To Charm a Naughty Countess

by Theresa Romain

  Caroline guessed he had little experience with women. As reticent, yet aroused as he had been during their dance, it could be no commonplace event for him to be alone with a woman. For a man so hungry for control, passion would be a devastating loss. Even so, Caroline wanted to wake it, to take that control for herself.

  But he was not hers to wake or control. He was in Augusta Meredith’s hands now, and soon Augusta might be in his hands.

  Oh, damn. Caroline couldn’t deny it anymore: she was jealous.

  Well, there was nothing to do but squelch the feeling. Michael had been quite frank about wanting Caroline’s help, but no more than that. And there was no sense in ruining his chances with another woman. Gossip and envy had been Caroline’s enemy eleven years ago. She would not befriend them now.

  Instead, she took care to adopt their opposite: graciousness. The young lady wanted a moonlit garden walk with secret paths? Very well.

  “My dear Augusta,” she broke the younger woman’s reverie. “His Grace has never been to Kettleburn House before. Would you show him the famous rose garden?”

  Augusta looked pleased, and Caroline had all the gratification of having done a small kindness against her own will. “That’s a wonderful idea, Caro. What do you say to it, Wyverne? Shall we take a turn through the garden?”

  “It would be my pleasure.” His voice sounded stiff, as though he had no idea to what he had agreed, no idea what pleasure was.

  Caroline affixed her brightest smile and waggled her fan at the pair. “Have a delightful time. Do let me know, Wyverne, if you come across a coquelicot carnation in the course of your botanical fumblings.”

  “Ha,” he said, and with one more hint of a smile, they had disappeared into the crowd.

  So. Her work was done, and she was no longer needed. If she had chosen well, she wouldn’t need to consult with the third marriage prospect she’d identified. Perhaps even now, the future Duchess of Wyverne was strolling with her duke through the tangled roses behind Kettleburn House.

  If so, they deserved each other, and that she did mean in all kindness. There was no joy in wishing people unhappiness.

  She only wished she could find a little happiness for herself.

  With seeming carelessness, she scanned the crowd for familiar faces, nodding whenever she locked eyes with a friend, acknowledging greetings with the perfect incline of her head, a graceful curve of lips. But no one sprang to her side to draw her into a deep conversation. No one called to her with any comment beyond a compliment on her appearance. She was surfeited with quantity yet wishing for a little more quality.

  Damn Michael. He had spoiled a perfectly lovely party. He’d jolted her awry with his response to Miss Meredith, and she couldn’t regain her footing.

  So it had always been with him.

  A voice in her ear recalled her to her surroundings. “Caro. You look ravishing tonight.”

  Reflexively, she turned in its direction. “Oh. Stratton.” Her smile vanished.

  Her late husband’s great-nephew and heir looked as fashionable as always. The high points of his cravat did little to hide the weakness of his chin, though, and the scented pomade in his light brown hair only accentuated his receding hairline.

  She tolerated a kiss on the hand, but it was impossible not to compare him to the man who had just left her behind. “What do you want from me, Stratton?”

  The earl offered her an oily smile. “Only a dance, dear Caro. Only a dance for now.” He gestured toward the couples assembling for a country set. “Shall we join them?”

  Inside, Caroline sighed. But there was little he could do to harass her in a crowded room. “Very well. But no proposals tonight, do you understand me? I simply cannot abide another.”

  He pressed a manicured hand to his heart. “How you wound me.”

  “I only wish I did,” she muttered. She would not soon forget how he had tried to manhandle her at the Applewood House ball. Such had ever been her fate when she floated out onto that terrace—though this time, Michael had been her savior rather than her ruin.

  Perhaps Stratton had heard her, for his eyes narrowed. “Wish what you will. Do you intend to dance with me, or shall you make a spectacle in the ballroom?”

  No. Not that. Dutifully, she laid her fingers on his arm and fell into step. “Very well, Stratton. Only stay in the middle of the crowd, and we’ll have a fair enough time. Shall we stand at the bottom of the set?”

