by Claudia Dain
“I won’t have her tricked into marriage, Louisa,” Blakes said, looking quite as calculating and cool as he normally did. She knew what lay beneath: a warm-blooded romantic.
“She’s my cousin and I won’t see her used.”
“If you won’t see her used, I suggest you talk to Edenham,” Louisa said sharply. Blakes wasn’t the only one who could be sharp.
With that, she walked out of the music room and back into the blue reception room. Molly was standing near the doorway between the two rooms, caught Louisa’s eye, and gave her a firm smile and crisp nod of approval.
Well. There was a surprise.
“What’s surprising about it?” Penelope asked, giving her husband a very assessing look.
“He is a duke,” Iveston said, looking at her quite penetratingly. He did that often. She enjoyed it thoroughly, although less now than usually. She had the intense feeling that Iveston was going to say something excessively annoying. “I don’t have to explain to you, of all people, how desirable that makes him.”
Not to her of all people, because she’d been determined to marry a duke, Edenham in particular, and got Iveston instead. As Iveston was the heir apparent of the Duke of Hyde, she’d got what she wanted, ultimately, a point she was not at all shy about disclosing to him. What would have been the point? It was a worthy goal. She was not ashamed of it.
“Not every woman has the same goals, Iveston,” she said, trying to be patient with him, but truly, did he think all women were cut from the same bolt? What did that make her? Just one scrap out of many in the bin?
“Edenham is highly desirable,” Iveston repeated, as if repeating it one hundred times would make a difference.
“She must want to marry him. It stands to reason. You certainly did.”
Penelope smiled. It was not an attractive smile, and as it was her wedding day, she did think that Iveston should make more of an effort to encourage her to look as attractive as possible.
“You don’t mention how desperately Edenham must want to marry Jane. She is a beautiful woman, unique to his experience, unattainable by every measure,” Penelope said.
Iveston, that imbecile, laughed under his breath. “Unattainable? Come now, he’s a duke, Pen, and can have his pick of women. Certainly, if he makes a serious offer, she’ll jump at it.”
“He’s already offered for her, Iveston. How can you have forgotten that? She refused him soundly, and he has the bruises to prove it.”
“Jed refused him, and small wonder, the way it was handled,” Iveston said, shaking his head and looking out over the guests in the yellow drawing room. “As to that, I don’t think Edenham meant a word of it. He was simply doing all he could to save Jane’s reputation. Quite honorable of him, actually.”
If they hadn’t been at their wedding party, Penelope might have hit Iveston over the head with a serving tray.
As it was, she did look around the room to calculate how many witnesses, and of what type, were present. Lord Dutton was snoring drunkenly on one of the sofas, but he was the only one who was. Everyone else was wide awake and beginning to stare at them.
“After kissing her soundly in the middle of a crowded room,” Penelope said crisply, “I hardly think being honorable crossed Edenham’s mind!”
“He’s a duke. Being honorable is always on his mind,”
Iveston said.
“Then why did he kiss Jane?” she snapped, her voice rising harshly on the final words. Was any woman ever made to endure such idiocy on her wedding day?
Iveston shrugged and said mildly, “She must have provoked him mercilessly. You women are quite accomplished at that precise thing.”
“Iveston, you have inspired me,” she said, looking him up and down. “I simply will not rest until I am pronounced merciless. I don’t think it should take very long to accomplish it, do you?”
Joel Elliot looked down at Lady Paignton and could not help but notice that she was mercilessly laughing at him.
Oh, not outright, but slyly, deep inside, the only evidence of it glimmering in her green eyes and slipping past the corners of her mouth.
Treating him like a rustic, was she? Not for long. New York was a bustling city boasting the busiest port in America; he knew how to lift a skirt in his fist and what to do after that. In fact, why not do just that? He would do her the supreme honor of taking her at her word.
“I’m not offended, Lady Paignton,” he said, taking a single backward step, the gravel crunching under his feet, crossing his arms over his chest to look her up and down.
