by Lucy Monroe
“I hesitate to admit this, but I made it up,” he said, quelling his lascivious thoughts with strict control. “I’m sure Wemby will find a friend more interested in his discussion of hounds than yourself, but none actually await him.”
The sound of her laughter affected his already overactive libido and he had no choice but to steer her toward the terrace before she, or someone else, noticed the growing state of his arousal. Not that he expected a lady of Irisa’s sensibilities to let her gaze wander below his chin, but nevertheless, a gentleman’s evening clothes left very little to the imagination.
As they stepped from the brightly lit ballroom into the shadowed world of the deserted terrace, Irisa’s head snapped up and she stared at him, owl-eyed. “My lord?”
“It was getting a trifle warm in the ballroom. I thought you could use the air.”
She nodded, sliding closer until their bodies almost touched. “Air. Yes, air would be very nice.”
Her lips were parted as if about to say something, but she remained silent, gazing up at him.
She could have no idea just how delectable she looked at that very moment, how incredibly kissable. Her all too welcoming expression did nothing to aid his body in returning to less embarrassing proportions. He had to get himself under control and quickly or he was likely to shock the innocent right into a faint and compromise her into the bargain.
He needed a diversion.
“I’ve decided to invest in your brother-in-law’s most recent shipping venture.” One of the things he enjoyed about Irisa was that she conversed intelligently on topics of import.
She did not pretend, as most ladies of the ton attempted to, that everything outside of the social sphere did not exist.
“Sh-shipping venture?”
“Yes. He told me you knew all about it. It’s a sound investment.”
Her hand dropped from his arm and she moved a small distance away. He breathed a silent sigh of relief. Without her nearness, he could regain control. His reaction to her innocent provocation astounded him, but he would dwell on how best to master it and himself later. He could not allow marriage, or the prospect of it to undermine the self-discipline he had spent so many years perfecting.
“Yes. I know about it,” she replied, her voice subdued all of a sudden, “I made a small outlay on the venture myself.”
He would not have thought Langley the type of man to give his daughter any sort of financial independence. “Are you in the habit of investing in your brother-in-law’s ventures?”
Her creamy white shoulders rose and fell in a ladylike shrug. “Actually, in the past my investments have been mostly in Thea’s business dealings and the ‘Change. Up until now, Drake’s transactions have been too large or too risky for me to take part in them.”
Lucas’s ardor completely dissipated on a wave of shocked disbelief. “You invest in the ‘Change?”
“Yes.” She looked at him, her expression as innocent as always, except for a spark of something in her eyes he could not quite name.
If he did not know better, he would say it was defiance, but Irisa was too biddable a lady for such an emotion.
“How long has your father been allowing you to engage in such cork-brained behavior?”
She moved back another step, her posture becoming stiff.
“Papa has nothing to do with it,” she replied in freezing accents, sounding for all the world as if she thought it was none of his business.
He strode two steps forward and grasped her shoulders, forcing her to face him. Even in his anger, his body registered the feel of her silken skin beneath his fingers. “Are you saying you have been investing your money without his permission?”
She lifted her head quickly, meeting his look squarely. “I spend my allowance as I see fit.”
Her pin money? Either she had a very large allowance or she made very small investments. “I’m surprised you had the resources available to take part in Drake’s latest venture.”
To Lucas’s knowledge, Drake required a minimum outlay from even his smallest investors and it would require a great deal more than pin money. Perhaps Drake had made an exception for his sister-in-law’s whim.
She bit her lip and shifted her gaze to a point beyond his shoulder, for all the world as if she intended some manner of subterfuge.
His grip on her arms tightened involuntarily. “Tell me.”
Ignoring his command, she turned her attention to the point where his hands gripped the soft skin of her upper arms. He forced his fingers to relax somewhat, realizing his hold might very well be uncomfortable.
“If someone came out of the ballroom and found us here, they would assume we were in a passionate embrace,” she said in a curiously wistful voice.
Bloody hell. She was right. He quickly released her completely, but did not step away. She would not distract him that easily.
“Explain to me how you were able to invest in the shipping expedition.”
She adjusted first one, then the other of the white evening gloves she wore and then smoothed her skirt as if they had been engaged in an invigorating country dance rather than standing almost completely still for the past several minutes.
Snapping open her fan, she used it as a shield for the expression on her face. “You overstep yourself, sir. I do not owe you an explanation of my actions or my finances. We are not connected in any way.”
Her fan might protect her face from his scrutiny, but the icy remoteness in her voice left him in no doubt as to her frame of mind.
Without another word, she stepped around him and returned to the ballroom before he could assimilate either her surprising stubbornness or the cool challenge in her voice. Didn’t the chit realize she belonged to him? They were as good as engaged. Of course she owed him an explanation.
He followed her with the intent of telling her just that, but a return to the bright candle glow in the ballroom brought back his reason.
What was he doing?
For the second time that evening, he had very nearly lost control. This time he would have made a spectacle of himself in a way he had vowed long ago never to do. He was one Ashton who would not follow in his mother and younger brother’s scandalous footsteps.
