by Eva Devon
“Exactly so.”
“I thought we were to be allies,” she reminded.
“We are.”
“Friends do not try to force their friends into intimate confessions.”
“Ah, but we are not to be friends. We are merely under truce. Did you wish to be friends?” he asked softly.
“No,” she replied far too quickly.
He shrugged then gave an exaggerated sigh of woe. “You see, I thought not.”
She arched an impatient brow. “You seem to see a great deal for one of your notorious reputation.”
He smiled. “Perhaps there are layers to my nefariousness.”
“Layers?” she queried.
“Yes. Like trifle.”
Good God, he was so bloody maddening and yet she was enjoying their discourse in a most alarming way. She didn’t often speak with someone who loved to spar so easily with words.
Still, she rolled her eyes at his playfulness. “You do not resemble a trifle in any way.”
“I assure you I do.”
“I do not wish to know how,” she said with growing exasperation even as she was secretly amused.
“How could anyone wish to dismiss trifle?” he teased.
She gave him a withering stare. As much as she was beginning to enjoy him, she needed to put their exchange to a stop. He was too clever and the longer they spoke, the more likely it was he would begin to suspect Lady Patience was far more than she seemed. He already was suspicious.
Lord Charles lifted his hands in supplication. “Dessert isn’t for you. I understand. Then what should we discuss? If not ourselves and not my layers, then what?”
“The weather is a very fine subject.”
“Weather be damned,” he declared, absolutely serious now. “You’re more interesting than that.”
She gave him what she could only call her most spinsterish look, eyes narrowed, lips pursed, spine straight as a ramrod. It was an often practiced look. “Am I?”
“You know it.”
“Ah sir,” she said with as much humility as she could muster, “I am naught more than a reclusive lady who scribbles away. I’ve no aspirations to greatness or singularity. I am merely an unassuming and rather boring creature.”
He snorted. “There is nothing mere about you.”
Drat and double drat. Why wouldn’t he accept that she was just a bored recluse who wrote romantic prose for her own entertainment?
“Why are you so determined to unearth something that isn’t there?” she demanded, her temper flaring.
“Because I believe it is there and truth be told. . . I am bored.”
“Bored?” It was all she could do not to roar at him. He was causing her all this trouble because he was bored?
“Bored,” he repeated with exaggerated articulation.
“How can someone of your birth and your good fortune be bored?” she asked incredulously, though she’d seen it before. The sight of men and women born to every chance, every privilege and who went about sighing with ennui would have been tragic if it wasn’t so infuriating. In her opinion, bored people needed a good slap.
“Ah.” He folded his arms across his broad chest. “To echo you, Lady Patience, you know nothing about me.”
Of that she was beginning to truly agree. She had made basic and quick assumptions about him. But there was more to this man than just the rake. He was claiming boredom, but as she surveyed his face, he didn’t seem bored. He seemed like a placid sea hiding great currents underneath. He was running from something, hiding from something deeply unpleasant within himself and that was why he sought distraction.
Oh, yes. There was a darkness. A cleverness. And a willingness to push her and discover her secret no matter the consequences.
Which she had to nip in the bud.
“My lord, if you will be so perverse, then I will have done.” She curtsied and started for the door, manuscript still clasped to her chest. As tempting it was to plumb his depths, such a thing would be far too dangerous. “I bid you goodnight.”
“What, my lady retreats?” he challenged.
She stopped and said, “My lady is a pacifist and doesn’t engage in fights.”
“What a pity.” He gave her a slow, wicked smile. “For fights do often meet pleasurable ends. All that tussling, you see.”
That smile of his burned. It burned her straight to her core with the most pleasurable heat and it was enough to cause her to swallow and draw a deep breath. “I beg your pardon?”
“I should dearly like to tussle with you.”
“You’re outrageous.”
His smile only deepened as he delivered what seemed to be his coup de grâce. “And I think you like it.”
She wanted to pop him one. Right in the mouth. Something proper Lady Patience would never, ever do. But even she, as her most honest self, couldn’t. Because he was correct. She couldn’t let him know that, though.
Squaring her shoulders, she sneered, “What you think and what is are so very far apart it is not even worth giving credit to.”
“The lady doth protest too much.”
She let out a cry of protest. “Using Shakespeare to prove your point is too low.”
“Using Shakespeare is never too low.”
Clutching her papers tighter to her chest, turning her book into armor, she decided that the only thing to do was, indeed, retreat so that she might regroup. This afternoon, she had undoubtedly won their sortie. Now? She wasn’t sure about the outcome of their forming war.
“Goodnight, Lord Charles.”
She started to resume her exit but to her shock, he caught her elbow.
It so surprised her, her novel flew to the ground, falling about like overgrown leaves on an autumn day.
“Forgive me,” he said immediately.
She made a sound that was somewhat growlish before she could stop herself.
“I just—” he foundered for a moment. “I should like your company.”
Any other reply would have received a terse reply but there was honesty in his eyes. He meant it. And if she was honest, she had been growing melancholic herself since the death of her uncle.
