“My sister and I founded a school for girls a few years ago. The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds.”
“A mouthful.”
“Yes, well, our headmistress, Mrs. Bloomquist, was adamant that the school’s mission be evident in its name.”
“So you aren’t involved in the daily running of the school?”
“No, but I am on the board of directors.”
“Ah, that makes more sense.”
“And what is that?” Olivia asked in her best imitation of Mrs. Bloomquist. Something in his tone told her she wasn’t going to appreciate the direction of this conversation.
“You don’t exactly strike me as the schoolmarm sort.”
“And why is that?” she shot back.
Slowly, with the heat of a thousand suns, his gaze raked over the curved length of her arm, across her clavicle, down toward the gently rounded mounds of her décolletage. A blush spread across her skin like wildfire. She tried to tell herself that it burned so hot due to justifiable outrage, but she suspected a different cause at its root, one it would do no good to dig up and examine.
From the last stronghold of her composure, she summoned a limp measure of righteous indignation. “And here I thought,” she croaked. She cleared her throat and began again. “I thought you were less of a nitwit than the others occupying this room. Appearances can, indeed, be deceiving.”
He pulled her close, and his lips feathered against her ear. “My apologies, if I implied your physical beauty and mental acumen are mutually exclusive entities. You might be the rare lady who possesses both.”
Her breath suspended in her chest. She might never breathe again.
She pulled back from him, hoping to encourage a measure of cool reason. But it was no use. Her focus was entirely concentrated on the points of contact between his hands and her body.
At last, a sliver of good sense came to her rescue, and she was able to say, “Let us finish this waltz and go our separate ways.”
He gave a curt nod of assent, and the arctic chill returned to his eyes. A sigh might have escaped him, even as they waltzed on, narrowly avoiding another couple.
What was happening to her? Not an hour ago, she’d been an ice queen, untouchable. Now rational thought was abandoning her, and all she could do was feel . . . The pressure of his fingers against her flesh, even through several layers of cloth . . . the rumble of his words from deep within his chest, even as his soft Dutch accent lent them a clipped quality . . . and, oh, the content of those words . . .
This wouldn’t do. She knew next to nothing about this man. Which didn’t matter, not in the least. She knew herself. She didn’t need, or desire, an entanglement with a man, particularly not with a man she met on a ballroom floor. She’d done that once, and it hadn’t ended well.
She hadn’t divorced one husband only to find another.
Her eyebrows crinkled together. Why had that conclusion come to her? She’d barely had ten minutes of conversation with this man.
But she knew why. The Right Honourable Jakob Radclyffe, Fifth Viscount St. Alban, was the sort of man a woman could marry.
But she wasn’t the sort of woman a gentleman married, not anymore. Not that she would; it was simple fact. Besides, she would never be wife to any man again. The bloom was off that particular rose.
With a sudden contraction of hardened muscle, he pulled her body into him to avoid yet another couple. The touch of his breath along the exposed line of her clavicle sent tiny bolts of lightning through her. Her gaze flew up to meet his, to see if he felt them, too. But his countenance remained aloof and stoic, giving nothing away.
Lord St. Alban aroused in her a reaction unlike any she’d ever experienced, not even with Percy. This feeling was dark and complex and mysterious like an underground cavern that wound round and round far below the surface. It insisted that he alone could illuminate its dark depths and satisfy this nascent ache . . .
She planted her feet, halting their swirling momentum and eliciting a few murmurs of displeasure from the couples who had to swerve to avoid them. Scandal be damned, she needed to leave this room. “My day begins quite early, my lord,” she said, her eyes refusing to meet his.
His hands dropped from her body as if singed, yet he made no other movement. No move to hold her in place or insist that she finish this waltz with him.
She inhaled the sigh of disappointment that wanted release and whirled around. Her feet kept pace with the rapid tattoo of her heart, leading her away from him . . . away from this room . . . away from this night. Lately, it felt as if she was ever fleeing one thing or another.
