How to Romance a Rake

by Manda Collins

  For her own part, she cared little of what the ton thought. She had long ago come to the realization that the loss of her foot had been a small price to pay when compared with what might have happened that day in Vienna. Since returning to England she had become aware of just how many people died from simple blood loss when physicians removed their mangled limbs. The only embarrassment, to her mind, came from the knowledge that she had survived not because of any divine providence, but simply because of an accident of birth. If she’d been born to a poorer family, it was doubtful that she would have received such excellent care.

  Expecting the modiste to be impatient with her request, Juliet was instead surprised to see compassion in the woman’s eyes.

  “You do not wish to show the scars, eh?” Madame Celeste gestured to her feet.

  At Juliet’s nod, the older woman nodded. “All right, then. You will go into the little room and remove your clothing. We take the measurements from those.”

  Relieved that she would not be forced to defend herself further, Juliet followed the first assistant to the fitting room.

  “Take off everything but your shift,” the assistant told her, as she unfastened Juliet’s gown at the back. “I will wait just outside so that you may hand them to me. It will take longer this way, you know.”

  But Juliet didn’t care about the time, so long as her secret remained secret.

  She undressed quickly and, clothes in hand, she opened the door, giving the assistant her stays, corset, and gown.

  Now, shivering in her shift, she lowered herself to the overstuffed chair situated in the corner of the tiny room. Wishing all this might have been accomplished without her being separated from Madeline and Deveril, she wondered what the two of them were discussing while they examined fashion plates.

  She had noticed the way Deveril watched her cousin. Had even been made jealous by it. It was ridiculous for her to mistake his interest in helping her find Anna for an interest in her, but when she felt the intensity of his gaze, she had a difficult time remembering just why the notion was so foolish.

  There were a number of reasons why it made more sense for a man like him to set his sights on Madeline rather than Juliet. For one thing, Madeline was healthy and hale. In fact, she was ridiculously robust and enjoyed nothing more than a vigorous ride in the park, or a country ramble. For another, Madeline, with her fashionable blond crop and short stature, was to Juliet’s mind the epitome of a pocket Venus. Yes, she might be lumped in with Juliet and Cecily—well, just Juliet now really—as an Ugly Duckling, but there was nothing remotely ugly about Lady Madeline Essex. She might have a tendency to speak her mind overmuch, and had at times entered into discussions that made her less than comfortable company, but overall, Juliet thought that with the exception of the highest sticklers, Madeline had far more chance of marrying well and overcoming her less than stellar social status than she did.

  Which was, of course, why Juliet spent her time waiting in the back of Madame Celeste’s shop imagining her cousin and Lord Deveril, their angelic blond heads together, getting along famously and planning to elope to Gretna Green as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He would declare himself on bended knee, a beam of sunlight shining down from the heavens to denote their approval of the match, while Madeline, a light wind ruffling her golden curls, smiled her acceptance of his proposal. And they would live happily ever after in connubial bliss while Juliet grew older and, having refused her mother’s insistence that she marry Turlington, lived as an unpaid servant with her brother Matthew and his unpleasant bride, the former Miss Snowe.

  It was on these unhappy thoughts that Juliet dwelled as she heard an exclamation from the other side of the door, and the murmur of voices.

  “She can’t be gone!” hissed the first assistant. “She promised me that she would be back today at the latest.”

  “Well, according to her note she won’t be coming back,” said a second, harder voice.

  “Let me see it,” the first assistant demanded.

  The rustle of paper indicated that the note had exchanged hands.

  “Why would she do this?” asked another voice, doubtless one of the seamstresses. “Jane needs this position if she wants to get her daughter back. And why would she go off with such a one as him? She said she’d never trust a man again.”

  “For enough money I’d go off with old baggy eyes. At least he’s got the blunt to pay for nice clothes and a fancy house. It’s a sight better than being ordered about by Madame and her hoity-toity customers.”

