“I was informed that you were refusing to . . .” The diatribe she’d prepared on the way here and mentally shelved while her intruder spoke to Mr. Flyaway left her.
Sylvia cocked her head. At five inches past six feet, he was as tall as Mrs. Flyaway had braced her for. Only, she’d imagined the monster painted by the older woman as not broadly muscular.
With his cloak on and his hat perched atop a close crop of blond curls, the gentleman with a prominent square jaw and broad Roman nose, hooked slightly at the bridge, was familiar. Nay, more than familiar.
His arms were folded from the conversational exchange he’d been engaging in with Mr. Flyaway, and a copy of The Times hung from his fingers.
Surely there was a mistake? And the brute savage who’d invaded her household was not in fact this man . . . but another? Alas, just he and Mr. Flyaway remained.
His heavy features froze, giving way to a mask of disbelief and confusion.
The newspaper slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the marble floor.
Yes, well, that made two of them.
For the same man before her should be none other than the one who, on Sylvia’s wedding day, had stood beside Norman in friendship and support. Unlike her husband, who’d been a charmer and had an ease with his words, Viscount St. John had been given to long pauses and stiff politeness. He’d been . . . different from her urbane late husband, the friendship having been an unlikely one.
Except he had certainly charmed her usually ice-cold butler.
His jaw went slack, and he did a search throughout the foyer before settling his gaze once more on Sylvia . . . this time, his expression perfectly pained. “Youu?” The elongated syllables squeezed into the one, indicating he was, in fact, the one who’d come demanding an audience.
From the hallway came the rapid pitter-patter of footfalls as the society gathered upon them, and she found herself jerked out of the haze of confusion, taking strength in the support of the small army of might, the women behind her.
“Were you looking for another, Lord St. John?”
Chapter 5
Had he been looking for another, she’d asked.
The answer was absolutely, unequivocally, and undoubtedly yes.
He was to have met with some cold, unfeeling stranger who’d unintentionally dismantled the norms of society and left his friend brokenhearted, and Clayton with the problem of trying to find a wife when no women wanted to be found as wives.
Nay, the last woman in the whole of the United Kingdom whom he’d set out to meet was . . . her. In fact, for the better part of three years, he’d made a concerted effort to avoid her.
Sylvia.
His gaze went to the small army of women glaring back at him with their fearless liege at the front and center of the group.
The audience he’d imagined had always been private.
All his muscles seized up, clenching painfully in a taunting reminder of just how damned foolish it had been, setting out as he’d done.
He who, as Landon and Scarsdale had pointed out, never did anything . . . irrational.
“He doesn’t look like a monster,” someone whispered from within that gaggle of ladies.
To give his hands something to do, he doffed his hat and fiddled with the article. “Uh . . .”
He’d known precisely what he was going to say.
That knowing, however, wasn’t something innate that simply came to him. Rather, he’d planned and plotted each detail of the impending meeting because that was the way he had to move through life.
Where some men were glib with words and capable of disarming with a look and an effortless reply, Clayton had always been one who’d needed a whole menu of discourse prepared within his head.
All that suited him in parliamentary matters and business meetings and social affairs . . . as long as he’d an ability to prepare and everything went to script.
It was when it did not that he found himself slack-jawed and empty of a proper response . . . as he was in this very moment.
A member of their rather large audience groaned. “Whatever is he doing here?”
That voice, even more familiar, added to his absolute befuddlement. Furrowing his brow, he searched the group, his gaze landing on the flame-haired spitfire amongst them.
His eyebrows went shooting up. “Cora?”
What in hell?
A second figure amongst the masses slipped backward from the group, hiding behind the taller lady beside her, but not before Clayton made out the identity of another member of the party aggrieved by his presence.
He drew back. He might have expected Delia—with her of late very vocal disdain for men—would have found her way here. But . . . “Brenna?”
Both young women stepped forward . . .
Followed by . . . yet another.
He rubbed at his eyes.
The sight remained.
Well, this was really too much. “Anwen?”
“Whatever are you doing here?” Cora demanded, preparing to throw her periodical at him the way Cook had once taken down a mouse loose in the kitchens.
His sister would ask what he was doing here? Him? “It appears I am extricating you.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Bedlam ensued. The fifteen or so women marched forward, moving in tandem like a wave crashing toward him . . . and he backed up several steps away from the crowd out for his blood.
Salvation came from the unlikeliest one of the group.
Sylvia stepped between Clayton and the gathering of snapping and hissing ladies.
And without so much as a word or hand gesture, she commanded that loyal legion to silence. “If you’ll excuse me? Lord St. John requested a word.”
“But . . . but . . . he interrupted our session,” Brenna said on an angry whisper to one of her compatriots. “How is she meeting him? How?”
She’d rather throw him to the lions, then.
Only Anwen cast a slightly sheepish glance his way. Tiptoeing over, she rescued his forgotten-until-now copy of The Times and held it out.
“Anwen!” Cora hissed.