“I’m only taking your measure, if you will. You may lift your skirts to any man, but I do not respond to every invitation from every woman who issues one. How would I get any work done with that going on all day and night?
No, a man must be particular as his time is so much more valuable than a woman’s, even one who offers him a quick respite from his toils. How much time do you have? Nearly infinite, I should hazard. I might be able to spare you fifteen minutes. I can assure you that it will be fifteen minutes you won’t forget.”
Bernadette looked at him first in surprise, then in what appeared to be only mild outrage, which did tell the tale of her exploits most clearly, and then finally in what he could only name brittle humor.
“Fifteen minutes, Captain Elliot? My, you Americans are given far more credit for determination and endurance when faced with an English opponent than I believe you deserve. How ever did you win your revolution? In fifteen minute . . . spurts?”
Lady Paignton gave as good as she got.
Joel found that an admirable quality in anyone, even an English aristocrat, and he smiled in spite of himself.
“It can be stretched out, as the need or inclination requires,” he said.
“Stretched out, can it?” she said, looking him up and down, her face displaying an overt eroticism that he found nearly irresistible, which was certainly no secret to her.
“Upon whose need, Captain? Whose inclination? I fear it is upon such points that wars are begun.”
“If I give you fifteen minutes, you can determine that for yourself.”
“If I give you fifteen minutes, you shall beg to have far longer than that, which I can assure you, you will not forget.”
Joel took a step nearer and looked down into her almond-shaped moss green eyes. “Is that a challenge?”
“Captain Elliot,” Lady Richard said, her hazel brown eyes looking at him quite cautiously, “I do feel that I must have put a foot wrong.”
“By inviting me into your bed for an hour or two?”
Jedidiah asked. “But why not longer, Lady Richard? Why not the whole night? Could it be that you do not think I would last the night? I assure you that my stamina is a match for yours. Or perhaps you think I could sustain your interest for merely an hour or two?”
She looked at him with all the vigor of a day old fawn, all wide eyes and trembling limbs. Everything about this woman bespoke gentility and fragility, and this is what pops out of her mouth? A fine bit of mummery. He had thought her the most exquisite woman he’d ever seen, her manner as gently wrought as her features. He felt like the rustic colonial she surely thought him.
“Captain Elliot, that is not at all—”
“Katherine,” he breathed, taking her by the arm and pulling her a step closer to him, “please call me Jedidiah.
As you have offered your body to me, it seems foolish not to share the intimacy of our names.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth opened slightly. She looked ready to be kissed, and damned if he didn’t want to be the man to do it.
“Ah,” she squeaked, staring at his mouth.
“If I take an hour with you, Katherine,” he said, his gaze skimming her face, “you will beg me to take you, and take you, and take you for a week.”
“Ah!” she squeaked again, a bit more moanish this time.
“Or until the wind comes up and I’m away upon
the sea,” he said briskly, releasing her arm, but not stepping back from her. No, not quite able to do that.
She stared up into his face, her breath a shallow gasp in her throat that he heard distinctly, and which pulled at something deep within him in a way that wasn’t comfortable at all. She took a breath. She took another, a bit shaky, and then she smiled with all the innocent sweetness of a child.
“Is that a challenge, Jedidiah?” she said.
Twenty-two
“Molly,” the Duke of Hyde said softly, “as it’s past seven, I do think we must have the wedding breakfast now. Lady Melton is murmuring that she’s feeling faint.”
Molly snorted under her breath and said, “She’s always finding a reason to faint. I can’t think what she finds so entertaining about it.”
“The last time I saw her fall into a faint, and a graceful one it was, she displayed the ankle of one leg and nearly half a calf on the other,” Hyde said pleasantly. “I was entertained. Briefly, only briefly.”
Molly looked up at him and laughed.
The Duke of Hyde was a tall, lean man of faded blond hair shot liberally with silver white, and pale blue eyes.
