She extended one ungloved hand toward the neck of the nearest bay. “May I?” she asked the skeptical groom in her most persuasive accents, and flashed what she hoped was an endearing smile.
The lackey eyed her with faint suspicion for a moment or two as if calculating her trustworthiness to handle such a priceless treasure as his master’s prime cattle. There was something in her poise, in her calm approach, however, that gave the unmistakable impression that the lady knew her way around horses. And she was a Beauty—a thoroughbred in her own right. It tipped the balance of the scales in her favor. His features relaxed into a less grimmer aspect. “Aye,” he said cautiously. “I’m thinking there can’t be any harm in it if you take care no to skitter ’em.”
Deirdre voiced her thanks for the generous favor and advanced upon one of the bays with palm extended. She brought it to a halt a good twelve inches from his flaring nostrils. Watchful, coal black eyes surveyed the unfamiliar object for a moment or two, muscles tensing for instant flight, but as the hand remained immobile, just out of reach, curiosity overcame the bay’s natural instinct for caution and he craned his head forward to nuzzle Deirdre’s fingers.
“I learned on a horse farm in Jamaica how curious these animals are,” said Deirdre with a hint of apology. Her hand moved across the corded sinews of the bay’s neck, softly massaging, stroking him into submitting to her touch, and she murmured soft endearments under her breath.
At the liquid sounds of her soothing voice, the bay’s ears pricked. Deirdre scratched them. “I presume your master knows your worth, you magnificent animal,” she breathed against his silky neck.
“That he does,” the groom interjected, his voice puffing with pride. “His lordship be knowing the worth o’ his cattle, none better. He was born an’ bred to the saddle, aye, an’ can do an honest day’s work in the stable when he has a mind to. He be a cavalry man an’ no one o’ yer flats w’ nowt in their heads ’cept cuttin’ a dash.”
“I take it your master is one of those gentlmen who puts his cattle above people?” Deirdre was familiar with the type.
The groom shrugged. “He respects what he pays for.”
“And yet he keeps them here standing,” Deirdre needled with gentle malice, perversely hoping to open a crack in the lackey’s blind devotion to this paragon of a master.
The groom’s confidence was not to be shaken. “Nay!” he returned easily, disappointing Deirdre’s hopes. “His lordship be putting the bit to a filly o’ a different sort. He’ll break her to bridle soon enough.” A sly smile touched his lips. “He’ll be having her tamely eating out o’ his hand afore ye know it. The master has the knack o’ gentling even the highest steppers. He knows how to be patient and so maun we.”
“Are we talking of horses or females?” asked Deirdre primly.
“What’s the difference?”
Deirdre was startled into a laugh. He was a bold one, and no mistaking. But he had a touch of the Irish in him. That would explain it.
“Rogue!” she flung at him with an impish grin. “I thank you for the warning. You may rest assured that in future I shall give both you and your master a wide berth, yes, and instruct all the ladies of my acquaintance to emulate my example. ‘Break her to bridle,’ indeed!” Laughter threaded her voice.
She gave the bay one last, reluctant pat and swung back toward the pillared entrance of her aunt’s red brick town house. She had taken only a step, however, when the door swung open and a tall, imposing figure in dark superfine and beige pantaloons molded closely to the hard muscles of leg and thigh stepped over the threshold. Deirdre caught a glimpse of the mahogany cast of the gentleman’s ruffled locks before he jammed on his beaver and jauntily descended the few granite steps of the front portico.
“Rathbourne!” she exclaimed. Her green eyes shaded with surprise swept up to meet the golden glint of his steady gaze.
“Gareth,” he corrected gently.
Before she knew what he was about, the Earl had grasped her firmly by the elbow and was propelling her toward the waiting curricle. “I have your aunt’s permission,” he warned when he felt the stiffening resistance beneath his fingers. “I assure you, Deirdre, it is quite acceptable for a gentleman to take a lady for a drive in an open carriage.”
