Lord Perfect

by Loretta Chase

  “It would seem that you’ve mistaken me for someone who was born yesterday, my lord,” she said.

  “It would seem you are completely blind to the obvious, to suppose I should deceive you about such a thing,” he said.

  “I am not blind,” she said.

  “You are not using your head,” he said. “Try a little common sense. I am not a younger son. I haven’t the luxury of being the family scapegrace. That is Rupert’s job. My world is a small one, where liaisons are nearly impossible to keep secret. They might, however, be kept quiet, if they are too boring to interest the gossips and the scandal sheets. You are much too exciting. If I became intimately involved with you, I should be made a public spectacle—as Byron was, but worse. The caricaturists would be thrilled. I should not be able to stir a step without seeing my exaggerated image, captioned with what passes for witticism these days. The prospect does not enchant me.”

  Bathsheba was aware that Lord Byron had been ridiculed mercilessly. She had seen some of the cruel caricatures.

  With Rathbourne, it would be worse. The higher a man stood in the public eye, the keener the world’s delight in his fall.

  “Oh,” she said, deflated. Disappointed, too. For a moment she had almost believed that she made Lord Perfect as witless and immature as he made her.

  “My offer is a respectable one,” he said. “I know of a set of rooms in Bloomsbury that might suit you. The landlady is a war widow. The rent should be within your means, if I have calculated correctly. If one multiplies one-fourth the rate you charge for Peregrine by your eight students on Mondays and—”

  “You calculated my income?” she said.

  He explained that much of his parliamentary work involved computation. Consequently he understood what a budget was and how to balance it. He was aware, furthermore, that some people had to live on very little money. He and a few colleagues had founded enterprises aimed at bettering the condition of war widows, veterans, and others for whom neither the government nor the parish provided adequately or at all.

  “Oh, yes, your famous philanthropy,” she said, her face burning. She did not want to be one of his charity cases.

  “This is not philanthropy, madam,” he said coldly. “I am merely saving you the trouble of finding Mrs. Briggs on your own and wasting time roaming unsatisfactory neighborhoods like Soho. The rest will be up to you. Would you like to see the place?”

  The chill tone was calculated to subdue the listener. It made Bathsheba want to shake him. She had her pride, after all, which rebelled at being treated like an unintelligent, lesser being. Still, Olivia’s future was more important than her mama’s pride.

  Bathsheba swallowed it in a gulp. “Indeed, I would,” she said.

  She had not understood the directions he’d given the hackney driver, and the rain was so heavy now that the world outside was a blur. When the hackney stopped, and Rathbourne alit to help her out, she must simply trust that he was taking her to Mrs. Briggs of Bloomsbury Square, and not his private love nest.

  She could see that the blood of his savage ancestors still ran in his veins. She could see that he was a good deal too accustomed to telling others what to do and too little used to their contradicting him.

  She had trouble, however, seeing him as one who lured women to their undoing through deceit and trickery.

  To lure a woman, all he had to do was stand there, looking bored with being perfect.

  Her instincts proved correct. Mrs. Briggs turned out to be a respectable lady of middle years. The rooms she offered, while far from luxurious, were neatly kept and furnished. The price was a bit higher than Bathsheba liked, yet lower than what she’d assumed she must pay in this part of London. Within an hour, all was settled, and she was in another hackney with Rathbourne, on her way home.

  En route, he gave her financial advice. His assuming that she was financially incompetent was annoying, but she supposed he couldn’t help it. He was in the habit of arranging the lives of the less fortunate. In any case, he had experience with this sort of thing, and only a fool would refuse to listen.

  She was surprised, though, when he took out one of his calling cards and on the back wrote the names and addresses of shops to whom she ought to bring her watercolors and drawings. Were her art hanging in Fleet Street or the Strand, it was more likely to attract those with the means to purchase it, he told her. Moreover, she must raise her prices. “You do not value your work sufficiently,” he said.