Well, in this case, there was no help for it. It was an absolute imperative that she flee Lord St. Alban. The man made her feel . . .
Well, he made her feel. And she had no use for feelings elicited by any man.
Determination steeled her as a pair of words swirled through her head: freedom, independence. No man would ever make her forget them again.
She must find a Mayfair townhouse posthaste. She couldn’t abide the possibility of Lord St. Alban arriving at the Duke’s manse for his viscount lessons. It was all too much, too fast.
Her footsteps trilled down the Dowager’s front door stoop and crisp night air hit her lungs. She snugged her shawl secure about her shoulders and allowed a footman to hand her up into her waiting carriage.
Tonight, she would lay her head on her pillow and dream this night away.
Tomorrow, she would awake clear-headed and her real life would proceed. That marriageable man and the unsettling confusions of emotion he provoked would be part of a future left behind and better unbegun.
Chapter 4
Next day
Some days were born perfect.
On the bridge of an East Indiaman, with the open sea beneath his feet, the clear sky above his head, and a crew to command, the outside world didn’t stand a chance of touching Jake.
His head snapped around and another command issued forth. “You there, haul that crate to the foc’sle.” A cooling breeze lifted off the water and caressed the back of his neck. “And you, see to it the mainsail is trimmed and secured.”
On a trading vessel as well-run as the Fortuyn, every man understood his task and set about it with utmost efficiency. There were times when the deck of a ship resembled nothing so much as a hive of bees in springtime. It was a joy to behold.
Deep within him settled a feeling of peace. This was where he belonged. This was home.
A pair of watchful eyes drew his attention. In them, he saw the truth of the current situation reflected back at him. They reminded him that today wasn’t a perfect day.
The open sea didn’t roil beneath his feet, only a thin layer of muddy Thames kept the moored ship afloat.
The sky above wasn’t clear. In fact, above his head hung a sky oppressive with London fog.
And this wasn’t his crew to command. Not anymore.
Nylander, the man observing him and his closest childhood mate, was now captain of the Fortuyn. This was his crew to command.
Jake stood on the verge of crossing a line, if he hadn’t already. His function today was purely administrative on behalf of his family’s shipping interests. “Are you on schedule to unload her at the Pool before nightfall?” The Pool of London was a bureaucratic mess, but a necessary destination for all trade vessels making their way up the Thames.
Nylander nodded sharply before replying, “The men are anxious for home.”
Although the ship sailed under the protection of England’s colors thanks to Jake’s patrilineal line, home for many of the crew was the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It was obvious in the efficiency of their movements that both captain and crew were anxious to be on their way. They would have been separated from their familie
s for more than a year.
Disappointment shot through Jake. “Ah, well, next trip I’ll buy you a pint, and you can regale me with a seaworthy tale or two.”
“Next trip.” Nylander paused, avoiding Jake’s gaze, before adding, “my lord.” The Dutch weren’t known for mincing words.
Jake’s past life had slipped through his fingers. No longer a sailor. No longer one of them, Nylander’s tactfully averted eyes told him. A viscount didn’t risk his precious, noble hide to captain ships or partake of any occupation that hinted at trade. He dutifully split his time between London and his country estates.
The bitterness of it clogged his throat. Christ, how he missed the open sea. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to be done with this meeting and off this ship. “All looks in order.” He passed the paperwork to his steward, Payne. “Captain, Godspeed.”
He held out his hand to shake Nylander’s. Rough callouses lined the captain’s palm, and Jake realized with a start that his own were fading. Soft hands, one of the many privileges of the soft life of a gentleman. He’d spent too much time in a seated position, attempting to balance a dead man’s books that refused to balance. A cord of wood must need chopping somewhere in Belgravia.
