The Lady Most Willing

by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James

  “I doubt that,” Oakley said, recalling her attention. “Allow me to see you back to a warmer part of the castle.”

  His attitude was impatient, and clearly, his thoughts were on other matters.

  “Thank you,” she said, turning in the direction he indicated.

  Though she’d never met Oakley in London, she knew his reputation as a stickler of the highest order. She had seen him several times in the company of Lord Burbett, her most solemn suitor, but had never asked for an introduction. He seemed the sort of man who would always find fault with a person, and she never purposely courted self-doubt.

  Now Oakley was scowling deeply, his hands behind his back as he walked alongside her. “I am sorry about all this,” he finally said. “Burbett will have my head when he hears about it.”

  She frowned. Apparently, Oakley thought Burbett entertained a position of greater importance in her life than he did. She could hardly inform Oakley that she had turned down his friend’s offer. It was Burbett’s place to reveal that information in whatever light he chose.

  Taking her ensuing silence for a rebuke against overfamiliarity, Oakley flushed. “And now I must apologize again.”

  “Good heavens, m’lord,” she said, “this is the eighth or ninth time you’ve apologized for something or other. You can’t possibly blame yourself for everything. I assure you, I do not.”

  “As no one else in my family seems to comprehend the gravity of the situation or claim culpability in bringing it about, if only for pride’s sake, I must.”

  “You do not consider your uncle or . . .” She hesitated. “ . . . your cousin to be properly conscience-stricken?”

  “Uncle Taran has no conscience,” Oakley muttered.

  “And your cousin?” she prodded.

  For a moment she thought he might rebuff this overture but then the stiffness that seemed an essential part of his demeanor dissolved. He smiled rather ruefully.

  “I suppose in all fairness if you are going to acquit me of blame, you must do the same for Robin,” he said. “Though it is nigh well impossible to tell from outward appearances, I suspect he is as shocked as I am by Taran’s fool antics.”

  “Is he?” Now here was a topic far more interesting than Burbett.

  Again that unexpected—and unexpectedly charming—smile. “One can but hope.”

  The opportunity to learn more about Robin was irresistible. “For a gentleman noted for his, ah, appreciation of young ladies, the comte certainly makes himself absent a great deal of the time.” It was an appallingly bold thing to say and she could scarce believe she’d uttered it.

  Oakley glanced at her in some surprise, but answered nonetheless, “My cousin prefers to give his appreciation only to ladies who are no longer young misses.”

  Ha! Cecily thought grimly, not if Marilla Chisholm had her way.

  “Well, it isn’t very polite,” she said.

  “You mustn’t take it personally,” Oakley said. The earl must be distracted by something—or someone—indeed, to forget his legendary reserve. “I suspect that Robin is trying to ensure that no one’s reputation suffers through association with him.”

  “Or he is simply bound and determined not to fall in with your uncle’s matrimonial plans for him?” she suggested.

  “It is, of course, possible, but I doubt it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I don’t think Robin believes any reputable young lady would consider him a viable matrimonial candidate. No, something else is making him act strangely, and his concern for your reputations is the best reason I can deduce.”

  “You sound vexed,” she said lightly.

  “That’s because Robin is vexing. And aggravating. And wholly a dunderhead.”

  “By all appearances, he is quite your opposite, m’lord,” she retorted icily, unable to refrain from coming to Robin’s defense. “One could see how so congenial a gentleman might try the patience of someone who appears so sober.”

  His lips tightened. “Who a person appears to be to the world and who that person knows himself to be are not always the same thing.”

  She understood better than most. She knew society considered her insipid, but as long as her family and intimate friends knew better, she didn’t care. But looking at Oakley, a thought occurred to her. “Of whom are you speaking?” she asked. “Yourself or the comte?”

  “Perhaps both of us. Even you, Lady Cecily. Burbett proclaimed you to be the most circumspect young lady of his acquaintance and yet here you are interrogating me about my cousin.”