Hurriedly releasing the newspaper into his hands, the eldest of his sisters rushed off to join the line of ladies now filing from the foyer until he was left alone with Sylvia . . . and Mr. Flyaway.
An awkward silence was all that was left of the departed group.
Returning his hat atop his head, Clayton beat the newspaper against the side of his leg, and that seemed to spring the butler into action.
He came limping over to collect his hat.
“No need,” Clayton assured. “It was splendid chatting. Be sure and look for one of those triple-gear leads.” He made the motion as if he were reeling something.
Sylvia creased her brow. What in blazes was a triple-gear lead?
“Not even sure where I might find such a thing,” her butler was saying. “But if you return—”
“Ahem.”
Mr. Flyaway glanced over at Sylvia and blushed.
“Anything else you require, my lady?” the butler asked gruffly, his gaze directed at the floor.
“No, Mr. Flyaway. You’ve been help enough already.” There was a dry quality to her voice that earned a blush from the stalwart butler. “If you’ll follow me, Lord St. John.” Sylvia didn’t wait to see if Clayton followed, just turned quickly on her heel in a whirl of silvery satin skirts and marched off.
Her steps were measured, with a military precision that matched the ramrod stiffness of her spine. And not for the first time since Clayton had discovered the identity of whom he’d sought out, he contemplated making his excuses and getting the holy hell out of there.
“She’s not so scary,” Mr. Flyaway said on a loud whisper that brought the lady to a stop.
She faced the pair of them and lifted an eyebrow. “Is there . . . a sudden lack of urgency to your meeting request?” she drawled. Her low contralto carried from the hall and rose through the soaring foyer.
“Er . . .”
“I suggest you go before she changes her mind,” Mr. Flyaway said from the corner of his mouth. “The lady of the household doesn’t grant visitors. Especially those of the male persuasion.”
Heeding the older man’s advice, Clayton hurried to join Sylvia.
Sylvia, who did not pause to wait but continued on ahead without him.
Which was fine.
This was hardly a social call.
In fact, it was anything but.
The motives for his visit hadn’t changed because of her identity. In fact, her identity—the woman he knew her to be—gave him the first hint of confidence in the outcome of their meeting. Sylvia had always been reasonable and logical, and as such, he’d no doubt it wouldn’t take altogether much for her to see the concerns he’d brought her way.
They reached the end of the hall, and she pressed a handle, wordlessly motioning for Clayton to enter.
He hesitated, gesturing. “After you, my lady.”
“I think I’m quite capable of establishing the rules of my household, Lord St. John.”
“And . . . your rules are that men enter rooms before women?” he asked, slightly confounded and trying to sort through this unexpected battle.
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you being sarcastic, Lord St. John?” She clipped out each syllable of each word.
“Not at all.” Alas, he wasn’t capable of sarcasm. Directness, straightforwardness, yes. But playing with words and tones was something he’d never mastered—nor, for that matter, had he attempted to. “I assure you, I’m not one who—”
She jabbed a finger toward the room.
“Uh, right. Of course.”
Clayton entered the parlor. Or—he passed his gaze over the room. It had some of the trappings of a parlor, and yet, with a French Mazarin desk at the center of the room and a series of cabinets beside it, the space had been converted into more of an office.
The moment she’d closed the door, she spoke. “I don’t run a household where women are beholden to strictures that say when they may or may not enter rooms, or who should have the right to determine such a thing. Am I clear?”
“Yes. Very much so.”
Just as it was increasingly clear that he had a good deal less control of this exchange than he’d hoped to have.
Taking a moment to reassemble the thoughts that had scattered upon his arrival, he went through everything he’d prepared at White’s and on the way here.
She folded her arms. “I trust you disapprove?”
And just like that, the unexpected question knocked his thoughts off kilter.
“Who are you to come here and demand an audience?”
Clayton tugged at the collar of his cloak. “I didn’t really demand an audience.”
“Didn’t you?” she challenged, taking a bold step forward that sent him into a reflexive retreat. “You come here, charming my butler into allowing you to remain.”
This was surely the first, last, and only time he’d ever be known for charming anyone. “I was merely speaking to him until—”
“Until I was forced to receive you.”
He shifted his hat awkwardly between his hands. When she put it that way . . . “You are right. Forgive me. I didn’t realize it was you.”
She winged up a thin blonde eyebrow. “And would it have changed anything had you known it was me?”
Absolutely. He never, ever would have ventured down Waverton Street, let alone lifted the bronzed knocker over her door. Clayton looking in on, and after, Sylvia had been the one request that had been put to him before Norman’s untimely death . . . and it was the one guarantee he’d never given. Avoiding her eyes, he did another pass of his gaze over her room. “Perhaps we might . . . sit?”
She stiffened, and for a very long, endless, awkward moment, he thought she’d reject that request. Nor would it be the first time in the course of his thirtysomething years that he had been met with rejection from a woman. Awkward and rarely in possession of the right words, he’d never had the charm that had allowed Norman to woo her. Or countless other women.
Finally, she stretched a hand to the upholstered purple sofa, waiting until he was seated before taking one of her own.
