by Nancy Butler
Bryce, on the other hand, thought her waving chestnut hair, with its glints of deep red, a glorious contrast to her pale, magnolia skin. He still hadn’t decided if her expressive, almond-shaped eyes were green or blue, since they showed a bit of each color in their depths. He’d once seen an Austrian lake that exact shade—clear azure and shimmering with light.
He ushered her into the sitting room, waiting until she had settled herself in one of the chairs beside the hearth before he seated himself on the brocade sofa opposite her. He lounged back against the plump cushions, stretching his long legs out before him. “So what brings you to this part of Kent, Lady Jemima?” he asked in a pleasantly conversational voice.
She looked up from pleating a fold m her gown; she was unconsciously trying to cover the smudged bloodstains. “I came down from London with my brother. He’s off at a prizefight, you see, but he should be back by evening. I’d like to send him a note, so he’ll know where I’ve gone.”
Bryce’s eyes darkened. Not a heartening bit of news. Not that he hadn’t seduced women under the noses of their families before, but brothers were the worst sort of obstacle.
“He’s quite welcome to stay here,” he stated, knowing he was setting himself a challenge even as he made the offer. “I’ve plenty of room. And it would certainly ease your mind.”
“My mind?” Jemima looked up again from her pleating.
“I’m hardly likely to assail your virtue with your brother under my roof.”
Jemima sniffed. She was doing that far too much lately, she knew. Another missish trait coming to the fore. “I thought my age precluded that possibility.”
He smiled slowly and then shrugged. “It’s so hard to say. We libertines never know who might strike our fancy. I knew a roué once, who hungered for a washer woman.” He leaned forward, his hand upon his knee. “Why? Are you hoping I will try?”
Jemima’s eyes narrowed. “As there is no point in answering such an absurd question, I will ignore it.”
“Yes, and avoid telling me the truth. Neatly done, Lady Jemima.” He sketched a salute in the air. “And nicely parried.”
They subsided into silence then, Jemima gazing out the French windows, and Bryce surreptitiously gazing at her. He’d cut his eyeteeth on beautiful women, so looks alone rarely gained his attention. He required something more from his conquests—a spark, a challenge, a sense that the winning of favor would be rewarded with spirited play. Lady Jemima’s eyes held such a promise, even if her lovely mouth was currently drawn up in a disagreeable pucker.
When the tea tray was brought in, Bryce insisted on pouring. “It’s one of my few domestic skills,” he told her, as he handed over a cup and saucer. “And I always enjoy seeing to my guest’s…ah, needs.”
Jemima’s hand shook slightly as she carried the tea to her mouth. He was toying with her, and she didn’t like it one bit. Certainly men had flirted with her before but never with such blatant insinuation. It had a sort of novelty, though she thought a libertine would have cultivated a more subtle approach.
“I am rather less a guest,” she stated dryly, “and more a hostage.”
He drew back, a wounded expression on his face. “A hostage, Lady Jemima?”
“You coerced me to come here. You knew once I learned your identity, I wouldn’t allow Miss Wellesley to stay here unchaperoned. I only pray her parents come to claim her before nightfall.”
“Why?” He raised one brow sardonically. “What is going to happen then?”
Jemima nearly blushed. “I mean, I will need to return to the inn by tonight. All my things are there.”
“That’s easily remedied. When I ride over to see Tolliver, I’ll have him pack up your belongings. And as I said, your brother is welcome to stay here.” He raised his glass to her and purred, “We’ll be a nice, cozy family group.”
The expression on his face was neither cozy nor familiar. Wolfish was more like it, she thought, trying to repress a shiver. Jemima had no intention of spending even one night under the same roof as the notorious Beecham Bryce. But she had an uncanny suspicion that Miss Wellesley’s family might not discover her absence until that evening, in which case they were unlikely to come back for her until the following morning. Asking Terry to join her at Bryce Prospect seemed like the wisest course to follow. She could see that Miss Wellesley was properly chaperoned, and her brother’s presence would surely keep her host in line with regard to herself.
