl see the notorious rake up close in a decent setting without risking her reputation? And, of course, there was the timing. The first throes of mourning were barely passed and he was giving a party. That had to spark a curiosity of its own.

  He knew from the rumours circulating in London’s ballrooms the party had confirmed to everyone that he meant to marry this Season and that created the subsequent dilemma. The Chatham earldom was generally held to be a prize.

  Parents of aspiring candidates hoping to be Chatham’s next countess had to weigh the pros and cons of marrying their daughters to it; the gem now came with the notorious Riordan Barrett attached as husband and the scandal of Elliott’s death.

  He could imagine the conversations whispered between mothers and fathers as they debated the merits of sending their gi
rls tonight.

  ‘How do you enjoy spending your leisure time, my lord?’ Lady Helena enquired, dragging his attentions back to his end of the table.

  ‘I haven’t had much free time lately,’ Riordan said tersely. It wasn’t the most helpful of replies since it gave Lady Helena very few places to move the discussion, but at the moment he was more interested in catching the snippets of Maura’s conversation. She was laughing at something the widowed Hesperly had said and Hesperly was far too fixated on what that laughter did to the rise and fall of Maura’s bodice.

  ‘When you do have time, though, how do you like to spend it? Surely you must have hobbies?’ Lady Helena pressed.

  ‘I paint.’ Maura was still laughing. Dammit all, he wasn’t holding this dinner party for her to find a husband. A mean and surprisingly jealous thought took hold. Did Maura want a husband? Surely she must, all women did, even governesses. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

  He was starting to see Baron Hesperly through her eyes. A governess might think him a bit of a catch: titled, with two grown children who didn’t need mothering, one of them his heir. The baron was in his late forties with hair that hadn’t entirely gone over to grey and a belly that hadn’t become a paunch. He was likely considered attractive for an older man. He had grey eyes like his daughter, and those eyes were thoughtful and kind. He seemed a gentle soul. He was what women would call a ‘comfortable lover’. Maura would need more than that in a man.

  ‘What do you paint?’ Lady Helena was still trying to have a conversation.

  Riordan thought about saying ‘nudes’, just to put her in her place.

  ‘Hard to say, I haven’t painted much recently.’

  ‘Do you have a favourite painter? I admire Turner’s work myself.’

  ‘Titian,’ Riordan said with sudden energy. He was trying to give the illusion of looking at Lady Helena while actually looking past her. ‘His paintings play with colour in the most extraordinary of ways. I spent hours studying them in Venice.’