“I don’t remember you to be one to storm households.”
Nay, he’d never done something so . . . forward or improper. Alas, desperate times and all that.
“And I don’t recall you as one hosting incendiary meetings.”
Outrage had a sound, and it was the swift exhalation of offended air that slipped from her lips.
Oh, bloody hell.
“Not that your meetings are necessarily incendiary,” he said on a rush, attempting to put out the fire he’d lit with his loose tongue. “I’m sure they are not. That is why I’m here.”
“You are here to make sure my meetings are not . . . incendiary?” By the slow, measured way she drew out each word of that sentence, he knew he’d bungled it all over again.
Clayton set his hat down at his feet. “No.” Returning to the script he’d composed on his way to the lady’s household, he picked through to those words first. “There has been talk about—”
“And you are one to listen to gossip?”
He bristled. “Of course not.”
She lifted another perfectly formed thin blonde brow. “And yet, here you are . . . because of talk.”
Touché. She had him there. Only . . . it wasn’t necessarily gossip that had brought him here. Not completely. “I’m here to discuss your club, my lady.”
“Society.”
Was there a difference?
As if he’d asked the very question aloud, Sylvia elucidated. “Clubs are where gentlemen meet for brandies and cards. Societies are where actual change happens.”
His stomach sank. It was, then, as his friends had feared.
“Furthermore, Lord St. John, what gives you leave to come here to discuss anything going on in my household?”
That grounded him, as the lady brought him back to the purpose of his being here: Lord Scarsdale. Though, if he were being even a little bit honest with himself, his pressing need for a bride and heir was not a very small part of today’s boldness. “I am coming to you from a meeting I just left with a close friend . . . a gentleman who has suffered a broken heart because of you.”
Her lips lifted at the corners in a smile that so perfectly melded sarcasm and sadness. “I’m not the one known for breaking hearts.”
And yet . . . that wasn’t altogether true. Not really.
She, of course, spoke of Norfolk.
The husband who’d been unfaithful to her . . . who’d planned to leave her. It was too much, the memory of that day.
He turned the newspaper around. “Given the details here pertaining to Lord Scarsdale and Miss Gately, and”—he spoke over her interruption—“my meeting with the gentleman a short while ago, it speaks of a different story.”
Sylvia’s perfectly too-full lips formed a firm line. She reluctantly reached for the copy he extended her way, wafting the sweetest, summery fragrance of lilac and rose water that put a man in mind of a field of flowers and—
Good God, focus, man.
The lady’s eyes moved quickly over the page, skimming the details there. When she’d finished, she set it down on the table between them with a decisive thwack. “Hmph.”
Hmph?
He waited for her to say something . . . anything other than that. She, the same woman who’d regaled him with story after story, chattering all night as card partners, should now find herself ever so inarticulate and silent? “That is all?” he pressed when it became abundantly clear she’d no intention of saying anything further.
“What else is there to say? If Lord Scarsdale has suffered a broken heart, then perhaps you should look elsewhere to discover the reason for the earl’s suffering, say . . . the gentleman himself? He has no one but himself to blame for either his actions or current state of affairs”—her acerbic warning threw col
d water upon the haze momentarily cast by her alluring fragrance—“and certainly blame doesn’t belong here, in my household.”
Sitting up straighter in a bid to put some space between them, he tried again. “Lord Scarsdale’s betrothed has recently become a patron.”
“I don’t have patrons, Lord St. John.”
“A member, then,” he continued. “And at these meetings, she—”
The lady exploded to her feet. “She what? Had a sudden realization that mayhap the gentleman’s feelings were not as deep as she’d hoped or wished, and she would vastly prefer a different life, even if it is one without him in it?” Sylvia’s chest moved fast, rising and falling hard. Her cheeks washed red, a flush extending down over that creamy expanse, and all words failed him.
Well, words, they generally did fail him.
But not like this.
Not with him noticing the last woman he should be noticing. And with her standing as she was, and him seated as he was, his gaze was in direct line with the generous swells of her breasts.
Look away.
Look anywhere but where you are currently staring.
And now he knew the tribulations that had led Adam to commit the rest of mankind to eternal damnation. Forcibly, he lifted his gaze, and looked the second-worst place.
A question puckered the place between her eyebrows.
Mortified heat splotched his face, and he froze, certain she’d gleaned that he’d been ogling her like some manner of cad, which he’d prided himself on never being.
“Have you nothing to say?”
His mind went blank. “I . . .” No, he usually didn’t. This time, his inability to recall had nothing to do with his usual tongue-twistedness, and everything to do with her nearness and the curve of her—
Think, man. Think.
About what had brought him here. Whatever that source of contention was between them. Or the last matter they’d been speaking on. What was it . . . ? What was it . . . ?
“Scarsdale!” he shouted, at last landing on it.
The confusion in her brow deepened. Sylvia did a search about the room as if he’d summoned the gentleman himself. He came to his feet so that his gaze needn’t get him into any more trouble than it had . . . since he himself was already seeing to that task.
Someone Wanton His Way Comes Page 7