“Very well,” she said as she rose to her feet. “I’ll ask my brother to come here. He can bring our luggage over in his carriage and save Mr. Tolliver the trouble. Now, if you would just direct me to some writing paper.”
Bryce waved her over to an escritoire in one corner of the room. She quickly dashed off a note, asking her brother to collect their things and giving him the directions to Bryce Prospect.
“I’ll ride over now,” Bryce said as he tucked her note in his coat pocket. “I may be a while—I’m going to drop in on our local magistrate and fill him in on this murder business.”
Jemima had nearly forgotten about the murder. She clasped her hands against her skirt. “I still can’t credit that a man was murdered in that peaceful grove. Could it be someone from your estate, do you think?”
Bryce tapped his lip with a long forefinger. “I doubt it. Our prima donna told me that neither of the men were dressed like farm laborers, and that both appeared to be fairly young. My bailiff is a bit of a dandy, but he’s pushing sixty. No, I think I can eliminate any of my people, either as victim or villain. That section of the pasture isn’t far from the main road, so it’s possible the men were travelers who stopped to rest, and then fell into an argument.”
Jemima leaned toward him. “And do you really believe the murderer will come after Miss Wellesley?”
Bryce’s eyes darkened. “Yes,” he said with a slight frown. “He knows she got a good look at him. If he doesn’t find her at the inn, I suspect he’ll start asking after her father’s troupe.”
“Then she shouldn’t be allowed to go off with them to London,” Jemima stated forcefully.
“Yes,” he mused, elated at the thought of Miss Wellesley and her starchy but delectable chaperon being forced to extend their stay in his home. “I hadn’t considered that till now. Well, we’ll deal with that issue when it arises.”
Bryce headed for the door and Jemima followed him. He stopped, his hand on the latch, and turned to her. “I think perhaps you should go upstairs and have a rest. After all, Miss Wellesley’s not the only one who’s had a—” His sentence drifted to a halt.
“What is it?” she asked. He was looking at her with an oddly arrested expression on his face.
“Sorry,” he said, shaking himself back to the present. “It’s just that you’ve got the most remarkable blue eyes, Lady Jemima. A man could drown in them.”
“They’re green,” she insisted, setting her jaw.
He leaned very close, so that his face was only inches from her own, and peered intently into her eyes. “So they are,” he announced blithely, just before he went through the door.
For a long while after he left, Jemima leaned against the door with her hands fisted, trying to regain her composure. And trying to deny the unaccountable fluttering in her stomach his idle compliment had provoked.
No, she vowed, she was not about to let herself become a diversion for some half-baked libertine. She knew far too much about Beecham Bryce’s reputation to ever let herself be coaxed into indiscretion by a few flattering words. The man had been cutting a swath through the ton since before her come-out, making his name a byword for all that was licentious and low. His first public infamy, she recalled, had been dallying with the wife of a professor while he was at Cambridge. The upshot of that had been a duel between student and don, whereby Bryce had put the man out of commission for six months. Needless to say his university education had rather stalled after that.
There was another scandal after he enlisted in the army and was sent
to the Peninsula—something to do with a Portuguese nobleman’s wife. The husband in that instance had been killed in his duel of honor, and young Lieutenant Bryce had been court-martialed. He only escaped a firing squad when it came out that the dead man had been selling military information to the French. The army had no idea what to do with a rascal like Beecham Bryce, and so they had cut him loose; he returned to London, if not actually in disgrace, certainly without the laurels another man might have earned for ridding Wellington of a poxy spy.
Three years’ ago the worst of the scandals had erupted—Jemima remembered the year because Terry had used Bryce as a model for one of his less-than-virtuous heroes. The man had fixed his interest on the young wife of a military hero. The chit had run off with Bryce while her husband was in Spain serving under Wellington, and then had apparently died under mysterious circumstances. To Bryce’s credit, he had not run when the bereaved husband caught up with him and faced him over pistols. Bryce had taken a bullet in his shoulder. He’d maintained a somewhat lower profile after that sordid affair, diverting himself with a long line of less-sensational amours, involving opera dancers, orange girls, and the like.
