DamonUndone

by JayneFresina

  He followed her. "No. I don't gamble. Not anymore." Still that intense stare, as if she'd torn something of his.

  "But does your family's fortune not have its roots in—"

  "What does that have to do with me? I'll make my own fortune."

  Clearly she'd hit a soft spot. "That's admirable," she assured him. "I cannot mock you for that intention."

  He fidgeted with his neck-cloth. "I suppose you've heard all about us."

  "From whom?"

  "Your suitor." He glowered over at Bertie. "No doubt he has many good tales to tell you. I hear your aunt is acquainted with the Winstanleys. They must have shared many a scandalous morsel about my family too."

  "Are the stories not true then?"

  "Depends which bit of gossip you require verifying."

  She grinned. "About your preference for married ladies."

  Although she only meant to tease playfully, he was evidently in too grim of a mood to play along today. "What does it matter to you?" Hands behind his back now, he jerked a quick nod toward Boxall and growled under his breath, "Thought you weren't looking for a husband. Don't they all bore you?"

  "What does it matter to you?" she replied, smartly tossing his own words back at him.

  "Of course, women are notorious for changing their minds on a whim."

  She felt the heat rising under her lace collar. "I had better not stand here talking to you any longer. You're a bad influence."

  "I am?" His deep, low voice sank into her like warm fudge sauce into a soufflé.

  "And I am supposed to listen to those who would advise me sensibly, aren't I? As you said in your note."

  "I am here to counsel you."

  "But you have a very odd way of doing it. So I ought to stay well away," she tapped the handle of her parasol against his chest, "from you."

  He caught the handle and held it. "I still have a job to do."

  "But I have been on my very best behavior and not raised a single fist, or stabbed anybody with a hatpin, despite the temptations."

  "Part of my job, Miss Piper, is to keep you away from danger. Especially fortune-hunters."

  Frowning, she tugged her parasol from his grip and took several more, swift steps away from the others, pretending to take greater interest in the horses. She did not expect him to follow again, but suddenly he was behind her. The air changed, thickened with the heaviness that came before a storm. Pip had no need to look over her shoulder to confirm his presence there.

  "My father sent me all this way to be among dull, tedious Englishmen so that this sort of thing wouldn't happen," she added in a rushed whisper.

  "What sort of thing?"

  "I'm sure he thought you'd all be too dignified, stiff-lipped and gentlemanly to scrap with me, and that if I found nobody willing to argue, I'd finally learn to hold my tongue. Sending me here was the closest he could get to shutting me in a padded cell. I'm convinced of it."

  "So what you're saying is that I am not dull and tedious, after all."

  Rather than answer that, Pip decided to plunge in, regardless of what she probably should or should not say. "I see Lady Elizabeth Stanbury over there." Bertie Boxall had identified that slender, elegant, blonde woman for her.

  "So?" he snapped. "What of it?"

  "You know her, do you not?"

  "Her husband is a client. Why?"

  "She is very beautiful."

  "Is she?"

  She looked at him over her shoulder. "Don't you think so?"

  He gave no reply, but fussed with his cravat yet again, as if it might be too tight around his neck.

  With an impatient gasp, she turned fully around, handed him her parasol, and reached up to loosen the knot of that troublesome cravat for him, as she would often do for her father. "Mr. Deverell, you ought to know that I don't care about gossip. I don't listen to it, although I can't prevent my ears from hearing it, of course. You know what gossiping tongues have done to me and my sisters. According to some stories, the cause of Ernest Moffat's blackened eye was a lover's tiff and I was not only his paramour, but his father's too. That I was his father's concubine, his placee, a kept woman." She patted the finished, improved knot and took her parasol back from him. "So yes, I know how one simple fact can be twisted and expanded until it bears little resemblance to the truth. Gossip is nothing to me, no more than horse manure in the street— an inconvenience to walk around."

  His eyes warmed a little, but he seemed uncertain today, not his usual confident self at all.

