Dangerous Alliance

by Jennieke Cohen

  She looked up to catch his eye.

  “Would you be so kind as to introduce me to some of your acquaintances?”

  She laughed. “Oh, Tom! Is that all? You made me think you needed something quite impossible. Of course I shall.”

  “Thank you. Having been away so long—” He exhaled and nodded at her. “Thank you.” His light brown gaze captured hers with its sincerity.

  She looked away. His variability puzzled her.

  Then it struck her. This must be why he’d sought her out. “Don’t you have any acquaintances present?”

  He led her around the edge of the ballroom. “You, Lady Oakbridge, Lord Dain, and our hostess are the only people here with whom I am acquainted.”

  “I see.” Vicky frowned. But why had he come to the ball alone? Charles or his mother should have accompanied him, especially if he needed to make new acquaintances.

  “Did the countess and Charles accompany you to Town?”

  He cleared his throat. “My mother stayed in the country. Charles was unexpectedly . . . detained this evening.”

  Vicky nodded, biting her lower lip. “Clearly, you didn’t care to ask Dain or my mother, but what of the duchess?”

  “She was”—he paused—“busy.” He stared straight ahead as he said it. He couldn’t even be bothered to look at her.

  She straightened to her full height. “So you needed not a dance, but my help.”

  He caught her eye. “Yes. Very much. If you’d be so kind.” The authenticity in his voice partially melted through her anger.

  Very well, perhaps a dash more than partially. “Of course.” She cleared her throat, telling herself Althea would have done the same had she been here.

  “Again, I thank you,” he said, inclining his head with a smile that would have charmed her if it reached his eyes.

  She furrowed her brow, not at all certain she liked this new Tom. He was guarded, cautious, and it seemed not altogether honest.

  “Are you quite recovered after last week’s events?” he asked.

  She blinked, at first mistaking him to mean Althea. “Me? Ah. Yes, my head is much better.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it. I wrote your father a note, but I don’t believe he received it. Sir Aylward sent men and dogs to track the man, but they found no trace of him.”

  Vicky sighed, remembering the determination in the man’s eyes as he galloped straight toward her. “He didn’t seem likely to stay in the neighborhood.”

  Tom made a noise in his throat. “True.” Then he asked abruptly, “How do you know Dain?”

  She frowned at the question. “He is my brother-in-law.”

  Tom stopped midstride. He turned to face her. “He is Althea’s husband?”

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “My mother told me of her marriage, but I don’t recall her mentioning Dain’s name. When did they marry?”

  “Almost two years past.”

  Tom nodded with a creased brow. “Letters from England were scarce those years. The French intercepted a great deal.”

  Vicky shook her head. “It must have been so strange. I cannot imagine how you must have lived—”

  “Yes. Well, there’s no need to dwell on those old griefs now. We survived.”

  Vicky grimaced and didn’t press him further. There’d been no question of survival at Oakbridge. They’d grown extra crops to sell to the government for the soldiers abroad and been paid handsomely for their efforts. Life had continued much as it always had. Except Tom had been absent.

  “Well,” she said, trying to sound cheerful, “shall we introduce you to someone or do you plan to walk the fringes of the ballroom with me all evening?”

  “Lead the way, Lady Victoria.”

  She espied Mr. Carmichael speaking with two men. One of them, she recognized as the Viscount Axley. He was another friend of her parents. She steered Tom toward the group.

  She begged their pardon for interrupting their discourse, then proceeded to perform the proper introductions. Lord Axley greeted Tom warmly. Mr. Carmichael acknowledged Tom with a short nod. The third gentleman was the same man she’d seen speaking to Mr. Carmichael earlier. He had straight, dark hair and looked to be slightly younger than Mr. Carmichael.

  Mr. Carmichael spoke. “Lady Victoria, may I present the Honorable Rupert Silby, son of the Baron Scarborough?”

  She nodded and smiled.

  “Silby, this is Lady Victoria Aston.”

  “Lady Victoria,” Mr. Silby said, taking her hand and bowing over it, “it is a pleasure to meet you. I had the honor of making your mother’s acquaintance while you were dancing.”