  “That’s because you’re no better than you should be, Hetty,” said the other girl. “Jane ain’t like you. She don’t want a man’s money. She wants an honest wage and a way to get her baby back. I don’t believe it. She wouldn’t leave London again. Not when she’s so close to having enough money to bring her little girl back.”

  “I don’t like it,” the first assistant said, her voice clipped. “I don’t think she would leave on her own either. And didn’t she say she thought she’d been followed last week?”

  “Aye,” said Hetty. “She said some gent she didn’t know was following her from her rooms to here and back again.”

  Juliet shivered. She remembered Jane from a previous visit to Madame Celeste’s with her mother. She had seemed a gentle, well-mannered young woman. Not at all the sort who would leave behind her child for a frivolous reason. And, unfortunately, Jane’s plight sounded quite similar to Anna’s. From the mysterious note, to the man following her, to the existence of a child.

  “Right,” she heard the first assistant say sharply. “No more about Jane. We’ll lose our own positions if we don’t get back to work.”

  “But Meggie, what if whoever took Jane takes a fancy to me or Hetty? What then?”

  The first assistant, Meggie, made an impatient noise that sounded much like Madame Celeste. “Just stay together. Don’t go anywhere alone.”

  “Are you going to tell Madame?” Hetty demanded. “Maybe she’ll hire another footman to watch out for us.”

  The silence was deafening. So much for Madame, Juliet thought wryly.

  “Just be careful,” Meggie repeated. “Now, Hetty, take these back to Miss Shelby and escort her to the front.”

  Juliet heard the rustle of fabric as the first assistant handed her clothing back to Hetty.

  At the brisk knock on the door, she opened it to peek out.

  “Here are your clothes, miss,” Hetty, who was rather unfortunate-looking, said quietly. “Let me know and I’ll do up your back. You’re ready to leave, I think.”

  “Thank you,” Juliet told her, closing the door again to keep her curious eyes from looking at her feet.

  Quickly, she got dressed and a moment later, her walking stick in hand, she was following the seamstress back to the front of the shop.

  “I heard your conversation about your friend,” she told the girl as they walked. “Can you tell me where she lived?”

  Hetty stopped and turned to look at her. “Begging your pardon, miss,” she said, “but what can you care about a shopgirl going missing?”

  If she’d asked such a question of Lady Shelby, Juliet guessed that her mother would report the insolence to her mistress at once. Since she was hardly her mother, she simply shrugged. “I have a friend who disappeared under similar circumstances and wondered if the two might be connected.”

  This seemed to satisfy Hetty, for she gave a brisk nod and told her Jane’s address. Which happened to be one street over from Mrs. Turner’s flat.

  “It’s not like her, miss,” Hetty said. “She’s a good girl. She wouldn’t just leave her babe for some man.”

  “I believe you,” she replied.

  When they reached the sitting room where she’d left Madeline and Deveril, Juliet was surprised to see only Deveril there.

  “Miss Shelby,” he said, bowing over her hand, “I hope your fittings were not too tedious.”

  “They were fine, my lord,” she said briskly. “But w
hat has happened to my cousin?”

  “Ah.” Deveril smiled. “She recalled a previous appointment and begged me to ask your forgiveness for deserting you.”

  “But we came in her carriage,” Juliet said, her panic at being left behind with Deveril rising, even as a small part of her rejoiced to know that they hadn’t been out here this whole time making calf eyes at one another. “I suppose I can have Madame call for a hansom.”

  “No need,” he told her, “I brought my curricle. We’ll be perfectly respectable.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t,” Juliet protested, though the idea of riding beside him in such a small conveyance had its appeal. “I couldn’t put you out like that. You must have other things to occupy you, surely.”

  “Nothing at all,” he assured her. “And I can have Madame deliver your gowns to your house.”

  “But there has been no time to—”

  “She very kindly offered to send along a few gowns she had made up for another customer who was delinquent in paying for them, after they are altered to fit you of course.”