But he had resurfaced late last year, as the founder of a private men’s club called Bacchus. It was very exclusive, highly selective, and, rumor had it, catered to gentlemen with unusual appetites. Terry was a member, Jemima knew, though she hadn’t heard it from his lips. But by the time her brother had joined, just this past May, Bryce was off to greener pastures. Literally it appeared. No one in London knew where he had gone, and now it was her bad luck to stumble across him in this remote part of Kent.
She only wondered that she had never before encountered him in the ton. Few doors of proper society were open to him, it was true. Few hostesses welcomed him into their homes. According to the tattlemongers, he spent a great deal of time in the less-savory reaches of London—the slums of the East End, and the rat-infested wharves along the Thames. Where he could rub elbows, no doubt, with the worst sort of knaves and blackguards. And where he would, furthermore, find innumerable young women who were easy prey for a man with the outer trappings of a gentleman.
But in spite of Bryce’s rare appearances at ton functions and his bizarre taste in neighborhoods, it was still hard for Jemima to credit that she had spent most of her adult life in London without ever having him pointed out to her.
And who, she asked herself, would point out the king of profligates to a well-bred maiden lady? Certainly not that lady’s brother, not her elderly Aunt Sophie. Certainly not any of the artists and writers Jemima gathered for her monthly salons.
She sighed as she crossed the room and went to stand before the fireplace. Someone should have pointed him out to her. So she could have been forewarned, so she could have been prepared for the shock of meeting him face-to-face. It was disconcerting, to say the least, to discover that every nerve ending in her body quivered with physical awareness when she was in his presence. She again recalled how he had sat across from her, completely relaxed, to all appearances the genial host. Except for the strange fire that had gleamed in his frost-colored eyes, a fire that had set her insides to quaking. No man had ever leveled such a look at her in all her twenty-nine years.
She was surprised to discover his potent masculine allure had little to do with his looks. One assumed a libertine would need to be an Adonis if he was to have any power over women. Not that Beecham Bryce was exactly ill-favored, but Jemima knew a dozen men, including her brother, who beat him all to flinders in that respect. No, it wasn’t his lean, roguish face or his wide, muscular shoulders that made him so dangerous—it was something else entirely. He projected an unstudied grace, an ease with his body, as though he were more comfortable in his own skin than other mortals. And he possessed a devilish humor, at once deprecating and flattering.
No! she railed to herself, as she again went pacing across the carpet. Stop analyzing why he is so dangerous, and admit only that you see the danger.
She threw herself onto the sofa and began to fret at one of the pillows.
Except for that last comment about her eyes, he had said nothing to her that was overtly flirtatious. And yet she had a strong sense that he had been flirting with her, baiting her, trying to break through her maidenly reserve. God knew, no one had attempted anything even remotely like that for more years than she wanted to count.
That’s all it is, she told herself reasonably. You are imagining his interest in you, because, like all maiden ladies, you see a threat where there is none. Next thing you ‘II be sleeping with a pistol beside your bed to ward off phantom intruders with amatory intentions.
It was a pity though, a puckish voice noted from deep inside her. Because if one had a mind to be debauched, Beecham Bryce was not an uninspiring choice.
Muttering to herself, Jemima stalked from the room, intending to look in on Miss Wellesley. She reckoned the girl’s tearful prattling could not be more vexing than her own contradictory thoughts.
* * *
Bryce returned home just barely in time for dinner. He apologized for appearing in his riding clothes, but he pointed out that neither Lady Jemima nor Miss Wellesley had a change of wardrobe either.
“We will be very informal,” he announced over drinks in the drawing room.
The resourceful housekeeper had furnished Lovelace with a cane, and so she had been able to hobble down to dinner. After Bryce had coaxed her from her sullen unhappiness with a humorous story of his first and only attempt at becoming a steeplechase jockey, she began to sparkle with charm.
