As they deposited their heavy wraps and mantles, Deirdre took stock of the finery of the other ladies present and noted with satisfaction that her own simple frock of gold sarcenet with ivory satin ribbons tied snugly under the bosom and at the sleeve needed no apology although it was four years old and recently refurbished. Her ensemble might not be of the first stare, but in this setting, and with Rathbourne’s preferred colors, she could not have chosen better. The cream-colored rosebuds set adroitly in the ringlets of heavy gold hair which fell to her shoulders had been plucked from the bouquet which she had received that afternoon from the Earl. It would have been ungracious not to acknowledge his thoughtfulness in compensating her for the one rosebud she had so rashly discarded. Either way, he was bound to make some comment, and she hoped he would find the gesture placating and in some small measure be more kindly disposed toward her brother.
Deirdre fell into step behind Lady Fenton as they moved down the long expanse of corridor toward the grand saloon, which seemed to glow with the blaze of a thousand candles and where she knew their hosts would be waiting at the threshold to greet their guests. She tried to brace herself for what she saw must surely be a nerve-racking evening, and her spine straightened imperceptibly and the green of her eyes deepened to smoke. Then she caught sight of him, and she felt a pulse spring to life at her throat.
She had never denied that he was uncommonly handsome, although her personal preference was for men of a fairer complexion. His dark skin, sun scorched to bronze, and those mesmerizing eyes were too overpowering for comfort. She acknowledged that the sweep of his broad shoulders and the hard-muscled, lean length of him were made to be displayed in the current fashion of skin-tight breeches and coat. Few women, she knew, could resist that dark, rugged beauty and the charm of that engaging smile which he used with such unconscious effect. More fools them! Unexpectedly, his gaze traveled over the heads of his two female companions and his eyes locked with Deirdre’s. For a fraction of a second, his smile faded. But the warmth of his admiring gaze reached out like a caress.
Deirdre was ready for him. Her long lashes fluttered down to shield her from that probing look, and when she next raised her eyes, she was careful to fix her gaze on the women who flanked the tall figure of her host.
Like the Earl, the Dowager Countess of Rathbourne and her daughter, Lady Caro, were tall and straight backed. Their elegantly coiffured tresses blazed unashamedly with the tawny hues of the Earl’s locks, but less subdued, and Deirdre idly mused that future generations of the great House of Cavanaugh would carry the Earl’s tawny imprint as a distinguishing feature. A fleeting impression of infants with soft red tresses playing at her feet and nursing at her breast flashed through her brain, shocking her into momentary immobility. A slow, faint blush of color suffused her cheeks. Her startled glance flicked to the Earl, but thankfully, his head was averted, his attention focused on the guests ahead of her.
She had always been cursed with a too lively imagination, and see the results of it, she told herself sternly. Nevertheless, as her slow, dragging feet brought her level with the receiving line, she could not suppress the fanciful notion that she was about to make her curtsy to a pride of lions. Three pairs of glowing amber eyes flecked with gold were turned upon her, and Deirdre forced herself to accept their unfaltering scrutiny with outward tranquility. She responded to Rathbourne’s polite words of introduction and comment on the roses in her hair with a graciousness of long practice, but when she at last moved out of their menacing orbit, she breathed a long sigh of relief, then felt immoderately guilty when she caught her aunt’s reproving frown.
Later in the evening, when Rathbourne had brought his sister to her and immediately departed with a muttered apology about a host’s time never being his own, Deirdre was to wonder at that first impression, for the girl, with her long stride and tossing mane, seemed more in the style of a skittish colt ill at ease in an unfamiliar pasture. Caro’s hands flexed nervously at her side, and her golden glances, wide and wary, roved the room as if anticipating some unfriendly overture from the throng of fashionables who graced her mother’s best saloon. Deirdre, in a rush of sympathy, set herself to distract the girl from what she surmised was an understandable attack of nerves at her first public appearance.