  “Let’s go to the top, so everyone can see us.” He beamed at her, proud as if he was already pulling gold from her pockets.

  This was the way of her life, her world: through her money and manners, she left people happy. But did anyone think of her when she wasn’t around? Would anyone care for her if she had no fortune or a plain face?

  She had no means of testing this hypothesis, but she suspected the answer was no.

  She might as well dance with Stratton, after all. What else was left to her this evening?

  ***

  “This is the most notorious garden in London, Your Grace,” Miss Meredith whispered to Michael. Her hand was tucked into the crook of his arm, and as they walked, she kept brushing his arm with her undeniably splendid bosom.

  Michael didn’t mention it, of course. She would be embarrassed if she knew how she was displaying herself.

  The Kettleburn House garden was not large by the standards of London’s mansions, but it was intricately laid out. Already Miss Meredith had led him through a maze of pitted gravel paths, past sedgy undergrowth and tangled, spindly rosebushes. An occasional torch split the night; an occasional giggle too. They were not alone in taking a moonlit stroll, then.

  “What gives this place its notoriety?” Michael said.

  “Ah.” Miss Meredith raised herself on her toes to murmur in his ear. “It was born in scandal.”

  The full weight of her breasts plumped onto his forearm as she dropped back onto her heels. Despite his best intentions, he twitched at the contact. Caroline had prepared him to discuss the weather, not to be bombarded by breasts. He could not fathom the proper response.

  So he pretended that all was normal. “A scandal? How so?”

  “It used to be quite a showplace, as Lord Kettleburn had hired the best gardener in all England. But some say the gardener spent as much time cultivating her ladyship as he did his flowers, and so he was let go. No one else has been able to do a thing with the garden since.”

  Michael frowned. This reminded him too much of the long-stirring rumors about himself, so often seasoned with salacious undertones. Lust or madness, the subjects were irresistible to the beau monde’s gossips.

  “The place looks well enough,” he contradicted. “Though the cold weather cannot be helping the roses to bloom.” His own lands looked far worse, the dead vegetation rotted in boggy lowlands and stick-dry on the windswept higher ground.

  “But the scandal of it!” Miss Meredith sounded agitated. “The clandestine affair!”

  “It need not concern you,” Michael said. “No guilt can come by association with a location, only with a person.”

  Miss Meredith stood still for an instant, then dropped her fan from her free hand. “La! How clumsy of me.”

  She bent over and began to pat the ground. “Oh, mercy, where can it have got to?”

  Good God. Her round derriere was waggling in the air, and her generous bosom seemed about to spill from her bodice as she leaned over.

  The curvaceous Miss Meredith was pretty, but Michael was embarrassed on her behalf: she seemed unaware of the prurient way she displayed her body. Had she enough dignity to serve as his duchess?

  The headache decided to join them for this rose-garden interlude, but Michael willed it away. If Miss Meredith wished, she could roll all over the ground. She had money enough for them both, and so they might deal well together.

  He tr
ied a courtly maneuver. “Miss Meredith, do allow me.”

  He shut his eyes to accustom them to complete darkness, then crouched and opened them. Right away, he saw the dim outline of the ivory fan on the gravel path, snatched it up, and slapped it into Miss Meredith’s palm as he stood.

  “Oh. Ah. Thank you, Your Grace.” She looked at the fan for a long moment, then smiled up at him. It was a rather impish expression that reminded him of Caroline.

  The young lady dusted off her gloves and slid her hand into the crook of Michael’s arm again, leading him further into the winding garden. Her grasp was tighter than ever, her fingers tight as unsheathed claws. If young Miss Weatherby had been a kitten, Augusta Meredith was a tigress. She seemed not to know her own strength.

  After a few minutes of wordless crunching down the gravel paths, she spoke. “What brought you to London after so long away, Your Grace? I’ve lived here all my life, but I haven’t heard of you being here since… oh, I must have been a child at the time.”

