***
Miss Loraine Beauchamp
She left the moment she rose out of the curtsy, without sparing him another glance.
For several moments, Philip felt incapable of moving. He just stared at the curtain, billowing in her wake, feeling like he’d just seen something that wasn’t of this world.
He blinked, as though shedding the bonds of a spell she’d cast on him. And then he followed her, in a primal instinct to certify that she wouldn’t disappear and be lost to him forever.
He stepped past the curtain and caught sight of her almost instantaneously, because his gaze was drawn to her.
Philip took a step towards her, with every intention of asking her to dance. That would trap her against him for at least the duration of a song.
But before he reached her, another gentleman got there first. Philip was close enough to hear the man say, “Would you care to dance, Miss Beauchamp?”
Philip felt certain that before she answered, Loraine stole a glance back at him. She looked back at the gentleman, who was certainly handsome, and accepted his offer with a gracious smile. She took his hand and he led her to the dance floor, away from Philip.
Philip’s chest deflated and his brows pulled together, making him look rather like a sullen beast. He was still a little drunk, though he wasn’t sure if the dizziness he was feeling right now was a product of the liquor or of Loraine.
“What are you staring at?” Theodore said, as he appeared beside him.
Philip forced himself to stop staring at Loraine. But he regretted it the moment he did so, because when he looked around he saw that almost every gentleman and lady was staring at her too.
“The same thing everyone else is,” Philip retorted. “That woman.”
“Miss Loraine Beauchamp,” Theodore answered, in a grim voice.
Philip looked at him. “Yes. How do you know of her?”
Theodore shrugged. “Everyone is talking about her, so it doesn’t take much to find out.”
Theodore was looking at Loraine. Philip studied his expression, to determine if he could see any interest in it. But instead of interest, he saw something else that looked almost like anger.
“You do not seem smitten with her, as they are,” Philip remarked.
“And nor should you be.”
Philip’s brow wrinkled with confusion. “Why on earth not? Have you seen her?”
He nodded, with a somber countenance. “I certainly have. She is quite enchanting, isn’t she?”
“You say that as if it is reason to spite her.”
“That alone may not be,” Theodore answered. “But what has come of her enchantment certainly is.”
“Do stop quibbling,” Philip said, impatiently. “What are you getting at?”
Theodore’s anger was replaced by surprise and he turned his face to look at Philip. “Don’t you know who she is?”
Philip looked from Theodore to Loraine. He was certain that if he’d ever seen this woman before, he’d recognize her. “I’ve never seen such a woman in all my life,” he concluded.
“No, you have not. But you have heard of her. Miss Loraine Beauchamp, Philip. From Louisiana.”
Louisiana? His frown deepened. “I must have been drunk out of my mind to forget meeting her in-” He stopped talking abruptly.
Miss Loraine Beauchamp.
He had heard the name before. Once.
Philip’s face went deadpan and paled. He stared at Loraine, across the ballroom, as his heart beat to a queer and uncomfortable rhythm.
“Edgar…” he whispered.
“Edgar,” Theodore echoed, miserably.
Philip watched her, hearing the blood rush to his ears over the sound of the music. He watched every glide of her limbs, every movement of her lips and every flutter of her lashes.
He felt a sudden and uncomfortable heat in his body. An impetus that made him want to move.
He took a sudden step, but was forced to stop when Theodore caught his arm and yanked him back. “What are you doing?” Theodore hissed.
Philip yanked his arm free and turned on his friend. “How can you just stand here?” He bit out. “While she-”
“While she what?” Theodore snaps in reply. “What do you expect me to do, Philip? Justice isn’t ours to take.”
“Then whose is it?” Philip practically snarled. He made another attempt to walk towards Loraine, but was intercepted by Bradley this time.
Both he and Theodore blocked his path, which just made Philip angrier. “Take a moment to think,” Bradley whispered, to keep others from hearing. He planted his hand against Philip’s chest, rending him motionless.
“What do you plan on doing?” Theodore asked.
“I-” He began, but found that his answer wasn’t forthcoming. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he knew that he had to do something.
His rage and remorse were these fiery, intermingled, living things inside of him.
He had to get them out before they burnt him up.
“Come outside,” Bradley suggested. “Come outside and talk.”
It took several moments before Philip was able to agree.
***
Lord Philip Everton, Marquess of Blackhill
By the time Theodore and Bradley were able to usher Philip outside, his temper had cooled ever so slightly. He was no longer prepared to throw himself at Miss Beauchamp without any notion of what he intended to do.