After a turn around the grand saloon, they settled on a small white damask settee near the chamber reserved for supper. By dint of careful questioning, Deirdre soon had Caro holding forth on a number of topics which were of interest to any young deb on the threshold of her first Season, and at the end of ten minutes or so, she was amply rewarded for her pains when she noted that Caro’s reserve had melted entirely and they were chatting like old friends.
“I suppose, since you are the only girl in the family, your mother has long anticipated your first Season?”
“True.”
Deirdre sensed the restraint behind the noncommittal response.
“No doubt you anticipate the weeks ahead with as much anxiety as ardor?”
Lady Caro’s eyes showed a glimmer of interest. “How astute of you to notice. Nearly everybody expects me to be in high alt at the thought of taking my place in Society.”
Deirdre resisted the impulse to smile. “But such a prospect, of course, puts you in the dismals? Now why is that?”
Caro’s smile held a hint of reproach. “Can’t you guess? Attending balls, routs, and so on, making small talk, and everyone pretending they have no notion of what is going on.”
“What is going on?” asked Deirdre with a small frown of perplexity.
“You know! I am to find a husband, of course. Isn’t that the object of this charade which is aptly named ‘The Season’? Mama might as well have given me a shotgun or a line and reel to lug around, or put me on the auction block at Tattersall’s. It’s disgustingly embarrassing.”
Deirdre was tempted to laugh at such a display of cynicism from a young slip of a girl, but concern for Caro’s future acceptance by the high sticklers of the ton crushed the impulse. Such thoughts might well be common to some debutantes who were of a sensitive disposition, indeed she counted herself in their number, but it would never do for a gently bred girl to express herself so candidly, especially to a veritable stranger. For all that, Deirdre found the young girl’s honesty refreshing.
“I know exactly how you feel,” she began carefully, hoping to temper Caro’s frankness with a modicum of discretion, “but it were wiser if you learn not to express such thoughts to all and sundry. Guardians and mothers, in my experience, are never swayed by the logic young debs articulate, however persuasive. My advice to you is to forget their ambitions and make the most of your opportunities. Enjoy yourself. Enlarge your circle of friends. I, for one, am very glad that I had this opportunity of making your acquaintance, and if there had been no Season, it would never have happened.”
“That’s true,” said Caro, brightening a little. Then on the next breath, “But of course, Gareth would have introduced us eventually.”
Deirdre saw the object of their conversation approaching with a supper plate held aloft in one hand. “Speak of the devil,” she said sweetly when he was within earshot.
The Earl smiled playfully down at her. “I am flattered that even when I am absent, you ladies think on me still.”
Deirdre snorted. “What we think of you, Rathbourne, doesn’t bear repeating.”
“Here, brat,” he said affectionately to his sister, “I’ve brought you some supper. Guy is right behind me, somewhere, I believe. Now mind your manners until he arrives to watch over you. Come, Deirdre,” his soft baritone commanded with an imperious edge. “Permit me to rescue you from this precocious chit.”
His warm hand covered hers and she was pulled to her feet before she could give him the dignity of a reply. She caught a glint of laughter in Caro’s eyes, and managed to throw over her shoulder, “I’ll be back directly.”
“Oh no you won’t,” Rathbourne countered sotto voce in her ear as he steered a clear path for
them through the crush. Deirdre noticed her aunt’s gray head bent in conversation with Rathbourne’s mother, and she smiled and nodded a greeting before the Earl had time to yank her through the open door to the room beyond. His mood was lighthearted, playful, like a young boy bent on mischief, and Deirdre wondered at it. She felt his hand briefly at the small of her back, and she frowned up at him, but nothing, it seemed, could shake him from his good humor.
A stoic footman heaped their respective plates with every kind of delicacy, and Rathbourne found a place for them in a deserted alcove half concealed by gold velvet curtains which could be pulled at will. If they had been alone in a small room they could not have been more private. Deirdre’s lips thinned. Had Rathbourne made the slightest move to pull the curtains, she would have departed like a shot. As it was, she merely sniffed, and ranged herself behind the low table opposite the Earl’s place on the sofa. Rathbourne gave her a knowing grin and stretched his long legs to rest casually on the obstacle that separated him from his quarry.