  Heat flooded up her neck and into her cheeks.

  “But then, what do I know of ladies?” he continued on a note of savagery that surprised her. “Nothing. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to chastise you. Fool that I am, I insist on seeing things through society’s eye and not my own.” His jaw tensed. “As it were, I was speaking of Robin’s insouciance. It’s a pose he’s adopted.”

  She waited, hoping he would elaborate, and after a moment, her silence was rewarded.

  “Robin’s willingness—or one ought to say willfulness—to undervalue himself invites others to do the same. He inherited a vineyard from his father and through sheer determination he’s wrested it back from the brink of ruination. Within a decade or so it will be producing some of the finest Bordeaux in the world.

  “The gossips”—he spat the word—“and tattle tellers and daily rags never mention that, however. The fools only speak of his expertise in other areas. And he encourages it.” He ground out this last bit. “He readily admits not only to those things he has done, but to crimes he has not even committed. Can you think why anyone would do such a thing?”

  Good heavens, whatever had become of the ironclad reserve of London’s most famous stone face? She had the odd feeling he was no longer speaking of Robin but something, or someone, else entirely.

  She answered, nonetheless. “Perhaps he hopes to preempt the gossips by getting there first, and in doing so at least have the satisfaction of stealing their thunder and, perhaps, avoiding the sting unfounded accusations can bring.”

  He regarded her sharply. “You may be right,” he murmured. “Robin is in many ways as fine a man as I would hope to know. But I would be a poor host indeed were I to allow my guests to unintentionally expose themselves to gossip.

  “Be careful, Lady Cecily,” he added roughly, but not unkindly. “We have a mutual friend who would never allow his name to be associated, even tangentially, with anything remotely inappropriate. ”

  He was talking about Burbett again, warning her that if she dallied with Robin, Burbett would break off his courtship. “You needn’t concern yourself, Lord Oakley. I have no intention of entering into a flirtation with your cousin.”

  No. She had other ideas altogether.

  “I would never presume such a thing, Lady Cecily,” Oakley said, stiffening once more. “You are obviously not the sort of woman who encourages men to . . .” His lips curled in a snarl that looked more frustrated than enraged. “ . . . to climb the ivy outside their bedchambers.”

  She had no idea what he meant by this last, but clearly, it meant something important. She did not wonder for long, however, being wholly caught up in an idea that had taken root with his words.

  “Ivy,” she muttered, her brow furrowed in concentration. What man could possibly mistake the intentions of a lady driven to such an act? He couldn’t.

  She was thinking metaphorically, of course, but if Robin would not pursue her, then she would simply have to seduce the Prince of Rakes.

  Chapter 20

  Very early the next morning

  The sky was still a deep cobalt paling to orchid on the horizons when Robin began prowling Finovair’s long-abandoned portrait gallery. The storm had passed, and Finovair stood cloaked in heavy white robes, her turrets and tumbled curtain wall shimmering with ice. It was as pretty now as ever it would be or, in all likelihood, ever had been. But Robin barely noted its beauty. His imagination was fixed
on quite a different kind of beauty.

  Who would have guessed that Lady Cecily Tarleton would prove to be the most dangerous woman in Great Britain? Oh, not to the world at large, but to a very small population of one, she most decidedly was that.

  “Were it not so amusing, it would be pathetic,” he murmured, his breath turning to a cloud in the unheated corridor’s frigid air, glad to find his humor restored.

  It had gone mostly missing since he’d first seen her, standing before Bretton’s carriage in a pool of torchlight. Snow caught in her lashes, spangled her rich, dark hair like the diadems in fairy queen’s veil, and melted on her rosy cheeks. Subtle bemusement had flickered over the cameo smoothness of her face, a sense of wonder growing in her amber-colored eyes as she looked around for all the world as if abduction were a regular occurrence, and she needed merely to enjoy the interim between theft and rescue.

  Having been thrown at birth on the mercy of Fate and Fortune—and having discovered therefore that amused acceptance was the best ally against despair—Robin appreciated the same attitude in another. Especially such a lovely “other.”

