She turned to Shelburn with a brilliant smile that Eliot knew was for his benefit. Perhaps she imagined that if he believed she’d already taken a new lover, he’d leave her alone.
Would he? The longer he was with Verena and Shelburn, the less he was convinced that she was on fire for the earl. Hard as she worked to give Eliot that impression.
For a start, he knew what Verena looked like when she craved a man. He sensed a fondness for Shelburn, who was an old friend, but nothing more. The crackle in the air was missing.
The air had crackled when he arrived this afternoon, no matter how she’d tried to send him away. That crackle had always been so obvious to him that he wondered why nobody else had ever picked up on their flaring attraction.
Call Eliot a naïve fool, but he didn’t think her quite lost to him yet.
“It’s a lovely afternoon,” she said and held her hand out to Shelburn, who took it and tucked it into his crooked elbow.
Shelburn’s glance was supercilious. Could he make it any more obvious that he didn’t rate Eliot as a rival? “Good luck with those horses, Colville. I look forward to seeing you put them through their paces in the park.”
He looked forward to Eliot making a complete cake of himself, rather, was the barely hidden message in the patronizing comment.
Eliot shortened the rein on his temper and bowed. “My lord. My lady.” He shot Verena a sharp look. “Perhaps another time I’ll find you at leisure, Lady Verena.”
“Perhaps,” she said with more of that infernal coolness that made him want to seize her and kiss the haughtiness from those full, red lips. See how high and mighty Shelburn felt then.
Eliot followed the couple outside. As he put on his hat – Merton hadn’t even taken his hat and topcoat, a signal that a long visit wasn’t encouraged – he saw that Tom was indeed struggling to restrain the grays.
The door shut behind him while Eliot lingered on the top step. He watched Shelburn hand Verena into a high-perch phaeton, drawn by two chestnuts much more disciplined than his cattle. Although right now, they caught the grays’ nerviness and sidled with unease in a footman’s hold.
As Verena took her seat, she hardly cast a glance at Eliot’s rig. Shelburn climbed up beside her and raised his whip with a flourish that Eliot felt was unnecessary. But then the villain had always been more flash than substance. A quality that never seemed to hamper his success with the ladies.
“Hold on, Tom. I’m here,” he called to the boy and ran down the stairs to leap into his curricle and take up the reins. Subject to a firm hand and the voice of authority, the horses soon settled.
“I’m sorry, my lord, but the nags wouldn’t pay no heed to me, once Lord Shelburn’s carriage arrived.”
“Never mind.” Eliot smiled at the lad who had come up from Gloucestershire with him. Tom Ball belonged to a large family that had served the Ridleys for generations. “I shouldn’t have left you alone with them so long.”
Tom looked relieved that he wasn’t about to cop a scolding. Shelburn’s carriage rolled past with Verena looking sternly ahead. In a strange way, Eliot found that reassuring. If he truly meant nothing to her, she wouldn’t try so hard to give him the heave-ho.
To his surprise, Shelburn touched the handle of his whip to his stylish beaver hat. “Well done, Colville. Your cattle looked ready to make a break.”
Eliot gritted his teeth, although he heard genuine admiration in the words, instead of the usual mocking insolence. He bowed with his own hint of insolence, then turned to his tiger. “Jump on, Tom. We’re off to the park to give these two beauties a run.”
With a cheeky grin, Tom obeyed. Eliot had hoped to leave Tom at Verena’s house, while he stole the chance for a private conversation. That wasn’t to be, sod it. But be damned if he was going to come out with his new pair, just to turn around and go home with his tail tucked between his legs.
He wanted to prove to Verena that he no longer cared if scandal attached to his name. No time like the present to launch his campaign.
Chapter 7
“That puffed-up buffoon handles the ribbons better than I thought he would,” Shelburn said. “Maybe those magnificent horses aren’t wasted on him after all. I feared he’d ruin them with plowman’s hands.”
