Don't Tempt Me

by Loretta Chase

  A quartet of crows.

  “Who died?” he said.

  “Cousin Horatio,” said Augusta.

  “Ah, the recluse on the Isle of Skye,” said Marchmont.

  Lexham had taken him there after Gerard died. Some thought it a strange place to take a grieving fifteen-year-old, but Lexham, as always, knew what to do. In hindsight, Marchmont saw how wise his guardian had been not to send the new Duke of Marchmont back to school. There he’d have to hide his grief. There, among his friends, he’d have no Gerard to boast of, no letters from Gerard to look forward to. Skye and the eccentric Cousin Horatio held no associations with Gerard or their dead parents. It was far away from the world in which they’d grown up, and it was beautiful. He and Lexham walked. They fished. They read books and talked. Sometimes even Cousin Horatio joined the conversation.

  The brooding atmosphere of the place and the solitude had quieted Marchmont’s mind and brought him a measure of peace.

  “He died a fortnight ago,” Dorothea said.

  “He left his property to Papa.”

  “The least one might do is wear mourning for him.”

  Were they thinking of sending their youngest sister to Cousin Horatio’s? Zoe on a desolate, windswept island of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides? She’d think she was in Siberia. For one who’d spent twelve years in a land where the sun always shone and where even on winter nights the temperature rarely fell below sixty degrees, it would be exactly the same thing: bone-chilling and spirit-killing.

  His gaze drifted to Zoe, in her wine-colored shawl and pale green frock. She was the antithesis of mourning, acutely alive and unmistakably carnal.

  It wasn’t that her garments were seductive. It was the way she wore them and the languorous way she carried herself. Even standing still, she vibrated physicality.

  “I did not have enough clothes, and the black dress my sisters found for me was too small,” she said, evidently misreading his prolonged survey as criticism. “To alter it was too much work. The maid must take a piece from here.” She pointed to the bottom of her skirt, drawing attention to her elegantly slender feet. “Then she must add it to this part, to cover my breasts.” She drew her hand over her bodice. “They must put in a piece here as well.” She slid her hands along her hips.

  “Zoe,” Dorothea said warningly.

  “What?”

  “We don’t touch ourselves in that way.”

  “Most certainly not in front of others who are not our husband,” Priscilla said.

  “I forgot.” She looked at Marchmont. “We don’t touch. We don’t say what we feel in our hearts. We don’t lie on the rug. We keep our feet on the floor except in bed or on the chaise longue.”

  “Where were you keeping your feet?” he said.

  She gestured at the furniture. “No chairs in Cairo. When I sit in one, my legs want to curl up under me.”

  “This isn’t Cairo,” Augusta said. “You would do well to remember that. But of course you won’t.” She turned to Marchmont, who was with difficulty maintaining his composure. “Marchmont, you may find this all very amusing, but it would be a kindness to Zoe to face facts: It will take years to civilize her.”

  She’d got him aroused in an instant, the little witch, and made him laugh at the same time. Zoe Octavia had never been fully civilized. She’d never been like anybody else. Now she was less so.

  He let his gaze slide up from the hips and bosom to which she’d called his attention. Up the white throat and delicate point of her stubborn chin and up, to meet her gaze.

  It was the gaze of a grown woman, not the girl he’d known. That Zoe was gone forever, just as the boy he’d once been was gone forever. Which was as it should be, he told himself. That was life, perfectly normal and not at all mysterious. It was, in fact, as he preferred it.

  “If by ‘civilized’ you mean she must turn into an English lady, it isn’t necessary,” he said. “The Countess Lieven isn’t English, yet she’s one of Almack’s patronesses.”

  “What is Almack’s?” said Zoe. “They keep screaming about it, and I cannot decide whether it is the Garden of Paradise or a place of punishment.”

  “Both,” he said. “It’s the most exclusive club in London, impossibly hard to get into and amazingly easy to get thrown out of. Birth and breeding aren’t sufficient. One must also dress and dance beautifully. Or, failing that, one must possess sufficient wit or arrogance to impress the patronesses. They keep a list of those who meet their standards. Some three-quarters of the nobility are not on the list. If you’re not on the list, you can’t buy an admission voucher and can’t get into the Wednesday night assemblies.”

