“My lord? What do you say?” Lady C., the damnable meddlesome biddy, persisted.
What choice did he have? He washed his sandwich down with a healthy swig of tepid tea and gave her a smooth smile. “Of course, my lady. Where would you have us perform?”
Though he spoke to Lady Cosgrove, he slanted a glance back at Cleo, who watched him with the hopeless expression of a woman flailing in a sea, about to be swept under by the tide. In fact, it was the very same expression she often wore before pleading a megrim, which he’d come to discover was her dramatic way of begging out of an indelicate situation. Oh no, he told her with his eyes, you and I are in this together, my dear.
“In the center of the drawing room, if you please,” Lady C. ordered with the air of a queen. “I should tell the company that, of course, the two of you will be portraying a portion of a scene from a play dear to my heart, Love’s Labour’s Lost. The countess is fair Rosaline and the marquis is Biron.”
He gave her a half bow, then crossed the room to retrieve his partner in mayhem. As he clapped a hand on Cleo’s elbow, he leaned into her and caught the delicious scent of lavender. Christ but he wanted to lick her everywhere. And instead, he had to spout Elizabethan nonsense like a simpering fop.
“Are you mad?” She frowned at him. “You haven’t an inkling as to your lines.”
Damned if she wasn’t right. Still, no need telling her that. It would make her ego insufferable. “Hush. We’ll muddle through it together.”
“We’ll make a spectacle of ourselves.”
Yes, very likely they would. But avoiding Lady Cosgrove’s offer would be akin to admitting they had never practiced their scene together at all. Since he’d already created a stupid scandal by tumbling with Ravenscroft, he couldn’t well cry off. It would instantly make all their time spent together suspect and with good reason. There was no alternative save dashing headlong into it together. Perhaps they’d be fortunate and no one would be familiar with the play. Damn, but he still recalled the soliloquy in Julius Caesar. Why couldn’t they have been given that scene?
He led Cleo to the center of the drawing room, too aware of the eyes trained on them, the hush that had fallen over the usually loquacious crowd. They smelled blood. Thornton placed Cleo before him, willed her to recall her lines even if he could not, and took a breath. The first line, at least, was easy enough.
“‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’” he asked, careful to keep his tone intimate yet allow it enough strength to carry.
A shutter closed over Cleo’s green eyes. She sent him a coy smile. “‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’”
Thornton stepped closer, the hem of her gown brushing his boot. He smelled lavender again, sweet and teasing in his nose. “‘I know you did.’”
Cleo withdrew from him, eyes snapping. “‘How needless was it then to ask the question!’”
“You must not be such a shrew,” he improvised, having forgotten most of the rest of the scene.
She frowned at him and he knew he’d been caught. “’Tis long of you that spur me with such questions.’”
“Your…” Damn it, his mind was as blank as a new sheet of paper.
“Do you mean to insult my wit?” Cleo asked, prompting him with her eyes and words.
He wanted to kiss her but knew he could not. Their acting could not go so far. “Indeed, dear lady. ‘Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast.’” He paused for effect, then stepped closer to her again. “ ’twill tire.’”
Cleo spun away from him, presenting him with an opportunity to appreciate the elegant lines of her back. Her glorious black hair, he noted, had been flawlessly re-pinned even after the havoc he had wreaked upon it. “‘Not ’til it leaves the rider in the mire,’” she said archly.
The subtle tension of the scene was not lost on him. If possible, it made him want her more. It somehow mirrored their wordplay when alone and their seductive push away, pull back relationship. He’d never in his life been this overpowered by a woman.
Worse, he even recalled the bloody lines. “‘What time o’day?’”
She made a graceful quarter turn and gazed at him over her shoulder. “‘The hour that fools should ask.’”
She enjoyed delivering that line, the minx. He could tell. Already he knew her so well. Impossibly well, it seemed. Thornton took the steps forward she had taken in retreat, cupped her elbow and spun her back to face him. He employed more force than necessary, making her cling to his arms to keep her balance. Her lovely features betrayed her discomfiture.
