She had already dared so much. Now she must decide if she could dare much more for the sake of love.
Her aunt sighed so loudly beside her that Fanfan growled softly in sympathy. They were nearly home now. The carriage had just turned the corner into St. James’s Square.
“I intend to say nothing to your grandfather of your encounter with Lord Geoffrey today, Serena,” she said, more gently, “nor will I tell him of your plans to see him again tomorrow in the park. Day by day, my dear, day by day. Perhaps then Lord Geoffrey will be able to succeed where I have failed, and make you see sense. All I ask at present is that you put aside your stubbornness, and listen to the gentleman, not just with your ears, but with your heart. Is that too much to ask?”
Slowly Serena shook her head. Riding in the park with Geoffrey, listening to him say glorious things meant only for her ears, did not mean she was going to marry him. She was only sharing his company for less than an hour, day by day, with her aunt and hundreds of people in the park as her chaperone. Surely, in the grand plan of her life, there could be no lasting harm in that.
Especially not if it was fated to be.
CHAPTER
4
Over the next four days, Geoffrey met Serena in the park, and rode beside her as he’d done the first afternoon. Each time she was followed by Lady Morley’s carriage and the two mounted grooms, making for a small procession of propriety. As much as he wished otherwise, he and Serena never left the sight of the others, nor did they dismount to stroll into any of the more shady and private areas of the park. All they did was ride slowly, side by side, and talk. Their physical contact was limited to the occasional, electrifying brush of his hand against hers or his leg to her skirts with the pretense of accident, and the night he’d held her in his arms at the ball had come to seem a distant dream. He’d never before shown such patience or restraint with a woman, and it was at once both maddening and captivating.
He had no choice, of course, considering her position, but to his surprise he also found the time in her company to be completely fascinating. He never knew what she’d say, for she was as changeable as the weather, one moment being distant and lost in her own thoughts, and the next her gaze fairly smoldering as their eyes met. She called him her champion, at first in teasing flirtation, and then more seriously, and though she didn’t seem to expect him to do anything to earn the title, he still took it seriously because she did.
But the more time he spent in her company, the more muddled his own goals became. When he’d first seen Serena at the ball, he’d intended a full seduction, and perhaps making her his mistress. After he’d learned from Harry that she was much more innocent than she seemed, an unmarried lady who could not be seduced without the gravest consequences, he had reconsidered his intentions and aimed only at a kiss, just enough to prove to his brother that she wasn’t as chilly as she appeared.
Now, however, that didn’t seem sufficient. As a rule, he didn’t generally listen to what ladies said, yet Serena’s talk of champions and kismet and splendor had drawn him in. He was certain she wasn’t intentionally trying to ensnare him, but it was happening just the same.
It was the damnedest thing. Each day she seemed to grow more beautiful and desirable, and he could not believe the speed with which every rendezvous—always the same three turns of the way as proscribed by Lady Morley—would end. When they parted, he could think of nothing and no one else, and no matter how he tried to distract himself with his friends and his usual diversions at the playhouse, clubs, or gaming houses, she remained in the center of his thoughts.
But on the fifth afternoon, the fair spring weather gave way to an equally typical spring downpour. No one would ride in the park today. Geoffrey stood at the window and glumly stared out at the rain that pelted the glass. Weather like this always left him restless, and made his house feel especially empty as well.
He considered summoning his carriage to call upon Serena, and then thought better of it. To appear at her door like that would be answering her aunt’s constant invitation, an invitation that always felt more like a summons. Worse yet, he’d be officially considered A Suitor. He liked being her champion well enough, but a suitor—no. He wasn’t that, and he’d no intention of being so just yet, either, not for any lady.
And so as much as Geoffrey longed to see her, he settled on the safer course. He sent a footman to the flower-seller and had him deliver a bouquet of conservatory roses to Serena. He enclosed his card, and nothing more: no endearments that could be misinterpreted by Lady Morley.
Then, still feeling at loose ends, he left for White’s, and the convivial, if not as alluring, society of cards and wine.