  "Where's your delightful aunt?" he said suddenly. "Not here today, overseeing her nieces to be sure they don't meet any young men like me?"

  "She was under the weather this morning. Lord Boxall and his godmother were happy to bring us."

  "I bet they were."

  "I thought you didn't gamble?"

  He half turned away and shook his head dolefully. "He's in debt up to his scrawny neck. That's why his godmother is pushing him. That why he's here with you."

  "And to think, I imagined he was besotted with me. How lucky I am to have you, my aunt and my sister, to remind me of the grim, ugly truth, just in case I should be swept away with the romance and imagine a man might want me for more than my dowry."

  "Just warning you. It's my job. Men can be unscrupulous."

  She laughed. "Is that not the wolf warning the sheep?"

  "I see the amiable mute part still isn't working."

  "Mercy! I had forgotten what fun it is to argue with you."

  His eyes glittered, his gaze stroking roughly over her face. "Likewise."

  She laughed a little breathlessly. "What shall we disagree about next?"

  "Boxall," came the immediate reply. "He's no good for you. He'll spend all your money and then run off with a chambermaid."

  "Oh lord," Pip rolled her eyes. "He's harmless enough. I'm in no danger there."

  He scowled, tugging on the cuffs of his cutaway. "Interesting how your aunt approves of a drunken wastrel like Boxall, but threatens me with nutcrackers."

  "It's all about the title. But she assures me that once I'm married I can take someone like you as my lover. A little something on the side." It came out of her before she could prevent it. Like so many things. In the surprise and excitement of seeing him again, she couldn't stop herself chattering. Or her fingers tapping against her closed parasol.

  Why did he not give one of his sharp replies? Appalled, she suddenly realized he might have taken her remark as an actual suggestion.

  "I didn't mean—"

  "I hope not." It was a taut interruption, squeezed out between gritted teeth.

  "Rather hypocritical of you, isn't it?"

  This time, nothing. Had she finally rendered him speechless? After a full two minutes of awkward silence, he returned to the others, muttered something to his sister and dragged her off in another direction.

  "I thought you hadn't met Deverell," Bertie exclaimed, coming to stand stiffly beside her.

  "As he said, he was hired by our father. It's not as if I know him... socially. I'm just a client in his eyes."

  "Well, I didn't care for the way those eyes looked at you."

  "Yes. He's not terribly polite."

  "Polite?" Bertie scowled. "Manners have naught to do with that man."

  She smiled, turning away to watch the race.

  He did look at her in a very wicked way, she thought. It was enough to make her perspire under her lace collar. If her bosom ever began heaving in his presence, she'd know she was seriously in trouble.

  * * * *

  "Why on earth were you so discourteous to Miss Piper?" Raven exclaimed.

  "I was merely being myself."

  "Determined to prove me wrong about the charm? Good lord, there was no need to be so utterly miserable. What are you afraid of?"

  "I'm not afraid of anything." He squared his shoulders. "We've both decided already that we don't like each other, that's all."

  "Yes. So I saw. " After a pause, Raven added, "I thoug
ht the eldest Miss Piper was very pretty. I'm sure, if they are on the hunt for husbands, they'll do well. Something a little exotic and interesting is always welcome."

  Damon shrugged. He thought Nonesuch was the most wretchedly beautiful woman he'd ever seen, but he would, under no circumstances, tell his sister that. He would keep it to himself, along with all the other things he'd begun to think about her. At night. In his bed. When he was with Elizabeth and should have been thinking about her instead.

  Had his ears deceived him, or had Nonesuch just suggested she might take him for a lover once she was married? It was just sinking in. The audacity of such a suggestion made by a woman to him. Of course, she was American; she might not realize that it was up to him to seduce her, and that such a decision was not hers to make. She should be coy, reluctant, play the game. Not make such a brazen announcement as if it was all entirely up to her and he was just a plaything to be picked up and set down on her whim.