It was why she was looking forward to her trip to London on the morrow so greatly. Too many days alone in this great house were beginning to take their toll. As self-sufficient as she was, no soul could exist without some company.
He knelt before her and began carefully collecting pages. “Would you tell me about it?”
“What?”
“Your story?”
She never talked about her writing. There was no one to talk to. Elizabeth Barton, the actress who facilitated her entrée into London’s demimonde, knew she was an author but they didn’t discuss her work.
It was tempting to take him up on his request, for she often felt as if she were brimming over with her story. However, it was too risky.
“I do not feel comfortable doing so.”
“Ah Lady P, one day you shall have to share it with the world.”
“What if I write only for myself?” She’d done that at first, before she’d realized she could gain financial stability from her work.
“Why would you deny the world the magnificent people in your head?”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to understand the odd man on the floor. “What if my writing is drivel?”
“Not possible,” he said with unflappable conviction. “If you refuse to share it with me at least promise that you will let me show it to an editor.”
She tensed. “No, Lord Charles. Absolutely not.”
What was she doing? Speaking like this to him? Risking it all for a few more moments in his infuriating, though compelling, company. That was what she was doing. If she’d really wished to be rid of him, she’d have already swept out of the room and, yet, she’d indulged in their banter.
He stood slowly and offered her the bundled pages.
She took them, carefully avoiding his touch. “I am going into town tomorrow. I th
ink it best we allow our representatives to handle the transition of the house. After all, it is yours now. If you wish to sell it to me, just inform my steward.”
A curious look hardened his face. “If that is your wish.”
“It is.” And with that, she whisked from the room, determined never to be alone with him again. Lord Charles was far too great a temptation. And despite what he might say, his kind of bliss wasn’t worth the risk. Of that, she was certain.
Truly.
Chapter 5
The gray and pink light of dawn slipped through the great hall’s towering windows, slipping onto the floor and spilling over the toes of Charles’ boots.
He took another sip of brandy from the snifter he’d found nestled with a bottle of brandy. . . Beside Lady Patience’s writing desk.
One glass had already been used. Unless her servants were inclined to tippling and leaving the evidence behind, there was no other conclusion to draw other than that Lady P herself liked a bit of brandy whilst she worked.
Teetotaler she was not.
What other assumptions had he made about her that were incorrect?
He was beginning to think, many. Very many.
For not only had she had the brandy, she’d vacated the house even before dawn had made its presence known.
He’d heard the coach rumble over the gravel drive and listened to the sound of her firm step as she had left Barring House and him behind.
Somehow, he had seriously miscalculated Lady P. Miscalculation was something to which he was entirely unaccustomed.
He’d been so certain she would bow to his will; that she would succumb to his fawning over her writing. After all, she had agreed to be his ally.
False.
Absolutely false, he now realized as he leaned forward and contemplated the ashy fire.
She had agreed to be his ally to placate him not because she had softened to him.
He supposed he couldn’t blame her. Every woman he set his sights on couldn’t fall at his feet, though in the past, they all had.
It was difficult to understand this woman who so easily slipped his net and who, though clearly tempted, was able to deny her desire for him so thoroughly.
In fact, he was now certain that she had been fooling him the whole evening. Not once had she truly wished him to stay. Not once had she revealed anything intentionally about herself.
He couldn’t shake the image of her honeyed hair falling about her face in wild waves or her hazel eyes blazing as she’d stood in all her passion and righteous indignation while the fire had bathed her in its warm caress.
Somehow, he’d cocked it up.
The entire situation, he knew, was odd in the extreme. Yet, he’d felt confident that he was going to be able to unearth Lady P’s secret and unleash her confidence in him.
He’d been greatly mistaken.
And he’d failed to convince her of how marvelous she was.
It was difficult to hear such an exceptional woman be so self-deprecating. He had little doubt that she was an excellent writer. For surely, her austere surface hid a deep inner world. Certainly, the few words he’d read suggested that her imagination was wild and marvelous, indeed.
She should have the chance of being appreciated by the world at large.
Perhaps, as many women did, Lady Patience simply believed she wasn’t worthy of the world’s notice or praise.
This bothered him.
All her life she’d been in this house, alone, facing the consequences of her uncle’s behavior.
She’d clearly been no stranger to the consequences of her uncle’s actions. For she’d asked, what had Uncle Reginald done now?
Clearly, Lady Patience had spent a good deal of time picking up the pieces of her uncle’s existence.
She deserved recognition and praise.
And what had he done? He’d come to evict her. Unknowingly, true. But he hadn’t exactly made the experience easy.
He’d been himself. . . And being himself wasn’t easy for most people to swallow.
Charles stood and made his way to the dying fire. The barest of heat emanated from the charred ashes.
He took another sip of brandy and felt a wave of emotions that he normally didn’t permit.
Charles was accustomed to failing people. He’d failed his father and, in turn, his mother. The last year had been one long terrible slog of coming to terms with the brutal turn his life had taken.
