A Season of Ruin

by Anna Bradley

  “For the gentlemen, yes. For married ladies. For young unmarried girls, it’s just as restrictive as Surrey. More so, even, for the ton is addicted to gossip, and while they care little about what happens behind closed doors, they are particular indeed about appearances.”

  For goodness’ sake. Lily cared about appearances, too, but it didn’t do for one to become so preoccupied with her gown, she forgot to put on her drawers. Surely what was underneath counted, as well?

  Delia crushed the paper as if she had Mrs. Tittleton’s neck between her hands. “Whatever will we do?”

  She looked so agitated, Lily grew alarmed. “Ellie had an idea.” Honesty compelled her to add, “But I’m not sure it will work.”

  Delia patted a space on the bed. Lily settled down next to her and explained Ellie’s plan to have Robyn act as her escort until the scandal blew over.

  Before she’d even finished, Delia was nodding her approval. “Ellie is wonderfully clever, is she not? Her plan is just the thing. The ton can’t focus on one scandal for long, and something new is sure to come along. I don’t think I even need mention this to Alec at all.”

  “Won’t he hear of it on his own?” Lily asked.

  “I doubt it. He never reads the scandal sheets. I suppose one of his acquaintances might hear of it, but none of them will like to call Alec’s attention to it, for it might make him furious enough to throttle the messenger.”

  Lily bit her lip. “Hadn’t you better tell him? He won’t throttle you.”

  Delia stared at her. “Me? Certainly not. I’d much rather he never find out at all. He’s worn out with worry as it is.”

  “But if Alec doesn’t know, who will see to it Robyn fulfills his obligation in this?”

  Delia raised her eyebrows. “Robyn, of course.”

  Lily fiddled with the tassel on one of Delia’s pillows. “Any plan that relies on Robyn is doomed to failure. He’s far more likely to be off rolling dice at the gaming hells or chasing Lady Downes around Lord Barrow’s study than acting the proper escort. Besides, he didn’t precisely agree to Ellie’s plan.”

  “I can’t believe Robyn would leave you to the mercy of the ton. What if we have his promise?”

  “Oh, he’ll promise easily enough, and just as easily break it. He’s forever breaking promises to his sisters.”

  Delia considered Lily for a moment. “Robyn breaks promises because no one expects any better from him. You underestimate him, Lily. Everyone does, even Robyn himself. Give him a chance, won’t you? Doesn’t he deserve at least that much?”

  Lily wound an uneven thread tightly around her finger and yanked it out of the tassel. “I haven’t much choice in the matter, do I? We haven’t any other plan, and Charlotte thinks Lord Atherton will marry this season.”

  Delia frowned. “You’re still set on Lord Atherton, then?”

  “Of course, though Mrs. Tittleton has set me back a good deal. I gather Lord Atherton is rather fussy about decorum. This scandal with Robyn comes at the worst possible time.”

  Delia hesitated. “I don’t know Lord Atherton well, and I don’t think you do, either, Lily.”

  Lily dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “I know everything I need to know about him. He’s the very soul of propriety. Charlotte called him the most dependable gentleman in London. I believe she was poking fun at him, but dependability is no laughing matter to me. He’ll make an ideal husband.”

  “Dependability is all very well, but there are other desirable qualities in a husband, like tenderness, and passion. How do you know he possesses either?”

  Lily began to yank more loose threads out of the tassel, one by one. Passion caused that weak in the knees, butterflies in the belly feeling. She’d felt passion when Robyn kissed her, and now look at what a mess she was in.

  Last night’s passion was today’s unmitigated disaster.

  She didn’t want butterflies, and she didn’t want a man who made her forget herself so entirely, she’d slap his face. “I don’t want passion. It hasn’t any place in a marriage.”

  Delia made an odd choking sound and laid her hand on her belly. “Wherever did you get that idea?”

  “Oh, you know what I mean. It’s a serious business, contracting an advantageous match. Think of the doors that will open for our sisters if I marry as well as you have.”