  He must have asked her mother’s permission for the introduction. “Ah yes. How pleasant.” She introduced Mr. Silby to Tom.

  Both men inclined their heads. “I hear you were abroad for several years,” Silby said to Tom. “Where did you frequent?”

  “I was in the Swiss Confederation primarily. Solothurn. I returned to England last year.”

  “Ah, I was there on my grand tour,” Lord Axley said. “Though I must say I preferred Lucerne. By the time I crossed the Channel in the spring of ’98, I learned I’d just narrowly missed the French invasion.”

  “You were fortunate, sir,” Tom said with a serious nod.

  Silby and Axley plied Tom with more questions about his time abroad, seemingly fascinated by how the Swiss had lived with the French, and how anyone could stand being without steady English fare for so long. Tom weathered their questions with ease, though he spoke only in generalities. Vicky looked away, irritated he could speak of his life abroad with men he’d just met, yet not at all with her.

  She set her jaw. His behavior all led to one inexorable conclusion: he no longer wished to be anything other than acquaintances.

  Which was all the better for her. After tonight, she would think of him as a full-blown character from her past—one she’d remember with occasional fondness, but no regret. The way Emma Woodhouse thought of Frank Churchill.

  When Vicky looked up, she discovered that in contrast to everyone else, Mr. Carmichael’s dark eyes—just a shade or two lighter than black—focused not on Tom, but on her. She swallowed. The same crease she’d noticed earlier appeared between his brows. He broke eye contact and scanned the area behind her.

  She followed his gaze. Was he looking for Dain? A moment later, he caught her eye and smiled. Was he trying to tell her Dain had gone? If so, she liked him all the more. She smiled back and realized he had a small, thin scar above his left eyebrow.

  Worried she’d been staring, she looked away, turning her attention back to Tom and the tide of conversation. She peeked at Mr. Carmichael through her eyelashes. He watched her still. Her pulse quickened.

  “Have you been reading lately, Lady Victoria?” Mr. Carmichael said, changing the subject so abruptly, the other men glanced at him.

  “Er, yes,” she said as the focus shifted to her.

  “Lady Victoria is a great reader, I believe,” Mr. Carmichael said to the group. She wondered if Mr. Carmichael was teasing her again, but she detected no mirth in his face.

  “Really?” Lord Axley said.

  “Not a great reader,” Vicky said, remembering the few times she’d attempted to speak to gentlemen of books last season and the glazed expressions she’d always elicited. But her father had actually boasted of her knowledge of estate workings to Mr. Carmichael when he’d visited Oakbridge, and he hadn’t seemed at all disapproving. “I try to keep abreast of the latest tracts on animal husbandry, crop yields, and the most beneficial management strategies.” As she spoke, Lord Axley and Mr. Carmichael nodded and smiled. Tom remained still, and Mr. Silby’s eyes widened with what she took for disbelief. “But beyond that I mostly read novels.”

  “Ah, which are your favorites?” Lord Axley asked.

  “Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility,” Vicky pronounced without hesitation.

  “Ah, those of Miss Jane Austen, I believe,” Lord Axl
ey said. “I quite liked Emma, myself.”

  Vicky hadn’t understood Miss Austen’s identity to be public knowledge, yet she had dedicated Emma to the prince regent, so perhaps certain members of London society knew more of her than Vicky had realized.

  Vicky smiled at Lord Axley. It felt like her first genuine one of the evening. “Did you, Lord Axley?”

  “Very much, though I did think Mansfield Park a better novel,” he replied.

  Vicky nodded. Althea felt much the same as Lord Axley, and she and Althea had often debated the point.

  “Perhaps, but Elizabeth Bennet is surely the most delightful of Miss Austen’s heroines,” said Carmichael.

  Vicky’s eyes widened as she caught Mr. Carmichael’s gaze. “That is precisely what I believe.”

  He nodded as if that were obvious. “What say you, Silby?”

