How to Romance a Rake

by Manda Collins

  “What happens?” Juliet asked, keeping her voice low as they waited for the music to start.

  “I bite,” he whispered.

  There was no time for Juliet to react, for the music commenced and she spent the next little while trying to maintain her balance and mastering the sliding steps of the dance. It wasn’t particularly vigorous. And because she could not point her right foot, she had to rely more on her partner than she would have liked. Even so, once they’d gone through a few figures, Juliet felt much more confident in her ability not to embarrass herself should she ever attempt to dance in public.

  “I really must thank you for suggesting I try it, my lord,” she told Lord Deveril as they waltzed. He’d proved to be a patient teacher. And despite that provocative remark earlier, he had been the perfect gentleman. “I find that I enjoy dancing a great deal more than I could have guessed.”

  If she were completely honest with herself, it wasn’t only the dancing that she enjoyed. Being held in the arms of London’s most eligible bachelor was something to anticipate, no matter how she tried to suppress her reaction.

  “I would never have had the audacity to even consider the idea if you hadn’t suggested it,” she continued, trying desperately not to notice how he smelled of cloves and sandalwood.

  “The pleasure is all mine, Miss Shelby.” If Lord Deveril noticed that she was melting in his arms, he gave no indication of it. Instead, he smiled down at her in that agreeable way of his that made her breathless and comfortable all at once.

  “I am pleased to see that my suspicions were correct,” he continued. “Otherwise I would have missed the opportunity to dance with such a delightful partner.”

  “Can’t say I expected such forward thinking from you, Deveril,” Monteith interrupted, gliding past with Cecily in his arms. “Thought you spent all your time coming up with new ways to tie your cravat. Or new receipts to bring your boots to the brightest shine.”

  If they were ladies, Juliet would have described the reaction of the gentlemen to this salvo as giggles. But from her own experiences with her brother, Juliet knew that gentlemen never giggled.

  “I fear, Monteith,” Deveril retorted, “you are mistaking my interests with those of my valet. Indeed, if I have any standing as a man of fashion at all, I owe it to him. Perhaps you’ve considered retaining one for yourself? Or perhaps you mean for your neck cloth to look as if it has been crushed by an elephant?”

  “He’s got you there, Monteith,” Winterson snorted. “Told you that cravat wouldn’t pass muster with Deveril. Though I don’t think Phillips is going to like having his handiwork disparaged like that.”

  “Gentlemen, pray remember that you are supposed to be on your best, most charming behavior!” Cecily chided the men. “One’s partners at a ball do not generally call out to one another across the room.”

  “Well, not at ton balls anyway,” Lord Fortenbury, who was dancing with Winterson’s cousin Serena, said. “There are certain other entertainments where the social rules are a bit more … flexible.”

  “Yes, well, we do not discuss those in mixed company, do we, Fort?” There was a hint of steel in Winterson’s tone.

  “Really, darling,” Cecily said. “How are ladies supposed to know anything of the real world if gentlemen are forever protecting them from fast talk? If you treat us like children to be sheltered from every little hint of scandal, how will we deal with real scandal when we run across it?”

  “Madam, I pray you, desist from requesting fast talk until you have gone home for the evening,” Monteith objected. “I have no wish to meet your husband over pistols at dawn. He’s a better shot than I am.”

  “And what are your feelings on the matter, Miss Shelby?” Deveril asked, diverting Juliet’s attention from the other dancers. “Do you share your cousin’s attitude toward the edification of ladies?”

  “I can hardly admit otherwise in her hearing, can I?” Juliet asked with a laugh. “Cecily can be quite persuasive on the matter, so I definitely share some of her more liberal leanings. However, I’m not sure I wish to know precisely what real scandal entails. Or rather, I do not wish to experience it for myself.”

  “Ah, you are cautious, then.”

  Juliet refused to look up into his face for fear she’d reveal just how captivating she found him. Besides, he was only doing her a kindness. It hardly implied the man was ready to throw himself at her feet.

