“Splendid,” Chloe said with a widening smile.
Alex winked at Imogen and took his leave. At last, he knew what could be a good deal worse than being tasked with the role of chaperone.
It would be serving as a chaperone to that tart-mouthed, fiery crimson-curled, young lady.
Chapter 4
The following afternoon, in the marble foyer of his brother’s home, Alex pulled out his watch fob and consulted the gold timepiece. She was late. Nearly thirty-minutes late, and he noted that particular detail not because he gave a jot about timeliness or any such nonsense, but rather, until he saw to his responsibility, then he was otherwise prevented from spending his day as he wished—at his faro tables with a delectable beauty his only desired company for the night.
With a silent curse, he glanced up the staircase for a hint of his sister, damning Gabriel to the devil for the thousandth time that day. Chaperone. On a trip to Bond Street. Alex shuddered. The devil was likely exacting his due for all the sinful deeds Alex had been guilty of through the years. Bedding widows and other lightskirts. The excessive wagering. Oh, he had little plan to cease his roguish ways, but he could appreciate that his brother sought to punish the badness out of him.
Hadn’t Gabriel realized their father had tried at that? Tried and failed. Alex gave his head a disgusted shake. He should be at Forbidden Pleasures, a crimson beauty with a lush mouth and blue eyes curled on his lap. The rapid flow of thoughts came to a jarring halt. “Where in hell did that come from?”
“Where did what come from, sir?” the old, grey-haired butler asked in nasal tones.
He spun about. “Bloody hell, Joseph, must you scare a man?”
The ghost of a smile played about the lips of the servant who’d been with their family since the old monster of a marquess had been alive and in power, beating his children and… “My apologies, sir.” He held out Alex’s cloak.
With a murmured “thanks”, Alex shrugged into it. He shot another look up the staircase just as his sister appeared. “I’m so very glad you are able to join me.”
Joseph grinned, coughing into his hand to hide the expression of amusement.
Either ignoring or failing to hear his droll words, his sister bounded down the steps with a lack of ladylike decorum that would have shocked their mother. Alex had ceased being shocked by anyone and anything when he’d been a child who’d felt the fury of his father’s fists.
“Alex,” she greeted with a smile, as a footman rushed over with her cloak. “I hope you were not waiting long.”
“I was.” For a shopping trip that he wanted nothing to do with. The only shops he visited were to select fine baubles for well-sated mistresses, not wherever it is unwed innocents like his sister visited.
Joseph pulled the door open.
As though she’d not heard the dry reproach in his words, Chloe sailed outside and made her way to the waiting carriage. “I’m quite looking forward to our trip shopping.”
“You’ve never enjoyed a trip to Bond Street,” he mumbled. Not as a small girl when he’d thought to do a brotherly good deed and take her to the Bond Street Bazaar and not when she’d been a lady who’d made her Come Out and he’d escorted her one last time for a bonnet. Or had it been a ribbon?
Chloe beamed and tugged on her gloves. “No, that is true.” With that odd statement, she continued on, prattling about their plans for the afternoon, and then the evening, and then tomorrow evening and…God help him. They reached the front of the carriage and she gave a set of directions to the driver. She resumed her blurred ramblings. “…First we shall collect Imogen and…”
He blinked. “What?” Alex shot a hand out and blocked his sister’s ascent into the black lacquer conveyance.
“We’re to visit Bond Street.” Her lips formed a small moue of displeasure. “Do you listen to nothing I say?” With a beleaguered sigh, she slipped under his arm and scrambled into the carriage sans assistance.
With a silent curse, he climbed in after her. “Not that particular detail, Chloe. The other part.” About the tart-mouthed, crimson-curled beauty.
Chloe wrinkled her brow. “Do you refer to Imogen? Yes. We are to collect her.” A beleaguered sigh she’d likely learned at their mama’s knee, escaped her. “Really, Alex, I swear you listen to nothing I say.”
“I’m fairly certain you’d not mentioned this particular detail,” he said impatiently. This, this he would remember. Particularly after their volatile exchange yesterday morning.