“What did you say?” Verena was paying no attention whatsoever to her escort. Instead, she felt as though she contained a stormy ocean inside her. She hadn’t been alone with Eliot since he’d proposed in that horrid scene at the Lumsden ball. He still had the power to turn her world upside down.
She’d spent the last ten days, telling herself that she’d soon forget him. Ten awful days while her body hungered for his touch and she’d hardly slept. It was almost worse when she did sleep, because phantom memories of Eliot’s lovemaking tormented her dreams.
She’d decided that the best way to get over him was to avoid his company, which given that high society was one large village was more difficult than she’d prefer. And while she’d maneuvered not to dance with him or fall into conversation with him, the effort involved hadn’t done much to help her forget him. Nor had seeing that golden head across a crowded room night after night. She strove not to notice him, but striving was another thing that kept him uppermost in her thoughts. Every direction she looked, she was in trouble.
Even worse, he seemed to turn up at every event she attended. What on earth was Eliot up to? If he continued his pursuit, the talk would soon be all over Town. People might even wonder if something was going on between Lord Colville and Lady Verena.
Fate had an ironic sense of humor. When she and Eliot had been mad for each other and conducting a passionate clandestine affair, nobody in society had suspected a thing. Now that they were no longer involved, Eliot’s wayward behavior was sure to attract unwelcome attention. When wayward was a word that she’d never thought to apply to the viscount.
As if to underline his resolve to play a part in her life, the elegant yellow curricle passed them at a fast clip. Eliot looked uncharacteristically rakish with his visible ease with the reins and his high-crowned hat at an angle. She had to agree with him about one thing. She’d very much like the chance to test her skill at handling those grays. They were such sweet high steppers, they made Shelburn’s elegant chestnuts look like cart horses.
“Colville turns out to be quite the whip. Who would have thought the prig had it in him?”
Verena bit back the urge to stand up for Eliot. It was harder than it should have been. “It appears he has hidden talents,” she responded in what she prayed was a noncommittal tone.
The problem with Shelburn was that he’d known her since she was toddling. He’d been her first dance partner at Claremont Castle, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Horsham where she’d grown up. If she wasn’t careful, he was apt to see past her pretense of indifference to the handsome viscount.
“Indeed.” Shelburn stopped speaking to negotiate his way around a mail coach. By now, Eliot was a hundred yards ahead, weaving through the thick traffic with a deftness that she couldn’t help but admire. “In fact, it turns out that the saintly viscount is a man full of surprises. Including his presence at your house when I called this afternoon.”
“It doesn’t mean anything.” This was just what she feared. Curiosity was inevitable, and it made her want to box Eliot’s ears. “I’m not at all his sort of woman.”
When Shelburn studied her face, she prayed that she didn’t look as shifty as she felt. “I wouldn’t have said so, but perhaps I’m wrong.”
“Are you saying I’m unfit to associate with him?” she snapped, tightening her grip on the rail along the edge of the seat.
He cast her another curious glance. “Not at all.”
“But you suspect he thinks that I’m unfit to associate with him.”
“It’s clear that he doesn’t think that, if he called to invite you driving. In fact, I’m wondering if the fellow has his eye on you. It’s not the first time that he’s singled you out. He danced with
you at the Lumsden ball, before you two went off alone together.”
She shrugged, inwardly appalled at how closely Shelburn had been observing her. “We took the air. There’s no sin in that, is there?”
“Except it was as cold as a witch’s tit that night. Nobody was out on the terrace or escaping into the garden in search of privacy. And when I found you in the hallway, you were looking rather peaky. Did Lord Incorruptible make his move, Verena?”
Damn Shelburn and his sharp eyes and even sharper brain. Damn Eliot for ambushing her with his proposal at a ball, instead of somewhere private where she could hide her agitation from society’s busy tongues.
“You seem to be paying a little too much attention to what I do and who I do it with,” she said in a tight voice.
Despite his low laugh, his eyes remained watchful. “I have a brotherly interest, given that your actual brothers have washed their hands of you, the mealymouthed hypocrites. Hillary does nothing but chase opera dancers, while Eustace has a string of bastards from the mistress he’s kept all these years. And that’s as well as fathering six children on that poor downtrodden wife of his.”