  And where, exactly, would that lurid gossip about her being the elder Moffat's mistress come from? She should be more decorous and not talk of "placages"— arrangements of that nature between men and women. Ladies might know of such things, but they did not talk about them in public. Her tongue had no doubt got her in trouble before. All it took was one prying busybody to overhear half a conversation and build the rest of it with supposition and spite.

  Once I'm married I can take someone like you as my lover. A little something on the side.

  Such a thing for a young woman to suggest! What was the world coming to? Suddenly he was prudish.

  But that wasn't what bothered him the most.

  He didn't like the way the American woman made him feel. It was unpredictable, uncontrollable. Damon knew where he was with Elizabeth Stanbury, who was far more suitable for his adult life. Nonesuch belonged in the grubby-faced, playful boyhood he'd left behind.

  But something restless broiled within. Everything that had previously made him content was suddenly constricting, somehow false. As if he wore another man's coat and boots and tried to make them fit.

  And what troubled him the most about Miss Epiphany Piper was not her bold manner, or her quarrelsome tongue, or even the possibility of her aunt's wrath— it was simply that he did not like sharing her time and attentions with those of another man, whether it be Boxall or any other entitled brat. For the first time in his life he felt possessive over a damn woman.

  He would never share her with another man. He couldn't be her little something on the side.

  He wanted more.

  Somehow he had to conquer this needy, impish creature of discontent growing inside of him. Somehow.

  Chapter Twelve

  The proposal came at the end of June. She knew he'd been pushed into it by his godmother, and probably by her own aunt too. They were all going to be disappointed.

  "I'm sorry, Bertie, I cannot think of marriage at this time. I hope we can remain friends. But I have far too much to do with my life." Pip had prepared her response, just in case this moment ever came, no matter who asked her.

  "You led me to believe...you were fond of me."

  This is what happened, she thought glumly, when a person was obliged to hide their true feelings and not say what was in their head. When one was forced to be nice, patient and obliging, no matter what. She had followed her father's advice and look where it got her. Nice, apparently, didn't always pay.

  "We have known each other little more than a month, Bertie. Been in company together no more than five or six times—"

  "Eleven!"

  "Oh," she faltered. "Eleven? I must confess I wasn't really counting."

  His face was very long and pale. Too much wine the night before— or that morning. Had he needed something to strengthen his courage before he launched into this proposal?

  "You cannot seriously think to marry me after so short an acquaintance," she added, bemused, even a little sorry for him. Did he think he had monopolized her time so that she thought of nothing else? Or nobody else.

  If only her life was that simple.

  He pouted. "It's not rare to form an attachment in a few weeks. Marriage shouldn't trouble either of us too much."

  She got up from the chair, feeling penned in by the boy who knelt before her. "I'm afraid it would, most certainly, trouble me. Where would we live, for instance?"

  "We'll have a place in Mayfair, of course, for the season, and a little place in the country for the rest of the year. Nothing fancy. Just forty rooms or so."

  Something with room for his godmother, she supposed. All of it purchased with her money.

  She frowned, hands on her waist, fingers tapping. "You're prepared to overlook the gossip and my great infamy?"

  "Yes. I am." He beamed. "Besides, you're not so strange now. People are becoming accustomed to—"

  "You're not afraid I might punch you in the eye or commit some other bodily harm against you?"

  "Why would you, my dearest, when I shall give you no cause?"

  She very much doubted that.

  Of course, he was on his best behavior now because he wanted her dowry and, ultimately, the one third portion of her father's fortune. She didn't need Damon Deverell to advise her of that.

  "I'm sorry, Bertie. It's out of the question."

  "Why?" he demanded, smile gone instantly, replaced by an unbecoming pout.

  "Because in another year, I shall be going home to work for my father's business. Eventually I want to become his right-hand man. So you see, I can't be a wife. I simply won't have the time for a husband and a family of my own. It wouldn't be fair to any man I married, for work would take my attention away from him."

  He stared, confused. "You don't want—? But all young women want to be married."