  “Indeed,” she answered primly. “I would not wish to become the subject of talk. Or rather, no moreso than usual.”

  “I’m afraid that when you reveal your newfound dancing skills at the next ball you attend you will inevitably become the subject of talk,” Deveril told her, dipping his head a bit to look her in the face.

  “But only of the best sort,” he assured her with a warm smile. “Society loves nothing better than a triumph.”

  Juliet nodded, unable to voice her appreciation for his kind words.

  They danced along in companionable silence while the easy chatter of their friends sounded around them. Juliet reveled in the feel of his hands, one at her waist and the other clasping hers tightly. She had very few moments of this sort, when she could hide away in the deep recesses of her mind, to bring out in times of trouble as a salve to combat loneliness. But she knew, with a certainty born of experience, that she would always remember this waltz.

  For too long she’d allowed herself to be pushed to the side, like a broken bit of furniture that was no longer of use. She hadn’t been completely repaired, but she now knew that she was not so damaged as she’d once thought. And the knowledge filled her with hope—for the first time in years.

  No one, she vowed to herself, would rob her of such opportunities again.

  “Juliet! What on earth are you doing?”

  Like an unskilled bow on a violin, the sound of Viscountess Shelby’s voice brought all activity in the room to a halt.

  Just like her mother to spoil things. Juliet closed her eyes in an effort to steel her emotions. She had hoped that Lady Shelby would remain ignorant of her dance lessons until after she’d been able to demonstrate them in public. Her mother was much more likely to acquiesce to the change in her daughter’s social status if it were presented as a fait accompli. She had her own reasons for wishing Juliet to remain in her current position at the edges of the ton and none of them involved her offspring’s well-being. Juliet had learned that the hard way years ago.

  When Juliet made to pull away from Deveril, she felt his arms tighten about her for a flash before he let her go.

  “I am dancing, Mama,” she said to her mother, who stood in the doorway, her hand at her breast as if she’d discovered her daughter in an orgy rather than a simple dancing party.“It’s quite harmless.”

  “I am so sorry, Your Grace,” the butler said from behind Lady Shelby. “She slipped past me as I came to give you her card.”

  Perhaps sensing that her histrionics would not be best received by the present company, Lady Shelby visibly composed herself. “But, I am family, so I knew you would not wish to stand on ceremony, my dear Cecily,” she crooned, assuming a more solicitous mien. “And I did so wish to see my dear daughter dance. I hate to think of what effect it might have on her injury.”

  “She is perfectly all right, as you can see, Aunt,” Cecily informed her as she stepped forward to offer a supporting arm to Juliet. “I daresay it’s even good for her.”

  “Indeed, Lady Shelby,” Deveril said, flanking Juliet’s other side, “she is a natural dancer. It was I who suggested it in the first place, if you must know. I’ve an aunt who suffers from—”

  But before he could complete his thought, Lady Shelby interrupted the viscount. “I am sure your aunt is quite able to do as she wishes, my lord. But you do not understand the fragile nature of my daughter’s health. I will thank you to let me know how best to take care of my own flesh and blood.”

  “Mama,” Juliet objected, mortified at her mother’s rudeness.

&n
bsp; “Juliet, my dear,” Lady Shelby said, turning her head in that way that signified she was about to issue a towering scold. “Might I speak with you in the hall for a moment? The rest of you will excuse us, of course.”

  * * *

  Alec watched as Juliet followed her mother from the sitting room, her limp more pronounced than it had been all evening.

  “What was that about?” he demanded. “One would think that Lady Shelby disapproved of Miss Shelby dancing at all.”

  The pall cast over the room by Lady Shelby’s arrival hovered over the erstwhile revelers like a dark cloud.

  “Come, my lord,” Cecily said to him, linking her arm through Deveril’s and pulling him toward the table where refreshments had been laid out earlier. “Let me pour you a cup of tea.”

  “It’s a da … er, dashed shame,” Winterson said, leading Lady Madeline to the refreshments as well. “It’s as plain as a pikestaff Lady Shelby resents Juliet enjoying herself.”