  “I’m not one for novels,” Mr. Silby replied, looking like he’d attended little to the conversation since it began.

  “Have you read them, Lord Halworth?” Lord Axley asked.

  Tom shook his head. “I’m afraid I haven’t yet had the opportunity. Are they at all like Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels?”

  Vicky shook her head. “Not at all.” Ann Radcliffe wrote sensational romances where the women were often the victims of terrible villains and rogues. “Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels are an exaggerated version of life—dark abbeys with skeletons in chests, trapdoors, abductions, assassins—those sorts of things don’t happen to real people. Miss Austen’s novels are much more analogous to life.”

  “Really?” Tom said.

  Vicky nodded. “Ladies with no dowries find wealthy husbands who cherish them. Worthy men act honorably. Life should be so tidy and end so happily.”

  Tom frowned slightly. Then he looked away, saying nothing.

  Vicky pressed her lips together and tried not to let his judgment anger her. What did he know? He hadn’t even read any of Miss Austen’s books!

  “And how do you know Lady Victoria, Lord Halworth?” Mr. Silby asked.

  Vicky glanced at Tom. He smiled as he pushed his right hand through his hair. The waves of his hair had been brushed sometime earlier in the evening, but now the brown locks fell over his forehead in disarray. In that at least, he had not changed.

  “Would you believe we grew up together, on neighboring estates?” Tom replied.

  “Indeed?” Silby said.

  “Indeed,” Tom affirmed. “We were inseparable even into our adolescence.”

  Vicky’s chest constricted. Everything was so different now.

  “That, I do not believe,” Silby pronounced. “When I was younger, I would have been ashamed to associate with a girl. Even one so lovely as Lady Victoria,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

  Carmichael clapped him on the arm. “Your loss, I am certain, Silby.”

  Axley laughed. “Quite right!”

  Silby shot Carmichael an annoyed look. Mr. Carmichael ignored him. Tom’s expression stayed neutral.

  Vicky pasted a tolerant smile on her face, even as the irony of Mr. Silby’s comment brought roses to her cheeks. That was precisely what had happened. Tom had turned his back on their friendship without a second thought, without even giving her an opportunity to fix it.

  She took a fortifying breath. Tom could go to the devil. She wasn’t here to think about him. She was here for Althea.

  “Gentlemen, if you will excuse me, I believe I see my friend. I really must say hello before she is claimed for every dance.” It was a feeble excuse. She had no friend in this room. Oh, she could speak to some of the young ladies who’d made their debut with her the previous year, but no one would be genuinely happy to see her. Perhaps if she spoke only of the newest fashions in gloves and refrained from offering opinions about whether feeding dairy cows turnips or swede yielded the best milk as she had at Lady Grembly’s ball last season, then—

  “You mustn’t run off just yet, Lady Victoria. Not before you agree to dance the next with me,” Lord Axley said with a smile. He was being kind. Lord Axley was a confirmed bachelor in his late thirties who rarely danced, so he must have seen her distress. How very Mr. Knightley of him.

  She smiled. “Of course, Lord Axley. I would be delighted.” Up on the balcony, musicians began the opening chords of a minuet. Lord Axley offered her his arm. She took it. This wasn’t turning out to be quite the successful evening she’d envisioned, but at least someone other than Tom had asked her for a dance, even if Lord Axley had only done so to be benevolent.

  As Lord Axley led her away from the group, she stole a brief glance at Tom out of the corner of her eye. He was speaking to Mr. Silby, asking whether he had attended Eton.

  Vicky shook her head. No, she didn’t think she liked this new Tom at all.

  But truly, that mattered little; she was here to keep her promise to Althea. She raised her chin and took her place across from Lord Axley in the line of dancers. She wouldn’t allow Tom or Dain or anyone else to get in her way.

  Chapter the Sixth

  Can such abominable pride as his, have ever done him good?

  —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

  In his peripheral vision, Tom watched Victoria stroll away on Lord Axley’s arm. He thanked his occasionally lucky stars that their encounter was over. Tom took a deep breath. He’d truly thought she would have grown up a little more by now. She was still very much like the girl he remembered who’d believed in fairy stories, except now she believed in the novels of some Miss Austen.

