“Not with my brother,” she complained. She loved to waltz in the powerful arms of Lord St. Cyr. As though he’d followed the scandalous path her thoughts had traversed, Sin dipped his dark brows menacingly.
Prudence braced for the impending lecture on rogues and emotions and scandal, which was really quite silly coming from a one time, long time, rogue. Fortunately, the steps of the dance separated them and she gave silent thanks. From the opposite side of the circle of dancers, he caught her gaze; the frown on his lips proving he sensed that relief. She stumbled and crashed into the couple just crossing opposite her and her partner. The result was catastrophic…if a welcome, unintended distraction.
A young lady knocked into her dance partner and crashed upon the floor and, with that stumbling move, took down her slight and slender dance partner.
From across the rather humiliating jumble of limbs created by her faulty step, Prudence looked across the ballroom. Her mother had a hand to her forehead and shook it back and forth.
Long accustomed to endless scrapes at his sisters’ hands, Sin, quickly took Prudence by the arm and neatly extricated her from her latest, unintended mess. “I think we are done here,” he drawled.
Yes, that was assuredly the case now. However, as she walked arm in arm with her brother from the dance floor, her head held high in the light of whispers and censorious looks, she readily acknowledged there was one particular matter that was not concluded.
She felt his eyes upon her and found him standing beside a column with a glass of champagne in his fingers. Unlike the contempt and derision marked on the other peers present, the hint of a smile marked his hard lips. He lifted his glass in the faintest salute. Warmth unfurled in her belly and she smiled in return.
“Prudence,” her brother snapped, jerking her gaze away.
Yes, there still remained the matter of Christian Villiers, the Marquess of St. Cyr.
Chapter 5
Lesson Five
Some gentlemen are worth bringing up to scratch…
Christian had always preferred words to numbers. Words could be shifted and altered into fragments and sentences that altogether changed meanings. It afforded one a good deal of control—over all manner of relationships and situations. Numbers however, could not be changed. They were bloody firm in their unbending meaning. And no matter how many times he stared at the bloody numbers upon the pages, they did not change and they were not altered.
He pulled off his wire-rimmed spectacles and tossed them down onto the edge of his mahogany desk atop the leather copy of Sir Walter Scott’s work. The desk, just another gift inherited by the late Marquess of St. Cyr—the scratched, ink-stained desk and an enormous mess of those inherited estates. Christian stared at the stacks of ledgers littering the surface. Yes, no matter how much he sorted through the numbers, not a thing changed. He was in dun territory. And for his friend’s flippancy earlier that evening in Lord and Lady Drake’s ballroom, there was nothing humorous or casual about the circumstances.
Having been born the son of an impoverished baronet, Christian and his family had never lived the extravagant London life celebrated by members of the peerage. He’d endured a mundane existence all the while craving a world beyond the Kent countryside. And his father, a man with an adventurer’s soul, who’d never gone anywhere himself, indulged Christian those foolish fancies.
He stared across the room at the small fire contained within the hearth. The orange flames cast dark, eerie shadows upon the wall. His lips pulled up in a bitter smile. And Christian found just the exciting, grand escapade for a young man of seventeen. It hadn’t been upon the marble floors of European ballrooms but rather upon the battlefields, soiled with blood. What if his father had been the coolly practical, lesser lord who guarded his heir as though he were a cherished artifact? How very different would Christian’s life be now? He pinched the bridge of his nose as a familiar and unfair resentment toward a father who’d died in his absence, crept in. With a steely resolve, he willed back the memories to the far recesses of his mind. There were more pressing matters to attend than the loss of his youth, and the folly to go off, a young, passionate man, to fight that bastard Boney.
The faint creak of the door jerked his attention across the room. His sister stood in her cotton nightshift, framed in the entrance, a wide smile wreathing her face. “Christian,” she said excitedly. “You’ve returned!”
This, of course, being the more pressing matter. Or at the very least, one of the many pressing matters. “Did you expect I should have spent the evening at Lord and Lady Drake’s ballroom?” he teased.