“What did you think of Caro?”
Deirdre considered before replying. “I like her. She is so transparently honest.”
“Frank to a fault, in other words?”
“That’s not what I said,” Deirdre protested. “She is frank, I don’t deny it. But that is part of her attraction. Her lack of affectation is unusual in a girl of her age. She is a beautiful, winsome creature.”
“And what do you think of her brother?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Come now, Deirdre. My question is not ambiguous. I want to know where I stand.”
She raised her glass of champagne to eye level and examined the bubbles as they floated to the surface. “As you can see, I am here,” she began cautiously. “I have not spurned your offer of friendship. As for my brother, truly, I am doing my best to wean his interest from Mrs. Dewinters. It’s no good taking a hard line with Armand. But I think I’ve hit upon a solution to bring him round my thumb.” The slow smile she bestowed on the Earl verged on the self-congratulatory. “With a little cozening and a great deal of duplicity, I intend to prevent that scamp from causing you further embarrassment. He believes me to be on the hunt for a husband, you see,” she went on in a confiding tone, “and has more or less promised to toe the line until such time as I’ve bagged one.”
It suddenly occurred to her that the metaphor she had chosen to express herself was exactly as Caro had described her predicament, and Deirdre could not suppress a chortle of laughter. “Poor boy!” she finally managed. “Since I am most particular in my requirements, the chase could last indefinitely.”
She half expected Rathbourne to share in her mirth, but when she slanted a glance at him, she was dismayed to see an expression of bridled rage hardening his features.
He pushed to an upright position and looked at her from under the shield of his thick, dark lashes. “I don’t appreciate the joke,” he said coldly.
“What?”
“Good God, woman, do you really think I want you to help me stave off a quarrel with that blasted brother of yours?”
“I don’t understand.” Deirdre was bewildered at the line the Earl had taken. He should have been grateful for her assistance, not glowering at her as if she had committed some unforgivable gaffe.
“Can’t you ever consider anything but your obsessive attachment to that ne’er-do-well? To think that you would stoop to such deceit…that you might put yourself in the way of some unscrupulous degenerate who may essay God knows what when he finds himself the thwarted lover—and all for what? What must I do…oh, never mind. Talking to you is like talking to a brick wall,” he ended savagely.
His attention became fully occupied in selecting the next choice tidbit from the plate of tempting delicacies balanced on his knee. It was a task that he seemed reluctant to rush. “Deirdre,” he drawled at last, not deigning to glance at her, “I don’t give a tinker’s cuss for that precious brother of yours. He’s a nuisance, an inconvenience, a gadfly and nothing more. When he oversteps the bounds of what is permissible, as I don’t doubt he will, I intend to deal with him in a way that will teach him to mend his manners, if he ever had any to begin with. It’s perfectly clear to me that you have ruined the boy’s character, indulging and petting him till he is beyond restraint.” He gave Deirdre a straight, hard look and, ignoring the ominous set to her mouth, went on in the same controlled tone. “On this matter, Deirdre, I am not open to suggestion, nor will I permit you to protect that whelp from my wrath. Dare to meddle in this, and I swear I’ll make you sorry. I shan’t tell you again. Is that understood? And I’d be obliged to you if henceforth you’d refrain from dragging your brother’s name into every conversation I try to initiate with you. In short, the subject of Armand St. Jean bores me to death.”
His tone was soft and bland, so devoid of emotion that every word, to Deirdre’s mind, was laden with a more frightening menace. That he should dare to threaten her inflamed her beyond reason.
She set aside her untouched platter of food and rose to her feet in a soft rustle of skirts. A bittersweet smile hovered on her lips. “Hail the Conquering Hero,” she mocked with biting sarcasm, and bent her knees in a curtsy that dipped almost to the floor. “Mothers, hide your sons and daughters! ‘Le Sauvage’ rides abroad and eats babes for breakfast.”
