Even if they had not, the usual reaction of women to the scars upon Gideon’s face was for their gazes to be quickly averted so they did not have to look at him. Or, as had happened on one memorable occasion a few years ago, for that young lady to run whimpering from the room.
He had no wish to hurry to see that fear or loathing on the face of the beautiful redhead waiting downstairs. Although either of those emotions would still be more acceptable than the pity he occasionally encountered.
Despite her appearance, he sincerely hoped that his ward was stronger in nature than she looked. Otherwise, the next two years of his guardianship of her were going to be uncomfortable for the both of them.
The companion had certainly appeared to have more of a backbone when she had good-naturedly chivvied her mistress into entering the house. No doubt her lot in life had dictated she needed to have one. It could not be easy for a woman to be so reliant upon the approval of another female in order to maintain her position in life, even that of a poorly paid companion.
Or perhaps, in this case, not quite so poorly. Gideon had already taken control of Michael’s ongoing financial obligations toward both the maid and companion of Michael’s daughter, and the companion was certainly paid above what he might have expected.
A sudden thought occurred to him as to why that might be. Now that he had seen that companion for himself, how beautiful she was, he couldn’t help but wonder if she had not also been a companion of another sort to Michael.
If so, that might make it easier to suggest a similar arrangement between the two of them. Even though Gideon hoped she had not been a paid mistress to Michael.
Gideon was not in the least straitlaced, and God knows he did not judge others for what they had to do in order to survive in this often cruel world. But he hoped that bright-eyed young lady, if she had been involved with Michael, had not been forced into accepting that physical relationship with her employer out of financial or other necessity.
Had he not envisaged enjoying that same physical relationship with her himself just minutes ago?
Not entirely, no. Not when he was desirous of persuading Miss Babcock into coming to his bed without financial enticement.
Although that was a big hope, considering no woman had done so in the past ten years.
“Your Grace?”
“Inform the ladies I will be with them shortly, Smythe,” he answered the butler tersely.
Gideon needed several more minutes to compose himself before going downstairs to greet the ladies.
Lydia stood beside one of the tall windows in the elegantly appointed sitting room as she waited for her guardian to join them. She was too restless and had already spent far too much time today confined in the carriage to be able to sit on one of the elegant blue couches as Charlotte had. Instead, Lydia looked out the window at the perfectly kept grounds and the churning gray-blue sea she could see in the distance.
She wasn’t restless because she was in awe of the expensive furnishings or the silk paper upon the walls. She had lived in luxurious homes like this one all her life and was not overwhelmed by such opulence.
No, her nervousness was due to the fact she was to at last meet Gideon Rhodes, the Duke of Esher, and the man who was to be her guardian for the next two years. Longer, if she remained unmarried. It would be deeply frowned upon for single lady of Society, even once aged one and twenty, to set up her own household.
No, for the foreseeable future, the homes of the duke would also be her own. Whether he also resided in those homes would be his choice, not hers.
After her father died, Lydia had feared for her own future, knowing she had no relatives she might live with. Then the family lawyer had informed her that the Duke of Esher had been named in her father’s will as her guardian.
Lydia had never even heard of the duke until that moment. He had certainly not been seen in Society for the two years that she had been a part of it.
She had been bombarded with gossip about Esher once it became known in Society that she had become the duke’s ward after her father succumbed to injuries he had received at Waterloo.
Lydia wasn’t usually one to listen to idle tittle-tattle. But as her father had never so much as mentioned the other man to her, let alone that he had chosen him to be her guardian, that gossip about the duke was all she currently knew of him.
They said he had been a cruel and uncaring husband.
That he had murdered his wife when, after two years of marriage and a miscarriage, she had failed to give him an heir.
That he had become a recluse on his estate in the wilds of Cornwall after he was hideously scarred in the fire which had ended his wife’s life and resulted in the accusation of his having murdered her. As far as Lydia was aware, that accusation had never been proven, but the duke had still been ostracized by Society.
No one, not a single gentleman or woman of the ton, had seen fit to mention that Gideon Rhodes, scarred or not, was also one of the handsomest gentlemen Lydia had or would ever set eyes upon!
Chapter Two
At least, she presumed the very tall, aristocratic, and elegantly dressed gentleman who now strode forcefully into the sitting room was her guardian.
The scars on the left side of his face appeared to confirm that was exactly who he was.
Strangely, Lydia did not find those scars to be in the least repellent. Indeed, in her opinion, they complemented rather than detracted from the harsh beauty of this man’s completely masculine face: dark jutting brows over pale gray eyes, a long aquiline nose, high cheekbones, a hard slash of a mouth above an arrogantly square jaw.
His overlong hair was as dark as his brows, with the odd streak of distinctive gray at his temples.
His clothing was fashionable and perfectly tailored, despite those same Society gossips having said the duke had not set foot in London in the ten years since “the scandal” that had caused him to take up residence in this remote estate in Cornwall. He was very tall, his body muscular, with wide shoulders, a narrow waist, and powerful hips and thighs.