  Juliet was surprised at his temerity to make such a decision for her. As if reading her mind, he smiled at her. “Your cousin gave her permission, I assure you, Miss Shelby. I can be a bit overbearing, but I do have my limits.”

  She blushed at being so easily caught out. “I apologize, my lord, for doubting you.”

  “Shall we go?” he asked, offering her his elbow.

  As Hetty handed her the pelisse she’d worn in earlier, Juliet remembered the seamstresses’s conversation about their friend Jane.

  “My lord.” She pressed a staying hand to his arm. “I wish you to listen to a story for a moment.”

  She nodded to Hetty, who related the story of the missing Jane, elaborating a bit more on her friend’s situation. It seemed that Jane had fallen in love with a scoundrel who had promised to marry her but then refused when she discovered she was with child. She had gone to stay with her sister in Bath for the birth, and upon her recovery had returned to London and attained a position with Madame Celeste.

  “It makes no sense for her to just go off with some man again, my lord,” Hetty said. “It’s a lie and we all know it. Something has happened to Jane. Either some abbess has stolen her and put her to work, or worse. But there’s no way Jane would leave her babe behind.”

  “Thank you for sharing your story with us, Hetty,” Deveril told the little seamstress. “I promise you that we’ll look into the matter. And in the meantime, you girls look out for yourselves.”

  He did not speak until they were seated in his curricle, his hands expertly steering the horses from Bond Street toward Mayfair.

  “It does seem suspicious,” he told Juliet, taking them within an inch of a lumbering apple cart. “Not only the fact that there is a child involved again, but also the note. With Mrs. Turner, the note makes sense, seeing as how you were her closest friend. But with Jane Pettigrew, there is risk involved with leaving a note. After all, very few women of her class are even able to read. As an explanation, the note in her case leaves much to be desired.”

  Juliet considered. “True. But there is generally someone in their lives who can read a note to them. And the more people who know the note’s contents and hear the explanation, the faster the lies spread. I suspect before the day ended that the news Jane had left town with a man was all over London. Even if she were to return today her reputation would already be ruined.”

  “Excellent point,” he said, flicking the leader’s ear with his whip as the horse tried to nip his comrade in the harness. “I wonder…”

  “What?” Juliet demanded, trying not to pay attention to the feel of his warm thigh pressed against her own.

  “Do you suppose that their reputations have something to do with why they have been taken?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it occurs to me that both Mrs. Turner and Miss Pettigrew were able to rehabilitate themselves after one bout with notoriety. Mrs. Turner was dismissed from your parents’ home for an indiscretion with a gentleman. And Miss Pettigrew lost her position with a milliner for the same thing. And they both were able to leave, have their children, and make lives for themselves again.”

  “Are you suggesting that this villain is taking them as punishment for their past sins?” Juliet was horrified at the notion.

  “Or”—he frowned—“he is ensuring that this time they are well and truly ruined.”

  Either way, the notion was monstrous. But enough to give her grave concern for Anna.

  “Come,” he said, “let us speak of something less troublesome. How goes your dancing?”

  “That is hardly a subject without trouble for me, your lordship,” she said. “But I believe it is going well enough. I may even be good enough to try my new skills in public soon.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “You must save a dance for me.”

  “Drat,” Juliet said, remembering that his name was on Amelia’s dance card. She could hardly pass it off as her own with Deveril, since he knew very well that she had not danced before he taught her. For that matter, her former aversion to dancing would make it impossible to bluster through convincing a passel of gentlemen in their cups that they’d already asked her. “Double drat.”

  “What?” Deveril asked. “Am I so awful a dance partner?”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said, wondering if she should tell him about her dance card problem. He was so influential that he might even be able to smooth things over with the other gentlemen.

  Deciding that he was trustworthy, she explained to him how she and Madeline had made it possible for Cecily to use Amelia’s dance card at the Bewle ball.