  “Are you on the list?” Zoe asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Men’s moral failings tend to be overlooked,” Augusta said.

  Marchmont ignored her. “You’ll be on it, too,” he told Zoe.

  “That,” said Gertrude, “will take a miracle, and I have not noticed that you and Providence are on the best of terms.”

  “I don’t believe in miracles,” he said. “Not that Almack’s signifies at present.”

  “Doesn’t signify?” Augusta cried.

  Why would they not go away? Why had Lexham not strangled them all at birth?

  “I’ve disposed of the mob,” he said. “Next is the newspapers.”

  He walked to the door, and the tragic chorus gave way.

  He summoned a footman.

  “You will find a disreputable-looking being named John Beardsley loitering in the square,” Marchmont told the servant. “Tell him I shall see him in the anteroom on the ground floor.”

  As one would expect, this set off the chorus.

  “Beardsley?”

  “That horrid little person from the Delphian?”

  “What is the Delphian?” came the lilting voice from behind him.

  “A newspaper,” said a sister.

  “Ghastly, gossipy newspaper.”

  “He’s a vile little man who writes stories for it.”

  “Sometimes in iambic pentameter. He fancies himself a writer.”

  “You can’t mean to have him in the house, Marchmont.”

  “What will Papa say?”

  “Since I am not a mind reader, I haven’t the least idea what your father will say,” said Marchmont. “Perhaps he will say, ‘That was an excellent idea the ancient Greeks had, of abandoning female infants on a mountainside. Why was that practice given up, I wonder?’”

  Having rendered them momentarily mute with outrage, he turned to Zoe. “Miss Lexham, would you be so good as to walk downstairs with me?”

  Before she stepped out into the corridor, she smoothed her skirts. In another woman, the gesture would have seemed nervous. With her it was provocative. She did it in the way she’d trailed her hands across her bosom and along her hips.

  I know all the arts of pleasing a man, she’d said.

  He had not the smallest doubt she did. He was aware of heat racing along his skin and under it, speeding to his groin. He could almost feel his brain softening into warm wax, the wax a woman could do as she liked with.

  Nothing wrong with that, he told himself. Men paid good money for women who possessed such arts. He’d be paying good money, too, come to that. He forgot about her annoying sisters and laughed—at himself, at the circumstances.

  She looked up questioningly at him, and he almost believed she had no idea how provocative she was. Almost believed it.

  I’m not innocent, she’d said. That he could believe.

  “I was only thinking of the thousand pounds you’ve cost me,” he said.

  “You refer to the wager with your friends,” she said. “You didn’t believe it was me. But why should you? I was worried at first that my own parents wouldn’t know me.”

  “Well, none of us do, do we?” he said. “But it is you, beyond a doubt. And I am far too glad of that to begrudge the money.”

  “You’re glad?” she said, her face lighting up. “You�
�re glad I’m back?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Did you think I wanted to find that your father had been taken in by an imposter? Did you think I wanted to see him made a fool of?”

  She looked away then, and he couldn’t see the hurt and disappointment in her eyes—not that he would have noticed. Eyes were reputed to be windows to the soul. The Duke of Marchmont didn’t care to look that deep.

  That evening

  Wearing a wry smile, Lady Tarling opened the oval red velvet box. Within lay a diamond and golden topaz necklace, with matching bracelet and earrings.

  “How beautiful,” she said. She looked up at the man who’d given them to her. “I’m partial to golden topaz.”

  Marchmont hadn’t known this, but he wasn’t surprised. Lady Tarling’s taste was exquisite. She was a slender brunette, with large, light brown eyes. She knew exactly what became her, and golden topaz, set off with diamonds, suited her perfectly.

  His secretary, Osgood, who was in charge of selecting suitable gifts for His Grace’s amours, would know this. Osgood always kept several fine pieces of jewelry on hand, particularly the kind to be used as generous parting gifts, for His Grace was easily bored. This was not a parting gift. It was intended, in fact, to prevent that—until His Grace decided it was time to part.

  “I’ve taken on an amusing task that may keep me away for a short time,” Marchmont said.

  “Ah,” she said, her smile faltering a little.

  “An obligation to an old friend,” he said. “I’ve agreed to bring his daughter into fashion—and perhaps find her a husband before the Season’s end.”