“‘Now fair befall your mask,’” he ordered in triumph.
She attempted to extricate herself but he would not let her. “‘Fair falls the face it covers.’”
The next line was meant to taunt and sting—he knew it well. “‘And send you many lovers.’” Only me, his eyes told her. He would not share Cleo, especially not with her bastard of a husband, even were the man to appear suddenly in Lady C.’s entry hall.
He felt more than heard their audience titter. They adored the slightest hint of scandal, the quality. He could almost hear the whispers already beginning, even if Shakespeare himself had written the words and not Thornton.
“‘Amen,’” Cleo said with relish, pulling herself away from him and giving her head a defiant toss, “‘so you be none.’”
“‘Nay,’” he told her softly, then stopped, losing the rest of his line, the closing words of their blasted scene.
“Then be gone,” she directed him in a convincingly august voice.
There was a pregnant moment of silence before the company erupted in applause led by Lady Cosgrove and joined most reluctantly by Margot Chilton. He’d noticed the chit aiming her cap at him and was doing his best to dodge it.
“Well done my brave lambs of sacrifice,” their hostess crowed, bobbing forward, clapping enthusiastically all the while. “Well done indeed.”
Thornton met Cleo’s eyes, but she looked away. He bowed to her. She curtseyed. In that moment, they may have been utter strangers. The underlying emotion in their scene may not have existed. It was terribly surreal. He yearned to reach out to her. Instead, he turned and strode back to Jesse’s side. Let her be aloof now if she wanted. He knew what her ice became in his arms.
The scene left Cleo’s emotions in a ferocious muddle. Thornton had been intense and too near to her for her mind to function properly. She found it dreadfully unfair of him to push her so far before an audience, especially after his mother had only just announced the presence of the mysterious Miss Cuthbert in Thornton’s life.
Ravenscroft appeared readily available to make her other suitor pay. She deliberately walked past Thornton on her way to the earl, who looked pleased to be her unwitting dupe.
“Fetching display, my lady.” Ravenscroft’s voice was like warm honey sliding over her skin. “I thoroughly enjoyed your performance.”
“You are far too kind, I dare say.” Even so, she gave him her best smile. “But I must thank you just the same.”
“I am not ordinarily kind.” He winked at her. “However, my kindness can be bought.”
She laughed—too loudly if the censorious gazes cast in her direction were any indication. Thornton took instant notice. He caught her with a thunderous glare. No man could exude imperious arrogance like Alexander de Vere.
“How do you propose I buy it?” she teased.
“What sort of currency have you in mind?” Ravenscroft’s grin was wicked.
“Not the sort you have in mind.”
Thornton’s dark voice interrupted their tête-à-tête. He grabbed her arm and drew her to him. “Excuse us, Ravenscroft.”
Ravenscroft’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “Of course.”
“I apologize,” Cleo murmured. “We can continue our conversation later, I hope?”
Thornton dragged her away without waiting for the earl’s response. Lady Cosgrove announced that the next scene would begin after the servants cleared away the te
a and sandwiches, but neither Cleo nor Thornton paid her much heed.
He did not release his hold on her until they were well removed from Ravenscroft. Thornton held himself stiffly, jaw working with fierce determination. She knew he would not speak until he had harnessed his temper. The anticipation was worse, Cleo feared, than an outright row. She had been deliberate in her actions and he was now all too deliberate in his response.
“What are you about, madam?” he ground out so lowly it was a wonder she had not misheard.
“I was merely enhancing my acquaintance with the earl.” She pinned a sweet smile to her lips as they passed Lady Grimsby whose cunning, fox-like ears were perked and whose sharp nose trembled with repressed malice. “Is not Lady Grimsby looking well this evening?” she asked in a voice designed to carry to that lady herself. “Yellow complements auburn hair in a most lovely manner, I find.”