Charlotte, having been seated on one of the couches as they waited for Lydia’s guardian to appear, rose hastily to her feet the moment he strode purposefully into the salon. There was a look of apprehension, or aversion, on her face as that gentleman’s scarred and imposing presence seemed to dominate all and everything—everyone?—in the room.
Lydia could not claim to feel dominated by him, but her body had certainly reacted to him in a manner she had never experienced before with any other man.
Her breasts felt as if they had swelled inside the bodice of her gown, the nipples tingling. An unaccustomed heat had centered between her thighs, causing a gush of hot juices to dampen her drawers.
That damp material now brushed against the sensitive flesh between her thighs as Lydia stepped farther into the room, increasing her arousal.
Gideon Rhodes didn’t even spare a glance in her direction as he stepped toward Charlotte and took one of her gloved hands into his much larger one. “I am Gideon Rhodes. You may call me Gideon, or Esher, if you prefer it.” He bowed his much taller body over that gloved hand before releasing it. “I trust your weeklong journey here by carriage has not been too arduous?”
“Er— Um— Not too much so, no. I— Um—” Charlotte, having already revealed an aversion to the duke’s scarred face, now sent Lydia an appealing glance mixed with the confusion she felt at his having greeted her first.
Lydia, on the other hand, was able to guess exactly the mistake the duke had just made.
Both she and Charlotte had relinquished their cloaks and bonnets to the butler when they entered the house, but Charlotte was still dressed in mourning black from head to toe, whereas Lydia’s silk gown was of the same russet color as her hair.
It was not too difficult to guess that Gideon Rhodes believed the woman dressed in black was in mourning for her father and so must be his ward, Lydia Montague. That therefore the woman in the russet-colored gown must be
her companion, Miss Charlotte Babcock.
A logical assumption for Esher to have made in the circumstances.
It was, unfortunately for him, a wrong one.
Lydia was determined to put an end to this misconception as quickly as possible. Especially as she could see Charlotte was having increasing difficulty in restraining her urge to bolt from the room so that she was far away from the scarred and imposing duke. “I believe there has been a mistake, Your Grace—”
“I believe I was talking to Lydia?” Esher silenced her coldly.
Lydia’s eyes widened at this deliberate set-down. She had been trying to avert what could be an embarrassing situation if Charlotte gave in to her obvious need to run, and instead, she was now being subjected to this man’s innate arrogance.
Pompous arse!
Lydia was almost tempted to let him remain in ignorance of her identity for several more minutes to see what else he might say to embarrass himself. Almost. Because she doubted that this cold and aristocratic gentleman would appreciate being made to look a fool if the mistake were allowed to continue.
Her chin rose, and she straightened to her full height of two inches over five feet. “I am Lydia.”
That cold gray gaze swept over her, from her silk-slippered feet, to her fuller figure in the russet gown, to her red-gold hair, slightly disheveled after a morning of traveling. Lydia had tried to tidy and secure her hair back into the pins after removing her bonnet, but there was really only so much she could do with no mirror to guide her.
There are no mirrors here, Lydia realized.
There was not a single one to be seen in this elegantly furnished salon, nor had there been one in the cavernous entrance hall when they arrived so that she might tidy her appearance before meeting their host.
Deliberately so?
So that Esher, with those scars upon his face and down his throat, did not have to constantly see his own disfigurement every time he passed a mirror?
It seemed a somewhat extreme measure to take, if that were the case. But she had a feeling Esher, despite his outward veneer of cold and controlled deliberation, was also a man of extremes.
He maintained an outwardly rigid visage, while at the same time, there was a smoldering heat in the depths of his eyes which said he would either like or loathe a person. That there was no room inside him for any emotion in between those two.
That narrowed gaze also said that whether he was going to “like or loathe” Lydia had yet to be decided.
The knowledge that the beautiful and glowing redhead was his ward was enough to ensure Gideon’s cock didn’t so much as make a twitch of renewed interest as he looked at her.
Instead, he knew he was about to embark on two years of physical torture on top of the ten of emotional torment he had already suffered through.
This time not because of the past scandal that still haunted him, but because of the young women with whom he was now forced to share his home. A young woman who had awakened carnal urges inside Gideon he had believed to be long dead.
He felt slightly nauseous at the realization he desired Lydia Montague with a physical depth and yearning he had not felt for a woman in more years than he cared to think about.
Which was exactly why his role as her guardian, for at least the next two years, promised to be a living hell.
Despite what the ton might say of him, Gideon had never been unfaithful to Harriet, no matter how dire the situation between the two of them had become.
Nor had he taken a mistress since she died. Initially because he was so seriously burned and in such pain, he’d had no interest in sexual matters. Following that, there had only been the occasional paid female companion he visited in Truro when his physical need to feel the touch of another had been too strong for him to deny himself any longer.