“I don’t need looking after,” Verena said through stiff lips.
“You know, I’m not sure that’s true.” He paused as if waiting for an objection, but she didn’t respond.
To her relief, he went back to concentrating on his driving. The chestnuts were biddable beasts, or at least they were in Shelburn’s skilled hands. But the street was crowded with vehicles and pedestrians. Eliot’s skill in negotiating the throng while in charge of those frisky horses was doubly impressive. Because they’d never appeared together in public, Verena hadn’t realized that he was a first-class driver.
Once he’d cleared the snarl of carriages at Hyde Park Corner, Shelburn returned to the topic. To her annoyance. “Although the last man I’d ever expected to have to save you from is that epitome of rectitude, Eliot Ridley. You will tell me if he becomes a pest, won’t you?”
“You’re making too much of this,” Verena said.
“Am I?” Shelburn said in a musing tone without looking at her. “I’m not sure. There was a look in the paragon’s eyes that tells me he has plans for you. And when I teased him, he looked ready to murder me.”
Once again, she wanted to leap to Eliot’s defense when Shelburn belittled him. She needed to abandon her allegiance to her former lover. After all, Eliot Ridley now meant nothing to her. “That’s just because you were being impossible.”
“Perhaps. And perhaps the viscount suffered an attack of the green-eyed monster when he learned you were driving out with me and not with him.”
Eliot, Eliot, Eliot, what have you done?
It was becoming harder and harder to maintain her disinterested air. “You’re basing an awful lot of speculation on one dance a couple of weeks ago and an invitation to drive in the park, especially when his lordship took his dismissal in his stride.”
Which was a lie, but Shelburn didn’t need to know that.
Shelburn shook his head, keeping his attention on his horses. “Except that small amount is more than I ever imagined he’d do. He’s always so all-fired determined to keep a lilywhite reputation. Showing you any attention at all screams louder than another man taking off his clothes and dancing around naked in front of you.”
Verena forced a laugh and hoped it sounded more natural in Shelburn’s ears than it did in hers. “Goodness, I hope that’s not how my next lover intends to woo me.”
Shelburn didn’t laugh. “Speaking of lovers, you haven’t taken one in a donkey’s age. Are you reforming, Verena? Or has something been going on that you haven’t told your dear old chum Shelburn about?”
Oh, no. Verena’s heart plummeted into her stomach. If Shelburn started thinking too hard about all this, he’d winkle out every one of her secrets before they reached the park. “I vow, Shelburn, you make me sound like Messalina. I don’t have a new man in my bed every night. In fact, I sleep alone more often than not.” Always, in fact.
Shelburn’s expression grew serious as it rarely was. “I imagine after being married to George Gerard, that’s a relief.”
It was, but it wasn’t something that she wanted to talk about now. Or ever.
She’d done her best to hide the scars that her marriage had left behind. The thought of the world feeling sorry for her made her skin creep. But to her regret, Shelburn knew her too well to fall for the carefree widow act. “I choose my lovers. I lay down the rules they follow.”
Except for Eliot. Oh, he’d cooperated with any request she made, but from the first, he hadn’t fitted the pattern of her other paramours. That exceptional status continued. At the end of an affair, no other lover had left her unsettled and unhappy and second-guessing herself the way he did.
Right now, she wished to the devil that she’d never met him.
“I think that’s one of the reasons why you infuriate so many men. You act like they do.”
She shrugged. “Few women have my freedom.”
His next words dashed any hopes of moving on from the subject of her bed’s recent occupants. Or the lack of them. “But even when you’re between lovers, you’re on the hunt. I haven’t heard your name linked with any gentleman’s, since you sent Oscar Peary on his way and he fled to France to nurse his broken heart.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Believe me, it was. The fellow looked ready to throw himself into the Thames, the last time I saw him.”