His fifteen-year-old sister giggled. “Oh, hush. You know what I mean.”
He found the long case clock. The broken long case clock. With that unnecessary reminder of his financial circumstances, he looked to the ormolu clock atop the fireplace mantel. He squinted in the dark. “Egads, it is well past two o’clock. Should you not be sleeping?” He swiftly snapped the ledgers closed.
“I should not,” she said with a wink. “Should you not be sleeping?”
He gave a wry shake of his head. With her probing questions and tenacity, Lucinda was oftentimes worse than their mother.
She propped her hands upon her hips. “I thought you would never arrive.” There was a faintly accusatory edge to her tone.
“I assure you I would far rather be home,” even in this crumbling home, “than,” hunting for a marriageable young lady’s fortune, “attending any ball or soiree,” he substituted instead.
She skipped over and he abandoned work for the evening, coming to his feet. Lucinda stopped before his desk. “I expected you would return and tell me all about the ball. Were the gowns wonderful?”
One particular gown slipped into mind; one that was not at all wonderful with its hideous ruffles and flounces and yet there was something intriguing about the wearer of that gown. He came around the desk and chucked his sister under the chin. “As a non-wearer of gowns, I am afraid I cannot say.”
Her lips formed a moue of displeasure. “Oh, pooh. You know I am living vicariously through your grand adventure.”
His grand adventure. There it was again. That foolish phrase. The idea his sister craved that stirred unease within him. He propped his hip on the edge of his crowded desk. “The orchestra was lively and the dancers exuberant.”
Lucinda sank into the cracked leather winged back chair. She pulled her knees up much the way she’d done as a small girl and dropped her chin atop them. “Do tell me more,” she pleaded. More than ten years younger than his own twenty-six years, he’d never been one to deny his sister anything. After despairing of the spare to Christian’s heir, news his mother had been expecting had been the shock of his parents’ marriage and the bane of Christian’s then ten-year-old existence. Until he’d first beheld her glassy, brown-eyed stare. Then he’d been helplessly lost to be anything but her protector. She leaned over and swatted him. “Will you not speak?” Before he could open his mouth, she said, “Mother says you are searching for a wife.”
He choked on his swallow. Bloody hell, his mother had loose lips. “Wherever did you hear that?”
“Well, I heard her muttering to herself about you hurrying up and wedding…” She wrinkled her brow. “Have you found a bride and you’ve not told me?”
“Egads, no!” A small shudder wracked his frame. There would be a wife. The disastrous ledgers and crumbling estates, of course, made that inevitable and yet the idea of tying his worthless self to an innocent young woman knotted his belly.
His sister swung her legs over the chair. She shot a bare foot out and connected cleanly with his shins.
He grunted. “Blood—what in blazes was that for?”
“Well, if you are in the market for a wife—”
Christian choked again. “What do you know about any market for a wife?” God, with her single-minded attention to his marital affairs, she was worse than their mother.
“Do not change the subject,” she continued
over him with a frown. “If you are in the market for a wife, then it hardly behooves you to be so very dramatic in your displeasure at the prospect. In fact, I daresay you shouldn’t even marry a poor young woman under those circumstances.” She paused and gave him a meaningful look. “I certainly know I would not.”
Alas, she’d not have to because he’d make that sacrifice for her. “When did you grow up?” he asked, giving his head a bemused shake.
“I’m not a girl,” she said matter-of-factly. “I only want you to wed because you are hopelessly in love.”
He paused as her words unwittingly dragged forth a long buried memory.
“…I will love you until the end of time, my love…”
Lynette pouted. “Oui. But I thought I was more than ‘your love’.”
He caught her lush frame to him. “Ah, yes, you are the goddess of my heart…”
Lucinda waved a hand before his face, snapping him to the moment. “Hullo, Christian. Do attend me. We are discussing you being in love.”