  He exhaled. But then, why would she have changed? Her idyllic life had not altered. The only transformation was that she was now of marriageable age.

  Of course, he was grateful to her for performing introductions and wished her well, but she belonged in his past along with the bad memories of his childhood; he could not allow history to distract him from his present purpose.

  Tom turned his attention back to Mr. Silby. Apparently, the fellow had gone to Harrow; they had no mutual friends Tom could discover. He struggled for a new topic. He had to convince Silby or Mr. Carmichael to introduce him to more people, but he didn’t feel right asking either of them after such a short acquaintance. Simultaneously pompous and awkward, Silby was proving difficult to converse with. And Carmichael had said no more than two sentences to Tom since Vicky had introduced them.

  Tom needed to speak with as many people as he could if he wanted to discover prospective financial backers for his hotel. But how was he to achieve that with these two?

  Then it came to him. “Would either of you care to repair to the card room?”

  “Better than dancing with debutantes, eh, Halworth?” Silby said.

  Tom wouldn’t have said so, but he smiled to be agreeable.

  “I’m surprised you do not wish to capitalize on your fame, Halworth,” Carmichael said without inflection. “The whole room was agog when you were announced.”

  “I am simply here attending to familial duty.”

  “And is performing introductions Lady Victoria’s duty?”

  “Not at all. She did me a kindness.” Not that it was any of his business.

  “Oh, of course. Because you were inseparable,” Carmichael continued.

  “As I said, Lady Victoria and I grew up together.” What was the fellow driving at?

  “And you now presume to use that connection to your advantage.”

  Tom started. He had every intention of leaving Vicky to her own devices, but he also had a perfect right to speak with her if he wished. For that matter, even if he wanted to revive their friendship, it wouldn’t be any of Carmichael’s affair.

  “Presume? If I’m not mistaken, it is no crime to converse with one’s neighbors, even if one has been abroad for an extended time.”

  Carmichael’s expression remained unyielding. “No one spoke of crimes. Yet some might consider taking advantage of a lady’s kind nature to be a breach of manly conduct.”

  Tom threw Silby a look, waiting for him to comment on Carmichael�
��s behavior, but Silby, it seemed, was content to watch the exchange. His eyes widened with interest.

  Tom looked back at Carmichael. His emotionless stare did not waver. The man comported himself with the hauteur of a royal duke. Unusual for an untitled gentleman.

  “One might place discourtesy in the same class,” Tom said evenly.

  Carmichael’s eyes narrowed.

  Tom set his jaw. Clearly he could expect no help for his hotel from either Carmichael or Silby. He’d repair to the card room alone and insinuate himself into a game. Men were always eager to meet someone ready to lose money. It would be a small price to pay.

  He favored Carmichael and Silby with a condescending nod worthy of his father and strode away without a backward glance.

  Chapter the Seventh

  There was no possibility of rest.

  —Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

  Late that night, Tom dragged himself up the steps of his town house and stumbled through the door with an exhausted sigh. He locked the front door, turned, and picked up the candlestick the butler had left for him on an entry table. Earlier that evening, he’d told the servants not to wait up for him.

  Shielding the candle from drafts, Tom stalked through the hall toward the library—the closest room that might not be ice-cold. The furniture, shrouded in white-and-gray dust sheets, stood like stationary specters, watching him from the fringes of the candlelight.

  God, how he hated this house. At least he had few childhood memories of the place. Only now that he knew how his father had used it for so many years did he find the house repulsive.

  He didn’t give a damn that it had been in the family for fifty years. In the morning, he would look for somewhere cheap to rent for the season and get an estimate on what this pile of bricks could bring.

  He shivered. It was colder in here than it was outdoors. He moved faster.

  When he finally reached the library, a light shone underneath the door. He yanked it open.

  Charles lay sprawled out in an armchair, his head lolling to one side as he snored, a book splayed open on his lap. He still wore his black evening clothes.