Jemima could see, now that Lovelace was no longer tearstained and in shock, that she was an extraordinarily pretty girl—and one who had clearly learned to maximize every bit of allure she possessed. Bryce had placed them on either side of him at dinner, and Lovelace—for that was what she insisted they call her—spent most of the meal flirting outrageously with her host. She simpered and preened, cooed and gurgled. She looked limpidly up through her long, suspiciously dark lashes, and gazed wistfully down over her pert but elegant nose.
Ought to be taking notes, Jemima thought ruefully. The chit had it down to an art.
For his part, Bryce seemed to take her chatter in stride. He laughed at the proper times during her gay stories of life on the boards and frowned soberly when she regaled him with some dire tragedy that had befallen her. But Jemima noticed—she was able to observe him freely, as most of his attention was fixed on Lovelace—that when he grinned at his young guest, the smile never quite reached his eyes, and when tie frowned in sympathy, they likewise remained unaffected.
Two-thirds of the way through dinner, as Lovelace was prodding at a platter of cutlets with a fork, Bryce turned to Jemima and whispered, “Lay you odds they never come back for her.”
“What?” She nearly choked on her ragout of veal.
“Her family,” he said over the back of one elegantly manicured hand. “They’re probably popping a cork this very minute in celebration. Well, would you want her back? She could talk the scales off a haddock and have breath left over to inflate a dozen hot air balloons.”
Jemima hid her grin behind her napkin. “She is a trifle self-impressed.”
Bryce rolled his eyes. “She could give lessons to Prinny himself.” And then he added in a more conversational voice. “Now then, Lady Jemima, why not tell us something about yourself.”
“Yes,” Lovelace crooned, turning from her cutlets. “I am all agog to hear about you.”
Jemima realized she was pleating her skirt again. The housekeeper had managed to remove the bloodstains, but she was still fretting at the fabric. “I lead a quiet life in London,” she said. “I look after my brother—he has…interests in London that keep him very busy.” She wasn’t going to say anything more about Terry. They’d find out soon enough if he decided to overnight there.
“And occasionally,” she added, “I visit with my two sisters who live in Surrey. They both have young children, you see, and appreciate my
help.”
“I am prodigiously fond of my own family,” Lovelace pronounced. “I have been teaching my brother Charles to sing, and he has shown a deal of progress.”
“Ah, so you sing, Miss Wellesley,” Jemima exclaimed brightly. “Perhaps you would entertain us after dinner. I would be happy to play for you.” She felt Bryce’s foot kicking against her ankle in protest. Not very seductive, she thought, trying not to grin.
Lovelace’s eyes lit. “I would adore it. I blush to say this, but my voice has been acclaimed in places as far away as Leeds.”
“They could probably hear her all the way up in Edinburgh,” Bryce muttered under his breath.
Jemima shot him a look of reproof.
Lovelace continued to monopolize the conversation through the next three removes, and by the time the port was brought to the table, Jemima had a headache pounding across the back of her head.
“I’ll take my port in the drawing room,” Bryce announced as he rose from the table. He sidled up beside Jemima as they strolled through the doorway. “You’re looking a bit peaky.”
“She is like a juggernaut,” she hissed back. “Maybe she should run for Parliament.”
“You had your chance to forestall her, my pet.”
Jemima looked up, startled by the casual endearment.
Bryce wrinkled his nose and said, “Somehow your offering of, ‘I lead a quiet life in London,’ didn’t quite enthrall her enough to throw her off her own track.” He raised his brows. “Although I cannot for the life of me see why not.”
He moved past her and took Lovelace’s arm, guiding his hobbling guest into the drawing room. She at once limped doggedly to the piano and began to sift through the sheet music in the bench. It was clear that Lovelace Wellesley was not about to let a little thing like a sprained ankle keep her from center stage.
“Oh, here is one that I quite adore,” she said, holding the sheet up. “Do you know it, Lady J?”
Jemima drew a breath to steady her temper. The girl was unschooled in manners, and not used to society. Much had to be forgiven her. But no one in Jemima’s life had ever, ever called her Lady J!