  A child? Michael felt suddenly out of step as they walked on. Had he been away from London for a half a generation, then?

  Yes, so he had: eleven years. And if he had no one’s welfare to consider but his own, his absence would have continued indefinitely.

  He looked back to the house again, almost wishing to return to its churning, glittering, crowded rooms. Though he and Miss Meredith were alone, he felt somehow more exposed than he had in the ballroom. “I returned to London because I thought it time to find a bride.”

  “Ah.” Miss Meredith’s hand relaxed its grip by approximately twenty-five percent. When she spoke again, her soft coo had been replaced by clear, clipped tones. “I’m sorry, Your Grace. I didn’t know. It seems I’ve led you down the garden path.”

  He looked at the scrambled plants behind them, the shuffled pebbles of the path, the guttering torches that left them only half-enlightened. “Yes, of course you have. That was the purpose of our walk, after all.”

  “No, I mean…” Miss Meredith tugged her hand from his arm and wrapped it, like its twin, around the sticks of her fan. “I had a different purpose in inviting you outside.”

  Bewildered, Michael asked, “How so?”

  Miss Meredith shuffled her feet. She studied her fan and shrugged.

  She was reluctant to admit the truth, then? He ran through possible reasons. “Did you intend that I should compromise you? There is no need for such machinations. I am quite ready to propose at any time.”

  Miss Meredith laughed shakily. With her back to a torch, her face was thrown into unreadable shadow. “They warned me you were mad.”

  Michael ears rang as though she’d slapped him. “I beg your pardon.”

  “I intended quite the opposite of a proposal, Your Grace. I thought you might… oblige me.”

  “Oblige you in what manner? I have no money to—oh. Oh.”

  “Yes. Exactly. Oh.”

  “I— That is— You can’t possibly mean—” Every sentence Michael tried was impossible. He shook his head, hoping the world would rattle back into place.

  “Unmarried women don’t enjoy the pleasures men do,” she said. “But I want to. That is all.”

  “You could marry.” Michael squinted at her silhouette. “You could enjoy fleshly pleasures in a respectable way.”

  “If I married, I would lose control of my money.” She shook her head. “I can’t have that. I simply want to be… obliged.”

  “And why did you choose me for this singular honor?” He could not keep the ice from his voice. He had never obliged anyone in his life, and he was damn well not going to begin with a gaudy stranger in the outdoors.

  “Because you are an eccentric, Your Grace. It is well known that you care little for the rules of society. If anyone is willing to cast off propriety, it is surely someone like you. And you are quite a fine figure of a man, you know.”

  “I am most gratified to hear it,” Michael replied stiffly.

  She seemed at last to comprehend his displeasure, for she fell silent. Her arms folded in front of her body, then dropped to her side, then refolded.

  If she felt anything like he did, she had no idea what to say or do now. Surely they had plumbed the very depths of embarrassment. Nothing Caroline had taught him had prepared him for a situation such as this: a woman rejecting his respectable proposal and making him an indecent one.

  He didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh until the buttons popped off his waistcoat, or to sit and let his headache take full possession of his senses.

  So he did neither. Instead, he said the only thing he knew was always appropriate. “Deuced cold, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Miss Meredith said with admirable calm, stepping out of the torch’s shadow. “Shall we return to the house? I don’t suppose there’s any purpose to our remaining out here any longer.”

  Michael held out his arm to her. After a long pause, she took it. They retraced their steps in silence—on her side, maybe chastened or embarrassed. Michael could destroy her reputation if he wished to.

  Of course he would not. A reputation was a fragile thing; he would never damage a lady’s simply because she had the verve to admit what she wanted.

  In fact, he had a marvelous idea. One that might help this lascivious maiden and achieve a small victory of his own at the same time.

  “Miss Meredith,” he broke the taut silence. “Have you ever made the acquaintance of Lord Hart?”

  “N-no,” the young woman faltered.