She might have known that the equipage belonged to him. The crest of red hawk emblazoned on its side should have warned her. But it had never occurred to her that Rathbourne would seek her out. Barely an hour had elapsed since they had spoken to each other on Bond Street. What was he up to? Armand! Of course! He would wish to sound her out about her brother.
As she was solicitously settled on the cushions of the black leather seat, Deirdre looked around with a wrathful glint in her eye. Rathbourne had moved to the other side of the curricle to take his place beside her, and Deirdre, catching the speculative grin on the groom’s face, bared her teeth in a ferocious grimace. She heard his strangled chuckle as he gave the ribbons into his master’s hands. Then he deferentially touched his cap to her and with a surreptitious wink moved off down the street as if by prearranged signal, and she was alone with Rathbourne.
He flicked the ribbons smartly, urging the bays to a slow trot.
“Where are you taking me?” Deirdre demanded.
“Only to the Park. What did you think? That I meant to abduct you? Rest assured, that is not my intention.” Amusement laced the soft sarcasm of his words.
Deirdre was stung by the smooth jibe. If he meant to show her up as a fanciful female, he was in for a disappointment. That he felt no real remorse for his unfeeling conduct at Vauxhall was obvious. No doubt that peccadillo paled into insignificance in light of his subsequent debauchery. It would feed his vanity if he ever discovered that what to him had been a passing flirtation had come close to blighting her life.
In the five years since her come-out, she had become adept at depressing the pretensions of overfamiliar coxcombs. Rathbourne’s masterful manner might endear him to the likes of a Mrs. Dewinters, but Deirdre was confident that she had long since become inured to the hackneyed charm of a born flirt. He expected a blushing innocent. She would show him the face of a woman of the world.
“Naturally, I am disappointed. But don’t let that weigh with you. I shall console myself with the thought that this afternoon I have an appointment with my mantua maker, and Madame Tremblay hates to be kept waiting. Perhaps some other time?”
She had expected to disconcert him, but when she flashed a glance at his profile, she soon discerned that it was impossible to depress the Earl. He was smiling broadly, and before Deirdre could make a recovery, he was on the offensive.
“It was never my intention to disappoint you, Deirdre. Your suggestion is well taken. An interlude of dalliance ought not to be compressed between appointments to one’s tailor or one’s dressmaker. How are you fixed for tomorrow?”
Deirdre retreated behind a veil of glacial politeness. “You had some business with my aunt, sir?” She was careful to avoid the use of his Christian name or title.
Rathbourne flicked her a satirical look. “A non sequitur if ever I heard one. Does this mean that we have sheathed swords? And just when things were beginning to get interesting.” He gave a loverlike sigh which Deirdre ignored. “To answer your question,” he continued affably, “I had some business of a private nature with Lady Fenton.”
Deirdre waited, but the Earl had obviously no intention of satisfying her curiosity.
After an interval of silence she began on a new tack.
“How well you handle the ribbons.” The exaggerated admiration was done to a nicety. Insult or compliment—let him make of it what he would.
“Don’t!” he commanded.
She raised limpid eyes to meet the sudden blaze of his expression. “What did I do?” she asked innocently.
“You know perfectly well.” He slowed the bays to negotiate a sharp corner, then went on more easily. “Don’t play games with me, Deirdre, I won’t allow it. And save those melting
glances for the flats who are like to be taken in by them. You have my permission to act the grande dame, as only you can, with any other man of your choosing, but with me I insist that you be your own incomparable self. Between us, I expect a little candor. It was ever the quintessence of your charm.”
She fell silent, watching resentfully from under veiled lashes as he skillfully maneuvered the bays through the Stanhope Gate and into Hyde Park. The odd rider had taken the opportunity of exercising his mount at a time when the park was certain to be thin of company, but there would be few carriages until later in the afternoon. Rathbourne brought the bays to a halt and slackened the reins, allowing them to forage on the winter brown grass at the edge of the drive. Deirdre felt a chill and dragged the folds of her redingote more tightly across her knees.