  Their three younger sisters had come for Delia’s wedding, but had returned to Surrey immediately afterward to close up the cottage and prepare for their permanent move to London. They’d join Delia and Lily here next month. Iris, who was eighteen, would debut at the start of next season, and Violet and Hyacinth would soon follow.

  A brief silence fell, then Delia tugged the tassel out of Lily’s hand. “Dear, I want to speak with you about something, but I don’t want to upset you.”

  Something in Delia’s face made Lily uneasy. She tried to smile. “Upset? Do you think I would shout at my pregnant, ill sister?”

  Delia didn’t smile back. “No. I know you won’t shout. You never do. You rarely raise your voice at all. Don’t you ever want to shout, or fall into a rage, or hurl something across a room?”

  Lily’s heart gave an anxious thump. Even if she had an urge to throw something, she wouldn’t indulge it. Hysterics led to chaos, and she couldn’t bear chaos. She avoided it at all costs.

  Delia put her hand over Lily’s. “Remember those dolls you had when you were a child? You’d play with them for hours, and when you weren’t playing with them, you’d arrange them on your bed, from the smallest to the tallest, sitting straight up against the pillows, their hair smooth and dresses tidily tucked around their legs. I always adored that about you, Lily—you take such wonderful care of the things you love.”

  Lily nodded but didn’t speak. For some reason her throat had gone tight.

  “But ever since Father and Mother died . . .”

  Delia took her sister’s hand and curled Lily’s fingers into her palm, then she covered Lily’s hand with both of hers and squeezed, gently at first, then harder, so Lily’s fingernails began to dig into her skin.

  Delia looked down at Lily’s fist, trapped between her hands. “It may seem safe to live this way, but it’s exhausting, keeping everything in orderly rows. It’s tight, like a fist. Hard. It hurts, and nothing can get in or out.”

  Lily stared down at her fist clenched between her sister’s fingers. Her heart felt as tight as that fist, but she meant to keep it that way; otherwise she’d fall back into the yawning chasm that had opened beneath her after her parents’ carriage accident.

  Delia didn’t understand.

  Lily had never been a daring sort—even as a child she’d been careful. Cautious. But ever since her parents’ sudden deaths, she felt as if she teetered on the head of a pin, and a breath in any direction would tip her over into the dark, bottomless abyss. The only way she could keep her balance was not to breathe too deeply, or move or feel too much. If she could only stay in control and behave as a proper young lady should, nothing awful would happen.

  Proper young ladies didn’t end up in the scandal sheets. They weren’t shunned by the ton or barred from Almack’s. They didn’t wander into dark rooms or slap gentlemen’s faces, and they didn’t let notorious rakes kiss them senseless.

  Delia loosened her hands, uncurled Lily’s fingers, and pressed her sister’s palm against her own. “You can’t arrange your life like you arranged those dolls, Lily. You can’t line people up in neat rows. If you stay closed and tight, it will become harder and harder to open your heart with every day that passes, and after a while you won’t remember how to open it at all. Do you see?”

  Lily nodded, but she didn’t trust herself to speak. She had an overwhelming urge to put her head in Delia’s lap and sob. She might have succumbed to it had Alec not walked into the room at that moment.

  He went straight to Delia. �
��How do you feel, love?” He lay a tender hand against her cheek.

  Delia put her hand over his and turned her head to kiss his palm. She smiled up at him. “I feel so much better. Lily has kept me company.”

  The tension around Alec’s mouth eased a little. “Has she?” He smiled affectionately at Lily, but he dragged a weary hand through his hair, and Lily noticed there were dark circles under his eyes.

  Delia was right. She couldn’t burden Alec with this business between her and Robyn. She’d have to make the best of it without Alec’s help.

  Chapter Six

  If one considered a fist to the face an improvement, Robyn’s day improved once he escaped the family breakfast table, and he made it a point to do nothing of any use to anyone for the remainder of the day.

  He pummeled the daylights out of Pelkey at their usual Thursday afternoon bout at Gentleman Jackson’s. Pelkey was a big, meaty chap, and it was damned good entertainment pummeling him, rather like pounding on a side of beef. Robyn had the advantage, being quick and deadly accurate with his fists. Pelkey rarely landed a punch, but when he did, he sent Robyn sprawling, and this afternoon Robyn had been just distracted enough for Pelkey’s huge fist to connect with his face.