Another curt nod and Nylander’s sun-bleached head whipped around as he issued commands to the active crew, his attention concentrated on the monumental task of accounting for cargo accumulated over several months from myriad ports lining the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Jake stepped off the gangway and onto dry land, Payne, mosquito-like, racing to catch him. Payne had also been the previous viscount’s steward. “Shall I summon your coach, my lord?” The tip of the servant’s thin, needle-like nose moved in unison with each word he spoke. A nose, Jake couldn’t help reflecting, which was a perfect counterpoint to the rest of the man’s rotund, yet compact, body.
“That won’t be necessary.” Jake quickened his step. “You take the carriage, and I shall walk.”
“Walk, my lord?” Payne called out, winded trying to keep up.
Jake came to a sudden stop and pointed his face toward a gray sky that precisely mirrored his mood. “I shall place one foot in front of the other until I’ve reached my destination.”
“Through Limehouse?” Payne struggled to keep up. “And the East End, my lord?”
“We shall review the ship’s accounting in the hour before tea,” Jake called over his shoulder, each step separating him from Payne, propelling him toward freedom as he set out onto damp, narrow streets.
“My Lord St. Alban,” Payne acceded, defeat evident in his fading voice.
St. Alban.
The Dowager had been right: he was St. Alban. It was time to get on with it.
However, she’d been wrong in one regard. He wouldn’t play protégé to the Duke of Arundel. He didn’t trust the advice of any man from a social class whose sole purpose was to lead as unproductive lives as possible. He couldn’t understand a man who didn’t want to dirty his hands from time to time or enjoy a frothy pint at the end of an honest day’s work.
To be fair, the Duke did appear to have a shrewd brain in his head. But Jake was determined to stay away from the man for an additional and entirely different reason: Lady Olivia.
He wasn’t sure what had been in the air last night, but in the light of day, he saw matters more clearly. And the fact of the matter was this: Lady Olivia may be connected to every lord and lady in London, but the woman was a walking scandal.
He would stop thinking about her and focus on any number of the ladies the Dowager had introduced to him last night after Lady Olivia left. Like Miss Fox, the only daughter of a baron and an ideal match, according to the Dowager. The lady had a spotless reputation with not a hint of scandal hanging about her. And if she was a little plain, well, he couldn’t hold that against her. Every woman was a little plain compared to . . .
Lady Olivia. There she was again, popping into his head. The woman intrigued him too much by half. Perhaps that was why he’d relentlessly provoked her.
It was possible he owed her an apology, except he didn’t feel apologetic. Not when she held her tongue in such controlled reserve, yet her eyes flashed hot and pretty blushes crept up from the creamy depths of her décolletage.
He would be willing to wager that he hadn’t been the only one interested, engaged, and enlivened by their banter.
No matter. He must banish her from his mind. She wasn’t right for him. More importantly, she wasn’t right for Mina. Mina needed a guide through Society who was wholesome and unblemished, who never spoke a wrong word and never took a wrong step. And Lady Olivia, well, she exemplified none of those qualities.
“Sir! Sir!” he heard behind him. A quick backward glance revealed a street urchin on his tail, a plaintive cry on his lips. “Milord! Milord! A penny, sir? A farthing, milord?”
Jake stopped and pulled a crown from his vest pocket. He watched the boy’s eyes go canny and wide as the coin glinted silver in a fleeting ray of sunlight. Before he could reconsider his offer, the urchin snatched it from his outstretched fingers and ran down a rancid alley as fast as his scrawny legs could carry him.
The fact that he carried coin had probably shocked the boy speechless. English gentlemen were above matters as trivial as money, pockets righteously empty of filthy lucre. And judging by his cousin’s papers, so, too, were their bank accounts. A thorough gentleman to the end, the late Fourth Viscount St. Alban.
Jake glanced about his surroundings before resuming his westward trek. He hadn’t the faintest clue as to his whereabouts, except that he should keep heading toward St. Paul’s Cathedral. He was definitely still in the East End, judging by the putrid smells pouring in from every direction: over from the filthy river, up from the filthy sidewalk, down from filthy chamber pots. Filth was the common thread that linked one slum to every other slum around the world.