Watching Irisa join her current partner on the dance floor, he willed her to look at him. Their discussion was not finished. She refused to return his gaze, stubbornly keeping her head angled away from him and her focus entirely on the gentleman accompanying her.
He knew it was apurpose because she had once confided she did not care for Lord Yardley’s company. Lucas had learned the other man had courted Irisa two Seasons ago, but her father had denied his suit. He was certain that she only agreed to dance with the other man because she knew to refuse would cause comment and she was a lady in every sense. The perfect antithesis of his mother, in fact.
However, his lovely, biddable, beautiful, little paragon had sprouted a willful streak.
***
In high dudgeon, Irisa barely controlled herself from slamming the door upon entering her bedchamber. Only the knowledge that such behavior would be reported to her mother, stopped her. Her maid, Pansy, had left only one small brace of candles burning in the room so the deep wine red of her bed curtains and coverlet looked almost black.
Which matched her mood all too well. Her irritation with Lucas had not cooled one whit since the scene on the Bilkington’s terrace. He had spent the next half hour watching her on the dance floor and then left without saying goodbye or asking for his customary second dance.
She would be dismayed by such an eventuality if she weren’t so bloody angry. Even saying the swearword in her mind made her feel guilty. What would Mama say? Something censorious, no doubt.
In her current state, the thought made her feel rebellious, squashing the remnants of guilt.
She muttered, “Bloody, bloody, bloody man,” in a fit of defiant pique as she tore off her gloves and tossed them onto the dressing table.
She could not b
elieve that he had taken her to the seclusion of the terrace to grill her on how she spent her pin money. Did he have no sensibility to her person whatsoever?
She had practically thrown herself in his arms and he had ignored her every hint.
The door opened as she was kicking off her slippers with more emotion than aim so that one ended up on top of her coverlet and the other hit the heavy mauve drapes closed against the spring night before dropping to the floor with a small thud.
“Something ‘appen to put you in a tizzy?” Pansy asked as she stepped forward to help Irisa prepare for bed.
“Not something. Someone.” Pansy and Irisa had been friends since the maid had joined her mother, a downstairs maid, in service at Langley Hall as a young girl.
Some would say that the young woman who still spoke with a heavy country accent was not appropriate material for a lady’s maid, but Irisa could not imagine sharing her daily life so closely with anyone else. When she’d reached the age for a lady’s maid to become necessary, she had asked her brother, Jared, to approach Mama on the subject of promoting Pansy to the position.
Ever mindful that Jared was Papa’s one and only heir, Mama had acquiesced. One never knew when one’s husband would go to his Great Reward and leave one at the mercy of a stepson. It did not do to antagonize the person that might one day hold the purse strings.
“You mean ‘is lordship, The Saint?”
Irisa met Pansy’s understanding gaze in the mirror and nodded. “He’s so dense, I swear he could pass for one of the Elgin marbles.”
For once Pansy’s laughter did not bring an answering smile to Irisa’s lips. “The dolt took me out onto the Bilkington’s terrace and quizzed me on my investments.”
“And I suppose you were expecting ‘im to do somthin’ altogether different on the terrace, milady?” Pansy finished removing Irisa’s gown and corset.
She hung the dress up while Irisa pulled a nightrail over her still elegantly coiffed hair.
Blushing from Pansy’s teasing comment, she replied with great honesty and not a little disgruntlement. “Yes.”
The fact was, she usually enjoyed Lucas’s willingness to discuss practical matters. It was one of the reasons she was so drawn to him. Rather than treating her as an empty-headed widgeon like so many gentlemen of the ton, he conversed with her as an equal.
Only tonight she had wanted him to treat her like a woman, was almost desperate for it, in fact. Her liking for him had deepened to something far more substantial than mere friendship and she needed him to reciprocate those feelings in some measure. It was not a need she was comfortable with, being too much like her desire for a love her parents had been destined not to give her.
The maid took the pins from Irisa’s hair, allowing the curling gold strands to fall in one long mass before she separated it into three parts and began braiding it. “He’s a real gentleman, ‘e is. I don’t think ‘e ‘as the makin’s of one of them romantic ‘eroes you like to read about, Lady Irisa.”
Irisa glumly wondered if Pansy was right. Had she been fooling herself to believe Lucas had a core of manly passion he kept well hidden? Remembering the look of real anger in his eyes when she had refused to answer his question, she ignored that possibility. No, the passion was there, but could she tap it...more than the anger, that is?
“He’s supposed to call on ‘is lordship tomorrow, you know.”
Irisa’s head came up so fast that she pulled the lengthening braid from Pansy’s fingers. Luckily her maid was used to her fits and starts and she got hold of the braid before the strands separated and she had to start all over.
“When did you hear this?”
“The second footman ‘eard ‘is lordship’s man talkin’ to the butler. The servants is all wonderin’ if there’s to be a match at last.”
For once, she ignored the fact Pansy had been listening to gossip. At least it had been about something harmless.
Regardless, Irisa grumbled, “You talk as if I had one foot in the grave rather than being merely twenty years old.”