  Though he was in agreement with his friend, Alec didn’t say so. He knew that he should be taking this opportunity to sit beside Lady Madeline and chat with her about some inconsequential frivolity, but he found himself reluctant to chat lightly of this and that while all the work he’d done to bring Miss Shelby out of her shell was being undone in another room.

  “Here, Lord Deveril,” Cecily said from his elbow, offering him a cup of tea. “Do not let my aunt’s scolding bother you. I can assure you we have endured far worse from her over the years. Indeed, I believe she was much calmer than she would normally have been since she would dislike having you gentlemen know how difficult she can be. You will not believe it but you probably saved Juliet a public scold by your mere presence.”

  “But why would she be so angry because Miss Shelby tried dancing?” he asked. “How can she possibly object to having her daughter participate more actively in society? I have seen mothers of debutantes before. And they do not make a habit of preventing their daughters from making good matches!”

  Winterson choked on his tea. “I should say not! If only they did, the lot of us might have slept more easily these past few years.”

  Madeline, who had been looking on with a frown, spoke up. “I do not know the reason behind it, but Aunt Rose has always been hard on her children. And you are right that it’s odd for her to sabotage Juliet’s chances at making a good match. But she’s been this way ever since Juliet’s accident.”

  “What actually happened?” Deveril asked. He knew it was perhaps rude of him to ask such a question, but he sensed the circumstances surrounding the incident that had left Juliet crippled lay at the heart of Lady Shelby’s censure.

  “We are not even exactly sure ourselves,” Cecily said, sipping from her own cup of tea. “The year Juliet was fourteen her father was posted with the Foreign Office to the Congress of Vienna. And while they were there something happened. Whether it was an accident or a deliberate injury we don’t know. But whatever occurred, it was grave indeed. I know that at one point they were unsure whether Juliet would even survive the injury, so it cannot have been minor. They remained abroad for two more years, and when they returned, Juliet was completely changed.”

  “How so?” Monteith asked, stretching his long legs out before him as he reclined in an armchair.

  “You will not believe it, but before they left,” Madeline said, “Juliet was the most animated of us three cousins.”

  Alec felt his jaw drop a little.

  “You’re joking,” Winterson said, his brow furrowed. “Juliet? Quiet Juliet?”

  “I’ve seen it happen to soldiers,” Monteith said, his face serious. “You have too, Winterson. We all have. A young fellow full of his own importance goes off to war and comes home a changed man.”

  “Yes,” Deveril said, “but a gently bred young lady living in polite society abroad is hardly exposed to the same sort of atrocities as a hardened soldier. No matter how close Vienna was to the battle of Waterloo.”

  “Whatever happened, it must have been very difficult indeed,” Cecily said. “Because the Juliet who left and the Juliet who returned were like night and day. And of course there was the injury.”

  “Which was…?” Monteith asked from his perch before the fireplace.

  “We don’t know.” Madeline’s blue eyes were serious. “We have never known. Cecily and I agreed that we would wait for Juliet to tell us about it, thinking that for us to bring up the subject ourselves would perhaps be too intrusive. And there was a certain amount of…”—she paused, as if searching for the right word—“hesitation, I suppose, in her manner every time our conversation even approached talk of her time abroad, that we simply became accustomed to avoiding the subject altogether.”

  “As a result,” Cecily continued, “we never did learn what happened to her. Or why. All we know is that something definitely occurred that left Juliet with a bad limp, and that our aunt has tried her hardest to make sure that Juliet does nothing to draw attention to herself.”

  “Why allow her to debut, then?” Alec asked. This whole business made no sense. He’d never particularly liked Lady Shelby but he’d never considered that Juliet’s unpopularity actually sprang from a concerted effort on her mother’s part to prevent her from being accepted. “One would expect her to simply forbid Juliet from going out in society at all.”

  “Oh, Lord Shelby wouldn’t allow it,” Madeline said. “I think Juliet would have been just as happy not to make her come out at all. But her father insisted that she do so along with us.”