He breathed it in, let it coat his nostrils. The air smelled real and like home. He’d never lived in a slum, but it wasn’t a stretch to say close quarters on a ship at full capacity often resembled one.
Here in the East End, surrounded by cutthroats, thieves, venders, beggars, and whores, he was able to experience that wildness of life missing from the tame drawing rooms of Mayfair and St. James. He was a duck out of water in those rooms.
And Mina?
His body tensed, ready for battle, as the buzz of the ton’s scrutiny, their speculation, their unkind titters returned to him. In her fourteen years on this earth, what a large amount of tumult Mina had endured. From the very beginning . . .
A face appeared in Jake’s mind’s eye: a clammy, labor exhausted face, the light fading fast from it, content in death at the promise she’d exacted from him. “Protect her, Jakob . . . she’ll have only you . . .”—Her weak grip on his arm had taken on an unexpected tenacity—“only you can do it . . . for Minako, my little Mina.”
Familiar pain spiked through him, and Jake banished the anguished face to the past where it belonged. His focus sharpened on the present.
The narrow London view was still gray, still filthy, and ever crowded as the morning progressed. He glanced at his pocket watch and picked up the clip of his stride. He didn’t want to be late for his appointment with yet another girls’ school.
He’d already interviewed three candidates with no luck. Mina needed more than piano lessons, drawing lessons, French lessons, and tea pouring lessons. Her brain tended toward natural philosophy and mathematics. The writings of Sir Isaac Newton excited her in a way that the newest dance step might for other girls.
The problem was that he had yet to find a school willing to teach to Mina’s intellect, and he resisted the idea of private instructors. She must form relationships with her peers if she was to have a chance of entering Society with a measure of success.
What was the name of the sc
hool Lady Olivia was connected to? The Progressive School for Young Ladies and something or another?
It mattered not, for he wouldn’t be pursuing that particular school. He needed to stay as far away as possible from the scandal-prone and, therefore, unmarriageable Lady Olivia Montfort.
Marriage. That was another way he would ensure Mina’s success. A stepmother of impeccable reputation and lineage would provide invaluable connections and assistance in the endeavor. He needed a partner in a wife. Whether or not she made him feel interested, engaged, and alive was of little consequence.
He shook his head, as if he could as easily shake Lady Olivia loose, and made to cross a street when a carriage whizzed past, splashing water fetid with street grime onto his boots. He snapped to. He would be run over and killed, if he wasn’t careful. A quick left-to-right glance confirmed the intersection was clear, and he jogged across uneven cobblestones until his feet hit sidewalk once again.
A voice called out, “Hey, guv, ye ain’t passin’ by without tastin’ one ‘a tha misses’ buns, are ye?”
Jake half-turned to find a rotund man coated in a fine dusting of flour belligerently eyeing him up and down. The man was a caricature of a baker come to life. “What have you there?” he asked, approaching the open window with the man’s substantial belly hanging out of it.
“We got yer stickies,” the baker said in a sheepish tone, clearly not anticipating Jake’s interest in his wares. He craned his head back and shouted, “Fanny! You got yer hot crosses out?”
“Out in two if a minute,” came Fanny’s shouted reply.
“Oh, come on, woman. Got a real gent’ulman customer ‘ere.” The baker pulled a beleaguered face as if to say, Ain’t it like a woman.
“A what?” The woman rounded the corner from the back of the shop and stopped dead in her tracks, straightening her apron as she puffed out her low-slung chest. “Oh, a real gent’ulman is right, I say.” She smiled what Jake would have called a toothy grin, if she hadn’t been missing her two front teeth. “Ne’er seen tha likes o’ ye ‘round here. New to tha area?”
Tempted by the Viscount Page 4