  “An old friend. I see.”

  “You’ll read something about it in all the papers tomorrow,” he said. “Rumors will be traveling through Almack’s tonight.”

  “But you knew I wouldn’t be there to hear them,” she said.

  Lord Tarling’s handsome young widow was not on the patronesses’ list. Lady Jersey had taken her in dislike.

  “I preferred you not learn about it from one of the cats who will be there,” he said, “or from the newspapers. They were likely to give you the wrong impression altogether.”

  “It must be a curious impression, indeed, to result in such a gift.” She gave a little laugh. Her silvery laugh was famous. It was gentler and prettier, many thought, than Lady Jersey’s tinkling laughter. This was but one reason Lady Jersey loathed her.

  “I’ve taken Lord Lexham’s daughter under my wing,” he said.

  She closed the box. “But all of his daughters are launched and wed—” She broke off, the truth dawning. She was, after all, both intelligent and well informed. “You refer to the…”

  He didn’t wait for her to hunt for a more tactful term. “The Harem Girl, yes,” he said.

  “My goodness.” She moved away from him to the nearest chair and sat down hard—but tightly clutching the box, he noted.

  “There’s going to be a ridiculous uproar tomorrow,” he said. “Completely ridiculous, as the world will soon discover. For the time being, discretion would be in order. Miss Lexham has some prejudice to overcome: Her recent past is not regarded as respectable.”

  “And I am not well loved by some who decide who is acceptable and who is not. Your…er…protégée will want the blessing of Almack’s lady patronesses, as well as the Queen.”

  Queen Charlotte didn’t like Lady Tarling, either.

  “It will not take long,” he said. “By the time she’s presented at court, no one will turn a hair.”

  “You are very confident,” she said.

  “Oh, Zoe’s intelligent and beautiful,” he said. “I’ve no doubt she’ll take. It’s merely a question of quieting the uproar and retraining her a bit.”

  “Intelligent and beautiful,” Lady Tarling murmured. She opened the box again and studied the jewels therein. “I see.”

  He didn’t know what she saw, and it didn’t occur to him to be curious. He was not accustomed to explaining himself and had gone as far as this only because their liaison had scarcely begun, and he wasn’t quite finished with her.

  It never dawned on him—and why should it?—that she was intelligent enough to perceive this.

  Still, he was the Duke of Marchmont, and Lady Tarling was no fool when it came to men. She accepted the gift and pretended it was perfectly normal for him to depart soon thereafter with no other display of affection. She knew as well as anybody that he’d very little of that article to display.

  Later that evening

  Zoe stood at the window and looked down into the garden. “I could climb down from here,” she said.

  “Oh, no, miss, I hope not,” said Jarvis. “And not in your shift—which maybe we could change for your nightdress?” The maid held up the garment.

  “I climbed out of the pasha’s palace many times,” Zoe said. “They always caught me and punished me. But I did not stop doing it. Do you know why?”

  “I’m sure I don’t, miss.”

  “I did it because I knew that one day they would not catch me, and so I must keep in practice for that day.”

  The day had come, as she’d known it would, and it had come without warning. During the evening meal, Karim had simply fallen off the divan, clutching his throat, and died. His grief-stricken father, at whose side he’d been sitting, had taken to his bed. Within hours, he, too, was dead.

  Zoe hadn’t waited to find out whether or not these were natural deaths. She’d seen pandemonium, and she’d taken advantage of it. While everybody was running about, the women tearing their hair and shrieking and weeping and the men shouting and arguing and threatening one another, she collected her jewels, stole a cloak, climbed out of a window, and fled through the garden.

  Jarvis’s voice called her back to the present. “Miss, I do hope you’re not thinking of running away now. Her ladyship gave me strict orders—”

  “No, no, I’m not running away.” Zoe came away from the window. “But I never could abide being confined—to the nursery, to the schoolroom. So I always looked for the way out.”

  “I suppose, was the house to take fire, it might be useful to know another way out,” Jarvis said.