“Non, non, non, Mademoiselle Carew!” exclaimed Monsieur Passard with exasperation, his pale blue satin coat the only bright spot in the music room on this dreary afternoon. “Heed me, if you please, and mind the time of the tune.”
Hands at her waist, Serena sighed with dismay and glanced out at the rain pelting against the glass. With the weather making a ride in the park impossible, Aunt Morley had asked the dancing-master to remain for an extra lesson today. It was, thought Serena, hardly a fair trade.
The lesson was not going well. Usually Serena earned Monsieur’s approval, but today her thoughts were filled not with dancing, but with Geoffrey. She had tried to tell herself that a day apart would mean nothing, that what they’d been sharing while they rode together was only the kind of polite conversation that engaged any lady and gentleman. That was all it should be between them; no, that was all it must be, the mildest of flirtation that would lead to nothing more.
But as hard as she tried to be coolly objective, she wasn’t. Her disappointment at the rain had been so sharp that she’d shocked herself, and no amount of reasoning in her head had helped.
Now she kept glancing at the window in the empty hope that the weather would improve, and imagining how Geoffrey himself was passing the afternoon. She was too distracted to pay close attention to the complicated steps Monsieur demanded, and over and over she began a beat too late to match the cue of the fiddler sitting patiently in one corner. It was just as well Aunt Morley had been called away by a question in the servants’ hall, and wasn’t there to see her blunders.
“Non, non, non, Mademoiselle Carew,” Monsieur said again, his exasperation now bordering on despair. “First you forget the steps and the figures, and now your posture. Without proper deportment everything is clumsy and meaningless. I beg you not to wilt, mademoiselle, yet still you forget!”
Serena nodded and again drew her shoulders back, striving to make her shoulder blades touch the way every lady desired. For the past three years, poor Monsieur had labored to correct her posture, imploring her to keep her upper body straight and unyielding so as to better display the curving arc of her arms. This, he argued, was the posture of a genteel lady, and he was particularly vigilant against se déhancher, which her embarrassed aunt had defined as wiggling. Aunt Morley blamed this on the fact that she’d begun proper dancing lessons so late in her life, but Serena knew the real reason was exactly the opposite.
She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t danced. Dancing was something that every Indian woman did, for holidays and celebrations and to entertain guests and family, and simply for the joy of it. She had learned from the older women, and had been praised for her grace and fluidity and the emotion she brought to her movements. Father had loved to watch her dance, and had wept openly because she’d so much resembled her mother.
In Serena’s opinion, London dancing was hardly dancing at all, but a stiff, joyless exercise that reduced ladies to awkward cranes, their bodies so encased in stays and hoops that all their grace was snuffed away. She had tried her best to learn what Monsieur taught, wanting desperately to appear English and not give herself away, but she still felt so self-conscious that she rarely danced at balls and routs and assemblies, no matter how many times she was asked.
Yet she had danced with Geoffrey. She’d da
nced the steps exactly as Monsieur had taught her and had held her back straight, the same as every other English lady in the room. She knew she’d succeeded, because she’d seen the admiration and pleasure in Geoffrey’s eyes as he’d watched her, which in turn had given her pleasure, too. If she’d been able to do it then, she could do it now, and she faced Monsieur with fresh resolution.
“Répetér, mademoiselle,” Monsieur said, briskly clapping his hands twice. “We shall begin again. Une, deux, trois, et quatre, and step.”
As the fiddler began again, she could hear raised voices in the distance, most likely in the front hall. She tried to ignore them and concentrate on the music, but one voice was growing louder, coming closer through the house, and because it belonged to her grandfather, it was impossible to ignore.
“Serena!” he roared. “Where in blazes are you, girl?”
“Here, Grandpapa,” she called, nodding to Monsieur in apology for the interrupted lesson. “I’m in the music room.”
The footman barely had time to open the door before her grandfather came charging into the room first. Although the Marquis of Allwyn was nearly seventy, there was nothing frail about him, and when he was as angry as he was now, he was a formidable figure indeed: his broad chest puffed with outrage, his face ruddy, and his old-fashioned, full-bottomed wig flying around his shoulders and scattering hair powder like snow over the front of his dark green coat.