He’d served as a general in the American colonies and whilst there he’d met Molly, a Boston girl born and bred, of a prosperous shipping family. Possessed of dark blond hair and gunmetal blue eyes, Molly’s head came barely to Hyde’s shoulder. They appeared to have nothing in com-mon, including their temperaments, yet they shared the one commonality that was essential. They loved each other.
It was for this reason, this surprise of finding love with a Boston girl, of marrying her in the midst of a bloody political conflict, and bringing her home to England where she made his life as duke of some reputation far richer than it had been before, that Hyde had allowed Molly to encourage, by the most outlandish means imaginable, the marriages of three of their five sons. And now their American niece.
It was getting a bit sticky.
“She may not want to marry him, Molly,” he said, when her laughter had run its course.
“Of course she does,” Molly answered briskly. “Who wouldn’t want to marry a handsome duke? I certainly did.”
“You weren’t marrying a duke. You were marrying me.
And an uphill battle it was for me. Your family gave me the devil of a time. I despaired of ever achieving you, more than once.”
Molly smiled up at him and patted his chest fondly. “A man is supposed to despair, that’s the best purpose of any sort of courtship. A man without an uphill battle? Why, he’d stay sleeping on his cot in his tent, the battle raging on without him.”
“You believe she’s toying with him? Encouraging him to fight for her?”
“It is what she’s doing, whether she knows it or not,”
Molly said, straightening her pearl necklace. “If he was nothing to her, if he meant nothing, if he aroused nothing, then she’d treat him . . . as nothing. It’s not that she would ignore him, it’s that she would do nothing to him. Whatever else she has done, or not done, she has engaged him.
It’s equally clear that she enjoys engaging him and wants to continue engaging him.”
“It is equally clear that Edenham is still in the fight,”
Hyde said. “But marriage? Sally will not be pleased. Timothy less so.”
“My mother was not pleased with you,” Molly said. “I, however, am still pleased.”
Hyde nodded slowly, convinced. “Our guests would be pleased if they could eat.”
“Which goes directly back to my point, Hyde,” she said pleasantly, “that not everyone is going to be pleased.”
To that, he had no response but a smile.
Jane was still smiling, thinking of all the suffering she was going to require Edenham to endure, when two remarkable-looking men approached her. Actually, they approached Mr. Prestwick, but as she was standing with Mr. Prestwick, the effect was the same. Had she met them previously? She couldn’t remember, certain things having gone a bit fuzzy, but as Mr. Prestwick was the thoughtful sort, he introduced them, again. Or not. She might remember later. Or not.
Really, there was something very disturbing about the quality of Aunt Molly’s Madeira.
Lord Raithby was quite handsome; they all seemed to be quite handsome, didn’t they? Likely something to do with the improved diet that was the direct result of being well-moneyed and spoilt from birth. Raithby’s hair was dark brown, his eyes were dark blue, and his face was angular with a narrow chin. He had a scar near his eye.
She liked the look of that scar.
She truly was a most horrid girl and must get ahold of herself and her ruthless instincts immediately. Or at least soon. Or at least as soon as she could without undue fuss.
Yes, that was it. There was no need to make a fuss about it, was there?
But she did like the look of that small scar. It gave Raithby a dangerous look. She was obviously the sort of girl who liked a dangerous look.
Which explained her unbecoming fascination with Lord Penrith. Handsome? Naturally. Dark blond hair that was arranged rather savagely, longish, and unruly. Green eyes that looked at her with all the subtlety of a wild cat. His voice was a rough purr, a throaty, velvety, smooth path to a most speedy seduction. Oh, there was no doubt about that.
A more sensual man she had never met.
Did he know Lady Paignton? That seemed a most logical question. They had many points in common, those two.
Mr. Prestwick seemed only slightly alarmed by the arrival of his friends, or she assumed they were his friends.