A gentlemen need not even begin looking for a wife before the ripe age of five and twenty, but a woman was considered quite on the shelf if she reached twenty without attaining the exalted state of matrimony. It was ludicrous.
“You’re nearing twenty-one m’lady. Most ladies is married and with a couple of children by that age and that’s the truth.” Pansy tied off Irisa’s braid and stepped back after making that unwelcome, if true pronouncement.
“Well, I’m not one of them.”
“That’s what’s got us all so worried, m’lady.”
“I do not need you worrying about me and when it comes to that, gossiping about me either.”
Pansy didn’t even blush at the reminder and Irisa dismissed her so she could find her bed.
Still too agitated to seek similar solace herself, she paced her room.
If she had not blackmailed her parents, she would be just like all those other ladies Pansy had mentioned. She had used the truth of her birth to force them into giving her some say over her future, which raised a disturbing issue she could no longer ignore. Not after discovering he planned to call on her father the next day.
If he asked her to marry him, she would have to tell him the truth about her birth. It was the only honorable thing to do. She did not expect her parents to see it that way. They would hide the scandal from their Maker if they could. The appearance of propriety was all that mattered to Mama and Papa and on the surface, she looked like any other well-bred lady of the ton.
If there was going to be a revealing, it would be up to her to orchestrate it. The prospect was not a pleasant one.
Stopping in the middle of her silent room, she hugged herself tightly and struggled not to let deeply ingrained fears and negative emotions get the better of her.
She dreaded revealing her secret to Lucas as much as she had dreaded the final emotional break with her parents four years ago. She had not intended the blackmail to do that, but the result had been foreordained. Mama had never forgiven her for refusing a duke and Papa had never forgiven her for defying him. If she did not accept an offer this Season, life at Langley Hall would become unbearable.
Is that why she had allowed her heart to become engaged with Lucas despite her better judgment and his reputation as such a paragon? Was her fear of returning to Langley Hall in disgrace the reason she tried to see passion in a man whose self-control was absolute? Her eyes burned as she accepted that her questions were most likely of little consequence.
Once she told Lucas the truth, he would undoubtedly sever their relationship.
Lucas owned twice the lands her father did and had a legendary size fortune. A gentleman of his station, particularly one who took such care with his reputation, would certainly balk at marriage to a lady who could not lay legitimate claim to the title.
Saint Ashton would leave her life as quickly and irrevocably as he had entered it and she very much feared he would break her heart in the process.
CHAPTER TWO
Lucas slowly pulled the thread that raised the miniature mast and rigging on the ship within the bottle.
A deep sense of accomplishment filled him as he surveyed the perfect imitation of a Brigantine vessel now enclosed in glass. Taking the last step in the months long process, he tied off the string and corked the bottle. He had not planned to finish the ship tonight, but had been restless after returning to his townhouse from the Bilkington ball several hours ago.
Working on the model had relaxed him, but it had not taken his mind off the maddening Lady Irisa. His desire for her was growing too strong to deny. They needed to marry, or he was going to do something he would regret. Like seducing her on a balcony.
He could not let that happen.
The last of his line, he was fully cognizant of his responsibility to the earldom to beget heirs.
Although his honor demanded he do his duty to the line, he had no intention of tying himself to an unsuitable w
oman like his father had done. Lucas could still remember the blazing rows between his very beautiful, very young mother and his elder, duty-driven father. The arguments had ended when he was ten years old with his father’s death.
Without her more conservative husband around to keep her under control, his mother had gone wild. She threw lavish parties, kept liaisons in such a public manner that even her two young sons were aware of them and spent a great deal of time in London. Both Lucas and his younger brother, James, had been forced to endure cruel and cutting remarks from their peers when they went away to school. His mother’s excesses were legendary and favorite fodder for gossip among the beau monde and its children.
James had largely ignored both his mother’s actions and the gossip they elicited. In fact, much to Lucas’s private grief, his brother had shown all the symptoms of following in her footsteps prior to his untimely death at the age of one and twenty.
Lucas, on the other hand, had fought his way through school, defending the indefensible and his mother’s nonexistent honor. By the time she had died eight years ago, Lucas’s intolerance on the subject had become its own legend. It was rumored that he had fought no less than two duels over the matter. He knew the rumors were false. There had been three duels and he had won them all.
He would never again willingly link his life to a woman who required that kind of defense. He would marry a woman whose behavior was so exemplary there would be no cause for duels, a woman like Lady Irisa.
A patterncard of appropriate behavior, she was also an enticing woman who stirred his passions in a very satisfying way. She was perfect as his potential wife, even if she had a heretofore-unknown tendency toward stubbornness.
***
Langley’s eyes mirrored deep satisfaction as Lucas made the reason for his call known.
Lucas was unsurprised at Irisa’s father’s reaction to his offer. The man had made no secret of his desire to see his daughter wed. The only mystery was why he had allowed her to remain unmarried so long. The earl did not seem to be the sort of man to pay close attention to his daughter’s sensibilities in the matter.