Oscar had been a nice man and an enthusiastic lover. A little too enthusiastic. When she’d noticed signs that their association was becoming more than an amusing diversion for him, she’d ended it.
Why in heaven’s name hadn’t she seen that things tended the same way with Eliot? If she’d sent him off after a few delightful weeks, she wouldn’t be in this mess.
Now she paid the price for being greedy for more pleasure, more…Eliot.
“I’m sure Oscar’s having a perfectly enjoyable time in Paris and he’s forgotten me altogether.” She paused. “And saying I’m on the hunt doesn’t present a very flattering picture.”
Shelburn frowned at the horses. “It’s more flattering than you imagine. I always think of you as Diana the huntress.”
She responded with a derisive snort. “Diana was a virgin goddess.”
When he glanced at her, Shelburn still looked serious. “I know it sounds mad, but no matter what happens to you, no matter what you do, something about you remains pure and untouched.”
The thought was so absurd that she broke into a peal of laughter. Quite natural this time. When she’d caught her breath, she curled her fingers around Shelburn’s elbow. “In that case, six months without a lover should suit me down to the ground.”
He still didn’t smile, and the look he sent her banished any further desire to laugh. “If you say so, Verena.”
***
By the time they joined the crowd flooding into Hyde Park for the fashionable hour, Shelburn had recovered from his uncharacteristic urge to delve into the secret corners of her soul. Verena discovered that Eliot’s new team of horses and stylish carriage were subject to much admiring comment. The people she met were agog at this new dashing version of proper Viscount Colville.
Everything in the world seemed to conspire to keep her focused on the scoundrel.
Except if she was honest with herself – and she usually was – she thought of him every five minutes anyway.
She told herself not to look at him, but couldn’t help herself. He’d stopped to talk to the Tierneys and then the Bilsons, who were strolling through the park with Imogen. The girl looked spectacular in a dark blue walking dress with black velvet braiding.
“She’s a fine-looking chit,” Shelburn said, noticing the direction of Verena’s attention as Eliot took Imogen up beside him. “The on dit is that Halston plans to offer for her before the season is out.”
Shocked, Verena turned to him. Eliot had mentioned that bom
bastic oaf Chippenham as a potential suitor. The dissolute Lord Halston was an altogether different proposition. “Really? I hadn’t heard.”
“He invited her down to his place in the country last week.”
“Just her?” If he did, it was as good as a proposal.
Shelburn gave a wry laugh. “No, you silly girl. There were plenty of other people there, but her father is boasting all over London that his daughter is about to become the next Countess of Halston. Halston has singled her out, and he usually shows no interest in debutantes. Haven’t you noticed how often they dance together and how he’s started attending the sort of respectable ton events that he once wouldn’t touch with a bargepole?”
Verena regretted to say that for the last ten days, she’d noticed very little apart from how miserable she was and who Eliot chose to dance with. “She’ll make a pretty bride,” she said, as she struggled to match the dissipated earl with the innocent girl.
It seemed absurd, but she felt very protective toward Imogen. Perhaps because she saw something of herself in the spirited girl with an ambitious and tyrannical father.
“She will. And she’s rich besides, not that Halston needs the blunt.”
Eliot had turned his rig in their direction and with a sick feeling, Verena realized that he headed toward them. The cautious man she’d first known would never think to introduce his sister to his mistress – or former mistress. But this new, unpredictable Eliot was likely to do anything.
“Good God,” Shelburn said, genuine amazement sharpening his voice from its usual lazy drawl. “Colville is coming this way.”
Verena sat up straight in the seat and shot Eliot a blistering glare from under the brim of her stylish peaked hat. He ignored her displeasure, and his daredevil smile showed no trace of fading as he pulled in beside Shelburn’s carriage with a neatness that in other circumstances Verena might commend.
Verena knew that she wasn’t alone in observing the viscount’s approach. While she maintained the cool control that had served her so well since discovering the unpleasant reality of life with George Gerard, her skin prickled as hundreds of well-bred eyes settled on the little drama playing out under the trees.
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