His lips pulled in an involuntary grimace at those remembrances of his younger, naïve self, and his hopefully optimistic sister’s innocence. God, that he’d ever been so bloody green.
“Why did you do that?” Suspicion laced Lucinda’s inquiry.
Bloody hell, she didn’t miss a blasted thing. “Why did I do what?”
She jabbed a finger at his mouth. “You frowned as though you sucked on a tart lemon.”
“Aren’t all lemons tart?” he countered in a bid to halt her relentless questioning.
“Christian.” The entreaty in that one word filled Lucinda’s eyes. “Surely you know you must wed and it must be to a woman whom you care for.”
Ah God. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes. At her innocent, too-truthful words, panic settled like a stone in his belly. For there would have to be a wife. Either wed, secure their wealth and Lucinda’s future at the expense of some other woman’s sacrifice or lose everything. Christian firmed his jaw. He had no choice. But he’d not enter into a union carrying some weak-willed thoughts of love for the woman he’d wed. Lady Prudence Tidemore flashed to mind once more and he immediately thrust the lady’s visage back. The Earl of Sinclair’s sister was too young, too innocent, and everything his roguish self had avoided these past eight years. For all the damage wrought by Lynette, she’d at least left him this valuable lesson.
“You’ve gone all quiet,” his sister said softly.
He adopted an unaffected tone. “I am not discussing matters of the heart with you.”
“That is fine,” his sister conceded. “We shall speak of the ball, instead. Did you dance all evening?”
“I danced…” A number of sets with several young women who fit his criteria for the role of marchioness. They were those title-grasping ladies whom the papers reported would never settle for anything less than a marquess. Which made him the perfect candidate for any one of them—after all, was there a more perfect match for a fortune hunter than a title hunter? Disgust tightened the muscles of his stomach with this, his latest fall from honor.
Only one lady, however, danced to the forefront of his mind. One who with her wide, hopeful eyes and whispery sighs assuredly did not fit with his criteria.
His sister waved a hand. “Hullo, Christian. Do pay attention. What did you dance this evening? A waltz? A quadrille? A reel?”
“I danced a number of sets.”
Lucinda drummed her fingertips on the arm of the cracked leather chair. “How many sets?”
“Seven,” he lied. Christian didn’t have a single idea. He only recalled the one.
She continued with her rapid fire questions. “What did you drink?”
“Champagne.”
“Was it splendid?”
He inclined his head. “Indeed.”
His sister narrowed her eyes. “How many glasses did you consume?”
“Flutes,” he corrected. “And it is none of your affair.” None of her intrusive questions were. Christian sighed. He’d always hopelessly indulged her.
“Were you smitten by any young woman?”
He snorted. “I am not a man smitten by anyone or anything.” He’d not be that man again.
His sister swung her legs over the arm of the chair, dangling them over the side. “I daresay I do not know how you can possibly be the rogue the papers purport you to be when you are so hopelessly unromantic in all matters.”
“Stop reading the blasted papers,” he commanded. God knows what else his sister had read about her worthless brother within those scandal sheets. He looked over to the well-stocked sideboard. The only well-stocked anything left by the previous marquess and he craved a drink. For his sister in her innocence was unerringly on the mark. There was nothing romantic of his life. He was a man who lived with the sins of his past and now, ironically, as he’d inherited the late marquess’ mistakes, someone else’s sins, too. Only it was strictly Christian’s follies that haunted his dreams. Several creditors away from paucity with nothing to offer anyone but a damned title, there was nothing, nor would there ever be anything, romantic in such a person as he.
“I did not mean to hurt your feelings,” his sister said quietly with an uncharacteristic seriousness.
Involuntarily, the right corner of his mouth ticked up in a half-grin. “You’ve not offended me, poppet.” She’d merely spoken the truth and served to remind him of the direness of their circumstances. “Now,” he took her firmly but gently by the arm and guided her to her feet. “You are going to bed.”
She made a sound of protest. “But—?”
“Unless you care for me to share with Mother your inexplicable ability to have your governess avoid lessons in French, I suggest you seek out your chambers.”