“I didn’t?”
“You did not.”
A footman closed the door behind them and then the driver snapped the reins. The carriage lurched forward.
Chloe lifted her shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. “Regardless, even you realize we simply cannot leave her to her family. That wouldn’t be at all something a friend would do.”
That is hardly proper discourse for a lady and a gentleman, and one who is practically a stranger. Considering the lady’s words and the fact that his skin still stung from her slap, there were no feelings of friendship on either of their parts. “No.” He’d been charged with chaperoning his sister. He’d not be tasked with the Lady Imogen and her disapproving eyes or frowning lips.
They are not always frowning. Sometimes they turn up in a seductive, enticing pull…
Chloe folded her arms mutinously across her chest. “Yes.”
He opened his mouth to call orders for the carriage to continue on directly to Bond Street, but an uncharacteristic somberness in his sister’s eyes stifled the words.
“Please, Alex. She cannot be alone. She is quite looking forward to this outing.” Of course. The trip to the shops at the famed shopping district had nothing to do with his pragmatic sister and everything to do with the young woman who’d snared and then lost a duke. “Surely you see she requires all the support she can find.”
You sir, are no friend…you are a stranger…
“It really is all rather tragic.” His sister’s lower lip trembled, hinting at the sadness she carried.
He shifted on the bench and resisted the urge to direct his eyes to the ceiling. “Tragic?”
“Her heart has been broken, Alex. She loved him.”
He snorted. “She loved his title.”
Chloe recoiled as though slapped. “How can you say that?”
“Rather easily,” he said with a bluntness that made her flinch. Guilt stirred, but he shoved it back. His sister’s naiveté and innocence would be the ruin of her if he weren’t careful. Perhaps he was the better chaperone for her, after all. His stodgy, stiff brother would fail to see the perils abounding throughout London for one such as Chloe.
“You are wrong, Alexander Nicholas Edgerton. She loved him and—”
“I thought you didn’t believe in love.” That jaded piece of his sister, another product of their father’s cruel influence.
She blinked “I don’t for myself, I do for others, and most especially for my dear friend. Surely that makes sense.”
Something twisted inside him. Other young ladies her age were to have starry hopes of love and happily-ever-afters and all other drivel Alex himself didn’t believe in. But damn it, he wanted it for his sister and loathed his dead father all the more for having robbed Chloe of her innocence. She leaned over and flicked his hand. “Do not change the subject, Alex. She loved him and it had nothing to do with his title.”
He snorted.
Chloe’s frown deepened. “Whenever did you become so cynical?”
“Too long ago to remember,” he said with a smile for his sister.
She pointed her eyes to the ceiling of the carriage then shifted her attention to the window, studiously ignoring him.
With her disapproval came blessed silence. The carriage continued to rattle along the cobbled London streets. Alex settled back in the comfortable, red velvet squabs. His sister believed he’d given her a sarcastic non-answer. Except his had been, mayhap, one of the most truthful pieces he’d imparted. The birth o
f his cynicism, as Chloe had called it, came somewhere between a birch rod upon his back as a child of seven and the day he’d left university. It had taken but his first ball to discover there was a whole host of ladies with a preference for the spare to the heir who brought no marriage-worthy connection.
The carriage rocked to a halt before a white, stucco townhouse. He yanked back the curtain. “Bloody wonderful,” he groaned. “Oomph. Will you please stop kicking me,” he bit out.
“Only if you cease being so foul.”
For all that was holy, this chaperone business was not worth his allowance. It was not. “What was that for?”
She fixed a glower on him. “Be nice.”
“I’m always nice,” he groused.
“No, you’re not.” Chloe jabbed her finger out. “You’re only charming to the scandalous ladies with their dampened gowns.” He choked. What did his sister know of scandalous ladies and dampened gowns? No, he really didn’t care to know. Chloe went on. “You’re improper and you wear a horribly scandalous grin. I’ll not have you be that way around Imogen.”
