by Claudia Dain
That Amelia had not been ruined years before now, and indeed not mere moments ago, was due entirely to her careful protection of her public image and Lord Cranleigh’s determination not to be the cause of her downfall, which was surely a lovely thing for a man to do. That was beyond obvious. Of course, Cranleigh’s behavior of the past few days had been less than discreet …
“Oh, but darling,” Sophia said to Aunt Mary, laying a kind hand upon Mary’s arm, which Mary did not look kindly upon at all, “that is not quite accurate, is it? Lady Louisa, under your very amiable gaze, went quite astray, though very happily astray, as is usually the case. Certainly one must be forced to draw the conclusion that Lady Amelia, quite on her own, is above any sort of speculation, which is why her father has not come undone in the slightest degree upon seeing Gillray’s satire. The fault must lie in exaggeration, which artists are so fond of doing. Why, certainly Romney’s portraits of Lady Hamilton prove that point most well. Lady Hamilton, though lovely, is not quite that lovely, but one does not make a reputation for oneself by displaying less than intriguing, that is to say, captivating subjects in the realm of art. Hence, the satire can be discounted as it was clearly designed for monetary gain. And succeeded admirably at it, too, as I’m told it was sold out within the hour.”
Somehow, within that convulted speech, Amelia heard two things most clearly. One, that she was not that lovely. The other, that Cranleigh couldn’t possibly have succumbed to desire for her among the roses of the Prestwick conservatory, or anywhere else for that matter.
“Perfectly logical,” Edenham said. “I agree profoundly, Lady Dalby. Lady Amelia is quite the innocent. Why, one has only to look at her to see how naïve and positively untouched she is by the tempest of that ridiculous satire. Or anything else.”
Edenham was, to be fair, a profoundly handsome man. If he hadn’t have been, one could hardly have expected him to attract any wife at all after the first. That he’d totaled up to three to date and was now, remarkably, looking at her as if she should make an agreeable number four was slightly alarming.
Cranleigh certainly didn’t look pleased. Which was the slightest bit gratifying. Cranleigh looked positively enraged. His incredible blue eyes were shards of ice and his scowl was formidable. The moment was near perfection and quite irresistible.
“Duke, what a perfectly lovely thing to say,” Amelia said, smiling up at Edenham. He was a very handsome man, quite like a Greek statue in many ways, certainly all the important ones. “If you would like to be interviewed, as everyone insists upon calling a simple conversation, then I should be delighted to accommodate you. Shall we retire to the drawing room?”
“Alone?” Calbourne said.
“She’s in her own home!” Aunt Mary said, outraged at the question that every inch of Aldreth’s home not be plainly recognized as perfectly respectable and acceptable.
“I didn’t have the opportunity of talking with Lady Amelia alone,” Calbourne said, not at all graciously. “I can’t think how that’s a fair comparison.”
“But, darling,” Sophia said, “you were discounted for your impressive height, and certainly a woman does not have be alone with you to determine that.”
“She does if she believes it to be a … a hindrance,” Calbourne said, quite more robustly than was in good taste. Why, Aldreth was looking at them entirely too closely. He might decide to end the entire adventure as it pertained to dukes.
“Why, Calbourne,” Sophia trilled. “You astonish me! Certainly a girl of such refinement and obvious innocence wouldn’t have the wherewithal to consider such … hindrances.”
“No one is that innocent,” Calbourne maintained, crossing his arms over his chest.
“She is,” Cranleigh said. “And will remain so. No one else talked to her alone and I shouldn’t think it necessary for Edenham to require solitude.”
“You did,” Sophia said brightly to Cranleigh. “Fair play should require you to allow Edenham the same privilege. And indeed, Calbourne as well. I won’t say Lord Iveston because he did have his time alone with Lady Amelia in the Prestwick conservatory, didn’t he? None would know that better than you, Lord Cranleigh, and none should know how completely innocent such brief though private conversations can be. Nothing did happen, did it? The satire is a complete exaggeration, is it not? ”
Well, that did put a nail in it. What was Cranleigh to say to that?