  “I have been thinking of your stated aim, and I believe he’ll answer your purposes admirably. Shall we see if he is in attendance tonight?”

  She halted. “Is this a jest?”

  “Not at all. You have done me the honor of entrusting me with your confidence. I would like to assist you, though I cannot do so—ah, directly.”

  Help. Simply help. This was how Caroline had repaid his own clumsy proposal. He could do the same for her friend.

  And perhaps distract Caroline’s preferred admirer from her side too.

  Miss Meredith turned toward Kettleburn House, then nodded. “Very well. Thank you. I should be glad to make his acquaintance. But you need not concern yourself in the matter; I’ll ask our hostess to perform the introduction.”

  They resumed walking. For the first time this evening, the drumbeat in his head relaxed. Michael was not what Miss Meredith wanted, but he had made amends for that. And so her hand on his arm was simply a matter of courtesy; there was no further expectation that he would flirt and no chance that she might accept his hand.

  And that was all right. She was not who he wanted either. Though it was not her place to make amends for that.

  No, that was Caroline’s fault, and Caroline would answer for it.

  By unspoken agreement, they strode quickly back to the beaming house. Before they climbed the steps up to the stone terrace, Miss Meredith stopped Michael again. Light from the ballroom filtered down the steps, gilding her bright hair and pale skin.

  She was a vision; she just wasn’t his vision.

  “You’re quite kind, Your Grace.”

  “I am most gratified to hear it.” This time, he could speak the words with a smile.

  “I hope you find the lady you’re looking for.”

  “I hope you achieve your goal as well.” He bowed over her hand, then led her up to the terrace. With a curtsy of farewell, she returned to the house.

  Enjoying the slight breeze, Michael leaned against the balustrade and soaked in the quiet. The sense that he had done right by Miss Meredith was a small triumph.

  The sense that Caroline had not done right by him? That was thornier.

  He often felt as though society spoke a foreign language. In recent days, Caroline had served as his translator, putting the proper words in his mouth when he had none of his own. All in pursuit of a
goal: a wealthy wife.

  So why had she chosen to introduce him to Miss Meredith? Surely she had known about the young woman’s proclivities. She certainly knew of his own preferences, his reluctance to be touched or to trust anyone. Yet he had touched Caroline, kissed her, trusted her.

  Splat.

  A fat, cold raindrop slapped him on the cheek. He wiped it off, but another spattered his still-raised hand at once. With a suddenness familiar to all Englanders, rain began to pitter over the terrace, darkening the buff-colored stone in blotchy circles.

  It was refreshingly cold, damping the air’s acrid heaviness. But much as Michael wanted to stay and let it wash away his thoughts and clean his skin, he could not. He wore linen and wool and fine knit, and his elegant clothing would be ruined by the rain.

  How he had changed since he had come to London not quite three weeks ago. He was protective of his clothing. He was conscious enough of propriety to turn down an affaire. Maybe he really was mad.

  He actually managed a smile at the idea.

  He strode to the French doors and shoved them open. At once, the chilly drizzle was exchanged for the humid, close air of the Kettleburns’ ballroom.

  No matter. He would clear the air soon enough.

  Eleven

  Michael found Caroline sipping at a cup of punch, listening to an overweight gentleman of indeterminate years and liquor-red face holding forth about horses.

  “Y’see”—the man squelched a hiccup—“a chestnut has no get-up-an’-go. Everyone knows that. If it’s a fine trotter y’want, choose a bay every time.”

  “How fascinating. I had no inkling,” Caroline said over the edge of her cup. “I know it’s important to have a matched pair, but that’s the limit of my insight.”

  “A matched pair of bays.” The man hitched at his waistband and braces. “You’ll never go wrong with a bay. Deep through the chest, they are.” He leered at Caroline’s bosom as he spoke the final word.

  Michael had enough of this nonsense. “Pardon me, I need to borrow Lady Stratton. There is something particular I need to discuss with her.”