Lucinda widened her eyes. “You know that? How do you know that?”
Christian waggled his brow. “I know everything,” he said as they reached the door. Except how to get himself out of debt and save his family and staff in a way that did not result in him bartering his freedom and taking some woman’s dowry.
“Humph.” She glared at him. “It is wholly dishonorable for you to threaten to share my secrets with Mama.”
No, dishonorable would be erroneously receiving the credit for actions at Waterloo, when, in fact, it was your best friend who’d fought off three French soldiers on horseback, while also single-handedly protecting Christian’s worthless life—and with nothing more than the edge of a bayonet, no less.
Shame knifed through him, but he proved too much a coward to disabuse her of her foolish and wholly inaccurate notion. He inclined his head. “Good night, Luce.”
“Oh, very well. Good night, Christian.”
Christian stood staring after her as she disappeared down the hall and around the corner. With a sigh, he shut the door and this time remembered to turn the lock. His sister and her fanciful musings and bothersome questions aside, he returned to the stacks of ledgers enumerating the creditors owed.
He sank into the folds of his father’s seat; the one piece Christian had brought with him from his previous life as baronet, to the new exalted, but bankrupt, position of marquess. Everything, from the unentailed property to the silver, had been sold off to cover the struggling crops and tenants. Christian picked up his glasses then popped them open. He placed them on the bridge of his nose, hoping they would help bring some clarity to the rather grim prospect.
Except, his sister’s unwelcomed prodding had roused the reminders of what had brought them to London for the Season so very early—his need for a wife with plentiful coffers. In the scheme of uncommendable things he’d done in his life, this was hardly the greatest sin. As though to press down that particular point, his shoulder throbbed with the familiar pain from where that musket ball had torn through his person, cleanly exiting out the other side. So many men had lost more and suffered far worse. Others had given all, never to return. And yet, the weak, useless, and worse, dishonorable, Marquess of St. Cyr should live—now that was the gre
at irony.
A log tipped in the hearth and exploded in a spray of popping embers, calling his attention to the waning fire. His stomach churned with nausea. The blaze transported him back to the crack of a pistol, the horrified cry, lost amidst battlefield shouts, and then the burning of flesh. He pressed his eyes tight, but it was futile. When the memory crept in, it dug in with a tentacle-like hold and did not let him go. Nor should it. This time Toulouse merged with Waterloo and he was thrust into the heart of that famed battle, with the only thing between him and death at the hand of three French soldiers was Maxwell’s skill with a bayonet. A whimper climbed up his throat and he dug his fingers into his temples. In the scheme of marriage, which was a certain necessity, the last person he wanted to bind himself to was a hopeful miss who saw good in him. Not when his failings were so very great. With his return from war, a young man of twenty, the ton had been enamored of those returning Waterloo soldiers. In his silence, he’d only perpetuated the myth that he had been a hero that day in Belgium.
But he knew the truth. Just as did the men, fellow soldiers and brothers-in-arms, who’d stood beside him, knew the truth about just what kind of hero he’d been—a weak, pathetic coward. The manner of soldier who’d needed the protection of his friends in order to survive….and worse, a man who’d unwittingly shared their battlefield secrets with a woman who’d professed her love. That folly had cost his friend, the now Duke of Blackthorne, nearly everything and many other men, absolutely everything.
Self-loathing unfurled within him, tightening his chest so that it was hard to draw breath. With a broken sob, Christian buried his head into his hands.
What woman would ever want such a gentleman as that for her husband?
Chapter 6
Lesson Six
Occasionally, a gentleman will cause you to woolgather…
It is the blue of your eyes.
Walking beside her youngest sister with their maid trailing some distance back, a silly smile played on Prudence’s lips. “It is your eyes,” she silently mouthed. She recalled the marquess’ piercing stare upon her person as he’d then turned and left Lady Drake’s ballroom floor. He—
Captivated by a Lady's Charm Page 6