  “I knew that wasn’t her card!” he exclaimed. Turning to glance at her, his eyes lit with mischief. “I’ll tell you a secret as well. We all were just so pleased that Amelia had left for the evening that dancing with Cecily was a relief.”

  “She will be pleased to hear it, my lord,” Juliet said with a laugh. “And now that Cecily has passed the card on to me…”

  “Ahh, so now we have the real reason for your learning to dance. I thought I was simply so persuasive you couldn’t say no.”

  “Well, you are persuasive,” she said, “but yes. This was my reason.”

  Something seemed to click in his mind, because he asked, “So, why did Cecily pass the dance card on to you? Are you supposed to use it to find a husband as well?”

  Juliet felt her ears turn scarlet, wondered if she’d said too much.

  “Yes,” she admitted, trying not to pay too much attention to the way his arm brushed against her as he handled the reins. “Though Mama’s wishes for me to marry Turlington and Mrs. Turner’s disappearance have made the whole thing seem trivial and silly.”

  “And I haven’t been helping, have I?” he asked, his expression so penitent that she could no more scold him than she could drown a puppy. “With my teasing and questions.”

  “Your offer to help me find her has been one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me,” she told him truthfully. “I know you probably offer your assistance to all sorts of damsels in distress, but honestly, you have been a great help.” Especially considering that I haven’t told you the whole truth, she thought.

  He stole a glance at her before turning his attention back to the horses. She wasn’t sure what emotions it was she saw in his eyes. But it made her heart beat faster.

  “No,” he said, a little grin curving his lips. “You are my only damsel in distress at the moment.”

  She said nothing as she tried to interpret his words.

  “Do you know, Juliet?” he asked, adding, “I think we are good enough friends that we may address one another by our Christian names in private.”

  The idea of sharing privacy with the handsomest man in London was certainly nothing she’d ever considered before. Much.

  “I believe,” he continued, “Juliet, that you may be the first female ever to admit having done wrong.
I think we’d better keep this between us lest the rest of your sex learn of your treachery.”

  “They can hardly shun me for being sensible,” she said. “And besides that, there is little enough reason for them to fear me. I am no threat.”

  She hated the note of resignation in her voice, but she only spoke the truth. It was clear to anyone with eyes that she wasn’t as pretty as her mother and aunts. Or even Cecily and Madeline. With her red hair and pale skin, she was as unfashionable as could be. Add in her limp and she was far outside the range of even passable.

  “Fishing for compliments, Juliet?” He did not look at her, but she heard the chiding note in his voice.

  Unwilling to discuss the matter further, she was saved answering by their arrival at her family’s town house.

  “Will I see you at the Hargreave musicale this evening?” Alec asked as he lifted her from the carriage. She tried and failed not to feel the exhilaration of being held, even briefly, in his arms. Something about him just seemed to make her body thrum with awareness.

  “I believe so,” Juliet answered as he handed down her walking stick. It was amazing, she reflected, how little she noticed her infirmity when she was in his company.

  “Wear the blue silk, Juliet,” he told her, a puckish glint in his eye as he said her name again. “I believe it will go nicely with your hair.”

  As she made her way into the house and up to her room, Juliet sent up a small prayer to the fashion gods that the blue would be one of the gowns Madame Celeste finished altering today.

  And that her mother chose not to attend the musicale. Because if she saw Juliet’s reaction to Alec, Lady Shelby would waste no time ensuring that Turlington secured her hand for good.

  * * *

  “Where is your cousin this evening?” Alec asked Lady Madeline and the Duchess of Winterson, after they’d exchanged greetings at the Hargreave musicale that evening.

  He’d tried not to make his inquiry about Juliet the first thing he said to her cousins, but it was clear from the way the two ladies exchanged a knowing look that his subterfuge had done nothing to disguise his interest. Dammit. Could not a man inquire about a lady’s whereabouts without being suspected of nursing a tendre?