  “I am a complete unknown,” she said. “I do not belong to any prestigious art society. One must value the work accordingly.”

  “Your name, as I pointed out earlier, is far from unknown,” he said. “What you are is naïve.”

  She almost laughed. She had lost the last of her naïveté by the time she was ten years old, thanks to her parents. “I am two and thirty, and I have lived everywhere,” she said. “While I may not have seen everything, there is not a great deal I haven’t.”

  “You don’t seem to understand your potential customers,” he said. “This makes me wonder if you are truly one of the Dreadful DeLuceys. You have failed to take advantage of common human weaknesses. It has not occurred to you to exploit your notoriety. You seem unaware that the more expensive an item is, the more people value it. Such is the case, in any event, with Fashionable Society. When you set a rate of quadruple the usual to teach Peregrine, my respect for you increased proportionally.”

  It was no use trying to read his face. Even if his were not a tell-nothing countenance, the light was too dim. She could not decide whether or not he was being sarcastic. He sounded bored.

  “I advise you to make them pay,” he said. “You cannot change Society. Despite my privileged position, I cannot, either. Even I must live according to the rules, as I said before. It is tiresome, but the price of breaking the rules is excessive. In addition to causing my family distress, I should lose the respect of people necessary to passing bills, instituting reforms, and supporting various other efforts that give my life purpose. You have already paid a high price because your late husband broke Society’s rules. What do you owe the Beau Monde, then? Does it not owe you? Why should you not require ample payment for the work that supports you and your daughter?”

  The bored drawl could easily make one believe the subject was merely tedious to him. He sounded the way he’d looked in the Egyptian Hall, at the moment she’d first seen him: the very model of aristocratic ennui.

  The carriage interior was small, though, and she sat too near him not to sense something amiss: a tension in the air, perhaps. Or maybe it was the way he held his head and shoulders. Whatever it was, she doubted that the man on the inside was fully in harmony with the one on the outside.

  “Perhaps I have fallen into a bad habit of being humble,” she said. “How shocked Papa and Mama would be!”

  Neither of her parents would have hesitated to exploit others’ weaknesses. Neither of them knew what a scruple was.

  “There is that,” he said. “Another trouble is, you are not a Londoner. You do not know how to take proper advantage of the place. Like most of my acquaintance, you know your bits of London, but you do not know her in all her infinite variety.”

  “London is like Cleopatra to you?” she said, smiling at the image of the bored aristocrat fascinated with this vast, smoky metropolis. “ ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.’ Is that your view?”

  He nodded. “You know your Shakespeare,” he said.

  “But not my London, it would seem.”

  “That would be impossible,” he said. “You have lived here for how long? A year?”

  “Not quite.”

  “I have spent the greater part of my life here,” he said. “I am obnoxiously knowledgeable.”

  He proceeded to demonstrate, with a detailed description of the environs of Bloomsbury, including the shops and vendors worth patronizing and those best avoided.

  They reached the Bleeding Heart Tavern all too soon
for Bathsheba. She could have listened to him for a good deal longer. He loved London, clearly, and the picture he painted transformed it for her. This afternoon it had seemed a cold fortress, shutting its gates to her. He opened it up, and turned it into a haven.

  That was not all he’d done for her this day, she realized. A short while earlier, she’d felt bowed down by the weight of her cares. Rathbourne had lightened them.

  This had never happened to her before.

  Her parents spent their money as fast as they got it, and went on spending when there wasn’t any. When creditors and landlords became difficult, Mama and Papa packed up and moved, usually in the dead of night.

  Though Jack was far more honorable, he was no more helpful. He had loved her passionately, but he was hopelessly irresponsible. The practical problems of everyday life were completely outside his experience. He couldn’t see them, let alone analyze and solve them. He had no notion of the value of money. The concept of living within one’s means was beyond his comprehension.

  This man, who did not love her, had sorted out her finances, guided her to precisely the sort of home she’d hoped for, and advised her how to make and save money. He’d even taken London apart for her, as though it were a mechanical toy, and shown her how it worked.