Twenty-one
EDENHAM and Amelia walked into the drawing room alone. It was quite a pleasant room done up as it was in pink and white marble with a frescoe of prancing Greeks upon the high ceiling and dark red damask drapes at the windows. There were two elegantly proportioned settees covered in plum-colored silk damask and eight chairs sitting in a very polite line along the back wall, covered in the same dark red damask as the drapery. Certainly a girl’s reputation could not be ruined in such a room. All that marble and a small settee? Impossible.
“How long do you intend his punishment to continue?” Edenham asked once they had sat on facing settees, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
“I beg your pardon?” she said with a start, wishing she had her shawl to wrap around her, anything to help her hide from Edenham’s scrutiny. His lovely brown eyes were very observant. As to that, he had married three times; it was only to be expected that he might actually have learned something about women in all that time. “Whose punishment?”
“Lady Amelia, you are a very beautiful woman and beautiful women are very accustomed to getting exactly what they want, however long it may take, and upon whomever’s shoulders they may be required to step on to get it.”
Put that way, it sounded extremely unattractive.
“I have made no secret of the fact that I am ready to marry,” she said, which was perfectly true.
“Yes, but to whom?”
“Why, to the man who is … that is … the man with whom I find the sweetest compatibility,” she said.
It was a most difficult thing to phrase, this list of requirements. And wasn’t Edenham interviewing her? Not at all the way this was supposed to progress. She hated to admit it, but Sophia did keep things so nicely on target, even with the most difficult of men. Edenham, it did appear, was going to be one of the difficult ones. Although, weren’t they all in one fashion or another? Certainly Hawksworth was very nearly horrid most of the time, and he was only truly at his best whilst asleep.
“And you have yet to find that man?” he asked.
“Obviously. Do you hope to be that man?” she dared to ask.
“I must, or why else am I here?” he asked. “Unless it be to annoy another man into offering for you.”
Oh, dear. He really was too very observant for a girl’s enjoyment.
“If he must be annoyed to do it,” she said, “I can’t think that he’d be at all desirable as a husband.”
“Can’t you, Lady Amelia? ” he said, smiling marginally. “But as to our interview, we have spoken before, though only briefly. Do you remember it? It was at the Earl of Quinton’s, a dinner to celebrate his son Raithby’s first win at Newmarket, or something of the sort. A year ago? Do you recall it?”
She most certainly did. Cranleigh had got her alone in the end stall of Quinton’s mews and kissed her until she could barely see clearly. In fact, she’d stumbled for a full five minutes after leaving the mews. It was encounter number twenty-two and no one, as usual, had seen anything.
Except, apparently, the Duke of Edenham.
“Yes, Duke,” she said. “A filly out of Ravenbolt, wasn’t it? I fear I have forgotten the name of the winner.”
“I believe, my dear, that Amelia Caversham was the winner that day,” Edenham said. “But I don’t mean to torment you.” Pure rot. “I only wish you to know that I am an old hand at matrimonial dances and if I can aid you in any way, I am entirely at your disposal.”
That sounded nearly too good to be true. But what to do with him, if true? How could Edenham, indeed any man, aid in bring
ing Cranleigh up to snuff?
“You believe to know my mind, my intentions? I did not realize we were that well acquainted,” she said, shifting her weight on the settee and forcing herself to stare into his eyes. He had quite nice eyes, not the arresting blue of Cranleigh’s but quite compelling in a different fashion.
“And I did not realize that you had any interest in being more well acquainted with me than you are, Lady Amelia, no matter the intrigue offered by your proposed interviews. Tell me, have you discovered anything but that you are more determined to have Cranleigh than ever before?”
Amelia chuckled before she had quite got hold of herself.
“I must apologize for being rather more forward than is considered in good form,” she answered, “but you must know that it is and has been my intention since leaving the nursery to be a duchess one day. It has been brought to my attention that, far from being subtle, I have made no secret of my desire. That being true, whyever would I want Lord Cranleigh? He is no duke.”
“Are we to pretend that a woman’s desire is subject to plan?” he answered.