The three of them stood in the gardens, a stone’s throw from the house but out of earshot.
None of them were especially well-equipped to be having such a serious conversation, given that they were all drunk.
“I can’t comprehend the pair of you,” Philip said. “How can you stand to be anywhere near her? It makes me sick to my stomach.”
And indeed he did feel nauseas, though perhaps that was the liquor coming back to punish him.
“Do you think we like it anymore than you do?” Theodore retorted, hotly. “But what do you expect us to do? We can’t very well drag her before a judge.”
Philip knew that he had insulted his friends by suggesting that they were any less upset by Miss Beauchamp’s nearness than he was.
But in his anger, it was too easy to forget that they were grieving too.
“We have to do something,” Philip said, in a terse voice that broached no argument. He looked back towards the house, imagining her inside. Happy. Not a care in the world for the man she’d killed.
Bradley followed Philip’s stare, then muttered, “True justice would be to do to her what she did to him.”
Philip looked at Bradley. He knew that it had been said without real intention. That it was just a thought. But to Philip, it was far more than a thought.
“Encourage an infatuation,” Philip said, as something dawned on him.
Bradley nodded, still heedless of the path Philip’s mind was taking. “Make her fall in love and show her how it feels to be scorned.”
“That would be justice indeed,” Theodore added, with a quiet sadness about him.
“Then let us do it,” Philip said, with nothing but resolve in his countenance. His friends looked at him, frowning. “Let’s do it,” he said again. “Let’s make her fall in love.”
Theodore lost his sombre look and expelled a long breath, as if he’d grown impatient with Philip’s madness. “And I suppose you will be the one to do it?”
“Who else?”
“I don’t get it,” Bradley said.
“Philip wants to play her,” Theodore explained, with a disbelieving quirk of his brow. “To make her fall in love with him so that he can scorn her.”
Bradley looked between Theodore and Philip, frowning. “Won’t that be rather tricky?”
“I’ve never had any trouble persuading a woman to want me before,” Philip reminded them.
“This woman is different,” Theodore responded. “Or have you forgotten what she’s capable of?”
“I’m not Edgar,” Phil
ip said, thoughtlessly but honestly. It was the truth. Edgar had always been a bit soft. Hyper prone to the most extreme form of every feeling.
“Edgar wasn’t the only man to fall for her,” Bradley said. “I heard that she’s left a long line of broken men behind her.”
“Well I am not like most men. I would bet my life on my ability in this regard.”
“Your life?” Theodore echoed, with a challenging tone. “What about your pocket?”
“I’d put a handsome sum on it,” Philip answered.
“How handsome?”
“How would one hundred pounds suit you?”
Bradley whistled out a breath, while Theodore’s expression turned musing.
“Well?” Philip pressed. “Do we have a deal?” He put his hand out and waited, with raised brows.
Then, after several weighted moments, Theodore shook his hand. “We have a deal.”
Bradley looked concerned, particularly when Philip turned back towards the estate. “Cool your temper first,” he advised.
“It is entirely cool.”
“Is now the best time?” Bradley pressed.
“There is no better time to start,” he remarked, without looking back.
Chapter 5
Miss Loraine Beauchamp
“May I interject?”
He was back. The man from the balcony. Loraine did not answer, but looked at the gentleman she was dancing with. He looked entirely taken aback. His mouth was open and he was trying to stutter out a suitable reply.
It was clear that he didn’t want to concede, having just managed to get a dance with her. Poor chap. She’d seen him looking at her all evening, waiting in the figurative queue to dance with her.
They’d only been dancing for a few moments and it was such poor etiquette to interject. But the gentleman clearly didn’t have the strength of will to say no.
“Good fellow,” Lord Blackhill said, before the man had managed to muster a single word. He smacked him on the back amicably and stepped in, forcing him to step aside.
Looking like a child whose candy had been taken away, the man stepped back, his jaw still slack. Lord Blackhill’s hand slipped into hers. Loraine was tall for a woman, but he was still a great deal taller. She had to tip her head back slightly to look up at him.
“That was unkind,” she remarked, though her voice didn’t sound especially concerned.
Lord Blackhill smiled. “Dancing with everyone but me was unkind of you,” he replied.
“You did not ask me.”
“You knew my purpose,” he said, with an arched brow, daring her to deny it. It was true. She’d seen him approaching her after they’d left the balcony.
“It is no fault of mine that someone beat you to it.”
“Are you suggesting that you would have said yes if I’d gotten there first?”