  The carriage stopped. She was not ready to part from him but she had no excuse to stay.

  “Thank you,” she said, and laughed a little. “Two paltry words, not a fraction of what I feel. If only I were Shakespeare. But I am not. Thank you must do all the work of reams of clever verse.”

  She meant the words to do all the work.

  But her spirits had lifted, and for a moment anything was possible, and so she dared to lean toward him and lightly kiss him on the cheek.

  He turned his head at that moment, and then his mouth was moving over hers and his hand was curling round the back of her neck, and she was on her way to perdition.

  BENEDICT SHOULD NOT have turned his head.

  He should not have sought those plum-ripe lips.

  But he had, and the instant his mouth touched hers, his famous self-control unraveled.

  He grasped the back of her neck and drew her closer and kissed her as he’d wanted to do from the first moment he saw her.

  He felt her stiffen, and No danger, some distant part of his brain assured him. She would thrust him away, and probably slap him for good measure.

  She did not thrust him away.

  Her body abruptly went all soft and pliant, and her mouth moved under his, answering. Her silken hair tickled the back of his hand, begging to twine about his fingers. The scent of her skin stole inside him like a dangerous vapor, and the longing to which he’d refused to yield came to wild life inside him.

  His body remembered the feel of hers when he carried her, the easy way she fit in his arms, the soft curves tucked against his hard frame. His body had craved more, and it had cost him an effort, later, to speak without revealing the depths of his frustration.

  But that was before. This was now, and all he cared about was now. He cupped her face and drank deeply. He tasted dreams and youth and longing—a taste like a night of too much wine, a taste like too many lonely nights.

  Of course he wasn’t drunk or lonely and he knew better than to yearn for his youth and its dreams, its passions. All that was behind him. Years behind. Lost.

  He should have recognized the danger then, understood what was stirring to life within him, and stopped.

  But he was past the moment of logical thinking. He was unable to recognize that what he tasted was danger, and so he failed to understand why it called more insistently than common sense. He understood only that this tasted like a woman and smelled like a woman and felt like a woman—and she was a forbidden woman, all the more irresistible.

  Her hands stole up his coat and caught hold of the fabric. He felt her fists on his chest, and his heart thundered with excitement, like a boy’s when a girl first says yes. He brought his hands to her jaw, to untie the bonnet. He pushed it from her head. He dragged his hands through her hair, and the glossy curls coiled about his fingers as he’d wanted, and they were softer and silkier than he’d imagined. Everything about her was more than a man could imagine, and he wanted more.

  He crushed her against him and deepened the kiss, to find the secret taste of her. He let his hands rove over her back and down to her waist, but as he slid them over her breasts, she broke away.

  She pushed him from her with surprising strength. “No! Enough!” She turned away and picked up her bonnet from the carriage floor. “Oh, this is very bad.”

  She shoved it on her head and hastily tied the ribbons. “This was unforgivably stupid. What is wrong with me? I cannot believe—What an idiot. I was supposed to kick you or tread on your foot. I vow, one would think I had never learnt a thing about men. This was a terrible mistake!”

  He found his voice and some vestige of his mind. “Yes, it was,” he said.

  He collected his famous composure and helped her out of the carriage.

  The perfect gentleman, as always.

  “Good-bye,” he said.

  She hurried away without answering. In the next instant, she’d vanished into the night.

  He swore once, under his breath, then set himself to gathering the shattered pieces of what used to be his perfectly regulated world.

  Chapter 6

  Friday 5 October

  TO AVOID FURTHER INVOLVING THE underfootman in the secret, Peregrine had made a post office of sorts by prying loose some bricks near the back garden gate. There either Olivia or an accomplice deposited her letters and collected Peregrine’s. Though she was a girl, she moved about London far more freely than Peregrine did.

  Unlike him, she did not have servants watching her constantly. She made any number of detours to and from school, none of which she remembered to mention to her mother, and all of which horrified and fascinated him.