“Here!” He unfolded a traveling rug and draped it across her lap. “What happened to the rose?” His hand went toward the lapel of her redingote.
A faint flush stained Deirdre’s cheekbones. “I lost it,” she lied, suddenly ashamed of her ungenerous impulse.
“I’ll get you another,” he said softly, then on the next breath, “You never married.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No,” she replied shortly. Two could play at being tight-lipped.
“Why?”
He had no right to ask. She owed him nothing. “Perhaps nobody asked me.”
His measuring gaze wandered slowly over her, from the top of her jaunty blue ostrich feather to the toes of her new kid half boots, absorbing the slim but feminine figure with its promise of pleasure, the clear oval of her face, the fine-pored, flawless complexion. He grew pensive as he held those expressive green eyes which mirrored every fleeting thought and emotion. She would never know how easy he found it to read her. Even now, her eyes were narrowed in displeasure at his bold scrutiny. If only she would unbend a little and favor him with that slow, unconsciously alluring half smile that could transform her from passionless prude to Aphrodite incarnate. His gaze lingered on her lips, and he smiled.
“Oh, you were asked,” he replied smoothly. “As I recall, you became engaged a fortnight or so after I left for Spain.”
“And became disengaged a fortnight after that,” she replied with an edge to her voice.
“So I heard. Then took off soon afterward for Jamaica. The question still stands. Why did you never marry?”
She tilted her head back to get a clearer view of his expression. Did he suppose that she had avoided marriage because of a forlorn tendresse for him? The thought came so uncomfortably close to the truth that she felt her anger rising.
“And take a master to lord it over me? You must be funning. I have yet to be persuaded that matrimony holds any material advantage for a woman.” She caught his derisory grin and went on with biting persistence. “What, pray, does a woman gain by it? She merely passes from one man’s dominion to another’s. A guardian or a husband—what difference does it make?”
“If you don’t know, I cannot explain it.” Laughter flickered in the depths of his eyes. “Suffice it to say that I find your education sadly lacking in some respects. But rest easy, Deirdre. You may depend on me to spare your blushes.”
“Don’t put yourself to the trouble. I don’t blush easily. But deny if you can that marriage, for a woman, is like a game of chance. Whether or not her guardian or husband is benign or a tyrant is a matter of good fortune or bad. What protection has she if either proves intolerable? There is none.”
“Not in theory, but in practice, surely, most women are cherished by their menfolk?”
“Do you think so? You may be right.” She was not persuaded, but the subject was becoming too personal for comfort. She eyed him with frank curiosity. “But your case is not the same as mine. A man has nothing to lose if he takes a wife. Yet I don’t see you rushing off to offer for some eligible girl. Answer your own question, Rathbourne,” she commanded boldly. “Why have you never married?”
“Can’t you guess?” he asked provocatively.
Deirdre did, and her composure was visibly shaken. “Yes, I can see that the question is irrelevant. What need of a wife when there are always dozens of women ready to throw themselves at your head? Don’t trouble to deny it! The ondits of your shocking behavior in Spain were related to me, ad nauseam I may add, even as far away as Jamaica. And even before that…”
She fell uncomfortably silent, thinking that perhaps he thought she was fishing.
“And I had supposed that after Vauxhall, you never gave me another thought. I am flattered.”
“Don’t be. If I thought of you at all, it was with…indifference.”
“Deirdre, why are you angry?”
“I am not angry,” she said emphatically.
“But you are.”
“I tell you, I am not,” she retorted, visibly trying to control her fury.
He shook his head in mock disbelief.
“I am not…oh, this is silly.” She would say no more.
“If there is anything you wish to know, you have only to ask me,” he continued with maddening blandness. He cocked an inquisitive brow, but Deirdre was steadfastly looking away, pretending an interest in a lone horseman who was taking advantage of the deserted park to ride ventre à terre along the wide sweep of drive reserved for riders and their mounts.