“I did not say that,” Loraine said, and lifted her chin a little higher as they started to dance.
“Then you would have said no?”
“I did not say that either.”
He started to smile and he almost looked amused. It perplexed her. She wondered why he hadn’t given up yet, though she supposed he wasn’t unlike most men. They were terribly difficult to shake off.
“I thought I’d managed to evade you,” she admitted. She did not look at him directly, but scanned the room. She’d been avoiding her aunt, who’d been in the drawing room for a while now.
That had afforded Loraine a small reprieve from Aunt Esther, but her aunt’s absence compelled gentleman to ask her to dance. Over and over. Every time she would try to speak to another lady, in an attempt to befriend her, a gentleman would interject.
And she was beginning to lose her courage, having failed so many times.
“I am not so easily evaded,” Lord Blackhill said. She looked up at him. His voice was rich and smooth and his eyes had a heavy look in them which made something in her belly shiver.
Before she could come up with a clever answer, she spotted her aunt coming into the ballroom. She was craning her head and looking over the people around her.
She was looking for her.
Loraine ducked down suddenly, leaving Lord Blackhill towering over her. He looked down at her and quirked his brow. “Miss Beauchamp? Might I ask what you’re doing?”
“Shh!” She hissed. The crowd of dancers was keeping her mostly hidden, but they were starting to disperse as the song came to an end. Loraine picked up her skirts and ran towards the doors that led into the garden, keeping her head low.
Once outside, she ran across the lawn as best she could in her gown and shoes. When she reached some bushes, she hid behind them. She put her back against them and expelled a breath.
Loraine closed her eyes. This was not what she’d envisioned her return to England being like.
“Why are we hiding?”
The voice startled her. She jumped out of her skin and put her hand over her heart. Beside her, Lord Blackhill had emerged.
“We are not hiding,” she bit out, in a whisper. “I am hiding. You are stalking me.” As she said this, she peeked out from behind the bushes and looked towards the garden doors to see if she can spot her aunt.
When she saw a woman emerge in the doorway, she mistook the woman for her aunt momentarily. Sucking in a breath, she grabbed Lord Blackhill’s arm and yanked him towards her so that he was entirely disguised behind the bushes.
It brought them uncomfortably close. She looked between them, then released him. “If you insist on being here, then you mustn’t be seen.”
“Does this dissuade most men?” He asked.
She frowned at him. She had her hand on a cluster of leaves and was bushing it back so she could peer through the bush. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re referring to.”
“This attitude of yours.”
She stopped looking through the bush. With raised brows, she straightened so that they were eye to eye. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t pretend you’re insulted,” he replied, unfazed by her confrontational stance. “You know very well what I’m talking about. I have you figured out.”
“Do you?” She said, with a single elevated brow. “After a mere evening, you have me figured out,” she said, with an abundance of sarcasm.
He nodded, entirely assured, and smiled. “I do.”
“Do tell, Lord Blackhill.”
His smile grew. He had the look of a poker player who had a good hand, but she couldn’t be sure if he was bluffing or not. “And give away all my cards? I’m afraid not. But if you want to make an exchange of secrets, I may be willing to negotiate.”
“Your cards? Are we playing a game, Lord Blackhill?”
“You certainly are.”
She felt the slightest stirring of her temper. Something that happened so rarely. Men irritated her, but they didn’t anger her, because she didn’t care enough.
But Lord Blackhill was insufferable.
“Well?”
“Well what?” She replied, tersely.
“Does your attitude dissuade most men?”
Loraine studied his face for a few drawn-out moments. Her expression was full of scrutiny. “Only the clever ones,” she answered, as she turned back towards the bushes and peered through.
“Loraine!”
Loraine winced. Through the bush, she could see her aunt stood by the garden doors. She was calling for her. “Loraine!”
Her cheeks went pink and she was mortified by the prospect of everyone hearing her aunt shouting for her like that. “Stay here,” she said to Lord Blackhill, as she turned back towards him.
“Pardon?”
“Stay here. She mustn’t know we’re here together.”
“Why not?” He said, with a growing smile. “Are you concerned that she will think we are making mischief with one another?”
The notion should have disgusted her. But she felt her blood warm a little. She didn’t let it show, but expelled a hefty breath impatiently. “Will you j
ust stay here?”
“In exchange for something.”
She balked at this. Her aunt called her name again. “In exchange for what?” She said, quickly.
“A kiss.” There was such an impishness about his face. This made her balk even more so.
Title Sinful Tales of Desirable Ladies Page 4