Well, then. Alex sat back, silenced by his younger sister. Of all the humbling…
“And furthermore—”
That furthermore went blessedly unfinished as the driver pulled open the carriage door.
Imogen accepted the servant’s hand and then their gazes locked. Something volatile and charged passed between them and, for an infinitesimal moment, everything slipped away, but for her. Her fathomless blue eyes formed wide circles and she remained there, one foot poised on the floor of the carriage, the other hanging out. “You.” Shock underscored that one word utterance.
Had she expected, Prinny himself? This lady who’d drag his sister along on a shopping trip? He folded his arms. “Tell me, my lady, do you intend to stand frozen like a Greek stone statue all afternoon or do you intend to join my sister on her shopping trip?” He winced as his sister kicked him again.
“I said be nice,” she hissed. Chloe shouldered him out of the way and motioned Imogen inside their brother’s extravagant, spacious landau. “Do forgive him,” Chloe said, her tone apologetic. “He is quite foul, you know.”
“Indeed,” the lady muttered under her breath.
Alex bristled and made room on the bench for Lady Tart-mouth.
Imogen hesitated and then claimed the seat on the bench alongside Chloe. Which, of course, made total, perfect, proper sense. And also filled him with an inexplicable disappointment.
Imogen quickly worked her gaze over the carriage. “Where is your brother?” she blurted.
“I am her brother,” he snapped before his sister could formulate a proper reply.
“I referred to her eldest brother.”
As in Gabriel, the favored Marquess of Waverly. It mattered not of the man’s character or principle, only the size of his pockets and the age of his title. His lip peeled back in a sneer. “Do you refer to the marquess?”
“Is there another?” She scratched her brow.
“There is not.” It would not have surprised Alex to discover his reprehensible father had sired a passel of brats on some outrageous woman or another. With your profligate ways, are you really very different? A needling voice taunted. Even though he’d taken care to not get his child upon a woman, he conducted himself in much the same way. The ugly, unpleasant truth fueled his ire. “And you’d, of course, prefer Waverly because of that marquess title.” He ignored Chloe’s sharp gasp.
“I’d prefer the marquess because he’s respectable.” Imogen gave him a pointed look. “And he is not a rogue.”
At her insolent tone, he narrowed his eyes. “And you are disappointed there is no marquess to work your charms upon.”
Imogen snorted. “If I possessed any charms worth mentioning, I’d have used them upon my own betrothed.” Her droll words cut into his anger, drove it back, and in the dark confines of the carriage, he peered at her. That had certainly not been the outraged reaction he’d sought to elicit from the lady.
Mouth agape, Chloe alternated her stare between them.
Alex set his jaw and settled back in his seat, not for the first time cursing Gabriel and his damned plans for Alex and his independence.
The scandal sheets had reported with some frequency on Lord Alex Edgerton. In all of those pieces she’d read with only barely-there interest, they’d labeled him a charming, affable, if cynical, rogue.
But for the cynical rogue part, Imogen saw very little charming or affable in the gentleman.
In the stilted quiet of the carriage, she studied him. With his unfashionably long, black hair and dark green, nearly black eyes, there was something dark and menacing about him. The papers also purported he was known to carry on with anyone from a scandalous widow to an unhappily wedded lady. And so for the dark, hard beauty of him, she’d never see anything more than a shameless cad who belonged with the ranks of the Montroses of the world. Why, she didn’t feel so much as the faintest stirring of interest in the gentleman. He may as well have been—Alex shifted his gaze to her, piercing her with the intensity of his stare.
Her heart sped up. Liar. She jerked her attention to the window. She’d noticed him. A good deal more than she should. A good deal more than was safe. Was any manner of interest in Lord Alex Edgerton safe?
The carriage rocked to a sudden halt. “We’re here,” Chloe said with a wide smile.
Relief warred with unease as Imogen faced the prospect of stepping out into Society once more, this time as the jilted bride, thrown over for her sister. The driver pulled the door open and helped Chloe out. Alex leaped down, unfurling his towering form to its full six-foot and some inches.