  When Byron had taken her hand, Robin had realized he had wanted to be the one taking her hand, and since Robin rarely denied himself anything he wanted, especially as he always made certain his wants were well within his means, he had fairly shoved Oakley aside and presented himself. As expected of a rake, he’d made some slightly outré comment and grinned wickedly, anticipating her gasp—de rigueur in such situations—or, possibly, if she was a rompish miss, a snicker.

  She hadn’t done either.

  She’d looked up at him. A strange, heart-stealing expression of recognition had arisen in her honeyed eyes, and her ripe, luscious lips had parted but not a word escaped them, and he had been stunned by the force of a yearning so unexpected it had nearly brought him to his knees. And it was at that precise instance he’d realized how very, very dangerous Lady Cecily was. Because against all reason, when he should have been proof against such nonsense, he had done the unthinkable and fallen in love.

  And love at first sight, at that.

  Robin had never been in love before, which is precisely how he recognized the sensation with such absolute certainty. Shortly thereafter, he had fled—and no, he would not appease his vanity by calling it anything else—from the more habitable portions of Finovair to those parts falling to ruin, which, he thought ruefully, looking around, was most of it. Because while Robin might be in love, he was not insane, and it would be insanity indeed to pursue that which he had no possibility of attaining.

  He had learned that lesson early in life when he’d arrived in London as a young man. Society’s mamas wasted no time in cautioning their daughters against the son of an impecunious French count. And their papas had been just as quick to take Robin aside—accompanied by their more brawny retainers—to make very sure he understood the warning.

  Thereafter, Robin had kept his liaisons strictly to the ranks of ladies who did not require marriage as a prerequisite to bed sport. And while his conquests were not nearly so legion as Byron assumed—and Robin let him assume—they were plentiful enough to keep a fellow from deploring his lot in life.

  And why should he deplore his lot? he asked himself, stopping to stare sightlessly at the snowy courtyard below. He had health, good friends, a few acres of vines he still managed to keep a working concern, and—he cast a jaundiced eye down a hall of fallen plaster rubble and pockmarked walls—someday would inherit a Scottish castle. What more could he want?

  Her.

  He scowled at the betraying thought.

  Irritably, he pivoted to leave, and as he did so, he heard the unmistakable if faint sound of a female cursing. Relieved by the distraction, he smiled, wondering if along with all the rest of the unwelcome bequests with which Taran—damn his unfruitful loins—intended to saddle him, he would also inherit a ghost. Though he thought even ghosts had more sense than to haunt so inhospitable a place.

  He looked down the hall toward where the sound had come just as a pile of russet-colored rags topped by a head emerged from a doorway.

  A particularly dark and lovely head.

  Lady Cecily.

  It appeared he was to be haunted, after all.

  Chapter 21

  For a second, Robin considered pretending he hadn’t seen her—again—and bolt down the adjacent corridor. By avoiding her thus far, he had avoided sampling what he could never wholly have.

  True, manners had demanded that he make an appearance at dinner the first night, but he’d seated himself at the opposite end of the table from her and escaped as soon as Marilla had commenced her campaign to win Bretton’s . . . Well, if she won anything of Bretton’s, it certainly wasn’t ever going to be his heart. But, then, any fool watching her manhandle the duke would soon realize that Bretton’s heart was never her objective.

  But now Robin found he could not resist the opportunity to spend some time alone with Lady Cecily before her rescuers came thundering through the passes. When they arrived, he would be gone. He had no intention of standing by while Marilla Chisholm convinced her father that events had occurred that could only be satisfied with a wedding. Particularly if it was his own.

  Besides, perhaps if he spent some time with Lady Cecily, he would discover that she was not what every fiber in his heart declared her to be but simply a young lady whose lovely visage and pretty manners summed up the total of what she was or aspired to become. At least, he thought as he strode toward her, he could hope.