She saw the thunderous look that darkened his face, and the scar on his cheekbone, the scar of her making, stood out red and ugly. She had pierced his armor of indifference and she was glad of it, for her own anger, boiling and reckless, was past containing. It flowed out to scorch him.
“You dare prattle to me about character, you conceited oaf? Let me tell you that my brother has more genuine feeling in his little finger than you have in your whole body.”
As she paused to marshall her wits to cut him down to size with her next shaft, Rathbourne set his supper plate carefully on the table in front of him.
“Touch one hair of Armand’s head,” she warned him, her lips contorted with fury, “and I’ll damn well kill you myself. I’m an excellent shot, I promise you. And I don’t give a tinker’s cuss for the consequences.”
She spun on her heel and made to stalk past him, but he was ready for her. His arm shot out like a coiled spring and she was dragged back to sprawl against the sofa. One hard yank and she was in his lap.
There was a cynical twist to his mouth as he lashed her with his scorn. “Genuine feeling? Coming from you, a woman who has a block of ice where her heart should be, I find that oddly amusing. But I’ll never give you cause to question the depth of my feelings again. ‘My whole body,’ I believe you said. How fortunate for you that your challenge was uttered in a room full of people, or I swear I would teach you a lesson you’d not soon forget.”
She was lifted bodily and thrust into the chair she had so recently vacated, cowed by the fury flashing from his eyes and the leashed violence of the powerful hands that gripped her shoulders.
“Now pick up that fork and eat your supper,” he told her curtly. “Perhaps when your jaws are busy eating instead of talking, your society will be a little easier to stomach.”
That she dared not respond in kind to his blatant insults was a provocation she could scarcely endure. But caution, if not the implacable set of his stern features, held her in check. It was not the time to test the limits of Rathbourne’s tolerance. And just when she was beginning to feel more comfortable with him, he had to spoil it all! Deirdre picked up her fork and ate.
Chapter Eight
They finished their repast in strained silence, apart from the occasional comment thrown out by the Earl. Deirdre thought that she discerned a slight softening in his expression, but so incensed was she at the indignity of being treated like a rebellious child that she responded to his civilities in only the coldest of monosyllables. Not that Rathbourne seemed to mind, and Deirdre found herself more infuriated by this show of indifference than she had been by the blaze of his anger. Pride demanded that she rise
imperiously to her feet and demolish his arrogance with a few well-chosen words. Caution constrained her to remain passively in her place picking daintily at a dish of delectables she could scarcely swallow for bile. It was an intolerable situation and one which she would soon escape. He had only to return her to her aunt and she would plead a headache and shake the dust of his so-called hospitality from her feet.
As she entered the grand saloon on Rathbourne’s arm, they were joined by Lady Caro, who seemed determined to pursue her friendship with the other girl, and before Deirdre’s purpose could be accomplished, an event occurred which put the thought of flight entirely out of mind. Some late arrivals appeared at the far entrance to the main saloon, a diminutive woman flanked by two handsome young men, one as dark as the other was fair. Deirdre was only dimly aware of their presence until she felt the tug on her arm and heard Caro’s voice, soft and husky, whispering in her ear.
“Who is that gorgeous man?”
Deirdre’s eyes followed the direction of Caro’s gaze, and what she saw made her spine stiffen. Armand, looking every inch the young chevalier in dark evening coat with a touch of white lace at the throat and wrist in the grand manner, had just entered and stood at his ease, his dark head bent toward the tiny brunette whose snapping dark eyes roved the assembled guests as if seeking a familiar face. Of the two men who flanked the pocket Venus, there could be no question as to which Caro’s words referred. Armand was by far the handsomer. But Deirdre was in no mood to admire her brother’s heart-stopping good looks. That he should dare to trespass on Rathbourne’s hospitality filled her with dread. She threw an anguished look at the Earl, but his polite smile of welcome betrayed nothing.
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