  “I overheard Lord and Lady Shelby arguing once at a house party. She was demanding that he give up his ridiculous insistence that Juliet be treated like any other young lady.” Cecily scowled at the memory. “I will never forget the scorn in her voice when she spoke of Juliet. As if she were an embarrassment. That was not terribly long after Juliet made her debut. She had gone for a walk on the terrace with Lord Filton and she’d slipped on a stone. You would have thought she’d fallen headfirst into the Serpentine at Hyde Park for the way Lady Shelby carried on about it.”

  Deveril shook his head. He’d had no idea that any of this had been going on. He certainly hadn’t done anything to ensure that any of the Ugly Ducklings, as Amelia Snowe had dubbed them, were sheltered from the unkind members of the haut ton. A pang of shame washed over him at the knowledge. He’d been so busy worrying about himself, he’d not even noticed the dramas going on beyond the fringes of his more fashionable set of friends.

  “You didn’t know,” Madeline said softly.

  Deveril looked up to find the curvy blonde’s gaze on him. She saw more than she let on, he’d wager. He was startled to remember that she was the one he’d originally intended to woo. Certainly he felt none of the dizzying array of emotions that Juliet inspired in him when he looked upon her. No, Madeline was a nice enough young lady, but he was not drawn to her in the same way as he was to Juliet. And perhaps that was all to the better. He had learned from his father’s example just what hardships could arise from a match based on passion. Much better to marry someone he liked, but felt no passion for.

  “No,” he said at last. “I didn’t know, but I cannot help but feel responsible somehow. If I had been more alert to her situation—”

  “You could have done nothing,” Cecily said baldly. “Only Lord Shelby has ever been able to sway Aunt Rose and even then he is not always successful. I daresay you weren’t even introduced to us until last year. One can hardly blame you for failing to intuit that Juliet was being held back.”

  A sharp cry from the hallway startled them all. Alec, his senses attuned from years spent with his brute of a father, knew all too well what damage a parent could visit upon a child. Even an adult. Incensed, he stalked toward the pocket doors.

  He was arrested by a hand on his arm.

  “My lord, perhaps you should wait,” Cecily said quietly.

  He pulled out of her grasp and continued to the door.

  Behind him he heard Winterson bidding his wif
e to let him go.

  Ignoring the talk behind him, he stepped into the hallway, his dancing slippers echoing on the marble floor.

  He scanned the richly appointed room, and saw the door to an adjoining chamber ajar, the warm glow of lamplight spilling into the hall.

  He could hear the sound of weeping and, for the first time, stopped. What right did he have to intrude upon Juliet’s pain? But something stronger than common sense made him press on, an urge he hardly understood leading him to seek her out.

  Carefully, he walked to the door, and peered inside, so as not to startle her. To his relief, she was alone. And at first glance he saw no sign that she had been mishandled physically.

  She sat in a small chair before the fire, a handkerchief in one hand and what appeared to be a note in the other.

  “Miss Shelby,” he asked, trying not to let his anger for her current state infuse his voice. “Are you well?”

  She looked up, her eyes bright with tears. Stricken, she dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, made to stand.

  “Lord Deveril, I did not hear you come in,” she said, her voice shaking, but strong. “If you will give me but a moment I will be back to finish our lesson.”

  “Do not trouble yourself, Miss Shelby,” he said, moving closer, wishing he could take her into his arms to offer comfort. But even the Duchess of Winterson, with her liberal ideas, would frown upon that, he suspected.

  He settled for a comforting hand on Juliet’s shoulder.

  “Is there something I may assist you with?” he asked. “Shall I bring your cousin to you?”

  She closed her eyes, as if to give herself strength, then shook her head.

  “No,” she said softly. “No, I will be all right in a moment. I just needed a bit of time to myself.”

  Her words implied that she wished him to leave, and he could not blame her. But he also knew that such situations, if left to be handled on their own, could lead to dire consequences.