  "Not this one, I'm afraid. I wish I did. It would be easier." She smiled. "But as I said, I hope we can still maintain a friendship." She needed him to keep her aunt from dragging any other possible suitors to her for an introduction. "I know, Bertie, that you are not particularly in haste to marry— me or anybody— and that your godmother put you up to this, because of my dowry. Is that not so?"

  The young man made a grunt of agreement and flopped backward into a chair. She was amused at how easily he admitted his mercenary intentions.

  Pip poured him a brandy and took it to where he sat. "Well, then. If we maintain our 'courtship' it should keep them quiet and content, for a while at least— both my aunt and your godmother."

  He took the glass, looking a little less sulky. "I suppose so. An engagement would do the same, however."

  "But that would encourage them to order wedding clothes and start making arrangements. We don't want it to get out of hand. It wouldn't be kind to them."

  Downing the brandy, he made no reply.

  "Keep things the way they are and that should be enough. Just... don't call me dearest," she added, flinching.

  "What shall I call you then? Not still Miss Piper, surely."

  "You may call me 'Pip'. It's what my friends call me." She saw nothing amiss with that familiarity, and it was certainly more palatable than "dearest".

  * * * *

  The Winstanley's town house was in the process of being shut up for the summer, dust sheets already shrouding the furniture in some rooms and trunks cluttering the hall, packed ready for the requisite summer in the country, away from the ripe stench of overheated London gutters.

  Lady Lucille Winstanley, dressed in travelling garments, received Damon in the morning room, looking somewhat flustered and impatient. He knew she would not have agreed to see him at all, if it were not for the fact that he'd helped her once dispatch a blackmailing lover, and a shop-lifting charge involving a card of lace that she claimed to have taken outside merely to see in the light. Both issues Damon had managed without bringing either to her husband's knowledge and keeping them out of the newspapers.

  She could not, therefore, turn him away from her door. But it did not mean that she need be civil. He was still a Deverel
l, a bastard's bastard— as the lady had once referred to him when she didn't know she was overheard— and a lowly solicitor.

  "What can have brought you here today, young man," she exclaimed, standing by the sunlit window, one eye on the list in her hand and the other supervising the loading of trunks onto the carriage in the street. "As you see, I am busy." She opened the window to shout terse instructions to the coachman and two footmen who sweated in the sun and, of course, couldn't be permitted to remove their liveried coats. "There are two more larger ones in the hall. Make haste and stop dragging your feet. You cannot stack them that way or they will be unsafe. Don't toss his lordship's new gun box about like that! Where is his valet? Paul! Take the gun box and you load it. No! Let him...you, yes you do it. Oh, for heaven's sake!"

  "I am also constrained for time, your ladyship. I won't keep you long, but there is a matter of some urgency that I must clarify with you."

  "Go on then," she snapped, still preoccupied with the chaotic scene through her window.

  "It was brought to my attention that someone in your household has been — how can I put it— spreading the muck—"

  That got her attention. Her head snapped around, and she fixed him in a startled gaze.

  Damon hid his smirk, carefully looking down. How he loved using deliberately earthy terms when dealing with these high and mighty characters.

  "— spreading the muck about those young American ladies staying with Mrs. Du Bois."

  She folded the list in her hand. "I cannot think why this would be brought to me. Servants will talk and there is—"

  "Servants aren't the only ones who talk. Friends talk too. And you are very good friends with Mrs. Du Bois, so she has been led to believe. It would be most unfortunate if the lady should learn where those rumors found a footing in London, would it not? She strikes me as a lady who stands for no nonsense, and she is very protective of her nieces."

  "What are you trying to accuse me of, young man?" Head up, eyes flaring, she put up her best shield.

  "You, your ladyship? I would not dream of accusing you. Surely you are above reproach. I merely wanted to apprise you of the fact that somebody in your household is responsible for causing a certain young lady and her family a great deal of embarrassment." Damon strode up to her, hands behind his back. "I believe the worst of it is over now, but it was still an unfortunate business. A great shame that somebody should have been so spiteful toward a young lady who did them no harm."