  He flinched as he ran careful fingers over the dark purple bruise that shadowed his left eye. It hurt like the very devil, but he’d gladly take a fist to the other eye rather than sit through another interrogation by his sisters, or endure more of Lily’s reproachful silences.

  After Pelkey had scraped him up off the floor at Jackson’s, they’d dallied at Tattersall’s all afternoon, then gone to White’s for supper. Lord Archibald had met them there and the three of them had wandered off to the theater to see Miss Bannister play Viola in Twelfth Night.

  As soon as they were seated, Pelkey nudged Robyn in the ribs. “Louise Bannister is a saucy little piece, eh?”

  She was. A brunette, too. Robyn had recently decided he preferred brunettes. “Talented, as well.”

  He watched Miss Bannister’s hips sway in her tight costume as she sashayed across the stage. Saucy, indeed, and no doubt easy to please, both in bed and out of it. He needed a good, hard ride. So why not saddle up Louise Bannister?

  Pelkey chortled. “You can be sure her talents aren’t displayed to best advantage on the stage, Sutherland.”

  Her assets were, however, especially in her eunuch’s costume, which clung to those assets like a second skin. Plump, lush assets they were, too. “What say you, Archie?”

  Lord Archibald, whose family seat bordered the Sutherlands’ seat in Kent, was one of Robyn’s oldest and closest friends.

  “I’d say the theater manager has taken some shocking liberties with Shakespeare.”

  Robyn rolled his eyes. “About the lady, I mean.”

  Archie surveyed Miss Bannister, his face a mask of indifference. “She’s all yours. I prefer fair-haired women, with blue eyes.”

  “The insipid blond, white-skinned English rose, eh? That’s not very imaginative of you.”

  Archie turned to him with a smirk. “Really? But I’m sure I just read somewhere you like blondes well enough, Robyn.”

  Robyn stretched his long legs out in front of him and leaned back more comfortably in his chair. “No good ever came of reading, Archie. Best avoid it, especially the scandal sheets.”

  Archie shrugged and turned his attention back to the stage, where Miss Bannister was on her knees, pleading with her Orsino, her breeches pulled tight across her thighs.

  Archie cleared his throat. “On second thought, Sutherland, perhaps Miss Bannister isn’t a bad choice, after all, since you find yourself with an insatiable appetite for brunettes all of a sudden. She looks to be, ah . . . a fit enough specimen.”

  Robyn’s eyes wandered over her arse. She did look fit, for any number of wicked things. So why wasn’t he the least bit interested in fitting her with a saddle and grabbing the nearest riding crop?

  “Come now, gentlemen,” Pelkey said. “Cool blondes, sultry brunettes, red-haired vixens—why limit yourself to just one? Or even to one at a time? Lovely ladies of every color, size, and skill await us at the Slippery Eel. Shall we?”

  Archie offered no objection, and it seemed as good an idea as any to Robyn. Once they arrived at the Eel, however, he found none of the ladies on offer there pleased him any more than Louise Bannister had.

  It was a trifle worrying. His eel was usually so accommodating.

  Pelkey, more eager than he was discriminating, had chosen a somewhat battle-weary brown-haired wench. Archie waved off a petite blonde in favor of a bottle of whiskey and a lonely seat on a settee, and there he sat, swilling his drink and smirking at Robyn. “What’s the matter, Sutherland? Can’t find a brunette to your taste this evening?”

  Pelkey snagged the arm of a slender dark-haired woman as she walked by, and gave her a little push toward Robyn. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  Robyn studied the woman’s face. She was pretty enough, but the area beneath his falls remained stubbornly unresponsive, and not, he was sure, because the woman wouldn’t taste of wild strawberries. He’d never known a whore who did.

  Or any woman who did, for that matter.

  Except one.

  He shook his head. “Not tonight, sweetheart.”