“What is it, Grandpapa?” Serena asked, clasping her hands together at her waist. When she’d first come to London, she’d been terrified of him, but since then she’d learned two things: that he loved her deeply because of her father, and that the best way to deflate his blustery rages was with reasoned calm. “What has upset you so?”
“This has upset me,” he said, thrusting a sizable bouquet of white roses into her face. “Do you know anything of this?”
“No, Grandpapa, not at all.” He was brandishing the bouquet like a beribboned weapon, shaking it so fiercely that white petals and green leaves were beginning to fall to the carpet. It was a shame to see such a pretty thing destroyed; even in its battered state, the bouquet was lovely, and the out-of-season roses must have been quite costly. “How did you come by it?”
“It didn’t come by me at all,” he fumed. “It was brought to my door, and carried into my house by my own servants like the false horse that destroyed Troy!”
“It will take far more than a nosegay to destroy this house, Grandpapa,” she said, wondering why the flowers hadn’t first gone to Aunt Morley, as such deliveries usually did. “Surely there must have been a card from whomever sent them.”
“Oh, there was a card,” he said, “just as there was a rascally jackanapes of a footman delivering it. He tried to skulk away back to his rogue of a master, but I spied him just the same. A good thing I was passing through the hall when he came. I’d recognize that livery anywhere.”
He pulled the card from his cuff, holding it at arm’s length to read.
“ ‘Lord Geoffrey Fitzroy,’ ” he read. “Lord Impudent Scoundrel is more the truth. How dare he address you, Serena? How dare he send his wicked offerings to an innocent lady like you?”
She gasped and felt her cheeks grow hot, unable to help herself. She couldn’t believe that Geoffrey had sent flowers to her, here, and that somehow her grandfather had intercepted them.
It wasn’t just that this was the first time a bouquet of flowers had arrived for her from a gentleman. What mattered most was that the gentleman was Geoffrey. She’d told him enough about how protective her grandfather was of her that he should have known better than to make so blatant a romantic gesture, but still, in a way, she was overjoyed that he had. A bouquet of white roses was exactly what a champion should send. What more proof did she need that he, too, regretted today’s rain?
Wistfully she looked at Geoffrey’s flowers, wishing she could rescue them. Misinterpreting her reaction, her grandfather’s eyes gleamed with fresh indignation.
“Don’t distress yourself, Serena,” he said gruffly. “My poor gentle girl! I see how it grieves you to be insulted by that rogue’s attentions.”
“Grandpapa, please,” she began, striving to calm him. Clearly Aunt Morley had kept her word and said nothing to Grandpapa. Serena was grateful for that, but her secrecy had created other problems, and she wished now that her aunt were here, too, to help soothe her grandfather. “I’m not distressed. Truly, it’s of no consequence.”
But he wasn’t yet ready to be appeased.
“No, no, I’ll be failing in my duty to you if I didn’t end this now, Serena,” he said. “I’ll make sure Fitzroy doesn’t trouble you again. I won’t have him sniffing about you. My God! A Fitzroy!”
The name alone seemed to inflame him all over again. Shaking his head, he hurled the bouquet contemptuously to the floor.
“No!” wailed Serena, and without thinking she dropped to her knees to retrieve Geoffrey’s roses, gathering the now-broken stems into her arms.
“Enough of that, Serena,” Grandpapa said crossly. “You needn’t be gathering up the rubbish. Leave it for the servants.”
“Whatever is happening here?” Aunt Morley stood in the doorway, looking from Grandpapa to Serena and back again. “Serena, what are you doing on the floor with those flowers?”
Grandpapa glared at his sister, aware of the disapproval that she wasn’t trying to contain. “It’s perfectly obvious what she’s doing, Deborah,” he said. “She’s picking up the damned flowers that I threw there. If that infernal rascal Fitzroy hadn’t presumed to send them to this house and to her, then I wouldn’t have been provoked to throw them.”