“Only if we pretend that a man’s desire is likewise planned.”
Edenham laughed softly and nodded in acquiescence.
“Lady Dalby suggested the list, the interviews?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, not entirely sure why she was confiding in Edenham, though the fact that he had known of her indiscretion with Cranleigh for a year and said nothing likely had much to do with it. “A scandalous proposition, but upon reflection, scandal seemed the only course left me. Being virtuous had achieved little.”
“But not too virtuous,” he said.
Amelia stiffened. “I would not have you believe so little of me or of Lord Cranleigh. A simple kiss is not a mark of indelicacy or indiscretion. If I believed it were, I would never have allowed the kiss and Lord Cranleigh, who is a man of considerable honor, would never have attempted it.”
“Of course,” Edenham said agreeably, and then ruined it by adding, “ a simple, single kiss is no such thing as indelicate, indiscreet, or dishonorable. A man would be a fool to argue otherwise.”
“Thank you for not acting a fool, Duke,” she said, rising to her feet. Edenham rose at her cue. “And thank you for allowing this little interview; I believe I am not wrong in thinking we understand each other very well. It was very gracious of you and I do hope it does not tarnish your reputation in any way.”
“I should hope it adds to my luster,” he said. “But there is nothing I may do to aid you in your quest? No little nudge I may aim in Lord Cranleigh’s approximate direction?”
“I can think of nothing, I am sorry to say. I should not have minded at all marrying a duke and being a duchess,” she said. “I did want it very badly, and I was very firm in my plans. And then Cranleigh kissed me.” Amelia very nearly shrugged, which would have been most improper. “I suppose I am not very sophisticated, to allow a kiss to accomplish so much, but it did and Lord Cranleigh has been most stubborn in not …”
How to say it? He had kissed her, confused her, she had righted herself, and then he had kissed her again. She had, to be perfectly fair with herself, kept her decision to marry a duke very firmly at the forefront of her thoughts despite a single kiss. Despite a single encounter of kisses. It was when the kisses had passed a score that she had become rather disinterested in dukes as a concept and wholly interested in Cranleigh.
What could be done about it? She had made plain her interest in Cranleigh and Cranleigh, beyond kissing her, had not made plain an interest in her. She could have got herself publicly ruined and settled the matter, but Cranleigh had not publicly ruined her and the matter had not been settled.
Cranleigh should have understood that, by her continual availability to being kissed, she would not be disinclined to accept an offer of marriage from him.
Cranleigh had made no offer.
Not after the first kiss and not after the fifty-first kiss.
To say that it had broken her heart was not an understatement. To say that she had cobbled herself together and put a good face on it was also not an understatement. To say that she had come up with a plan to salvage her heart was obvious.
Whoever would have thought that getting married would be so complicated?
“Understanding your preference?” Edenham offered, finishing the thought for her.
“Yes. Precisely,” she answered, for it was as good an explanation as any.
“Perhaps there is a way to encourage Cranleigh past his stubbornness,” Edenham said as they walked to the doorway that led to the library, and quite a bit of commotion was coming to them from that direction, too. Why, it sounded nearly like a brawl.
It seemed to be a day for brawling, which might be precisely how marriages were arranged. She had seen nothing to hinder that conclusion and rather a lot to reinforce it. One only had to remember Louisa’s night of ruination to hammer the point home.
It was as she was thinking of Louisa and how happily, one might even say passionately, she was married to the man who had seduced her by surprise, that Cranleigh burst into the drawing room looking like a tiger on the hunt.
Amelia started, jumped actually, Edenham took her hand and placed it on his arm, smiled at Cranleigh and said, “Ah, Cranleigh, you haven’t seen Aldreth about, have you? I must speak to him immediately. Lady Amelia and I have reached a most cordial and most unexpected understanding.”
“You can’t have done!” Cranleigh nearly shouted. It was rather blatantly insulting, in certain lights.
“I beg your pardon?” Edenham said, lifting an eyebrow and looking very ducal all of a sudden.