  He squeezed into the shrubbery, where he would not be seen, and opened the letter.

  Queen Square

  Thursday 4 October

  My Lord,

  Farewell!

  The Time has come for me to Depart upon my Quest.

  “No,” Peregrine said. “No.”

  He had written two long letters to her, explaining what was wrong with her Idea about finding Edmund DeLucey’s treasure. First and foremost, young ladies—and she was a lady by birth, and must never forget this—did not set off on jaunts unaccompanied. Second, she must consider the grief she would cause her mother, who was an agreeable, sensible, and intelligent parent, unlike some. He had written third, fourth, fifth, and sixth points, too—a complete waste of ink.

  “I might as well have written to the head of Young Memnon,” Peregrine muttered.

  Be assured, sir, that I have read and thought about Every Word you have written to me. However, Matters Have Reached a Crisis.We moved to Queen Square on Monday. Our new Lodgings are more than comfortable, and I for one am glad to put a distance between my home and St. Sepulchre’s Workhouse. Yet Mama grows more Unhappy every day. I fear she is Sickening, the Victim of a Wasting Disease. She pretends to eat and sleep, but it is all a Sham, for she grows pale and thin. I am glad Papa is not alive to see it, because he would be Heartsick.

  Even you must agree that I have Not a Moment To Lose but must set out AT ONCE. Rest assured that I have taken your words To Heart and shall not make this Journey Alone. Sir Olivia travels with her Trusty Squire, Nat Diggerby. His uncle drives a cart to market on Mondays and Fridays. We have arranged to meet him tomorrow at the Hyde Park Corner Tollgate. He will take us as far as Hounslow. A Wise Plan, you must agree.

  “No, I don’t, you idiot girl,” Peregrine said. “What becomes of you after Hounslow—if you get that far? Do you never stop to think that your Squire Diggerby might be taking you to his ‘uncle’ the pimp or his ‘aunt’ the brothel keeper?”

  Peregrine could hardly believe she was so naïve, given how much else she knew. He su
pposed the deficiency was on account of never having attended public school, where boys learned, along with Greek and Latin, all they needed to know about pimps, bawds, and prostitutes.

  He hadn’t time to fill in the gap in her education.

  The impulsive creature was leaving today.

  He had to stop her.

  BATHSHEBA GAVE UP waiting for Lord Lisle after half an hour. Evidently she’d misunderstood his schedule. She’d thought he’d said he was leaving on Saturday for Scotland. He must have said Friday, and she had only half-listened, her mind elsewhere.

  She could not recall whether he’d said good-bye. But why should a boy of thirteen think it necessary to take any special leave of his drawing teacher? His uncle had taken polite leave already, a few days after their last encounter. His secretary had written a courteous thank-you letter, enclosing payment for the remaining lessons.

  She gathered her belongings, closed up the classroom, and set out for home: a new home, thanks to Lord Rathbourne . . . whom she’d never see again.

  He would keep away, and she was safe now, quite safe.

  Also bored and out of sorts . . .

  . . . until some hours later, when she was taking the table linens out of the cupboard and found the letter Olivia had left for her.

  PEREGRINE ARRIVED AT Hyde Park Corner tired, hot, and cross. He’d lost his way several times, and twice he’d had to run away from louts who took exception to his costly attire. In normal circumstances, Peregrine would have run straight at them, in order to beat them bloody. He couldn’t take the time, and having to run away like a coward did not improve his temper.

  He was angry with himself, too, for not having the good sense to hire a hackney and spare himself a great deal of aggravation.

  This was not the best frame of mind in which to approach Olivia, who stood talking to some women selling pies. Beside her stood the boy version of a bull: Nat Diggerby, no doubt. His head went straight down to his shoulders, with no discernible neck between, and his shoulders were so wide he must have to go through doors sideways. He stood like a bull, too, head tilted downward, while only his eyes moved, watching the scene about him.