“Lord Geoffrey sent you flowers, Serena?” Aunt Morley asked, her humor instantly improving. “How generous of him.”
The marquis swung around to face her. “Do you know of this, Deborah? You are supposed to be watching over the girl. How in blazes did Fitzroy get to her?”
“In the most proper way possible, Allwyn,” Aunt Morley said. “They danced together at the ball last week, and they have addressed each other whilst riding in the park.”
“There’s not one thing that’s proper about Fitzroy,” Grandpapa snapped, “and I won’t have him intriguing with Serena. He must keep from her, or answer to me, and the sooner he knows my feelings, the better, too.”
He reached down and snatched the battered flowers from Serena’s lap, and stalked from the room.
“We must stop him, Aunt,” Serena said urgently, scrambling to her feet. “He can’t call on Lord Geoffrey.”
“If he does, he will only say things we shall all regret,” Aunt Morley said grimly, and the two of them hurried down the passage after the marquis.
He was standing by the front door, thrusting his fists into the sleeves of the greatcoat that his manservant was holding for him. Another footman held the offending flowers, gingerly. Her grandfather’s hat was already on his head and the carriage was waiting at the bottom of the steps, but what terrified Serena was the sight of his sword buckled around his waist. She knew that Grandpapa was of the school of older gentlemen who did not feel entirely dressed without his sword slapping at his thigh, and that it was a formality as much as anything. Yet still she feared for the combination of Grandpapa’s bellicose temper with Grandpapa’s sword, and what he might rashly do if he confronted Geoffrey.
“Don’t make a fool of yourself over nothing, Allwyn,” Aunt Morley said tartly. “You are far too old to go traipsing about all over town in the rain after a young lord who dared smile at your granddaughter.”
“Don’t you scold me, Deborah,” he said, glowering. “It wouldn’t be necessary if you’d heeded your own responsibilities toward the girl.”
“My duty is to see that Serena is happily wed to a suitable gentleman,” Aunt Morley said. “How that is to be accomplished without her being permitted to converse with young men is an utter mystery to me.”
“It’s not the conversation, Deborah, it’s the suitability,” her grandfa
ther said. “The Fitzroys are the spawn of a wastrel king and a French whore. None of them are fit company for Serena, nor would I ever wish such filth to be introduced into our family lines.”
“Please, Grandpapa, there’s no need for any of this,” Serena pleaded. “Lord Geoffrey has made no designs upon me, none at all.”
Grandfather shook his head, his expression stern.
“Say what you wish, Serena,” he said, “but I saw your face when you learned who sent those flowers, and I saw the truth in it, too. Fitzroy has beguiled your affections. No, don’t deny it. He is not worthy of a lady from this family, and he must be made to understand that.”
She already understood that she’d never be permitted to see Geoffrey again. Yet as much as that grieved her, she still feared for him, too.
“Don’t hurt him, Grandpapa,” she pleaded. “For my sake, I beg you.”
Her grandfather’s mouth only tightened with fresh determination. “It’s a matter of honor, Serena. I’ll serve the rogue as he deserves.”
“Honor!” she cried with dismay. It was one thing to make jests with Geoffrey about being her champion, but she’d no desire to have the two men she cared for most slashing away at each other because of her. As a girl, she’d witnessed the grievous wounds caused by swords and male tempers, and there was nothing romantic about it. “You do not mean to challenge him to a duel, do you? Not over me?”
“A duel? With a Fitzroy?” He grimaced. “Show some sense. A rascal like him merits a thrashing, not a duel.”
Then he seized the bedraggled flowers from the footman and plunged out into the rain to the waiting carriage.
“Oh, Serena, I am sorry,” Aunt Morley said, coming to stand behind her. “We must hope he will not say too many things that cannot be undone.”
But Serena knew it was already too late for that.
She’d told herself that Geoffrey was only a passing diversion, with no lasting consequence in her life, and that it was better that way. There could be no shared future between them, and she’d tried to pretend that she could be like other London ladies with their careless flirtations. She’d tried, and she’d failed, and now it was done.
A Sinful Deception Page 6