Although, if they were, why should he be alarmed? Jane drew her natural caution around her like a thick shawl.
It fell off.
“I do like the look of that scar, Lord Raithby,” she said with a smile of pure female appreciation. “How did you come by it? Not by a woman’s hand, I hope. Or perhaps I do hope. You probably deserved it. Did you?”
Raithby’s blue eyes widened slightly. He glanced at Penrith. George Prestwick smiled and shook his head in what appeared to be amusement. Penrith grinned and looked at Jane.
“Oh, do tell me,” Jane prompted. “I’m not from here, you know, and have missed what I’m certain is a wonderful story about your scar. You like it, don’t you? You should.
It’s completely dashing.”
“Completely,” Penrith said. “Makes me wish I had one.
Would you care to inflict a scar upon me, Miss Elliot? I would hold very still.”
“A wound first, Lord Penrith,” she said. “The scar follows.”
“Ah, very true,” Penrith said.
“And you would allow me to wound you? All for the dash of a carefully placed scar?”
“Miss Elliot, as you find scars alluring, I would indeed.”
Jane burst out laughing. “Oh, that’s absurd. I am only one woman, Lord Penrith. You should not remake yourself because of a whim of mine. I don’t even live here.”
“But perhaps you shall?” Penrith said, his eyes glittering with amusement.
She could have pretended ignorance, but why? It seemed suddenly too much effort would be required to do so. She was just a visitor and she would never see any of these people again. Why not say what she wished? Why not do what she wished?
Was there any greater adventure than that?
“Because of the Duke of Edenham’s determination to marry me?” Jane asked in response. “Is that what you mean, Lord Penrith?” Without waiting for his response, but really, was it necessary, she said, “Did you not hear my brothers renounce him completely?”
“I did,” Penrith said softly. “The thing is, Miss Elliot, I did not hear you renounce the duke. Certainly your wishes must count for something with your brothers? Or not? But perhaps it is that you would do nothing to distress them and since Edenham so clearly distresses them, you will be guided by their preferences.”
That wasn’t it at all, most obviously. Or not most obvi
ously. Is that what this throng thought? That she was being managed by her brothers?
Oh, they did try. Everyone tried, even Penrith was now trying. Being managed was an exhausting bit of business to endure and, naturally, there was the equally exhausting business of then being required to outmaneuver them all.
How much simpler it all would be if she only did what she wanted, no matter what anyone else wanted.
It was upon such thoughts that revolutions were begun.
As the world was awash in revolutions, who would notice the tiny one she would stage?
“Lord Penrith,” she said, “you are an agitator, which in my country is a high compliment. Now,” she continued, linking her arm in his, to his clear surprise, “I have not decided what to do about the duke. My thoughts lead me to one conclusion, yet my . . .” She wanted to say loins, but did think that might be a bit bold for them. She might be starting a revolution, but one didn’t want to alienate potential allies at the first billow of gunpowder.
“Heart?” Mr. Prestwick offered.
“Very good, Mr. Prestwick,” she said. “Heart will serve most admirably. The Duke of Edenham, his determination to wed me, was very much a surprise to me. An unwelcome surprise, to be sure, but one does find the man has some few compelling qualities.”
His mouth, his eyes, his face, his hands, his very unlikely sense of decorum to name but a few. Which she would not name, clearly, for there was no point in telling one man what a woman found attractive about another man. Not unless . . .
Not unless . . . and Jane smiled so brilliantly that even Mr. Prestwick seemed struck dumb.
“Lord Penrith,” she said, throwing her beauty all over the man like a riotous rainstorm, “would you walk with me about the room? I shall tell you all the reasons why I should prefer to remain in New York and you shall endeavor to convince me that England is a wondrous country and that I should be a fool not to want to live here. Can you do that, Lord Penrith?”
“Convince you or walk with you, Miss Elliot?” he asked, studying her with his cool green eyes, the tiniest of smiles pulling his lips upward in a cat’s grin.