Then he reached his hand inside. She studied his long, olive-hued fingers. Unashamedly naked and desperately requiring gloves, and yet it would be the greatest shame for a scrap of fabric to shield the power of that—“Lady Imogen, do you intend to stand there all day gawking at my hand or…”
She slid her fingers into his. Alex wrapped his hand about hers. A heated charge seared through her gloves and burned her skin. Heart thudding loudly in her ears, she stumbled away from him, panicked.
“Come along then,” Chloe called out cheerily, motioning her ahead.
Imogen ducked her head and slipped past Alexander. There was an inherent weakness in her. There was no other accounting for this awareness of Lord Alex as a man. Not when the only details she should note of him were his shockingly ill-manners, and his hard smile, and his deliberate taunting…
Chloe stopped outside a milliner’s shop, eying the building a moment. “We shall begin here.” With a whir of skirts, she pulled the door open and hurried inside.
In a desperate bid for control, Imogen rushed after Chloe. As she stepped into the shop, Imogen’s skin prickled from the awareness of Alex’s stare trained on her person. An almost physical urge possessed her to steal one last glance at the chiseled perfection of his high cheeks, his noble brow. She gave her head a clearing shake and stepped deeper into the shop. Wetting her lips, she cast a quick glance about for gossiping ladies who’d delight in being the first to see the shamed Lady Imogen Moore out in Society once more.
The milliner rushed forward, a smile on the plump, older woman’s wrinkled cheeks. “May I be of assistance?”
An almost giddy relief filled her at being spared the ton’s undue notice. “No, thank you,” she murmured. There would be a good deal of cruel whispers and mocking stares to come later, but now she would steal these moments of solitude where she could.
As the woman assisted Chloe, Imogen wandered about the perimeter of the shop. She picked her way around the high, wood table, littered with fabrics. Ribbons hung down in a rainbow of color from the low ceiling and she trailed her fingers over the soft, satiny fripperies. The gossip would, of course, come. Likely the ton even now eagerly anticipated that first function attended by the Moore ladies; one now a beloved duchess, the other…well, her. Imogen’s stomach tightened with dread. She knew what Chloe
sought to do, sparing the unpleasant business of being with her own family and appreciated it. She truly did. But Chloe would not always be there and when she wasn’t—
A tall figure stepped into her path and she gasped. Lord Alex’s well-muscled frame prevented all forward movement. “Lord Alex,” she said, her heart quickening in that odd way. His thick, black lashes obscured his eyes, giving little indication to what the practiced rogue thought.
“You enjoy shopping.” There was a mocking edge to words that were more a statement than anything else.
“No, I quite detest it.” She fiddled with a scrap of blue-green, satin fabric upon the table, rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger. Alex followed the distracted movement with his hooded eyes. She’d not thought it possible but those thick, black-lashed eyes narrowed further. Unnerved, Imogen dropped the scrap.
“My sister indicated that this shopping trip was at your bequest.”
She’d hardly humble herself in giving him the likely truth of Chloe’s efforts. “To counter such a claim would require I call Chloe a liar. Which I will not do.” She made to step around him.
Alex blocked her path. She gritted her teeth and craned her neck back to meet his gaze. “Is there something else you’d require, Lord Alex?”
He passed his gaze over her face and that foolish organ in her chest thumped that annoying erratic rhythm. “Do you know, there is,” he said on a silken whisper. Move away. Instead, she remained fixed to the floor as Alex dipped his head. His breath fanned her lips, the faintest hint of mint and brandy filling her senses, intoxicating in its potency.
Imogen gripped the edge of the table wanting her words to come out cool and unaffected. “I-is there?” Instead, they emerged with such hesitancy, she damned him and his unflappable, roguish charm.
His hard lips turned up in a mirthless grin. “You really don’t like me, do you, sweet Imogen?”
It was not a matter of liking him or disliking him, but rather despising the havoc he’d wrought upon her world. She cleared her throat and cast a look about. Chloe and the milliner stood at the front of the shop engrossed in conversation. The older woman occasionally held up a strip of fabric and Chloe periodically shook her head.
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