  “But it isn’t what ladies do, I know,” Zoe said. “I’ve always been the contrary and obstinate daughter. When people say to me, ‘No, you can’t,’ I always think, ‘Yes, I will.’ In Egypt it was, ‘No, you’ll never get out of the harem.’ Then I got out, and I was arguing with myself, with the fear, the bad genie in the head: No, you’ll never get safely home. Yes, I will. No, they won’t let you in the house. You’ll never get in. Yes, I will. No, they won’t believe it’s you. Yes, I will. Then today, it was No, you can’t have the life you should have had.” She laughed. “And then Marchmont came and I thought, ‘Oh, yes I will.’ And he said, ‘Nothing could be simpler.’”

  “Yes, miss, it sounds like the sort of thing His Grace would say, and I’m sure he knows better than anybody whether it is or it isn’t. Won’t you put on your nightdress? You’ll be warmer. Lady Lexham said we must remember you aren’t used to the climate.”

  Zoe stalked to the fire and glared at it. “When I asked him if he was glad to have me back, he said he was. Do you know why he was glad?”

  “No, miss, though I couldn’t guess why he wouldn’t be, like everyone else.”

  “He said, ‘Did you think I wanted to find that your father had been taken in by an imposter? Did you think I wanted to see him made a fool of?’ What do you think of that?”

  “I’m not allowed to think, miss,” Jarvis said.

  “He’s changed so much,” Zoe said. “I hardly knew him. He used to be sweet. He used to have a heart. I used to be able to talk to him and laugh with him. He said he remembered me, but he doesn’t, really. And the man I saw today…” She shook her head. “He’s conceited. I used to think he was the cleverest of all the boys, but now his head is empty. Maybe his brain has shrunk. He’s beautiful and desirable and powerful—but I know he will test my patience. I am so t
ired of being patient with men, Jarvis, so tired of holding my tongue when they’re stupid and obnoxious. So tired of catering to them.”

  “Miss, you don’t want to take a chill, I’m sure, and worry Lady Lexham.”

  Zoe looked round at the maid. She was holding up the nightdress, her brow furrowed.

  Until tonight, Zoe had shared her mother’s lady’s maid. But after Marchmont and the others left, Mama had decided that Zoe must have her own lady’s maid to look after her. The housekeeper had sent up three of the girls she deemed qualified. Zoe had chosen Jarvis—formerly Jane the upper housemaid—because, she said, all she saw in her eyes was truth.

  Jarvis wasn’t yet confident of her abilities as a lady’s maid, and Lady Lexham had given enough instructions and warnings to fill the maid’s heart with terror.

  Clearly one could not hope to carry on an intelligent conversation with Jarvis while she fussed about the nightdress and her mistress’s taking cold. With a smile intended to be reassuring, Zoe signaled the maid to help her out of her shift and into the nightdress.

  When the ceremony was completed and Jarvis had relaxed a degree, Zoe startled her by stroking her arm.

  “Where I’ve come from,” Zoe said gently, “we say what’s in our hearts and we touch, as you do not,” she said. “My husband, Karim, gave me a slave, Minhat. With her I could share what was in my heart, as I couldn’t do with the other wives or concubines or slaves. You’re not a slave, but you are my Minhat. If we can’t speak freely together, then there’s no one with whom I can do so. My sisters are all crazy. They all think I’m crazy. None of them can be my Minhat. Wherever I go, you’ll go with me. When I marry, you’ll come with me to my husband’s house. You must speak your heart, always.”

  The maid looked wildly about the room.

  “Always,” Zoe said firmly. One of the many things she’d learned in the harem was the voice of command. “I have opened my heart to you, Jarvis. It’s your turn. Speak to me as my Minhat.”

  Jarvis shut her eyes, then opened them. She took a deep breath and said, “Very well, miss. Here’s what I say. The Duke of Marchmont is top of the trees. Everyone wants him. All the unmarried ladies want to marry him. They say there’s plenty of married ladies who’d disgrace themselves if he crooked his finger. Every hostess in Town wants him at her party. All the royal family think well of him. It don’t matter how conceited he is or if he’s drunk half the time or doesn’t have a heart. There’s only two things you really need to know about His Grace the Duke of Marchmont: One, he always keeps his word. Ask anybody. Two, everybody knows he don’t care about much, but what he said to you means he cares about your father. Why else do you think he came to the house today? If I was you, and he was promising to bring me into fashion, I’d muster up all the patience of all the saints and martyrs, because I know he’ll do it, no matter what, or die trying.”