  “Lady Cecily,” Robin hailed her, his amusement growing with each step.

  She’d exchanged yesterday’s antique morning weeds for an even older ball gown, dating from an era when women would have had to turn sideways to enter through a door. But without the support of the underlying panniers that would have once jutted out from her hips, the heavy skirts dragged along the ground on either side of her like two broken wings.

  The once rich ruby red silk had turned a dull rusty color, and the heavy application of silver thread embroidering the sleeves and hem had become green with age. Huge silk cabbage roses, once white but now dingy and yellowed, hung disconsolately from her elbows, waist, and hips.

  Even during the height of George VII’s reign, when low-cut dresses were in vogue, the décolletage would have been indecent, but on Lady Cecily’s slight frame it hung so loosely that she’d been forced to wrap some sort of velvet shawl around her neck like a muffler before stuffing the ends down the bodice to preserve her modesty. The effort had apparently caused her hair to fall from its neat knot, and it, too, lay tucked beneath the velvet wrapping.

  An image of how she’d look had she not been so enterprising with that damned shawl beset his imagination; her hair rippling over her naked shoulders, loose curls playing at her cleavage. Heated desire quickened his body. Ruthlessly, he vanquished the taunting vision.

  “Heavens, Comte, whatever are you doing here?” Lady Cecily asked.

  Avoiding you, my love. “Taking my morning constitutional. My doctor prescribes clambering over rubble in frigid temperatures at least thrice daily,” he said, and she gratified him by laughing at his absurdity. “Might I inquire the same?”

  She glanced down at her bedraggled skirts and gave an unexpectedly gamine grin. “One can only wear a gown twice before retiring it. Surely you know that, Comte? I found this in the trunk Mr. Hamish brought to the room and as for this . . .” She grimaced, plucking at the shawl.

  His eyes widened. By God, it wasn’t a shawl she’d wrapped around her shoulders, but an old velvet bed curtain. He recognized it as coming from a room he’d once occupied as a child! Apparently, she’d ripped it from its moorings.

  “I will, of course, make restitution,” she added.

  “My dear,” he said, shaking his head mournfully, “I hardly know what to say. One doesn’t find relics like that just lying about, you know.”

  “No,” she answered. “One finds them hanging about.”

 
; He stifled a chuckle, trying to look stern. “What is even more distressing than your pillaging my uncle’s home is that having torn the family tapestry from its rods to decorate yourself, you are now on the hunt for more things to loot.”

  “Terrible, I know,” she admitted, her gaze unsettlingly direct. “I am afraid that when I find something I want, I will fight to the end for it.”

  He looked at her with renewed appreciation. Those had hardly been the words of a model of propriety. And her gaze was too direct and her expression filled with delight and naughtiness. Indeed, her ripe lips trembled with ill-suppressed merriment.

  Damn it.

  “How rapacious of you,” he said, realizing he’d been staring. “But then, how can I find fault with that? Especially as I have been accused of similar failings.”

  “Oh. Is it a failing?” she asked innocently, glancing at him out of the corner of her remarkable eyes. With each word and glance, she delighted him more.

  This was far worse—and so much better—than he’d expected. The conversations he’d had with young ladies during his first season had been unremarkable exchanges: bland pleasantries, light chat about the latest play, the weather, the most recent exhibitions. There’d been no repartee, no subtext, no—God help him—flirtation.

  He must leave Finovair before lunch.

  “Besides,” she said, “your cousin claims that you are the very model of restraint.”

  Once more, she’d caught him off-guard. He burst out laughing. “Either you are twitting me, Lady Cecily, or you have discovered a cousin who is entirely unknown to me and who, obviously, knows just as little about me in return.”

  “He seemed quite confident. But then, you never know with men, do you?” she said. “They always appear to be certain of everything. It must be exhausting. Is it?”

  “As I am not certain of anything, particularly this conversation, I dare not answer.”

  “Oh, I believe you think yourself very certain of who and what you are, Comte.”