“Do not think to change the subject.” He neatly guided her away from Lady Grimsby. “I’ve seen more attractive lead mules on a farmer’s plow. No amount of yellow can alter ugliness.”
“You’re harsh.” She sniffed and turned her head away from him so that he had no recourse but to stare at her Bridget-repaired coif.
“Have I not reason to be?”
“I think not, my lord.” She stopped near a potted palm and made the mistake of glancing back at him. “I fear I have yet another megrim.”
His eyes burned into hers. He gripped her elbow, his fingers punishing. “My lady, I fear you are a damn liar. I dare say you’ve never had a megrim in your life, though you claim them often enough.”
How dare he be rude enough to call attention to her artful avoidance of conflict? Did he have such few dealings with ladies that he didn’t realize feigning megrims was a lady’s prerogative? His dexterity with undergarments would certainly suggest otherwise.
“Let me go, you brute. Someone will see.” Cleo cast a frantic glance about the room, but its occupants all appeared to be engaged in some manner of gaiety or another in the wake of Lady C.’s announcement. She had quite been forgotten, as had Thornton. Margot Chilton had turned her wiles upon Mr. Whitney, hedging her bets in case of lowered expectations. Wise girl, though Cleo thought the American far too handsome a man for the likes of Margot Chilton. Even the dowager was, for a moment, impossibly allowing the drunkard Lord Chilton, returned with whiskey in hand, to flummox her into a heated debate of some sort.
No one to come to her rescue. Drat. Thornton was glaring at her with an expression that made her insides wilt.
He lowered his head, bringing their faces inappropriately close. “I’ll restrain you if need be. God knows that like any good mare, women need a guiding hand.”
She gasped. “Your nerve astounds me, sir.”
“As does your complete lack of grace after the time we shared together mere hours ago!”
“Who is she?” she demanded, no longer able to pretend the mere mentioning of that woman’s name had not shattered the fragile porcelain of her good mood.
Thornton raised a brow, at his most imperious. “What?”
“This Miss Cuthbert person. Who is she?”
He did not answer at once, but took his time working his jaw as if in preparation for the explanation to come. Chagrined was the term she’d apply to his expression. “This is neither the time nor the place for such a discussion.”
True, they were in a room filled with many people, but they stood on the back fringes where they could easily affect the appearance of listening without having to do so. No one stood nearby thanks to the accommodating size of Lady Cosgrove’s drawing room.
“I find that I do not wish to wait,” she informed him coolly. “You’ll tell me now.”
He struggled with her demand before finally biting out, “Miss Cuthbert is my expected betrothed.”
She exhaled. It was as she feared. “Expected?”
“Nothing is certain, Cleopatra.”
“Carrying on a dalliance whilst you’ve an expected betrothed waiting somewhere seems certain enough to me. Would you not characterize it as such?”
“I would not,” he began lowly, “call you and I a dalliance, Cleo. Nor, I hope, would you. But neither can I escape that I am a man before you with a past behind him. Clearly, I could not have anticipated what would pass between us. In truth, I did not even know you planned to attend.”
“Yet you could have easily avoided what passed between us by being a man of honor and not pursuing me at all,” she pointed out.
“And you could have been a woman of honor by remaining true to your husband,” he retorted.
“Lower your voice.” She kept her eyes trained on the center of the room where Margot Chilton and the Duke of Claridge had taken their places to enact their scene. “That was cruel and you know it.”
“Forgive me.” His hand gave hers a surreptitious brush for a breath. “I am not the only one deserving of blame. I should not have brought Scarbrough into the matter just as you should not have brought Miss Cuthbert into it.”
“If I recall correctly, your mother managed that feat on her own.”
“To be fair, my mother dropped Miss Cuthbert’s name because she is so intent upon the match and she fears you,” he whispered.
She glanced at him. “Why should she fear me? I have no claim on you. This entire argument has only served to prove as much.”
Thornton’s eyes darkened with intensity. “You have every claim on me, Cleopatra.”
“You must not call me that,” she said, shaken by his statement. “Everyone calls me Cleo.”