  Archie took a long pull from his bottle, not bothering with a glass. “Don’t tell me you’ve developed more refined tastes, Sutherland. Worst thing that can happen to a man. Innocence has a certain appeal, though, doesn’t it?”

  Pelkey snorted. “Innocence? You’re in the wrong place for that, Sutherland. Better settle for the brunette. She looks as though she could wring some life into you.”

  Robyn ignored this. He watched Archie raise the bottle to his lips again. “What would you know about innocents anyway, Archie?”

  Archie laughed. “Not much, though I do know if you despoil one, someone is damn well going to make sure you do something about it. So what do you plan to do about your most recent mess?”

  Robyn raised an eyebrow. “Do?”

  “What mess?” Pelkey searched the floor at Robyn’s feet, a puzzled expression on his face.

  Archie gave Pelkey a disgusted look. “You can’t just walk away from it this time, Sutherland. She’s not one of your doxies.”

  Pelkey looked from one to the other of them. “Who? The brunette? Certainly she’s a doxy. Not Sutherland’s doxy, though. She never even touched him.”

  No, Lily wasn’t a doxy, and she wasn’t his. He was hers, though, at least according to his sisters. He was trapped right in the palm of her dainty little hand, and if his sisters had their way, there he’d stay for as long as it took to remove the stain on her reputation.

  No matter how hard she squeezed.

  He grabbed one of the empty glasses on the table and thrust it at Archie. “Of course she’s not a doxy, and no one will believe she is, no matter what they read in the scandal sheets. I can’t see what all the fuss is about.”

  Archie poured a hefty measure of whiskey into the glass and handed it back to Robyn. “My, you are naïve, at least when it’s convenient for you to be so. It doesn’t matter one whit if they believe it, just as it doesn’t matter if it’s true. Scandal is scandal, and the ton devours scandal like a jungle full of starving savages.”

  “Savages with short, feeble memories. It will be over before it ever takes hold. You’ll see, Archie.”

  Archie shook his head. “You may not take it seriously, Robyn, but the ton will. It isn’t going to go away, and it will be Lily who suffers for it.”

  What bollocks. But Robyn didn’t want to argue with Archie, and he was wasting his time at the Eel, since he remained uninterested in any slippery frolics with the ladies on offer this evening.

  He finished the rest of his whiskey in one swallow. “I believe I’ve had enough fun for one night, gentlemen. En
joy your evening.”

  “You’re leaving now?” Pelkey began. “But you haven’t even—”

  Robyn let the door slam shut behind him before he could hear the rest of Pelkey’s objection.

  It was early yet. Not even midnight, and he was in no hurry to get home. Perhaps he’d walk to Mayfair. The cool air would clear his head. Or perhaps a footpad would attack him. He’d quite enjoy a brawl with a footpad.

  He began a determined whistling, for that was what a gentlemen did when he’d had a pleasant day. He whistled.

  So he’d faced an inquisition from his sisters and been set to the torture for his sins, the torture in this case a sentence to attend balls at Almack’s. Then Pelkey had thrown him across the room and blacked his eye, and Archie had scolded him as if Robyn were a naughty child.

  Now here he was walking home, unsatisfied and wondering why he hadn’t felt even a twitch of interest in the brunette.

  All very pleasant.

  His hopes for a brawl faded as he neared Mayfair without any sign of a footpad or even an obliging cutthroat. Good God, what had London come to when a single gentleman remained unmolested on the streets at night?

  He’d reached the iron gates surrounding the back garden when he noticed a fine black carriage rolling down the street. It came to a silent halt in front of the Sutherland town house. The footman placed the stairs and a young lady stepped gracefully down onto the pavement.

  Lily. There was no mistaking that lithe figure. He’d know it anywhere. He’d know her anywhere, even without the gleam of the gaslight on her hair.

  Damn it. There was the twitch he’d looked for earlier.

  Shouldn’t Lily be tucked safely into her bed at this hour, dreaming pure white dreams, like all the other respectable virgins in London?

  A gentleman alighted from the carriage after her. A tall, well-formed gentleman who took her arm to escort her to the front door. They passed into the foyer and the door closed behind them.