“Is it my reputation?” he persisted gently. “I cannot pretend that I’ve been a saint all these years, but the stories that got about were grossly exaggerated. You can’t mean to hold my past against me?”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“I hoped we were to be friends.”
“Friends? Why should we be?”
His laugh held a thread of self-mockery. “You have not an inkling, have you? No matter. I shall satisfy your curiosity when I judge the time is right. I rushed my fences once before…” He halted suddenly in midsentence as if he regretted saying so much.
“Is this an oblique reference to my brother?”
“Your brother?”
“He is only a boy.”
“What?”
“Armand! You cannot feel threatened by him.”
“I don’t.” He sounded surprised.
“He won’t call you out. I have his word on it,” Deirdre went on earnestly. “If you would just give me a little time, I hope to persuade him to give up…to come home to Henley with me.”
He realized they were talking at cross-purposes. “That would not suit me at all,” he said with a half smile gentling his expression.
The threat to her brother was unmistakable.
“Lord Rathbourne, Gareth,” she began, and smiled engagingly into his eyes. The sudden intensity of his expression almost unnerved her, but she forced herself to speak naturally and without hesitation. “Allow me to apologize for my brother’s rash words when we met on Bond Street this morning. No one takes the boy seriously when he is in one of his takings. He really didn’t mean to be insulting, you know. It’s just that he speaks without thinking.”
He looked at her for such a long, interminable moment that Deirdre began to think that perhaps she had offended him.
“Did he ask you to speak to me on his behalf?”
“Certainly not! Why if he knew that I was here with you now, he would be…” She faltered to a halt. The conversation had taken a turn she had no wish to pursue.
“He would? Pray continue?”
“It doesn’t signify. I should never have mentioned it.”
“But you did mention it, Deirdre, and I insist that you finish what you began.”
But she wouldn’t dare. She shook her head. “No, no! Let it rest.”
“Deirdre, I am not a patient man. Either you tell me what I wish to know or I shall make a point of applying to your brother.”
He must know the answer to that question. Why was he insisting that she bring up a subject which must give her considerable embarrassment? She would show him that she had more composure that he gave her credit for.
“Armand has taken you in dislike. That shouldn’t surprise you. I gather that he imagines himself to be in love with a lady in whom you have a mutual interest.”
“Indeed? You speak of Mrs. Dewinters, I presume?”
“Is there another?”
They might have been discussing the weather. They spoke with detachment, without rancor, and so rigidly correct.
“Not to my knowledge. Poor boy! Maria will make his life miserable!”
“But…don’t you mind?”
“Why should I?”
“But isn’t she…? Everyone says…”
“You have been listening to gossip again, Deirdre, a regrettable failing. My interest in Mrs. Dewinters is strictly platonic.” Then gently, “She means nothing to me.”
Deirdre felt as if a crushing weight had been lifted from her chest. “Then Armand is safe? There won’t be a duel?”
“I am not in the habit of dueling with children. But tell me, do you make it a practice to fight all your brother’s battles for him?”
The hint of censure put her immediately on the defensive. “He is my brother, and under age,” she said with crushing dignity. “It is natural for me to worry about him.”
“Are you saying that you are responsible for him?”
“Not legally, of course. Armand has a guardian of sorts, but not so as one would notice. If I don’t look out for his interests, no one will.”
“Who is his guardian?”
“My late stepfather’s brother, Giles St. Jean. But as a guardian, he is a useless article. Armand might as well not exist for all the attention he pays him.”
“But you surely don’t hope, on your own, to manage a young hellion like your brother? Ye Gods, you can’t be much more than a year or two older yourself.”
Why had she confided so much to him? It had been a mistake. Rathbourne was hostile to Armand, that much was obvious. His next words confirmed her observations.
The Passionate Prude Page 6