And so, he found that it rubbed him the wrong way that he had failed Lady Patience in just about every way a man could and in fewer hours than it took to fill a day.
Surely there was something he could do?
Charles glanced down to her writing desk.
It was well worn and, from the edge, a piece of paper was peeking out.
He paused. A better man, a man of honor wouldn’t sneak and lift the lid of her desk.
But as he had made so clear the day before, he was a master sneak.
So, without permitting that oh so nauseating sensation of honor to rear its sanctimonious head again, Charles lifted the desk lid.
Inside sat two thick bundles.
Each bore a title page in a clear, bold hand.
The one on the left read, The Amorous Flight of Lady Phoebe Trilby and the one to the right, The Wicked and Most Lamentable Fall of Lady Anne.
The titles reminded him a little of The Wicked Adventures and Journey of Calliope Baker, but Lady Patience had claimed that she did wish to write similar stories so it was no surprise that she would imitate a work she admired.
After a moment’s pause, he collected one of the manuscripts then moved her writing chair closer to the dying fire.
He sat and slipped the title page away and began to read.
*
Elizabeth Barton was everything that Patience wished she could be or at least imagined so. Where Patience was plain, mousy-haired, and austere, Mrs. Baron was voluptuous, a stunner, and witty beyond compare.
Few actresses were accepted with such open arms by so many people.
It was why Mrs. Barton was so perfect for Patience’s needs.
That day she’d headed backstage after a performance of Much Ado About Nothing and visited Mrs. Barton’s dressing room was embedded in her mind.
It was then, over a cordial, that she had taken her heart in her hands and asked the remarkable woman to facilitate her research.
Mrs. Barton had looked at her with her jewel-like eyes as if she were quite mad and then she’d smiled.
Mrs. Barton liked mad people.
And so, the beginning of her very first friendship with another woman had begun.
They had no secrets and Lady P reveled in the hours she could spend in Mrs. Barton’s company because, at last, she had found someone she could be open with.
And because of Mrs. Barton, Patience had been able to write the tales she’d always wanted to. . . And live a life more dangerous and more rewarding than the one she’d endured locked away in the country.
Mrs. Barton sipped her champagne and eyed the ruby silk as her dressmaker clucked and fussed over a corset.
“Patience, this one would suit you.”
Patience eyed the silk and smiled. After years of drab gowns, having frocks selected by Mrs. Barton had been like suddenly entering a world sparkling with rainbows after living on a dark Yorkshire moor.
“Then I should like a gown in its hue,” she said easily.
The dressmaker, a small French woman, beamed. “Bien sur, Madame! With your coloring, you will be tres jolie, non?”
“Oui,” agreed Mrs. Barton as she cast aside the ruby fabric and stroked a peacock silk. “This one for me, Madame Celeste. It will look marvelous with the emeralds sent to me recently by a certain duke.”
Patience knew that Mrs. Barton had made friends with a very powerful family recently and was delighted. It gave her hope, watching her friend traverse the worlds of the ton and demimonde.
It was unlikely, but she wondered if per
haps one day she, too, would be able to be free and not have to hide her activities. Such a thing was so unlikely it was silly of her to even contemplate.
Patience cleared her throat. “Speaking of dukes, do you know the Duke of Hunt.”
“I do.” Mrs. Barton eyed another piece of damask emblazoned with crimson poppies. “A good man with a delightful wife. He once was quite the scandal. Very good in bed, or so I hear.” Mrs. Barton winked. “I’ve not had that pleasure.”
Patience laughed. Months had passed before she could hear such things without choking but Mrs. Barton had proved an education and liberation in many ways.
She thanked God every day for the courage she’d found to go backstage that day.
If she hadn’t, her life would still be naught but one, ongoing, bleak landscape.
Patience picked up her own glass of champagne, gulped half of the bubbling liquid and asked quickly, “And his brother?”
“Charles?”
Charles. Patience bit back a groan. What if Elizabeth knew him well. Very well.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“He’s a sheep of the darkest hue, my dear. Very intelligent. Very skilled. . . Very dangerous. Why?”
“I’m thinking of using him as inspiration for one of my characters.” That was true, though it wasn’t the only reason she was asking.
“He’d certainly be rich fodder. Especially as one of your notorious seducers.”
Patience fought another groan. She’d hoped that Lord Charles would prove to be all talk. She’d never really believed it, but she’d hoped.
“That good, is he?” Patience asked.
Elizabeth stared at her for a moment then started to laugh. A rich, bemused sound.
For some reason, Patience found herself shifting from one slippered foot to the other. Why was she laughing?
“My dear, Lord Charles is much beloved by women of all classes.”
“Why?” He was dratted infuriating. How could he be so beloved, aside from that incredible beauty of his and indescribable magnetism?
Mrs. Barton sighed then put her glass of champagne down. “He’s a guarantee of pleasure. Many men are not capable of ensuring a lady’s peak. Lord Charles? Let’s just say he’s been known to have more than one woman in his bed at a time and send them all home with silly smiles upon their face.”