Those previous years of Harriet’s distaste for him, and his now scarred appearance, meant he required no more from a woman than a willingness on her part to give him sexual release.
One glance earlier at the voluptuous redhead alighting from the carriage outside his home, and he had become lost to imagining the two of them in bed together.
Only to now learn the redhead was his ward and so not physically available to him in any way.
His jaw tightened. “Why are you not wearing black, in mourning for your father?” His tone was accusing, mainly because of his anger with himself for allowing his hopes to have been raised in regard to possibly making love to the glowing russet-haired woman.
Lydia’s vivid green gaze didn’t so much as waver in continuing to meet his. “Because it was my father’s request I not do so.”
“I do not understand.”
She shrugged. “I am too pale skinned to suit wearing black.”
Gideon scowled. “You are seriously asking me to believe that your father requested you not wear mourning, even out of respect for his death, because you are too pale skinned to wear black?”
“I am not asking you to believe anything, Your Grace,” she said coolly. “I am merely stating the truth.”
Gideon’s irritation deepened. Whether because of this young woman’s self-confidence or his own feelings of awkwardness after his earlier mistake as to her identity, he could not have said.
The latter, probably. He could not help but inwardly admire the fact that this young woman was obviously not in the least frightened of or in awe of him. Not of his scars nor of his coldness and arrogance.
To be fair, his arrogance had been immense even before the fire, and he was inclined to use it now as a means of keeping others at an emotional and physical distance from him.
As his desire for Lydia’s voluptuous body meant he must now keep her at that distance.
“Well, I am stating that, as my ward, you will commence wearing black immediately,” he bit out, “and that you will continue do so until a full year has passed following your father’s death.” He had to do something, anything, to make this young woman’s appearance less attractive to him, and if that required she wear black, so be it.
It was not helping the situation that he currently wanted to throw Lydia over his shoulder and carry her up the stairs to his bedchamber, before stripping the russet-colored gown from her body and ravishing every delectable and lush inch of her.
He had never had this totally visceral reaction to any woman before today, not even before he was married. Certainly not toward Harriet. It was doubly disturbing that it was now toward the ward whose welfare had been entrusted to him for two years and who was also eighteen years younger than him.
Except…
There was an inborn air of confidence to Lydia, a challenge, that said she would not be afraid of anything physical Gideon might demand of her. That she might even make demands of her own.
Except, she’s my ward, damn it!
A ward I did not ask for nor want.
And an innocent.
Is she?
Gideon didn’t balk at the inward conversation he was having with himself. Having been alone for so long, he often found himself discussing matters inwardly.
He gazed at Lydia searchingly for several long minutes, knowing that a lack of betrothal or marriage on her part did not mean she was still a virgin.
She’s only nineteen, just a year older than Harriet was when I married her twelve years ago.
But Harriet had possessed an air of naivete not apparent in Lydia.
That doesn’t mean she’s any less innocent.
And there, Gideon accepted, was the crux of the matter.
There were already so many reasons why he should not allow this desire for Lydia to continue or get out of hand, but if she was a virgin still then he certainly could never act upon it.
“I have something for you, left to you in my father’s will. It is in one of the trunks being taken up to my room,” she now informed him softly. “I will bring it to you once my maid has unpacked my things.”
“What sort of something?” Gideon was wary of anything Chess
ington might have left him—anything else the earl might have left him—when the other man had already made him guardian of his daughter.
She shrugged. “It is wrapped in brown paper with your name and title on the front of it, and tied up with string. But it is shaped like and feels like a book of some kind.”
Gideon had absolutely no idea what book Chessington might have left him. He did not recall ever lending one to the earl that he might have felt a need to see returned to Gideon after his death.
He gave a dismissive shake of his head. No doubt the puzzle would be solved once Lydia had retrieved the parcel from amongst her luggage.
His nostrils flared. “I will leave the two of you to enjoy your refreshment,” he snapped as one of the footmen entered the room with a trolley laden with sandwiches and cakes as well as a pot of tea. “Dinner will be served at eight o’clock.” He gave an abrupt bow before striding from the room.
Chapter Three
“Your new guardian is every bit as frightening in looks and manner as I thought he would be after the things your London friends relayed to you about him.” Charlotte gave a shiver of apprehension. “Did you not think so, Lydia?”
The two women had made themselves comfortable in Lydia’s new bedchamber, Charlotte seated on the side of the bed, Lydia sitting in the plush velvet-cushioned chair near the window.
Lydia was wrapped only in a large and soft white towel after taking a bath, with her hair in loose red curls down her spine and still damp from having been washed.
A bath she had enjoyed as a way of avoiding answering the questions she knew Charlotte would ask the moment she was able to do so. The to-ing and fro-ing of the footmen with the bath and bathwater, as well as the presence of Lydia’s maid as she unpacked the trunks and put clothes and personal items away, had made that impossible until now.
Wayward (Regency Scandal 3) Page 2