A smile twitched at his sulky lips. “You listen better when I use your full name.”
Did he think to manage her completely? She sniffed again. “You are an insufferable man.”
“You tell me so on a regular basis.”
“It’s very improving to hear one’s faults. Perhaps I will help to tame your ego.”
“You have already quashed it mightily, my dear. Trod on it any more and it shall cease to exist.”
“I’m not as bad as you imply,” she huffed. But perhaps she could be a trifle of an overwhelming personality at times. She could admit it to herself, but never to Thornton. “Margot Chilton is stammering over her lines. Hush now. I wish to listen to her make a fool of herself, as it will make me exceedingly happy.”
“You are every bit as bad,” he whispered into her ear. He pressed his palm to the flat of her back for just a moment.
“You’re worse.”
It was an intimate gesture, deceptively casual and fleeting, but she felt it to her core. She had an ill feeling that, like Margot’s attempt at being an actress, their affaire would end badly. They watched the remainder of the sketches in silence.
Chapter Ten
Cleo avoided him for the next two days, which took her safely to the end of the first week of the house party. It was no easy feat, considering how determined Lady Cosgrove was to perpetually entertain the company. She cried off dinner. She allowed Ravenscroft to escort her everywhere. She took tea with him, went riding with him, made certain she was seated next to him for a performance of The Tempest. And she also made the vexing discovery that no matter how beautiful a man or how tempting a wit or how divine a flirt he may be, the earl did not make her feel even the smallest shred of passion Thornton aroused within her.
On the morning of the third day, Tia and Helen ambushed her in her chamber before she even rose from bed. Which was entirely anticipated but not wholly appreciated. Indeed, there was nothing like sleeping after tossing about half the night only to have said slumber rudely disrupted by daylight pricking her eyelids and the incessant chatter of her sisters piercing her ears.
“Do wake up, dearest.” Tia, already resplendent in a golden morning gown with English daisies embroidered on its impressive skirt, perched herself on the bed. “You can’t lie about all morning, you know.”
Cleo swatted her. “Of course I can, you ninny. I’m doing it now.”
“Helen, you k
now what this means. Fetch the water.”
“No water.” Cleo glared at her sisters through bleary eyes. “Who allowed you lot in here?”
“Bridget of course.” Helen, wearing a muted green gown that flattered her taller frame, seated herself on the other side of the bed. “She’s worried about you, as are we. You haven’t been yourself these past few days.”
Tia leaned forward, a wicked grin lighting her expressive face. “What Helen really means to say is that we simply must know whether or not Ravenscroft has ravished you yet.”
Cleo groaned. “Tia, you are incorrigible. Of course he hasn’t ravished me.”
“Precisely right.” Helen sent Tia an arch look. “I told you, did I not? Cleo’s heart isn’t involved with the earl. I have a suspicion it’s been reserved for someone else.”
“Truly, it is too early in the morning to discuss my personal affairs.” She frowned at her two sisters.
Tia grew pensive. “Oh dear. It’s as you feared, Helen.”
“Just so.” Helen nodded, examining Cleo with an intensity that made her want to pull the counterpane over her head. “Thornton has addled her wits.”
“I beg your pardon.” Cleo shifted into a sitting position. “Did not the two of you demand I engage in an affaire?”
“But Ravenscroft would have been a wiser candidate.” Tia tsked as she settled the voluminous fabric of her skirt with an artistic hand. “Thornton is not for you. Surely you see that, Cleo.”
She pressed a palm to her forehead. “My head understands that but my heart does not.”
“What has your heart to do with this?”
“You’ve gone and fallen in love with him, haven’t you?” Helen asked with quiet precision.
Tia blinked. “With Ravenscroft, do you mean? That’s terrible.”
“It’s horrible,” Cleo agreed, “but it’s not the earl.”
“Thornton.” Helen and Tia both spoke his name simultaneously, Helen’s tone knowing and Tia’s incredulous.
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