“I said you can’t have done,” Cranleigh repeated, staring at Amelia. “Calbourne is even now insisting that he and Amelia have reached an understanding and this business of his being too tall was simply a jest they were playing upon the Town until Aldreth returned from the Continent and could be approached for her hand.”
Really? Whyever would Calbourne say anything like that?
The name of Sophia Dalby sprang instantly to mind.
“Calbourne is known for his peculiar sense of humor,” Edenham said dismissively. “Didn’t he strike the Earl of Dutton in White’s as some part of a wager or a jest or some ill-conceived entertainment? ”
“That was the Earl of Ashdon,” Cranleigh said, and then nodding as if remembering further details. “Followed by Henry.” As Henry Blakesley was Cranleigh’s younger brother it should not be considered that Cranleigh was in any confusion as to who struck whom.
“Upon a single day?” Edenham asked, losing the point completely.
Men did become so distracted by anything to do with fighting or horses or wagering. As the three so often went together, men were very nearly always distracted and therefore not at their best. It was a gracious assumption for it assumed that men did, at times, behave better than they ever did. Gracious and presumptive as she had never seen actual evidence of better behavior. Why, one only had to consider Hawksworth. And then there was Cranleigh.
“No, but within a single week,” Cranleigh said tersely. “I do not believe Dutton found it entertaining.”
“How unsociable of him,” Edenham said blandly.
“As to being unsociable,” Amelia cut in, “I should—”
“We must go see your father,” Edenham said, cutting her off, and not at all apologetic about it. “I will have this intrigue with Calbourne settled and him promptly removed.”
“Yes, do that,” Cranleigh said. “I would speak with Lady Amelia while you do so.”
Edenham raised one eyebrow arrogantly and said, “I am not at all certain I find that acceptable.”
“Then become certain of it,” Cranleigh barked.
“A most peculiar family,” Edenham said as he walked into the library. “Must be the American strain introduced by the Duchess of Hyde.”
“Damned arrogance,” Cranleigh murmured, watching Edenham leave the room.
“
As to arrogance,” Amelia said. “I can’t think why you thought it your place to intrude upon my interview with the duke. We were getting along famously.”
“I can bloody well see that. You seem to be getting on famously with all the men.”
“All the men on my list, yes. Did you presume otherwise?”
“No, of course not,” he said, being as perfectly obstinate as he always was. “I know how well-behaved you can be when the right eyes are watching you, Amy. ’Tis a fine performance you give, quite worthy of the boards.”
“You make me sound quite common, Cranleigh, when the simple explanation is that I’m behaving as I was taught to behave.”
“And when you’re with me?” he asked, leaning close to her, his body tantalizing in its nearness.
“I behave as you taught me to behave,” she breathed, taunting him boldly. Would he never declare himself? Would he never simply ask to have her? “Did you expect otherwise, Cranleigh? What did you think would happen after countless kisses in corners and stair halls? Did you think I would not—”
“Develop an aversion to corners and stair halls?” he said, missing the point entirely, as was his practice. One would think he did it on purpose, being as stupid as a stump, but she was very afraid he came by it naturally.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the spirit of blunt speaking upon her after talking to Edenham, she ought to simply explain what it was she wanted of Cranleigh. Things could hardly get worse; even honesty could do little harm now. It was a sign of the death of civilization as she knew it to even think such a thought. Where would Society be if such thinking took over?
“But not an aversion to you, Cranleigh,” she said, taking the bull by the horns, very nearly literally. She pressed her head against his chest, feeling the heat of him rising up to caress her. She laid her hands upon his ribs and held her breath. In all their encounters, he had been the instigator, she the willing participant. Would he be willing now? Could she, by laying her head against his heart, force him to act?
Cranleigh lifted his head and sucked in a hard breath. One hand came round to hold her to him, his hand gentle on the small of her back, his other arm held away from both his body and hers, as if he were afraid of touching her with both hands, holding her to him, pressing her against him. She drank in the scent of him, feeling his cravat on her face, wanting what he would not give her. Himself. Fully and completely himself.
